Catskills

Route 17 was quiet this early in the morning. Jen kept her windows rolled up, though the heat was a stifling New York heat that promised to add an equal dose of humidity.  She stared straight ahead; nothing could pull her gaze from the road. What had she just seen?  Every time the memory would try to resurface, something would suppress the image into a flash of light and the sound of children crying. She reached down to check her cell phone to find it cracked from when she fell on the tracks, in a fit of rage she flung it into the back seat.  From Rt 17, she turned onto Holiday Hill Road and made a quick left into a hidden driveway between two neglected trees. The door to the cabin flew open at her touch and she found Stan rushing over to her.

“What is it? What happened,”  he asked. She resisted his touch and sat down at the kitchen table.  “Did you find Nick and Sasha?”

She did not answer him; staring ahead, she pulled her hair frantically and began to cry.

“I’m calling the police,”  he declared and walked over to the phone.

“No,”  she said sternly. She took a moment to compose herself.  “It’s no use, they’re gone.”

“Gone,” he demanded, slamming the phone down.  His face was full of concern.  “What the hell happened down there?”

She told him what it was like driving there without him. Sasha and Nick did not come back last night from hiking in the Catskill Mountains.  Stan called the Sheriff's office and was told they had to be missing longer than a few hours before they could warrant a full search party.  Jen drove off by herself, just before midnight to the location Nick and Sasha told them they would start. Sure enough, she found their Honda Accord parked in a small gravel parking lot near the old Ulster & Delaware Railroad Company railroad tracks.  In the wooded forest, at this time of night, darkness could not even begin to describe it.  She could not see her hand in front of her face.  Without a flashlight, she used her cellphone LED to light the way ahead.

Nearly a hundred and fifty years ago, the railroad company went out of business.  Treacherous terrain caused the trains take exorbitant amounts of time just to travel up and down the mountains. During an icy winter, a deadly accident had cost the lives of nearly eighty tourists. The tracks had frozen, but this was to be expected during the peak of skiing season. Screams could be heard by people, who lived nearby, as the trains breaks failed to catch on the slippery tracks.  The odd part about the accident was that there was no crash. The train simply went into the tunnel, but never came out the other side. Without a free flowing amount of information in that day in age, the story past with the time until it became merely a legend.  Hundreds of tons of steal in that train and all of those passengers could not just disappear.  There wasn’t a sophisticated ticketing system in those days, so the passengers were just forgotten. The dramatic loss of business for the Ulster & Delaware Railroad Company and local stories turned the accident into a legend.

It wasn’t long before Jen was at the abandoned tunnel calling for her friends.  Up to this point, Stan followed the story without interuption.  “That tunnel,” he asked with doubt written all over his face.  “I lived here my whole life, there is nothing haunted about that tunnel.  The three of you came here to visit, babbling about the tunnel and full of wild stories.  It’s nothing!  A tourist trap... that’s all.”

“I was there,”  she screamed.  “I didn’t see any ghosts or anything. I just walked into the tunnel and suddenly, I was on the other side and it was already daylight.”

Suddenly, she found herself in darkness.  The immediate change in her location made her stumble and fall.  Her cell phone crashed across the ground.  She could feel the wooden sleepers with her hands as she traced them to the steel rail.  The darkness surrounded her, as did the cries of people so close she felt like she was in the center of a circle of sobbing children.

“Sasha,”  she screamed.  “Nicolas!!”



From inside the cabin, Sasha and Stan were seated on the sofa as Nicolas walked into the house, closing the door behind him.  He drove the Camry back from the parking lot near the trail feeling incredibly guilty.  He and Sasha chickened out and never went near the tunnel.  Instead, they camped out and tried to have a little time alone.  He hoped Jen would hit it off with Stan and make use of their time together as well.  Each time he went to look for her, he managed to walk the entire length of the trail, including walking from one side of the tunnel to the other.  With the aid of daylight and flashlights, he saw no sign of her.

“Any word from the Sherrif,” he asked.

Sasha and Stan shook their heads.

“It’s been two weeks,” Stan said.  “They’ve done all they can, according to Deputy Jones.”

In the tunnel, there were no remains of Jen. There was no indication she was ever there. If you ever heard her voice joined by the chorus of crying victims, you probably weren’t getting out of the tunnel either.