by Neil Bullock
I crack up when it appears, and laugh for quite some time. Lara, rather than looking pleased with herself, looks sad.
“What’s up? That’s awesome,” I say.
“It’s nothing. It’s… it just reminds me of the cake Sam and Paige made me once for my birthday when my dad couldn’t even be bothered to buy a ready-made one.”
I nod. I consider raising my glass and toasting her sisters, but I know she feels conflicted about them leaving her at the mercy of their father, so I don’t. Instead, I say, “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. Kinda wish I hadn’t thought of it now.”
I hesitate. “I don’t get it, though. It didn’t take any longer than any of the other stuff. You can’t make a cake like that in the time it took to arrive.” I’m slurring my words, but I don’t care.
“Is there anything you’ve seen since getting on the train that has made any sense?” Lara asks.
“Well, no.”
Lara raises an eyebrow at me. “There you go, then. We live in total inexplicability.”
I frown. “Inexpic… inexclipable… what?”
“Inexplicability. I’m cutting you off, Eden.” She grins.
“Can’t do that.”
Kyle laughs and says, “You actually can’t. She can just imagine up anything she feels like.” He pushes the two bottles of water I brought from Lara’s room to the middle of the table. “Maybe drink some of this, though?”
I grab the bottle I brought with me from the supermarket where I got the Oxycodone and twist the cap off, then gulp down half the bottle. “Happy?” I ask.
“Inordinately.”
Lara grabs the bigger bottle and drinks some, then passes it to Kyle.
“I went drinking with my dad once when I was underage,” I say suddenly. I wasn’t intending to say this, but the words keep coming and I seem powerless to stop them. Kyle and Lara look intrigued. “It was a scam. A bad one. It always was with him. He was intending to get me drunk, then reveal that I was underage to the bar’s owner. He thought he could use it to get free drinks, or something like that. He didn’t expect them to card me.”
Lara giggles. “Wow, that’s…”
I feel myself sobering up, talking about this. “Yeah. My dad was an asshole. Nothing like yours, Lara, but he had his spectacularly shitty moments.”
“Like what?” Kyle asks.
“Like the time he pulled me out of class on the pretense of a family emergency. I thought Mom or Nana had died or something, but no. He just wanted my lunch money so he could get drunk. Or high.”
“Wow,” Lara says again. “What a dick!”
“Or the time he drained my college fund a few months before my high school graduation. I don’t want to sound entitled or anything, but Mom and Nana had been saving that money since I was born. I had to work a lot of shitty, demeaning jobs because of him.” I find I’m getting worked up about this. I know I shouldn’t be. I know it’s nothing in the grand scheme of things, especially compared to Lara’s father, but it’s also exhausting being so thoroughly and repeatedly disappointed in somebody who is supposed to love you. That exhaustion and disappointment stays with you.
“My mom kicked him out when I was young, just before we moved to Oregon, but he stuck around like a bad smell. Only ever contacted me if he wanted something. I wasn’t old enough to understand that he had no interest in me beyond how he could profit from my existence. I always hoped he’d come to see me. For a while, he even tried to pretend that was the case, you know? He’d spend some time talking to me about school or whatever, but then he’d get to the point. He needed some money. It was nearly always money. He told me once that some gang was going to break his arms and legs if he didn’t pay them what he owed, and he’s still my dad, so I felt like I should help. There was no gang, though. He just wanted the money.”
Kyle and Lara are just watching me talk now, and I’m okay with that. This is cathartic. “The last straw was when he had to go to the hospital and tried to commit insurance fraud. He lied on the form about who he was, where he lived. Stole some poor sucker’s identity. He was unlucky to get my friend Alice as his doctor. She called me rather than the police. Sometimes I wish she’d just called the cops, but if she had, he might still be in my life. I exploded at him. Involving my best friend in his shit… it made me feel stupid for letting him do this to me for so long. We had it out, and I didn’t see him again after that.”
“It sounds like you’re better off,” Kyle says, his words hesitant.
Lara nods her agreement. “Yeah. He had that coming.”
“Just like your dad,” I say, and she nods again, slowly and sadly this time, her lips pressed tightly together.
She starts to add, “It’s a shame—" when I interrupt.
“Wait, wait! Guys! Shut up!” I blink repeatedly until I’m sure the person who just appeared in the corner of the room isn’t a figment of my imagination. “Do either of you see him?”
Lara whips her head around to see what I’m talking about. Kyle does the same. “Uh. Who?”
“I don’t see anything,” Lara says.
The man has apparently become aware he is being watched. He turns to me slowly and I can practically hear his bones creaking. His face sags and the uniform he wears is threadbare and gray. He stares at me for a moment, dumbfounded. When he speaks, his voice sounds like an ancient, forgotten thing waking up for the first time in centuries. “You can see me?”
part three
fifteen
The Help
“I…” I begin, but I’m lost for words. I was right! Well, maybe not at first. “You’re real? I mean… sorry. Yes, I can see you. But you’re real, right? I’m not hallucinating?” I remember Lara asking us the same thing when we met her.
