THE TICKET COLLECTOR

S.M. Cashmore

In a corner of Central Station, away from the brightness of the main concourse, four carriages destined to make up the last train from Glasgow to Ayr slumber in shadow. No railway staff are visible. No would-be passengers head towards the somnolent train, hurrying into view, desperate to board before the carriages jolt awake and move slowly out of the station.

The second-hand on the platform clock becomes vertical. A moment later, the train jerks and shudders. Its lights flicker into life and give out a low orange glow. The train groans into movement, shuffles around a long bend and disappears from view.

I pressed my cheek to the window and felt momentarily dizzy as the platform abruptly vanished and was replaced by the depths of dark, cindered ground. I sat back and wondered whether I could be bothered to get out my notes. There was nobody else in the carriage. I sighed. Even if I did get out my notes, I probably wouldn’t bother to read them.

The train pushed on through the blustery December night, negotiating a maze of sidings and points before creeping high over the blackness of the Clyde. It clattered through fleeting pools of light, half-seen platforms standing cold and empty. I gave up all thoughts of work and dozed, only stirring when we reached the coast with a sudden burst of speed. I opened my eyes. Glossy darkness reflected my face, the inside of the carriage, the seats and windows on the far side. I wondered sleepily if I could see myself in those other windows. Not quite, because the windows were parallel to each other. Seeing my reflection would be equivalent to seeing out of the back of my head.

I must have dozed again because when I next looked at the reflection I thought I saw a man in an old-fashioned suit sitting on the other side of the narrow gangway, facing the same way I was. He seemed to be reading something. I turned curiously, but there was nobody there. I yawned and glanced at my watch. Ten minutes of the journey remained.

When I turned back to the window the hairs stood up on the nape of my neck. The man in the old-fashioned suit was still there. I could see, in the reflection, my own eyes widening, my mouth dropping open. My heart thudded painfully. The man’s legs were crossed, with a book resting on his knee. He looked perfectly normal, except … except I knew he wasn’t there.

The man turned his head and for a terrible moment I thought he was going to look at me. But his gaze swept past me, as if I was the one who wasn’t there, and he shifted to look behind him. My nerve broke. I jumped to my feet and at the same instant the carriage doors hissed open to admit the ticket collector. He saw that I was staring with utter shock and terror at the empty seat and said, “Ah, ye’ll hae seen Mr Rackham, am I right? Not to worry. Kin I see your ticket?”

The train roared into deeper blackness, entering the tunnel scant minutes before Ayr.

I fumbled in my pocket, found my ticket, and proffered it with a trembling hand. My ears popped as the train pushed through the tunnel. The ticket collector ascertained that my ticket was valid. I took it back and swallowed.

“That’s fine,” he said.

“Oh, yes, yes. But you said … something about …” My eyes flicked back to the still empty seat.

“Aye,” said the ticket collector. “You saw Hamish Rackham. I kin tell that’s what happened, and I kin tell you aboot ’im, right enough. But I’ve the last carriage to see to first, sor.”

He chuckled suddenly, and bent down as the train emerged from the tunnel and the blackness outside lessened. “See?” he said. “Nobody there now.”

I bent down nervously. He was right. The seat in the reflection was as empty as the real thing. The ticket collector straightened. “Sit somewhere else, if you like, sor, but it won’t make ony difference. Ye’ll not see him again, not tonight. You kin trust me on that.”

I did trust him. But I also sat in a different seat. I glanced out of the window as we clattered slowly across the bridge, then almost broke my neck swivelling around to make sure nobody had appeared while I wasn’t looking. Nobody had.

The train braked and jolted and entered Ayr station. I’m pretty sure I was the first one off.

The ticket collector met me by the station exit. We shook hands.

“George McIntyre,” he said.

“Jim White,” I said.

It was nearly midnight. I suggested the Station Hotel, but he shook his head. “No need,” he told me. “See above the DVD place? That’s ma flat.”

“Very… convenient,” I said, trying to keep up. He was a tall man and his long legs ate up the ground.

“Aye,” he said. “And no noisy downstairs neighbours.”

Behind a brown door were stone steps that he climbed two at a time. I scurried behind him.

“Come in,” he said, opening another brown door and clicking on a light. “Tea or coffee?”

“Tea would be nice,” I said. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

“Whit, made tea?” he chuckled.

I remembered how my heart had thundered, my hands had trembled, and how I had jumped off the train as if the very devil was after me. I didn’t feel like joking.

“You know what I mean,” I said.

“Aye, I do. Help yourself tae milk and sugar.”

