by JL Bryan
“There we are,” Grant said, looking from me to Michael. “Stacey’s taller than I remember.”
“You’ll be surprised to learn this isn’t Stacey at all,” I said. “This is Michael Holly. Michael, Grant Patterson, from the Savannah Historical Association.”
“A new team member?” Grant studied Michael more carefully. “Tell me Stacey hasn’t left the firm?”
“No, she’s still around,” I said. “Michael’s a firefighter.”
“Oh, a pyrokinetic ghost?” Grant asked, his white, neatly manicured eyebrows rising. “Is this about your--”
“Not him,” I hurried to say, before Grant could ask about Anton Clay, the fire-wielding ghost who’d burned down my childhood home and killed my parents. Grant knew about it from helping Calvin research the history of my house, and all the other houses that had burned down on the same site. I wasn’t eager to chat about it at the moment.
“Not who?” Michael asked.
“Grant’s talking about a different case,” I said. “An old case.”
“Excuse my assumptions,” Grant said, with a smile for Michael. “Are you the client? Do you suffer from ghosts in the closet or attic?”
“Basement, actually,” I said. “But we took care of the ghosts in his house.” Maybe, I thought. While we’d definitely removed the boogeyman from the apartment house where Michael lived, I wasn’t so sure about the dark well in the basement, which had apparently been infested by ancient evil spirits for many centuries. A demonologist had helped us seal it, but we hadn’t encountered much resistance, as if the darkness had simply laid low and let us close the door. I didn’t think we’d seen the last chapter on that. “Michael’s not a ghost hunter or a client. He’s here, uh, socially.”
“Socially?” Grant gave me an amused smile. His eyes flicked over Michael again, as if evaluating whether he was a fit mate for me.
“I’m just really into trains. And, uh, old buses.” Michael pointed at a long red vehicle parked outside.
“That is a trolley, sir,” Grant said.
“Right,” Michael said. “I just didn’t want to get too technical.”
“Hm. Well, come along, and let’s learn about the fascinating history of Georgia’s rail industry.”
“Can we do it quickly?” I asked.
“After the time I’ve spent researching this for you?” Grant asked. “No, dear. Prepare for an earful.”
“Is that a real fully restored General Electric diesel?” Michael asked, approaching a boxy black locomotive with fat red stripes across the nose. The old engines and cars sat in individual bays, as if they’d pulled in for repairs. “Looks like a 1947 model. Man, that’s a classic.”
“You certainly know your trains,” Grant said, looking impressed.
“Don’t tell me you’re a train buff,” I said. “Or any kind of transportation-technology buff.”
“Nah, just kidding. I just read the plaques right there. Still, it’s impressive, isn’t it?” Michael looked up at the engine towering above us. “It must have seemed like a monster back in the day, tearing through the woods and past the old farms.”
“In 1827,” Grant began, walking out to the little spurs of tracks with cars parked on them, “the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company was established in Charleston to steal commerce from the Savannah River, and therefore the city of Savannah. Savannah’s business community scrambled to compete, chartering the original Central of Georgia line in 1833. It connected the port of Savannah to Georgia’s western interior cities like Macon and Atlanta, creating a rapid highway to move cotton from within the state to ships bound for the Northeast and Europe.”
“Stacey’s already going to be sad she missed this,” I said. “She just loves piles of facts, figures, and dates.”
“Of course it’s fascinating,” Grant said. “The railroad marks the beginning of the modern industrial world. After the Central of Georgia was constructed, our Savannah forefathers chartered the Savannah, Albany, and Gulf railroad in 1847, which followed a southerly course and was intended to connect Savannah with the Gulf Coast ports of Florida. There was as yet no northbound line to connect Savannah to Charleston, the next major port along the Atlantic coast.
