The Rail Specter

by Vennessa Robertson

  “Ruthlessness and compassion,” I gasped, recalling his early lessons.

  “A healer needs to do what must be done. A healer needs to act with compassion.”

  Papa was still my teacher in all things. Dealing with injuries required a certain measure of resistance to the unpleasantness. You had to harden your heart to the cries of pain while you set a bone or stitched a wound, drained a cyst or cleaned out a pus-filled wound, or told a family that a loved one would never recover. You also had to have compassion to those in need.

  Compassion, like caring for those who could not pay, administering care to the wounded and dying, or to the sick when they needed help. Giving food or forgiving rent when you could.

  “How can compassion defeat this monster?” I asked. “Injuries and illnesses don’t care one bit if I approach with kindness or with mighty magic.”

  “I do not know, darling,” Papa said. “You are linked to these people in a profound way. But I believe they are representative of all those seeking salvation. They need to be heard. They need peace. And it is our job to give peace when we can to everyone we are connected to. Our actions affect everything around us in ways we will never fully understand.”

  He was right, of course. I turned away and looked out across the land. We stood in a place where no living souls were meant to be, walking along a path the dead took to reach the afterlife. We traveled to ask the Great Hunter, the lord of all beasts, to make the tiger, or the striped cat, stop stealing our babies. If this was not an act of faith, I didn’t know what was.

  I folded my arms. Nate’s hand was on my back. I had sinned against an immortal creature, and I saw her in all things. Nate and I were both paying for it. I needed to atone by apologizing. I should not have kept the ruby a secret from Nate.

  There was a gurgle and a gulp. I turned. The wendigo was there, fully regenerated, fully restored.

  The monster held Papa in its fist. The wendigo’s bony fingers were wrapped around his throat, holding him off the ground.

  I screamed. Nate’s eyes opened wide as he turned.

  Nate leapt for the wendigo’s hand. I searched for Geiger. If the monster was here, Geiger could not be far behind. But, for the moment, it appeared he was gone. Nate had his seax in hand and chopped at the monster with heavy blows. The weapon could cut logs, but it did nothing to the wendigo.

  I could not move the arm, it was a metal vise clamped around Papa’s throat. I didn’t have a choice. It had my papa! I had to use the ruby again. Immediately I felt my right shoulder burn. The King of Cups waited upon his throne of stone, overlooking the majesty of the ocean stretched out before him. But where there is beauty in the ocean, there is also immense power. Like my papa, the ocean is deep, and though it can be gentle, it is a force of nature. The Magician gave me strength as he united the elements, I needed his help to harness the power.

  The harnessed power was a punch to the gut, but my aim was true. “Be gone!” I screamed, my voice cracking under the strain.

  It caught the wendigo in the sun-bleached skull. It dropped my papa, who crumpled to the gray stone.

  My knees buckled and I hit the ground hard. The impact brought tears to my eyes.

  The ruby was so hot here. It fell from my hand and clattered across the gray slate.

  In the brilliant red-white flash, the wendigo grabbed for the ruby.

  Nate moved to intercept it. His booted heel slammed into the weakened wendigo and pushed it back. Nate slid the ruby to me. I dove on top of it.

  The power channeling through the ruby burned my hands, a searing pain with a terrible throbbing, like a heartbeat, echoed through my entire being.

  A skeletal hand with long thin fingers gripped my collar. I grabbed the hand, tearing at it, my fingers slipping between the fleshless bones. I kicked and struggled. The bones wrenched my fingers apart like furnace tongs. I gasped but pushed back.

  My other hand got tangled in its foul-smelling, black pelt, clumps of the moth-eaten fur coming off in my hand. It carried the musty scent of improperly cured skins.

  The throbbing pulse of the stone took over my vision and everything turned hot and red. I slammed my knee into the creature. Dry bones snapped and moved beneath my knee, but it was as if I had kicked a great stack of firewood, and was about as effective.

  It jerked me into the air, away from the ruby. I released the bone arm and snatched the ruby up in my other hand.

  The world turned alarmingly to one side. Nate wrapped his arm around the wendigo’s neck and hammered several heavy punches into the side of the monster’s fleshless head.

  Sharp coyote teeth gnashed inches from my face as the wendigo opened its mouth. Inside was an endless void within which all light disappeared. I trembled with dread and jammed my fist beneath its chin to force the gaping maw away. Nate wrenched the head back by the antlers.

  The wendigo dropped me onto my back.

  The wendigo’s bones made a cracking sound as it turned, slamming into Nate, hammering him as hard as it could. Nate blocked the punches, throwing them aside, but he was bound to miss one eventually, and the wendigo was frighteningly strong. Nate switched tactics and slammed his foot into the wendigo’s side with immense force, then again, higher. The wendigo shifted with each blow.

  I clutched the stone to my chest and kicked as hard as I could.

  Nate dodged and aimed his next kick into the monster’s other side. More bones splintered and cracked. Nate jerked me to my feet.

