Tears leaked down my cheeks. I screwed my eyes closed. The Moon and The Sun would be gone too. Burned away by the ruby or the wendigo, or both. I touched the mirror. In the last few years, the marks had meant more to me than my own blood. Whatever I had done, I was burning away.
I cleaned up my tears. I had battled the wendigo for Nate, for the Tates, for myself. If I told Nate the marks were gone, he would try to stop me from helping him fight the wendigo again. But if Mr. Geiger believed Nate to be strong enough to contain that terrible power, then I might be the only person who could save him. I had to keep this information to myself for now.
As soon as I made my way down the stairs and into the kitchen, Nannie took my hands in hers to examine the wounds. If she thought their healing was unexpected, she didn’t comment, though she did look at me queerly.
“Where is Mr. Carey?” Nate asked. “We need to express our gratitude for allowing us to take refuge here.
Nannie’s hand holding mine suddenly stiffened. “My husband, Joseph, is out of town.”
Her tone gave me pause. She was ashamed. The answer was simple. And yet, with most things, it was also complex. She might not be lying about her husband, but she was not being truthful, either. She did not strike me as one accustomed to lying, and I did not wish to strain Nannie any more than we already had. “Please express our gratitude when he returns.”
“I will,” she assured me.
It was not hard to return to the railway. Nate’s sense of direction never failed to amaze me, though this time I was sure he was following the path we took last night in the direction of the burned homestead. My stomach quivered at the thought of returning to that place of death and the monster that hunted there.
We walked until I caught the unmistakable scent of fire. A thick carpet of ash moved off into the woods, but the rubbery path of leaves that resembled kudzu was gone. Now and again, in its path, heavily shadowed, lay the whispery outline of leaves made entirely of ash. The wind caressed them and blew them away. For just a moment, the wind smelled of rot and death, but then shifted to the good, clean scent of earth and wood.
I picked up one of the leaves, and it was like a twist of burned paper, the fragile bits evaporated into gray ash, the same ash that was under the rails. The night brought rotting vegetation up from the earth, and the sun burned it away.
Nate ran his hand over it, checking for heat. Satisfied there was none, he touched it. I did too. The ash was as fine as soft sand and sifted through my fingers while, beneath it, the grass was green. It was like someone had poured ash from a huge barrel in order to create a trail. I could have believed that to be plausible if the scent of fresh burning was not heavy in the air.
We followed the trail of soft ash. We kicked fine bits of it into the air until it coated our riding boots and trousers. It led us to the wooden rail ties and the handcart that lay untouched. The steel rails themselves were gone. Where the kudzu grew over the tracks, the steel had been reduced to lines of ash.
I stood on the wooden ties, heavily stained with soot and worm-rot. They appeared to have been there for ages. The railroad spikes which had sat so heavy in my hand, two hundred to a barrel, were gone. I squatted where they would have been driven into the ground. The holes, filled with ash, remained. I shoved two fingers into a hole, which was hot, frightfully so, even through my leather gloves.
“The vines are gone,” Nate said.
He was right. Mr. Geiger had come to the land, and both he and the kudzu only left death in their wakes.
Chapter Thirteen
THE HANDCAR WAS left stranded on the wooden ties, since the rails had burned away. It was a long journey by foot back to the workers’ camp. But, in no time at all, we made it to the place where the warped, blistered rails appeared again. They were still hot and twisted, just like before, but remained steel instead of ash. The broken edges reached for the sky, like something good and pure that cried out for salvation. I knew how they felt.
Samuel Lane’s gas-powered runabout waited at the worker’s camp. We located him easily and, within moments, were headed back to St. Louis. Exactly what I was going to tell the local law enforcement, I had no idea, but we needed to convince them to at least investigate the fire as a murder. If I could find doctors in America half as accomplished as the doctors in England, they would be able to see the bodies on the Tate farm had not expired from a normal fire.