“This is where your dead friends come in,” Grant continued. “The Georgia Canal and Railroad Company was chartered to connect the cities of Savannah and Charleston. It was an ambitious project, including a network of canals through the rivers and salt marshes that would parallel a fancy new rail line. Your Isaiah Ridley was, of course, one of the principal investors. He poured his savings into it, desiring to own as much of the stock as possible, obviously believing it would be extremely profitable.”
“Isaiah who?” Michael asked.
“A nasty ghost we had to remove from a client’s house,” I said. “He spent a hundred years tormenting the ghosts of his own kids. Carried a belt that had evolved into a long, nasty whip lined with buckles and prongs.”
“Unfortunately for your whip-wielding friend, the railroad was ill-conceived,” Grant said. “The line was to cross the marshy islands of the Savannah River, but the bridge supports proved unreliable at best. The line went bankrupt in 1851. Five years later, other investors would charter the far more successful Savannah and Charleston Railroad, wisely locating the bridge several miles north of the original failed crossing, where the ground was more solid and the river a bit straighter and narrower.”
“I wonder why the first guys didn’t do that,” Michael said.
“Most likely, that was because another major investor in the original line was Andrew Thorburn, owner of Silkgrove Plantation,” Grant said. “He wanted the rail crossing on his land so that he could profit as much as possible from it. Instead, that first attempt at a major Savannah-Charleston line ended up as nothing more than a small branch, connecting the plantation and its river docks to the later line that actually succeeded.”
“So no trains ever traveled to Charleston on the old railroad we’re investigating?” I asked.
“I’m afraid there was never much traffic on that line,” Grant said. “Just enough to shuttle cotton from Silkgrove Plantation to the main trunk line. The little spur you’re studying fell into disrepair during the Civil War and was never restored to service, as Silkgrove Plantation was out of business, permanently. There was no further use for that bit of railroad.”
“That should narrow things down for us,” I said. “Were there any train crashes along the line before it was abandoned? Something with fatalities?”
“I found no such events,” Grant said, and I felt my shoulders slump a little. “There was, however, a particular incident that may be of some small interest. Follow me.”
Grant led us to the far end of the roundhouse. He stood before a massive black steam engine, about two stories tall, the massive smokestack reaching even higher. It was polished to a gleam, the massive wheels bound together by heavy connecting rods, a powerful and dangerous-looking machine with a dark round face. The big cow-catcher at the front jutted out like the teeth of a grinning dinosaur. The locomotive looked like it would snap you up and tear you apart if you stood in its way.
“Hey, that’s the haunted train!” Michael said. “From when I was a kid. They used to hang spiderwebs and stuff all over it at Halloween.”
“A practice that was soon discontinued,” Grant told him. “It’s no surprise this was selected for redecorating as a Halloween train. It’s an 1890 Baldwin, and once upon a time it ferried passengers and cargo between Savannah and Charleston, along the second, more successful railroad we just discussed. It chugged through the towns and the pine forests in what I imagine to be a quite romantic and charming manner.
“Georgia never saw many train robberies,” he continued. “The nineteenth century saw an epidemic of them out West, stealing gold on its way to deposit in the East. The railroads here, of course, tended to be loaded with heavy produce, cotton and timber and such, not the easiest items to stuff into one’s saddlebags befor
e riding away. Not in a profitable enough volume, in any case.”
“Train robbery?” Michael said. “This is getting good. We should grab some popcorn.”
“In 1902, an evening train was halted and robbed after it left Savannah with a sizable shipment of bills and coins en route to the Bank of Charleston,” Grant said. “The lead bandit was a man named James McCoyle, a notorious outlaw who’d robbed trains in Nevada and Arizona during his younger years. He was forty-three in 1902, his wilder days behind him. He may have thought trains in the Southeast would be easier marks than those out West.
“McCoyle and his gang blasted the safe with dynamite, took the bank shipment, then robbed the passengers at gunpoint. In a gruesome twist, the gang blasted the most crowded passenger car with some remaining dynamite, killing several aboard. The engineer, conductor, and brakeman were also shot.”
