Julie Waight's "The Overcoat" is an edged fantasy, dark as the underground tunnel through which her protagonist hurtles on the kind of hellish train Ramsey Campbell or Clive Barker would appreciate.

     It's just not the protagonist's day, whether mentally mulling her dysfunctional relationship with her mum, or discovering just how disturbing her fellow riders truly are.

     This Australian writer seems to have a firm grasp of what she's doing, managing to compress human relationships, disturbing imagery, and a full story into a claustrophobic space. Her achievement is impressive.

     Read Julie's dark fantasy below and judge for yourself.

--- Edward Bryant

     The last train on Tuesday night. Two carriages. Five passengers.

     Miranda watches a pair of boys with identical cockatoo haircuts and baggy pants leap from the platform onto the first carriage. Their voices alternate between deep and squeaky as they jostle each other to a seat.

    . A middle-aged woman with a tea cozy hat, hesitates by the door the boys have entered, then marches to the second carriage. Miranda follows her; inside a man in an overcoat is already seated. The middle-aged woman plops down in a seat and adjusts her hat.

     Miranda slips onto blue vinyl and puts her feet up on the seat opposite. She wriggles her toes. The soreness of a day pacing the office floor registers against the interior of her suede shoes.

     The train hums an intermittent station tune. Miranda waits for the jolt that means moving on into darkness. She looks into the mirror-like window; the glass reflects her face, station lights shine in her eyes. As she stretches her neck from side to side, Miranda rehearses a response for home. Her visiting mother will have tea in the oven, an extra plate covering the overcooked food. Knife and fork will be waiting in readiness with a few slices of dry bread, becoming drier as the minutes tick by.

     It's her birthday tomorrow. What in the world am I going to get her?

     Her mother - a self-proclaimed martyr - expected a gift that expressed true appreciation for long sufferance.

     Mothers - what a hassle.

     When the train lurches into movement, Miranda examines the man in the overcoat. His eyes are huge and hollow, rimmed with red swollen flesh. The overcoat that hugs him is as thick and enveloping as the night beyond the window. She's never seen a coat like it. Blackish brown, dingy, the material fur-like but thicker, not the texture of fur, but something else. The massive coat hangs about his hapless face, dwarfing it. He looks harmless enough, yet - could it be a hoax?

     I sound like my mother. Ever the potential victim. Next I'll be imagining he's a flasher or something.

     Miranda shakes her head. The man in the overcoat does the same, at the window, at the night. His eyes are wide and worried, as if he knows where he is headed and doesn't want to go.

     Miranda looks from the man to the woman with the knitted hat, who sits straight and still, handbag safely on her knees, eyes peering steadily over Miranda's head.

     The rocking of the train lulls Miranda. She closes her eyes but doesn't sleep. Merely slips between reality and imagination. Corridors of flashing lights, wheels on rails, the rhythmic sway, jolt, float . . .

     . . . Her mother is tidying things, dusting, arranging and chattering.

     "Cleanliness is next to Godliness, Miranda. Your bookshelves are a terrible mess. I found cutlery in your drawer that doesn't look like it's been washed at all . . . and your tea will be completely spoiled if you don't get home soon."

     Miranda becomes fully aware. The man in the overcoat has flung his head back against the seat. His mouth is slack. A dribble of saliva rests on his chin, threatening to leap onto the coat's lapel, but it seems suspended by darkness.

     Darkness.

     The train lights have dimmed like guttered candles.

     Miranda wrenches her feet off the opposite seat and hugs her knees. It is terribly dark . . . she feels a sense of something forgotten or misplaced. A niggling wrongness.

     The man in the overcoat. The darkness. The rattle of the train. On and on they go. But shouldn't she be at her stop by now?

     With a dry taste in her mouth, she stares out the window. Dark shapes lean against each other like heaped clouds of smoke.

     Miranda tilts her head to her shoulder then stands up. She wobbles for a moment, leans her hand against the cool glass of the window and clears her throat. In her head, her mother's voice says, "You shouldn't ride the train at night. It isn't safe. Hooligans, you know . . . and when did you last dust the light fixtures?"

     Moving into the aisle, Miranda sways with the motion of the train. She notices that the woman with the tea cozy hat is not in her seat.

