Spirit

by J. P. Hightman

  “Oh, I understand little of the arts,” Annette replied energetically. “I’ve decorated my father’s inn where I work, and that’s the extent of it. But I have an idea that the arts could be used to help children learn about the world and history and all that.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ve been thinking I might help the blind students from Salem. You know, they have so little. They’re relocating their school up here because they’ve been given a cheaper arrangement for land. All those rich Boston investors rebuilding Blackthorne were so kind to them, once those children stood right in front of them as a choir, singing hymns. Anyway, I’d like to do my part by teaching them to paint.”

  “Teaching blind children…to paint.” Tess strained to imagine it. “What fascinating work they would produce. But you yourself don’t know how to paint?”

  “Oh, no, not at all.”

  “Ah.”

  Tess stared out the window. Strange, wispy whorls of snow spun out of the forest. The train’s huffing and clacking drowned out other sounds, but the world outside seemed caged; the wind was like an eager animal wanting escape, straining to be unleashed. The sky was cream and gray, preparing to storm, a pale tiger lying in wait.

  From every window Tess could see white-capped trees sheltering nothing but darkness. She had the impression the train was now breaking through a membrane into a place out of time, not just a void between townships, as Elaine had suggested, but a long, solitary kingdom of loneliness.

  A deathscape.

  In its mind’s eye, the creature watched as the train approached a bend near a frozen lake, a vast sheet of ice, and it observed an unnatural heat wave that penetrated the air, and then vanished. It was as if the locomotive were wrapped in a glistening, invisible curtain, and then suddenly this wave shot away from the train into the trees, too quickly to be noticed.

  In the distance was a huge herd of elk, rattled, agitated.

  The wretch was witnessing these events from a considerable distance, examining the situation, seeing all the elements at work.

  Its hand was clawing at the water in a small, smoldering pit built into the floor of a ramshackle house. The pit was encircled by bones, human spines linked together. The skull of a dead elk floated up from the turgid water.

  Far off in the forest the locomotive approached the herd of elk.

  Tobias put his hand to his temple in excruciating pain. A moment later Tess felt it, too. She looked out the window again. At first she saw only a colossal sheet of glass, a bright nothingness surrounded by trees. It shocked her; a white hole in the world. But it was just the blinding gleam of the frozen lake.

  As Tess took this in, she became aware of something under the rattle of the train; the sound of something big moving in the woods.

  A gentle mist embraced the locomotive, passing, leaving beads of moisture on the window glass. Tess reached out her hand to the window closest to her. Warm…As she took her hand away, she could see a herd of elk galloping alongside the train. Their hooves on the ground made a powerful drumming.

  It caught her completely by surprise.

  They had emerged from the forest across from the icy lake. The herd was now a single force of nature, moving nearby as the express chattered on.

  The hordes of elk thundered closer.

  They were keeping pace with the train.

  People beside Tess turned, taking note in awe—the blur and clatter of the herd silencing everyone. The elk were racing the train, the huge, dangerous animal mass smashing across the snow. It was a mesmerizing sight.

  For a split second, a shimmer seemed to pass over the elk, as if they were a mirage, and a momentary crackling phenomenon played upon their antlers like lightning. Then the creatures suddenly rushed into the path of the engine.

  They dashed across the rails in a throng. The engineer screamed. The first elk intersected with the front of the train, and the engine plowed into them—cutting the huge stampede with a horrific clatter of horns and the thump of raw meat. Elk were hurtled, flying into the air, the cluster of animals shotgunned apart by the cowcatcher, as the train reached a segment of battered, loosened rails.

  With a shower of sparks, the train lost its hold on the track.

  The old engine slipped sideways, derailed, plowing into the snowbank.

  Tess closed her eyes as Tobias threw himself over her.

  The engine smashed into the snowy earth.

  And the world went dark for everyone.

  When Tobias awoke in the upturned train, Tess was nowhere to be found.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Tobias pulled himself out of a gaping hole in the side of the car. From the corner of his eye, he saw wisps of light shoot off into the forest away from the wreckage. Dizzy, in a daze, his heart beating in panic, he crawled away from the half-destroyed express coach, searching for Tess.

