But Alan didn’t. “I don’t know,” he said. “And that’s what makes me nervous.”
Rachel was still staring up at him, her fingers hooked on the edge of his coat, near his hand, but I could see in her gaze that she liked that answer about as much as I did.
2
We walked down the sweeping hill together, with Rachel and I flanking Alan. We all had our hands near our guns, but none of us had drawn. That was something you didn’t do unless you were prepared to shoot, and you didn’t do that unless you were prepared to take someone’s life. Since we’d seen nothing moving, nothing that even looked alive enough to need killing, we kept the guns holstered. But that taste of copper and bronze and garlic had me on edge, and we were ready. It never hurt to be careful.
The train was farther away than it looked, and it swelled up before us as we crossed the desert. I could hear the fire popping, and the groan of broken metal sinking into the sand, settling, but I could also hear our footsteps. I could hear the way Alan’s were sure, solid steps, and the way Rachel’s mimicked his. I could also hear how mine were not, how they twisted as I stepped with slightly weaker knees than I would have admitted.
But the pull was getting stronger. It was something like being caught in a rip. I’d been to the ocean once, out in San Francisco, and I knew what that was like. How the current nipped at your toes and then wrapped itself around your legs and then took you out to sea like so much driftwood. How you’d just tire yourself out if you struggled, because once the rip wanted you to go somewhere, you were going. The train was like that and more. It was an emotional pull as well, as if I not only wanted but needed to go to it. As if I wouldn’t be complete, wouldn't be satisfied, until I did.
Rachel licked her lips, an audible sound in the stillness. “What if it’s going to blow up?”
“If it’s loaded with dynamite?” Alan didn’t look at her, but shook his head. “It would have already. Look how hot it is in places. The metal is red. Any explosions are well behind us.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
They were blasting, out in the mountains. Laying a new track. Supplies had been running along with almost daily regularity, shipments from the east to the workers in the west. Most of it was food, clothing, pickaxes, and the like. But a lot of it was also dynamite, because you couldn’t blast without it. There had been at least one accident so far, with a freight train ripping itself to pieces and flinging metal shards in a wide radius, so Rachel’s fear wasn’t totally unfounded. It would explain the wreck, anyway.
I swallowed; my throat was dry and it hurt and I knew everything couldn’t be explained so easily. I’d seen the other train, how it had been scattered across the sand. How it had been torn to ribbons. This wasn’t like that, though it was burning. This looked like it had hit a snag in the line and tipped. There was a long groove behind it, wide and deep with walls of sand, where the train had plowed along on its side before coming to rest.
“Alan,” I said.
“What?”
“Should we?”
Now, for the first time, Alan looked back. He stopped in mid step and I was horrified to see that he was grinning. His teeth were two lines of white. “Do we have any other choice?”
“No,” Rachel breathed.
“But the horses.”
“Forget them. This is bigger than that. Can’t you feel it?” He took a deep breath, closing his eyes and pulling air through his lips. When he opened his eyes again, the grin hadn’t faded. “Can’t you taste it?”
And I could. It was there and it couldn’t be left alone. No matter that there were people behind us, people with badges and papers for our arrest. People who had seen how we’d shot up the tavern, how we’d left half a dozen bodies in the street so we could make off with little more than pocket change from the bank. People with guns who would not leave them holstered long enough to take us alive, unless some miracle intervened.
I looked back at the train, still thinking it looked like a backbone. The cars were the vertebrae, the long spine of some creature that had been torn out and tossed to the desert in front of us. But there were no creatures like that, not in the world I knew, and I wondered if that wasn’t why I had gooseflesh crawling down my arms and legs. But, at the same time, I also wondered if this train wasn’t, somehow, the very miracle we’d been looking for.
“Come on,” Alan said.
3
The boxcar was hot. The heat rolled off in waves, like breakers crashing over our bodies. The door hung open, a yawning mouth with no teeth. The darkness inside was absolute, an inky blackness that consumed even the light of the fires. Whatever had made it this hot had burned itself out, but the heat was residual. It still lived, though the cold night air had to be taking it quickly.
Alan walked up to it, his bandana now pulled up to protect his face. He leaned close, looking in, but didn’t touch anything. Whether he didn’t dare or just hadn’t gotten that far yet, I didn’t know. He looked back, just a mask of red, and waved us forward. “I don’t think there’s anything here.”
We both came up, Rachel and I, to opposite sides. Rachel’s hand fell to the small of Alan’s back, both protective and asking for protection, and I tried to ignore it. But I’d been trying that since she’d joined us, and it didn’t work now any better than it had been. I leaned in, like Alan had done, hoping that would help.
It did.
Putting my head inside the boxcar was like sticking it into a pit of quicksand. The darkness seemed to pull at me, to suffocate me, to close in around me like a living thing. But, even as I felt it, I also felt the draw stronger than ever. I wanted to step up into the car – this one wasn't canted at an angle; walking inside would be tough, like walking on a ship at sea, but not impossible – and see what there was. Gun in hand or otherwise. In that moment, I didn’t care.
