The skin on his left cheek, though scarred the day before, was almost perfectly healed now that one more night had passed. It would seem that the legend that said that he would get up again and again, no matter how many times he was killed, as long as he didn’t lose the power source in his heart, wasn’t an exaggeration. It was hard to believe right away that this man who seemed no older than a college student was in the War eighty years ago, just like the spirit in the radio, but it must be true — this was something she heard from the radio the night before. Harvey never participated in their conversations anyway, but it was a given that whenever the War got brought up, he would look clearly unhappy and pretend to be asleep.
“What?” Harvey asked, raising his downcast gaze slightly.
This took Kieli off guard; she opened and closed her mouth a few times, and answered, “Nothing. I was just looking,” giving a reason that wasn’t really a reason. At some point she had stopped just looking sideways at him — she was leaning forward and staring him in the face. Of course he’d wonder what she was doing.
He glared at her suspiciously, and Kieli pulled her head back.
“Herbie,” the radio called out, as if throwing her a life preserver.
“That’s Harvey,” Harvey corrected him, sending his gaze toward the radio, his eyes only half open.
“History homework is right up your alley. Even more so if it’s Church history — you could tell her more than she’d ever want to know. You should just help her already.”
“You’re kidding. Why should I?” Harvey retorted immediately, scowling. The radio was clearly pretending he couldn’t hear him when he answered Kieli’s, “Really?” instead.
“He’s wandered all over the planet for decades since the War ended. If he didn’t learn a lot about history, then he’s just plain stupid. And while he’s at it, he could tell you what kinds of filthy tricks the Church has been playing behind the scenes since the War — ”
“Aaahh!” Harvey yelled, a bit slow to interrupt the radio. He ran his eyes over the other box seats in the car, wearing an expression that said going on would cause trouble. He lowered his voice and said, “Shut up, you piece of scrap. You wanna make me a traitor to the Church?”
“Why care now?”
“I don’t care; I just want to spend the time I have left in peace. Anyway, a report like that, you should just write whatever’d make the Church happy and get your grade.” Talking like a normal upperclassman, the legendary Undying, the Demon of War, laid the subject to rest and pulled a cigarette out of a pocket in his work pants.
Looking alternately from one face to the other (though, to be accurate, one of them didn’t have a face), and listening to them argue, Kieli remembered one of the questions she thought Harvey might have the answer to. Her grandmother had told her never to speak of it in front of people at Church or school, but she thought it would be okay to ask Harvey.
“Um, hey. Harvey, have you noticed that there’s no God in the Church?”
“What are you talking about? Have I noticed…?”
As Harvey brought a lighter to his cigarette, he turned only his eyes toward her and furrowed his brow, but he didn’t deny it. Rather, he seemed to be wondering why she would be asking about something so obvious. Kieli automatically brightened.
“Do you know why that is? I think this planet was too far away, so He went back home,” she went on enthusiastically. This time, Harvey’s expression seemed genuinely confused as he held the lighter, still lit, in front of his face. His cigarette fell out of his gaping mouth.
“You know. When the Saints who made the Church left their home planet and took God with them.”
Kieli thought there must be something wrong with the way she’d asked and tried to explain further, when a stocky silhouette arrived and stood beside her seat.
She broke off and looked up to see a man in a dark blue uniform standing in the aisle. There were two rows of beautiful gold buttons running from its neatly closed, high collar to the hem above his knees. It was a railroad conductor’s uniform like the ones Kieli aspired to wear, just a little, when she was a little girl. (The kids in her Sunday school class made fun of her, saying a girl could never be a conductor, and her dream was easily shattered.)
“Oh.”
She hurriedly pulled a slightly bent ticket out of her skirt pocket and offered it to the conductor. The conductor leaned over and peered at the ticket, then smiled as if to say, “You’re okay.” His kind, gentle smile reminded Kieli of her childhood dream, and she smiled bashfully back at him.
While Kieli put her ticket away, the conductor moved over to Harvey’s seat, but Harvey completely ignored him as he once again lit the cigarette he had placed back in his mouth. The conductor just leaned forward and smiled as he did with Kieli, and moved on to the next box of seats.
“Why didn’t you show him your ticket?” Kieli complained on the conductor’s behalf.
Harvey just glanced sideways at her and blew smoke diagonally up towards the ceiling. “Show who?”
“‘Who?’” Kieli peered questioningly outside the box and cast her gaze at the conductor’s back as he moved away from them down the aisle.
The seats were packed with travelers despite its being the middle of the Colonization Days vacation, but now that she looked, not one of them reacted to the appearance of the conductor as they carried on their own business — sleeping, chatting, etc. But the conductor went through the motions of looking carefully at each ticket, smiling kindly at each of them, and walking on.
After the uniformed back vanished through the door to the car in front of them, Kieli realized, a little late, that her ticket had already been checked yesterday, and by a different conductor. She let out a little “Ah!”
Of course the other passengers wouldn’t have noticed him; he was a ghost in the shape of a conductor.
When she looked at Harvey, his hand was at his mouth holding his cigarette, as if to hide his smirk, and he was looking pointedly to the side. Kieli glared resentfully at him and said, “Tell me these things sooner!”
