by H. P. Bayne
“The book didn’t have much about the light.”
Emily giggled. “Oh, that was Jim for you. Jim Castain. He was petrified of ghosts, but he concealed it behind complete denial in their existence. I had to battle him to include anything at all about the legend, with him insisting it was all hogwash. I finally managed to convince him by showing him all the letters I’d received from former residents, many of whom made a point of asking we include the legend in the book. You see, people who lived there adopted the legend as something that made the place unique.”
“So people were definitely seeing it back then?”
“Oh, yes,” Emily said. “Those I spoke with for the book described it to me in some detail. Everyone seemed to have a story. I was utterly fascinated by it.”
Sully perked up, the microfilm suddenly feeling like a job for another day—if at all. “Do you still have your notes from back then? The things those people told you?”
“I’m sure I do,” she said. “I don’t throw anything out. You know that.” He heard the wink in her voice, and he smiled though she wasn’t there to see.
“Thanks, Emily. Can I come over and help you look?”
“Of course. Oh, and I have some of that coffee cake you love.”
Sully’s grin widened. “Awesome.”
Having sent a text to Dez to let him know he’d moved from the library to Emily’s, Sully took a bus then walked the remaining short distance to the building. Located above the Golden Hand pawn shop, the apartments were nothing to write home about. In fact, it was the sort of place you probably wanted to avoid mentioning.
The Riverview neighbourhood of Kimotan Rapids was once, long ago, a hub within the city, located next to the downtown core. Since then, a shiny new downtown had been constructed, the rich building themselves towering, glass-sided monuments in the sky—bringing the city of some eight hundred thousand into the modern age. The old downtown core contained many of the city’s staples—train and bus stations, police headquarters, central library, city hall and the like. But big business and those who could afford the added cost had moved for the sunnier climes of what was called the New Town district, leaving places like Riverview to those too poor to go anywhere else.
As a result, Riverview had gradually faded and crumbled. Along with the old downtown core, it still held some of the coolest architecture in the city, in Sully’s opinion, and the most interesting people. Everyone here had a story. Not necessarily the nicest stories in all cases, but these people could tell you things about life, love and loss that the ultra-privileged would never fully grasp. Having worked in a Riverview bar for several years, he’d heard many of their tales, and he’d come to appreciate his own life far more for having listened.
Unfortunately, the area had also become crime-ridden, requiring constant attentiveness and a brisk pace. You didn’t dare spend too long eyeing up the stained glass at St. Joe’s Cathedral or the gargoyles on the former bank buildings. Doing so would make you look like a lost tourist. And lost tourists in Riverview got mugged—or worse.
Sully keyed open the downstairs security door and jogged up the stairs. Emily was at her door immediately upon his knocking, and he wondered with some amusement whether she’d been standing there, waiting for him, the whole time.
“Come in,” she said, standing aside to make a passage for him into her small, too-warm apartment. He immediately shed his coat and removed his boots, leaving both in the entryway.
“How’s the temperature outside?” she asked. “I haven’t been out yet today. It looks cold from here.”
“It is,” he said.
“Then you’ll need some coffee,” she said.
She busied herself at the counter, having waved off Sully’s offer of help. A few minutes later, they were at her table, Sully ignoring his steaming coffee while he scarfed down a piece of her coffee cake.
“I found the notes I made,” she said. “I have a trunk in the living room where I keep things like that.” She got up and returned a moment later with a pile of papers she’d retrieved from the kitchen counter. “My notes are on top, and I’ve also attached a number of letters from former residents who told me about the Edge Creek Light. But I’m curious now. What could this have to do with a missing person? To my knowledge, the light was never blamed for anyone disappearing. It wasn’t considered threatening. Many people feared it because it was unexplainable, not for a more sinister reason.”
“The guy Dez and I are trying to find went out to see the light the night before with his girlfriend. She’s the one who’s asking us to find him. She said whatever he saw shook him up really badly. I don’t think it’s necessarily a case where the light made him disappear. It’s more likely he got freaked out and took off. It’s an avenue we’re exploring, and I don’t want to rule out the connection until we’ve covered everything we should. The main legend I heard about involved a fight and one guy getting killed on or beside a train. Did you ever confirm anything like that?”
Emily poked through her pile of papers. “Oh yes, I recall.” She mumbled to herself as she continued to flip until, eyes lighting up behind her glasses, she stopped. “Here. This one. One of the family histories I received was from a woman whose father used to work at the railway station in town. He was a porter. Anyway, here, you might as well read it yourself.”
She slid the typed letter over to Sully, then tapped gently at the spot where she thought he should start reading.
Just a few long paragraphs, but illuminating ones.
I would very much like to see you include a short piece about the light, if you could. I have been seeing it since I was a little girl, and I can tell you my friends and I were all very fascinated with it. A couple of them used to try to prove it wasn’t real by walking toward it, but they could never seem to get any closer. Then suddenly, there it would be, almost right in front of you. So deliciously frightening!