Then I felt fingers grab the spine of my shirt, gently pull me back. I hoped it was Rachel, but it was Alan. “Hold on there,” he said. “We’ll go in a minute.”
I spun, anger flaring up like a fire when you toss on a pine branch. “Let go.”
“James, not yet.” So calm, so sure of himself.
“Yes.” I jerked out of his grasp. Maybe he’d led us this far, but I’d take us the rest of the way. Maybe then Rachel would watch me, would look up at me all beautiful in the firelight and see that I existed, as well. Or maybe not. Either way, I had to go inside. My chest was screaming for it with every beat of my heart.
I stepped up onto the boxcar’s lip without touching it. I still wasn’t sure how hot it was, though it was just bearable in the air. Still, the metal could be worse. I heard Alan say something behind me, but I ignored him. The quicksand deepened, thickened, and I took a step forward, into the heart of the car.
Then I was sliding. My feet were out from under me and I was sliding down the car’s tilted surface like it was ice. And, the strange thing was, it felt like it. I threw my hands down in reflex and the floor of the car was so cold it burned. It was like ice in the winters I’d spent up north as a kid, the same ice that had broken beneath my father and pulled him out of sight forever. I never forgot that feeling, the way that cold was all-consuming.
Rachel was screaming and then my feet hit the far wall. I let my legs buckle with the impact and had the sudden image of myself breaking right through the other side. Crashing through the wall and tumbling into the sand. And, in this version of it, the splintered wood had slashed my face and arms and legs to ribbons just like the train I’d seen destroyed by dynamite.
I blinked, and the vision was gone. I was still propped against the wall, the darkness all around me, and I could hardly breathe. I rolled over, pulling myself up onto my knees against that ice-cold floor, and felt for my gun. It was still there. “Alan,” I said.
Nothing.
I couldn’t hear myself speak, not at all. It was as if I’d said nothing, as if the darkness were made of tar that held the sound back. It wasn’t even lik
e talking underwater, where you can hear a low, distorted version of your voice. It was like I wasn’t talking at all.
My heart missed a beat and I wanted nothing more than to be out of the boxcar. I scrambled on the floor, but it was as slick as it was cold and I couldn’t get any grip. I could still hear Rachel outside, saying something in a high, shrill voice that was edged with fear, and Alan saying something back. Trying to come in after me, no doubt, and Rachel not wanting to be left alone in the night. I didn’t blame her, but then, she didn’t know what it was like inside.
The pull was still there, the want. That part of my mind just wanted to lie down and go to sleep, to tuck my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around them and sleep. In here, with the darkness and the silence, I could sleep for days without ever waking and it sounded like pure bliss.
For a moment, I almost did it. Just for a moment. Then I heard Rachel speak again, and I remembered the outside. It sounds strange, that I’d have to remember something that I’d been in less than a minute before, but that’s how it was. Like the desert and the tracks and the people behind us were part of another life that I had lived centuries ago.
But I’d remembered now, and I began to climb. I stood and could balance against the walls and that’s when I found out where the heat was. It was on the outside, in patches where it must have been on fire behind that wall. I nearly stuck my hand in the middle of one as I got up, and it would have seared of my fingerprints if I had. But some age-old instinct warned me, warned me that heat was coming and that meant pain, and I moved my hand to the side at the last second. It struck metal that was warm, hot even, but not so bad that I couldn’t stand it.
I began to walk, still bracing myself and feeling out those patches, and found that the car was empty. There was nothing but the wide floor beneath my feet, and I was as far inside as one could get. I wondered if the car had been left that way on accident, or if perhaps it was just there for a return shipment. For all I knew, they’d found gold in the mountains. There’d certainly been rumors of it, though none that I would have called trustworthy.
Alan was standing on the lip now, and I could barely see him. He was peering inside, leaning forward with Rachel to keep him from falling. He called my name, looking all directions like a blind man who has become disoriented in an unfamiliar room.
“Alan,” I said. “I’m here. Hang on.” But there was that same stifling silence, that all-encompassing blanket of nothing. The sound didn’t even travel up to my ears, though I could feel it in my throat.
Panic is a barely-tamed beast. It’s a starved and vicious dog that we’re often able to leave chained up and forgotten. But that chain is thin, weak, and it breaks easily. I could feel it fighting beneath my skin, wrenching at the chain and almost loose.
That’s when I reached the side wall, started to pull myself up, and found that the boxcar wasn’t so empty after all.
4
It was a feather, matted in what was either tar or blood, and it was stuck to the side of the car. It felt coarse and stiff and it was far too big, almost as long as my arm from the fingertips to the elbow. From the feel, I thought it was a raven’s feather. But the ends were sharper, harder, and there was the size.
I jerked my hand away, screaming without a sound. It was impossible, but that hadn’t even hit me yet. The shock of coming across it was enough. My vision swam for a second, and I couldn’t see Alan or the door or the dark sand outside. Then I grabbed something metal – I don’t know what it was, only that it was there and I could use it as a handle – and hauled myself forward. Halfway up the car. My heart was racing so hard it hurt. Worse almost than the feather had been the way my scream, as loud as I could force it, had been dead quiet. I imagined that’s how I’d scream if they ever thought I was dead when I wasn’t and buried me alive.
