Four Corners Dark: Horror Stories (2 page)

“Are you sure of that, my friend?” Omar asked calmly. He turned and stared into the eyes of the man on the machine gun.

“Am I what?” the man shouted back. “Do you know who we are?”

“Of course I do, Miguel,” Omar answered. “I know you all very well, but the question is how well do you know Francisco?” Omar gestured towards the man behind the machine gun.

Miguel looked back and bullets began ripping through the cab. Francisco fired four hundred rounds leaving the truck oozing with bloody pulp and the bed filled with shell casings. Francisco sat dazed for a moment, then pulled a knife from his boot and plunged it into his own throat. Blood sprayed and sizzled on the hot metal of the gun barrel. Omar turned towards the travelers and found them all face down on the ground. Anna had her Colt in her hand ready to fire. She put the gun away and helped Rosa to her feet.

“Let’s move out,” he said. His voice was matter of fact, as if he had just stopped to swat a fly.

CHAPTER THREE

T
he travelers were near the point of exhaustion when a brilliant light illuminated the clear desert sky. They followed Omar to a clearing where the outline of a magnificent train depot came into view. The building rose out of the desert sand six stories high. The roof capped two towers connected to a clock in the center of the building. The clock, which had no hands, was two stories high with Roman numerals on its face.

“We are here at last!” one of the women exclaimed.

Anna helped Rosa to the station fighting a sense of dread that trumped her fear of narcos and the border patrol. When they reached the building, people poured through etched glass doors and onto a balcony that overlooked the station floor. A single set of tracks ran along the far wall of the building and marble staircases led down to the platform. The station appeared to be empty with suitcases, water bottles and articles of clothing littering the polished floors.

The travelers, tired and filthy from the journey, followed Omar to the floor of the station. He was still perfectly groomed with polished boots and a crisply pressed shirt. He assembled them at the edge of the track.

“Group one, over here,” he said, gesturing. “Group two, over there,” he said, pointing down the platform.

Once the groups were in place he inspected and counted them.

“Thirty four heads” Omar said to himself.

He stepped over a disgarded suitcase and took his place in between the two groups.

They had waited in silence for an hour when one of the men finally spoke.

“Señor. How much longer for the train?”

Omar glared at the man and walked past him. No one asked again. They waited three more hours sitting on the marble floor of the station.

Shortly before 3 a.m. a train whistle sounded in the distance. When the whistle blew a second time the black hulk of a locomotive appeared in front of them followed by a coal car, an ornate rail car and twenty box cars. Engine 18 was stenciled in script on its side. The track underneath the train was in flames with hot embers between the smoldering ties.

The crowd stepped back as flames erupted from the train and spread throughout the station. The travelers were surrounded and began to scream. Anna and Rosa, in the back of the crowd, were knocked to the ground. They watched the flames engulf the travelers. Anna helped Rosa take cover behind a bench. The fire swept across the platform and the travelers disappeared in waves of billowing smoke. Moments later they appeared in the barred windows of the box cars, shouting and pounding on the wooden doors.

Anna and Rosa were surrounded by fire and began to cough from the smoke. Anna spotted a gap in the flames and pulled Rosa towards the opening. A dark shape formed within the smoke and Omar stepped forward.

“Ladies?” he said politely, extending his hand.

“Stay where you are,” Anna said pointing the Colt at Omar.

“As you wish,” Omar responded.

Anna cocked the gun and fired a round past Omar’s ear.

“We want out of here,” she said.

“Of course,” he said. Steam blew from his lips and caught Anna and Rosa in its scalding embrace.

CHAPTER FOUR

A
nna woke staring at the ornate ceiling of a Pullman car. She was dazed, unable to focus her eyes and her right hand throbbed in pain. Her weapon was gone but an imprint of the gun was branded into her palm. Her grandfather had left the pistol and twenty thousand dollars to her father but he died before he could drink up the money. The police believed he was caught skimming collections from his employers, but Anna knew the truth. He came home drunk one night, began beating her, and she shot him.

Anna sat up and looked around the room. The walls were covered in satin walnut and polished to a brilliant shine. She tried to stand but collapsed back down in the chair.

“Don’t try to stand yet. It will pass,” someone whispered.

Three women she had been travelling with were in the room all dressed in an odd variety of clothing, one in a gown, another in a Roman tunic and the third in a leather bondage outfit.

The women looked drugged. Anna stood and approached a mirror hanging on the wall and saw a reflection she hardly recognized. She was dressed in a Nazi uniform. She turned towards the other women.

“Where the hell are we?” she asked.

“On a train,” the woman in the bondage outfit shouted and began to laugh. She took a large gulp from a silver cup. “You should try this it is delicious,” she said in a slurred voice.

A wine decanter full of a deep-red liquid sat on a table covered with white linen. Anna lifted the decanter and smelled the liquid, recoiling from the pungent smell. She put the decanter down in disgust.

“Where are the others?” she demanded.

“Back there,” one of the women answered. “In the bad place.” She giggled.

Anna walked to the back of the train car, swung open the door and stepped out on the observation deck where cold air whipped past her face. A mass of people writhed within the freight car behind her. The train was moving so fast that the landscape was indistinguishable. She needed to find Rosa and escape when it slowed. She walked back inside and found a doorway at the front of the car but the door was locked.

