She held it up, the little yellow door hiding the barbs pointed to the ceiling, once again making Edmund think she’d missed her calling at being a gunslinger.
“Then I change your body’s current voltage of zero to fifty-thousand.”
***
He didn’t want to fall asleep but somehow he did, despite being scared out of his mind, both for himself and for his friends who could be in any sort of trouble right now. The thought of them being picked up by the train made his heart sink and he worked hard not to dwell on that particular nightmare.
When he woke it was because the old woman was gently shaking his leg. He started, but immediately found her eyes and she was holding a finger to her lips, instructing him to be quiet. She pointed toward the window, where the night was as black as could be, but some white glow lined the windowsill.
Edmund slowly rose from the bed and walked over to peer through the edge of the curtain. The streetlights were out, and Edmund wondered how he could have possibly slept through what he saw below, other than being far more exhausted than he knew.
The train was there, on the street beneath them, using the same path that cars had been using since the road was paved. But the trainset was too wide, and it had turned over telephone poles and street lights, and had driven parked cars into the sides of the buildings. The fancy sports car now looked like a tube of toothpaste after the wheels of the train flattened half of it.
Luckily the engine was long gone, the sounds of it but an echo far away. Now, the whole trainset was moving at a snail’s pace, what Edmund’s dad would have called taxiing speed, as if it were pulling into a station. The ghosts inside the cars were calm, simply sitting around in clumps, as if this was their naptime. In truth, as Edmund began to realize, they simply hadn’t been activated by seeing a living person.
“What’s it doing?” he whispered.
“The engine passed about half an hour ago. It’s looking for people to take. And see that?” She pointed down to the destruction it was causing along the street. “It doesn’t care to be seen. The Entity has grown the rooster.”
“The what?”
“The rooster. That’s your term, right?”
He thought for a minute, trying to connect the frayed wires of the language barrier. “Do you mean cocky?”
“Right, cocky. It has grown so powerful that it does not care who sees it.”
Edmund looked down, and she was using a small pocket knife to make tally marks on the windowsill. So far she was up to thirty-three.
“Go back to sleep, Edmund. We’ll leave when the sun comes up, if it’s gone.”
He did as she asked, and after he closed his eyes, the passage of time seemed to come all at once, and the next thing he knew the light was filtering in through the mesh curtains, tickling his nose with his eyes closed. The silence had returned and the rocking chair sat empty. His heart sank. What if the old woman wasn’t immune after all?
The street below was clear, but still looked like a giant blade had swung right through it. Many of the cars were pressed against or into the houses, and those with parking brakes applied were flattened. A couple of the houses down the street had collapsed as too much debris—a delivery truck and a pair of telephone poles—obliterated their foundations. Before moving away from the windowsill, he took note of Matilda’s tally marks.
Fifty-six.
He found her in the next room, standing by a window that looked out to the backside of the house. She sensed his presence and half turned, but continued to gaze out at the wide-open field, apple trees and hedge rows the only things noteworthy.
“Good morning,” she said. “I found some coffee and it’s boiling on the wood stove. The train knocked out the power last night.” Now that she’d mentioned it, he could smell the coffee.
“Have you been to sleep?” he asked. He looked at his watch. Quarter past nine.
“I dozed after the train left. It was enough.” But her eyes looked heavy, and just when he was about to suggest she rest before they leave, she said, “Are you ready?”
“What are you looking at out there?” he asked, joining her by the window.
“A whole lot of nothing,” she said. “You’d never know it now, but there used to be a whole town out there. Right past those trees.”
“What happened to it?”
“The Germans happened to it. We’re close to Treblinka, so they set fire to everything around here to keep it secret. This would be nothing but a desert if not for the trees and their usefulness. Buildings and people could tell of your crimes. But the trees . . . the trees could hide them.”
“Is that where you lived?” Edmund asked, pointing out.
“For a time. After I left the Entity’s lair. Good people took care of me, helped me discover that I was special, and then I led them back and to their deaths.”
Edmund didn’t know what to say to that, so he just kept quiet.
“The Entity is evil, but it’s the same as the Germans. The same as the Soviets. It’s so hard to have hope in the face of such evil. Do you understand?”
“I think I do.”
“Good. Because hope is all we really have, isn’t it? I remember the night I was loaded into the train. I’d been sleeping, and I was sick with typhus. It was a miracle I even survived to the night of the train. People ran into our house, Poles, I mean, shouting that we were leaving. I had no time to get any of my belongings other than my doll and that was only because I was hugging her when matka told me we had to go.”
“Matka?”
“My mother. My real mother. Sometimes I can still see her face. She was beautiful. Long black hair. Good teeth. A kind smile. But that’s all I remember.
“When she put me on the train, she told me she hoped we were going to a better place. And that hope was all I had during those four agonizing days, crammed in with nearly a hundred other people. No food, no water, taking turns to shit in the corner. And even after the Entity took us back to its lair, I still had hope, because for the first time I felt strong. Nazis had been around for over half my life, at least the years I could remember, and I was finally able to stand up to something. And that’s the hope that has continued to drive me forward.”