Out of the window of the tiny sitting room I could see Ayr station, dark and silent now. George sat in one armchair, I took the other. We sipped our tea in silence. Eventually, he put down his mug and picked up a pen and small dog-eared notebook and turned to more than halfway through.

“December sixteen. Name, Jim White. Phone?”

I hesitated, then gave him my number.

“I’m thinking I might write a book aboot it. When I retire. You’re a hundred twenty-nine, by the way.”

“What?”

“A hundred twenty-nine,” he repeated. “Mind, I cannae remember the exact numbers at the stairt, though I remember the first one well enough. That were a young lassie. She came screaming intae the second carriage, straight intae me. She fell doon and just kept going, like a crab. Anything tae get away from Hamish!”

“Hamish?” I asked cautiously.

“There were a few more before I thought on keeping a note. So you might be a hundred twenty-eight or a hundred thirty. See?”

“A hundred and thirty people have seen this… this…”

“Ghost,” supplied George McIntyre. “Aye, round aboot. Some people has seen ’im more than once.”

“Ghost,” I muttered.

“Whit else? A trick o’ the light, a reflection from outside?” He sighed. “I’ve heard ’em all afore.”

“A hundred and thirty times,” I said. “Nearly.”

“Nearly,” he agreed.

I took another sip and began to relax. That so many others had seen the apparition made it less frightening. My curiosity grew.

“I’ve niver seen him,” said George McIntyre. “Guess I’m not in the right place. It’s always that seat in the third carriage where people see ’im. And always just before Christmas.” He tapped his notebook. “Earliest was fourteenth December. Latest was twentieth, though by then ’e seems tae be all thin and transparent.”

I glanced at my watch.

“Sixteenth—seventeenth now, I suppose,” said George McIntyre. “Guess he seemed solid enough, eh?”

I nodded.

“Just kind of sitting there? With his legs crossed and something on his knees?”

“Yes. He was dressed in an old-fashioned suit. I think it was brown.”

“Aye, that’ll be right,” said George McIntyre sombrely. “His name was Hamish Rackham, and he died in a railway crash on December thirteenth, nineteen thirty-four.”

I stared at him. Even though I had already accepted that the vision on the train was a ghost, giving it a name and date of death reawakened my fears. George McIntyre gazed into the gas fire as if reliving those events of almost a century ago and for a wild moment I wondered if he was a ghost, dragging strangers to this old tenement to spin tales of bygone years. Then he looked up and met my eyes, and the fancy vanished.

“You kin read aboot it in the library. The papers were full of it. A train derailed as it went intae the tunnel and fetched up agin the wall. They was several injuries, some serious. One lady, Frances McMurphy of Prestwick Old Town, lost her sight in flying glass. But only one fatality.”

“Hamish Rackham?” I said.

“Aye, Hamish Rackham.” He tapped his notebook. “Number seventy-three was a Professor Clive Gardner. Seventy-three tae seventy-eight, in fact. He was like a dog wi’ a bone, was the Professor. Determined tae find out who Hamish was. It was the Professor,” said George McIntyre in a firm voice, as if he suspected that I might start arguing with him, “who found out that Hamish was Hamish.

“Ah.”

“It was the Professor who found out about the train crash. He kept coming back. He tried to take pictures. He even tried talking to Hamish.”

The hairs prickled on the nape of my neck. “And did he … er…?”

George McIntyre shook his head. “Nothing.”

“And now he appears just before the tunnel,” I said, something stirring in the back of my mind.

“The accident was in the tunnel,” George reminded me.

“But Hamish appears just before that,” I said. “When he was still alive, if you see what I mean.”

George McIntyre raised his eyebrows. “Niver thought o’ that. But it’s right enough. Pity the Professor isnae here,” he added.

“The Professor didn’t think of it,” I said.

“We dinnae know that,” George said, a little defensively.

I leaned back in the armchair. There seemed little point in arguing about whether the Professor had considered the timing of the ghost’s appearances. I glanced at my watch. It was nearly one o’clock in the morning.

“I better be going.”

“Going up tae Glasgow tomorrow?”

“No. My course is Wednesdays and Fridays.”

“Course?” asked George politely.

“Formal logic. A sort of maths.”

“Ah.” He scratched his head. “That’ll be why yer thought o’ that… before the tunnel.”

I nodded thoughtfully.

“Do we know why Hamish keeps appearing? Lots of people die and they don’t …”

Now George McIntyre was nodding. “Aye, I ken what you mean. Is he trying tae tell us something? Or was he doing something so important that he keeps on doing it even after he was killed?” He shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t think so.”