The man’s features rise in what I think might be the approximation of a smile. It’s hard to tell. “Real as you.” He speaks slowly and draws his words out some, but it’s hard to place his accent because it’s so dusty and worn.
“But… why?” I’m not articulating myself very well.
This time, he laughs. It’s a low, throaty sound and doesn’t seem to come easily. “Why what?”
“Eden, what the hell is going on?” Kyle asks.
“Wait…” I’m so confused. “Hang on. Stay right there, okay?” I say to the man.
He inclines his head in what I hope is a gesture of acquiescence. I turn to Kyle and Lara and say, “There’s an old man in the corner. Shit.” I turn back and call, “No offense!”
Kyle’s eyebrows are knitted together as he watches me closely. I think he’s inspecting me for signs of psychosis or something. Lara’s head is cocked to one side. “Where exactly?”
“Right there,” I point, and they both look. “You can’t see him?”
She shakes her head.
“Why can’t they see you?” I ask the man.
“You’d have to take that up with Rona.”
I blink, then shudder as if something unpleasant just happened, but I’m not exactly sure what. “Rona? Why?”
“She’s the one supposed to be in charge of the train while The Creator’s away.”
“Wait, what?” If I sound incredulous, it’s only because I am. “Rona runs the train?” Lara and Kyle gape at me.
The man considers. “No, not exactly. She was left in charge. The train mostly runs itself, but she was left in charge of some functions.”
“Like make it so we can’t see you?”
He tips his head. “Right. Feels strange, talking to someone else. It’s been a long time since anyone saw us.”
“Us?” I ask, reeling from the news that Rona might oversee some aspects of this journey. Why didn’t she tell me?
“Eden,” Lara says, but I ignore her.
The man nods. “The crew.”
“I knew it!” I say, louder than I intended.
The man raises one eyebrow comically high. “You thought we were an artific
ial intelligence, as I recall.”
My eyes go wide, and he laughs again. I smile, but I’m not sure if I should. Part of me thinks that laugh might be sinister, but his expression is kind enough. “How do you know that?”
He gives me a look that says he shouldn’t have to explain this. “You want the truth, or the version that sits better with most folk?”
“The… truth?”
“I heard you thinking about it.”
“Jeez. You can read minds? What’s the nicer version?”
“I overheard you talking with your friends about it. ‘Course I can read minds. We all can. How else do you think you can order food and get those nice clothes you’re all wearing?”
“Oh… okay.” I can’t think of anything else to say.
“Eden, why can’t we see him?” Lara asks. “What’s going on?”
“In a minute, Lara, honey.” To the man, I say, “I’m sorry, I’m Eden. This is Lara and Kyle. Can I ask your name?”
The man appears confused for a second, then shakes his head sadly. “Can’t say I remember my actual name, but we borrowed names from some of the other passengers we’ve had. The other crew call me James.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say automatically. He tilts his head and raises both eyebrows. “So, Rona made you invisible? Why would she do that?”
“I… don’t know. It’s possible I’m wrong. I never interacted with her much, and I only know what the others told me. It’s been a long time.”
“How long is a long time?”
He wheezes out something that may be a cough. “Time doesn’t really mean anything on the scale I’m talking about, and as I’m sure you’re aware, there is no time on board. Lifetimes, I guess.” He waves a hand as if this information means nothing.
This is too much, too fast, but I’m scared that whatever is allowing me to see this frail old man will stop as suddenly as it started, and I want to try to get as much information as I can. Being drunk isn’t helping. I shake my head to try to clear it. I wanted things to become less confusing, not more, and trying to come up with meaningful questions under this much pressure is impossible, and it’s almost as if some cosmic force senses my stress, because James disappears.
I jump to my feet immediately, galumph my way to where he stood, then realize I might be standing in the exact spot he’s occupying, and I retreat. “Shit!”
“Eden, what the hell?” Lara yells. She’s standing, too, and looking at me with what I realize is terror in her eyes.
“Oh, Jeez, I’m sorry. That must have looked a bit… well, nuts.”
“Little bit,” Kyle says. “What did we miss?”
I fill them in.
We’re all back in Lara’s room, sitting on the floor in a triangle. The door is locked. My head hurts, and it’s not from the alcohol. Kyle scratches his own head. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he says, not for the first time. I’ve stopped even acknowledging his confusion because it doesn’t help anything.
“You’re sure that’s all he said?” Lara asks.
I’ve just been over the story for the third time. Lara has written down some notes, which is good thinking, but I’m struggling to make sense of what James told me. He said very little, but what he did say was astonishing. Can we trust him? “Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s everything.”
She cracks her knuckles. “I wonder how many more of them there are.”
“Eight, I’d guess. There are nine crew compartments.” I looked at the plaques on some of their doors, but I’m not sure I remember seeing a James. It’s easy enough to check, but I’m finding that I’m a little creeped out that there are people we can’t see sharing this limited space with us. People who can apparently read our minds.
Kyle suddenly blurts, “What if we stand where they are?” I shake my head. I don’t have any answers for him, though I did have that same thought in the dining car.
