Old Shag

A routine freight run becomes a nightmare when a brakeman finds himself alone in the cab of a speeding locomotive. The engineer is dead, the fireman has vanished, and the train is carrying cars loaded with dynamite—while the stranded railroad man has no idea how to stop it. Just when panic takes over, a sharp-tongued stranger with an unmistakably shaggy head appears and talks him through the controls.

Stopping the train is only the beginning. The mysterious helper points him toward an alarming discovery in the cargo and then asks a question that turns a railroad emergency into something far stranger: what happens if a man travels into the past and allows one of his ancestors to die? Caught between strict railway rules, lethal machinery, and a paradox that could erase his own existence, the narrator must decide whether to trust the impossible visitor—and learn quickly enough to survive the ride.