"Sweet shelter!"
"Yes! We don't have to sleep on rocks and twigs tonight!"
"It looks abandoned. I doubt there are many supplies here, but it should at least be a good enough place to hole up."
Albert smiled at some of the people in the group, who looked ecstatic at finding a place to rest after hours of hiking in the forest. Francis' intuition had once again turned out correct. The railroad tracks they had found branched off in either direction, running through forest that had obviously been cleared for development.
Francis and Albert had continued for about two miles to the west down the track, before it curved into a shaded section of the forest. There, cut out into a tiny clearing was where a station had been built, with the railroad tracks continuing on past to who knows where.
The station was a two story building, with only one to two rooms on the second floor as it rose up out of the center. It was all made out of a deep brown wood, which may have been colored greyer with age. The was long and narrow, running about fifty feet with a staircase leading to the main deck and the single door that led to the interior.
The whole station seemed like a rustic 19th Century train station from the Western United States, and was clearly not a modern train station in any sense of the word.
If they were back home, it was clearly the sort of place that would have become a historical exhibit, if it survived at all.
"Hey! The doors locked! Goddamnit!" Anthony the college student's voice rang out. While Francis and Albert were admiring their newly found shelter, people had wandered off in an attempt to get inside.
The large double doors had apparently been sealed shut with age.
"Hey! Someone gimme a hand over here!" he hollered to the rest of the group, who were just milling about. Kevin and D'Angelo had taken to playing around on the train tracks, while their mother waltzed over and gave them a piece of her mind.
Jesús Lopez and Joe Alexander responded to the call of the younger Anthony, and together the three of them attempted to bust the door clean off its hinges.
Bang!
"Wait, maybe we should try to find another way..."
Smash!
"...in," Albert finished his statement with just a whisper, as the large door was pummeled down underneath the weight of the three men. The rest of the group gave a loud cheer, clambering their own way up the stairs as people filed into the train station.
"Do these people ever use their brains?" Albert muttered to himself, as Francis chuckled beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Don't let it get to ya. Hopefully we can fix the door later before some wild creatures get in. But, it's hard to fault them for being jittery. It's been a long day."
Martin Louverture walked past the both of them with his family.
"So, after we all get settled in, are you gonna..." Francis asked. Albert nodded back at him.
"Yeah. I'm gonna have to. Now, come on. Let's get inside," Albert said, noticing that most of the others had already filed themselves into the station.
"Okay, everyone! Roll call!" Francis hollered as he and Albert entered the station. Albert began to take a head count, while Francis tried to prop the door back up as best as he could.
Albert took a head count as best he could in the dark, counting thirty-one people total.
"Everyone's here. That's good..." he said, not counting Francis or himself. The sun was just about to go down in the forest, and when it did, their only light source in the dark station would be extinguished.
The room was fortunately large enough to contain that amount of people comfortably, and Albert realized that they must have been in the main lobby.
The ceiling hung over them at about eight feet, which struck Albert as odd that it would be so low. Then again, if the only people here were those horse things, maybe not.
"Gonna have to find a way to fix this later. It's not going to hold forever..." Francis said. Albert nodded to him, and it wasn't lost on him that Francis just implied that they were going to be here a while.
"I'm gonna go check in the back; see if we have anything we can use for the time being." Francis whispered to Albert, who nodded. The older man took off to the southeast part of the room, where another door was.
The room everyone else currently resided in was clearly a lobby of some sort for passengers. The other people were murmuring to themselves in the southern part of the room.
In the center of the long narrow room was a silhouetted structure that seemed to be a timetable, some of the wood had rotted off with age. In the back were no more than four ticket booths.
The rest of the room was pretty barren, save for some tables and chairs and even a couch or two for passengers to sit upon while they waited for their train.
"Well! Okay, everyone!" Albert said, trying to keep himself chipper and optimistic for the sake of the group, "I know we've had a long day! We've walked more than we usually do in a week, we probably all smell bad, and we've witnessed several things that should be impossible. Despite that, if we want to get back home or take away anything positive from this situation, we need to be united. We have to work together!"
"Yeah, right! We're sleeping in an abandoned train station, for Christ's sake!" someone shouted, to which there were several murmurs of agreement.