  He could see her lying in the snow up ahead. He ran to her quickly, turning her over. She seemed unhurt, with only a few scratches. She looked up, numb.

  “Something dragged me,” she said.

  They turned back to the trench behind her in the snow. Her body had indeed been dragged from the train.

  She’d been pulled out of the car.

  There was nothing else around her to indicate what had done this, no foot tracks or odd markings.

  Unnerved, Tobias looked out across the winter landscape.

  Elk corpses lay everywhere. One fearful elk that had survived clattered past to join a few others, which fled across the frozen lake. Human bodies and debris were strewn across the snowbank. The locomotive engine itself lay far ahead in the snow, and the first cars of the train were thrown about behind it.

  To both Tess and Tobias, the universe seemed muted, stoppered up. They just stared for a moment, their breath ghosting the air. The middle cars, including theirs, were off the track but near it, some still linked up, and the last part of the train, unhooked from the rest, remained on the rails and intact.

  The Goodravens got to their feet, facing the train and the jumble of three derailed cars nearby. Where they stood now was a blank slate of snow; behind them, a dense, winter-dead forest. Across from them, and across the train tracks, there was the frozen lake, and then more trees. Some of the train had slipped from the rails in that direction; thus there were derailed cars on both sides of the tracks.

  Most of the massacred elk lay spread around the front of the engine, though some of the corpses curved around Tess and Tobias in a wide, bizarre crescent of brown and blood red.

  “God…what were these animals doing here?” whispered Tobias. Elk in the northeast were a decidedly rare sight, though pockets of them were seen occasionally. Still, this was not natural. And…

  “Do you hear that?” whispered Tess. “Those are dead screams.”

  Tobias nodded. The sound of the freshly dead left a peculiar ringing hum, but never had they heard it so powerfully. “They’ll trail off in a while. Just…stay calm, Tess.”

  Other passengers began emerging from their car. A few who had been thrown onto the snow began to stir, waking.

  “I think we’re good and sound,” Tobias said. “Nothing broken?”

  “No,” said Tess, but she felt herself filling up with nausea and confusion. “I think I’ve got to get out of here. It’s too much…”

  “Tess. It’s going to be all right.” He looked over at the wreckage, took in a lungful of cold air. “We’re going to understand this.”

  Though he was rattled, he sounded firm, and his voice steadied Tess. He looked again at the trail in the snow, and then at the train. Curious, intent, he began moving toward the train. She watched him make his way back to the coach, where the college boy, Sattler, seeming shocked and mystified, was sitting on the car that had been turned upon its side. Blood was caked on his blond hair.

  Tobias said nothing to him, his mind fixed on some urgent mystery.

  Sattler looked toward him. “There are people moving in there,” he said slowly, peering
down into the car. “We should get them out.”

  “I suppose someone should,” said Tobias. Tess could just hear them. She watched as Tobias climbed onto the coach.

  As Tobias looked down, all he could see was a mess of people and metal. Sattler stood blankly beside him. It was a daunting sight, and neither had any idea where to start.

  “Should we just pull them out?” asked Sattler. “Maybe that’s not good…”

  Inside the car, the historian, Gil, was helping his wife, Elaine. He looked up, confused but not injured. “The train came off the tracks…,” he said to them.

  “Indeed it did,” said Tobias, grim and unruffled.

  Sattler was biting his lip, clearly upset. “I think maybe we should move them, unless they’re trapped. We have to keep them warm while we wait for help.”

  Tobias nodded. “Any way to get help?”

  “I’m not really sure.”

  Below them, Tess turned. She could hear other survivors now. Everywhere, out on the snow, in the train cars. Moaning. Screams.

  She looked over at Tobias, but he was preoccupied, slapping Sattler’s back. “Well, you head up the rescue; you seem to be an upstanding gent,” Tobias was saying, moving to examine the metal hole, the torn steel of the roof.

