Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked

by Christa Carmen

  When she’d walked long enough for there to be nothing around her but miles of forest and the yellow, uncaring eyes of nocturnal things, she stopped.

  She set up quickly against the trunk of a great tree, the muscle memory required for the pouring, mixing, and drawing up almost as ingrained as the muscle memory of stroking her daughter’s face after she’d woken from a nightmare. The euphoria that flooded her brain and body was like slipping into a hot spring after being cold for an eternity, and she let herself go with it, let herself be carried away on a wave that would not crash.

  When she opened her eyes, the edges of the forest, the angles of its trees, its peaks and valleys, seemed softer and less pronounced, its mist-draped colors more muted. A gleaming cherry wood staircase sat in the middle of a clearing. The moon cast a spotlight on the first step.

  Molly stared at the staircase, a sense of loss befalling her, but also one of peace. It was the sense that if she made the decision to walk up those stairs, things would be better. Better for her, but more importantly, better for Audrey.

  Molly realized the decision had already been made.

  She rose, her slippers shuffling across the dampened leaves of the forest floor and walked toward the impossibility before her. She stopped at its base, considered the stairs’ height and width, saw each step as a move away from all the unfortunate choices she’d made in her life, those best-laid-plans that had devolved into years of sorrow she could not shake.

  She climbed.

  The higher she ascended, the more she felt the forest forgive her for all her shortcomings. Her fear deserted her, then self-hatred.

  On the last step, before Molly Monteith disappeared in the quiet mist like a ship too far from shore, the very breath in her lungs dissolved into smoke, leaving her weightless and feeling like she could float… or fly.

  THIS OUR ANGRY TRAIN

  “On this train,” the conductor says, “it doesn’t matter if you have a ticket or not.”

  “On this train,” Lauren counters, “a tired traveler just wants to show her ticket like anyone else.”

  If the Amtrak conductor is nonplussed by her dismissal, he doesn’t show it. Lauren is worn-out and in no mood for flirtation. The conductor leans over and scans her e-ticket. The bright beam of alien light flashes red in her eyes before winking out.

  Lauren places her hand on a hardcover suspense novel and looks at the conductor as if to ask will that be all? The conductor tips the shiny black brim of his hat to her, but makes no move to go.

  The train’s whistle is a long, mournful wail. Most of the curtains are drawn over the windows but Lauren’s is open, giving her a view of the Back Bay station sign hanging in a tunnel made dreary by an excess of urine-stained concrete, scurrying rats, and abandoned newspapers flying like so many restless ghosts. The station sign swings, though there is no wind.

  “This train is haunted,” the conductor says.

  “Haunted?” Lauren says. She’s annoyed at the conductor’s persistence, but she’s intrigued as well.

  “Yes, haunted. It is a vessel for lost souls moving from one place to the next. A vessel of memories.”

  Lauren sinks back against her seat. “That’s not haunted,” she says, with a wave of her hand. “That’s just a train.”

  He leans in and begins to whisper:

  Against the kind and awful reign

  Of darkness, this our angry train,

  A noisy little rebel, pouts

  Its brief defiance, flames and shouts.

  Lauren cocks her head at the mustached, rhyming conductor.

  “It is haunted,” he says. “They call this train, The End of the Line. The man that operates this train, this route, has done so for as long as anyone can remember. They say his wife and daughter were riding The End of the Line one dark and stormy night when the wheels hit a dislodged track at seventy miles per hour. The derailment caused the lead locomotive to crash into the side of a cliff bordering the tracks and explode. The impact caused a fuel spill, sparking a massive fire, while several other cars ended up in a nearby millpond. Forty-eight people lost their lives and one-hundred others were injured. The engineer’s wife and daughter were killed instantly.

  Lauren grimaces, but the conductor seems not to notice.

  “Dozens of passengers saw him in the engineer car before the crash, but somehow, in the aftermath, he arrived at the site dressed not in his uniform but in street clothes, off duty. The engineer they pulled from the wreckage? His body was never identified.