     She just moved, that's all.

     She passes the man in the dark overcoat; his chin still savoring the sliver of saliva, and makes her way toward the next carriage. Her knees feel weak, her temples pulse like the train on the track, a rhythmic thump. Reaching the end of her carriage, she forces the connecting door open. The clanking motion increases. A sudden shift buffets her shoulder against metal; she sucks in air that makes her fillings ache. Cold. It is cold.

     Goosebumps prickle her flesh, her heart flutters. Shakily, she enters the next carriage, looking for the teenagers and the middle-aged woman with the tea cozy hat.

     "No," she whispers. "No, it's not true."

     The carriage is empty.

     Where are they? The woman and the kids with the bright yellow hair?

     Although this carriage is also dark, there's a remaining breath of light, enough to display empty seats. Miranda walks up and down the aisle, looking on the floor between seats, in case they are injured, or hiding.

     Hiding in the dark.

     She shivers and licks her parched lips.

     They must have got off.

     But Miranda knows it's impossible.

     If the train had stopped, she would have been roused from her dozing.

     Suddenly, it's important to see the man in the overcoat.

     It might just be him and me. No, that's not right. There's a train driver, I mean, there has to be . . . A vision of a driverless train sends a jolt of terror through Miranda. Her bowels clench. Ropes of tension tug across her chest. Her throat is as dry as the pieces of bread waiting on the table at home. She needs a drink - a glass of water, a cup of coffee, the plate of food her mother has waiting in the oven.

     Miranda swallows and totters up the aisle, back toward her carriage and the man in the overcoat.

     He'll have disappeared too. I'll be here all alone . . . and it will get darker and . . . She shakes her head.

     "Stop it," she tells herself aloud. Her heart, which fluttered moments before, now hammers as noisily as the train on the rails.

     Miranda shoves the adjoining door open and steps into the shrill clattering and scrapping of metal between carriages. The coldness curls around her ankles like a dead cat. Gasping, she slides the next door open. The man is still there. But something is wrong.

     His head remains tilted back against the seat. The drop of saliva is gone - and so is the coat.

     "Mister," Miranda says, stepping toward him.

     He lies there, unmoving.

     "Excuse me," she says a little louder. "Are you alright?" She can see his chest, glowing faintly in the dwindling light. He is anything but all right.

     The man's bare chest is covered with minute squiggly lines, raised from the flesh, two-dimensional. It reminds Miranda of soil full of worms and the places they have been.

The man's bare chest is covered with minute squiggly lines, raised from the flesh, two-dimensional.

     "Jesus," she pants. She backs away. Her hip thuds against a seat; the pain is recorded as something distant and irrelevant. The train rattles and rocks. She can't breathe, she can't scream, she can't take her eyes from the man's engraved chest. Miranda decides the marks are more like stitches - crooked, shaky stitches in a human quilt.

     What happened to him? What could do something like that?

     Although Miranda's moans are lost in the clatter of the train, she can feel the sound in her throat. She glares at the patterned chest. In her mind, her mother's voice scolds. "Your tea's getting cold, can't keep it in the oven all night, it'll dry out . . . and where's his coat anyway? Who took his coat?"

     Miranda walks up and down the aisle, inspecting the floor, the seats, and beneath them. The train clanks, sways and plunges into the night.

     Where are we going? Where's his coat?

     She finds it - wedged beneath the very seat she had been sitting on. What? She glances quickly about the carriage.

     The coat looks like a huge hibernating bear. Miranda feels fear gather at the nape of her neck and crawl over her scalp.

     It's just a coat. Someone stuffed it under the seat, that's all.

     Her mother disagrees. "Who exactly put it there, Miranda? The lady and the teenagers are gone. And that poor man is dead. Do you want gravy on your roast lamb? It will keep the meat moist . . . and what do those marks on his chest really look like, Miranda?"

     They look like stitches, like - well - like threads, furry threads.

     It's just a fucking coat.

     "No need to swear," her mother tells her from inside her strained brain. "No need for that sort of language."

     "Fuck you!" Miranda shouts.

     The coat moves.

     Miranda gulps a mouthful of air. Releases it as a whimper.

     Not true. Trick of the light - no - trick of the dark.

     More movement. More denial. Stress is making her see things.

