“No, mate, that’s not what I’m saying.”
“If we start killing each other now, where does it end?” Edmund said.
Brian threw his hands up in the air and walked off. “Forget I even bothered.”
Edmund noticed a change in Lena, as the old woman seemed to grow stern with her in the last few days. He guessed she was giving her the same speech, that she was at the end of her life and that things would grow chaotic in the moments that followed. Lena didn’t want to believe it anymore than he did. Had the girl known about her grandmother’s health? Matilda was a strong woman, and he doubted anyone was privy to such information.
On the last day, Matilda looked stronger than ever.
***
They’d been sleeping in a line, straight across the common room with the invalids bookending the group. Marcus lay in front of the fireplace closest the door with Sophie in front of the one to the rear. Edmund was in the center of the whole group, sandwiched in between Addey and Matilda. This put him in the coldest spot of all, and it was probably why he woke so fast when he sensed someone was moving over top of him.
His eyes opened just before he heard the loud crack of gunfire. Even before he saw who was holding it, before his eyes went blank from the flash, his nose filled with the smell of cordite. The entire group jumped at once, a collective gasp that unsettled Edmund enough to crawl backwards.
He couldn’t believe what he was seeing, and neither could the rest.
“Marcus?” Brian said from the front of the room. An invalid no more, Marcus had somehow found a gun and then moved to the center of the room, where he stood over Edmund. But the gun wasn’t pointing at him—it was shaky, but clearly he’d drawn the barrel to hover on Matilda. Edmund looked down at her, just when the screams started.
She was gushing blood—he’d got her right in the chest, probably in the heart. Her lips were wet and a steady trail rolled down her left cheek. By the way she breathed, the bullet probably got her lung, as well.
Lena screamed, “Babcia!” and as she got to her feet to run over, Marcus aimed the gun and fired one off at her, as well. She hit the ground hard, clutching at her chest. By now people were screaming all over the room, backing away into corners. The gun was shaking so hard and Edmund couldn’t tell if it was because he was scared or weak.
“Marcus, put the gun down,” Brian said from the corner, holding his hands up nonthreateningly.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” he said. “I didn’t want this to happen, but I have to get out of here. I can’t die in this place. My little girl needs me!”
“Put the gun down,” Edmund said, standing up slowly. He moved in front of Matilda.
“Let me finish her, mate, and then I’ll put the gun down.”
“You’re going to have to shoot me first. I can’t let you kill an old woman in cold blood.” But he was thinking the man already had.
Marcus’s hand looked like it was working hard to raise, but he brought the gun up, tears in his eyes, and the next moment it fired, but the bullet went high, the concussive blast of it tousling Edmund’s hair. He was so distracted by it that he failed to see the man twitching, and then fall to the ground where the gun skidded across the wood, landing at the bar.
Thrashing on the floor, Edmund saw the twin spiral of wires in his back, could hear the crackling of electricity, and he saw Sophie standing behind him, the yellow taser in her hand.
Bill came running, so transfixed on the grisly scene that he didn’t see that his girlfriend had stood and retrieved the old woman’s taser.
Edmund first went to Lena—he wasn’t sure why—but when she saw him approach, she sat up and said, “He got my bloody arm, it’s fine. Check her!” She pointed to the old woman who was currently gurgling blood. Addey moved to prop several pillows up behind her so she didn’t choke to death before bleeding out.
“Babcia,” said Lena, her voice trembling. She was bleeding profusely from the shoulder.
The old woman’s shaky hand took her granddaughter’s. Lena moved close and kissed a bloodless spot on her forehead. The room had grown silent now—Marcus was down and Sophie looked awestruck to see Addey.
“It’s . . . it’s okay,” said the old woman. She was looking at Edmund more than Lena. “I have to. I have to die.”
“Why?” Lena asked. “We need you. I need you!”
“I have to die,” she continued, “so I can show them how to fight.”
“Who?” Edmund asked, cradling her head. She’d begun to go limp. “Who, Matilda?”
