The Rail Specter

by Vennessa Robertson

  “Where is it now?”

  “In London.” I closed my eyes. “Buried with my papa.”

  Nate turned away. “Vivian.”

  “I’m sorry Nate, I loved him so much and I wanted to send him with something I valued.”

  He closed his eyes for a long moment.

  “I’m sorry.” The words were hollow, I knew it even as I said them. Men are islands. There is little they can rely on, little they can depend upon. If they are lucky, they are matched with good wives who care for them and support them and are their partners in all things. If they are lucky, they have a true, loyal friend. His truest friend, his beloved dog, Ranger, gave his life for him when they disturbed the leywell under London and Nate acquired his canithrope powers. Ranger was killed that night. He lost his best friend. Had he been the only one Nate could really rely on?

  No. Nate could rely on me.

  Then why had I hidden the ruby? Keeping it kept Nate safe, but there was something more. I couldn’t bear to be parted from it. There was something about it. I was holding it so tight my arm throbbed all the way to the shoulder. I was only vaguely aware Nate was moving.

  He was halfway out the door before I came back to myself.

  “Where are you going?” I demanded.

  “For a walk.” The door closed behind him. I would rather he gave it a spirited slam. The quiet click was more than a door between us, it was a wall, built brick by brick, closing us off from one another.

  I fell across our bed and cried, the ruby clenched in my fist.

  Chapter Eight

  NATE WAS QUIET the next morning. We dressed in adventuring attire, trousers and heavy vests, mine looking more like a bodice than a waistcoat, but of similar sturdy material, and our leather long coats, seax blades, and pistols. We headed out to see the end of the track. We had arranged to meet the rail line workers after breakfast.

  I had no appetite, but Nate did. He ate slowly, tapping a knife back and forth like a metronome. I abhorred when he did that. The tink-tink-tink of it was an appalling social habit from his previous life as an adventurer and one that he returned to when deeply distracted. I sipped a bit of tea and toast with jam, wishing for something a bit more British to start my day, like kippers or mushrooms on toast or even sausages and tomatoes. Nate wolfed down fatty bacon and eggs and coffee, and a good portion of thin, sweet biscuits cooked flat in a griddle. He must have enjoyed them. I was impressed by the sheer quantity of food he consumed. I wrapped a few slices of toast in a napkin and shoved them and an apple in my pocket. If anything, maybe it could be a peace offering to Nate later.

  Fortified, we left the HeadHouse and set out to meet a young man named Samuel Lane, employed by the railroad. Nate refused to believe there was nothing he could do to assist the railroad in advancing west. Perhaps it was the canithrope in him, or the fact that he had so far battled a mad man, monsters, metal men, and dragons that led him to believe that there was little he could not eventually overcome.

  Samuel took us out to a fancy, new metal carriage painted the color of a new straw hat, with red leather seats and a pair of shiny brass lanterns hanging from each front corner. He vigorously turned a crank along the side several times and the engine sputtered and coughed to life.

  “This is a gasoline-powered runabout,” Samuel explained. “We’ll be meeting a carriage and horses down the line because my beauty here only is good on the roads. If you want to go any further down the line, then you’re gonna need the horses. The rail workers use them.”

  Nate was immediately transfixed with the runabout. He ran a loving hand over the side like he was admiring a new horse. I felt sure we were going to be taking one home with us, maybe more. I rolled my eyes. This was the plow Mr. Crossdale had brought home at the beginning of the spring all over again. I patiently waited my turn to be acknowledged.

  “Just climb aboard, Mrs. Valentine, and we’ll have you and your mister out to the end of the line before you know it—duck soup!” Samuel said.

  I let him offer me a hand. “Pardon?”

  “Easy deal—duck soup means easy deal. I guess it’s because it’d be easy to make soup from a duck.”

  “And why is that?” I blinked at him.

  “Well, I never thought about it, but I suppose because ducks belong in water.” He laughed. “You don’t have to work too hard to get them in the pot. Fill it with water, they get right in and you just pop the lid right on.”