  The wendigo wanted the ruby. Geiger wanted the ruby. I held it before me, the only talisman I had that could do it harm. The wendigo looked at us, its broken and malformed bones cracking and crunching as they returned into their correct alignment.

  My papa lay on the ground. I dove for him. “Papa!” He was diminished, paler, a ghost of his former self.

  “I cannot guide you anymore,” he said. “You and Nate need to continue on now.”

  “I cannot,” I said. I’d already had to say goodbye once, I didn’t want to do it again.

  “You can,” he said, “and you will. I will see you again a long time from now. Tell your mother I love her.”

  He slowly regained his feet.

  “Take her and go now, son,” he said to Nate, who took my arm. I tried to jerk away, but my husband’s grip was iron.

  Papa stood between us and the wendigo. “Compassion, Vivian,” he said, “The only thing stronger than hate is love. It makes us strong when all else is lost.”

  “We have to go,” Nate said.

  “No,” I said, still trying to jerk myself free.

  “He is dead, he belongs here, we don’t. He is safe here. The monster cannot harm him, not forever. He is protecting us.”

  “I have the ruby, Nate! I can protect him!” I cried.

  “You can’t! I don’t think it’s supposed to work like that,” Nate said. He dragged me along, and we ran down the path away from the monster and my papa faced each other.

  “Stop, stop,” I gasped. “Can’t run…anymore.” My lungs felt like they were going to burst from my chest. “Have…to stop.”

  He swallowed hard. “It’s killing you, Viv!”

  “It’s not!” My throat was raw.

  “Your hands are burned.” He gasped. “The marks you use to fight it are gone, scarred over.” He pressed his hand to his side.

  He groaned and paced in a small circle, trying to catch his breath. “You can’t fight it,” Nate said.

  As much as I hated to admit it, nothing we did seemed to have any lasting effect against the monster. We were running out of options. I was running out of Tarot symbols. And, worse, we were running out of time.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ROCKY PILLARS CAME hazily into view. I was tired, so tired, and all I wanted to do was rest.

  No matter what we believed, we were all the same. I had been looking at it all wrong. I assumed the Cheyenne were being mistreated and, though unfortunate, it was not anything I could help with and that the affairs of
the Americans—any of the Americans, white or African or Native—were not our affair. I was wrong. If this monster, this wendigo, could be stopped by appeasing the spirits of the wronged and we could calm the tiger, or the striped cat, and Mehne, or the dragon, then it was our duty to do so. We might not be able to help the plight of all the Cheyenne people, but for these people, for Chelan and her children, we could help.

  My head was a jumble. Nothing made sense anymore. The only thing I was sure of was that we helped bring Chelan to her people and Geiger had followed us into the spirit realm. We had brought this evil to their door, and we needed to help fight it. Anyone with the means to help had a duty to do so.

  The endlessness of the land left me disoriented. I struggled to keep moving. My legs were heavy. My shoulders slumped. Our baby, we had to find our baby, and the dragon, and the tiger. I looked down at my hands, blistered and burned. At least they didn’t hurt here, not really. There was only a dull ache, like a sore tooth. Papa was gone. So many Tarot symbols were gone. I needed my husband and my baby now. I had to keep going.

  My ears yearned for sound in this muted place. Then, as if by a miracle, my straining ears heard the kind of sobbing that Lum’s daughter, little Mary Catherine, would make when crying for her absent mother.

  I spun around, looking for the source of the sound. It cut through me. A child! Nate heard it and looked around, too. As if in response to our searching, the shivering, shimmering landscape shifted, and rocky terrain with boulders larger than a man seemed to materialize from nowhere.

  “Didn’t He’heeno say we would meet those the monster wronged?” I didn’t want to see those wronged. I was afraid of what we might find.

  Nate nodded. He continued to search the landscape, shading his eyes his hand, his mouth slightly down-turned.

  I swallowed hard. “Hello?” I called. “Where are you?”

  “Viv?” Nate raised a hand, warning me.

  The wendigo made mocking sounds before, it lured like a child’s cries, but I could not ignore this sound. “It’s a child, Nate. I know it is. We have to help it.”

  He nodded. There was a muted clomp from his booted feet as he leapt onto another bit of rock.

  The rocks shifted, wavering into a dark shape, before revealing a small human form. A little girl, no more than three or four crouched, holding a doll blackened and scorched by flames. Her feet were bare, blackened by dirt and soot. Her ragged hair hung loose, a dirty blond curtain. She sobbed and cuddled her doll.

  “Mama?”

  “Did the monster do this?” Nate asked.

  “I want my mommy.”

  I knelt by her side. “Please, did the monster harm you?”

  “I want my mommy.”

  Her skin was covered in ash, the edges black and peeling and raw red underneath. The fire had blistered her beautiful, fragile skin. I carefully took her in my arms, and was surprised that she weighed nearly nothing. Her limbs were rail thin, and the tiny bones beneath her skin were fragile and sharp like a bird’s. She coughed and her breath smelled of smoke.

