the old train station

Long ago, there was a train station here, when trains still made sense to use, before the Great Road was built high up in the sky. Every day, trains of all shapes, sizes, lengths, and purposes would stop there. Some trains were short, and moved quickly, and brought boxes or transported whole cars full of some material like rocks and so forth. Some were long and moved more slowly, and these had windows, and people rode in them from place to place. And these trains would bring some people to this town, and take some away. At night, naughty children would go to the empty, dark, quiet train station to play, because there nobody could keep an eye on them and tell them to behave. One night, the children were playing hide-and-go-seek in the station. All of a sudden, there was the low rumble of a train’s approach. The children were surprised, because trains never came to the station so late. Looking out down the tracks, they could see the green smoke from its smokestack rising into the starry sky. As it approached, the whistle was sounded. It made a strange, flute-like sound, not at all like a normal train whistle. And as it approached the night around them seemed to grow quieter. The trees moved in the wind, but their branches didn’t make a sound. The children’s feet shuffling across the platform were quiet too. The train slowed down to stop at the platform. One of the children warned the others to hide, and they all rand to dark places to hide themselves. But one girl stood, awed by the sight of the strange approaching train, exhaling its green smoke into the night and glittering like a strange crystal. The train stopped and sounded its strange, whispery whistle again. The car doors opened. A strange, green fog began to ooze out from inside the train and onto the platform. A very tall man, dressed in a nice suit, bent down through the doorframe and stepped out onto the tracks. His clothes didn’t have any color to them at all, and his feet didn’t make any noise on the platform. The other children watched as he approached the little girl, knelt down, and held out his hand. She calmly took it, and he led her to the traincar. They boarded together, and with another soft cry of the whistle, the train began to slowly leave the station. After all its cars had passed from the platform, the other children ran to the edge to watch it passing into the distance. But when they leaned from the platform and looked down the tracks, the train was nowhere to be seen. For ten days and nights the people of the town searched for the little girl. The state police came to help with the search. But nobody found any clues. And none of the children would say anything about what they had seen. They themselves weren’t totally sure of what had happened that night at the station. The girl’s family never stopped their search, but the rest of the town came to terms with her disappearance. And some people say that even now, even though the train station is gone, and the children who saw that strange phantom train have long since perished, even now the ghostly whistle of the train can be heard among the trees, along with the laughter of a little girl...

Just testing with another section.

This section is just for me to test and make sure my margins are working. If this all goes to plan, everything will start coming together fairly soon!