Theme Week: Ghostly Tales!

"That is not dead which can eternal lie,
and in strange aeons even death may die." -H.P. Lovecraft

Which is to say that theme weeks aren't dead, they've only been sleeping. This week, the shambling beasts from outside time return as spectral adversaries to haunt our minds and send shivers through our imagination. This week's theme is, as the title has probably told you, ghost stories. So, without further ado:

The Adventure of the Haunted Trainyard
A true ghost story retold (but one of several ways) by Zach Marx, with much credit owed to his companions

Once upon a time, in a land of gray woods and rolling hills, a band of friends set out on an adventure.

They left their grey woods behind them, and found themselves in a strange postindustrial wasteland, populated by exceptionally hopeless suburbanites and home to strange, depressing sports outlets. Over a tangled cluster of old warehouses, auto-body workshops and ratty macadam courtyards, the foreboding single tooth of an industrial keep, big enough to build a mech in, loomed menacing but silent, its many antennae serving no visible purpose. The keep seemed close by, but could be reached by no direct approach, defended on all sides by outlying low buildings of uncertain purpose.

Skirting the outskirts of the postindustrial complex, our heroes happened upon a line of decaying train engines, embodiments of the same ideals that had once animated the complex, living engines of industry as it was, not the spectre of neo-colonial hypercapitalism that stalks the world today.

They adventured into the hearts and souls of those old trains, and brought back an echo of what it was when they had purpose and life. And when the old stories and old battles were over, they sat and studied the industrikeep.



They longed to know what secrets it housed, what diabolical plots or engines of despair it might conceal, but as they sat on the train-roof, they felt the sadness of the years rust soak into their bones, and knew that whatever truths it would contain were too much for them then.



Another day, perhaps, they would enter the tomb and discover the truth for themselves. For now, there was a sunset to watch, and another land to return to before the dark grew too deep, for at night the unquiet spirits of the closed-down factories would rise up from the grubby sidewalks of the unvisited storefronts, and rattle the windows with their fury.

Wishing to avoid this, the friends went home for cake.