Her good eye found him one last time, and she smiled. Her teeth were slicked with blood. “The buffalo.”
And then, she was gone.
For a moment there was silence, and Edmund half expected something to happen, but it didn’t. Her passing was as normal as if she’d been just any old woman dying in a hospital bed. Lena sobbed quietly, blood dripping off her fingers. That was the last person she had in her life.
No time to grieve, because the train’s whistle bellowed out.
They stood up and saw light flooding into Krakus House. The engine was lined up, the pilot facing the front door. Otto was hanging out of the side of it, his nose turned up as if he were smelling the air. Perhaps he was tasting the old woman’s death, as ludicrous as that sounded.
“He’s dead,” someone said behind Edmund. It was so alien, so unexpected that he didn’t realize what Brian was saying when he turned around. The man had a finger to Marcus’s neck. “That jolt right stopped his heart, I’m guessing. Damned thing was probably weak as a kitten anyway.”
Sophie put her hands to her face. “Oh, God, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”
“Don’t be,” Brian said. “Had no choice.”
Edmund looked back out the window, and now Otto had stepped off the train, the alligator wrench clutched tightly in his hand. Brian had scooped up the gun and was standing next to Edmund, but he thought it was all for nothing. What could a gun do to such evil?
Lena stood up beside him and took his hand. She looked at him with soft eyes, and why did he wait until now to notice just how pretty they were? Like little, sparkling emeralds. She smiled, but it melted from her face rather quickly.
“This is it,” said Bill. Sophie was sobbing on his shoulder. “It’s been a good run.”
“Does this place have a back door?” asked Brian, looking the place over.
Lena said, “Yeah, and it’s just as surrounded.”
Otto took a step forward. Edmund moved to the doorway, refusing to retreat. The large man’s boots sank in the mud, and seeing him now so close brought back the horrid images of when he’d first encountered him, what seemed like a lifetime ago. They were always going to die in this place, and Edmund was glad they at least made one last stand.
But then something unexpected happened.
Otto pitched forward because something had struck him in the back of the head. Edmund looked down, near the tire of the SUV. There was a boot—a shimmering, ethereal boot that no doubt belonged to a ghost. Otto regained his composure and slowly turned to where the assault had originated, only to be hit again by another flying boot. He staggered a little, then dodged just as another came hurtling.
That’s when the train cars began to empty out.
Ghosts of men, women, and children flooded the little roundabout in front of Krakus House, each running up to Otto and striking him in the head with whatever they had. The bald man grew furious, let out a roar, and then the alligator wrench was flying madly. The living who stood inside Krakus House watched in amazement as he cut down ghosts, who flitted away on the wind as if made of ash. They came at him like antibodies attacking an infection. Otto mowed down each and every one of them, for the alligator wrench was deadly at such close proximity. It was the second time they’d tasted the sting of the metal. But the ghosts were staggering him, moving him back away from Krakus House little by little.
It was a constant give-and-take fight. The sheer number of ghosts floodin
g into the fray made it hard for him to do anything other than swat at flailing arms and legs. Some of them even came with weapons of their own, clubs and swords that they struck against his head with little effect.
“Look!” said Sophie, pointing out the left of the battle. Edmund wasn’t sure what she saw, but as his eyes found one of the cars sitting several coiled rows back, he watched as it became as insubstantial as ash, and then floated away.
One by one, the cars disappeared. As Otto destroyed those riding, so to did he destroy the need for extra cars. Slowly, the train was shrinking. The Entity was no longer concerned with those at Krakus House and Edmund thought about what the old woman had said, during their last meaningful conversation.
If the Entity slips up at all and you can get away . . . head to Treblinka.
If this didn’t constitute a slip-up, he didn’t know what did.
Edmund pulled Addey and said, “You need to run upstairs, grab the vial and the flash drive. Go!” Addey nodded and was gone. Next he turned to Brian and said, “You have your car key?”
He nodded.