  “What are you doing?” Sattler asked him, angered by his giving orders.

  “I’m going to be busy for a moment. You find that…indeterminately foreign fellow, he’ll help you….”

  But the foreigner was out already, on the ground, emerging from the car’s rear door, carrying an injured Josiah Jurey on his back. Tess looked over at the foreign man and realized this was the first time she’d had a good look at him. She couldn’t tell how old he was, but he was unusually tall, sharp and striking-looking, with features she decided were Italian, and he wore a long duster coat and black boots. He had the swagger and air of an elegant outlaw, and, as he threw off his coat, it was clear he had a greatly overdeveloped physique. He was almost monstrously big, but Tess confessed to herself he looked somewhat heroic. It was rather a comfort to know he was there.

  The Giant and the Skeleton, as she called them, had survived for the moment. The foreigner set Josiah Jurey down on the snow nearby, holding his head up. Jurey was hurt badly, perhaps mortally, but his alert eyes were on the woods. “Is witchcraft done this.”

  “Sir?” Tess watched the old-timer curiously.

  “There shall be a time of renewal for them. We should strike now. While their energy is spent.”

  Tess looked up at Tobias, who shook his head, shouting down to the large man, “Sir, can you leave him for a moment? I see here…many other people who need help.”

  “This must be done first,” said Jurey, and he pulled the giant closer. Tess watched as the foreigner listened and nodded, and took from the old man a fistful of crosses and necklaces, amulets of some kind, which he pocketed. Then Jurey gave him something else, but Tess couldn’t see what it was. She was not entirely sure if the other man was taking Jurey seriously, but he seemed to accept each item solemnly. Then, as Josiah Jurey lost his last strength and closed his eyes, the foreigner eased him down and pressed one of the crosses into the old traveler’s hand.

  Immediately, the foreigner pulled from his belt a long pistol (one of many), and loaded it. He headed past Tess, off toward the woods, away from the wreckage.

  Tobias stood on the train and watched the tower of a man striding away. “What does he think he’s…” He shouted to the foreigner: “We have need of you here. Sir? Sir!”

  “Wilder,” the man said without turning back.

  Tobias was aggravated. “Wilder? That’s your name?”

  “It’s the name I’ve taken.” The foreigner continued on, as several injured people moaned for help near his path. He would not be taken off course. Whatever Jurey had told him to do, Wilder took it as a life-or-death matter. He was fast disappearing into the woods.

  “That man is mad,” Tobias complained. “Bring some people over to assist us, Tess, quick as you can.”

  As Tess stumbled past Jurey’s thin body, his eyes suddenly opened. In shock, she stared down at his white face and gaping mouth, as his breath poured out of him and shrouded him like smoke.

  “Child,” he whispered. “Whatever it is that gives you strength, they will take it from you. Don’t give it up. Find anything that gives them strength…and seize it.”

  His slackening breath took away the remainder of his words. His dead eyes unleashed a tear that froze upon his face, and Tess hurried away, not looking back, wading through the snow toward the next car.

  Her voice shook as she cried out, “Does anyone know of a way to call for help?”

  The plea was picked up; she heard people shouting it everywhere. No one knew how to get help quickly, and Tess was beginning to feel ill from the ocean of fear and worry all about her.

  She knew Tobias would sense the emotions just as strongly. Their empathic tendencies, as he often called them, seemed louder, deeper, clearer here in the woods. Tess felt overwhelmed by the bursting, sorrowful passion of so many wounded. And it was the fright she sensed—shrill, icy, coming in flashes of blue light—more than any pain, that threatened her most.

  She heard a voice from inside one of the cars, a male voice. “We have too much blood in here…. Help me…Help me…”

  Unable to trace the sound, Tess yelled in desperation, “DOES ANYONE KNOW THE NEAREST HOUSE?”

  There was no immediate answer, and Tess wandered toward another train car ahead, to be confronted by its horrors. At first in the shifting light of the snowfall, she could make out only arms and legs through the window, and she couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing…then amid the moving flesh she saw a man clawing his way over the pile of bodies, pulling himself out through a smashed window.

