20
I've never considered myself a patient person, and standing in a snowstorm by an incomplete railway track on the side of a mountain pass, while waiting for my partner and a young friend to ambush a gang of murderers, did nothing to disprove this assessment. Every minute was a fresh hell of anxiety, near panic, and feared mental collapse.
Then came the expected gunshots.
I had expected them to be louder, but they were strangely muffled by the snow. I counted three shots, and then silence. I waited until I could bear it no more, and then I called out.
“Jack.”
No response.
“Jack!”
I ran forward, and I could see the vestibule door of the car was open. There was a figure standing in the vestibule, back to me. As I drew closer, I saw the man's head, and the monkish hair, and knew it wasn't Jack. My heart sank, because I realized it was Grunvand.
“Oh, Jack.”
Grunvand turned then, a stiff sort of turn. Both of his hands were clutching his chest, and even through the snow I could see the blood that poured through his fingers. He looked at me with wide, pleading eyes, then pitched sideways and fell beside the tracks.
I ran up the vestibule steps and into the car.
Jack was kneeling beside Delaney, who was on the floor next to the Winchester. He was holding his side.
“Oh, no,” I said.
“He hesitated,” Jack said. “Why did you hesitate?”
“At the last moment I thought it possible to take him alive,” Delaney said. “I thought he represented a valuable intelligence asset the railway could make use of. You had the drop on him, as they say, and it seemed he was about to surrender his gun to me.”
“It was the road agent spin,” Jack said. “Oldest trick in the book. I've used it a few times myself.”
Jack pulled Delaney's hand away, pulled back his coat, and examined the hole in his cream-colored vest.
“I'll be damned,” Jack said.
He pulled out Delaney's pocket watch. The crystal was shattered and the lid was punctured, but the lead slug was flattened in the guts of the watch.
“Talk about stopping time,” Calder said, pulling Delaney to his feet. “You're going to have a nasty bruise, and maybe a broken rib, but you'll be all right.”
Delaney made a face that said yes, a rib was cracked, if not broken. Calder ejected two shells from his revolver and replaced them with cartridges from his belt. He did not put the gun back in its holster, but held it at the ready.
The interior of the car was richly appointed, with lamps and couches, tables and chairs, and a bed, but otherwise empty.
“Where are the others?” I asked.
“They must have heard us by now,” Jack said, picking up the Winchester and handing it to Delaney. “We are at a disadvantage here, so I say we press on.”
Then Calder walked to the front of the car, went through the door, and tried the knob to the next car, the one just behind the locomotive. It was locked. He cocked the revolver, then drew his leg back and kicked the door in.
The interior of the car was filled with a blue mist.
Calder followed the barrel of his gun inside, and Delaney was close behind.
“What in the world?” Jack asked.
In the center of the car, which was as richly appointed as the other, was a small circular table, and in the middle of the table was the spirit key. On one side sat Moria, and on the other was a finely dressed gentleman of fifty-five or sixty years, with black hair that had gone to gray at the temples. Their hands were clasped tightly together. Moria's eyes were rolled back in her head so that only the whites showed.
“It's a séance,” I said quietly.
“Don't shoot,” the man whispered, his eyes darting over at us. “I'm afraid to let go.”
“Put down your guns,” I said, stepping forward.
Jack put a hand on my arm.
“No, it's all right,” I whispered. “She's not seeing anything right now, not in this world, and we know where their hands are.”
“How many more on the train?” Calder asked. “Engineer? Fireman?”
“No more,” the man said. “It's just us.”
Delaney shook his head.
“Can't be,” he said.
“Stay here,” Calder said. “I'll go check.”
I took a seat away from the table, and I motioned for Delaney to do the same.
“You must be Benson,” I said.
“How do you know me?”
“Moria told me,” I said. “After poisoning my friends.”
“Have you made contact with Vail?” I asked.
Benson looked surprised. His eyes had a strange, unfocused quality.
“Figured that one out on my own,” I said. “AVAIL SPEEDWELL. I should have had it from the start. But it took finding the letters from Hopkins's shack before I put it together.”
“Please,” Benson said. “Be still. We are at grave risk.”
“No, I don't think I will be quiet,” I said. “You and your partner have caused me, and the rest of the country, too much trouble. Tell me why the key is so important, and why you had to come here.”
“Closer to the sky,” Benson whispered. “At the end of an unfinished line.”
“Like an incomplete message.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Why? What do you hope to gain, other than sending us technologically back to our antebellum past? It has to do with incomplete messages, doesn't it?”
“The future is just another kind of incomplete message,” he said. “A signal that has not been received yet. For someone to be able to decode the future, there would be no limit to the possibilities.”
“This is what Moria sold you.”
“I met her a year ago, while seeking a surer way to profit in the stock market,” he said. “She did some trance readings for me that proved amazingly accurate, but not repeatable. It was a random sort of thing. Then, in a trance, during a time of a ripple in the luminiferous aether, Moria made chance contact with the spirit of Vailâand received convincing intelligence from the future.”
“What intelligence?”
“This train is the result,” he said. “It runs on electricity.”
“Impossible,” Delaney said.
“It's true,” Calder said, coming back into the car. “There's nothing in the inside of the locomotive except bundles of wires and strange-looking devices of shining metal. No engineer, no fireman. Whatever is making this thing run ain't steam.”
“Wasn't this machine enough?” I asked. “It's worth unimaginable fortunes.”
“Nothing is ever enough,” Benson said. “Moria swore that if we waited until there was a tear in the aether, we could establish permanent contact with Vail. She said she had a way of keeping him here, that we could have all of the information about the future we wanted, just like a stock ticker.”