The handle was enough to get me close, and I lunged for the edge, got my fingers around it. Rachel yelled again and then her hands clamped down on mine; Alan jumped back out of the car, took hold of my elbow, and pulled. Heaved. I slid up the icy floor and over the far edge, where I tumbled to the sand.
For a moment, I just concentrated on breathing. I lay on my back, the grit of the sand as real as ever, the sound of my breath more welcome than a pardon from the President. Just that sound, the thin rasp of air over my throat, my tongue, was all I needed.
Alan leaned in, dark creases drawn across his face. The question was all over it, written there as if with paint, before he even asked it. “What just happened?”
I sat up, swallowed, remembered the feather. “I don’t know. It was like being buried or something. I could hear you, but not myself. And there was something in there. Or, maybe, something was in there before the crash.” I held up my fingers; something dark and tacky and looking all too much like half-dried blood was smeared across the ends. “I found a feather.”
“A feather,” Rachel asked, and she was looking at me.
“I know.” I shook my head. “But it was sharp, and as long as my arm. I swear to God. This wasn’t a normal feather. And whatever left it behind…”
“Is still out here,” Alan said. “You’re serious about this? It couldn’t have been something else, something you mistook for a feather in the dark?”
“No; I’m sure.” I showed him the blood. “See that?”
Alan nodded. “Well,” he said, “I’m going to get it.”
Rachel was away from me and had her arms around his arm so fast I could hardly believe it. “No. No. You stay right here. Let’s go get the horses and ride off.”
Alan gently pushed her away, then laughed. It was a dark sound, but there was a bit of real humor in it. He hadn’t been fully inside yet. “It’s not a big deal. Let’s just check this out. We’ve got a day’s ride on the others; a few more minutes won’t make a difference.”
“I don’t,” Rachel said, and stumbled over the words. “I don’t want you in there.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“But–”
Alan leaned in and did something I’d never seen before: he kissed Rachel on the forehead. It was tender and soft and so unlike him that I almost thought I’d imagined it. Jealousy rearing its head, or something like that. But it had been real, and when he drew back he slipped out of her arms and hopped up onto the boxcar. He bent down, smiling at her. “Only for a second, Rache.” Then he disappeared, and the blackness swallowed him.
5
We waited, and the night seemed endless. Rachel sat just a bit away from me, starting into the boxcar as if her life had almost ended. She was fingering her revolver with her hand, absently, perhaps thinking about charging in after Alan. I knew she wouldn’t need the gun, not in that car anyway, but I didn’t say anything. It was better to let her brew on it, because then, at least, she wasn’t doing it.
I looked down the line. The next car was closed, its door barred like the stone before a tomb. So was the next. But three down from us, and tipped back and not burning at all, was an open car. The door lay in the sand, wedged down deep with a little grove behind it where it had pushed up the desert. It must have fallen off right before the train came to a stop, maybe thrown off by the jar as those middle cars all came together.
I wondered if there was blood in there, blood and feathers. And I wondered if I really wanted to know.
There was a grunt, and heavy step, and Alan jumped back out of the boxcar. He landed in front of me, knees bent, breathing heavily. But he was smiling, madly, and in his right hand was the feather. That hand was bleeding, and the blood was draining down toward his elbow, but he didn’t appear to notice.
It was more horrible in the moonlight, with orange and red accents from the fire. The edge, what had cut Alan, looked as sharp as a razor and glinted brightly. It was mostly black, but not straight through. There was a tint to it, a blue or purple, that lay just beneath the surface. It did look like it came from a raven, though it looked even bigger in Alan’s hand than it had felt plastered against the front of the
car.
“You were right,” Alan said.
I didn’t have any response to that. I was, and I wished I wasn’t. Something about that feather was deadly, no doubt about it, but something about the gleam in Alan’s eyes was worse. Like he was just getting started, just getting warmed up. Like there was so much more to do and he couldn’t wait to get to it.
“What is it?” Rachel asked.
Alan didn’t even look at her. He looked at me. “This train isn’t from Kansas City.”
“I know,” I said. Though he’d known the whole time.
“I don’t even think it’s from here at all.”
“From here?” I sat up; my back was already sore.
“From this world.” Alan held the feather up like a trophy. Which, I thought, it was. “Just look at this. Have you ever seen something with feathers like this? Or think about the car, the way it’s been calling us. Or the way it feels when you go inside, like taking a bath in tar. Have you ever seen something like that before?”
“No,” I said.
“I think it’s from the other side.”
Rachel let out a little whimpering sound that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. Maybe because that was the moment that I realized the truth, or maybe because it was the last sound she would make before everything fell to pieces. Either way, it hit me then and it’s still with me now. It was like a scared dog being thrown into the ring. Maybe with another dog who was both starving and vicious.
The Deep Hours of the Night Page 2