“What was he doing on the last train?”

“He worked in Glasgow, as an auditor, but lived in the Fort area of Ayr. Travelled up and doon every day. He was going home after a meal with friends.”

“Except he didn’t make it.”

“Aye. Niver he did.”

We fell silent. Eventually I said, “Thanks for the tea and the… information. I’d better get home myself now.”

We shook hands.

“See you Friday night.”

“In a different seat!” I laughed.

“Maybe. You look after yerself, sor. It’s late.”

I slept like a drugged man for what was left of the night. I didn’t stir until almost noon. When I tried to study, I kept seeing the reflection in the blackness of the train window, my face transfixed with terror, and Hamish Rackham, his legs neatly crossed, turning round and looking right through me without the faintest acknowledgement that I was there. I kept remembering how I’d leapt to my feet as George McIntyre came through the carriage door.

I stopped work early and attempted to numb my brain in front of the television. By half past nine I could hardly keep my eyes open. I thought the visions were fading. But my subconscious clearly hadn’t got the message, because my night was wracked by awful dreams.

I was back on the train, walking unsteadily along the gangway. I saw that all the passengers were exact copies of Hamish Rackham, all sitting with legs crossed, all with papers on their knees. I kept moving forwards, and they all ignored me.

It was a long train. I moved through carriage after carriage of Hamish Rackhams and after a while I caught up with the ticket collector. My first inclination was to press past him but at the last moment I slowed and hung back. He was dressed, not in the sombre uniform of a ticket collector, but in an old-fashioned brown suit. Another Hamish Rackham! At the end of the carriage, a huge sign on the door said simply ‘3’.

We went in. At first I thought the carriage was empty, but then ticket-collector Hamish paused and leaned to his right. It crossed my mind that if the passenger was himself, then he was about to check his own ticket. I moved closer. To my utter astonishment, George McIntyre was sitting there, legs neatly crossed, his notebook on his knee. He was holding up something in his left hand. He looked, not at Hamish Rackham, but at me. He smiled, but his voice dripped with menace.

“Tea, sor? Or coffee?”

The train rumbled into blackness and I felt its wheels leave the rails. The lights went out. The side of the carriage crunched against the tunnel wall. Either George McIntyre or Hamish Rackham screamed. I knew that one of them had been thrown forward and was even now dying in my dream. The thought was so horrible that I made a tremendous effort and forced my eyes open.

I woke up.

I was tangled up in sweaty sheets, heart thundering, blood pounding in my ears.

I heard George McIntyre say, “He was an auditor. I never saw him. Must not be in the right place,” and I heard my own voice say: “Just before the tunnel. Just before the tunnel.” I saw Rackham in the corner seat, turning round just before…

Suddenly, I knew exactly why Hamish kept coming back.

I turned on the bedside light, jotted down a reminder for the morning, and slept solidly for the remainder of the night.

My alarm woke me at eight. I unglued my eyes and thought about going back to sleep. But it was the final session of my course, when our test results would be announced. And I had arranged to go out to dinner with some of the class. I would have to struggle out of bed and catch a train to Glasgow.

When I sat up, I saw that I had written something on the pad I kept on my bedside table to record odd thoughts that might occur to me. I picked it up and looked at it curiously. I had written ‘cf tick coll’. I frowned. It was not surprising that I had dreamed about the ticket collector, but what was I supposed to compare him with? I vaguely remembered dreaming the train being full of Hamish Rackhams, the shock of seeing George McIntyre in the haunted seat, and waking up as darkness enfolded the screaming train. But I did not remember what had provoked me to write down ‘cf tick coll’.

I thought about it as I dressed and had breakfast, but in the end just gave a mental shrug. It was time to stop thinking about dreams, ghosts and ticket collectors, and start thinking about formal logic instead. And as soon as I did, everything became crystal clear.

I had passed my tests, but my mind was so full of Hamish Rackham and the last train to Ayr that I scarcely took in the results. During a nice Italian meal that evening several people remarked that I seemed distracted.

“Come on, Jim, drink up! Cheers!”

I told them I was just tired, that the journeys between Ayr and Glasgow were getting to me. After all, that was no more than the truth. I left at ten o’clock, taking a taxi to Central Station, and made my way through the deserted concourse. My heart was pounding, my legs felt weak. I climbed aboard the drowsy train and sought the corner seat in the third carriage, half hoping that somebody was already sitting there. Nobody was.

I sat down and looked at the reflection in the window. The opposite seat was empty. I tried to relax, but my mouth was dry and my hands were trembling.

