“Interesting theory, my friend. If you figure out where, do ring us, please?”
Probably aboard the train, he thought. Wasn’t that the most likely place? Still, the train wasn’t the only location shrouded in mystery, that much was clear by the way Lena avoided talking of it.
“There’s a place near the Treblinka camp. It’s called Polvec.”
“Polvec? What’s Polvec?” asked Marcus, listening in on the call.
“Yeah, Edmund, is that a town?”
“I don’t know. I think so. But there’s a fence surrounding it and cameras guarding it. I saw it just when the train showed up. And had I not been there, the train would have probably ridden straight for it.”
“I’m not seeing anything online about a town called Polvec,” said Marcus.
“We’re looking at satellite maps all around Treblinka,” said Brian. “We don’t see a town anywhere by that name.”
“I don’t know,” said Edmund. “Something is there.” He pulled up the EarthTrotter app on his phone and zoomed out to where the fence had started. Edmund was probably looking at the same geodata that those Brits were seeing, and there definitely wasn’t anything there. Nonetheless, Edmund tapped the spot, then took a screenshot of the coordinates and sent it to Brian. “That’s the spot. Or close enough for you to see the fence.”
“Alright, Edmund. Thanks. We’ll check it out.”
“How? There’s a fence and cameras so I doubt they want people snooping around.”
At this word, Brian began to chuckle. “My dear boy,” he said, “we are professional snoopers.”
“Just be careful, please. I have a bad feeling about it.”
“Duly noted, my good man. Thanks for the lead. We’ll be in touch.” And then, he was gone.
Edmund sat there, feeling uneasy about the conversation but knowing there wasn’t much he could do about it. His phone was teetering on one percent battery, so he powered it down to expedite the charge and headed downstairs to the common room where he hoped he could eat whatever it was he’d started to smell.
Halfway down the steps he found the common room full, or at least full by Krakus House standards. The largest table, the one where they often had their dinner was filled with a banquet-sized breakfast. Both of his friends were eating and talking with Lena and the old woman, who had wheeled her chair right up to the edge of the table.
Bill was the first to hear the creak on the steps and turned to see his friend coming down, still wearing the clothes from last night.
“Ed?”
Sophie got up, briskly walked over to him and wrapped her arms around him. He wanted to cry, not because she was showing him such warmth, but because he knew he didn’t have to explain what had happened. They knew what he’d been through.
“Morning,” he said, unsure of what else to say.
Lena said, “We’re just bring them up to speed. Are you hungry? I made kasza manna. It’s like oatmeal in your country, I suppose. But with blackberries and—”
“You don’t know how lucky you are to be standing there, boy,” said the old woman. Her eyes were stern, reproachful.
He took a seat at the end of the table, away from the group. Whether it was subconscious or not, he couldn’t tell. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put anyone in harm’s way.”
“Just yourself,” said Sophie, shaking her head. “Why didn’t you wake us?”
“I honestly don’t know. I saw the map . . .” Edmund glanced at Lena, not sure if she’d told everyone her part in all this, “. . . and it made me impulsive. I had to see it for myself and I had to see it that very moment.”
Bill had taken on a more serious tone, his friend becoming ever more irritated by Edmund’s actions. “You’re lucky this nice lady followed you or else you’d be just like Addey. And we would be just as clueless about you as you are of him.”
Lena said, “We’ve been talking about your friend and we understand this is important to you.”
The old woman leaned in. She coughed into a fold of her blanket and then put her piercing gaze to Edmund. Whenever she did that, all signs of age disappeared. When that eye found him, old and brittle flitted away, replaced by a vigor he didn’t understand.
“But you have to understand why it’s dangerous for you here. Why it’s dangerous for anyone to be here. And if it’s answers that will send you home, I’ll tell you.” She took a breath, hacked into her blanket again, then continued. “I know what happened to your friend. Because just like last night, I was there.”
“You were?” Edmund couldn’t help but notice his friends were hardly surprised by this news, probably already having heard the story.
“Lena, be a doll and put a log on the fire,” said the old woman, another fit of coughing unsettling her frail lungs. She turned her attention back to Edmund. “Your friend checked into Krakus House and he stayed for three days. He asked many questions about the train, as people often do when they come here. For most, it’s a passing interest. The Ghost Train has always been rare, coming out only at night and only in January. Our house is unbothered for most of the year. But your friend was determined to find the train. On the eve of the last day we saw him, he spoke of the town. Said he got inside, that he found a secret way past the fence and that he’d thought about going back to take pictures.” Edmund thought of the strange buildings in his photos, the armed guard, the lab and the train track that looked like it was inside a tunnel.
Lena nodded toward the old woman as she sat back down. “Babcia told him that would be unwise, that he would get into trouble. She told him it was a military base and he’d be shot for trespassing.”
“Is that true?” asked Sophie.
The old woman shook her head. “That it’s military? No. That he’d be shot for trespassing? Yes. Anyway, we were at the bar, he’d just come in . . .he stayed gone for most of the day, and then immediately started to talk about his grandparents and how they were on the train.”
So goes the story of all the others, thought Edmund.
Lena said, “He left out of here, got in his car and drove off.”
