It was a normal night in the Everfree. Well, as normal as I night could be in this place. Harvest, or Harvey as he liked to be called, Moon sat at his desk, quietly sipping his coffee as he stared at the telegraph. It had been acting strangely for the past few hours, tittering a few times before stopping abruptly. While it may have been a pony at one of the other towns hitting it on accident, he quickly dismissed it when it happened a second, third and fourth time. Now he had been staring at it waiting for it to do something for the past hour. Things like this happening had been recorded previously but no cause had ever been found. Sure, the Everfree was known to be odd, but it never really played tricks on electrical instruments until the last few months.
Some of the other switch-shack attendants had said things about mysterious whistles too. Most ponies decided it was just them imagining things due to the isolation for days at a time. Harvey on the other hoof was optimistic. He has always been interested in magical pursuits but him being an earth pony hadn’t lent him well to the cause. So this happening was something that immensely intrigued him. After all, there was no way something like this couldn’t be magical in nature. There was to much that was unknown about the power-that-be to write it completely off.
A distant howl out the window caught his attention, his highly sensitive ears swivelling to the directing the sound came from. To him it indeed sounded like a whistle, albeit very broken, like a record needle skipping horribly. The cutoff was clean before picking up a second later.
“That's odd…” he said, turning towards his orders. His eyes flicked to the clock on the wall, “10 o’clock in the evening…” He drew a line with the tip of his hoof from the time on his papers to the schedule. No trains were supposed to be heading up the mountain for the next 4 hours, the last having disappeared going the opposite way 2 hours before. “There shouldn’t be any activity on the line at this time… unless its an unscheduled train. They would have sent word of such a thing though.” His face turned into a frown, his muzzle now facing the window, eyes peering into the icy cold of the night. It wasn’t long before the howl returned, but far more pronounced now. It was close, very close.
Harvey darted towards the door, throwing it open and letting the biting cold rip past him. He stepped out onto the porch, leaving a hoof print in the snow. Gazing off into the distance he found what he was looking for, a light on the side of the mountain. In the moonlight he could see the dark plume of acrid coal smoke pouring out of the exhaust stack. Harvey’s vision began to blur, a blink later the scene was gone, no engine or train in sight. This time the whistle began again, the vision appearing a few hundred feet from where it last had been. It kinda faded in and out of existence though, like a ghost or something. It was blurry and undefined. He kept staring, slack jawed and wide eyed at his findings. The locomotive on the head end was like nothing he had ever seen before. It was massive in every sense of the word, no engine in equestria could rival the size.
The intermitance of the train was starting to lessen, gaining solidity amongst the snow and trees. The whistle call wasn’t as broken now, allowing the musical nature of the note to cast itself over the mountain.
Harvey blinked again and the train vanished. He put a hoof to his head, “Woah… what am I seeing here?” He asked himself silently. He waited for another second before turning back into the house and grabbing his coat, shrugging it on over his shoulders. His dark blue hoof snagged a lanturn off a shelf and lit it, softly blowing on it to give the flame some life. Again, he stepped onto the porch and sat in a chair.He did some very basic calculations in his head and decided it would be around 10 minutes before the ghost train would reach his position, if it was real anyway. If 15 minutes passed and he didn’t see it again, he would go to bed and file it under caffeine hallucinations.
______
Justin Mathers was young, that was for sure. At only 25 he was half the age of most of his companions. His tenacity behind the throttle was nothing to shake a stick at though, putting him in the higher ranks of the community. After being the first to run the 2023 down the tracks on her first shake down runs, he was sure she could make it to the summit with no problems.
Justin kept a steady hand on the throttle as the stocky mikado fought for traction on the snowy rails. He lightly sanded the rails before him, trying to slip the wheels as little as possible. The loud, echoing barks of exhaust from the stack resounding through the mountains, and himself as well. It had been years of hard work, bloodshed and tears of restoration to get to this moment, and it was something he did not take lightly. His brow was furrowed, eyes looking off into the night as the oil lamp on the front of the engine cast a bright light over the tracks ahead.
Before him stood one of the 3 tunnels on the Cheval Scenic Railroad. This one, tunnel No.2, was guarded by a shack that should have long since been destroyed by nature. It had been 70 years since the original owner of the road closed down operations, leaving the rails to the forces of the mountains. Somehow it had survived, if only just barely. The Cheval Scenic had acquired the rights to the line after a vote went through town on the purpose of actually owning the trackage. After all, what good was an old mining railroad to a fledgling town?
After years of rehabilitation, they soon had the line operational again. Diesels were the biggest source of power though, being the only things the road could get their hands on on such short notice. The 2023 was years away from operation at that point so they needed something to move sightseers.
Now that the hefty mike was running, more passengers would pour in like water from the falls. At least, that was the hope anyway. Justin needed to prove 2023’s viability as motive power before anything could actually be done. That would be decided when she hit the summit with no problems. Justin blink quickly, his vision getting hazy from the strain on his eyes. “That was weird.” He commented to himself. He kept looking, his vision going hazy for second at a time. “Hey Ry, take a look outside will yeah?”
Rylie Rainer sighed, rolling his eyes. “This better not be another one of your pranks.” The lanky man pulled open the door to the cab and looked outside. “I dont see anything weird.”
“Look towards the head end ya blind moron. Something seems… off.” Justin replied, rubbing his eyes.
Rylie did so, and blinked himself. “Yeah, it is weird. Like static almost. No real clear picture.”
“Thats what Im saying.” Justin glanced over, “I’ve never experienced something like this before.” He grabbed the whistle cord and sounded the required blasts before entering a tunnel.
“Neither have I.” admitted Rylie as he grabbed the bell rope and began ringing it, “My skin feels kinda tingly too. Maybe a static charge?”
“Nah, that can’t be it. Nowhere near enough built up static to cause something like this.” Justin glanced outside again just as the train passed the run down switchman’s shack near the mouth of the tunnel. There was a figure sitting in the wooden chair, gazing up at him. Only, it wasn’t a human figure. It was dark blue with blue, green eyes. It jaw was wide with either fear or awe, Justin couldn’t tell which. Both beings stared each other down, unable to make a single move as the train passed into the tunnel, the weird equine-esque thing vanishing as fast as it had appeared.
The engineer fell back into his seat box, his hand slipping from the throttle as his mind struggled to come to grips with what he had just seen. Rylie glanced over, his arm still pulling at the bell. “What's wrong J? It's almost like you saw a ghost or something…”
_______
Harvest Moon could do nothing but stare. The massive steam locomotive thundered passed him in a flurry of snow and condensed vapor. The drive rods, almost larger than life, flung around almost effortlessly. Harvey’s green eyes flicked to the cab window, a kind of monkey looking thing, clad in striped overalls and a cap, looking right back at him. Both of his hands gasped the side wall, his jaw agape. They shared a blink, just enough to snap Harvey out of it, allowing the train to pass into the tunnel behind him before winking out of existence once again.
It took a few minutes for him to collect himself. With a deep breath he threw himself back into the shack and grab a pencil and paper, scribbling down his findings. Slowly he translated it into the dots and dashes for transmission through the wires. Hurriedly he tapped it out, letting anypony and everypony know what he had saw. The most noteworthy part read, “I need somepony trained in magical detection on the next train to Summit switch house! Copy, next train!”
Author's Note
Yeah, its short. But it was an idea I had to get off my mind. It was an interesting take on a kind of HIE I was debating. Let me know it you like it or not.
-Ironsides