"Look, everyone! Hopefully our um... living arrangements are only temporary. But, we should consider ourselves lucky; we have a roof over our heads for the foreseeable future."
"So what! We saw those horse things down in the town! Those things ain't normal, and we ain't anywhere near Ashland. How the hell are we supposed to cope with this if we don't have any way back? Are we gonna be stuck here forever?" Richie shouted, one of the few who had actually seen the ponies. He seemed to figure out that they were not on Earth anymore.
"Stuck here forever? What is he talking about?" Dwight Sydney piped up.
Albert began pacing back and forth, his eyes starting to adjust to the dark. How to break such a thing to them?
"Well, I'm sure Richie and those who have seen the "ponies" have come to the same conclusion. From first glance, they act like us; they've even built a very similar town within the forest. This train station itself probably belongs to them too. Just look, the ceiling hangs too low and those ticket booths are too small for a human to properly man."
Albert paused for a moment, letting the words hang on the group.
"This is just a theory, but I think we should be open to all possible conclusions. The truth is-"
"Hey, Albert!" Francis cut Albert off, stepping out from behind the door he had gone into. He was carrying a dimly lit candle lantern, providing at least some semblance of illumination to the rapidly darkening train station.
"I want you to come check something out with me! The rest of y'all, stay seated and don't move! Albert'll be back in a sec..."
Albert looked reluctant enough to leave the group unsupervised, but Francis was waving him over aggressively. He turned and looked at the group. Even in the dim light they looked impatient.
Still, something must have been up, so the younger man entered the smaller room and shut the door behind him.
The only light in the room came from Francis' lit candle, but it was enough to which Albert could clearly see what was in the room. The mainstay was the old desk in the back, with numerous trinkets and items sitting upon it collecting dust. A rustic wall clock hung on the wall behind it, the gears on the clock having rusted over years ago.
Albert blinked, for the numbers on the clock were clearly not Arabic numerals. Instead, they were strange symbols in a script that he had never seen before.
Another thing that caught Albert's eye were the multiple pictures set upon the wall. Most of them were sepia toned photographs of various events that happened around the train station. Some were just of the old steam locomotives, while others showed those same horses exiting and entering those trains, milling around the station, and various other activities.
One pony seemed to be a regular in all those pictures, a male who always seemed to be dressed up in a vest and a large coned hat. Other ponies in the picture also wore uniforms like those. Employees, perhaps?
Of course, there was not a single human in these pictures.
"This must be a director's office or something..." he muttered. After seeing the office, Albert's hopes for returning home were all but shot. He was now one-hundred percent sure they were not on Earth anymore.
An entire town of mutant horses could not go unnoticed by human civilization, but this train station had been non-functioning for years. From the pictures, that meant that they had an active transportation system, some advancements in technology, and a very clear history.
"Man, what are we gonna do?" Albert asked, almost rhetorically, but he knew that Francis thought the same thing once he laid eyes on this room.
"Don't know. But, check this out!"
Albert heard something plop down on the desk, after Francis had been fidgeting with the old drawers of the desk. Francis placed the lantern down on the desk as Albert walked up to him.
What Francis had found was a dusty old newspaper that had clearly been published years ago. It showed the train station in all its glory. Maybe the director of the station had kept a special newspaper that covered the station? Who knew, but the paper itself revealed key information to the two men.
They could not read any of it, but both of them could recognize the script that the newspaper was using. Beyond some symbols that Albert recognized as the numbers on the clock, the newspaper was printed in a twenty-six letter A-Z script, just rearranged to form a language completely different than English.
"What the hell do you think this is? Horse language?" Francis asked.
"Must be. I can't make sense of this. But, have you noticed? Ia nu drane lo Piurna, bavane drutin..." Albert began, reading the first few words of the paper.
"It's a whole new language, but it uses the same alphabet as English. Why would a civilization of small horses, who presumably have had no contact with humans before, develop the same written script as us?"
"Creepy..." Francis commented, and Albert couldn't deny it. It made zero sense according to the natural progression of things. There was no logical reason that horses from another world would develop the same written script.
Unless they had come into contact with humans before, but that was unlikely.
