by H. P. Bayne
And it was coming this way.
He moved forward, eyes fixed on the light ahead. It was bright. So incredibly bright.
He’d heard people talk about seeing a light when they died, and he wondered briefly whether this was his. But then one of the cops at the front of the train glanced up and froze, putting an end to Tim’s theory. If a living person could see it, this wasn’t Tim’s light.
The cop nudged his partner, and the two men rose to their feet, eyes fixed on the approaching light. One of them had a portable radio, and he peeled off a latex glove to speak into it, alarm clear on his face.
A moment later, the officer hung up and passed along information to his worried partner. Nope, no train expected for several hours, and they’d shut down the line anyway—to be safe. Trains had either been rerouted or stalled until the scene was cleared and the train in question allowed to leave.
So if not a train, and not Tim’s light to the afterlife, what was it?
The beam grew large enough the forensic investigators near the front of the locomotive leapt from their spots in haste. Yet Tim knew now no danger existed, not for them. This wasn’t a physical presence growing ever nearer in the dark.
It was ghostly.
He’d heard of the Edge Creek Light, knew the stories thanks to a friend who’d taken delight in hauntings. He’d never had a desire to drive out and see something that would scare or unsettle him. Yet here he was.
More unnerving, he couldn’t shake the belief it was coming for him.
As the nervous chatter from the living continued around him, Tim built up the nerve to draw nearer the track. Maybe this was it, the answer he needed. The light grew so close it would have been blinding were he looking through physical eyes. He watched, waited, until eventually he saw what was behind the light: an old-fashioned train, the kind in history books, rolling soundlessly to a stop.
Steam rose around it as it paused there. Tim moved closer.
He could make out several passenger cars behind the engine, outlines of heads and shoulders suggesting others were on board, peering out into the dark of early morning.
As he watched, a figure appeared in the doorway of the nearest carriage. The man was dressed in black with a wide brim hat casting his face in shadow. He hovered there, a tall, lean shape unmoving but for an arm held out, hand beckoning Tim forward.
The figure unsettled him, made the human activity near the death scene disappear into the background. Tim kept his distance, though he continued forward, past the figure in the doorway, to grant himself a better glimpse of the train itself.
Were the others he saw onboard dead like him? Lost, directionless? Had they, too, met with tragic outcomes or unexplained ends? Would this train take them where they needed to go?
Terrified and yet drawn to the train—and to the figure standing aboard—Tim started toward the doorway.
Movement caught his attention. A hand slapped against a window, fingers extended and splayed. As it streaked down the window, it left behind a trail of blood.
Tim stepped backward. The added distance wasn’t enough to keep him from seeing the face that next pressed itself alongside the appendage in the window—or what was left of a face. First nothing more than a shape, it emerged into the dim light as a mess of blood and bone. What remained of flesh and hair was restricted to one side. What had happened to the other side, he didn’t know.
And he sure as hell didn’t want to.
The only thing he wanted to do now was flee.
10
Sully had gone rigid, his body trembling under the weight of whatever he was seeing.
Dez had witnessed his brother caught up in these visions far more times than he cared to remember. While he had put to rest some of his fears of the unknown, he remained unsettled by observing what Sully endured while communicating with the murdered dead.
Dez took a step forward, allowing him to monitor his brother more closely. His breath was coming in tight, shallow huffs. His eyes, though closed, moved erratically behind his lids. Whether in pain or terrified by something, Dez couldn’t be sure. He knew when Sully was shown something by a ghost, he didn’t just see it as an observer; he experienced it as if it were happening to him. Meaning he’d faced death in the most horrific ways imaginable, had experienced what it felt like to be murdered countless times and yet managed to come out the other side able to function.
Saying he was the strongest person Dez had ever known was an immense understatement.
Problem was, Sully wasn’t always able to let go. That’s where Dez came in.
He raised a hand, preparing to pull his brother toward him, away from the ghost—and so hopefully the vision. A hand on his arm stopped him.
“What are you doing?” Lachlan asked.
“I can’t leave him in there for too long. He can’t always put up the barriers he needs to so he can pull himself back. It gets to be too much for him.”
“And if you draw him out right before Tim tells him something?”
“Believe me, ghosts who want to tell him something find a way. My job is to let it happen in a way that’s not going to do Sully in. Look at him. He’s had enough.”
Lachlan dropped his hand from Dez’s elbow. Dez, in turn, wrapped his fingers around Sully’s tricep.
“Sully? Hey, Sull, that’s enough, man. Let go.”
When he got no response after a few seconds, Dez took a more direct approach. He yanked him away from the track and, hopefully, whatever presence stood there.
The response was as he expected. Sully’s knees buckled at the sudden release from the ghost’s hold. Not wanting to drop him in the snow, Dez held him upright for a few moments, long enough for Sully to return fully to the here and now.
“The hell?” Sully mumbled.
Dez spoke through a smile directed at the top of his brother’s head. “Sorry, buddy. Looked like you were getting a little too caught up in whatever that was.”
