It is a true honour to present a story by Ian C Strachan. Ian has featured in several of the Pan Book of Horror Stories with great tales such as 'Death of a Council Worker' and 'The Incidents at Scanham.' This new, unpublished tale shows that Ian is firing on all cylinders and it gives me great joy to share this story here to you.

Ian now lives in Fort Worth, Texas.

On my walk back from the village, the street lamps were haloed by the mist. The last of the daylight was draining from the horizon. On the little station's platform, the mist was thicker - the cold was intense. There was no one about.

I went to the door marked Stationmaster, knocked and tried the handle.

Locked.

"He's not here. No one is here." Turning, I saw a dim shape sitting on a nearby bench, chin on hands, elbows on knees, gazing at the barely visible platform opposite. The voice had no force behind it. A whisper almost. I sat on the other end of the seat and remarked, "Bloody freezing. D'you know what time the next train for Lincoln is?"

Without turning his head he replied in that strange breathless voice: "It seems quite mild to me. A pleasant evening. . . ."

He looked at me and the eyes heldsome awful sadness. "But I'm still on the wrong side."

Down the line, a blurred red light blinked off and was replaced by a green one. He rose and moved to the edge of the platform, jumped down and began to cross the track, bobbing and swaying a little as he picked his way over the rails and sleepers. The train hurtled into the station with startling suddenness.The figure half turned, lifted an arm and vanished as the engine thundered past. I stood horrified, knowing what the racing wheels were doing to the fallen body. The last of the lighted windows flashed by and I searched for the scattered remains. There was nothing, only the dully gleaming rails, the empty platforms, and the swirling mist.

Five minutes after I had collapsed onto the seat,another train rattled in. I scrambled on board. Something, the whiteness of my face perhaps, drew puzzled glances from some of the passengers. "You feeling all right, mate? " asked an elderly man sitting opposite me. "A bit - bit of a shock. Something I just saw, thought I saw..." His lined face held a look that I could not interpret.

"In the station, was it?" I nodded. "Trick of the light I suppose. The mist... could have sworn I saw a chap cross the line, and - " I shuddered violently. "I spoke to him, even." He held up a hand. "Aye, you saw him. And you're not the first."

And as the train rattled on, he spoke almost matter-of-factly of a man who had died in just the way I had witnessed.

"Nottingham chap. Got on the wrong platform and when he heard his train coming, tried to cut across. But it wasn't 'is train, it were the York to London express. Chopped to bits 'e was."

The matter that took me to Gainshill that day remains uncompleted, for the simple reason that I have never gone back.

Copyright Ian C Strachan 2008