0600 Stockport

Calling at: Hazel Grove, Chinley, Edale, Hope, Bamford, Hathersage, Grindleford, Dore & Totley, Sheffield. Thirty-four trains a day, except on Sundays which only has twenty-five.

When travelling from Stockport to Sheffield, there are two incredibly long, dark tunnels as the train passes through the Pennines. Just you, the sound of the track, and pitch black windows. Your company through the darkness is your own reflection. You can try to see things out the window, press your nose against the cold glass, but you won’t.

I know the route well, though there is one journey I will never forget.

Since I flunked my A-Levels at nineteen years old, I’ve been working for security companies. Five years of patrolling, guarding, and watching CCTV footage. “You must have some great stories!” my friends ask me. Well, I can tell you with full sincerity that cock all happened across the expanse of my career to date, until the day I lost my last job.

My last employer had tasked me to to review the hours of CCTV footage recorded on West Midlands train network. Full time job of watching back hours of people sipping coffee, reading newspapers, and shouting at their kids to sit the fuck down and shut up.

In my last week of employment there, I watched back the 0600 Stockport train. It was like any other journey for the most part, apart from it was less busy than usual. By that I mean, there were only about five people in all the carriages - it’s not like 0600 trains on Sunday mornings are ever really busy. There was an older gentleman in carriage B with tea and newspaper; two suits in carriage C with blackberries or whatever the trendy work-on-the-go devices people use these days are; a younger lad in carriage A who looked like they were suffering from a serious hangover, with his head in his arms. Lastly in carriage E, a young woman sat with her earphones in staring out the window.

I flicked through the first 45 minutes of footage from each carriage with nothing worth reporting coming up. Well, the lad threw up on the seat next to him, and while I could try and chase up a fine on that, it was usually a pointless exercise.

It was after the first tunnel that things got strange. Just after entering it, all the lights went out in the train, and the emergencies didn’t kick in. I imagined the driver over the PA.

“Sorry for the inconvenience. Do not be alarmed. Something, something, something.”

Obviously security mode kicked in, and I eagerly skipped through the footage, squinting at the screen to try and see anything. Suit man One and suit man Two managed to illuminate their faces with their iDouches, but I couldn’t see anything else. I swapped to the camera for carriage E. Call me a “white knight” but I was concerned for a solitary woman on a pitch black train at six in the morning, even though I doubted the other passengers were capable of anything sinister.

After around fifteen minutes or so, light flooded back into the cabin. I had an instance of relief, being able to see her in light again, but that was stolen away just as quickly as the feeling came. There was a shadow at the bottom of the screen - an arm just curled around the back of a chair. I quickly flicked through the other carriages, all other passengers present and corrected for. How did I miss a sixth? No. I didn’t miss one. There wasn’t a sixth passenger, and yet there was.

The woman didn’t seem to notice, rubbing her eyes to sudden flush of light, then looking out the window. I wanted to bang the screen and point to her, yell “Hey! There’s a creeper!”. Just do anything. However, this had all already happened.

It moved. Just a little, it pulled itself from behind the chair. It must have been quiet, or the girl’s music too loud, because she didn’t turn. I could see its upper torso now, and it wasn’t a person. I’m sure of that. It just wasn’t shaped right: its forearms just too long as they stretched out along the floor in front of it, its spine curved and bent as it slide out into the aisle, its neck twitched and jerked its head periodically. I felt sick watching it move. Even at the low frame rate and poor picture quality from a CCTV; that wasn’t anything I had seen before and it wasn’t up to any good.

It raised one hand up and then gently lowered it to the floor, and began tapping. The girl still didn’t move. I felt my heart in my chest punching my ribcage. I wanted to stop watching but I had to see what happened. Another shadow slid out from the bottom of the screen - a leg? Yeah, a leg, but it was bent twice in the wrong places. A second one joined it and the creature inched across the floor, tapping all the way. It was like it wanted to be seen, it wanted to frighten her before… Before what?

She kept looking out the fucking window. I begged her in my mind, “Let the track change, the battery run out. Anything! Just run!”

It jumped in a hideous but deliberate motion on top of one of the seats in front of her. “Come on, you must have heard that!” I yelled out to the camera. She didn’t. It was only a few rows ahead of her when it started tapping on the window; one of its knees was bent up near its face, the other knee jerked out backwards. I suppose the closest thing I could think of is like a gargoyle, but that’s not even right. It was lean, and it had no wings or anything, and it twitched. I could see the side of its face now: a big black eye, and rows of teeth with no lips.

It scuttled forward over the rows, just two seats away from her. Instead of tapping it just began to lean forward, slowly creeping itself closer to her. And still! The woman gazed on over the fields outside the train.

The track on her MP3 player ended, or she needed to fix the volume, whatever it was she finally pulled her eyes away to look down. By then its face was hovering above the table in front of her, its hands propping up on the seats opposite her, and its legs stretched over two head rests behind it. I saw the look of panic, I saw her mouth fly open, I saw the thing shoot backwards to retract its legs, and then I saw nothing as the train entered the second tunnel.

I wanted to call down my boss immediately, but I had to see the rest. I flicked through the other carriages, onto C with its suit-men. Surely they heard a scream? Surely they did something? The little lights in their hands remained unmoving. Did she scream? Could she scream?

The blackout lasted another fifteen minutes. When the sunlight flooded back into the carriage, I prepared myself for the worst E had to offer. I imagined blood strewn across the seats, gore on the aisle, a severed head hanging from the ceiling staring into the camera. But there was nothing. No monster, no girl, no MP3 player on the table. It was all gone. For the remaining hour of the journey I flicked through footage, looking for anything. The girl, her bag, evil eyes laying wait under a table. Nothing. I watched as each passenger left the train at varying stops and more got on. I looked only for the girl; I ignored the toddler drawing on the tables, I ignored the drunk man breathing into an elderly woman’s face with beer can in hand, I ignored the brat child who set the fire alarm off and held the train up.

When the train finally rolled into Sheffield, there was no sign of her. She never left the train, she just vanished. I scrolled back and made a backup copy of what I had witnessed and then checked to see if there had been any damage to sustained to the train. There was nothing, so how the hell did that thing get on and off the train?

I had to tell my boss, and that’s when I was fired. Not immediately, though. He was obliged to inform the Police, who watched it and accused me of forging footage for attention. They threatened charges of wasting Police time, accused me of being on drugs. After back and forth arguments for hours at the station, they let me go with a warning. After that, I was fired. Apparently having an impeccable record doesn’t earn you any trust. The Police confiscated the footage and the back up too, or I would show you the video.

There’s nothing I can do. All I can say to you now is keep your volume down low when you’re travelling alone. You can still be snuck up on it broad daylight.

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Credits to: kerrima