The Dead Sleep in the Wilderness

by Yukako Kabeif

  “Don’t touch me!”

  Hearing the radio’s overblown objection, he understood, too late, the meaning behind her action. The girl turned and started to run, the radio hanging from one hand.

  “Wait!!”

  After a second, Harvey hurried after the girl. She was close enough that if he tried, he could catch her without any problem, but she took advantage of her small physique to slip through a narrow break in the fence and escape to the railroad side.

  “Hey, what are you thinking!?” he yelled at the girl’s back, forcing his body to squeeze through the opening. It looked like it was made for a cat or something; of course there was no way a big man like him could fit through.

  Running along the railroad track, the girl glanced back at him.

  When he saw her face, Harvey started and froze in spite of himself. Overlapping the form of the black-haired girl, he could see the face of a different, blond girl. It was the ghost that had been haunting the black-haired girl. He wouldn’t call her dangerous, but there was something decidedly different about her than when he had seen her that afternoon: her gruesome appearance, with a half-sunken head through which he could see her shattered skull.

  The two overlapping girls snickered together. It was a strange, twisted smile.

  With a faint vibration, two round lights appeared far down the tracks. Only a freight train would be running at this time of night. The girl’s black uniform cut a clear silhouette against the center of the light, like a shadow sewn onto a white wall.

  The girl stopped and, holding the radio up with both hands, shouted in a voice loud enough to be heard over the oncoming train.

  “Hey, the Undying don’t die, right? Even if they’re hit by a train?” She was using the black-haired girl’s voice, but most likely it was the ghost who was talking. “I died. Did you know that? I was hit by a train and died!”

  Like hell I’d know that, Harvey swore inwardly, and spitting, “Damn it, get out of the way!” to the innocent fence, he forced his body out of the opening in the wire mesh. A piece of wire that was poking out in an inconvenient direction stabbed the palm of his hand, but this wasn’t the time to let that bother him.

  The headlights and thunderous roar of the train were approaching. The girl raised the radio above her head and waved it toward the train tracks.

  Just then, a human shadow rose out like smoke from the radio that she was about to throw and grabbed the ghost girl’s arm, as if trying to take her down with him.

  “Kyaa, what is this!?” the ghost girl screamed, struggling. The moment she did, the radio slipped out of her hand and hit the rail with a clang. Following suit, the tangible girl fell over and landed on the tracks.

  “Argh, what are you doing, Corporal?” Harvey chided, finally free of the fence, and ran to them at full speed.

  First he picked up the girl’s body and tossed her, far from gently, to the side of the track. He immediately turned back and went for the radio. His foot got caught in the ballast but, after nearly falling over, he somehow managed to grab hold of the radio’s cord in one hand, and then —

  Hoooonk!

  The horn pierced his eardrums with a shrill noise resembling an explosion, and the two headlights, rushing forward as if to relieve some stress, filled his vision.

  The white lights brought with them a shock wave that gave him the sensation that they had run his body through. Before he could make out which of the girls screamed, his sense of hearing flew off somewhere.

  What did I do?

  Kieli wore a sullen expression as she puzzled it over, restlessly moving her breakfast of soggy cereal to her mouth.

  It was true that she had her stupid moments, but she wanted to think that it wasn’t so terminal that she would get into bed having mistaken her uniform for sleepwear. She had gone to bed sulking last night, and when she opened her eyes, she was in bed wearing her uniform. Of course it had gotten all wrinkled, and when she went to change clothes, her day already off to a gloomy start, she discovered that, while it didn’t stand out because the fabric was black, the uniform was covered in dirt, and it was even soaked through with blackish stains that looked like blood. Startled, she lifted her skirt to see that both her knees were scraped, and the instant she noticed they started to sting — but those were no more than scratches, and it would seem that the stains were not of her own blood.

  Becca still hadn’t appeared since vanishing the night before.

  What did I do?