  I liked him right away.

  “Their new man is a real Wisenheimer,” Samuel continued. “Thinks he knows everything about…well, about everything. But if he can deliver, then the Pennsy will be sitting pretty with the biggest monopoly on both sides of the Mississippi. Anyone who has invested a dime in the railroads will be minted millionaires, and anyone who has not will be cursing their misfortune.”

  “Yes, that is the very reason we are here,” Nate said dryly. “So far the ‘Pennsy’ has paid very poorly as an investment, despite very promising reporting.”

  Samuel was suddenly very focused on the hard-packed dirt road before us. “Well, we have hit some misfortune.”

  “So Mr. Cassatt has said, and the reason we are here as his agents.” Nate scowled.

  “Mr. Lane, what’s really going on?” I asked.

  “Well, ma’am, it’s like this, there’s a queer turn on the line.” Samuel focused on the road, using the handle to steer the runabout down the hard packed streets.

  Nate was watching the world zip by. “Queer how?”

  Samuel spared him a glance. “Something’s wrong with the ground, I guess. Maybe too many of them Injuns are buried there.”

  “Injuns?” Nate cocked an eyebrow. “What the hell?”

  “The land used to be swarming with them like ticks on a dog, they’re almost gone now, and good riddance. But there’s still some around, and they’re buried everywhere. My granddad said used to be you’d find their bones right out in the open. They didn’t have the sense to even bury their dead like good Christian folk, so most of them died off. God did ’em in, or the Army. Or they learned to be good Christians.”

  Nate gave me a look. “Injuns” must be Indians. I read about them once. I never expected them to be such hated, feared heathens, though.

  We traveled as far as the runabout could take us before we had to transfer into the wagon that had beaten us here by a few days, bringing a load of supplies to the work camp.

  “Nate, darling”, I crooned, “Exactly when did we become an agent of Mr. Cassatt?”

  Nate refused to look me in the eye, “When you were still sleeping this morning and I went out to gather some information; money changed hands and I got a few leads.”

  I stared at my husband, the airship pirate. “What happens if we are caught?”

  Nate shrugged, “I have no idea. Maybe we get answers, maybe we get stonewalled. Maybe they find out exactly what a canithrope is and how dangerous one can be when you disrupt his livelihood.”

  The foreman and his crew had a rail car set up as living space. The front of it they were using as a bunk house, the rear was a small kitchen. We were told it was moved to the end of the track by a hand cart operated by two men taking turns pushing down on a lever to propel the cart along the track. Another flat car held wooden ties and long sections of track ready to be laid as the railroad progressed to the west, as well as bins of tools used to drive the ties and rails into the earth and spikes to hold them there.

  Samuel introduced us to the foreman, Mr. Massey, a man with square broad shoulders and an impressive gut that hung over his belt. His cheeks were red with too much drink, and he glared at us with sallow, squinty eyes and a menacing expression. He looked as though he could consume a truly impressive amount of alcohol.

  “Who the hell are you?” His eyes traveled up and down my body, intimately, like he was removing every bit of my clothing. At my side, Nate clenched his fist, ready to introduce it to Mr. Massey’s jaw.

  “I am Mrs. Valentine,” I said, r
aising my chin. “We have come to see the line.”

  “My wife and I are agents of Mr. Cassatt and the board of directors for the railway,” Nate said through stiff lips. “We are inspecting the lack of progress. Would you care to explain that, Mr. Massey?”

  Mr. Massey pushed his hat back and stared at Nate for a long moment. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, spat then said, “Aye. Line’s cursed.”

  Cups, Swords, and Wands were all around, emotions, conflict, passion; there were so many Tarot symbols around it was impossible to identify just one.

  “Come on.” Samuel gave me a nod with his head. I knew I was doing no good here. Nate was ready to fight. So was Mr. Massey.

  I nodded and followed Samuel to the rail car that served as the bunkhouse. In the lee of the car, under an awning made of sailcloth, sat supplies: barrels of rail spikes, long sections of rails, wooden ties, tools, and more. He handed me a rail spike.