“My battery was dead when I got behind the wheel,” said the old woman. “Damned relic, it is! So I borrowed the neighbor’s truck down the street and followed as best I could. I got out of the car up in the woods because I could hear your friend shouting for his grandparents. I’m old, can’t move like I could before, but I chased the boy as best I could. The Ghost Train was on the prowl—damned thing doesn’t care who hears its whistle when it’s angry—and your friend was headed right for it. But then I came upon him. And he looked as dead as dead could be.”
“Otto came looking for him,” said Edmund. “That’s the big guy with the wrench. We could see him in the video.”
The old woman chuckled, revealing a mouth full of yellowed pegs. “Yes, boy. I know all about Otto. And had I not been there, Otto would have taken your friend onto the train.”
“So you just left him there,” said Edmund, his voice coming out far more hostile than he intended. It didn’t matter because he wasn’t sorry.
She just stared at him for a moment before answering, as if choosing words that wouldn’t exacerbate conflict. But in the end, she only looked defeated. “I had no choice. I can barely lift my bread out of the oven. Surely not a twelve-stone boy.”
“She didn’t just abandon him,” Lena said, jumping to the old woman’s defense.
“No. I didn’t. After I was sure the train was gone, I called the police from a phone kiosk near Poniatowo. Told them I saw a boy running into the woods and where they could find his car. He was picked up within the hour.”
“I don’t understand what’s wrong with him,” Edmund said. He always circled back to this. “Why is he in a coma?”
The old woman shrugged. “Your friend showed incredible resilience to the train. Some of us have that. Most do not.”
Lena reached out and touched her grandmother—her babcia—on the hand. “And some of us have a lot more
than others.”
Bill chimed in with the story of the zoologist, of how that man had simply gone into a stupor when he thought his sister was on the train, playing the piano of all things. He said, “Addey seemed to have his senses in the video. He wasn’t like . . . what’s the word?”
“Zombie,” answered Lena. “You Americans love that word. Brainless, moving without thinking.”
“Right,” Bill said, “like a zombie. He had enough wits about him to film while he was running after it. And he even ran away when Otto stepped off the engine.”
The old woman pursed her lips and shook her head. “I’ve never seen anything like it. But coming in contact with the Entity has caused stranger things to happen. Your friend just fell into a shock that can’t be mimicked any other way. He came face to face with a dark power, and unlike everyone else, is still alive.” She turned to Edmund, a move that was so rigid and robotic that he was sure it caused her great pain. “I know this is a small consolation, but your friend is extraordinarily lucky. This is not the words you want to hear, but take heart because it’s the truth. He is safe now. You all are not. You need to leave this place at once.”
“I think we can all agree on that,” Bill said. He rapped his knuckles on the table. “Ed?”
Sophie, unsure, looked at him also. “How about it, Ed?”
He didn’t hear any of it. Instead, he focused on what the old woman had just said.
“You called it an Entity.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Why that word?”
“Because that’s what it was before the train.”
“Before the train?”
She said, “A ghost must have a catalyst. It wasn’t always a train, but it’s always been just as evil.” Edmund recalled a very similar story he’d told Sophie.
“So what was it before it was a train?”
“And how did it even become a train?” Bill asked.
The old woman exchanged a look with her granddaughter and then answered. “Because I made it happen.”
Treblinka
January 21st, 1948
When he picked this place as a lair in the years leading up to the construction of the Treblinka camp, he assumed the Nazis would be smart enough to keep it running until the Final Solution was carried out. That would have been enough death to satisfy him while he plotted to move elsewhere, find the next holocaust. Man had so many aspirations when it came to being evil, so surely he wouldn’t have to wait long.
But now the lair was little more than a crypt. Five years had passed since the girl walked away, and in those five years he waited, hoping enough death would float on the wind, bolster his spirit, and let him leave this place once and for all. There was promise here, oh yes—with its hidden location and the laboratory at the far end, but what good was it all? He was weak, in no shape to govern the minds of the mortals to his will. The Entity had always been a scavenger but now he’d become a bottom-feeder, scrounging in the trash for whatever scraps he could find. The girl had broken him.
The only things keeping him from falling back asleep were the deaths that happened by chance. A few years ago, the first spring after the girl had left the cave, a two-vehicle accident claimed the lives of two drivers and three passengers. The Entity lingered at the mouth of the tunnel and breathed in the sweetness of fresh death. A couple of months after that a farmer, for whatever reason, walked across the field in the distance, sat down on the back of a wagon, and put a shotgun in his mouth. That death wasn’t filling, but it was tasty, all the same. These were the scant offerings that wafted by his lair, and it was nearly torture. Just like the warriors of old, it was better to die in the heat of battle than linger past the world’s turmoil only to live as an old man. And right now, he was an old man.
A year after the girl left was the last time he got a decent meal. He’d looked around his tomb that morning, finding a solace in the remnants that were once people. To be an Entity as old as he, was to forget the passage of time, to be content in the moment, and to be immune to the boredom that plagued man. His tomb was silent. The smell of rotten meat had long since dissipated. Now that he thought about it, nothing ever came to eat the bodies—his wickedness made the lesser creatures of the world keep away.