She peered through a stained glass window into the next room. Two young men were drinking from silver glasses and were dressed as oddly as the women. Anna knocked on the glass and the men waved and laughed. She knocked again and pointed at the door. One of the men stumbled over and opened it. They were in a small office with a built-in mahogany desk and two burgundy leather chairs. The men saluted and began laughing as Anna walked past them.

CHAPTER FIVE

A
nna entered a narrow passageway where a wood floor led to a series of doors. She pushed the first door inward. White bed linens were covered with blood and a silver cup had been dropped on the floor. Liquid had soaked into the wool carpeting and in the middle of the spill was a human finger. She put her hand to her mouth and stumbled back out into the passageway.

Somewhere ahead she heard Omar’s voice. He spoke but she couldn’t understand him, he wasn’t speaking Spanish or English, but something else altogether. She walked to a door at the end of the passageway and listened. Cremo, acquire and piaculum, the language he spoke was Latin. She heard footsteps and slipped into another room; Omar walked past and addressed the women in the back.

“Ladies how are we doing?” Omar said. “More wine?” His voice had a festive ring.

She looked around the empty room, opened a closet door and found a silver cane hanging on a wooden peg. She took the cane and felt its weight. It was heavy, made from black ebony and silver. She gripped the cane, wincing from the pain in her hand, and waited to surprise Omar. He returned within a few minutes but wasn’t alone.

“You will like it up here better than that box car,” he said in Spanish. “But first I need you to do for me one small favor.”

She peered out the door and saw one of the travelers walking behind Omar. He was an older man whose clothes were covered in soot and soaked with sweat. They walked into the next room.

Anna followed behind prepared to beat Omar to death. She swung open a door and entered a lavish dining room. The table was set with fine linens, crystal glasses and china. All the chairs surrounding the table were mahogany trimmed with red velvet, except the chair at the head of the table which was scorched black. She reached a door at the end of the train car and saw Omar and the man climbing down from the coal car and onto the locomotive.

Anna climbed onto the coal car, the wind whipped coal dust into her face as she crawled across the loose coal. She reached the end and peered over the edge, Omar was behind the man in the cab of the locomotive. The door of the firebox was open and the fire burned with blue-tipped flames. The man stared at the fire, dropped to his hands and knees then crawled into the firebox.

The man’s screams rose above the wind as the fire engulfed him, then stopped leaving only the clacking of the train on the tracks.

Omar closed the door to the firebox, turned and suddenly appeared at the top of the coal car. Anna stumbled back and tightened her grip on the cane. He began to laugh and spoke in her father’s drunken voice.

“Hija. You think you can ride for free and not pay for what you did to me?” he asked and began to laugh again.

Anna felt something wet soaking into the knees of her jeans. The bed of the car was no longer filled with coal but with bodies. She cried out and began crawling back towards the back of the train. She was covered in blood when reached the end of the car, and the cane slipped from her hand as she climbed down the ladder. Sparks flew as it ricocheted off of the tracks and disappeared into the night.

She jumped across to the Pullman car and fell onto the metal platform. Omar’s silhouette was moving across the coal car towards her. She reached out and grabbed the pin that connected the train cars. She twisted the pin and it began to move, her burnt hand ached from the effort. She pulled harder and when the pin came free she lost her balance and tumbled onto the track between the cars. The locomotive and coal car roared ahead when the couplings disengaged and Omar smashed his fists and screamed in rage. His shadow turned from black to an orange flame then disappeared. The Pullman and its line of cargo cars slowly ground to a stop.

Anna saw a brilliant flash and awoke lying on the floor of the train depot. The ornate depot was a dilapidated shell, starlight streamed through holes in the ceiling, and the brick walls of the building were scorched and covered in soot. People were waking all around her. Some whimpered but most sat stunned staring in the dark. She climbed to her feet and walked to a far wall where she found Rosa.

“Gracias” Rosa said as Anna helped her up.

In the distance a train whistle echoed across the desert. Panicked voices began to rise in the depot. The whistle sounded again this time much closer. Anna grabbed Rosa and ran for the front doors of the building. They joined the other travelers and escaped into the desert night leaving their possessions behind scattered across the floor of the depot.

RETURN TO
NOWHERE

CHAPTER ONE

S
eptember 1st, 1944. 9:01 a.m. The fog formed a dense blanket beneath the orange glow of the bridge. A cold mist infused the wind as cars sped by unaware of a man standing on the brink of death. The man moved quickly and deliberately oblivious to the cold or the cars. He was unlike others who had jumped from the Golden Gate. Frank Reynolds had jumped from this bridge before. Some did survive, battered and broken but Frank wouldn’t take that chance again. He climbed onto the metal railing and held a steel cable for balance. The bed of fog below was twenty-five stories down and ended in granite hard water. He glanced at his watch, threw down his cigarette and jumped head first.

He fell into the sea of white fog and remembered the first time he jumped, soon after the bridge opened in 1937. He had taken a financial beating in ’29 and lost everything, including his wife and kids. After struggling on for a few years he had reached the end of the line. The sky was a clear blue that day and the water was visible below him. He remembered the makes, models and license plate numbers of every car that passed by. Earlier that day a couple had stopped to ask him directions.