FSE

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"...and here are the emergency override switches for the level crossing," Frank explained. "Barriers closed, barriers open, and this one sets the signals on either side of the crossing to danger." The tiger pointed to three switches in turn.

Janet nodded and placed her bag in the corner of the signal box. "Exactly as it was in the documentation," she said.

Frank nodded and gestured to a radio telephone, a small computer with a black phone receiver on top, "There’s the Cab Secure Radio," he said, before pointing to a red telephone next to that one. "And that’s uhh…" He paused and took a deep breath. "The public telephone."

The fox furrowed her brow. "I… see?"

The tiger put his arms behind his back. "I’m sure they told you about what happens here tonight, so I won’t teach you to suck eggs," he said. "I’m sorry you drew the short straw."

She shrugged. "It was going to happen eventually. Just glad that I get tomorrow to rest up." Janet turned away from Frank and started to unpack her bag.

The tiger took a deep breath and bowed his head. "Just remember, when the call comes through, like it does every year: it isn’t real. Trust your eyes. It’s harrowing and it’s horrifying but it’s just a…" His voice catches. "Yeah. It’s just… something that ain’t really there."

Janet blinked. For a moment, the absurdity overcame her.

"Wait, what do you mean, it isn’t really there?" She turned around, but Frank was gone.

She went to the door, just in time to see the tiger pulling away in his car.

The vehicle was consumed by the fog as it drove away. The night closed in tightly, the cold mist ensnaring the landscape.

"...Well, shit." Janet dejectedly closed the door and sat back at the desk, pulling on her blue coat to keep warm.

The signal box itself was located in the south western corner of the junction, up against both the roadway going north and south and the trackway going east and west. Angel Road train station took up the two eastern corners and a large hedgerow grew in the remaining north west corner.

From her seat at the desk, the fox could clearly see the level crossing and the road approaching it from either side.

As she familiarised herself with the room, she was drawn to the two telephones again. The radio telephone was in good condition, but the red public phone was worn heavily. Not from conventional use, either. It had deep scratches, like someone had been gripping it far too tightly.

She also noticed that the desk was equally scratched. Not the kind caused by extensive wear, but from frantic clawing and scratching.

She tried to tell herself that it was just an old desk. But where the wood was in good condition, it looked far fresher and newer than those in the tattier boxes she’d worked in before. The phone handset too looked almost new. Except for the claw marks of course.

"Forget it, focus," Janet grunted to herself.

And focus she did. There were lives at stake. With the evening rush hour long over, it would be the final dozen or so passenger services, interspersed with the night freight and parcels trains. Even with such a light itinerary, the cost of mistakes was grave indeed.

-

By 11PM, the fog had inched ever closer. From Janet’s window, it surrounded the level crossing thickly on all sides. Even the full moon struggled to cut through it.

As a train rumbled past eastwards, Janet ticked it off of her timetable. There was only one left: the last train into London. It was due to pass in a few minute’s time.

Outside, Janet heard the alarms on the level crossing blare. After giving suitable time for stragglers to cross, the barriers slowly came down to stop anyone from getting into the path of the oncoming train.

Reflexively, she checked the readout to make sure it was the train she was expecting. There was only one on the map, but it was a little further away than she would have expected for the barriers to be triggered.

Before she had a chance to consider this further, a loud ringing filled the signal box.

The red telephone.

Without a second thought, Janet picked up.

"Hello, this is Angel Road signal box."

"Help, please!" The voice was frantic and sharp. "My car is trapped between the barriers, please open the gates!"

Janet lifted her head and looked out the window.

There was no car.

"Can you confirm that you are at Angel R-"

"Angel Road, I can see you moving in the signal box! You’re a red fox in a blue coat! Can’t you see this bright red car?"

Janet tensed up. She saw no car. But how many red foxes in blue coats were working signal boxes tonight?

"Can you exit the vehicle?"

"No, the doors are stuck! Open the gates! The train isn’t far away, please hurry!"

The fox opened the window and stared right at the crossing. No glass, no windows, nothing between her and it.

There was no car.

If she opened the gates when there was no car, anyone who mistakenly walked over would be killed. And she wasn’t going to ring up the train driver over… an apparition… was she?

"There’s no car there," Janet said as calmly as she could.

"Of course there is! You can’t be blind!" the pleading voice repeated. "You’re going to kill my children! My children are in here and we’re going to die!"

The fox checked the track map. There was only one train on it, one that would reach the crossing in just over five minutes.

But the crossing itself was still empty. There was still nobody there.

"You’re lying to me! You think this is funny?! You want to play pranks on critical infrastructure like this?!" Janet slammed the phone down.

Which immediately rang again.

Not long enough for a redial.

As if the call never cut out.

"He-"

"Please! Please save us!" the voice wept. "You can kill me if you must, but don’t kill my children, too."