“That’s terrible!” I said. “Why did he do it?”
“That is a true mystery,” Grant said. “Two of the bandits died along with the passengers, so it may be that McCoyle murdered his own cohorts to keep a larger share of the money. It doesn’t explain why he killed so many passengers along with them.”
“But he was an experienced criminal, right?” Michael said. “Wouldn’t he know that killing innocent people would bring a lot of extra attention?”
“I said it was a mystery,” Grant replied.
“Do you have a list of the people who died?” I asked.
“Of course. I have a folder of information for you. Now if you would simply let me speak for just a moment--”
“Sorry,” I said.
“McCoyle and his remaining accomplice fled, but as it turned out, there was a railroad detective on board. He was not killed by the dynamite. Instead, he pursued them, killing McCoyle and suffering a bullet in the leg for his trouble. However, McCoyle’s accomplice did escape with a significant portion of the money.”
“Did they catch him?” Michael asked. “The fourth guy?”
“There was no ‘fourth guy,’” Grant said. “The fourth member of the gang was a woman. Surviving witnesses described her as pale and freckled, red-haired, wearing a lacy red evening dress that was a bit scandalous for the era.”
“Was she ever caught?” I asked.
“Found two weeks later, in a boardinghouse in New Orleans,” Grant replied. “Dead of ‘unclean living leading to heart failure.’”
“Unclean living?” Michael asked.
“Yeah, like not doing her laundry,” I said, remembering how Michael’s clothes had been scattered everywhere the first time I’d seen his room.
“Maybe she had a gateway to Hell in her laundry room,” Michael said. “That doesn’t make it easy.”
“I have a copy of the coroner’s notes, which were fortunately shared with Savannah authorities at the time. If they hadn’t been, I’m sure we’d still be waiting for one of my contacts in New Orleans to dig up the original, if it still exists.”
“You have contacts in New Orleans?” I asked.
“The museum and library mafia, my dear,” Grant said. “Our tentacles are everywhere. In any case, her name was Maggie Fannon, and this was not her first time at the criminal rodeo. She’d previously been arrested for petty theft and fraud in Savannah and Charleston.”
“I wonder if she’s our banshee,” I said. “This is great stuff, Grant, but you said it didn’t happen on the track we’re investigating. Right?”
“Your track was already long abandoned by then,” he said. “The robbery, however, took place just at the spot where the old line once connected with the new. The gang of robbers may have hidden themselves somewhere down that track while waiting for the train.”
“How did they stop the train?” I asked.
“The usual way,” Grant said. “A red lantern, warning of emergency. It could mean a medical emergency on someone’s part, or it could warn of dangerous conditions on the tracks ahead, so the engineer was more or less obligated to stop because of that risk. It was a frequent ruse of train robbers.”
“So they stop the train, blast the safe with dynamite, then end up killing the train crew and several passengers. And two of their own, leaving just...James and Maggie. And only Maggie escapes.”
“That’s an accurate summary, though without the full flair of my recounting.” Grant nodded.
“Sounds like a plausible background for how the tracks became haunted,” I said. “We could be dealing with the ghosts of dead passengers and the entire gang of robbers. No wonder the neighborhoods in that community are crawling with the dead. Did you find anything else?”
“Death and birth records for the family who lived on that farm,” Grant said.
“Did anybody else ever die on those train tracks? Or near them?”
“If I turn up anything else, you will be the first to know,” Grant said. “From your initial request, I thought it best to spend my time digging into the train robbery.”
“Definitely,” I said. “Thanks so much, Grant.”
“It is always my pleasure,” Grant said. “We can’t have the dangerous and unpleasant sorts of ghosts overrunning the city, can we? There won’t be room left for the living.”
“And imagine the parking nightmare,” Michael said.
“Ghosts don’t normally drive cars,” I said.
“Do they normally drive trains?” he asked.
“Okay, good point.”