‘Pull yourself together,’ I told myself. ‘There’s another hour to go. He’s not here yet.’

It occurred to me that perhaps Hamish Rackham was already on the train. Perhaps he was even now making his way along the corridor. Perhaps he was just sitting down, crossing his legs and wondering whether to get out his notes. These thoughts didn’t do much for my state of mind.

The train jolted and the platform slid past. We lurched slowly around the bend and my fevered brain imagined that the entire train was a ghost, taking me away not only into the night, but into time itself.

‘You’re drunk,’ I told myself.

I got up and walked unsteadily into the second carriage. A young man wearing a woollen cap was resting heavy boots on a battered skateboard. He stared grimly at me, as if he suspected I was going to invade his personal space.

I had never been so glad to see anybody.

Back in my seat, my heart slowed and I stopped trembling. I looked at the reflection in the window again. Hamish Rackham still wasn’t there. Yet. Outside, light from the train skipped and jumped over the edge of the track and I watched it hypnotically lengthening, flickering, creating and destroying shadows. I almost slept. I started fully awake as the wooded areas gave way to an expanse of grass, sand and sea, glinting under a full moon.

I turned to look at the opposite seat. Nothing. I jerked back to the window. The night wasn’t quite as dark as it had been on Wednesday, and it took me a few moments to make out the reflection of the carriage. I moved my head slightly and Hamish Rackham came int view, not quite as solid as before, in the corner seat, legs crossed, studying something resting on his knee. Irrationally, my fear subsided. Now that he’d appeared, I was able to study him without the previous terrible sense of panic.

I could see a faint check in his old-fashioned brown suit. His hair curled down over his collar. He was clean-shaven, his jaw was firm, his hand turned a page, blurring into invisibility. He was almost transparent.

Then I remembered what was going to happen. I rubbed at the window, trying to make out exactly where we were. Surely the tunnel could not be far away? Rackham started to turn his head and I jumped to my feet. The door between the carriages slid open and George McIntyre came through.

“Ticket!” I shouted. The sound of the train altered and I knew it had entered the tunnel. “Give him a ticket!” I shouted desperately. “Hamish wants a ticket!”

The urgency in my voice must have convinced George. He turned to the empty seat and proffered a ticket just as the carriage plunged into the tunnel. The lights winked out, the wheels clacked louder, the engine’s uniform thrum became an irregular thud. I thought I detected the smell of smoke, billowing in through open windows.

The lights came back on.

The train rocked peacefully out of the tunnel. There were no open windows, no billowing smoke. The engine thrummed as on countless other journeys.

George McIntyre was pressed up against the door, shaking violently, eyes bulging.

“Felt ’im,” he whispered. “See, ticket’s gone.”

He held out his empty, shaking hand. I looked around and saw several empty crisp packets, but no ticket.

“’E took it.”

George swallowed and rubbed a hand across his face. “When it all went dark, I felt ’im take the ticket. You was right. ’E just wanted a ticket.” He lowered himself into a seat. “How did you know?”

I laughed, a little unsteadily. “You were the most important part of the puzzle!”

The train rattled into Ayr and screeched to a halt.

In the hotel bar I told him how I’d realised that the ‘cf’ in my note stood for ‘common factor’. Common factor—ticket collector.

“The train going into the tunnel wasn’t the only thing that always happened just as he appeared. The ticket collector was always just coming through the door. You. Hamish Rackham was always just turning round because he could hear you coming. Did it never occur to you that people were shouting and yelling that they had seen a ghost just as you were going into that carriage?”

George McIntyre informed me that it never had.

“That’s why he always appeared just before… while he was… I said this before, remember? … while he was still alive. Hamish Rackham was an honest man,” I said soberly. “An auditor. And he died before he had a chance to get his ticket.”

“That’s it?” exclaimed George McIntyre. “He kept coming back because he hadnae paid for his ticket?”

“I think so. And now he’s got one, I don’t think you’ll see him again.”

“I niver have seen him,” muttered George McIntyre.

“You know what I mean.”

“You might be right,” said George slowly. “But begging yer pardon, sor, I hope you’re not.”

I had no more occasion to take the last train out of Glasgow. I am sure that it still slumbers until the last possible minute before grumbling off into darkness. I am fairly sure George McIntyre still starts at the front end of the train and works slowly towards the rear. But I have no idea whether Hamish Rackham still appears in the corner seat of the third carriage just before the railway tunnel. Why don’t you take the trip and see?

Remember—corner seat of the third carriage. As you come away from the beach and swing down towards the tunnel, scant minutes before arriving at Ayr, be sure to be looking out of the window.