The key crackled and glowed brightly blue. Moria began muttering something about patents and contracts and government grants. Then she began giving the results of the Whig National Convention in 1844, the one held in Baltimore.
“Henry Clay,” she said. “Henry Clay, nominated for president.”
Benson cocked his head to one side, listening.
“You're night blind, aren't you?” I asked.
Benson's lips trembled.
“Do you know what she's done to you?” I asked. “She has poisoned you. Night blindness is a symptom of white arsenic poisoning, administered over a period of time. Tell me, was it in the vinegar pie?”
“Oh, God.”
“At least she's consistent,” I said.
“It was the only thing she knew how to cook.”
“It wasn't bad,” Calder said. “Deadly, but tasty.”
“Please, you have to help me,” Benson said. “A doctor. Find me a doctor.”
“It will do no good,” I said. “There's no cure, no antidote. By the time you are night blind, death is certain. Your heart will fail, most likely.”
“Professor Morse,” Moria asked, her voice deep, her chin up. “Professor Morse, is that you? I think I've found the solution to the cypher. Yes, dots and dashes. No, wait. Another message coming now. Great loss of life, a ship at sea. It is April 14, Professor.”
“We shouldn't be listening to this,” I told Calder. “Shut her up.”
“Gladly,” he said. He removed his kerchief, rolled it up, and gagged her by tying it around her face. Her eyelids trembled, but she remained in the trance.
“Tell me how Moria planned on trapping Vail.”
“We needed the key first,” Benson said. “She determined it was the only thing that Vail would directly interact with. And then the magnetic coils from the engine. The lines which run from the key are tapped directly into them.”
“So you were going to suck him out of the spirit world and put him in a bottle?” Calder asked.
“Something like that, yes.”
“Ain't going to happen,” Calder said, and before I could stop him, he jerked the wires out of the back of the key. The blue mist in the car grew denser and began to pulse, and we could hear a curious hum coming from the electromagnetic locomotive.
“You've killed us,” Benson said. “If the wires are disconnected, the infernal machine will destroy itself.”
“How much time do we have?”
“Three minutes,” he said. “Perhaps less.”
“Alfred Vail,” I said aloud. “Time is short and you must listen to me. You think you're alive, but you're not. You've been dead for some years, and have been trapped in the aether. Do you hear me, sir?”
The key on the table clicked several times.
“I know a little code,” Delaney said. “That means yes.”
“Shouldn't we leave now?” Calder asked.
I shushed him.
“Your unfinished business has now drawn to a close,” I said. “You will receive the recognition you deserve. People who care about such things will know. Starting tonight.”
More clicks from the key.
“Good,” Delaney translated.
“But there is one thing we require,” I said. “The network that you created must be healed. Can you seal the rift, close the door between the living and the dead, and quiet the lines?”
Silence.
“You were a good and humble man in life,” I said. “You avoided conflict and strife, made peace where you could, and used your gifts for the good of all humanity. I ask nothing more of you now.”
The key chirped.
“Done,” Delaney said.
“All right,” I said. “Let's go.”
Calder hauled Moria up, and Delaney pried her hands away from Benson's. I hesitated for a moment, and then grabbed the spirit key and threw it into my satchel.
“Come on,” Calder told Benson. “Let's go.”
Benson shrank from him.
“No,” he said. “It is no use. I am already dead.”
I grabbed his collar, but Delaney pulled me away.
“We have to go,” he said.
Moria could not, or would not walk, so Calder carried her in his arms. We ran out of the car, stumbling down the steps to the road bed, and then running through the snowstorm back toward the
Ginery Twitchell
. Behind us, the bullet-shaped train was glowing an intense shade of blue, so much so that it cast our shadows before us.
Delaney paused, holding his ribs, and tried to look back.
“No,” I said. “Keep going. Don't look back.”
He turned and I slipped my arm through his to keep him in the right direction.
Then there was an indescribable sound, like that of a hundred thousand bees, and the glow behind us became brighter than daylight. I could feel the heat from it on the back of my neck. Then there was an explosion that made the air ripple and the wave knocked us facedown in the snow.
I must have lost consciousness, for the next thing I remember was Calder pulling me to my feet. The storm had passed and the night was completely dark, with untold millions of glittering stars in the sky above us, with just a few wispy clouds.
There wasn't a trace of anything in the sky that didn't belong.
“It's over,” he said.
“The dark train?” I asked.
“Not a trace of it,” he said. “Nothing.”
“We'll let people think of it as a ghost train,” I said. “It will be easier that way. Where's Moria?”
“I've got the handcuffs on her,” Calder said. “And the kid is guarding her. We'll take her back to Marion County to stand trial for the murder of Hopkins. I don't think we can make any charges from what happened here stick.”
“No,” I said. “I suppose not.”
“Come on,” Calder said. “You're freezing. Let's find that trading post and get warm. I'm sure the railway will send someone looking for us by morning, because I'll bet the lines are already open.”
“And I would bet you're right,” I said.
Calder nodded, then rubbed the back of his right ear.
“There's just one thing I don't understand, Ophelia. Why did you grab the spirit key before we got out of the train? Hasn't it caused enough trouble? I mean, shouldn't it have been sucked back to wherever the train went?”
“That's the thought that crossed my mind first,” I said. “But then I realized it wasn't part of that world, it's part of ours. The key should be in a museum, and I'm going to keep it until the day it is. AVAIL SPEEDWELL. It sums up Alfred's legacy quite well, I thinkâand a promise is a promise.”
“But what if it's still, you know . . .”
“Haunted?”