  The spike was nearly sixteen centimeters long and weighty. “That there is real American steel, Mrs. Valentine,” Samuel said with a smile. “Impressive, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so.” I smiled and handed it back.

  “Keep it, they come two hundred to a barrel and, truthfully, without track the spikes aren’t much good.”

  “What do you mean, without track? There’s a whole car worth of track right there.”

  “Just you wait,” Samuel said mysteriously.

  Nate stood eying the barrier that indicated the end of the line where workers had constructed a pylon of timbers and added a hand-painted sign indicating the same. As far as I could tell, the rails continued much as they had behind us, stretching out across the landscape into the west, toward the far end of America.

  “We’re gonna have to take the hand carts and horses from here.” The foreman pulled a cigarette from his mouth. “The runabout cannot go where there ain’t no road, and any further, there ain’t no road.”

  “Show me,” Nate commanded.

  “You’ll wait until I’m done with my break.”

  Nate’s eyes narrowed, he was in no mood to be ordered around by the foreman of the rail project, but he said nothing. We didn’t actually have any authority by Mr. Cassatt or any other railroad executive, so it was for the best that Nate managed to hold his tongue.

  Finally, Mr. Massey finished his cigarette and washed it down with several swallows from his flask. After tucking it back into his grimy vest, he dusted his hands, shook out his coat, and beat the dirt from his hat. “You’re not just agents of the Pennsy, you’re also investors from England, aren’t you? You think you can get richer off the backs of good, hard working Americans?”

  Nate could not hide his accent any more than I could. It would be like expecting this layabout before us to act like a gentleman.

  “I look to help unite this great nation,” Nate said in his most diplomatic tone. It was softer than the Nate-the-lord voice but was no less impressive. “The railroads are the best way to accomplish this. Your Mr. Cassatt looked for financial backers from all over the world, not just America.”

  Mr. Massey snorted. “Rich men getting richer.” He turned to the army of workers doing what workers do best when there is a lag in production; they were gambling, talking, and generally lazing about. He hawked and spat. “You heard his lordship, boys, get hopping. This limey wants to see the true end of the line.”

  They exchanged glances, then got to their feet. Most were young men, scarcely out of their twenties, many of them younger than Nate and me. They leapt to the pylon and started taking it apart, sliding the timbers off the track.

  Mr. Massey climbed aboard the hand cart. “Come on, yer Lordship! My boys didn’t move them heavy timbers for nothing.”

  Nate climbed up and offered me a hand. I swallowed hard, realizing the safest seat for me would be right between Nate and Mr. Massey on the creaky wooden bench. I was thankful I thought to pack my adventuring clothes; a dress would not have fared well against the rough seats of the hand cart.

  Mr. Massey stared at me, making me wish I had more than my coat to cover myself. I did not want the type of attention Mr. Massey wanted to give. He leered at me, staring too intently at the curve of my thigh in my trousers. I turned toward Nate as subtly as I could. I did not need Nate fighting Mr. Massey, at least not before we discovered exactly why the railroad was not able to progress beyond St. Louis, Missouri.

  Thirty minutes later, we abruptly reached the true end of the track. Far ahead, the timbers had been laid, all that was left was to lay the metal rails upon the railroad ties and hammer the spikes into place. But the metal rails were twisted and warped, pitted as though acid had eaten away at them. Nate leapt from the cart, his boots crunching on the stone that formed the bed for the wooden ties.

  I joined Nate at the furthermost edge of the rails, where they were hot and warped, pitted, and so rusty they looked bloody.

  I knelt by the edges of the rail. But it was not the rails I saw. Death was change, and change was painful. Was this what the people wanted? Change was not always what people wanted, though it was sometimes what was needed.

