“Like Maudette keeps an eye on me, ensuring I never ever put myself in danger?”
He sighed. “Okay, I get it. You can’t be her warden. But—”
“But the song, Caden! Ain’t gonna break till the end of the line. I thought that meant the conductor wouldn’t rest until he got me, but now I think I’m the one — the only one — who can end this. The only one who can break what my great-grandmother started. If I don’t, he’ll never be stopped. He’ll never give up. Rachel will never truly be safe. She might have told him what to do with his ticket tonight, but there’ll be other nights … other sad souls in Prescott Junction, and Caden, you can’t even begin to imagine how powerful his pull is, how seductive.”
“Which is exactly why you shouldn’t get on the damned train with him! You know what happens when people get on there. Don’t do it, Ash. I can’t lose you.”
“We know what happens when they accept a ticket.” She laid her hands on his chest. “I won’t do that. I promise I won’t. And if I can’t board without a ticket, then I just won’t board. But I have to try, Caden. My dad’s soul is on there. My great uncle’s. Your grandfather’s brother. Ms. Degagne, and so many more….”
“Then let me do it.” His fingers tightened on her arms, almost to the point of discomfort, but she was sure he was completely unconscious of it. “Let me board the train.”
Oh, Caden. Ashlyn’s heart squeezed with pain. “Thank you, baby, but you can’t do it for me. It has to be me.”
The conductor’s rage seemed to abate suddenly, but a glance at the engine revealed he’d merely taken his fury further inside. The drop in volume of his roar was offset by the rising wails of misery from the imprisoned shades inside the first car, and Ashlyn knew he was taking his frustration out on them, flaying their very souls.
“Oh no!” Ashlyn cried. “He’s torturing them!”
Gradually, the train began to pull away. As more cars slid by, panic gripped Ashlyn by the throat.
She turned to Caden. “I have to get on. I have to do this. Let me go, Caden.”
He could restrain her, she knew, with just his grip on her arms. He could loop an arm around her and lift her right off her feet, drag her to his parents’ car. Or pin her down and hold her until the train’s whistle was lost in the distance. He was easily strong enough. And highly motivated. She saw the struggle in his eyes, the fear of losing her.
But he’d lose her in another way if he held her back. He had to see that too.
The last car slid past.
“Caden, please. This is what I have to do. Let me do it.”
“Dammit.” He pulled her close for a hard, quick kiss, then released her. “Okay, go! But come back to me, Ashlyn. Come back to me.”
“I will!”
She turned and ran after the train, which was still building speed. In the back window, she saw the faces of strangers, their expressions taut with anticipation as she raced along behind the train. By the time she came abreast of the steps on the caboose, her breath was coming raggedly. She flung herself onto that iron perch, and pain exploded in her elbow as she struck it on the railing. It was all she could do not to scream. But she’d made it! She was on board the train.
She bent over, sucking in a few rapid, shallow gasps of air until the worst of the pain passed. When she stood again, the faces were all focused now on the door, waiting for her to open it.
Of course! They wanted out.
She found the handle and opened the caboose’s door, then stepped back, expecting to feel the brush of freed souls streaming past. But the expected rush didn’t come. Instead, several shades reached out as though to pull her inside.
Instinctively, she flinched backward, only to find the souls who gripped her had no purchase. They were powerless to pull her, their clutching hands as insubstantial as smoke. And yet she felt them. Every small hair on her body stood up as though electrically charged. Good Lord, she had to walk through these cars, through these shades, to get to the engine room and the conductor. Her heart pounded so hard, every beat was a throbbing pain in her chest.
Taking a deep breath, she pushed herself into the caboose. The shades yielded, presenting no physical obstacle, but the moment she stood in their midst, she felt their collective anguish clawing at her. Oh, God, madness! So much misery and despair and pure, unadulterated suffering. It was blanketing her, smothering her.
Tears leapt to her eyes, streamed down her face.
Suddenly she remembered Paulette Degagne and the look on her face when her soul had boarded this evil train and the other shades had pressed in on her. She imagined her own face probably looked a lot like that right now.
Except Ms. Degagne had taken the ticket. With that choice, she’d unwittingly condemned herself to eternity on this rolling, belching, chugging piece of hell. But Ashlyn had not. This was not her fate. And if she could figure out how to bring the conductor down, it need not be anyone else’s fate.
What if you’re wrong? The thought ambushed her, stopping her feet in their tracks. What if she was stuck here even though she hadn’t taken a ticket? What if she were doomed to ride forever in the flesh on this evil train?
No. She couldn’t think that way. She’d promised Caden she’d get back to him, and she was going to keep her promise, dammit.
She started forward again, moving from the caboose to the next car. Once more, the shades pressed in on her. She tried to close her mind to the chorus of cries and moans and the grasping, clinging hands — oh, God, on some level she could actually feel their icy fingers! It was like passing through thick, swirling fog. But just as fog left condensed dampness on the skin, Ashlyn felt the souls’ collective madness condensing inside her.
Belatedly, it occurred to her that her father had not been on the caboose, nor was he on this car. He’d definitely been riding the caboose when the train had first appeared. He must have raced toward the front of the train to try to prevent her from boarding when he’d seen her on the bridge’s walkway.