  She unconsciously let out a small groan and tilted her head. When she did, she hit the back of it on the corner of someone’s tray as they passed behind her.

  “Ow…”

  It happened so suddenly she was more dazed than angry as she turned around to see freckle-faced Zilla put down her tray to sit a little ways off and start chatting with her roommate. There was no way she could not have noticed bumping into Kieli, but whatever; it would have been creepy if she’d apologized anyway.

  Kieli stayed quiet and focused on finishing her own breakfast. She had no interest in Zilla and her roommate’s boring conversation, but their voices reached one ear despite her lack of attention.

  The first thing they got worked up about was something so incredibly trivial as how many different pairs of glasses Miss Hanni had. Next they brought up the subject of a railroad accident that happened at the old station very early that morning. It was the first time Kieli learned that anything like that had taken place.

  “Apparently an animal jumped out in front of a freight train and got hit. They’re saying it was a cat.”

  “What do you mean ‘they’re saying’?”

  Zilla raised her nose at her roommate’s naive question, as if to emphasize that she had all the answers. “They couldn’t find the body of the animal that got hit, and in the end, the railway department settled it by saying it was a cat and started the trains running again. But don’t you think it’s weird? That there wouldn’t be a body anywhere.” When she got to that point, she suddenly lowered her voice and brought her nose right up to her roommate. “Like maybe someone picked up the dead cat and took it home to use in a demonic ritual.”

  Kieli felt the cruel glances they sent in her direction, but she ignored them, letting them brush past her cheeks. Based on something she’d happened to overhear recently, apparently there was gossip going around that Becca’s voice, the one that had chased out her roommate last spring, was Kieli chanting demonic incantations.

  She ate her bland cereal quickly, without tasting it, and left her seat. Zilla and her roommate were still laughing behind her, but she didn’t turn around once as she cleaned up her dishes and left the cafeteria. Outside, she took a deep breath, then abruptly broke into a full run down the hall.

  After a sequence of actions consisting of running to her room, opening the door, going inside, and closing it, she yelled, “Becca!” as loud as she could without having it leak into the hall.

  Becca didn’t show herself right away, but when Kieli’s firm voice demanded again, “I know you’re here,” she gradually appeared on her top bunk, as usual. Kieli turned a sharp gaze on her from where she stood in front of the door.

  “Were you at the railroad track last night? What were you doing? Did that blood come from a cat?” It was obvious that Becca had used Kieli’s body without asking while she was asleep, so she didn’t bother asking that.

  “A cat?” Becca asked, looking blank. From her attitude, it seemed that she really had no recollection of a cat, so Kieli pressed, “Then where did the blood come from?” For a moment, the look on Becca’s face seemed to say, “Oops!” and then she suddenly answered, in all seriousness, “That’s right. It was a cat.”

  Kieli glared fixedly back at her and repeated, “Where did the blood come from?”

  “……” Becca stayed silent for a while, but, resigning herself to her undaunted roommate’s threatening attitude, she finally confessed slowly, “I was testing him. To see if he wouldn’t die. Because you wouldn’t believ
e me, Kieli.”

  It wasn’t as though Kieli hadn’t anticipated that, but when she heard it, her vision went black for a second. Then it wasn’t a cat that was hit by that cargo train; it was something much bigger — a grown man?

  “Then what…what happened after that? Did he live?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? You didn’t check?”

  “I was scared, so I came home. I mean, when the train ran into him…there was a ‘splat’…A ‘splat’ sound. It really sounded like that.”

  “Of course it did!”

  Her tone intensified as she got more irritated. Becca recoiled on top of the bed and said, “Well…well, I didn’t know it would be so scary. Did that happen to me, too? Was I squashed like that, too? Is that what I looked like? What do I look like to you, Kieli?”

  As Kieli watched, the beautiful face, hanging down like it was about to cry, began to dissolve. She could see the skin melt away, exposing the flesh and bone.