“You’re a strong woman. Stronger than any American woman I know,” he said, hoping it sounded sincere and not as cheesy as he thought it did as it left his lips.
“But I won’t always be,” she said. “This old woman is ready for her rest. Ready to join those who have gone on before her.”
Edmund draped an arm around her and gently pulled her away from the window. “But not today. Today she’s needed to help a stupid American get the hell out of here.”
***
The stillness of the morning unnerved him. When he opened the door, hinges squealing from years of disuse, he thought the whole trainset would barrel right through the buildings and land right on the doorstep. It didn’t, and the old woman blew past him, taking the lead and heading right across the broken street and up the mountain where they’d come down only sixteen hours before.
She had a renewed vigor, and although she walked with a limp, Edmund figured that was ancient stroke damage and not from last night’s horrid events. The taser bounced in her waistband as she took long strides to get across the trench dug by the train. Edmund moved far slower because he couldn’t go more than a few steps without turning a full circle, making sure the train didn’t slide out of the mist.
“Your car is wrecked,” she said, as if that even needed explained. They passed it, a large jagged hunk that barely resembled an automobile at all. While gas was cheap in Poland, replacing a whole car was not. He didn’t even want to think of how they were going to pay Nomad. Ghost train collision was probably not covered under the insurance policy.
Matilda wasn’t leading them in a straight line, but rather a diagonal arc to the left of where they’d gone down the mountain. At the top, over a guardrail so overgrown with dead vines that he didn’t even realize what it was un
til he’d crossed it, he knew why she’d taken them astray. The wind was blowing hard, picking up snow, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway for what he was looking to see. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that the black SUV was still parked by the fence.
“The train always appears when someone is near the fence,” said Edmund.
“Yes.”
“The town, Polvec? Why does it care so much?”
“Because the town sits around the Entity’s lair. That’s the very mountain I climbed down when it released me. Before there were buildings. A town. Come. Let’s not linger here.”
“Just wait, please? I’m trying to understand. You’re saying that a town sprung up around its lair?”
“Yes.” She had stopped, turned to face him, but her eyes kept lingering to the spot where the train had appeared yesterday. The trench was unmistakable. “The locals have known about the town for years, but it has remained hidden and untouched all this time. The Entity has sway over them.”
“They do his bidding?”
“They are entranced, much like the people who hear the call. And much like Otto Herzog was after I left the lair and he turned his wrench against every person on the train. The Entity is powerful, and you would be wise to stay away from its backyard. Come on, Edmund.”
She started to walk, he started to follow. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that something didn’t add up. Matilda sensed that he had stopped again, and that he was looking in the opposite direction, toward Polvec.
“Edmund?”
“Why does it care?”
“I’m sorry, boy?”
“Why does it care that we go near it? The train has shown up both times I came too close to Polvec.”
“No one likes someone snooping around their house. That applies to supernatural beings, too.”
“That’s not it and you know it. Think about it.”
“Okay, Edmund. I’m thinking about it, but why don’t you just have out with it? And save an old woman the trouble?”
“It’s protecting something.”
Her eyes flashed with acceptance for just a moment but her natural, stoic face quickly returned. “Why would you suggest that?”
He shrugged. “When I was a kid we had this pit bull that lived down the street. Name was Jasper. Anyway, Jasper didn’t bother anyone. You could go into his yard and pet him and he’d lick your palms like he was your best friend. But across the street, by this little abandoned turnabout, was a big oak tree. If you so much as walked near it, Jasper would lunge at your throat. He eventually had to be put down because some kids were riding bikes near it and he pulled one of them to the ground. Kid had to have a bunch of stitches.”
“Where are you going with this?” Matilda asked impatiently.
“Sorry. What I’m getting at, is that a few years after Jasper was dead, they paved the turnabout, but they cut the tree down first. And buried all around it was at least a dozen squirrel skeletons. He’d been burying them over the years. And that’s what I’m reminded of when I think of Polvec. The train is hiding something there and tries to bite anyone who comes near it.”
“Interesting theory,” she said. “But impossible to prove.”
He nodded, in full agreement. However, the private investigators seemed to have gotten in, for better or for worse.
They moved away from all signs of the train’s damage, but he couldn’t help but think that it was still reaching beyond the physical destruction. The world had changed, at least to Edmund in his limited understanding of Poland. From where they walked, they could see the 627, and the traffic was much lighter than he’d ever noticed. He started to pull Matilda toward the highway but she shrugged off his hand.
“Don’t bother the motorists with our troubles.” She pointed ahead, where a building rose above the treeline in the distance. “We’re coming upon Poniatowo. We can call from there.”
But Poniatowo looked nearly as deserted. While they didn’t see any doors hanging open, there was still a remarkable hush blanketing the town. There was a payphone outside the Palace, the same place Edmund had a conversation with Emril Jablonski about seeing the zoologist chase the train.