None of this made sense. None of it. It would have been so easy to ignore it, for her to write it off as a sick joke. But she was in too deep now.

Janet growled. "Fine! Hold on."

Going against everything her senses told her, she placed down the phone and picked up the radio. She dialled in the code for the oncoming train.

"Two, Hotel, Seven, Six this is Angel Road Signal Box, confirm."

Static. A sharp, wavering and wounded kind of static.

"2H76, this is Angel Road, are you there?"

A growl in the static. Something about the growl rang the way a scream would. It was pleading, desperate and shrill. And the more she thought about that, the more she could hear the screams, like crosstalk in the two sets of wires.

"Hello?! Answer me!"

Nothing.

Janet slammed the radio down.

The room was darker now.

Was the light always this dim?

She looked around the box for the emergency button. There was one here, Frank had shown her all three buttons before. But now, she could find only one.

Barrier Open.

She wasn’t that delusional. There had to have been a mistake.

Hadn’t Frank actually said there were three? Or was there just that one? After all, why would she need to set the signals to red if there was a radio?

The red phone demanded attention again. She could hear the begging and screaming before she had even put the receiver to her ear.

"There’s still time!" The voice pleaded, now louder. More piercing. There were more voices too. Crying. Wailing. Screaming. Not just coming out of the phone. It was as if they were coming from the walls of the building.

"There’s nothing I can do!" Janet cried.

It was too late.

It was all too late.

She grabbed at the desk, her claws tracing the scratches already deep in the wood. She stared out the window.

There was nothing there.

"Please! I beg you!"

But her eyes said no.

There was nothing there.

In all of this, all these things around here that had changed, one had stayed perfectly constant.

There was nothing on that crossing.

In the distance, the sound and the light of the oncoming train approached.

Janet realised that not only could she hear the train out of the signal box window, she could hear it through the phone line.

Her gaze was fixed on the empty crossing, eyes drying for she dared not to even blink.

What if she was wrong? What if she was tired? Delusional? What if there really was someone there and she just… wasn’t seeing right?

"Don’t just stand there! Please!" The sound of the screaming, the screaming voices seemed to reach out of the speaker and pierce into her skull.

How many people could there be in that car?

And all of them would die?

She could hear them trying the doors and failing.

Janet stared, with her own eyes as the train came into view.

Light began to fill the crossing.

The empty crossing.

She dug her claws into the wood.

Into the phone.

As the train reached the edge of the crossing, there was a horrific cacophony of metal, glass and screams.

But before her eyes, the train passed through the crossing without incident.

The phone went dead within seconds, but it took moments for Janet to notice it.

Her claws had all but torn the desk in half, the phone handle cracked most of the way down.

The gates calmly opened, and a few cars made safe passage across.

Finally, Janet remembered to blink.

To breathe.

She placed the phone down and doubled over, shellshocked. The dial tone rang in her ears, but she welcomed it. At least it wasn’t the screams.

It was a good thing there weren’t any more trains coming through, because Janet was in no shape to handle them.

She looked over at the override switches.

All three were there.

As they always had been.

The radio telephone, in all the panic she’d pulled the cable out of the back of it without knowing.

It was impossible to explain what the call was. Maybe she was tired, maybe someone was just pranking her.

Her claws hurt. Her heart rate wasn’t coming down in a hurry, but it seemed that at least her work was done. Her scratching, clawing and tight grip on the phone had caused her to cut into her paw with her claws. She took some time to patch herself up.

And tried to forget what she had heard that night.

--

The black of night soon retreated to the deep blue of a coming dawn.

Janet had her equipment packed up and ready to hand over, her paw bandaged firmly.

"Morning," a skunk said, entering the signal box. "Any incidents to report last night?"

Janet shuddered. "Only… a prank call. Nothing more than that."

The skunk folded her arms. "You don’t look like you’ve slept in weeks. Is this your first night shift?"

"No, I…" the fox began. The room hung quiet in expectation, but it was all Janet could do not to throw up then and there.

"What happened to the desk?" the skunk said. "And the… emergency phone…"

Janet stared with a vacant gaze at the skunk, unable to even muster an answer. "I’m sorry," she whispered at last.

The skunk took a deep breath, then nodded. "Alright, hand me the keys and I’ll take over from here. See you at the station in a couple of hours."

Janet agreed and did as instructed. She gathered up her things and walked down the steps out of the box.

From there, she walked up the road, headed for the platform that would take her home.

When Janet walked over the level crossing, light from a passing car reflected on something.

She shook it off and made her way over to the other side.

But then, her curiosity took over.

She stopped, turned her head.

Another car passed.

Another reflection into her eyes.

This time she saw it.

Nestled into the freshly-cut shrubbery were shards of glass.

From shattered windows.

Wrapped in the crumpled body panels of a bright red car.