Day 252

They found a body in the nearby woods.
It happens from time to time and nobody can figure it out.
Within the last twenty years or so human remains have been discovered in those woods
all with the same cause of death - high impact trauma, cause unknown.
Police reckon it's some kind of serial killer as all of the remains include a right arm holding
a train ticket dating back to the mid 1800s.

They're calling it "the train wreck murders".

The woods were normally fenced off to deter people from entering.
Chain fence, barbed wire, CCTV - the works.
Somehow people were still getting in so guards were hired.
They were supposed to patrol the borders at set places where the fencing was weakest
but they'd dare each other to go inside.

One unfortunate guard by the name of Mason accepted such a dare.
He had to go to the latest body scene and take a photo laying down next to the chalk outline.
It wasn't too far from his usual patrol and he'd gotten one of the lads to give him a leg over
the fence, promising to buy them a beer if they waited for him to get back.

It was darker than he expected, the trees were densely packed together and hard to navigate.
Finding the body was easy at least, the forensics team was packing up still and their lights
shone like a beacon in the underbrush.
Luckily the team was relaxed enough to let him finish his dare and, phone in hand, he headed back.

He stumbled a lot, was the ground this uneven on the way over or was he just high on nerves
from posing next to bloody ground where most of a person was found.
Eventually he fell over entirely, his arm slamming into something...metal?
Why was there metal in the woods?

Feeling around for his phone he swiped for his torch app and shone it at whatever he'd hit.
It was a train line, how could there be a train line in the middle of a forest?
There had never been a train here as far as he knew, maybe it had something to do with the
murders?

If he could get to the source maybe he could catch the killer and get famous!
Plan set he followed the line, wading through the underbrush and occasionally having to walk
around large swathes of bramble and other vegetation.

The tracks seemed to go on far beyond the woods limit, it could just be the dark playing tricks
with his mind.
A few minutes later he found a second set of tracks running parallel to the first and widening slightly.
He began to hear a rhythmic noise somewhere in front of him.
The second he stepped off the tracks a large train came hurtling past, knocking him off balance and
nearly onto the tracks.

As he got his breath back, panting and shaking beside the line he saw faint lights out of the corner
of his eye.
He turned his head and saw a train station that looked like it came from a Dickens' book.
People stood on the platform dressed old fashioned and all in the same shade of grey.

He got up, deciding to try and talk to them, was this some kind of cult or prank?
The second his foot touched the platform all of their heads whirled to face him and he found
himself turning away from them.

Something grabbed his legs, walked him onto the tracks and held him there.

He didn't even have time to scream, the train was too fast.

They found him two weeks later, his legs torn to shreds, his face crushed beyond recognition.

A train ticket in his right hand dating back almost 200 years.