I asked my parents about it once, and my father told me a story he hadn’t shared with me when I was a child, given the violent nature of it. He said he’d been working as a porter at the station when the scheduled train came to an unexpected stop just down the line. He walked out in time to see a man running from one of the rear cars into the woods. Another man lay on the tracks some distance back, his skull crushed and one leg amputated by the train’s wheels. A rail man at the back apparently applied the rear brake and forced the train to a stop once he realized what had happened. Quite the uproar in town, you can imagine! My father couldn’t recall the exact year, but he thought it was 1909 or 1910.
It’s said the light started after the incident. People would see it at night, sometimes as a dull glow in the distance; at others, it would be very bright and would even draw close. No one ever saw it pass by them, though. It also seemed to be strongest when a death occurred somewhere near the tracks. I was told that after the tornado that killed two people, the light was extremely bright. Some people who lived near the tracks actually went to stay with relatives or friends to avoid it. In the 1930s when I was a girl, the dust storms would be so strong at times, you couldn’t see the light at all. But then it would appear, shining through the dust. It showed itself a lot in those days, as it had apparently during the big flu epidemic around 1918. Some people started to blame the light for the bad things that happened, but I think maybe it simply got stronger because of the newly departed souls.
And after the fire … well, you can imagine. People say it was never as bright as on those nights.
Anyway, if you find fit to include the story in your book, I think many would be interested.
The letter turned from there to family history, so Sully set it down and met Emily’s eye.
“This is awesome, Emily,” he said. “It helps a lot. The woman who wrote this, how credible would you say she was?”
“Very, I’d say. She was a well-respected doctor in Kimotan Rapids, not prone to making things up.”
“At least this narrows down my library search. If the light was
created because of a fight on the train, I should be able to find some names in newspaper archives.”
Emily’s smile had a note of regret to it. “I wouldn’t be too hopeful, dear,” she said. “One of the other letters I received at the time was from an elderly man who lived in Edge Creek in the late eighteen hundreds. He remembers the light even back then. Why it’s there and when it started, no one knows.”
Sully had a pretty good idea as to the why. The problem was, questioning a reaper didn’t seem like the smartest move.
7
If anything was worth knowing in paranormal mythology, Marc Echoles was likely to know it.
Sully had gotten to know the university professor a few years back, and the two had since become friends. If Sully had questions, Marc was always there to answer them.
Except when he was in class.
Seated in the hallway outside Marc’s closed office door, Sully fired off another text to Dez, letting him know where he’d gone. The office hours listed on the door revealed Marc’s return should be imminent, and Sully was pleased to see the professor stepping off the elevator. After years of juggling books, papers and whatever drink or snack he’d picked up after class, Marc had finally invested in a bag. He appeared far less harried as he strode down the hall, bag slung over one shoulder, to-go coffee mug in the opposite hand.
Marc’s eyes lit up behind his glasses as he spotted Sully waiting for him.
“Sullivan! Great to see you. I see you have questions for me.”
Sully puzzled over Marc’s observation only a couple of seconds before settling on the explanation. Marc saw auras and had also, more recently, begun to develop what he called empathic abilities. Marc could read another’s anger, grief or joy the way most people read menus. Put someone in front of him, and he knew immediately what they were all about.
Sully stood and waited as Marc unlocked the office. “I didn’t think curiosity had a colour.”
“Not curiosity so much as concern,” Marc said. He jiggled the key in the lock and withdrew it as the door clicked open. “I’d go so far as to say something’s left you fairly unsettled.”
Sully hadn’t been dwelling on last night’s incident—at least he didn’t think so—and he didn’t feel as if it had left him overly worried. Then again, Marc saw things Sully sometimes missed—including about himself.
Marc slid in behind his desk and waited for Sully to close the door and settle into one of the two chairs opposite. Then Marc leaned forward, fixing him in a curious stare.
“So what’s going on now?”
“A case,” Sully said.
“Of course. And naturally, the paranormal has found its way in.”
Sully tilted his head as he regarded Marc. “Naturally?”
“Well, it’s you, after all. These things tend to find you, don’t they?”
“There is a ghost involved. But none of this started with it appearing to me. It’s a missing person case. It didn’t come looking for me.”
“I didn’t mean ghosts always come looking for you. I meant your path in life means fate has a way of throwing these sorts of tasks in front of you. If you believe we’re all on this earth for a purpose, then you know we’ll be constantly presented with ways to meet that purpose.”
“And mine’s to help find justice for the murdered dead,” Sully concluded.
“Right. So what’s the latest? Is your missing person dead and wanting your help?”
“No, nothing like that. Not yet, anyway. We were told he was left really disturbed by something he saw right before he disappeared: the Edge Creek Light. You familiar with it?”
Marc extended his arms to each side as if to say, “Hey, it’s me.”
Sully smiled. “Okay, dumb question. Anyway, Dez and I went out there last night to see if we could figure out what might have happened to spook the guy. Neither of us had been there before, and I doubt either of us ever wants to go back.”
Marc leaned farther forward so he was pressed right up against his edge of the desk. “And what happened? What did you see?”
“We saw it. The light, I mean. But as you might expect, I saw more than that. I saw the actual train.”