“Not my job.”
“……” He didn’t have to say it so flatly.
“He’s not hurting anybody. He won’t mind if you just leave him alone,” the round speaker said in a calm voice; apparently the Corporal in the radio had realized long ago.
Somewhat embarrassed at being the only one who didn’t figure it out right away, Kieli squirmed in her seat. She had mixed feelings about being in this odd situation. It was the exact opposite of all her previous circumstances, when she was the only one who could see spirits. But, thinking about it, she felt strangely relieved that the people who were with her could see the things she could see. She really was glad she had come with them. Although Harvey seemed to think she was a nuisance.
“I wonder what he’s doing.”
When Kieli expressed her simple curiosity over the spirit conductor’s strange behavior, Harvey, in the opposite seat, had his eyes directed away from her as he puffed his cigarette and stated the obvious — “He’s checking tickets” — in an unfriendly tone.
“I wonder what he’s doing,” she repeated more clearly than before, and cast her gaze firmly at her addressee’s profile.
“…Look.” After she waited a full five seconds, her companion ran out of patience and a vein twitched in his temple. “Let’s get one thing straight. This is advice from your elder. It’s not like I’m telling you this because if you get involved with these troublesome ghosts and for some reason the sparks fly in my direction and threaten my peaceful schedule then that’s a huge nuisance, but since that is the case, I’m telling you.”
His cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth as he made his oddly worded introduction. He continued, “You let them take too much advantage of you. The reason people normally can’t see them is that they’re already dead and don’t have that much influence in the world anymore, and they’re not even little annoyances, so nobody can see them. If you want to live
a normal life, then stop reacting every time you see one and just ignore it.”
After taking a little time to digest the meaning of his long-winded speech, Kieli looked meekly down at her lap and thought that he might have a point. If she imagined she couldn’t see anything, she should have been able to be like normal people. But that seemed like a very difficult task to Kieli.
“Augh, you don’t have to look so sullen.” Seeing Kieli so glumly deep in thought, Harvey ruffled his hair in exasperation and spat, with a bit of self-contempt, “I mean, it’s not like I’m living a normal life myself.”
That’s when it happened.
The ghost conductor came back from the car ahead of them and passed through the aisle next to Kieli and the others again. Or rather, he ran through, kicking the hem of his uniform out of the way, with such incredible speed that it was as if a dark blue wind had blown by.
When Kieli poked her face into the aisle in surprise, he had already vanished through the door to the car behind them.
“I wonder what he’s doing.”
She tilted her head and returned to her original posture. Harvey was glaring at her with half-opened eyes. “I guess that troubled look on your face just now had nothing to do with my advice.”
“It did, but this and that are…” Kieli was unable to finish her excuse. “Eh?”
Just then, the train was rocked by an abnormal centrifugal force, and the next thing she knew, Kieli’s whole body was flung to the window. Her cheek pressed against the pane, and as her field of vision shook with the severe vibrations, the reddish-brown earth looked as if it was being pushed up toward her. Before her eyes, the window glass hit the ground and shattered, and Kieli frantically covered her head.
It all happened in an instant.
“…eh?”
She opened her eyes very timidly, her arms still over her head.
The scenery had rotated ninety degrees. The flattened side wall was under her feet, and her soles rested on scattered pieces of glass. The ceiling was where the wall had been, and broken bulbs blinked with a listless, yellow light.
The passengers that had been flung out of their seats lay here and there in artless heaps, their limbs bent at odd angles, like dolls that had been tossed aside by an owner who had tired of them. A fine, blood-colored mist had settled toward the ground and was coiling around her ankles.
“Kieli.”
It was just like that dream in the tunnel. A long, narrow, confined space; mountains of dead bodies as far as the eye could see.
“No…”
“Kieli, calm down.”
Just as she was about to scream, someone grabbed her shoulders. “Don’t get worked up. We’re the only ones who can see this. The train is moving like normal,” a low voice whispered in her ear. “Calm down,” the voice admonished one more time, and she was brought back to reality.
She looked around her again, and nothing out of the ordinary had happened. The floor under her feet continued its regular vibrations, and the passengers were in their seats like before, passing the time by chatting, reading, or sleeping. Some of them looked dubiously at Kieli, who was standing with her arms over her head, but they didn’t pay her much mind and quickly returned to their own business.
“Now sit.”
Kieli felt a push at her shoulders and fell back into her seat with a thud. Harvey breathed a light sigh of relief and sat across from her.
She tried to ask him something, but her brain wasn’t working very well, and her mouth flapped open and closed a few times before she finally managed a simple, “What was…?” Harvey didn’t say a word, just shoved his cigarette butt into the ashtray installed in the windowsill. The radio, sitting directly above the ashtray, answered instead. “Probably the memories of the conductor’s ghost. Must have died in the accident when the train turned sideways.”
“The conductor’s…”
“But hey, for a normal human, you picked that up pretty vividly. You’ve got a rare condition. Hey Herbie, did you know there were people like this?”
“Picked up…?”