That car gave way to the next and the next as she stumbled through the shades. More strangers, more rising moans. More grasping hands and sanity-shredding torment driving into her soul. In that third car, she recognized Dagagne, but unlike the others, she didn’t press toward Ashlyn. She and a few others — newer arrivals? — flattened themselves against the windows, straining to remain untouched in the throng.
Ashlyn made her way into the next car, where she had to cover her ears against the piteous cries and whimpers. Her pulse thundered now, and she wondered whether a healthy 17-year-old could have a heart attack from sheer stress. It was almost as though with each successive car, the more frantic the occupants grew. Because they’re closer to the conductor, she realized. Closer to the souls being tortured by that black-hearted devil. Would the conductor make his way through each car, flaying every soul until he’d vented his fury? Or could these souls feel the suffering of the others as acutely as if it were their own? Just as Ashlyn felt something of their collective misery, did they all suffer when a few were tortured?
And what the hell was she going to do when she reached the conductor? How was she going to stop him? Stop this train?
Well, she wasn’t going to figure it out huddled here.
Taking her wafer-thin courage in her hands, she started pushing through the wailing souls again. And again, their insubstantial fingers clutched uselessly at her as she passed, and she tried not to let their icy touches register. But oh, God, she felt sick with it. The rocking of the train beneath her feet didn’t help her nausea as she forced her way forward.
When she opened the car to the next door, she realized she was there, in that first passenger car. She realized this because the conductor held her father’s shade pinned against a window. Pinned in place, it seemed, with nothing but the force of his burning gaze.
“I’ll get her,” he said, thrusting his bony, fleshless face toward her father’s. “I’ll get that pretty daughter of yours yet. She can’t leave this train al
one, not with you on it. You’ll be the lure, Patrick Murphy. You and that sad, pathetic Rachel Riley. She got away tonight, but her puny defiance is no match for me. Maybe I’ll take that boyfriend of hers too. Yes, I think I will. I’ll take everything from her, and then she’ll come to me willingly. She’ll come begging me for a ticket. And once I have your daughter, I’ll have her mother too.”
Patrick’s soul screamed. In reflexive, sympathetic agony, Ashlyn sank to her knees.
The conductor laughed, the evil sound reverberating around the closed car. “Yes, that’s right. Your precious Leslie. As soon as they let her out of that hospital, she’ll come straight here. She’ll come for the two of you. Then no one will be able to stop me. Certainly not the old woman, Maudette. She’s too afraid of her own shadow to come down here. That one, she was beaten before she started, thanks to Catherine Brennan. Thanks to me! There’s no one left, Patrick. No one to stop me.”
The conductor moved slightly to the side and her father caught sight of her over his tormentor’s shoulder. Instantly, he started to struggle.
“What’s this?” the conductor hissed. “I thought I’d crushed the fight out of you once and for all yesterday, after your foolish intervention.”
Ashlyn clambered to her feet. “Leave him alone!”
The conductor whirled, and Patrick Murphy’s shade dropped to the floor.
“You!” The conductor’s face reflected shock. “What are you doing here? You don’t have a ticket!”
“I came to stop you, you sonofabitch.”
The conductor advanced on her. Despite having only tatters of mummified flesh left on his face, he was quite capable of expression. She wanted to shrink back from his fury, but reminded herself these shades were insubstantial. He couldn’t touch her. Couldn’t move her.
“Watch out, Ashlyn!” her father cried.
She did shrink back then, but not soon enough to escape the blow altogether. But instead of a crushing blow, it was more of a glancing one. Without that warning, it would have….
Wait … what? The conductor had corporeal substance?
Her heart rate jacked up again as her body dumped enough adrenaline to make her feel like she could outrun a cheetah.
The conductor swung again, and she scrambled out of reach. He stalked after her. The shades around her shrieked and for once moved away from her. As the conductor advanced, she managed to regain her footing, but every retreating step she took carried her closer to the end of the car. What would he do when she ran out of room? Kill her in hand-to-hand combat? Throw her from the train? Force a ticket into her hand?
“Ashlyn, you’re at the end of the line!” her father called. “You know what to do!”
Before Patrick Murphy could say more, the conductor turned on him, pointing a skeletal finger in his direction. To Ashlyn’s horror, her father’s mouth — or rather his shade’s mouth — simply disappeared. Patrick clutched wildly at his face, unable to vocalize.
Dammit! Despite what her father had said, she didn’t know what to do.
Or did she? The song … she struggled to remember it.
That train ain’t gonna break, when she comes.
When she comes!
What the hell good did that do her? And what was the next line? As she struggled to remember, the conductor turned back in her direction.
He held out his hand. “Take your ticket like a good little girl.”
Oh, crap! She started backing away again. He advanced slowly, letting her fear build — oh, God, deliberately feeding it with the pure, staggering power he projected. All she could do was back up another step and another step, terror pushing all else from her mind. When she bumped up against the end of the car, she almost crumpled. Then she felt the handle of the door behind her. Automatically, she opened it and fled into the final car, except it wasn’t another car, it was the engine. Crap! There was nowhere else to go. She truly had reached the end of the line.