  Tess felt her heart shudder—the man had no legs; they were shorn off below the knee, but they were not bloody, as though burned off, cauterized. He crawled up, automatic, inhuman, clambering over people—

  Tess watched in shock as the legless man emerged—reaching out his hand to her, desperate.

  She couldn’t move. He pulled himself out, his ragged legs thrashing, as he tumbled atop her onto the snowy ground.

  He was pressing her down into the cold. He writhed, grunting, a mass of flesh and fear. She struggled, but he was heavy, and seemed to have no sense of what he was doing. His whole body was shuddering uncontrollably, and she felt as if she had hold of an immense fish that was losing strength with every moment in the air. The motion of her hand brushed past his severed limb, and then she grasped snow, trying to pull herself away. She thought she might be covered in his blood, but there was no blood. And then suddenly the bottom of his legs were there now—where jagged, useless stumps were a minute ago. Tess stared at him in horror. He couldn’t seem to believe it himself, his eyes stretched wide. She couldn’t speak. He collapsed in the snow.

  She untangled herself and pulled free of him. She was in shock, she told herself, and shock leads to hysterical visions. Calm, now. Calm. Calm.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Inside the first ruined train car, Tobias was trying to find his seat. He sidestepped Sattler, who was helping several people out. Tobias raised his voice. “Those of you in here, listen. If you’re able-bodied”—he looked doubtfully at old Gil—“then help other people to get out. There may be a risk of fire now. We have one simple mission: survive until help comes. We can do that, can’t we?”

  Sattler was helping Annette. “Get my satchel over there,” he told her. “We might need those things.”

  Sattler’s concern for his bag caused Tobias to worry for his own beloved cello. As soon as the passengers were cleared out, he’d have to search for the instrument cases amid all the tossed-about baggage.

  In the meantime, Tobias ran his hand along the jagged metal and shards of glass that were stuck in his seat, all of which had narrowly missed him. It looked as if something had shielded him from the blows, and the debr
is had rained off in all directions around him. Remarkable, he thought. So it wasn’t Tess alone that had been helped to survive. But why? His mind stayed on this puzzle, until he finally realized the need around him, jostled by Michael and Ned, who were assisting people off the train.

  Both had dazed expressions seeming to ask for guidance. “We need more help,” Tobias said. “Is there telephone service somewhere out here? Blackthorne boasts how modern it is; it seems possible…”

  Gil looked at Sattler. “Didn’t a doctor move back in the woods near here? He wanted them to bring the telephone lines along to his house, didn’t he?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ve been away at Harvard,” said Sattler. “I don’t know the area well…”

  “We should start asking people,” said Tobias.

  “I’ll see to that.”

  Gil stopped Sattler. “We should also start some fires for warmth. Have all these boys go and help whoever they can, get blankets, and so on.”

  Bruised and battered, the college boys strode toward other passengers on the snowfield. They passed Tess, who was moving away from the unconscious man, as a train conductor stumbled around a car.

  “Go,” he said, and Tess realized he had a leg injury. “Go, get to the engine car. They may have an emergency box, medicines…”

  Urged on by him, Tess went toward the engine, a black mass against the ivory landscape. It was a long walk, and the sounds of pain filled the air behind her.

  An engineer lay up ahead, apparently dead, thrown from the engine cabin. She approached and could see the engineer’s body had leaked blood into the snow, a pool of it now slowly being sucked back into his body.

  She stopped, staring, unsure this had actually happened.

  “Oh God…help me…” Her words escaped in a whisper, and she looked back for help. Instead she discovered the legless man behind her had vanished from the snow, and only the crush of ice where he lay remained as evidence he’d ever been there. People were too busy to take note, or to see her at all. The only one to look over was the conductor who’d sent her forward, now collapsed and in pain. He yelled impatiently, “We’ve got no way to signal anyone, we need supplies—is there anything in there?”