Kieli turned a questioning gaze at Harvey, who made his usual correction of, “Harvey,” before sluggishly recrossing his legs where he sat and saying, “The moment a person dies, their strong emotions, regrets, and the like are released, right? Those memories are sewn over space and objects, and you end up picking up on them. It happens more easily when a spirit possessing those memories is close by.”
“The memories of the dead…”
Kieli remembered the scene of the accident she saw a moment ago and stiffened. A bloody fog drifting through a closed space, piles of dead bodies. The conductor died in that terrible accident. Not only the conductor, but all the people riding the train, most likely including small children.
Before she knew it, the color had gone out of Kieli’s hands. She clasped them tightly together.
“Don’t let it bother you,” Harvey said quietly, closing his eyes and sinking his tall figure into his seat as if planning to go to sleep. “He’s already dead. It’s not like you can do anything about it.”
“If I can’t do anything about it, why am I able to see it…?” Kieli couldn’t help saying. Harvey didn’t answer.
Harvey and the radio both went silent after that, and Kieli, now with nothing to do, dozed a little, listening to a tune that was a more moderate tempo than the rock music from earlier.
The next thing she knew, she started to dream about the tunnel again. She thought, It’s that scary dream; I need to wake up; but her body wouldn’t move. In her heart she desperately implored, Harvey, wake me up! As soon as she did, she sensed someone next to her, and thanks to that person, she opened her eyes.
“Harve…” Relieved at having been pulled out of her nightmare, Kieli looked up to see the conductor in the dark blue uniform with gold buttons standing over her, peering at her. Out of reflex, Kieli started to get out her ticket, but then, realizing what she was doing, stopped her hand in her pocket.
Just like last time, the conductor nodded at her with his gentle smile as if to say, “You’re okay.” As expected, he did the same with Harvey (Harvey, of course, kept his eyes directed diagonally downward and ignored him, just like last time) and moved on to the next seat.
Kieli stood up from her seat a little and gaped at the conductor’s back as he disappeared into the car ahead of them, performing the exact scene he had showed them earlier. When she sat back down, Harvey hadn’t moved except to direct his half-opened eyes at her.
“Do you know what ‘learning ability’ is?”
“Don’t you wonder what that conductor is doing?”
“No,” Harvey said flatly, closing his eyes again. Kieli frowned, upset that he wouldn’t pay any attention to her. Then, just like before, the conductor’s spirit returned with a frantic look on his face. In the blink of an eye, he ran by Kieli and her fellow travelers and disappeared into the next car.
Not even a second later, the image of the accident assaulted Kieli once more. Kieli closed her eyes tight so she wouldn’t see it, but the scene went on, ruthlessly realistic, on the other side of her eyelids. She was more calm than the first time, as she watched passengers being thrown around and crushed in the overturned train, but that calmness made her see the details all the more clearly.
She covered her head with her arms, and somehow managed to wait it out. “Harveyyyy…” She looked up, almost in tears, at Harvey, who sat up grudgingly and adjusted his position.
“You can look at me like that, but…”
At that moment, the same dark blue uniform stood next to the seat. Kieli started and looked up to see the exact same conductor with the exact same expression. The third time she saw it, his friendly smile started to look creepy. Even Harvey’s jaw dropped a little, and he watched, weirded out, as the ghost in uniform left, his smile plastered to his face.
“Hey, what do you think he’s doing?” This time, not even Harvey scoffed when Kieli asked the question for the umpteenth
time — because he didn’t have time. The conductor returned in less time than he did before, and immediately the disastrous vision of the car turning over spread before them. Before it vanished, the conductor came for the fourth time, walking through the dead and injured bodies on the ground, smiling and inspecting tickets. Kieli covered her mouth, feeling nauseated as she watched the convoluted scene.
“Don’t you think something’s strange? I thought he was a harmless spirit who had just fallen into an endless replay of his memories of the accident, but…” the radio said, a nervous air in his voice. “You’re right,” Harvey agreed, finally serious. He didn’t care a bit when I said it. Kieli stood up, a little peeved.
“Kieli?” Harvey looked up at her, questioningly.
“I’m going after him,” she answered shortly, and stepped into the aisle just as the conductor’s spirit was about to disappear through the door to the deck between cars. She quickly chased after him.
“Herbie.”
Behind her, she heard the radio shoo him out and sensed Harvey sighing and getting out of his seat.
The conductor’s spirit passed over the uncovered deck and continued on to the next car. None of the passengers noticed the ghost walking down the aisle, and a sense of the weariness of traveling through the night accompanied the peaceful voices that drifted throughout the car.
Kieli went down the aisle at a trot and looked back once just in front of the door to the next car. Harvey wouldn’t run but took long, very reluctant strides toward her, holding the radio in one hand.
Strangely, she felt a bit relieved seeing him. She turned back around and went out to the deck, where she was surprised to find the conductor’s back halted immediately in front of her. The back suddenly turned around, and Kieli froze, her head almost ramming into his belly. Then she realized there was no way they would crash into each other. The conductor just went through Kieli’s body and ran back the way he had come.
The Dead Sleep in the Wilderness Page 6