A Ghost train

CHAPTER TWO

“This is celine Milton signing out" the newscaster says as the scene changes.

"Hmmm." Mr Jacob's sighed with disappointment.

Meanwhile almiron still disturbed by the fact that everything he thought was a dream was in fact real, he looks at his hands trembling in fear as one thought scrolled through his mind.

'But how?.'

His father looks at him with a raised brow.

"Almiron, is everything alright."

Almiron's eyes widened in fear as his father's words reached him.

"I-i'm fine dad." He says while exiting the room.

He walks into his room locking the door behind him, he heads straight to the bathroom, walking up to the mirror and looking at his reflection

"It can't be. It just can't." He says to himself.

"Hhmmm." After spending almost ten minutes staring at himself in the bathroom, asking himself questions that he cant answer, he splashes water on his face and decides to try and forget about it all.

As he walks back into his room, he sits down on his bed and checks his phone, as he picks up his phone, he notices a message notification on his screen, opening the message he reads

"Hey dude, where you at?, am almost at the school gate." He's childhood bestfriend zayn sends him a text reminding him that their both supposed to meet up at the school gate.

'I'll be there in 20' almiron replied while getting up, on his way out of his room he sights he's headphones and quickly gets it saying

"This will be needed."

He leaves his room and heads straight to the front door.

As he leaves the house he is greeted by his driver.

"Good morning sir." The driver says.

Before he could reply back suddenly he gets a sick feeling and remembers that in the previous incident he took his car.

Immediately fear entered his mind as he took one step back

“Is everything alright sir?.” The driver asked

Almiron pulled himself together and replied

“Yeah it’s fine, I’ll be taking the bus today.”

“Are you sure sir?.”

"Yeah I am, let my dad know." He said while putting on his headphones and walking away.

As he walked to the bus stop he put his music on shuffle.

While walking the song "I can't make you love me by bonnie raitt" started playing, the first lines of the song was "turn the lights out, I'm alone and I don't feel so good"

'Wow what a great timing.' Almiron thought while listening to the lyrics

"Hhmmm" he sighed

Then he looks at the time on his phone before realizing that with all the traffic he cant take the bus.

'I might not make it in time if I take the bus.'

He thought to himself.

Then he remembers theres a train station nearby and start heading towards it.

After a short walk to the station, he buys a ticket for the next train leaving, as the train stops at the station, he gets on and heads for the seat closest to the exit.

With a lot of thoughts on his mind, almiron closes his eyes and uses the music playing on his headphones to calm himself down paying no attention to his surroundings, the train he boarded was a bit scanty and unlively 'LITERALLY'.

It didn't take him too long to realise the dead corpse odour that was inside the train,

The smell was like he was in a cemetery laying with the undead, at first he thought it was a dead rat but the odour was becoming too strong to be just that, but before he could take it that serious the train gets to his stop and the door opens, he quickly stands up and starts to get off the train, as he exits the train he feels a cold breeze blowing pass his neck. He didn’t pay any attention to that because he just thought it was the air conditioner, He was feeling fear and anger at the same time while he was in the train so he wanted to get out quickly.

He then leaves the station taking a small sigh and in no time he meets up with zayn at the school gate

“Where have you been?. I have been here for over half an hour and classes are about to start." Zayn asked him.

"Ohh, I went on a short trip to the station, I decided to take the train instead of the bus."

He said to him then greeted zayn with a warm hug.

"How have you been?." Almiron asked as he ended the hug.

"I'm doing alright as you ca." Zayn gets interrupted by the foul odour that was coming from almiron. He leaned in to take a sniff and said.

"Dude you smell like a dead animal, where the hell did you go?."

"I do?." He says as he sniffs his shirt

"Urhh ok maybe I do, but I cant remember coming close to any dead animal, I strolled down to the railway station at the end of my street and that's how I got here, so i honestly don't know why i smell this way."

"Huh?.. dude theres no railway station at the end of your street, the closest railway station is almost half a mile away from your house." Zayn said.

“But I was sure it was.” Then the flashes came to almiron as he remembered the railway station has been closed for over 30years, he then remembered while walking into the station there was a closed sign and he was the only one at the station.

“wait then what brought me here?.” He says as he was certain he entered a train and if the station was closed then what did he enter.

“I dont know, probably your having amnesia.” Zayn says jokingly.

“Here, use this.” Zayn says while bringing out his perfume from his bag

“Thanks” He takes the perfume and sprays it on his body, especially he’s neck, under arms and he’s wrist.

“Its all good, let’s head in.”

As they both head in almiron still wonders what he entered coming to college.

Zayn linderlof has always been there for almiron, they became friends when they were little, apart from maya zayn is the closest person to almiron.

Zayn is also the oldest in their friend group followed by almirons cousin maya then lastly almiron, he’s the youngest amongst the three.

Almiron and zayn are both studying computer science while maya takes on law

They both make their way into the classroom as the lecturer begins teaching. They both settled down at their various seats as lectures begin.

“Good morning everyone, for some of you who doesn’t know, I’m Mr Edwards.” The lecturer says while writing his name on the board.

But almiron paid no attention as his mind was elsewhere,

He stares out the window lost in his own thoughts trying to rap his mind around everthing that had happened today. He brings out a journal where he wrote down everything strange that had happened that day.

