Chickens (standard:Ghost stories, 1518 words)
Author: Lev821	Added: Apr 28 2022	Views/Reads: 633/371	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
This is why chickens should never play on railways.

Playing truant was always appealing. Always. Two nine-year olds deep
into their school days would always know better than what adults told 
them. Your years in school were not the best days of your life, and you 
don't need to attend classes to get clever to get good jobs. They knew 
it all, so didn't need to bother attending, and why do maths lessons 
and cross-country runs when it was much more appealing to play on 
railways? 

Which is what they did. 

Two pupils who should be attending music class were walking along a rail
track embankment, bushes, trees and shrubbery on either side, sloping 
high to shield them from any prying eyes. It was a sunny day and a few 
insects flew around happily. 

Tubby Baxter, as his friends called him, real name Charles Baxter, was
exploring along the edge of the undergrowth, looking for anything of 
interest, whilst Kenneth Wright wielded a piece of wood he used as a 
baseball bat to hit stones. 

“Look, a dead rat,” said Charlie, pointing into the undergrowth where a
small thin-skinned skeletal corpse of a rat lay. Their interest in that 
lasted seconds before they moved on around a gradual bend, the only 
sound that of their footsteps under the trackside stones, and those 
stones as they were cracked on the baseball stick. 

“Tubby!” shouted Kenneth. Charlie turned to see Kenneth swinging the
stick in his direction. His mind, in a split-second thought a stone was 
flying his way and he ducked, raising his hands in defence. 

No stone came his way. 

“Only messin,'” said Kenneth, and they continued. Tubby was one of those
kids that was always teased and made fun of, and never gave it back. It 
all just went over his head. Kenneth always thought he was more mature 
than he really was, as though in a rush to be an adult. 

As they walked further and further around the curve, the track
straightened out where just up ahead there was a tunnel. The dark 
gaping maw did not look appealing as such exploration did to a lot of 
children. There was nothing here that beckoned them inside. 

There were no other exits. They either braved going through, or simply
turned and went back. 

A slight rumbling on the tracks caused them to think a train was coming,
and they were right. “A train,” said Kenneth, and him and his friend 
simply stood there looking both ways, not knowing from where it was 
coming, and both instinctively stepped away, pressing themselves into 
the bushes. The 14.21 from London to Newcastle emerged from around the 
bend, and as it approached, a moustachioed driver saw the boys and 
shook his head. He probably knew exactly what they were doing, as he 
will have seen school children playing truant before, hiding down 
railways instead of town centres in their uniforms because they should 
have been in class. The train thundered past, swallowed by the tunnel. 

“Do you think he will radio the police and they'll come and get us?”
said Charlie. 

Kenneth thought for a moment. 

“Nah,” he said. “By the time he radios the police, and get told where we
are, then the police have got to get in their cars, drive here, then 
come down and find us. It'll be a while before they get here, and we 
should be gone by then, cos' I'm not going in that tunnel,” he said. 

The gaping maw was around fifteen metres in front of them. Angry twigs
and undergrowth threatened on both sides. “Look at that,” said Kenneth, 
pointing to the trackside, where several bunches of flowers were long 
dead. “Someone's been here before us,” said Charlie, “wonder what for?” 
They both stared at them for a while when Charlie suddenly said: “Let's 
have a game of dare”. Kenneth threw away his stick. “Okay, what shall 
we do?” “I dare you to stand on the railway in the path of a train”. 
“That's easy,” said Kenneth, approaching the trackside, but then 
stopped. “I heard that rail tracks are electric or something like that. 


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