I arrived in plenty of time. My seat was in carriage five, number 6A. I hoped it would be by a window, and it was! There were few others on the train as early as me, and then everyone in my carriage seemed to arrive at the same time. To me they all looked the same or similar but there were too many of them to be siblings. I counted them and there were twenty-nine. They were all speaking in a funny language I didn’t know. It didn’t sound like a proper language to me, but who am I to know. I asked one of them what language it was and he said it was Romanian. I didn’t say a word but in fact I’m rather fluent in Romanian and this wasn’t it.
The trip began. There were muffled conversations and muffled laughter. I tried to strike up a conversation with the man next to me – in seat 6B – but he wasn’t very social and after some time he started to doze.
It was then I noticed something: the skin on one of his hands was folded back like it was fabric, like it was an ironed handkerchief or a folded down sheet on a bed. The gap revealed a kind of green flesh or I should say a green lizard skin. To be honest it gave me the heebie-jeebies.
I started to look around at the other travellers. I couldn’t tell much, they all looked pretty normal but I felt they were all the same: creatures of some sort in a human costume. Then something monstrous happened. A passenger right up front took off his head. He just took off his head as if it was normal, and then put it back on – as if he was readjusting it. There was nothing under the head. It was empty.
I honestly barely tolerated the next ten hours or so. I hardly left my seat. At one time I went to the bathroom. Another time I thought I’d get something to eat and made my way through three carriages to the diner. All the carriages were full with the same looking people. The diner was empty. I bought a sandwich and the lady said I was the only one so far who had bought anything to eat.
At last we arrived in Cloverston. Everyone got off. The throng of humanoid lizards (that’s what I thought they were) all headed as a herd to some waiting buses. The buses took off and were gone.
I went straight to the ticket office and bought a ticket back from whence I came. I wasn’t hanging around. It was the spookiest thing I’ve ever encountered. I’m still scared. You are the only one I’ve ever told this to.
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