The Black Train

by Edward Lee

  Collier felt accosted now by sickness and confusion. “Why would Gast kill them somewhere else and then move their bodies to their beds? Where exactly did he kill them?”

  Sute pointed again to the manuscript. “It’s the absolute worst part of the story, Mr. Collier. But you can read it there. Flip to the account in italics. It’s the marshal’s. But if you’re certain you want to do so…then, please, let me advise that you have a drink. Something stronger than beer.”

  Collier slouched. It’s not even noon…“Sure.”

  “What’ll you have?”

  “Scotch on the rocks.”

  Sute lumbered up to the cabinet, while Collier’s eyes flicked down to the dusty manuscript. Several paragraphs down on page thirty-three, he found a transition heading: EXCERPTED FROM THE PERSONAL JOURNAL OF MATHIAS C. BRADEN, TOWN MARSHAL, MAY 3, 1862. But before he could begin, Sute brought him his drink. “Thanks,” Collier said after the first cool sip.

  “Those papers there in your pocket,” Sute noted. “It looks like alkali rag.”

  Collier had no idea what he meant.

  “A lot of printing paper during the first part of the nineteenth century was part rag pulp mixed with wood fibers. An alkali-soda base was used in the process. It bears a distinctive appearance.”

  “Oh, these, yeah.” Collier reached to his breast pocket and withdrew the checks he’d discovered in the desk. “I brought them to show you. I found a bunch of them at the inn. They look like paychecks—from Gast’s railroad company.”

  Sute examined the ones Collier had brought. “Oh, yes. Mrs. Butler has one of these on display, doesn’t she?”

  “Right.”

  “And you say you found a lot of them?”

  “Yeah—fifty, sixty, maybe. They were stashed in an old writing desk, probably overlooked all these decades.”

  “I’m sure they were. I’ll have to ask Mrs. Butler to let me examine them all, for the various names.”

  “Gast’s employees, you mean?”

  “Exactly. To cross-reference them with the other sources in my archives.” He held one up. “See here, this man here? N.P. Poltrock. He was Gast’s chief of operations. And Beauregard Morris—the crew chief. These men probably killed themselves on May second or third. Gast himself was already dead by his own hand—on April thirtieth—but it may be that Morris and Poltrock forestalled their own suicides to finish up a few of Gast’s final requests, and to have a last hoorah in town. They both died in one of the parlors.”

  Collier tried to fix a chronology. “Gast hanged himself on the last day of April—”

  “After he murdered his wife, his maid, Taylor Cutton, and his children.”

  The sickness continued to churn. “Do you know how the first two guys killed themselves? Morris, and the other guy?”

  “It’s in the same account by the marshal.” Sute gestured the manuscript again. “Morris cut his own throat, and I believe Poltrock shot himself in the head.”

  The awareness thumped in Collier’s blood like a slow heartbeat. He recalled his nightmare: he was a prostitute named Harriet. The guy who raped me…Wasn’t his name Morris? He remembered the dream all too vividly. Harriet never reclaimed the money he owed her. She’d seen his body in the parlor. With his throat cut.

  I can’t tell Sute that, I just can’t!

  “They look like paychecks…”

  “The system was a little bit different back then—the workers were always paid in cash, often on the job site, but, yes, that’s essentially what these are. Once it’s endorsed it becomes a receipt for payment. I’m sure the company’s treasurer kept these to maintain an accurate accounting. That’s this man here—” Sute’s stout finger tapped the bottom of a check. “Windom Fecory.”

  “The guy the local bank’s named after.”

  “Yes.” An expression of amusement touched Sute’s face. “If the current bank president had known more about the real Windom Fecory, I suspect he’d have chosen another name.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll recall the more abstract elements of our discussion—the supernatural element—”

  Collier tried not to smirk. “Gast selling his soul to the devil, you mean.”

  “Not necessarily the devil, but possibly an adjunct to the same entity. That would indeed be Fecory. He produced a seemingly limitless flux of cash without ever once depleting Gast’s personal account. That’s how the more far-fetched extremes of the story go, at least.”

