The Ghoul Train, Aly Ross [good book club books txt] 📗

last name, and Gothica was the last name of the goth person. I was starting to sweat. Somehow the water droplets turned to dust. I inserted the key into the brass keyhole and turned it.

The room was quiet and still. But as soon as I entered, the room had almost felt my presence and five torches magically lit. I saw my, and the Gothica’s, family tree. I saw why both names were on the door, because… My Dad had married a Gothica relative. I remembered the name dad told be. Lesly, la prone, Lest Mónica, LANCE!! Lance was the name of the woman dad married. I then, with my finger, followed the line all the way down to me. Arthur Carrie Kelmscott Nickleson. I had my whole heritage in front of me. I needed to find more, so I looked around and found a door.

 

CHAPTER 4

I walked towards the door, heart pounding, blood racing like a red Maserati. My adrenaline started to kick in as I walked through the door. The sight that I saw when I opened the door was unbearable. All I saw was one face. One very familiar face. Chartla. A dead Chartla. I looked around to see if anyone was occupying me and my dead aunt. 

I saw paintings on the wall of graveyards and dead people. My Aunt looked like an oracle. One which had green smoke coming out of its mouth. I started to run. But as soon I life that wasted place, the Candlelight guards were waiting at my door. They had their swords pointing at me indicating I was giving unwanted attention. And clearly for me, unwanted attention was bad. Really bad.

I tried to run away, but the only escape was the deathly room. I couldn’t just jump of a ledge and into wasp nests this time. I had to run through them and back into another room. My search wasn’t complete, so home wasn’t an option. l tried my outrageous plan, but one of the guards caught me. I could only hope for the worst to come.

My only burning question in my sweating mind was how to get out. I was sadly in a bag and obviously couldn’t see. Until I was dumped on a floor of a very posh looking Room. The walls were a colour of glossy gold. I noticed that the rug at the front counter was woven so intricately, I couldn’t even see the different colours of thread. The desk was made of pale oak wood.

There was a man sitting at the desk. His expression showed me he knew everything. One of the golden guards took of my ring. I was me again. “My, haven’t you grown older.” Was his only response to seeing me? IT WAS DAD. MY FATHER.

 He had a blue mohawk and rings in his ears. His face was more tanned, and it had a dark expression. He pointed to a painting suspended in the air by a rope with a red hue. Then I glanced over at his desk and guessed that the red hue was blood. He pulled the rope tight. The painting nor the rope budged. It hung there with no movement. Then he turned his expression to me.

 He looked at me for about a minute, and then he said, “RING!!” the bulky guard handed him the ring and scanned it under a barcode reader. The eyebrow movement on his face showed me that he knew about Mr Gothica and everything I did in the past forty-eight hours. “

You snuck a Death Catcher ring from Orlando Gothica.” That explained the DC on the belt. “You jumped into the TORCHER CHAMBERS!!” he was furious. “AND YOU LOOKED AT OUR FAMILY TREE” He threw the chair he sat on. And the pencil sharpener, and the pencils, and the spare graphite. That one hit a skinny guard. The bulky guard laughed… before the mighty blow struck his face, punched by my dad. He pointed to the door and clearly indicated for me to leave, because the fat guard grabbed me on my shoulder and led me to the door which was also made of oak wood.

 

CHAPTER 5

The fat guard led me all the way out the office, through a door which its sign red offices, then out another slide door that’s sign red DEPARTMENT OF OFFICE SELECTORS, then out into the main hall. The portal that brought me here was only metres away. I would run, the fat guard’s hands were too tight and there was a zero percent change of me slipping and jumping into the portal.

We walked down the corridor for about a minute until we reached a door that said, BLACKSMITHS AND INVENTORS LAB. We walked in and bypassed the INENTORS door but entered the BLACKSMITHS DOOR. Then we embarked through the INTERMEDIATE door rather that the EASY and MEDIUM doors. Finally, we reached the door that brought back the fateful memories on that Friday three years ago. The door sign red TRAINS.

The room was filled with wonder… and smoke. The deathly gas came from the big chimneys ahead of me. Then I realised what we were doing. We were making trains. More than just one. HUNDREDS. I looked around. It must have taken a hundred thousand men to build all the trains in this room. The fat guard handed me clothing. They were beige. Just like home. But there was only one problem. THEY WERE WORKING CLOTHS.  

The fat guard pushed me into the room. I could instantly smell the putrid, smoke filled chamber. My distaste for this room kept on growing until I reached a platform.  The platform stretched for miles and miles. The platform had gates that led to a train. Each gate had a number above it. I looked at my number. It said sixty-eight. GREAT!! It was sixty-seven gates away.