Marc’s eyes turned to saucers. “So it’s real? I’ve always wondered what it was, whether it was a spirit or simply some unexplained trick of physics.”
“It’s a real train, in the ghostly sense anyway. I saw the inside of it, one of the carriages. It’s loaded with spirits, but a lot of them I couldn’t see.”
“Because they weren’t the victims of homicide.”
“Right. I did see three, but they aren’t the issue. It was another presence that disturbed me. He stood at the back of the car dressed almost entirely in black. He looked like something out of the Wild West. All he was missing was a six-shooter. He wore this wide-brimmed hat, shadowing most of his face. When he finally looked up at me, his eyes ….” A shudder wracked him as he called the memory to mind. “They were black. Just black. And shiny. Like some sort of dull light was coming from inside them. I don’t know why exactly, but I had the feeling I knew what he was.”
Marc supplied the answer before Sully could. “A reaper.”
Sully nodded. “He started to come at me, but Dez tackled me out of the path of the train before the reaper could reach me. I don’t know what the thing intended if it got right up to me. All I know is the whole thing scared the hell out of me.”
Marc sat back, his face taking on the well-practiced appearance of thought. He steepled his index fingers so the tips poked at the base of his nose. He remained like that a few long moments while Sully waited for what he hoped would be a helpful answer and not one of his more philosophical replies.
At last, Marc shifted his hands away from his face, allowing him to speak. “As lore would have it, the Grim Reaper is a cloaked skeletal figure carrying a scythe. The whole image seems fairly far-fetched to me. Plus, I’ve always thought if such a thing exists, there would have to be more than one. After all, souls depart their bodies all the time, all over the world. Seems to me it would be a big task for one reaper.”
“I wasn’t really questioning if this was a reaper,” Sully said. “Just whether it’s a threat.”
“My understanding—and this is all lore-based, of course—is that reapers don’t take souls before their time. They’re probably busy enough with the ones that come to them on their own.”
“But what if it considered me a threat? Might it think I’m trying to take souls from it? And if I can, should I? I mean, what if they’re all trapped on the train with him?”
“Did you have the feeling they were trapped?”
“I wasn’t there long enough to get a real sense of anything. One of the homicide victims I saw definitely looked panicked when he saw the reaper, but that could be a response borne of the murder itself or a natural reaction to seeing something as spooky as that reaper was.”
Marc folded his arms behind his head and leaned back so far in his chair, Sully worried the thing might topple the older man over. But Marc stayed upright, eyes fixed on the ceiling. He held the position as he finally replied.
“Traditionally, reapers aren’t so much gatherers of souls as they are conductors of them. As such, a reaper on a train seems rather apt. They don’t hold onto souls for any length of time. They simply help to guide them to Heaven or Hell—their final destination, if you will. Now, I’ve gotten to know you well enough to figure out some spirits don’t cross over easily. Some have unfinished business they wish to take care of. Some are likely afraid of what the other side holds for them. It might be this reaper can take them where they are supposed to go, but from there, it’s up to these souls to disembark. As such, it might be their fear isn’t for the reaper, but for what awaits them on the other side.”
Marc sat up straight, gaze directed at Sully. “It could be, my friend, this reaper is actually very much like you are. In your own way, you locate and conduct souls. The difference might be that you are capable of aidin
g them whereas this reaper’s tasks are much narrower. Bear in mind, reapers are not thought to be good or evil—rather, a symbol of the natural order of things. If they are strong and intimidating, it could be because they need to be. Their job is to provide safe passage for the newly dead, to ensure souls go where they are meant to go. That might mean guarding against negative spiritual forces, or it might mean corralling darker souls who aren’t going to a place of light. In this way, I suppose they could be either a guardian or a jailer.”
Marc had turned philosopher again. Sully sat forward, pinning his friend in a stare. “Okay, but what am I supposed to do about it?”
“Maybe you don’t have to do anything. This train and the reaper on board might serve a very specific and important purpose. As to his approaching you, there’s no way to know his intention, so try not to assume he intended it as a threat.”
“One other weird thing: I heard him. I asked why I was seeing him since I wasn’t dead. He answered me in words: ‘Not yet.’ How did I hear him? I can’t hear ghosts.”
Marc gave it some thought before replying. “Perhaps because he’s not a ghost. Not exactly. Some might consider a reaper something of a demigod. You yourself have been exceedingly near death in the past. It might be whatever remaining barriers might have once existed between you and that world have broken down. Does any of that help you?”
Sully considered it. He definitely felt less anxious than he had coming in here. He nodded. “Yeah. But you already knew that.”
Marc smiled. “Of course. But I wanted to make sure you did. Now about your missing person: Do you have any reason to think he or she might have any abilities similar to yours?”
“It’s a he, a seventeen-year-old high school kid. And no one’s said as much. Why?”
“Just a thought. You’re experienced in this world, and very capable of handling the worst of it. Yet this presence you saw shook you. If this young fellow saw something similar but has little to no experience in the paranormal, I can’t begin to imagine how badly it would have shaken him. I can only think something like that might drive an inexperienced psychic near-mad.”