  “The End of the Line underwent major repairs, with most of the cars having to be completely replaced. And poor Erikson Cruz Shapiro had to bury empty coffins, his wife and daughter’s bodies were so pulverized in the crash.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because no one else has,” the conductor replies. “And because I always work with Shapiro. He likes having me on his train. Insists on it. I’m Mr. Holland by the way.”

  Mr. Holland extends one thin, gloved hand and Lauren shakes it. Holland returns his hand to his pocket.

  “Shapiro’s name was recorded in the log as the engineer the night of the crash, but he swore another operator requested a switch at the last minute. I testified to Shapiro’s character after the crash. To his character and to his work ethic. All the passengers who claim to have seen Shapiro in the lead car the night of the accident said he was leering like a madman from his place behind the controls.

  “The eyewitness reports were deemed unreliable, what with the traumatic nature of the crash and the phenomenon of false memories and all. With no other evidence, it was determined that Shapiro wasn’t operating the train when it veered off course. The unidentified engineer could have been a passenger on the train that night, having hijacked the train from the real engineer.”

  Lauren notices how pale the conductor’s skin is above his bushy mustache. Holland’s eyes burn scarlet, scaring Lauren silly before she realizes his eyes are reflecting the red light of the ticket scanner he’s begun fiddling with. “It is an interesting story,” she says.

  The conductor stares down the train car, lost in thought. Finally, he says, “Yes, Old Shapiro is something else. I’ll let you get back to your book. But be careful. Trains are not the safest of places, and this one is particularly dangerous.”

  The conductor spins on a heel of polished leather and strolls away before Lauren can ask him what he means. Before she can ask him if he’s still trying to scare her with ghost stories or if there’s something else about The End of the Line she should know. She watches him walk the length of the car and disappear. There are no other passengers for whom he needs to check tickets. There are no other passengers at all.

  Lauren resumes her reading, the thousand-page novel heavy in her lap, her eyelids heavier. She blinks emerald-amber eyes and gazes languidly out the window. The train is coming to a stop. Something catches Lauren’s attention, a woman in black walking alongside the tracks. She says something to Lauren, unheard through the thick pane of glass and over the roar of a passing train. When all that’s left of the eastbound train is a swirl of slowly settling dust, the woman is no longer a woman but a bird, a black sparrow flapping and cawing at Lauren in anger. Or in warning.

  Its squabbling reaches Lauren’s ears in the relative quiet of the train so recently departed:

  He had a wife and a daughter and everyone said how lovely they were. His wife wanted to travel by train to visit her parents in Newport News but he forbade it. The woman booked a trip on The End of the Line without telling him, believing she would be safe as long as he was behind the controls of the locomotive. He found her tickets and burned them in the hearth, placed a curse on her for her insubordination. Rebuffing the curse, the woman continued with her preparations, planning to repurchase her tickets at the gate. When she and her daughter left for the station, he was sitting in a tattered old armchair, staring at his grandfather’s pocket watch. He refused to look at her despite the woman’s attempts at reconc
iliation. She bid him farewell to no avail.

  When she arrived at the station, the woman was dismayed to find it overrun with sparrows. The fattest, blackest sparrows she had ever seen, hundreds of them, thousands even. There was talk of a delay; how would the engineer see through the flocks that had congregated on the tracks? Finally, the sparrows parted enough so that the train was able to move, and the woman and her daughter were on their way. The train derailed not long after it had reached full speed. The sparrows watched the rising smoke from the surrounding treetops. I should know, for I was one of the birds that witnessed these unfortunate events.

  Lauren jerks awake at the completion of the sparrow’s monologue. The car is cold and she reaches reflexively for her cell phone. She knocks it and it slips into the crack between the seats. Lauren thrusts her hand in after it. The air that accosts her groping fingers is frigid. It’s as if she’s plunged her hand into an icebox. Startled, Lauren pulls back, rubs her near-frozen fingers with the still-warm ones. The turquoise ring on the hand she pulled from between the seats drips with condensation.