The despair, the sheer resignation, must have been written plainly on her face, because the conductor laughed triumphantly and stepped through the door.
End of the line…. The echo of her own thought brought the lyrics of the song back.
Till it meets the end of the line,
There’ll always be another time,
She just has to get on board, when it comes
Well, she’d damned well gotten on board, hadn’t she? And she’d sure as hell reached the end of the line. But now what?
You know what to do, her father had said.
The conductor stepped closer. “How I’d love to know what’s going through your mind right now.” The bones of his face gleamed white, and the deep-set ruby eyes glowed with an unholy excitement. He was savoring this! Savoring her fear!
Don’t listen to him, Ashlyn. Don’t look. Just think, dammit! Think.
She played the lyrics back again in her head:
That train ain’t gonna break, when she comes.
When she comes!
Till it meets the end of the line,
There’ll always be another time,
She just has to get on board, when it comes
It struck her then that the first line wasn’t quite right. She closed her eyes, straining to hear it again, exactly as it had come from the radio. And then … omigod, she had it! It wasn’t the train ain’t gonna break when she comes! It was the train ain’t gonna break till she comes.
And oh God, yes! It wasn’t break, it was brake!
She needed to pull the brake!
She opened her eyes to find the conductor much closer, watching her face intently, waiting to see the despair and acceptance there when she opened her eyes. It took just a split second for him to see her eyes held not desolation but determination.
He roared and lunged at her, but she leapt away. Desperately, she scanned the engine room. There! Marked with a faded, red sign — Emergency Brake Valve. She faked in the opposite direction and he checked his momentum. That allowed her to change direction, duck under his arm and reach the switch.
“Noooo!” he cried, freezing with his arm outstretched toward her when he saw her hand on the switch.
“Say goodbye, Freakshow.” She started to pull the switch.
“Wait!”
Despite herself, her hand stilled at the thundered command.
“If you do this, it’ll send your father straight to hell. You don’t want to do that, do you, Ashlyn? After everything he’s done for you?”
His silky words broke around her, persuasive, insidious. She shook her head. “Shut up! He’s already in hell.” But her grip had already loosened.
“But he doesn’t need to stay here. Not if I release him from our bargain. His spirit will be free.”
“No,” she whispered. “You lie.”
“Not about this, Ashlyn. And wouldn’t you like to be with him, your father? I can make that happen.” Somehow, the conductor’s bony face managed to arrange itself in an expression that seemed kindly. Benevolent. “I know you never had a chance to know him. He missed so much. Gave up so much for you. You two could catch up on everything you missed out on. You could have that father you always wanted. A father who loves you above all other things. I know you’ve wanted that, Ashlyn. I know you’ve needed it. And now you can have it. I can give you that.”
The conductor’s words arrowed deep into her psyche and drew all those feelings to the surface, the yearnings of a fatherless daughter. In her mind’s eye, she saw all those birthdays when she’d wished for a father as she blew out the candles. She saw herself at school, telling those lies about an imaginary father as she made a Father’s Day card like the other kids. Hard as her mother had tried, there had always been a void there. And now she had a chance to fill it, not with a generic father replacement, but with her real father. The father who loved her.
But Patrick Murphy was dead. The only way for her to be with him would be if she also….
“All you have to do is take a ticket.”
She gl
anced up to see that he’d come closer again, almost within touching distance, and in his hand he held a glowing white ticket. Oh, how inviting!
Ashlyn, no! Not the ticket. Don’t listen to him. Don’t listen.
With every shred of her will, she brought her father’s face to mind.
Don’t listen to him, Ashlyn. He lies!
Then her father’s face dissolved and she saw Caden’s beautiful face, wreathed in fear and love and faith.
Come back to me, Ashlyn.
Her father’s face again. You’re at the end of the line, Ashlyn! You know what to do!
Caden again: I love you, Ash.
Wait a minute — he hadn’t said that.
But he was saying that! He was saying it right now. She knew it in her bones, heard it in her head.
Come back, Ash. Come back to me.
The conductor moved closer, close enough to see how soft her eyes had become. His own sunken orbs gleamed with victory.
“Take the ticket, Ashlyn Caverhill, with those Caverhill green eyes.” He held the paper out toward her.
Again she felt the fantastic pull of his hypnotic words.
Felt it and threw it off.
Straightening her spine, she began to sing, in a voice so high-pitched it hardly sounded like her own:
That train ain’t gonna brake till she comes.
Till she comes!
Till it meets the end of the line,
There’ll always be another time,
She just has to get on board, when it comes
The conductor lunged at her, his eyes blazing with fear and fury.
She pulled the switch.
Immediately, the train’s wheels seemed to lock, gripping the steel rails.
“Nooooo!” the conductor howled, his face starkly terrified now. “Oh, you fool! You little fool!”
That’s when Ashlyn knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she’d done the right thing. The conductor was petrified for his own shriveled up, evil soul. But if any doubt lingered in her mind, it would have been erased by what happened next.
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