We returned to our room at the HeadHouse. As soon as the maid arrived, we would send out our clothing to be cleaned. I was glad to be rid of the ash and blood.
While Nate bathed, I played out a hunch. I went to the rail office and picked up a set of maps showing the available lines and the planned expansions. I was interested in the not-yet-built rail lines, and Nate was better with maps than I was.
“I have half a mind to return to Mr. Cassatt,” Nate announced when I returned to our room.
“Oh?” I sat on the bed.
“He must have hired Mr. Geiger as an inventor, thinking he could make great deal of money for both him and his railroad. He could not have known that Geiger is a madman.” Nate said
“I refuse to believe that anyone who has met Mr. Geiger believes him to be sane,” I said. “Also, we are not acting as Mr. Cassatt’s agent, no matter what you are telling people. You might believe you can appeal to his sense of honor, but he values only money. He won’t appreciate our meddling.”
Nate scowled at me. “Well, there is an entire world between sane and mad as a hatter. Some eccentrics are odd but not dangerous. Geiger is both mad and dangerous.”
He was right, of course. And I needed to see just how dangerous Geiger and his new ally were to me. I sat before the mirror at the dressing table with my clean clothing laid out on the bed. I had been dreading this moment since the Carey home. Nate went through his clothes while I undressed. At the center of my chest, between my breasts, a circle of ash was on my skin and on my blouse. I gulped and touched the mark. Almost perfectly round, radiating rays that were divided by a line that dropped down the middle, creating the silhouette of a man looking out, the man in the moon.
On the Tarot card The Moon, he looked out over two towers and flowing waters to represent introspection. It would be like comparing a wolf and a dog. The tamed and untamed aspects of our minds, our hearts, and our souls.
I stared into the mirror, rubbing the ash away with a damp towel. It felt like the deep ache of cleaning infected pus from within an abscess. The ash kept coming out of me like a chalky, black poison, leaving me hollow and consumed with a loneliness that crushed me.
Nate caught sight of me in the mirror sitting naked to the waist. He kissed my cheek. “We could just skip dinner or have something brought up later.” He gave me his best enticing smile.
I must not have looked interested.
“That ash gets everywhere, doesn’t it?” He took the cloth from me and touched it to my lower back. The Sun Tarot mark had been there. Once it had been a round orb of power and light that radiated warmth, success, and vitality. Now it was a burned-out mark, a piece of me that was forever lost and forced from my skin.
It was The Sun and The Moon I mourned more than the loss of The Star. He washed the ash of the lost Sun away until the water from my bare back ran clear.
When we had first met, Nate was a man by day and a dog by night. In the Tarot, the wolf, the part of man that is wild and free, mysterious and introspective, looks up to the moon and cries the glory of strength. It is to the moon they sing of their love of men.
And The Sun represented man’s vitality, his hope, and it is the sun that is truly the source of all life on earth. Nate was the awe-inspiring warmth I went to when I felt lost. He was life, he was hope. And now both symbols that had come to represent my husband, the dog that guarded my heart and the sun watching over me, were gone.
So was the wendigo, I reminded myself. But that was a cold comfort as I dressed. It was a blow against an unholy creature I could not make again.
; We went down for dinner rather than taking a tray in our room. Since we had been seen in the hotel, it would have been strange to not take at least one meal, but I found I had little appetite. I just wanted to lie on the bed and hold the ruby to my chest and cry.
We were served creamy pea soup, a pork roast, and a colorful ratatouille, and finished with bread pudding custard. I picked at dinner while Nate attacked his with gusto.
Afterward, we made our way to the great room and I spread the maps out on the table where the light was better. “Can you find the place where the track was eaten away by those plants that the sun burned away?”
Nate stared at the map for a long moment and stabbed a finger at the map. “Here.”
“Are you sure?”
He scrubbed his fingers through his hair, that adorable gesture that was all his own. “Fairly sure, why?”
“What if this is where the Tate property begins?”
