1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Local by Ryohgo Narita Page A

time, but apparently he’d never heard the name of that ghost story before.
    “Oh, you don’t know that one? The story about the Rail Tracer, the ‘one who follows the shadow of the rails’?”
    To be honest, he wasn’t interested, but they were coming up on the “arranged point.” It wouldn’t hurt to listen.
    With a smile as though he were plotting something, and also as though he felt some pity, the older conductor decided to listen to the younger’s tale.
    “Well, it’s a real simple story, you see? It’s about this monster that chases trains under the cover of moonless nights.”
    “A monster?”
    “Right. It merges with the darkness and takes lots of different shapes, and little by little, it closes in on the train. It might be a wolf, or mist, or a train exactly like the one you’re on, or a big man with no eyes, or tens of thousands of eyeballs… Anyway, it looks like all sorts of things, and it chases after you on the rails.”
    “What happens if it catches up?”
    “That’s the thing: At first, nobody notices it’s caught up. Gradually, though, everybody realizes that something strange is going on.”
    “Why?”
    “People. They disappear. It starts at the back of the train, little by little, one by one… And finally,
everybody’s
gone, and then it’s like the train itself never existed.”
    When he’d heard that much, the old conductor asked a perfectly natural question:
    “Then how does the story get passed on?”
    It was a question considered absolutely taboo with ghost stories like this one, but the young conductor answered it without turning a hair:
    “Well, obviously, it’s because some trains have survived.”
    “How?”
    “Wait for it. I’m coming to that. See, there’s more to the story.”
    Looking as if he was having fun, he began to tell the crux of the story:
    “If you tell this story on a train, it comes. The Rail Tracer heads straight for that train!”
    At that point, the older conductor felt abruptly deflated.
    Oh, so it’s just a common urban legend. In that case, I’m pretty sure I know what he’s going to say next.
    That was what the man thought, and in fact, he did hear the words he’d anticipated.
    “But there’s a way to keep it from coming. Just one!”
    “Wait a second. It’s time.”
    Feeling annoyed by his colleague, who was enjoying himself far more than was strictly necessary, the older conductor interrupted him.
    It was time for the periodic check-in, so he flipped the switch on the contact transmitter. Then he turned on a lamp that would tell the engineer all was well.
    At that, bright light streamed into the conductors’ room from both sides.
    The tail lamps on either side of the very end of the train made it possible for people by the tracks to tell that the train had passed by.
    However, on this train, larger lamps had been specially installed below the tail lamps.
    Operating regulations for the
Flying Pussyfoot
stated that the conductors had to periodically contact the engineer. This was so that if the rear car was cut loose and the conductor stopped making contact, for example, the engineer would know that something was wrong.
    While it might have been an ostentatious, inefficient system, possibly it was also part of this curious train’s special presentation. The conductors followed this system without complaint, lighting the lamps on the end of the train at set times.
    …However. For the older conductor, this time held an even more important significance.
    After he’d seen the senior conductor turn off the switch, the young conductor cheerfully began his ghost story again.
    “Uh, sorry. So, to be saved, you”
    “Oh, wait, hold on. Hearing the answer first would be boring, wouldn’t it? I know a similar story; why don’t I tell that one first?”
    The young conductor happily agreed to the sudden proposal:
    “So we’ll trade ways to be saved at the end, right? Sure, that sounds like fun.”
    Looking at the young conductor—whose