Claire just wants to walk home with her candyfloss ... but the walk along the old train tracks becomes a nightmare
The ghost train is for kids!' said Claire.
"People look pretty scared when they come out,' said Peter, trying to pull her to The World's Scariest
Ghost Train. "Come on, it'll be fun!
They're pretending," said Claire. They know it's not real, so what's there to be scared of?
OK," Peter said, as he bought a ticket for himself and the rest of their group.
Maybe it was time to go home, Claire thought. But there was one thing left to do at the fair - buy a
candyfloss. It was impossible to finish a candyfloss. They were just too big and too sweet, yet, at the
same time, there was nothing there. It must be possible though, she thought, as she paid for her huge
pink sugar cloud. She set herself a challenge. Tonight she was going to eat a whole one. For that, she
needed time, and that meant walking home by the train tracks instead of through the town centre.
It wasn't very dark yet. She stepped off the dirt and onto the track. Each wooden sleeper was just the
right distance apart so she could step from one to another easily. Of course, Claire knew not to walk
on train tracks anywhere else - it was stupid and dangerous. Only last year some boys in the big city
died playing on the tracks. But there was nothing dangerous here.
No one in Fellside had any memory of a train using the railway tracks. There wasn't even a train
station. The tracks suddenly finished as if the engineers ran out of wood and iron. Claire always
thought of them like those cartoons where the cat tries to catch the mouse and the mouse puts down
tracks in front of his speeding carriage until he runs out.
The train tracks were a mystery, but an old one and nobody wondered about it now. They were just
there, and that was that. The tracks vibrated as she walked. She could feel it and then she could hear
too. It was getting stronger and louder. She looked behind her. A round light, small but getting bigge
was coming towards her. It couldn't be ...є
