This is the Last Train Car

by Unwhole Hole

Epilogue

Life returned to normal. There was no simpler way to put it. That was the way things worked in small towns like Ponyville. When bad things happened, ponies joined together to overcome them, and then progressed onward.

Or that was what Berry Punch wished she could believe. Except that the world never really worked the way it was supposed to. In reality, it was more like the damaged ligament in her shoulder. The doctor gave her bandages and medication that she never bothered to take, and she eventually healed- -but the pain never really went away. The slight limp grew less and less, but it would never truly be gone, and whenever storms came Berry would think of trains and hard metal doors.

It affected them each differently. Sparkler seemed to take it the worst. She became more quiet and reserved, and even slight sounds would startle her if she was not expecting them. Berry also began to notice that her punch supplies were dropping faster than usual, even from bottles that she had not yet opened.

Still, although Sparkler had changed, she was not broken entirely. She remained her normal organized self, and redoubled her efforts in the mayoral campaign, which eventually led to an inevitable victory. She could still laugh, and if anything she seemed to only have slowed because she was taking time to look at the world, to savor the light and peace that many ponies had forgotten existed in Ponyville. Berry Punch understood, and although the guilt over what she had done to Sparkler never really left her, the two still lived together with a lives not that different from those they had lived before.

Cheerilee had responded differently. In fact, her reaction had been the opposite. She had refused to acknowledge any of it at all. If Berry ever tried to bring it up- -which was rare- -Cheerilee would change the subject, or pretend that it never happened at all. Only when she had drank too much fresh cider at the yearly cider day had she broken down and cried.

Even if she refused to admit it, though, what had happened on the train had changed her. Perhaps one of the only positives of the event was that Cheerilee and Berry Punch were able to at least stand in the same room together, and to talk without any of the anger and jealousy they had been harboring before. They understood each other better, and trusted each other a little more. Whether that was worth what they experienced was something Berry had contemplated many times, and even after three months she had still not come to a sure conclusion.

As for Berry, the effect of the train was not clear cut. If anything, her life was the least changed by it. Sometimes she really did wonder if it was just a bad dream- -and other times she would awaken at night terrified that somehow she had never left the train at all. In either case, though, all she had to do was walk to the living room she shared with Sparkler and look at the central coffee table. Sitting in a dish in the center as the focal point of the entire room, she would invariable see a single glass apple.

Her love for trains had not changed, but it had been tempered. She did not know how long it would be before she could ride at night again, or alone, even during the daytime. Even when she would lie awake at night thinking of what really had been in those shadows, she could only sometimes venture outside at night, and even then she would never go to the town train station. Not in the dark.

The Continuum engine had never gone into full production. It had failed the test it had been given. Not because of strange happenings aboard its five passenger cars, though. The reasons had been far more pedestrian. It had come down to, of all things, the automation system. From what Berry understood, the train was able to stop at the stations- -but unable to stop at any other time. Its engine had been designed to run forever, and that what it apparently intended to do. Supposedly it had nearly run down a girl on a scooter without even attempting to apply the brakes- -if it even had any. Nor was it possible to stop it for track repairs, or to assign it to different lines. It ran on one line, stopping when it chose to do so with whatever sort of brain its creators had given it- -and did nothing more.

That, combined with the extremely high cost of producing the crystal engines, had led to the Continuum’s demise. There was talk about creating smaller engines of a similar design to power ponyless carriages, but Berry never bothered to care about such things. What mattered to her was trains.

Supposedly, they had switched the Continuum engine and its five cars to the auxiliary track. It had been left out on a long path of trails through the distant wilderness to continue its cycles for as long as it could survive, never passing near pony civilization and never stopping as it moved through Equestria. It would never pick up another passenger again. Without the Ponyville station, it would not stop to pick them up. Berry Punch, Cheerilee, and Sparkler had been the last ponies ever to ride it- -and according to Sparkler, they had been the only ones ever to do so.

Except that on some nights- -the nights when Berry found herself awake, sitting at her window with a glass of Punch and looking at the dark and sleeping town- -she would sometimes see lights in the distance. She would try to look away, but she never quite could. There was no sound except silence- -no whistle, no sound of steam or screech of brakes- -but she saw the distant station lights illuminating something just at the edge of her vision.

It was the reason she could not bear to venture toward the train station at night- -because she was sure that some nights at exactly ten minutes to two, she would see a second set of lights. They were almost invisible against the harsh arc-glow of the station, but they were unmistakable. Berry Punch saw the warm, inviting glow of a softer light, the kind cast by crystal lamps. A glow that passed through windows that hardly looked red at all from the outside as it waited,

On those nights, the lights stood there in the dark only briefly, inviting weary passengers to board the night train.

Comments

[nicksterra]

10/10 cosmic horror.

Relatively normal people struggling to survive in the face of impossibility, against formless enemies, with little in the way of hope.

Very well done.

[Samey90]

Hmm, the ponyless carriage with that engine would probably deliver its passengers straight to the afterlife.

Also, if Berry and her friends were the only ponies to ride this train, what happened to the others? The guard, the grandpa with a newspaper, the thestral couple and the unicorn guy? Were they illusions, or were they the victims of the train?

[CoffeeMinion]

Brrrr, this was extremely creepy. Very well done! I have similar questions as 8404632, though I think at one point Sparkler says that the other passengers were never ponies at all, so I guess that leaves us with unsettling conclusions. The yellow mare in particular still makes me wonder, though.

Obviously this poaches a few tropes from Lovecraftian horror, but they never came off as cheap. On the contrary, everything from the discussion of geometry to the description of the too-big cars right near the end felt vivid and unsettling. IMO the "where are they now?" chapter skirted the edges of a too-clean wrapup, particularly Cheerilee's decision to ignore everything. But that's more my personal opinion than anything technically wrong.

Overall I think this has a good cast, an effective if sparse use of humor, and a great slow burning horror. Like the first time the lights went off... that's horror gold.

[Zaknel]

8411560
I don't think you understand. Why 'feet' instead of 'hooves.'

[Unwhole Hole]

8411565
I see the two terms as somewhat interchangeable, with the hoof being the outer hard part of a pony/horse foot (which includes the rest of the appendage up to the ankle, as well as the bones and tissue inside).

[CanadianCapitalist]

So what was the cause of the train cars looping?

[SQA]

Now that was a good read. Thoroughly unsettling.

[Fiddlebottoms]

Very good, especially the end which captures the "... in the Twilight Zone" feel perfectly.

[Franso]

I like the story. I like Berry Punch. I love trains.

[Deor]

9464074
You clearly havent read his other fiction, the universe of which this fic is part of... What you thought was hastur and what you tought is nyarlathotep are one ants the same - Satin Vale, the red eyed goddes of lust, self apointed ruler of the world, keeper of the souls in tartarus and birthmother of fluttershy... Just like in Scriptwelder's games if you piece all the little details together you will go deeper, into a scary and very unsettling universe. I salute unwhole hole for paying such tribute to the games

[Moosetasm]

Fantastic story. Good characters, character building, and universe building if this takes place in the same continuity as Desert Water. The last paragraph was very spine-chilling, and served as a perfect punctuation for the ending.

[Hannah Nelson]

This is spooky!

[cozyloveme]

Good job!

[Winter_Solstice]

Featured in October for The Goodfic Bin

[StubobNumbers]

Blaine the train is a real pain!