     It's my imagination. Just shadows.

     Plausible enough, until the coat creeps out from beneath the seat and slowly slips up the aisle toward her.

     Miranda's heart pumps blood around her stiff body. The coat is moving, really moving, but she can't. The overhead lights dim further. Shadows skulk from corners. Through the train windows, darkness leans in like a child over a backyard fence - watching.

     "Don't just stand there!" Miranda's mother hisses. Only it's really the hiss of the train, braking, slowing down. "Run, Miranda. It'll get you unless you RUN."

     Like an electrical shock, the last word zaps her into movement.

     Blubbering, Miranda staggers backward. The coat had been so close that it had risen from the floor - Had it really? - As if to pounce, or ooze over her feet like an oily puddle.

     The train brakes sharply. Miranda waves her arms for balance.

     Almost fell onto it - into it.

     She can see tiny hairs, waiting to receive her. What would it feel like? What would happen to her then?

     Panicked, she reels away from the dark advancing creature that she'd mistaken for a coat. She stumbles, lurches sideways and falls onto the man's stitched chest. As she struggles to her feet, Miranda feels the texture of the marks beneath her hand, indentations left by coat, its fingerprint.

     The train sways and jerks, she falls onto the man again. She swears, pleads, but it's gibberish.

     The coat slinks closer, a bearskin rug caught playing possum. In a moment she won't be able to get into the aisle. Miranda throws herself sideways, tries to leap away.

     She can't.

     The man is holding her. His arms are around her waist. She swats at the cold hands as if they are spiders.

     "Let me go! Son of a bitch . . ."

     The coat has her trapped. One chance. Go over the seat, over the back of the seat, make it to the other carriage. She tries, but the man holds her tight.

     The coat slithers up the side of the seat.

     "Let me go!" Miranda shrieks. She batters the hands with her fists. Her elbows pound his bare chest. She feels the wetness of blood seeping out of his textured torso.

     "Stay," the dead man says.

     Miranda's mother answers, "She can't stay. She can't. It's my birthday and I deserve a present - a really truly magnificent present."

     Miranda kicks at the coat as it crawls closer. Cool and heavy, it slips up her leg.

     Miranda screams and thrashes. The train screeches and stops.

     The man says, "It's cold outside." His voice is strained and weak like a rotted rubber band. "Why don't you put on the coat?"

     Instead, the coat puts on Miranda.

         

     Wrapped in the overcoat, Miranda steps onto the platform. The woman with the tea cozy hat gets off the adjoining carriage, one hand over her heart, as if it may come flying out of her chest. She bustles over to Miranda.

     "My God," the woman says, rolling her eyes. "I thought I was all alone on the train. I mean, I couldn't have been. You were there, weren't you?"

     "Yes," said Miranda. She pulls the overcoat around her shoulders and smiles.

     "For a while there," the woman says, shaking her head and glaring. "I couldn't find anyone. I went to the other carriage. It was dark and . . ." She shrugs and looks about the well-lit platform of the station. An argument draws both women's attention.

     The teenage boys elbow each other; their cockatoo hairdos withered and worse for wear.

     "But where were you, man?"

     "I told you. Right in the seat where we sat down."

     "Bullshit."

     "What do you mean, bullshit? I was there. Where the hell were you?"

     "I was there."

     "Where?"

     'Right there.' The two gaze back at the train, horror etched in their faces.

     "It was the dope," says one.

     "Yeah, must have been," agrees the other.

     "Bad shit."

     "Let's not do that shit no more."

     "Yeah."

     Miranda watches the boys hurry along the platform and out of sight. The woman with the tea cozy hat heads for the exit. She looks back once and nervously eyes Miranda. Perhaps the woman knows the overcoat had begun its journey on another passenger. It doesn't matter.

     Miranda glances at the empty carriage and at the seat she had sat in - before the world had tilted and she'd slipped off. Her mother will be waiting.

     And I know just what to give her for her birthday.

     Inside the overcoat, Miranda strolls to the exit. The fur-like fabric adheres to her flesh. Threads weave in and out of her skin, dig in deep and swell. There's a raw itching sensation as the tendrils spread.

     She tries not to scratch.