  “You just said you believe in ghosts. Do you believe that?”

  “I can’t say,” Sute replied, still eyeing the checks. “But I must mention, if only in passing, that the name Fecory bears a suspicious resemblance to what you might think of as a demonic acolyte or serf, if you will. The archdemon who guards Lucifer’s netherworldly treasures is called Anarazel, and his acolyte is called Fecor.”

  “Fecor, Fecory.” Collier got it. “But I don’t buy the demon stuff, it’s too hokey.”

  “I agree, but say that it’s true. Windom Fecory was Gast’s paymaster; it was his job to remunerate cash in exchange for services. The demon Fecor can be likened to Anarazel’s paymaster, to remunerate Satan’s treasure…to those worldly men who serve him.”

  Collier tossed his head. “Fine.”

  “And I’ll add that there is no accounting for Fecory after April thirtieth, not only the day that all these checks have been dated but also the day that the railroad was officially completed, and Harwood Gast came home for the last time.” Sute maintained a clear interest on the checks. “Ah, and here’s one for Taylor Cutton, the foreman.”

  “Don’t tell me he knocked himself off, too…”

  Another smile sunk into Sute’s face. “You’re not very attentive, Mr. Collier. I’ve already informed you that Taylor Cutton was murdered in the house—”

  The memory sparked. “The guy Gast drowned in the hip bath.”

  “Yes. Also on April 30, 1862.”

  Collier couldn’t help but recall the gurgling sound from the bath closet last night, and the gnawing sound…I’ll just have out with it. What the hell? “Look, Mr. Sute. Since I’ve stayed at the inn, I’ve had a—”

  Sute interrupted, “An accelerated sexual awareness, yes. You’ve implied that. Certain people have experienced the same thing while staying there.”

  Collier probably blushed. “Yeah but I’ve also had several nightmares where I’m someone else. Two nights ago I dreamed I was a Confederate sentry. I was guarding prisoners who were being deloused in a converted barn. It occurred to me that these people—civilians—were being processed for something—”

  Sute didn’t seem surprised. “Indeed they were. They were being processed for their extermination.”

  The word struck a black chord. “Extermination as in incineration?”

  “Before I answer, tell me exactly why you ask.”

  “The nightmare,” Collier implored. “The detainees were all naked and malnourished, and their hair was all cut off. Then they were packed back in a prison wagon—a wagon that departed from a nearby train depot—and taken up a large hill. In the dream, I couldn’t see what was at the top of the hill, but I saw smoke, a steady, endless plume of smoke. Like they had a big bonfire up there.”

  “It wasn’t a bonfire, it was the former Maxon Rifle Works, once the largest blast furnace in the South. It was closed down in the 1820s after superior facilities were built in North and South Carolina, but before that time, Maxon produced more rifle barrels than any other metal works south of the Mason-Dixon. It was a technological marvel during its heyday—the coal bed was fifty feet in diameter, and it possessed a high-efficiency bellows system that was operated by a water wheel.”

  Collier’s mind filled with confused murk. “So the detainees were slaves, laborers forced to work at the furnace?”

  “No,” Sute informed. “It was Gast who refired the barrel works, but not for weapons production. He built an entire railroad to Maxon and refired the furnace solely to incinerate
the innocent.”

  Collier felt tinged with evil. In a sense, it explained everything he didn’t know, all at once. If…

  “Why would he do that?”

  Sute sat back down, fingering the old checks. “Either because he was insane, or because it was part of the deal. Riches in exchange for service. Mr. Collier, ritual atrocity and the sacrifice of the innocent are nothing new in the history of the occult. An oblation to the devil by the spilling of innocent blood is a powerful brew. Maxon was the Auschwitz of the Civil War…and almost nobody knows about it. The furnace’s obscure location kept it in operation even for weeks after the war ended. How’s that for evil, Mr. Collier? How’s that for Satan protecting his flock?”

  Collier wanted to leave. He’d heard enough. If it was all true, or all bullshit, he was done.

