The Tales of Gehiwian Circle

The Shunter's Pole - Part 1

20th June 1988

Childish laughter swept through the room as Norman Lamb opened up the window of his living room. He smiled. A lot of his elderly neighbours took issue with the noise emanating from the playground across the road after school hours.

Rotten killjoys, Norman thought as he relaxed into the soft embrace of his armchair. He shut his eyes, the sound taking him back half a century. Laughter, excited chatter, and train whistles echoed from the platform as school trips and families piled into coaches for holidays by the sea. The ecstatic chorus of their joyous trips, magnified by the seaside, died to a mellow, peaceful mumble as the carriages transported their tired souls home.

What I'd give to be a guard again, Norman smiled to himself. His arthritis had killed his youthful mobility years ago. He even had to give up volunteering at the Gehiwian Circle Heritage Railway. It was nothing like when he used to run up and down the line in his old trusty Ivatt tank engine. Everything was cleaner, slower, more a labour of love than a workhorse of local industry.

Norman opened his eyes.  A frail, elderly reflection stared back at him from the dark television across the room. Permanent bags hung below his eye sockets. Wrinkles contoured his cheekbones with graceful precision. Wisps of grey hair clung to his balding scalp, reluctant to let go. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down his throat as he swallowed. TV was hot business nowadays, pictures dancing across the screen to snatch the eyes faster than the ears.

But the ears, they could savour sounds, enjoy noise, commit life to memory. Someone's laugh, a person's favourite phrase, or the whistle of an engine, sounding her soul to voice herself to the railway staff. Pictures could stay with you too, but without sound they were never truly alive.

Memories, so many over the last eighty years. Parents, friends, lovers, engines, the breadth of the human mind couldn't remember them all. Norman glanced over at the shelves of photo albums by the fireplace. A physical extension of his ailing mind, within them were the things he didn't dare forget.

A flash of light on the dormant TV screen caught his attention. Norman's brain didn't piece it together right away. A figure, a strange shape.

Someone else was in the house, brandishing a strange and familiar object in their hand.

The intruder struck, swinging a long stick ending in a metal hook around the side of Norman's chair. The hook latched round his throat, the point piercing the skin as it tore through his windpipe. A waterfall of blood spilled down the inside and outside of Norman's throat as he gasped for air.

Grappling the armrests, Norman tried to stand. The hook's long handle kept him held in place. Gurgling, fingers clawing at the soft patterned fabric, his legs kicked, fighting but achieving nothing. The reflection of the TV vanished, eyelids fluttering to a close, the light of life disappearing.

Norman's last picture was not a bygone memory, but the horrors of the present -himself struggling in the TV reflection, nauseating unnatural sounds coming from punctured neck. His final thought identified his murderer's weapon.

A shunting pole.

***

"Jesus bloody Christ," Thorston knelt in front of the crimson-stained armchair. The pale white corpse of Norman Lamb laid still, head lolled to one side. A ragged, brutal gash in his throat had bled out all over him. A neighbour found him after knocking, then peering through his window. They were now with specialist officers, psychologically scarred for life.

"I wouldn't describe it out loud like that, Sergeant," Constable Doyle walked back in from the kitchen.

Thorston looked up at his young colleague, no older than he was when he'd first started on the force. A thin film of curly hair followed the shape of Doyle's skull rather impressively, capping off the top of his teardrop face. The young officer was blessed with doughy yet honest, well-wishing eyes t.