'Last Stop Wellsbourne'

And so we come to the title story (but not the last story) of Tom Johnstone's themed collection about a town that may or may not be Brighton. This is an interesting modern take on that well-loved sub-genre, the spooky train ride. Our protagonist is a rather unpleasant would-be property tycoon who finds his commuter service transformed into an old-style steam train, which brings him into Wellsbourne station rather than modern Brighton.

'It must be some kind of theme park, like when they run old steam locomotives and want the platform to fit with them. And when I get off, I hear the pistons hissing, turn to see a black iron funnel rising from the engine of the train I’ve just left. If the station’s a mock-up, everyone’s in on the act, and the sign says, “Welcome to Wellsbourne, where the land meets the sea, where all your dreams come true!”'

In a Twilight Zone episode we all know what would happen next. Wellsbourne would turn out to be a rather quaint, somewhat Utopian community where modern greed and brutality has not penetrated. The businessman would learn to think better of his fellow humans amid nice people doing nice things. He might fall in love and settle down. Or maybe he'd be found dead by the railway tracks, having tried to disembark at his dream town at the wrong moment.

Johnstone, however, shuns the sentimental, and indeed optimism of any kind. Instead the ghastly chancer finds Wellsbourne is old-fashioned in unpleasant ways - unpleasant to you and me, anyhow. In fact the darkness of the 'unreal' place it taken to surreal extremes, as when child beggars saw their own limbs off to earn more money. Wellsbourne is Brexit Britain as it truly will be, and then some. Not a prosperous, free nation, but a corrupt, failed state presided over by bigots and thugs.

I only wish I could believe this was fantasy.