SFWoE Note:   SFWoE thanks Julie Waight, the author of "The Overcoat," for allowing SFWoE to place her SFWoE 2002 Contest First Place Story on the SFWoE Website. If you would like to learn more about the author, please read SFWoE's interview with Julie Waight.

     The reader may view more of Peter Taschioglou's artwork by clicking on the SFWoE Swirl below.

     Well, what's your opinion of Julie's story? SFWoE invites you to send us your comments on "The Overcoat." Please keep your opinion relatively short and to the point, and we will place your remarks online.

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NEWSLETTER

     Julie Waight stated in her interview that at the last moment she changed her story to the present tense to make the action more gripping.

     Good move, Julie! Your story grabbed me and did not let go of me until ten minutes after I finished reading your story.

--- Joan Wiseman   Buffalo, NY  USA

           

     Julie, I have been on endless train rides in my younger days, but this one I must say takes first place.

     The ride was most adventurous. It most certainly kept me sitting at the edge of my seat until the very end.

--- Andrea Abousaid   Amman,  Jordan

           

     The hated mother talking inside her head, combined with the scary train ride, make Julie Waight's tale eerie before the real horror takes over. Great Story!
--- Cherie Wein   Ellicott City, MD  USA

           

     Julie Waight's story took me for a ride in more ways than one. I was scared enough that I wanted to get off the train at the next stop, but I just had to ride it to the end of the line to see what Julie had in store for me.

     Thanks for the "ride."

--- Edmund Meissen   Dortmund,  Germany

           

     I finally got the chance to read Julie Waight's story "The Overcoat." It reminded me of something Stephen King would write. Something wondrous, and yet quite bizarre. A coat can certainly keep you warmer on a cold day. Apparently it can also do other things to you . . . .

     Julie, you can be rest assured, that I will most certainly double check for what's inside of any coat I will ever put on from now on. Wow!

--- Jeff Redmond   Grand Rapids, MI  USA

           

     Julie Waight does a fine job mixing sci-fi, mystery, and horror in her engrossing tale "The Overcoat." She completed the tense build-up with a satisfying ending that leads one to speculate on what actually happened on that train and what will happen when Julie goes home . . . Nice!
--- Fran B. Giuffre   Arlington, MA   USA

           

     "The Overcoat" by Julie Waight is the type of campfire story Stephen King or George Lucas would really cherish. Full of the horror of a haunted train, along with three other passengers totally unaware that there is something wrong. Although this haunting tale is a lot shorter than the former winning stories, it has a unique meaning about horror, family life, and a train ride to remember!

     Congratulations to Julie for this fine piece of work and a perfect first place story!

--- Alan Yee   Auburn, WA  USA

           

     From the very start the tension is introduced, though in a manner that makes you feel comfortable, almost attached to the protagonist's plight until all things go weird, awry. Julie captures in writing what I often found in the TV show, The Twilight Zone. I got that chill up the spine, the raising of hairs on my neck. In the end I actually found myself wanting more, wanting the story to continue.

     As for coats? Well, I'm wearing pullovers from now on.

--- Robert N. Stephenson (Altair Australia Literary Agency)   South Australia

           

     When I read Julie Waight's story, I was suitably impressed. Her ability to take the mundane and make it menacing is a talent inline with the style of her favorite author, Stephen King.
--- Mina Athanasopoulos   Melbourne,  Australia

           

     I finally got a chance to read Julie Waight's first place story. I thought it was a well-written tale, deserving of its first place win.

     Thanks, Julie, for the chance to read it.

--- Angella Taylor Lofthouse   Springville,  UT  USA

           

     Julie, I enjoyed this story very much. Your use of language is wonderful, and it was a delight to see Miranda's subtle characterization unfold. I also admired the sense of movement in the narrative; that's how life is experienced on a train, even between the cracks.

     Well done!

--- Larry Taylor   Monmouth Jct,  NJ  USA

           

     Great piece! Slowly but surely, I could feel my shoulders tensing up as I read. Nothing like a good boogie-men and things that-go-bump story to make you start looking over your shoulder (despite the king shepherd and lab curled at my feet). And while I've noticed a tiresome predilection toward present-tense lately, I think Julie's choice of present-tense was the right one.
--- Marg (Magee) Gilks   Paris,  ONT  Canada