Nate gave me a look. “Why would you think that?”
“The home was burned,” I said. “But, Nate, there’s more.” How could I explain? “I had a vision. I saw Mr. Massey and Geiger burn the house and murder the Tate family. They murdered a farmhand, too. They tried to make him a vessel for the monster. Geiger failed.”
“Failed how?” His eyes narrowed.
“He was trying to give the wendigo a real human body. But the man—he exploded.” I shuddered at the memory.
“The bones you were holding?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, Viv.” He touched the map again. “I wonder if we could look up land records. Then we would know, for sure.”
The records were in the railroad’s office in Philadelphia. It was a long way to go for a hunch. And, even if we were right, then what? We needed a plan, a better plan.
We returned to our room. Our clothes lay on the bed, ironed and pinned in neat little stacks. My long coat hung on the hook where we had left it. I reached into the pocket I had placed a cutting of the kudzu into. I felt around, but the plant was gone. I turned the pocket inside out, tipping fine, gray ash out onto the carpet. It was the same ash that had been in the stone beneath the wooden ties, as well as the path from the farmhouse.
“That kudzu was taking us to the site of the murders,” Nate said. “But the fire consumes it also.”
“It has to be the Tates’ revenge,” I said. “Geiger came with an offer from the railroad and, when they refused, murdered them. Their spirits are refusing to allow the railroad to pass through their land. The workers lay the track and it gets burned away.”
“Why the kudzu?” Nate asked
“Kudzu overtakes all things. Maybe it is the natural world trying to set things right.” I glanced at the ash on my fingers. “Do you think it’s reduced to ash because of the burned home?”
Nate nodded, the idea appealed to his sense of justice. “Fire for fire, live growth fighting death. Sure, it makes as much sense as anything else here.”
He rubbed his hand vigorously through his hair several times. We were thinking the same thing: if the railroad could not continue, they would have to reroute. If they would not reroute then we would lose our investment in the Pennsylvania Railroad.
We would have to return to Mr. Cassatt’s office in Philadelphia and appeal to him directly. “Either way, it’s too late to do anything tonight.”
“Yes, but what if the kudzu destroys more of the rail tonight?” I argued.
“It won’t.”
“But what if it does?” I turned and opened the window to let the cool air wash over me.
“Viv, we’ve been losing money for months. This has been the proposed line for nearly a year. I doubt they just reached this point within the last week, they probably reached this point months ago, maybe more. The burn was not fresh. I mean, it was last night, but I don’t believe it was advancing.” Nate held his hand out for me.
“It was a renewed burn.” I said, “I refuse to believe that we were lucky enough to witness the only time those plants consumed the rails.”
Nate poured us both a drink. “Whatever happened last night happened again, since we had the workers lay fresh steel.”
I tried to keep my voice from shaking. “Is that what lured the-the monster?”
He nodded, “Most likely.”
He was right. But there was more, so much more. “The man, the ranch hand, was a very strong man.” I set my hairbrush down on the table. What I needed was something to do with my hands. “And he was a large man.”
“He had very large bones.” Nate had only seen the bones.
I covered my mouth with my hand. “Geiger was furious. The ranch hand was not strong enough to contain the wendigo. The very nature of it shattered the man like shook up beer in a bottle. It was horrible.”
Nate caught me up in his arms to comfort me.
I couldn’t stop babbling. “He tried more science, more electrics, more of whatever his chamber does, but the body would not hold. He needs someone stronger.”
“Then we shall have to keep him from finding someone stronger,” Nate said, stroking my hair.
“I know of someone stronger,” I said softly.
The hand at the nape of my neck stopped the gentle caress. “What do you mean?”
I pulled back to look at him.
He laughed. “You can’t possibly mean me.”
“You are a creature of earth and magic. Your bones shift and flex. Nate, if any living creature is strong enough to contain that demon, it is you.”
“I shall not let him near me with that chamber then,” he said with a smile.