I started walking and almost INSTANTLY the workers gave me a snarl-like look. They stopped what they were doing just to look at the new kid. Then I noticed something. They weren’t wearing rings, like me. Their eyes started to look at something else on me.  Then I noticed what. They all had A Candlelight tattoo embraided on their arm.  But I didn’t.

 As I finally reached platform 1/68, I saw only one boy. Around fifteen – don’t judge – he looked uneducated. It was Aslo. The very boy I knew back home. I looked at him like he was Jesus. He was concentrating on his work on blacksmithing the iron to make the train shell.

“ASLO??” He looked at me confusingly. He started saying how sorry he was and how he said I was right, but I shook my head and went to war. I started to see how Aslo looked like a daemon. His eyes were red from the exhaustion and tiredness of the shards flying in his eye.

As the forty-five hour shift finally ended – time seems to stretch here – we exited to platform. But Aslo seemed to go in to wrong direction. Unbeknown to him, I followed. He went all the way to gate 125 before stopping. He opened a secret door – which was behind a bookshelf, by the way – and he entered. He left it open, which was stupid because I followed.

When I went in, the walls were glossed green and the floorboards were a pint of silvery-grey.  I continued following him until I saw a literal eighteen-inch-high piece of… gold? It didn’t really look like gold, but then Aslo went down steps. Steps to a secret blacksmith. One which was crafting armour.

CHAPTER 6

It was a mixture of glorious and painful. All that goldish stuff being made into Armour. I figured this would be a story waiting to be solved. I had a lead. A big one. I went to get my camera for evidence, but all my hand found was one cold, large, bony hand. It wasn’t my dad’s, but it was another guard. I ran down the steps and into the lobby then past the blacksmiths with the helmets, then the boots, then the body protection and then, I slipped. A piece of that burning gold stuff found a foot to slip, and the only way I fell was down. Down into the belly of the beast.

I woke up with the heat of a thousand suns shining on me. There was also a face in front of me. My eyes followed her cream white coat to a name tag that red, Lazzlon Tonksas, Head of medical advice and surgeon. I had scars all over me. “The ring” I thought. “The fire.” I then was confronted by Aslo, who didn’t look happy. He was fuming. He held up my ring, slid it on my finger and I disappeared. This was not meant to happen. When I looked at myself, I wasn’t Mr Gothica, I was still me. “The ring crafted by me. I made invisible with Oarlock.” Which I later knew was that goldish mineral because I had to sit a lecture about it.

We ended our invisible voyage at the train station, where all the trains were. “TODAYS THE DAY PEOPLE!! TODAY WE FINNISH THE TRAINS, TODAY, WE DECLARE WAR.” The PC systems rust shavings were blown off by the wave frequency sound coming from the loudspeaker. “What invasion?” I thought, and then it got answered.

There was a massive portal about three miles away from the fist gate, which was like three hundred miles from gate sixty-eight. I started to build faster than I ever did. If I finished my shift early, I could enter the portal. But I didn’t because I and Aslo had to build three extra trains. After our super late shift, Aslo when to the blacksmithing obscured compartment, BCC.

Luckily for me, Aslo kept the ring on his desk, so I stole it and put it on. INVISIBILITY TIME. I walked until I was at the BCC. Then I saw it. Thousands of invisible rings. I also noticed something else. Aslo was wearing a ring. He now became… DAD. MY FRIEND WAS MY DAD!!! Then I remembered. When I went over to Aslo’s place, he was crafting a supposed ‘toy’. He was crafting a ring, so HE could get into the portal and out of it as Aslo and dad. And when ‘Aslo and I went to the tracks, he ran away, to get his ring so he could enter as the Candlelight leader.

 

 

CHAPTER  7

I was starting to piece together the puzzle. But the puzzle contained thousands of pieces, so I decided to pay a visit to 19th century heroes, a room which would contain Albert Einstein. I creeped from Blacksmiths and crafts back out into the long passageway. I opened the door to 19th century Heroes, and the first face I saw was President R.F Kennedy. I walked past him to find Nikola Tesla and then Edwin Hubble and THEN Albert Einstein.

He looked at me and somehow knew my name – he is a scientist after all – and said, “Young one, you must venture into the beyond!!” I started to walk away when he grabbed my shoulders and started to say a rhyme.

“When you find the deepest secret, venture to the shallowest ledge,

When all seems lost and can’t find answers at the final edge,

Go to the place we all know well and recruit the one who knows the battle bell

Befriend the lost who doesn’t appeal and have the power to steal the deal.”

I was a little confused, but a sort of got it. Sort of. I walked out the door and found him. A big, bulky, fat guard. His hand was the size of my head. He picked me up by my ears and ear carried me towards Dads Office. He dumped me on the chair and dad walked in. He looked like he had a great day, so that was good for me. “You found it out using MY EQUIPMENT!!!” he was still laughing when he was speaking so all I really heard was my equipment.

He waved