“I believe that concludes our tour of the train museum,” Grant said. “Unless you want to wait for the museum’s next scheduled train ride?”
“Train ride?” Michael looked down the longest track. “What does it do, travel a couple hundred feet and come back?”
“I admit it’s not a long ride. There is also the Whistle Stop Cafe, where you can order fried green tomatoes, if your life is lacking in Fannie Flag references.”
“I think I had enough fried everything this morning,” I said. “We ate breakfast at The Country Barn.”
“Then you have enough calories to survive for several weeks,” Grant said. “Provided your heart does not explode.”
“I should have bought you a hillbilly gnome, Grant. I think one would look great in your garden.”
“It is the thought that counts,” Grant said. “No need to act on it. I insist you leave the gnomes on the country kitsch shelf where they belong.”
“If you insist. Maybe I’ll get you a redneck snowglobe instead. It had a little house with a car parked on cinderblocks out front.”
“That sounds like a truly inspired work of art.” Grant adjusted the brim of his hat. “If there’s nothing else, I have a recently acquired trunk of papers to examine at the Association. Legal and property records from the 1840’s. We’re all very excited.”
“How could that not be exciting?” I asked. “Thanks again, Grant.”
We walked him to the parking lot. After Grant drove away in his chocolate-colored Mercedes sedan, Michael and I were left alone again.
“So we’re going to fight off the ghosts of some old cowboy bank robbers who haunt the abandoned train tracks,” Michael said. “Should we bring horses and six-shooters?”
“I’ll take my chances with a few high-powered flashlights. Maybe a ghost cannon,” I said. “You don’t have to come. It might get dangerous.”
“If it’s dangerous, I’m not letting you go without me.”
“It’s my job,” I said.
“Mine, too. I’m in the ‘protect everyone from everything’ business.”
“Sounds like you’ve got a Superman complex.”
“I had a Superman backpack. No, wait. Spider-Man,” he said. “It had this cool spider pull tab.”
I checked the time. “We need to get going.”
“Cowboy ghost hunting?”
“Some light domestic ghost-proofing,” I said. “I don’t want to leave my clients undefended while we’re hoboing around tonight.”
“Did you ever ghost-proof my house?” he asked as we climbed into the van
.
“Didn’t need to,” I said. “I was there the whole time. This new case is more difficult—I have to be in two or three places at once, trying to keep my clients safe while investigating the actual source of the haunting. Usually those things aren’t in conflict because the haunting focuses on just one location, but these ghosts are loose and wandering.”
“So helping you hunt ghosts counts as a date, right?” Michael said as I drove us toward the highway to the northern suburbs.
I smiled. “There’s nothing more romantic than confronting and evicting the unwanted dead. You might get scratched or thrown around, or psychologically tormented.”
“Still sounds better than the concert I dragged you to,” he said.
“True,” I said, pressing the accelerator. We had a busy night ahead, and from what Grant had told us, these spirits might be more dangerous than I’d expected—murderous criminals in life tended not to grow docile and harmless when they became restless ghosts.
Chapter Thirteen
We stopped at the office to gather up supplies. Calvin drew me aside while Michael loaded a couple of boxes into the van.
“I looked over the pictures you took,” Calvin said, while tapping at a digital tablet. “The symbols carved into the fence.”
“Any ideas?” I asked.
“They look like hobo signs,” he said. “Marks they would leave when traveling the rails to share information with each other, usually about opportunities and dangers—charitable people, work available, or police officers who will arrest hobos on sight, notes on the jail conditions, anything that might be of interest.”
I looked at the labeled symbols he’d pulled up on his screen. There were symbols for everything from mean dogs (a fence-like scratch mark) to kindhearted ladies (a crudely drawn cat). Some indicated advice like “act religious for free food” (a simple cross). One cluster of curves with an arrow meant “woman living alone,” which seemed more than a little creepy to me.
“This is great, Calvin,” I said. “I’ll have to compare them with my pictures and notes.”