“Mind the gap,” he used to say, “Mind the gap.” Never anything else. I had always thought he’d lost his mind at Bank Underground Station during a particularly nasty rush hour but his story was much worse than that. And much more rural, too.
No one ever knew exactly why and that’s why I had to go there myself and find out. All anyone would ever say was that he had never quite been the same after he came back.
“From where?” I would ask but get no answer, the speaker having already tailed off mysteriously into silence, turning away.
It took the death of his mother for me to find out anything more.
Upon her deathbed she whispered to me once more, “He was never the same after he came back, poor soul.”
“From where?” I asked again.
“He was the only one who did,” she replied, “The only little cub from his pack.”
This was new to me and took me quite aback but, before my mother returned, I was able to ask one last time, “From where?”
*
I travelled there not long after her funeral, determined to try and find out what had happened during that ill-fated trip. Having looked into it more before leaving I couldn’t believe something so huge had happened and then been buried away and forgotten.
A whole pack of Cub Scouts had gone missing except for one who had returned quite different and this had somehow not become a local legend. Neither was there any kind of memorial within the town or at the Scout hut where the pack still met.
I could understand the family of the surviving victim not talking too much about it but, given the scale of the event, I couldn’t believe I’d never heard a single thing about it growing up.
*
I stood at the place looking down at the small crack where the rock split. It was such a small thing, really, but it was big in local legend. A demon was supposed to live there, which had given it its name. If you did not receive warning to “mind the gap,” it would grab you, it was said. Hence so many lone walkers tended to go missing in the area.
He had known this. I went through his mother’s belongings after she died and found his diary. He’d been looking forward to this part of the trip, in particular, was looking forward to warning his friends and keeping them safe. So what had gone wrong?
I saw them as I stood there, coming along the path. “Mind the gap,” the first cub trilled happily and one by one they started to cross, each in turn warning the next. He was last and never reached the crack. The only one lifted to safety, he watched it all and began his eternal litany, repeating the phrase again and again even as the pack were torn asunder. Forever he would believe that this had saved him and so forever he would repeat it, to ward off the memory as well as the wolves.
No one ever got it out of him. I only know because the same thing happened to me.
Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the written prompt: 'Mind the Gap' Instruction in a Railway Station