  “Becca…” Kieli couldn’t scold her anymore. It was like the girl who had been hit by a train and killed two years ago had finally learned exactly how terrible her death was after seeing the same thing happen to someone else.

  “It’s okay. I understand. You wait here and stay out of trouble. I’ll go look for him,” Kieli said over her shoulder.

  Still, that didn’t excuse Becca’s actions, and on top of it all, depending on how things went, Kieli could be accused of murder. Kieli gave up on Becca and ran out of the room.

  The railroad tracks formed a half-circle around the southern edge of town, and went on through to the wilderness that spread to the east and west. The new station stood on the western side of town, and the closed-down old station stood on the eastern side. Before the switch to the new station, the east side flourished as the town’s center, but now no evidence of that remained, and the area had become a deserted ghost town.

  The railroad’s accident investigation team had already cleared out, but it was easy to find where the incident had taken place. Part of the tall fence that followed the railroad track was broken, and she could see that extreme emergency measures had been taken by the wires that were a different color in that one spot.

  No one was there from the railroad, but instead, the Church’s corpse disposal team was on the scene. The corpse disposal unit was the lowest rank of priests in the Church, and the two men wearing the team’s gray robes did not appear to take any pride in their work as they expressionlessly carried a body on a sheet of galvanized steel.

  Kieli’s heart pounded as she pretended to walk casually by and stole a look at the body’s face. It was someone else — the dried husk of an old woman. Feeling some relief that it was not the person she was looking for, she passed by the body, then stopped and looked back. Probably a vagrant who couldn’t make it through the night. It was cold last night. Closing her eyes just a little, she offered a prayer for the old woman and watched as they took her body away.

  The corpse disposal team’s pace didn’t change at all as they walked away, heading west along the tracks.

  Kieli didn’t know how long it had been there, but the spirit of the old woman was kneeling above her remains and looking in her direction. It wasn’t as if anyone was watching, but Kieli kept her hand at her side as she gave a small wave good-bye.

  The old woman raised her hand slowly, too. Kieli thought she was going to wave back, but instead, she extended a bony index finger and pointed. She followed the direction indicated with her eyes and saw, at the end of the tracks, on the easternmost end of town where the ruined buildings stopped, the square roof of the old station.

  When she returned her gaze to ask what it meant, the old woman’s spirit had disappeared.

  Entrance into the station was prohibited, but Kieli snuck in through a chink in the iron fence. Four gray concrete walls formed the inside of the building, which was gloomy and cold, despite it being midmorning. As she looked around, Kieli shivered and regretted having forgotten her coat.

  It had been abandoned for years, but there was a surprising amount of luggage strewn around the building. Kieli had the impression that it just been left there like that because it cost too much to dispose of old things. The ticket barrier leading to the platform stood directly across from her. Broken benches and pieces of iron lay piled in the waiting area to her left, and to her right was the now glassless window to the station attendants’ room, its “Employees Only” sign hanging at a slant.

  The stagnant air and silence drifted through the atmosphere as if time had stopped there many years ago.

  Faint voices escaped from inside the waiting area. She found herself holding her breath as she headed in that direction. A few rows of rusty iron benches that apparently had been used on the platform formed an unnatural pile in front of the waiting area. She could hear the voices from the other side of the unstable iron wall.

  When she stuck her face between a space in the benches to see the other side, the first thing she saw was the back of a copper-colored head.

  “There’s no need to hurry. How long are you gonna whine over staying one extra day? You’re pretty old yourself. Get yourself some more composure.”

  Even before she heard the way he easily let such biting remarks leave his mouth, she could tell the back belonged to the traveler who called himself Harvey. He leaned back on one of the three-person benches used for the waiting area and rested his crossed legs on the bench across from him.

  Oh. He’s fine…

  Kieli almost fell down on the spot as the worries that had built up inside her came crumbling down. Becca’s testimony had been a lie all along, and it must have really been a cat that got hit. But she did feel bad for the cat.

