Part 6: Ghoulstone Railway

As we started making our way towards an exit door, the two kids that were running behind us seemed to be in extremely critical danger the moment I heard a girl’s giggling noises echoing from the vast darkness.

My mind was racing as we almost reached our next destination, but I also couldn’t risk going back to save anyone if they got paralyzed.

Luckily, we all finally managed to make it through the brightly lit door of a vintage-looking train station. The sky was a beautiful blue with colorful flowers, grass, and trees lining the old-fashioned railway tracks. Everything about this remote place felt nostalgic even though I had never been to an area like this before.

The moment everyone calmed down, the mysterious boy and girl that followed us shut the door behind themselves.

The number labelled on it was 4.

“Woah, stay back! Or else!” shouted The Flower Man as he was holding his hands out to prevent these two children from approaching us.

“Relax! We’re not whatever you think we are. My name is Kishino Ryutane. Beside me is my friend Izusaki Tanase. We just want to escape too,” said the boy with the magenta-colored hair.

“Yeah, please don’t hurt us! We’re also looking for his dog, Lilac!” said Izusaki.

It was becoming clear that these two were as lost as us when we came here. I couldn’t deny it, even with my soul probably gone, that I still felt empathetic for their loss.

“I’m Ararima Haniki. Listen, I know the feeling you two are going through right now. If you really are who you say you are, how did you get here?”

“I don’t know how to explain it all, but the best I can tell you is that we ended up in a scary room with a lot of these candies and sweets that were really tall. This princess and her plush doll trapped us in there, but we found a way to escape that place. The problem is, we can’t find the real exit. We’ve been searching for I don’t know how long,” stated Kishino.

When I heard this, alarm bells went off in my head.

“You mean a candy room? Like The Candy Room?” I asked with extreme concern.

Both of them nodded their heads as I was taken aback from the situation they had gone through. I was about to consult with Wata and The Flower Man, but they ended up looking at me with a sort of starstruck expression.

Especially The Flower Man as he sighed to himself.

Was he hiding something about that room that we didn’t know?

Probably.

“Fine, you can come. On the condition that you will listen and do as I say when we are travelling. The Oddzones are no place to joke around in. We’re fortunate enough to have reached a safer spot,” said The Flower Man.

“Speaking of that, where are we?” questioned Wata.

“Ghoulstone Railway. An acquaintance of mine is here. Although he is an oddity, he means no harm to those who pass by him. His name is Wangle. In case, you’re wondering, no he doesn’t own the station, but he is a guiding figure like me and Polyhina. Only… He doesn’t move…”

Doesn’t move? This has to be interesting, I thought to myself…

Once we walked towards the other end of the station, I was shaken out of my mind the second I saw what Wangle looked like as he laid there on the station’s floor.

He had this white frazzled hair above that youthful mannequin-like face of his. Alongside it, you could see the cartoonishly hollow mouth and eyes which made him look like one of those stereotypical theater masks worn for stage plays. As for the body, he had two sets of arms with no legs attached. One facing forward with dark hands sticking out and the other set was backwards with white hands to contrast it.

In that sense, he had this appearance of a humanoid locust wearing a dark trench coat.

“Wangle, I want you to meet the new group of outsiders who I am helping,” said The Flower Man.

Looking at us all, his stare started to veer a lot more at me for some reason.

“Imagi, is that you, grown up?”

I was filled with an unusual amount of unease and confusion hearing Wangle say that.

“Umm… Wangle, I’m not Imagi… I’m Ararima Haniki. For the second time I have to mention that today anyway…”

A look of sadness drenched Wangle’s face.

“Ohh… I didn’t know that. Sorry Ararima… I only talked to her once. I am just really worried about where she is.”

“Really? Like how did you meet her?” I proceeded to ask out of genuine curiosity.

Wangle looked down with sorrow, showing that the memory provoked a certain kind of melancholy from having got to know her a bit.

“I recall her asking what my function was. When I told her my purpose was to guide others, she said her name was Imagi Hosato and that she was lost. I told her many things to try and assist her in escaping, but I could tell she didn’t want to leave me here. I found it strange, but endearing in a way. She hugged me goodbye when The Ghoulstone Train came by here and left to board it.”

“So that is our next way to find her. The problem is, we need to know which stop she got off at,” stated Wata.

“There is one stop that the train goes to… Acacia Asylum. You will each need a Ghoulstone to travel there. See the ticket booth over there? That item is given away for free, but you will have to give it to the ominous Syringe Stalker when you encounter him. Last I have been told, he will play a game rather than send you to The Endzone if you have a Ghoulstone in possession,” replied Wangle.

Well that was interesting… This game sounded more like a bargain except with no guarantee that you could receive anything good out of it.

“Can you tell us what the game is called and how to win it?” I asked him.

“Sadly, I couldn’t really help you there since Syringe Stalker picks the random game he wants to play. He has thousands of options and he can use any kind at his disposal.”

Oh no… So that means we will have to adapt to whatever he requests to play then.

Unfortunately, my only experience with that was the mini-games in Candiere’s Cafe. And to make matters worse, I won a few of them instead of all.

I was beginning to panic.

Kishino and Izusaki were not feeling any better in this situation either.

“That is not fair! He can’t just play around with us like this! Our lives are on the line and Lilac is missing!” yelled Kishino.

“You cannot reason with the Syringe Stalker. Like Wangle said, this is the only option out of whatever that skull head is going to say. And just to put this out there, who is Lilac? He sounds like a pet of yours,” assumed The Flower Man.

A steeping silence held weight in these words as tears were about to form on Kishino’s face.

“He’s my dog… A small golden retriever.”

While there was a feeling of loss that resonated with me here, I decided to take action to focus on doing something about it.

When I went to the ticket booth, I noticed that there were already five Ghoulstones placed in front. They glowed this purple to greenish color, looking a whole lot more like small lava lamps the shape and style of a marble.

And yet I observed all of these details while noticing that no one was inside the booth…

Upon grabbing them, I handed each one between our group until it was divided properly.

Once this was done, the train immediately appeared, making a loud entrance with all of its greenish smoke and traditionally gothic design covering the platform.

As we entered one of the passenger carts, I took a seat next to the window with a determined look on my face.

“We’ll find Lilac and Imagi. I promise,” I said to myself while crossing my arms.