  Tall grass swayed, growing yellow and brittle before my eyes. I blinked hard and when my eyes cleared, I could see figures walking through the grass. A king with a stately crown; a family, a mother, father, and child and old woman. A bishop in a tall miter. They made their way across the dry, golden grasses. Behind them, on a white horse, a knight in black armor rode up, his banner black as midnight emblazoned with a single white rose.

  The black knight overtook them easily and raised his visor, revealing a head reduced to a bare skull. He raised a scythe and cut down the king. He cut down the family. He cut down the priest. Blood splattered across the white rose. The knight turned without haste, without hate, and rode on, the grass turning green in his wake. Through Death, all things change. Death was transition. The white rose on his banner was our reminder that death was a pure transition without malice. It came for all.

  It was a transition, a transformation. Then the banner tore free of his lance and fluttered on a non-existent wind to fall at my feet. A white rose was a symbol of purity and innocence; an action without passion. Now the rose was blood red—a red rose.

  Red roses for love, courage and power. I looked over to my husband. We would need courage and power to overcome Geiger. I hoped the deep red was not literally red blood for what was to come.

  I looked up. The black knight was fading from view.

  Death rarely means literal death, it generally just means rebirth. But for rebirth to come, the old ways must end. No one is immune to the end of one thing and the beginning of another, not the young, not the old, not the rich or the poor, everyone must change. Something was very wrong here, this rebirth was tainted. It was not the innocent change as the white rose symbolized, this was violent. It left behind a bitter taste, something ashen and hot like copper, or blood.

  Nate went ahead, following the rails to their termination, touching the end, then pulling his hand back and staring curiously. He turned his fingers back and forth, first looking at his fingers then the rails.

  I went to join him.

  Nate glared at the metal. “They’re hot.”

  “They’re in the sun.”

  “I know they’re in the sun,” he said. “But it’s more than that. The rails are hot.”

  I knelt beside him. He was right. I didn’t have to touch them to feel the heat coming off them. The rails were hot right where they abruptly ended, reaching up like splinters of steel. Again, he touched the end of the steel rail and his hand came back rust red. He turned to smack the rust from his hands, but it turned to a smear of blood.

  We exchanged a glance. He wiped the blood away with his handkerchief then tucked it away in his pocket. He offered me his clean hand and we started back to the rail cart. Out of curiosity, I reached out occasionally to touch the rails as they sat in the warm sun. The rails got cooler as we got closer to the rail cart.

  “What
does that mean?”

  Nate shook his head, as puzzled as I was.

  “Mr. Massey, they’re back!”

  A worker who had been pumping the rail cart pointed up the hill. We wheeled around and Nate thrust me behind him.

  “Don’t get too excited, those redskins know they aren’t supposed to be here,” Mr. Massey called.

  “Redskins?” I turned. Anyone with red skin would make America even more wondrous. I stared at the dark-skinned man who had appeared astride a brown and white horse. I almost expected him to fade away like the black knight.

  “Indians, ma’am,” Samuel explained. “The army will be removing them soon enough. There’s a few men that up and married themselves squaw wives and had half-breed children. Being half-white keeps them out of the Christian charity houses and off the reservations, but it’s a waste if the mothers teach them the old backward ways.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You mean, if their fathers weren’t white, then they would be taken away, even though they have parents who love them and would provide for their welfare? A charity house is well and good when a child has nothing but when they have a family—”

  “Well, yes, but it is hardly a life. It’s not their fault; those poor children can hardly function in this modern age if they refuse to go to the reservation with the rest of their kind. Going to the Christian charity houses may seem cruel, but it’s really a kindness. It teaches them about the word of God, it gives them a good education, and gets them away from all that nonsense the rest of the redskins believe.”

  I stared at the man on his horse. He wore a tan cowboy hat, his long, black hair curled around his shoulder. He wore a red shirt and a waistcoat with a white front that, as unlikely as it seemed, looked like it was gleaming in the light. He sat like a statue on the hill, watching us. I would not have believed he was real if the horse beneath him, a beautiful brown and white paint, did not shift from time to time as it regarded the scene below the hill to the rails and more importantly, us.