The train cars continued to disappear as Otto continued to be driven away and down the hill.
“What are you thinking, Ed?” asked Bill, just as Addey returned with the only things that kept Otto here.
“We have to get to Treblinka.”
“What? Why?” Sophie asked.
“I don’t know. We just do.”
Brian said, “Mate, if we get out of here, we’re heading to Belarus or Lithuania. Not going to a damned memorial!”
“Yes, we are!” said Edmund. “The old woman told me so and that’s where we’re going. If I have to walk there, I’m going to Treblinka.”
“And I’ll be walking with him,” said Lena.
That admittance seemed to jar something in Brian and he dropped his head, then nodded.
The cars were disappearing faster now because Otto was in a frenzy. He’d started twirling the alligator wrench like some kind of samurai. Edmund couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought the man had sweat on his brow, that his armband had ripped. Could the ghosts really be wearing down the Entity, could they really be hurting it? When the train car closest to the road disappeared, Edmund found that he didn’t care.
“Go!” he screamed, then led the charge out the door. He slid a hand around the small of Lena’s back and helped her into the SUV. There were three rows of seats, so Brian took driver’s with Bill in shotgun. Lena and Edmund took the very back, just as he had the night Sophie almost succumbed to the train.
“Everyone hold on, the ghosts are still coming down the hill!” Brian threw it in reverse and almost backed them over the mountain because the wheels slid on the mud. Ghosts ran all around the car, not paying the fleeing mortals one ounce of attention. They’d been loosed, and now were after their eternal handler.
But now the supply was becoming exhausted. Where before they were a torrent, like a mighty fissure in a dam, they’d now dwindled to a drip. Even Edmund, from the rear of the SUV, could count the cars, and he knew it was smaller now than when the Ghost Train had first screamed out of that cave some eighty years ago.
Brian floored the gas, and Edmund looked up long enough to see Otto take notice of them and thump the grill with his wrench, knocking out the driver’s side light. Still, the SUV barreled past him, hit the uneven road at the foot of the hill, and put Krakus House to the rearview.
The world was dark on the other side of the back window. Edmund didn’t see anyone, no sign posts, no telephone poles, no trees. The Ghost Train had gutted the countryside.
“Christ, Edmund, you better be right about this!” said Brian. “I oughta drop you off and keep on me merry way.”
“Fine,” he said. “You know where it is? Keep straight. Another quarter mile.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
“Are you okay?” Edmund asked Lena. Her fingers were bloody, but that was just as much from the old woman as her own. She just nodded, and he was glad he couldn’t see her eyes in the darkness.
A flash of light filled the SUV and Edmund looked up, stricken with horror, and saw the engine’s pilot nearly touching the hatchback. Fire was bellowing out from the wheels and the smokestack, and each time it lit the night sky, Edmund could see that the engine was alone—the trainset no more. Even the co-conductor was gone. It was only Otto now.
Brian sped up, but the train, as if grounded in natural physics, moved even faster. It pulled up alongside the SUV and with one, hard push, knocked it off the road.
“Everyone hold on!” Brian screamed at the last moment. The SUV careened, and then the train was back to give it another violent shove, this time turning the whole thing on its roof. No one was wearing a seatbelt, so the six meatbags inside bounced around, amid twisting metal and shattering glass. They rolled down a hill, and had a thin copse of trees not been at the bottom, they would have kept going.
Edmund kicked open the hatchback, seeing the fire spouting from the engine high up on the hill. It was just sitting there, watching them, perhaps curious as to why Brian had cut down the wooded path toward the camp, near where the Entity had first snatched the train.
Bill was limping as he moved around the side of the SUV so he could hold the door up and let Sophie slither out. She had a small cut on her forehead. Brian was wringing his hand, but looked fine. Addey was likewise unbothered after he gave the vial a check to make sure it hadn’t ruptured. Lena simply shook the fog from her head and followed the group away from the SUV.
“There!” Edmund yelled. “It’s there!”