As the morning light filtered through the gap where the train tracks used to run, it cast an eerie glow across the four-thousand skeletons sitting in the cars, as if still waiting on the fateful night the train headed to Treblinka. Even Otto hadn’t moved an inch since the day he crawled up to the engine and collapsed. True, he was smaller now, the meat all gone and his face sunken like a mummy. A fine sheen of cobwebs covered him from head to toe, as if to wrap him in a full-body cocoon.
But then, death started to enter his lair in droves.
He was bolstered, the power returning to his noncorporeal form. In an instant he had materialized outside the cave. The path Otto had cleared was now so overgrown that no one would ever suspect a train spur had led here. But from his perch, he could see the fields in the distance, and they looked nothing as they did five years ago. Now, green grass had grown back, saplings were pushing through the ground, fences had been reconstructed, and then, on the horizon, a line of tanks were punching to the west.
War machines all looked the same to the Entity. He cared about the results far more than the means, so at first he didn’t recognize the tanks were of Soviet design. For the last couple of weeks, there’d been a steady stream of death floating through, and as he stood outside the cave at night, he could see the smoke billowing into the air. The Germans, in their retreat and in their effort to hide their horrid war crimes, had started to burn everything around the camp, including the nearby towns. Most were abandoned, but sometimes he would get lucky, and death was added to the air.
Now, the Red Army was pushing west, toward Warsaw, and mowing down any resistance that got in the way. As long as they were here, he would eat. However, this was short-lived, as the opposition had fled as far west as it could. The Germans were pulling back, Poland was lost, and now the Entity was living in a land where a new government was being installed. He cared little for the politics of man, but at any rate, the winds of death barely fluttered, and he had been begging for morsels ever since.
And then one morning, a few weeks after the five-year anniversary of the little girl fleeing the cave, cold, confused, barefoot, and clutching a straw doll—she came back.
At first he thought his perception was on the wane—he was incredibly weak, after all. But he could taste her on the air, just as he had all those years ago when Otto put her on the tracks and told her to leave. Why on God’s green Earth would she have returned?
It was after dark when a trio of bouncing lanterns began drawing close to the tunnel entrance. A white vortex blew the flames aside, the wind and snow whipping the barren landscape beyond. His eyes could clearly see the visitors—or was invaders a more proper term? The girl was filled with blinding, white light, but he knew it was her, even if she had somewhat doubled in size.
What stood before the mouth of the cave now was a child, obviously around ten years old, but looking into the abyss with a certainty he’d never seen upon a child’s face before. The confident stare, the slight grimace at her lips, told him that she knew she had power—and the two who’d accompanied her back to this place had most likely taught her all about it.
An older man with sandy brown hair flipped his hood back and reached out a shaky arm to survey the cave with his lantern. It was silent inside, as it had been for many years, and he hoped the trio would turn around and leave, but the Entity knew it wouldn’t be so simple. Just as he could sense the good in her, so too could she sense the evil in him.
The man turned back and said to the girl, “You’re sure?”
“There’s no tracks here, love,” said the other adult, a woman who was probably the older man’s wife. The Entity tried to dive into their minds, to see what they saw, to perhaps unseat them and make them run off, but he could
n’t. He was too weak, so all he was afforded was flashes of light, names, childhood traumas. None of the information he gleaned while floating around in their minds proved useful.
“I can’t explain that,” said the girl. “But the train is here. And he is still here.”
The adults glanced at one another and then to the child. Finally, the man nodded, leapt past the rocks and then helped his friends inside. They made the first discovery which was the tracks—Otto didn’t take those up because what use was it? If anyone happened inside the cave, they would see the train almost immediately.
“It’s here!” said the man, as predicted. The lantern’s glow was reflecting off the train’s pilot. The child came up behind him and the woman put a hand across her shoulder. Who were these people? How did the child even survive—five years! Only to come back here. The Entity swam away on what little bit of energy he had left, and watched them from the back of the train.
“You can wait outside if you’d like,” said the man to the girl. “We won’t be long.”
“Nonsense. I want to see him,” said the girl with more resolution than someone her age should’ve possessed.
“Matilda, you do not have to do this. We’ve dealt with evil before,” said the woman.
“Not like this. You need to let me go first.” The girl named Matilda pushed her way past them and held up her lantern.
“So many dead. Look at them,” the man said, pausing at each train car and peering inside. “Look at their heads. All beaten in. What kind of monster?”
“That monster,” said Matilda, pointing up to the man in the engine. The alligator wrench lay at his feet in a nest of webs.
How did the child know such things? The Entity sensed a pressing at his metaphysical head, and knew he was being invaded. This little girl . . . was looking into his mind.
“He’s here,” said the child. “He’s back there.” Her shaky lantern—shaky only from the weight and not fear—pointed right at him.
“Right, let’s do it,” said the man, placing his lantern on the ground. He removed his robe, and that’s when the Entity saw the medallion hanging around his neck—the spiral with the line through it. He’d seen these people before—they called themselves the Order of the Opeikun—and although they had no power over him, they could make life hard nonetheless.
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