  “Shut up!! I shouldn’t have to deal with you treating me like an old man.” A man’s voice jumped abruptly from the radio that had been placed on the bench by his feet. She gaped for a second and then remembered that Becca had said that a ghost possessed the radio.

  “Damn it, if things had gone the way they were supposed to, we’d be there in three days! But now we can’t move until you stop looking like you came straight out of a ghost story.”

  “Oh, shut up. Like it’s my fault. If you don’t stop complaining, I’ll cut your power.”

  “You’re not gonna throw me away somewhere and run off while my power’s off, are you?”

  “I wouldn’t do that. I promised I’d take you to the mine, didn’t I? Am I that untrustworthy?”

  “Trust is something you build up through your daily actions.”

  Every time the voice came from the speaker, particles like blackish static spat out around it, forming a blurry human face, and then dispersing when the voice stopped. Kieli couldn’t help staring at the static particles as they gathered and ran away like microbes. She had never seen a spirit like that before.

  The static clustered together and formed the human face again. The face, composed of strange greenish-black particles, was dark, like a shadow had fallen over it, so she couldn’t tell for sure, but it seemed to be the face of a man with sunken cheeks. When the outlines of the face were almost complete, green particles would go on to form eyeball-like spheres in the hollow eye sockets.

  And those eyes suddenly turned and glared in her direction. Kieli stiffened at the sudden movement, and before she could react, Harvey demanded, “Who’s there?” He sprang from the bench and turned around; behind him, the staticky face opened its mouth angrily. “Little girl, don’t you ever learn!?” it yelled, at the same time emitting a mass of sound from the speakers that transformed into a shock wave and attacked her. Knocked back by the lump of invisible air, Kieli fell on her rear. Immediately, the already unstable wall of piled benches gave a sudden lurch. She didn’t scream because she forgot to use her voice, and while she was at it, she also failed to remember to run away. Still on the ground, she looked up above her. The iron benches came clattering down.…

  There was a dull thunk! sound. Someone’s arm had caug
ht the bench, getting between it and her in the nick of time, and thanks to the arm, Kieli’s head went unsmashed.

  “Tsk…” Harvey clicked his tongue and pushed the thick, heavy iron bench away with his right elbow, clearly irked. Glancing at Kieli’s face as she sat there dumbstruck, he turned around and shouted back to the radio, “Calm down, Corporal. It wasn’t her. There’s no one inside her now!”

  When she saw the side of his face, Kieli’s breath stopped.

  The skin on the left half of his face had been torn off from his temple to his cheek, and crushed blood vessels and muscle tissue showed through in a mottled reddish-black pattern. On the arm opposite the one that caught the bench, his coat sleeve was torn to shreds, and his lower arm barely hung on to the upper half by naked muscle fibers.

  “Nooooo!” This time, Kieli screamed.

  “Oh, just shut up. This is partially your fault, you know,” Harvey spat at Kieli, twisting the unharmed half of his face in annoyance as she screamed in his ear. “Corporal, listen!” he yelled again at the radio. The spirit in the radio spun a whirlwind of static as it now formed not only a face, but an entire body, in midair. He was still a fuzzy gathering of particles, but Kieli could tell that he was wearing a brimmed hat over his eyes and a military uniform. The lower half of one of his legs disappeared at the knee, as if melting into the air.

  The static soldier moved his gaze sluggishly to the left and right, and his green eyeballs glinted in her direction — he’d finally found her. Maybe he was trying to shout something; his jaw dropped to a normally impossible angle. He tried to take a step toward her with his lost foot, but, as there was no foot there, he stumbled and almost fell — the kind of thing, Kieli thought, that shouldn’t have affected a ghost.

  Kieli felt sick, not because his form was so terrifying, but because of his bizarre behavior.

  When the soldier opened wide his pitch-dark mouth, a low groaning sound came from the speaker and shook the air. The scattered benches convulsed noisily across the floor, and a few of them rose into the air like marionettes.