  Her phone is next to her on the seat. Lauren thinks that perhaps she has not fully wakened from her dream after all. Lauren thinks Mr. Holland might be right, that the train is haunted. Or at least, that its name, The End of the Line, fits it quite well.

  None of the seats in her row will recline; the lights above her seat don’t work; the electrical outlet won’t charge her phone. She swears she put a bag of pretzels in the pocket of the seat in front of her, but when she reaches between Amtrak’s on-board magazine and a forgotten issue of Vogue, there’s nothing there. Lauren wonders if the car Shapiro’s wife and daughter had died on was rundown like this one. She wonders if Holland remembers their names.

  As if summoned by her thoughts, Holland appears in the aisle beside her. The muted light of the car gives him an ethereal quality. Holland looks as if he used to be a drinker, but has since given up the habit. He says:

  Upon my crimson cushioned seat,

  In manufactured light and heat,

  I feel unnatural and mean.

  Outside the towns are cool and clean.

  Lauren gives him a curious look.

  “Joyce Kilmer,” he says. “American writer and poet known for a little ditty entitled, Trees. I prefer the one called The Twelve Forty-Five. I always have it stuck in my head. How’s the ride treating you? Have you seen anything?”

  “Seen anything?” Lauren echoes. “Like what?”

  “Like ghosts. Rumor has it that Shapiro’s wife and daughter walk the tracks, trying to secure passage on The End of the Line. Sometimes they manage to hitch a ride, but it’s never the right train. Travelers have seen them in the window of the quiet car. Screaming silent screams.”

  Lauren refrains from pointing out that people love to pass along urban legends, no matter how meager the kernel of truth from which they’d sprung.

  Holland continues, “Their luggage makes its way onto The End of the Line every now and again. I’ve found it before, always after the last stop. No more passengers, yet two bags of luggage, one small and one large. As fast as I can, I go running for Shapiro, but by the time he gets to the back of the train, the bags have disappeared. It’s gotten to where he no longer wants to be told of the bags’ appearances. I think it’s getting to him though.” Holland’s face is waxy and grey.

  “What do you mean? Getting to him how?” Lauren asks.

  “Shapiro’s physical health isn’t what it used to be. His mind even less so. A few weeks ago, I’m up in the lead car with him, letting him know we’re all clear. Do you see them, Holland? he asks me. Do you see the birds? I look out ahead of us but all I see is an empty field. And the tracks. I told him, No, sir. I don’t see anything. They’re there, he says. They’re watching me. She’s watching me. I brought him a cup o’ tea from the service car and he seemed better. Good enough to navigate at least. I’m worried about him, but what can I do?

  “He’s starting to follow his own schedule, too. Getting the train to where it’s supposed to be on his time. Sometimes, not getting the train to where it’s supposed to be at all. Just, sort of, rerouting it.”

  “Can he do that?”

  “Sure he can do that. The average person would be amazed at how many directions these tracks run in. Last week, we were supposed to be in New York City, but we ended up in Albany. The passengers were mad as hell, but management won’t do anything. To be honest, ever since the crash, they’re afraid of him. Sure, it was determined Shapiro wasn’t involved, but that doesn’t mean people don’t give him a wide berth. Shapiro has always been obstinate. He likes to go as the sparrow flies, as it were.”

  Lauren’s blood freezes in her veins. “Did you say, as the sparrow flies?”

  “Hmm? Oh. Yes, that’s what I said.” Holland walks back up the car, continuing his recitation of The Twelve Forty-Five:

  The engine’s shriek, the headlight’s glare,

  Pollute the still nocturnal air

  The cottages of Lake View sigh

  And sleeping, frown as we pass by.

  Holland’s footsteps die away. Lauren’s thoughts wander. The reason Lauren is on the train is that she has met someone. A nice boy, as her mother would put it. She travelled to Boston in order to accept a dinner invitation, to eat spaghetti in the North End and look at the stars out over the wharf. Lauren wouldn’t stay the night (she was, after all, a nice girl) and so she is on her way back to Mysticism, the small town between South Kingston and Westerly, Rhode Island she’s lived in for seven years now.