  “Toward the end, the coal stores gave out,” Sute went on. “Union troops were only a few days away, but there were still a hundred or so detainees awaiting incineration. So with no way to burn them, a slaughterfest ensued…”

  Collier stared at him.

  “It was a grim scene indeed that awaited the federal forces. They discovered locked prison wagons that had been set aflame with their charges still inside. But children had been pulled aside and beheaded, the heads left in neat piles for the troops to find. Dozens more were pitchforked to death, or simply hanged. Heaps of bodies were found rotting in the sun. It was a celebration of evil, Mr. Collier. Truly the devil’s jubal.”

  Collier finished the strong drink, craving a good beer now, but before he could bid a curt farewell, Sute asked:

  “But back to your nightmare. Is that the only nightmare you had at the inn?”

  The recounting of atrocities made Collier forget the actual reason he’d come. “Well, no. You don’t seem surprised or suspicious that I’m having dreams that detail past events that I was previously uninformed of.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Sute said as baldly as his pate. “I’ve spoken to many people who’ve had similar experiences there. Transpositional dreams are commonplace in haunted-house phenomena, Mr. Collier…if you believe the technical mumbo jumbo that’s often affixed to it.”

  Collier tried to synopsize in his head: Gast burned innocent women and children to death in a giant blast furnace…to pay his debt to Satan…

  “One thing I forgot to mention,” Sute intervened, “is how Gast spiced up his supposed reverence to the devil. The railroad was finished on April thirtieth, and even minutes after the final spike was driven, the first contingent of captives were transported to Maxon. Before Gast and his men returned to town, however, there’s the matter of the slaves who worked so devotedly for him.”

  “You’re going to tell me that the slaves sold their souls, too?” Collier couldn’t help the sarcasm.

  “Not at all. Gast promised them their freedom when the job was complete, but he executed them all instead, a fitting final touch. His security team opened fire on all the slaves at once, firing low body shots so they’d be incapacitated rather than killed on the spot. He wanted them alive for the furnace. It’s ironic that the slaves who built the railroad were among the first into the coal bed, Gast’s first payment to his benefactor.”

  Collier sat numb. He felt as though he were sinking into a morass of distilled putrefaction.

  “Sorry, I’ve strayed,” Sute admitted. “You were going to tell me about another nightmare?”

  Collier had no good judgment left. “Last night I dreamed I was in the house. I was a woman—I was a prostitute.”

  “One of Bella’s, no doubt. Bella Silver, but nobody knows her actual last name. She was the madam at the town bordello.”

  Collier nodded, gulping. “I went up to the house, and the marshal was there—”

  “Braden.”

  “—with a deputy. We were the first to discover Gast’s body hanging from the tree out front—”

  “Then this would be May third.”

  “That’s exactly the day, and I know that because I saw it on a calendar at Bella’s—” Collier wheezed choppy laughter, knowing how mad he must appear. “There was a hole in the front yard, and shovels, and anyway the marshal ordered me to help him search. We were searching for Mary and Cricket Gast.”

  Sute sat large and immobile, listening.

  “You told me about Cutton yesterday, and how Penelope was murdered, and also about Gast hanging himself,” Collier continued almost breathlessly, “so that part of the dream could’ve been suggestion, but I didn’t know about the other two suicides—”

  “Poltrock and Morris—”

  “Yes, yes, but last night I dreamed what you told me today, and I’m positive I hadn’t heard it elsewhere.” Now Collier’s fingers were digging into his thigh. “In this goddamn nightmare I went inside and saw the same thing—I saw Morris with his throat cut and I saw Poltrock with part of his head blown off, and then I went upstairs and I saw Cutton in the washroom where someone drowned him in the fucking hip bath, and then I looked in another room and saw Penelope lying naked on a blood-drenched bed with an ax in her privates—”

  Sute looked alarmed. “Mr. Collier, relax. These kinds of tales can get under anyone’s skin. Let me get you another drink to calm you down.”