Sully nodded and patted Dez’s chest. He took back the bulk of his own weight, but kept one hand bunched up in the material of Dez’s coat as if uncertain whether he could maintain the upright posture.
Lachlan circled around to peer into Sully’s face. “What did you see?”
“He showed me his death.”
“Great!” Lachlan exclaimed. “Who did it?”
“He doesn’t know.”
“How can he not know?”
Sully released Dez fully and scrubbed a hand down his face, as if ridding himself of the last of an overwhelming vision. He took a few seconds to reply. “It doesn’t really work the way some people think it does. Just because a person dies and enters spirit form doesn’t mean they suddenly become all-knowing. They only know the things they did in life. If a person didn’t see who killed them while it was happening, they won’t know any more once they’re dead. You remember Justice Montague, right? Same thing. And sometimes it’s even more complicated. You know how people who go through trauma will sometimes block out certain things?”
Lachlan nodded. “Post-traumatic amnesia.”
“Happens to ghosts too. Sometimes the way a person died is seared on their consciousness to the extent they can’t think of anything else. Other times, their consciousness packs it away so they don’t have to relive it.”
“And you’re saying Tim’s the latter?”
“Not exactly. I think, in his case, it’s more a matter of him being too far gone to be aware of what was happening to him. He does remember one thing, though, and it’s pretty unpleasant. He was knocked unconscious after he got back to his car in a parking lot at night. At work late, maybe? His next memory is of waking up blindfolded with a tube down his throat. He felt really full, like something had been pumped down him—and still was.”
Dez shuddered. “Jeezus. Seriously? That’s how whoever did this got the alcohol down him?”
Sully nodded. “Next thing he knew was looking down and seeing his dead body next to the train that hit him.”
&nbs
p; “So as I suspected, then,” Lachlan said. “Someone forced the booze down his throat, then dumped him on the track. And you’re sure he didn’t give you anything else? I know you said he was blindfolded, but he didn’t hear any voices?”
“My ability is limited,” Sully reminded him. “I can’t hear ghosts, and I can’t hear anything inside the visions. I can tell you Tim didn’t give any indication he knew his killer. I’m not saying he didn’t—we all know most homicides involve people who knew each other. It’s just that he wasn’t in a position to know who did it.”
“So where does this leave us?” Dez asked.
Sully frowned. “Not much further ahead than we were to begin with.”
Lachlan grinned. “Come on, boys. Perk up. It tells us one very important thing.”
Dez thought through Lachlan’s words and arrived at one conclusion. “We know he was murdered?”
Lachlan grasped a handful of Dez’s coat, drawing him down slightly so as to better look him in the eye.
“We know I was right.”
Sully drew a few steps away, and Dez turned to him. “What are you doing now?”
Sully’s eyes remained fixed on something near the tracks Dez couldn’t see. “Tim’s still here. I want to see if he knows anything about Gabe.”
Dez’s first thought was to tell him no—he looked drained from his last encounter—but he bit his tongue. He had to trust his brother knew his limits.
As it happened, it didn’t matter. Sully spoke quietly, then turned back to him and Lachlan. “Tim wouldn’t share anything, just shook his head. Now he’s gone.”
“So he doesn’t know?” Lachlan asked.
Sully’s eyes remained fixed on the spot where Dez guessed he’d last seen Tim. “I don’t think that’s it. I don’t think he wants to tell us.”
“Hang on,” Dez said. “He knows where his missing kid is, and he won’t say? You know how that sounds?”
Sully turned to him, his face blank, as if waiting on Dez to finish his thought.
Dez complied. “Sounds like the ultimate in child custody disputes. What if Tim’s been watching the problems Gabe has at home with his mom and stepdad? Maybe he thinks the kid would be better off with him.”
“Which means he wants Gabe to die so they can be together?” Sully asked. “I don’t know. I didn’t get that off him.”
“One thing about being a parent, Sull. It’s ingrained in you to keep your kids close, to protect them. Tim can’t protect Gabe in his current state. Maybe it’s messing with his mind.”
“Still not seeing it. He doesn’t strike me as unstable.”
Lachlan crossed his arms. “So it’s not the other possibility then? Maybe Whitebear’s lonely and terrified on the other side and wants someone with him he loves and trusts?”
“He’d have to be incredibly selfish,” Sully said. “And I don’t think he’s that either.”
“No offence, kid,” Lachlan said. “But you’ve known him only a few minutes.”
“I know him a bit better than that,” Sully said. “For a few minutes, I was him.”
With nothing more coming from Tim for the time being, the three of them returned to the car.
“First things first,” Lachlan said. “We’re going to have to start reinterviewing witnesses, and I think Tim’s boss is a good place to start.”
“He’s kind of a bigwig, isn’t he?” Dez asked. “Head of the rail company and all.”
“Head of the northwestern branch,” Lachlan corrected. “Main office is out east. If he’s grown too big for his britches, I’ll pull him down to size in a hurry.”
Dez grinned as he ran an internet search for the phone number.
A few minutes later, number to the northwestern head office punched into his phone, Lachlan made the call. From this end of the conversation, it sounded as if the manager—Carson O’Keefe—was going to prove a hard sell. But this was Lachlan, and it took less than two minutes for him to successfully demand a meeting.