  Lauren tries to read to pass the time. She wears a monogramed pendant necklace and a layered sandstone maxi dress with wrap-up espadrilles, and her legs are cold. She folds her legs up under her and closes her eyes, her book tented over one knee.

  It is even darker now, and the train screams though an ever blacker forest. Branches scrape along the windows like fingers too slow to drag their mummified bodies up from shallow graves. The moon twinkles like the lidless eye of some slippery beast.

  The woman neither asks if the seat next to Lauren is taken, nor does she announce her presence in any other way. She sits next to Lauren as if they were old friends and Lauren’s eyes snap open at the rustling beside her. A young girl, little more than a child, sits across the aisle and Lauren thinks she is with the woman, but she cannot be sure.

  The woman smooths her black taffeta skirts and arches one sharply angled eyebrow. “Well,” she says, “where are you coming from? Or, better yet, where are you going?”

  “Mysticism,” Lauren replies. Though she’s miffed by all the impromptu conversation tonight, Lauren wasn’t raised to be impolite, to ignore questions directed her way.

  Perhaps her wariness shows on her face because the woman says, “You don’t like the train, do you? Why do you fear it so?”

  Lauren surprises herself by answering honestly. “Something terrible happened to me on a train once.”

  The woman nods, as if she understands this. “Me too,” she says to Lauren.

  The expression on Lauren’s face mirrors the sadness etched in the lines of the woman’s. Lauren tries to remain grounded in the present, but the veil shrouding the past slips away. A butterfly retiring into a cocoon and emerging as a caterpillar.

  There was another train. In another time. His words come back to her, a warning to remain awake no matter what. There are dogs to stay away from, to keep from smelling her and what she carries, and she must not forget which station is her stop. Her skin—skin that was so hot in the heat of the outdoors—sprouts gooseflesh and she thinks, If I’m quick, I can get away with it one more time. The cloying scent of ammonia rushes into flared nostrils, the steel trap walls close her in, the taste of the poison slips down her scratchy throat. It was accidental. She’s always maintained that it was accidental, now, and seven years ago after being removed from the train by police and EMTs.

  The woman issues forth a light cough, interrupting Lauren’s reverie. She regards
Lauren with a calculating look, as if judging how much of Lauren’s consciousness has returned to the here-and-now. Then, she says:

  For what tremendous errand's sake

  Are we so blatantly awake?

  What precious secret is our freight?

  What king must be abroad so late?

  Perhaps Death roams the hills to-night

  And we rush forth to give him fight.

  Or else, perhaps, we speed his way

  To some remote unthinking prey.

  While the woman speaks, the little girl takes to twirling in the aisle, her cotton dress billowing out around scabbed knees.

  “There are some things trains are good for,” the woman says. “Like moving backward when you think you are moving forward.” She looks past Lauren to the rushing world out the window. “Like now.”

  Lauren turns to look out the window of the train and experiences that sense of moving while sitting still. Or was it the opposite effect? Has Lauren been tricked into thinking they’d come to a stop while the train was moving? They could be traveling at one or one-hundred miles per hour and she wouldn’t know the difference. If she were to step off the platform, would she plunge to her death, thrown like a ragdoll to become a human nest of skin and hair and broken bones? Would sparrows lay eggs in her mangled remains? Confused, Lauren turns back to her companion, but she—and the little girl—are gone.

  When Lauren sits, motionless, and stares out the window at the passing landscape, she sees herself. First, it’s merely her reflection. But then it morphs, a portal to the past. She sees the last few years of her life, the years since everything has been good. Years she worked hard for. A vision of well-paying jobs and men-to-take-home-to-mom and sophisticated friends and similar, safe endeavors.

  The train hurtles through the darkness and Lauren sees the years before the good, when things were somewhere in-between good and bad. She sees the if-at-first-you-don’t-succeed jobs, the scuffed waitress shoes, the late nights, the constant struggle to climb back to the low limb she’d clung to before the devastating fall. The in-between part—in its uncertainty and potential for capriciousness—might very well have been worse than the bad.