"Ugh... we can't read this, but I think I might wanna take a look at this. There's a few context clues in the newspaper. That symbol right there..." pointing to one of the indecipherable letters, "is the same as one of the numbers on the clock. So, it's probably same to assume that's a number, "twelve" from the looks of it. We might be able to pick up snippets of the language by picking up written material like this..."
"What's the hold up in there?" someone shouted from outside, to which Albert groaned.
"I better go and placate them before they all riot. Though, from what I'm about to tell them, there's probably going to be a riot anyway!" he said, walking out the door while Francis winced.
"Okay, okay, settle down!" Albert called, his voice just barely being able to be heard above all the griping, "We looked in that back room, which seems to be some kind of director's office. But, you're not going to like what I'm about to tell you."
Francis had forsaken him, taking up the task of shuffling around the perimeter of the train station to look for more doors. That left Albert as the sole spokesperson for the group.
"...We are not on Earth anymore," Albert finished, waiting for the inevitable explosion. It did not disappoint. A cacophony of angry screams and roars permeated the area, as several people rose to their feet to mark their protest.
"What the fuck?!"
"Fucking a!"
"What about the children?!"
"This is impossible!"
"People! People, please!" Albert tried to placate the group, "I know it sucks, but we have to deal with the situation as best as we can. We shouldn't give up on returning home, but we need to take this One. Step. At. A. Time!"
"We have to work together on this. Although I corralled all of you away from that village of ponies, the fact remains that we can't hole up in here for the rest of our lives. We should contact them, but in a way that will be sure not to frighten them."
"So, what are we gonna do? Send in one person to be the guinea pig?" Joe Alexander asked. The plan in general seemed to calm some of the people down, but there were still questions to be raised.
"That's exactly what we're going to do!" Albert said steadfastly.
More murmuring.
Albert locked eyes with Martin Louverture; he seemed complacent about all of this. However, Albert couldn't help but shake the feeling that his days in the group were numbered.
"So, who's it gonna be? I know I definitely don't wanna go down there to meet those things alone!" Ryan said. Several others nodded in agreement.
"Quit being pussies! They're just horses! How threatening could they possibly be?" someone else piped up, to his own share of agreement.
"No one needs to worry about any of that," Albert continued, "because none of you are leaving this station to go meet those ponies. It should be acceptable if I'm the one thrown to the lions, correct?" he challenged.
"Whatever! I'm still trying to figure out who died and put you in charge, though!" one of the college kids shouted. Albert rolled his eyes and sighed.
"I swear, once we establish contact with these horses, we'll have a more democratic process when it comes to deciding things. Just be patient, everyone! We have children in the group, and we want to do things as safely and cautiously as possible!"
A few women, such as Candy Alexander and Mercedes Lopez seemed to agree with that statement. Some of the kids were starting to get sleepy, and were complaining to their mothers about the unfortunate situation.
"Hey, Albert! There's a storeroom over here in the back!" Francis cried from the very far end of the lobby. "There's a whole mess of supplies in here, includin' a couple of old sleeping bags. They're too small to fit an adult, but I'm thinkin' a kid can use 'em just fine!"
"Okay, great! It's been a long day, and I'm sure a bit of sleep could do everyone good! I'll be heading back to that town by myself tomorrow to see if I can contact the locals."
Several minutes later, and the group meeting had dispersed as Albert allowed people to go into separate ways. Nearly everyone split off into their family or couple groups.
There were half a dozen sleeping bags in the back storeroom, with Francis trying to distribute them as best as he could. Albert glimpsed Mercedes Lopez tucking Augustín into the small, moth-eaten bag after checking it for parasites, her other two children looking on. They would have to sleep on the ground tonight.
The Louvertures were closest to him, having had nothing but a candle lantern distributed to them. Steven and Lucy were getting ready to pack it in for the night, but Martin seemed to have remembered their conversation from earlier.
Albert walked up to the family, placing a hand on his shoulder.
"Meet me on the back deck in about two hours."
"Hey." Albert greeted simply.
"Hey, yourself," the younger human said simply. There was no happiness, resentment, or annoyance in his voice. Just a simple acknowledgement from an acquaintance.
Martin was sitting in a rotting old rocking chair that was placed upon the back porch of the old timey train station. Three other chairs surrounded a small wooden table that looked like it had seen better days. Everybody else had turned in for the night, leaving Albert and Martin alone in the cool midnight air.
