The Railroad at Hemlock Hill, by Nisrin Makki

I was terrified.

I told him I didn’t want to go, but he ignored my plea.

“You’re just a sissy,” he’d say.

My older brother was always the culprit of evil persuasions.

It all started when I was seven years old, and my brother eleven.

We attended a local elementary school named after a man they called Harvard Lowery, although I still don’t know who he is to this day.

Lowery Elementary was not your typical grade school.

It was surrounded by legends and myths told decades ago, passed on to every newcomer.

No, Lowery was definitely not your typical grade school.

It was haunted.

And it wasn’t just the school that was haunted.

The grounds around it were haunted as well.

Across the street from the school was a park called Hemlock.

It was fairly large, so teachers would take their student across the street to Hemlock for recess and end-of-the-year picnic trips.

The park itself was pleasant.

The hill at the end of the park–was not.

“Do not go beyond the hill! Do not climb the hill! Don’t even go near it!”

That was every teacher’s announcement to the kids before they headed over to Hemlock.

I never understood why, besides the fact that a railroad was located behind it.

A deserted railroad, for that matter, that hadn’t been used in ages.

There have never been sightings of an actual train passing through it.

Legends around the school say that many years ago, a little boy decided to wander over the hill, despite being told not to.

While playing on the railroad tracks, the train had come, slicing the little boy in half.

It is where his ghost now resides.

Every kid was aware of the haunted railroad at Hemlock Park, including my brother.

He was always so intrigued with the supernatural, and never seemed to be afraid of it.

On the other hand, I was a little girl who enjoyed the present world I was in, not needing an explanation to the unexplainable.

We lived a few blocks away from Hemlock, and my brother had made it a point to pay a nighttime visit to the little boy who died there.

I didn’t want to go.

I was terrified of what I’d see.

Deep down, I think my brother was just as terrified as I was, although he pretended that he wasn’t.

That is why he insisted I go.

It wasn’t to torment me, as he always did.

It was because he, too, was frightened of the outcome.

“You’re walking too slow! Come on!” he said.

“But I don’t want to! Please!”

“Quit being a sissy!”

I wanted to run back home, to my safe haven.

But I was afraid to leave my brother alone.

If he gets eaten by the little boy, it’ll be entirely my fault, I thought.

So I continued on.

Nearing the hill, we heard a loud noise in the distance.

We didn’t know where it was coming from, so we inched a few steps up the hill to get a closer listen.

It was silent.

“Can we go home now? Please?” I pleaded.

“No! Come on; we’re almost at the top!”

Nearing the top, we saw a flash of bright headlights and the sound of a train coming full speed.

“It’s a train! Look! It’s coming!” my brother yelled.

“But how?”

“Run! Go back down! Go back down!”

And so we did. We ran back home, breathless, as we slammed the door shut to our living room.

We knew the railroad was abandoned, so why was there a train?

Perhaps they had started using it again without anyone’s knowledge.

It was my only explanation, aside from my brother’s reasoning of “a ghost was driving a non-existent train.”

I was unable to sleep that night.

The next day at school, my teacher had made an announcement to the class.

“We will no longer go to Hemlock Park for recess.”

I quickly raised my hand.

“Is it because the railroad track is now being used?”

“Well, no, Nisrin, the railroad is still abandoned. There was an incident that happened last night, and we are not able to go there anymore. End of story.”

After school, my brother and I did not speak of the night before.

We were confused and really didn’t know why everything that happened–happened.

It wasn’t until we got home that our questions were answered.

My mother told us that there had been a mugging and a murder that took place on the railroad tracks the night before. A man was walking along the edges, and a group of men robbed and stabbed him, leaving him for dead.

A chill ran through my spine, thinking that could have been my brother and me on those tracks.

It was then we realized the little boy did exist.

He was the one who saved us.

That train was a warning sign, an attempt to scare us out of harm’s way.

He was protecting us.

I no longer feared the supernatural.

The kindness of the little boy gave me an epiphany.

The real evils of the world are the ones who walk among us day by day.

The living is what could have ended our lives that night.

Not the spirit of the little boy, whom everyone had feared.

I still visit the hill every now and again, hoping to hear or see the spirit of the little boy who had saved my life years before.

I’d like to think that he has moved on to a new and happy dimension, but what do I know?

I was never the type to try to explain the unexplainable.