“Hhmmm, all in one day, I’m gonna get to the bottom of all this.” Said almiron while jotting down.

While doing so he caught a whiff of a familiar smell, this particular odour gave him a quick flashback of where it’s from and he remembers that this was the same odour that was in the train. Then without wasting time he was about to ask zayn for his perfume when he noticed someone standing at the classroom door.

“Huh.”

He says with fear and confusion in his eyes, because this wasn’t Just any ordinary person, it was the dead body of james bradwich the mugger he was struggling with on the road, he was standing over at the door giving almiron a death stare

“No no, Zayn!!.” He calls out to zayn in fear while tapping repeatedly on the arm.

“What!.” Zayn replies

“Look over there, the man.” He says while pointing towards the door.”

“What man?.”

“In red t-.” Almiron stops talking in shock while noticing that there was no one at the door anymore.

“Chill, theres no one there.”

“I-Im i, losing it?.” Almiron whispers to himself

“He was there, am sure of it.”

As almiron spoke to himself quietly everyone gets up to leave as that session was over.

“Let’s go get something to eat, maya just texted me.” Zayn said while putting his PC in his back.

Still phased by everything that has happened to him almiron gets up looking stressed, picks up his things and leave. They meet up with maya at the end of the hall and she embraced both of them with a warm hug.

“Hi al, hi zayn.” She said to both of them with a big smile.

“I literally did not have anything for breakfast so lets get something to eat before i drop dead.”

As zayn said that word ‘DEAD' it made almiron feel uncomfortable putting a disgusting look on his face

“Sure sure, al are you good?.” She said while noticing the weird look on almiron face.

“Hmmm, yeah I am, I just had a bad dream.” He says as they all start walking.

They head over to an eatery across the street. However, just as they turn the corner, almiron bumps into an incoming figure.

The damage done to him was lesser than that done to the incoming figure. He merely stumbles backwards, whereas the other guy ended up on his butt, hand rubbing the spot on his face that had ran into Almiron's chest.

“Dude, watch where you’re going!” Zayn reprimanded, hands flying up in the air to emphasize his point.

“Al, you alright?” Maya looked over him to concern, before turning to look at the guy who was still on the floor, watching as everyone fawned over the dude that was barely hurt. “And you,” she pointed. “This is a public restaurant, how can you be so careless?”

“So I’m the one meant to apologise now,” Mumbling underneath his breath, the dude stood up and dusted himself off.

“What did you say?” Zayn stepped forward, more than ready to punch the smug right out of the males voice.

However, he had not taken more than a step when Almiron held his hand out, stopping him in his track.

“Cool it Zayn,” He shook his head, only dropping his hand when Zayn relaxes his stance. “He’s not worth it. Let’s go.”

Maya along with Zayne shot the guy a nasty look as they walked past him, except maya’s glare looked more like she was threatening to smulder a golden retriever rather than an actual human.

“Fucking Aristocrats,” The guy mumbled underneath his breath once they were gone.

Picking his bag up, he slung it over his shoulder and meandered down in the direction he had been going before previously bumping into the rich boy he perceived Almiron as.

The school bulletin board.

At the start of each semester, students were given ranks, ranks that represented how they were treated and those ranks were given either by their grade scores or, well money bought by their parents.

Daxon was one of the former, studying from morning till night to make the cut for the academic bulletin.

He was more than sure that with the scores he had carried, he was likely to make first place.

All that certainty however, faded away as he stood in front of the bulletin board, brows drawn together in a permanent frown.

He hadn’t come in first, nor seconds, or even third. He was fourth.

Fourth fucking place and in first place was Almiron, a name he knew very well amongst the new students in Verin International college. Second was the name of a girl, Maya, and finally was another guys name Zayn, the name he recalled hearing a couple of minutes back.

And then like a brandish disgrace to all his late night studies and mantras, his name came fourth.

What. The. Actual. Fuck?!

“Damn, Almiron made it to first place.” The sound of someone talking beside him pulled him out of his pitiful rumination.

Beside him, two freshmen stared at the board before shaking their heads.

“I studied for months for this shit?”

His second laughed. “Lucky you. My mom’s gonna kill me, she paid thousands for my tuition at the study centre.”

Clapping his friend on the shoulder, the older looking one chuckled. “Damn man, your souped. But, that wouldn’t be the case once you explain to your mother that you had gotten the spot, but that rich daddy’s boy had his father bribe the committee.”

That was enough words to draw Daxon's attention, making his head snap quickly in their direction. They were startled, instantly claiming their mouths shut.

If looks could kill, then those two would be dead right at that moment.

Even though his anger wasn’t directed towards them, Daxon couldn’t contain it, making his face twist in a menacing manner.

He studied for nights, had nose bleeds and nearly broke down completely, whereas that golden boy had his father by his grades.

What. The. Actual. Freaking. Fuck!

“Uh, dude, i think we should dip.” The younger one suggested after seeing the look on Daxon. Soon after, his second agreed and they both rushed away, saving their faces, or any of their body parts for that matter, from Daxon's death stare.

What they didn’t know, was that as they rushed away, their words boomed in Daxon’s head like a broken track record, undermining the efforts he had put into getting into Verin university and making a new found hatred for Almiron bloom.

“Damn Aristocrats. I’ll make them all pay for this.”