“I’m not joking, Nate!” I struck him for good measure. It was like punching a wall.
But he wasn’t joking, either. His smile lasted too long without reaching his eyes. He reached for my hair brush and began to brush out my hair so I could braid it. “The Lamia on Molten Cay told us that magic never leaves. It can be altered, it can be changed, but it never leaves. Geiger will find me a very difficult man to trap. And if he does put his hands on me, or upon you, he will wish he hadn’t.” The brush rasped through my hair in the low lamplight. “Tell me,” he said at last, “did you have a vision of him turning me into a monster? Or of harming you to destroy me?” He swallowed hard. “Of making me harm you?”
I took the brush from him again. “No. No visions of your doom. It was just a horrible thought my brain came up with all on its own.”
“Well, then, tell your brain to stop it,” he said gruffly. “We face enough dire peril as it is.”
Chapter Fourteen
WE STARTED THE day with a hearty breakfast. Actually, Nate had a hearty breakfast, consisting of eggs, and ham steak, and toast with coffee. I had an egg and a bit of coffee and nibbled some marmalade on toast, mostly to make him happy. He had become quite the nursemaid, lately. I just wanted to hold the ruby in my hand. When he wasn’t looking, I would slip my hand in my pocket and touch it, to make sure it was still close.
Finally, fortified and ready to head out to the railroad field office, we left the hotel to hire either a car or a couple of horses. Nate was convinced he would be able to find us suitable transportation.
We headed down the main street only to be greeted by the angry murmurs of a crowd.
“I’m telling you, it was those damn savages!” one man said, his voice carrying over the crowd.
The shouting was coming from the open windows of a pub with a colorful painted sign identifying it as the Riverboat.
They were discussing the natives again. If I were a cat, I would have arched my back and hissed.
“Nannie Carey and her damn brother, West.”
There were murmurs of agreement.
“If West and that other fella didn’t do it, then they sure know who did!”
I looked up at Nate. Appealing to Mr. Cassatt might have been a long shot before, but now it was impossible. We were needed here.
Mr. Massey stood at the bar. “Those savages were given a reservation, land where they could d
o whatever they want! That’s where they should be!”
Massey. I felt cold anger bubbling up within me. He helped murder the Tates. He lied about the fire. He stared at me like I was a bit of meat for the taking. He treated Nacto as less than human. Now he was rallying a crowd of drunken bar swine into a fervor against Nannie Carey and her brother.
My skin felt red hot, as though I was being consumed by a great fire. And, beneath it all was a drumbeat like a heart echoing in my ears.
The crowd murmured their assent.
“And still they stand in the way of progress!”
“We will settle this land! And those that wish to remain can become good Christian Americans.”
The crowd nodded.
“What they cannot do is murder good Christian people!”
The crowd yelled in agreement.
“They cannot burn good, honest people out of their homes!”
The crowd yelled again.
“It’s time to make them go!”
“If the children are half-white put them in schools and save their souls!”
The crowd cheered.
I clenched my fists. I was ready to throttle the woman nearest to me. The man, too. I could break that beer glass right over his great ignorant head. They were talking about children!
“Hang those murderous savages!” Mr. Massey yelled back. “And if the rest won’t go, arrest them, too! Make them stand trial, move them under guard! They have a place, make them stay there!”
Nate grabbed my wrist. I released the breath I didn’t realize I was holding. The thrumming in my ears was gone.
The crowd was frenzied, clapping each other on the back, slamming beer glasses together, calling for blood.
My hand was cold and stiff in Nate’s. Massey and Geiger were responsible for Tate’s murders, but there was no way this mass of people would hear that.
Nate shouldered his way out of the Riverboat, dragging me through the seething mass of human ugliness. The Tate family would find no justice here. The Carey family would find no help here. The mob was an ugly thing, no different than the vicious rioting hordes I encountered in London from time to time. Adding alcohol to the mix would not improve matters.
The Rail Specter Page 12