Crickets chirped around them as an animal howled somewhere off in the woods. Albert realized how nice these woods actually were for camping; if only they had arrived here under more pleasant circumstances.
He looked up, taking in the clear night sky which was not ruined by light pollution. The moon here was a full one that looked just a little too perfect, which visible constellations and galaxies dotting the skies around it.
"Listen..." Albert began, taking another of the seats beside Martin, "I wanted to talk about... y'know. We discussed this before," he finished.
Martin lit a cigarette, to which Albert made a face. The older man realized that his pack of cigarettes and lighter must've been the only thing Martin was carrying on him when they arrived.
"Must you do that here?" he asked, rolling his eyes. Martin placed the half-empty pack of cigarettes on the table, and Albert shook his head. The boy had started chain-smoking when he got back from his second "vacation". That had been almost six years ago.
"No wonder your brother and sister started picking up your habits..." Albert groused.
"Steven and Lucy don't smoke cigarettes, only weed. And it's their friends that got them hooked on that. It doesn't have anything to do with me," Martin said, without missing a beat.
"I suppose I can't blame you too much. Those two smoke for recreation. You only smoke when you're stressed."
"Given the circumstances, that tends to be a lot..." Martin said as he put out the cigarette on the table before lighting another one.
"We're getting off-topic. How about you tell me how you brought us here, and what do we going to do to get back?" Albert asked. In all honestly, Albert was almost pleading that Martin knew the way back to Ashland. He had talked to the group like this was going to be a more permanent adventure, but if Martin could bring them back now...
The cigarette hung between Martin's lips, and Albert just realized a sickening thought. He may have been carrying cigarettes when it occurred, but he definitely wasn't carrying his antidepressants.
Would there be a relapse in his depression? Not to mention, the possibility of panic attacks.
"It wasn't meant to happen, but I'm surprised an incident like this didn't happen earlier. Teleportation PSI is something that I don't have the ability to control. Well, I don't have much control over anything I do really, but teleportation is especially unpredictable. It's happened before in smaller spurts, but I can't believe that it encompassed the entire neighborhood!"
"Teleportation? How many abilities do you have?" Albert gawked. He knew Martin had psychic abilities, but he had never seen much of what he could actually do with them. The government took every precaution to only minimally expose his abilities to the outside world, and he had only caught a few glimpses before.
He wasn't aware that something like this was possible, even for him.
Martin pondered the question a bit.
"Seven." he said finally. "Seven disciplines I have at least some manner of ability over. Some are stronger than others."
"Strange that you would call them disciplines..." Albert commented. Martin looked at him strangely while taking another drag on his cigarette.
"That's what they are. Or, at least, that's what I call them, because you have to be disciplined if you want to use them," Martin explained, to which Albert raised an eyebrow.
After that, Martin changed the subject.
"I heard you're going down to that town tomorrow. Are you sure about that? I could always go in your stead, you know?"
"Don't change the subject. The others deserve to know how they got here! We're going to have to tell them sooner or later, lest something like this happen again!"
"...Well it was nice knowing you."
"Don't say that! I'll vouch for you; I'm not going to let you take all the blame for this. We need you now more than ever!"
"You kidding? How do you think they'll react to finding out that there's a literal psychic in their midst? I know we've gone through a lot of weird stuff, but I'm a part of the group! The parents won't want me around their children once they found out its my fault we're even here..."
Martin took a drag on his cigarette.
"Besides, I might deserve every bit of anger they throw at me."
"But it was an accident!"
Martin exhaled more smoke.
"So what?"
"They can't just kick someone out like that. I won't let them," Albert said.
"In systems like these, it usually comes down to majority rule. If everyone in there," he said, gesturing to the dark interior of the train station, "figures out what I'm really like and decide they don't want me around, I'll have to go. If you just decide to lord over them like that, they may stage a mutiny. Splitting up like that only hinders the group, and lowers our chances of surviving," Martin said.
"If it comes down to it, I'll take the fall. I'll be the scapegoat." he finished, putting out the last cigarette he was going to smoke for the night. Albert shook his head.
Despite him trying so hard to keep determined conviction in his voice, Albert could tell by the expression on his face that he was not ready to face what was in store.
"Fine. We'll vote on it tomorrow."