  “I don’t want another damn drink,” Collier harped. “I want to know what was in the children’s room, the room I’m renting now. In the nightmare I went to open it and it was locked. So the marshal’s deputy kicked it open, but they wouldn’t let me look! Mary and Cricket were in there dead, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “But they weren’t killed in that room—you already said so. So where were they killed? And why were their dead bodies moved to that room after the fact?”

  “For an obscene effect, I’m sure.” Sute’s voice seemed to vibrate in a grim suboctave. “It was Gast. He wanted horror. He wanted the children to be found, don’t you see? Read some of the excerpt…”

  Collier’s eyes surveyed the italics:

  . . Gast and his first team had already arrived back in town a week ago, according to the station master. There was no difficulty in discernment, after I’d spoken to Richard Barrison, a plowman, who testified that he saw several of Gast’s men digging a large hole next to the front court. Not thirty minutes later, when returning, Barrison reports that he saw the same men refilling the hole. This was shortly before one o’clock in the afternoon. Further deliberation was hardly necessary when we discovered the bodies of those poor girls…

  Collier rubbed vertigo from his eyes. “My God…You mean he—”

  “Gast buried his two daughters alive, then went about the business of murdering Jessa and seeing to the gangrape and sequent ax-murder of his wife. Cutton was murdered sometime after one in the afternoon as well.” Sute diddled with another drink. “Just before sundown, he ordered Morris and Poltrock to exhume Mary and Cricket’s bodies and place them in the bedroom. He closed the door, and locked the dog in with them. He knew that it would likely be days before the bodies were discovered. He wanted them to rot down a bit first, which is why he closed the windows. And the dog, of course, having nothing to eat…”

  “The dog ate the girls’ bodies,” Collier droned.

  Sute looked a bit sick himself now. “Not…just that, I’m sorry to say…”

  “What do you mean?”

  The obese man pointed again to the manuscript in Collier’s lap. “Perhaps it’s best that you not read anymore. An abridged version might be less offensive.” Sute cleared his throat. “The girls were pregnant when Gast put them in the hole, probably considerably so.”

  “He buried them alive and they were pregnant?” Collier almost shouted his outrage.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Rape-related pregnancies?”

  “Hardly. See, these young girls weren’t so innocent themselves. With a mother like that for a role model? They were notoriously promiscuous and quite willing, at least according to the plethora of letters and resident diaries. And what
you’re not comprehending is this: Gast wanted their punishment to be rich. After several hours under the ground, the girls were dead and the fetuses miscarried. The corpses were then exhumed—four of them, mind you—and lain in their beds. Hence, the dog’s first pangs of hunger were satisfied by the fetuses and afterbirth, and when there was none of that left…it started on the girls. That’s the scene that awaited Marshal Braden and his deputy when they forced open that door, and no doubt the same scene you would’ve witnessed in the nightmare had you looked in the room.” Sute sighed. “Rumor has it that the dog escaped, never to be seen again. But you can be sure…it escaped with a full stomach.”

  And all of that, Collier regarded, happened in the room I’m staying in now…

  Was Gast simply a man gone mad, or was it really something worse, something which, for all intents, was impossible? The silence that followed made the room seem darker; Collier’s brain felt like nerveless meat. I’m some kind of an antenna, he thought, and the inn is the power source. But did he really believe it was a power source charged by the evil of the past?

  He felt older when he pushed up from the chair. “I have to go now.”

  “It’s a harrowing story, Mr. Collier. But now you know all of it. Of course, knowing what you know now, you’re probably sorry you ever asked.”

  “It’s my nature.” He tried to laugh, and handed back the manuscript.

  “You’re sure you don’t want to borrow it?” Sute asked.

  “No. I wouldn’t be able to hack it. I’ll be leaving soon anyway.”

  Sute rose to put the manuscript up; then he returned the checks to Collier. “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope it’s not the town’s ghastly history that’s sending you away.”

  Collier lied. “No, no, I’ve got to get back to L.A.” There was a discomfort that continued to itch at him. What did it matter what Sute might say when he was gone? Nothing, he realized. Still, he didn’t want anything getting back to Dominique, even though he realized that he’d probably never see her again after tonight.