“Do you have any money?” asked Matilda, picking up the receiver. “I never carry any.”
Edmund fished around in his pockets for a few coins and dropped them into the old lady’s palm. “Just tasers, huh?”
She winked, a terribly disconcerting gesture with only one good eye, then turned to make her call. Edmund caught sight of someone moving on the other side of the door’s frosted glass window and he pulled it open and stepped inside, wondering if it could be Emril.
The place was far more deserted than the other night, but that could be accredited to it being early morning. Emril wasn’t around, but a tall, bushy haired girl at the hostess podium offered him a fabricated smile, nonetheless.
“Is Emril here?” he said. He always preferred to ask the first question so that they knew beforehand not to launch into a spiel about today’s specials through a language he didn’t know.
“Emril not here,” she said, picking her words because English was far back in her language rolodex.
“Oh, sorry,” he said.
“Not here yesterday either. Doesn’t call. Boss is worried.”
“Thank you,” said Edmund, not wanting to push it. Emril was probably riding around in a boxcar by now.
Edmund stepped out just as Matilda was hanging up the phone.
“Your friends are safe, although the girl hurt her wrist. Lena is coming in the car to pick us up. So we wait.” She pointed to the bench outside the Palace and the two sat down, a sense of normalcy coming back at once.
“I’m sorry, Edmund,” she said. Every bone in her body sounded like gunshots as she stiffly leaned back.
“For what?”
“For getting you involved in our fight. Lena should have never sent you looking for your friend. I should have just told you from the beginning. But we are scared out here.”
“I understand. And it’s fine, you didn’t get me involved. I came here looking for answers and would have found them either way.”
“I certainly believe it.” She coughed heavily into her hand, turning away from him.
“Truth is, we need to be moving on. Bill is going to propose to Sophie in Romania. At Dracula’s Castle.”
“What? That sounds horrid. St. Mary’s Basilica is right down in Kraków. Have him take the girl there.”
“No, you don’t understand. It’s a pop culture thing. She’ll love it at Dracula’s Castle way more than some old cathedral.”
Matilda looked like she didn’t know what to make of that, so she crossed her arms and shook her head. “You Americans confuse me. But at least the two have each other. Do you have someone back home?”
“I do,” he said. His mind had hardly drifted to Samantha during this whole trip. He pulled out his phone and a saw he had a few missed texts from her, all popping up at once because his cell was getting service again.
“Why didn’t you bring her with you?”
“Because we don’t have the same kind of relationship that Bill and Sophie have. We aren’t . . . um, what’s the word I’m looking for? Serious? I’ll probably break up with her when I get home, anyway. We don’t get along. We barely see each other. I’m okay with that, too.”
“I see. That’s a shame.” She watched the road again, waiting to see the car come along, and even though it was yet to appear, it must have reminded her of her granddaughter. “I wish Lena would find someone.”
“Are you all she has?”
Matilda nodded. “Both her parents, my son and his wife, I mean, heard the train’s call.”
“Jesus, are you serious?” The thought of it made a chill run down his back.
“Yes. My daughter-in-law in 2005, and my son in 2009.”
“She was young during both of those,”
“That she was. Too young to lose one’s parents.”
Edmund nodded
but he couldn’t relate. Both of his parents were alive and well, and currently wondering why he wasn’t responding to his texts.
And just as he’d made the mental connection, his phone began to ring. He held it up and saw it was that strange number again—the one that had already called, each day, at least once.
“You going to answer that?” Matilda asked, looking at the screen. “Might be important.”
“It’s a telemarketer,” said Edmund, finger hovering over the dismiss button.
“I doubt it. That’s a Warsaw number.”
He took a moment to gauge the seriousness of her face and then shot up from the bench while pressing the TALK button.
“Hello?” he said.
For a moment there was only silence, and then, a clear, pleasant voice responded. “Yes, I’m looking for a Mr. Edmund Riley?”
“This is Edmund.”
“Mr. Riley, this is Agata Nowak from Copernicus Polana.”
“I’m sorry, who?” He didn’t understand the name, nor did he really recognize the voice.
She paused for a moment, and although her English was nearly perfect, she was having trouble coming up with the proper words to make him understand. So she simply said the easiest things to bring him up to speed.
“Adlai Chobot. You were here, to visit him? You told me to call you if any change.”
Edmund’s heart sank because what news could there possibly be if not bad?
“Yes, right, I’m sorry. Long day. What about Addey? Sorry, Adlai?”
“I really don’t know how to tell you this, Mr. Riley,” she said, her voice trailing off. And Edmund felt the tears stinging his eyes, felt the phone slipping through his sweaty fingers. Matilda had stood, noticing his sudden dismay, but did not approach him as he did little circles on the sidewalk.
“Go on, please,” he croaked.
“We lost him, sir. I just don’t know how.”
“What do you mean you don’t know how? Was it his heart? His brain?”
“Sorry? Oh, God no. I’m so sorry, Mr. Riley. We lost him. He’s gone.”
Ghost Train of Treblinka Page 16