“The missing kid is coming in handy,” Lachlan said upon hanging up. “Hard for people to turn me down once I tell them a kid’s life is at stake.”
They hit the road, back to the city. Northern Rail still had its main office at the railway station, a large, Victorian-era structure in the old downtown core. Many of the freight trains ran out of depots in the city’s outskirts now, but passenger trains still came and left from the downtown station, giving it an old-world charm that seemed to suit everyone.
Lachlan skipped the information desk and made his way to a short row of elevators, leaving Dez and Sully to follow.
“Can I help you?” a woman called from the information desk.
“Meeting with Mr. O’Keefe,” Lachlan replied and continued on his current path.
Dez exchanged a look with Sully. On their own, they would still be back at the info desk.
Once inside the elevator, they had two destinations to choose from: up or down. The lowermost level held the train platforms, leaving the sole upper floor for office space. Lachlan punched the “2” button and stepped back as the door closed.
A receptionist’s desk awaited them as they exited the elevator, a barrier even Lachlan couldn’t simply hurdle.
“Lachlan Fields for Carson O’Keefe,” he said.
The all-business tone had the receptionist reaching for the phone without so much as a word of greeting or acknowledgment. Then again, maybe Carson had alerted the receptionist to the impending arrival and the fact he wasn’t particularly pleased about it.
The receptionist hung up a moment later. “End of the hall, on your left. He’ll see you in the boardroom.”
Carson wasn’t yet there when they arrived, giving them a moment to study their surroundings. While the carpet looked new, little else appeared to have been changed since the building was constructed. The walls were panelled with dark wood, and a large oak table in the centre of the room matched perfectly. The chairs weren’t period, but they also had a classic style. Dez guessed they’d cost a bit more than the standard office chair. A bank of three large windows and numerous lamps upon side tables lightened what otherwise would have been an exceedingly dark room.
Carson didn’t delay, bustling into the room moments after they’d arrived.
“I only have a few minutes, gentlemen,” he said. “If we could make this quick, I’d greatly appreciate it.”
He moved immediately to a seat at the head of the table, one Dez guessed he occupied at every meeting—save, perhaps, when the company’s head honchos were in town. Carson O’Keefe wasn’t a large man, though a little too heavy around the middle. But in just his shirtsleeves, a slight bulge of muscle revealed the man worked out. He stood fewer than six feet, and Carson remedied the height differential by waving the other men into chairs before he himself sat. His facial hair was carefully sculpted, his head shaved close to the scalp—something Dez took as Carson’s beating nature to the punch.
His receding hairline was likely the only thing in Carson’s life that didn’t do as he directed.
Lachlan waited until the man was settled and focused on him before launching into it. “I won’t beat around the bush. I know you’re a busy man. As I said on the phone, we’re looking into the disappearance of a young man.”
“Tim Whitebear’s son. You said. What about it?”
“It seems he went missing after going out to see the Edge Creek Light. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you about the significance of that particular spot.”
“I recall very well Tim killed himself there. Did the boy know?”
“We’re not certain yet. All we know is something upset him quite badly that night, enough he left his home and didn’t return. As a result, we need to ask some questions about the Whitebear death.”
Carson leaned back in his chair. The springs beneath protested the movement. “I still don’t understand how reopening a very painful chapter will help any.”
“Humour me,” Lachlan said. “What can you tell us abou
t what happened?”
“I told all of this to the police at the time. Can’t you pull my statements?”
“I’m not a policeman anymore,” Lachlan said. “Accessing the file isn’t a simple process.”
Dez noted his boss, while fudging facts a little, hadn’t gone so far as to outright lie about not having the file. He did his part by maintaining the same posture and avoiding glancing at his brother.
Carson sighed. “Okay, if you really think it will help find the boy. What do you want to know, exactly?”
“Tell us what you remember. Your own words.”
Carson sat forward, resting his forearms on the table and leaning into them as his fingertips came together. “All right. I remember being shocked when it happened. I got a call late at night from someone in human resources. One of the crew members had called to report a fatality on the line. As you can imagine, I went out right away. By the time I arrived, someone had already identified the deceased man as Tim Whitebear, the head of our accounting department. By then, the conductor was in police custody, and I learned he had been drinking quite heavily prior to the collision. He was being charged with impaired operation, and they were still to decide whether he would also be charged in the death. Ultimately, he wasn’t, and it was further determined Tim took his own life.”
Lachlan leaned into the table, mirroring Carson’s position. “What do you remember about Tim? Did he seem upset or depressed about anything in the time leading to his death?”
Carson shook his head slowly. “No. Not really. That’s why the whole thing seemed so strange to me. He and his wife had just had a baby, and he was over the moon about it. And he’d recently been promoted, so his career was going the right way. The only thing I thought might have upset him—and I told this to the police—was his car had been vandalized a week or two before his death. I don’t remember exactly when or even what it said—some sort of racial slur. It apparently happened in the parking lot while Tim was at work late, which was one of the reasons I saw him as management material.