Lara says, “They probably get out of the way. They know we can’t see them, but I guess they can see us. The more interesting question is whether it’s possible to collide with them at all. What if they’re insubstantial when they’re invisible or something?”
“Like they really are ghosts?” I ask.
“Yeah.” She looks pensive. Ghost was the word she used to describe the things making noises in the night, she might have been right all along.
A thought occurs to me. “How would they cook the food if they can’t touch anything?”
Lara’s face registers surprise, then she smiles. “We’re on a flying train, I think we can throw out whatever rulebook we used to live by.”
“Yeah, okay,” I shake my head and sigh.
Kyle interjects, “Jesus. This is insane.” There’s real anguish in his voice and I wonder if I should be worried about him. I’m not sure I’m doing any better, though. Lara’s the one making sense right now. She’s the one writing down what I can remember. She’s the one in charge, because both the adults are struggling with this. I feel a vague sense of guilt about that, but mostly I’m just glad one of us is able to keep a cool head.
“The most important part of the conversation was the stuff about Rona, I think. Maybe the stuff about time. And he mentioned The Creator. If we could find out who that is and find them…” Lara says.
“Creator of what?” Kyle asks.
“The train, I assume,” Lara replies.
I nod slowly, replaying what James said in my head. “I find it hard to believe Rona has access to some of the train’s controls. She seems like she’d struggle to use an iPad.”
Lara looks confused. “A what?”
“Uh… It’s a handheld computer thing.”
“Right. Well, we need to know more about that. Either we need to talk to the crew again – someone who knows more – or we need to ask Rona about it directly.”
I start nodding. “That’s a good idea. Maybe we can force the lock on the door to carriage ten.”
“It’s worth a try. Maybe in the morning.”
“Why do we think I’m the only one who could see him?”
Kyle sits there, massaging his temples slowly. Lara appears to consider my question, then gets up and walks over to the stuff we brought back from the dining car. She picks the bottles up in turn and examines them. “What’s this?” She holds up the water bottle I boarded the train with.
I stare at the bottle, it’s half empty. “It’s… my water.”
“You brought it from home?”
“More or less. It’s not from the train’s stocks. You think that could be it?”
Lara bobs her head from side to side. She picks up another bottle, this one much bigger. “My water’s from the train. You’re the only one to drink your water, right? We all had some of the other drinks, and I’m pretty sure we all shared the food.”
“I think so. So, we can only talk to the crew until that bottle is empty?”
“I don’t know, Eden. But that would be my guess. It kind of makes sense, right?”
The thought is disquieting. What if we need the crew’s help to get off the train? How much of the water do I need to drink to start seeing them? The other half? Do we only have one more shot at this? I get up and take my bottle from Lara and turn it over in my hands. There’s absolutely nothing noteworthy about it. “We need to keep this safe,” I say, then open Lara’s fridge and place it inside after making sure the cap is screwed on tightly.
Lara nods once.
“Why the fuck are they invisible anyway? This is bullshit!” Kyle exclaims suddenly.
“I don’t know, big guy.”
Lara says, “It’s the ultimate wet dream of the rich and powerful, isn’t it?”
I sit on the counter next to the refrigerator. “What do you mean?”
“If you can see your servants, if you can interact with them, you’re forced to consider their humanity. If you can’t see them, you can ignore their needs, their desires. You can treat them as badly as you w
ant because you can’t see how much you’re hurting or demeaning them.”
I raise my eyebrows. “I had no idea you were so cynical.”
“I’m a product of my environment.” She smiles sadly.
Kyle runs a hand over his stubble, making a scratchy sound. “Are we saying that this creator James talked about installed a feature to… hide the crew?”
I guess he must be starting to come to terms with things, because that’s a good question. Lara presses on, “Why not? They also installed rooms filled with nothing and made the train fly.” She walks over to her bed and plops down, deep in thought. I get up and follow her over and sit on the edge. Kyle remains in the middle of the floor. “I think we need to do two things. First, we need to come up with a list of questions for the crew, just in case we’re wrong about the water and one of us sees them again. Three copies of the questions. We each keep a copy on us, and a pencil. There are some in one of the drawers.”
I nod. “What about just leaving a page with some questions on it in the dining room? Do you think they’d write the answers down for us?”
Lara chuckles. “I guess they might! Although… what if everything they write is invisible, too?”
“Huh. Worth a shot, though, right? What’s the other thing?”
“Figure out how to get to the front half of the train and have a conversation with Rona.”
Kyle looks up at this, finally seeming interested. “Yes. Yes, that’s… that’s good. If anyone has answers, she will, right? The invisible man said she was in charge.” He looks incredulous, like he can’t believe he’s allowing himself to buy into any of this.
James said Rona wasn’t in charge, she was more of a caretaker, though I’m not about to correct Kyle. He seems to have taken some comfort in having a way forward. I’ll let him have that for tonight.
Lara says, “I’m exhausted. You want to share the bed, Eden?”
“You’re sure you don’t mind?” The pile of blankets I exchanged my pile of cushions for was better, but only slightly. A night in a bed would be wonderful.