They’d come in from the side of the camp, bypassing the place where they’d parked weeks ago. Now, somehow, the four eternal flames that marked the boundaries of the crematorium were lit, tiny pyres of dancing fire.
The group huddled around the giant memorial, the split rock that stood as a monument to all the smaller stones—villages, communities wiped out by the Nazis. Why would the old woman want Edmund to come here? What purpose did it serve to die in this place?
Their collective hearts sank when the engine’s fire shined through the tiny, skeletal trees. Otto pulled it right up to the first symbolic stone railroad tie, the flames dying down as if he’d thrown a conventional engine into neutral. He stepped off, minced his fists, then reached back in and pulled out his alligator wrench. This was the end. He was no more than twenty yards away, and they were out of options.
***
For the first time since his existence, the Entity knew pain, or at least what equated to pain. He had no blood, no muscles, no nerve endings and no brain in which to carry that message. But when the ghosts started to attack him, emboldened by the old woman’s death, it hurt his noncorporal body like nothing ever had.
And now, as he stared down the group of humans—children who hadn’t even experienced the world and its cruel and twisted ways, he felt a bitter shame. He’d grown so strong over the years, and that strength had been his downfall because he’d been arrogant, quick to act. If only he’d let the scientists work without prowling for new souls, his lair would’ve never been discovered. What happened here tonight didn’t matter. The work was finished. He was finished. More Opeikunites would show up and they’d form a ring around Poland so tight and so deadly that he would be immobile, forced to go mad while children gawked at him.
But tonight, he would satiate his soul with one last bit of revenge . . .
And on top of the Treblinka Memorial sat the old woman.
Only she wasn’t so old now—not a child, per se, but vibrant looking with dark hair and a face that didn’t droop. Both her eyes were staring at him. The little smirk on her face made him rage inside, because they both knew he couldn’t touch her in life, and most certainly couldn’t in death. There was a reason she had the children come here. She’d been a light bearer, and now those who’d been searching for the light finally found her.
***
Edmund remembered Matilda’s dying words:
I have
to die so I can show them how to fight.
Only Matilda wasn’t really talking about those on the train. She was talking about all the good people who’d been snatched away by evil. The Entity evolved when Matilda came too close. And now that she had passed, Matilda herself had evolved. She’d told Edmund she didn’t believe that God would reroll the dice, that he would balance out good and evil—but she’d been wrong.
Thank God, she’d been wrong.
Treblinka II, the site of the former death camp, suddenly became so bright that it was as if the sun were coming up prematurely. The light was so intense that Otto, now only a few feet away, put a hand over his eyes, the alligator wrench gleaming.
Edmund looked around, and as far as he could see were the dead. Ghostly apparitions of a faded grey were standing shoulder to shoulder, like warriors about to do battle. A sea of faces, all staring intently on the man wearing a German SS armband. He didn’t know how many ghosts stood around him, in front of him, behind him. But if history had been right, it was just short of a million.
The ghosts of Treblinka had assembled one last time.
They were deafening as they ran past, heading right for the Entity who’d begun to back away. The ghosts of Treblinka didn’t bother the living at all, simply passing through them on their way to land at least one hit on the monster before becoming one with the world and disappearing on the wind.
Otto was overwhelmed far worse than he had been with the ghosts on the train. Edmund didn’t know how badly they were hurting him until the ghosts created a sliver in their swings, and he saw that Otto had dropped the alligator wrench, and that his face had long, jagged scratches on it. But if they needed any evidence for how well he fought, they needed only to look at the train.
It was shimmering, little tendrils of smoke rising from its dingy metal. The ghosts continued to run past the group of humans, coming with such speed and ferocity that they hopped atop one another, making a mound that was growing out and up. The train blinked out of existence, the fires a tiny poof before they floated away.
And then, in a final push, the ball of flailing arms and legs exploded, sending ghosts through the air and knocking down the rest in a concussive blast. The ground was scorched where the Entity—where Otto—had stood, but now he was gone.
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