Night shades

On the day:
20/04/2012


On the way:
It's late. The platform is empty. The last passenger train is long gone, the last travellers safely delivered to their destinations. 
Hours ago the benificent station manager, let's call him John, put away his broom, switched off his intercom, logged out of his computer, turned off the lights, locked up his office and closed the grille on the tiny ticketing hall, snapping shut the hefty padlock with a wry version of that shy smile he bestows on visitors to his counter. No one's coming in here tonight, no one ever would. 
Over the course of 12 years he has come to know and love this two-track stop. It's nowhere near the hurly-burly of the urban terminus, it's far from the picture perfect rural siding. But it's his, his station, his community, his service, his responsibility. And in 12 years trouble has rarely if ever, come there. And he can sleep the sleep of the just, safe in the knowledge that he has performed his service to the best of his ability, with good will. Yes, he has been in bed these past three hours and the sleepy station is securely shored up against the creatures of the night. 
But still, they come. 
For from far beyond the wooden frame of the station bridge, deep within the inky blackness that swallows up the tracks like a heedless leviathan trawling the ocean floor, from there comes sound. It's a mutter before it's a murmur, a murmur before it's a rumble, a rumble before it's a roar and then only, then might the security cameras catch their first glimpse of the approaching storm, if only they could see at all. 
Those who live nearby know it's coming, those who have not received the benediction of sleep, and they burrow their heads beneath their pillows. And young mothers hold their babies to their breasts and pray this night will not be their night. But they do not see. 
They do not see the swart column explode from the darkness, black from blacker still, yard after yard of endless night, every inch hammering, grinding the tracks, a cacophony of iron against iron, pounding down with crushing force - who knew darkness had such terrible mass -  channeled between man-made banks of brick and concrete and under the bridge, blunt head powering, crashing, irresistable through near solid slabs of empty space. 
And stops. The sound and the fury. Leaving stillness, silence, almost, as the rustle of the unkempt grass and tow-headed weeds on the bank shuffles down from the star-nuzzling line of trees towards the platform showing itself in the newborn silence, and the shadows shift between the stalks, as stroked by a breeze. But not a breath follows the halting of the juggernaut it doesn't dare. And still the shadows ripple up to the great spiked metal fence, flow through, and trickle across a tarmac expanse towards the concrete flags at the platform's edge. Tiny silhouettes take form, bent backs, stocky bodies topped by round heads extended sideways by bat-like ears, like the mischievous shades of a fairytale, of a dream. 
But what mischief is here? Some have swarmed across the rails and pried open the nearest of the massive blocks borne by the juggernaut, some have already slid aside, no, flipped up a slab from the platform wall. There's light in there, firelight far below. Already the rattle of - of what? - cascading down a metal shute. A metal shute? Produced  from where? A faint glow against its sides like embers, golden, orange, brighter, faint again. It's there and it's gone in an unhurried instant, vanished like the shades. 
And so is the swart column carrying its clamour and terror to the south, thunder fadiing into the night. 
Hours will pass, the sun will chase away the shadows, and John will return with his keys to unlock the gates, turn on the lights, and sweep the night's detritus and dreaming from the platform. 


On the pod: 
Oceania - Thomas Dolby 


On the front page: 
Mayday in Whitehall (The Times)