  “What is your name?” I asked.

  “Rose.”

  “Rose, I’m Vivian. My husband and I will find your mommy. What does she look like?”

  Rose coughed again. “She’s very pretty.”

  “Well, of course. She would have to be.” Rose was here, she had been murdered by the monster. There had been children at the Tate family farm. She must be one of them. We would have to set her to rights. Hopefully, her mama was here, somewhere.

  Hers were the tiny, fragile bones. Oh God. She would have been teething about a year or two ago, enough for toothmarks in wood to still be discolored. A child this size would cower from a fire in a small corner. I gulped hard. My vision clouded with tears.

  I could see the bones, twisted and terrified, shrinking away as fire raged through their home. A fire set to cover a murder.

  “Do you need me to carry her?” Nate asked. His hand was warm on the small of my back. “Is she heavy?”

  I swallowed past the hard lump in my throat. “Horribly heavy.”

  He nodded. He understood and let me carry her without offering to take her again.

  For just a moment, I was glad we did not have any children. The pain of being unable to protect the innocent girl even though I was not present for her death was the heaviest weight I ever carried. If we stopped Geiger years ago she would be alive. I would carry her with me until I died, if nothing else so she was remembered as a treasure that was lost too soon.

  Ahead of us stood a woman, gaunt from lack of good food and from too much hard work. She had long, dark blonde hair that hung down her back in a messy braid. Most of her apron and dress was discolored with a dark blood stain. I could not tell the exact nature of the injury, but it felt like it would be exceptionally intrusive to stare while trying to determine what had happened.

  She tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear. She was searching, looking far off into the distance, staring through the rocks and boulders as though they were not even there. I knew without knowing how I knew: She was The Queen of Pentacles, a woman in red and blue robes seated on a throne, lovingly holding a disc in her arms; the picture of a mother looking for a child. I could see translucent flowers sprout along the path where she walked, and as fast as they grew they were gone, so quickly there and gone I might have imagined it. She was a mother. And I had her child, whose breath smelled of smoke, in my arms.

  “Mother,” I called. “I have your child!”

  Suddenly, she could see me, she could hear me.

  She turned and ran to us, the blood flowing from her stomach, her dress, dripping down her legs and onto her feet.

  Whatever had killed her was deep; a slash to the stomach. She would have been the one with a scored spine. She was murdered with vicious hatred.

  “Mommy!” Rose struggled to get free.

  I set her down. Her doll dropped to the slate and mother and child rushed to one another.

  “Please,” I begged in a whisper. “Can you tell us what happened?”

  Nate touched my back. His hand moved gently down my arm and took my hand. I didn’t want them to answer. I knew what had happened. I turned to Nate and set my damp cheek against his waistcoat.

  “It is a monster,” Papa said.

  I wheeled. So, he was back. But he didn’t quite feel right.

  “Can you name the monster, Vivian?” he asked me.

  “Hate?” Nate guessed.

  “Yes,” Papa said, “and no. The one that murdered them did not merely hate them. The one who murdered them saw them as less than human. She was below him. Unworthy of him.”

  It wasn’t that something was wrong with him, he was just incomplete. He was there and yet not.

  “How can you hate a child? A mother?” I remembered the body so burned that all I could find was a set of deep cuts along the inside of the spine. Everything else had been burned away. How could another human being be reduced to nothing but scored bone? Or perhaps what I should be asking is what could create such a horrible wound that would tear through a woman so deeply it would tear her apart and scrape the bones on the far side? How could that be anything but hate?

  “That is too horrible a wound to be anything but hate,” Nate growled. That came from the dog in him. The part of him that abhors those who bully and those who hurt the innocent or vulnerable. That part of him was offended. So was I.

  “It is more than hate,” Papa said sadly. He was also brighter than I remembered; he was glowing from within.

  “The monster,” I concluded. “Nate, you saw what it did to the men at the Carey home. It turned them into something else. It was the wendigo.”

  “The monster came later.” The mother had her child in her arms, the girl’s tiny head cupped to her shoulder.

  “Who did this?” Nate asked through gritted teeth.

  “The man,” she said, distracted. There was blood in her mouth, as she spoke I could see her mouth was wet with it. It
bubbled against her lips.

  “What. Man?” Nate asked slowly. It was the voice of a lord.

  I looked at him. We knew who it was. Why would he ask?

  Nate’s mouth was a thin line. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe. It was the pain of a man who would hear the name of his enemy spoken.

  “Silver arm.”

  “Silver arm. Geiger.”

  We would have to face him. It would be him or us.

  Nate nodded quickly. “I will make him pay.” He was strong enough to bear witness to her murder. He would see justice done for her and her child and her family that was murdered and burned.

  “Nate, honey.” I felt cold. “She has what she wants. Her daughter.”

  The woman and her daughter slowly began to fade away. The shimmering mist reclaimed them. There was peace. Whatever had kept them on the path from the afterlife was gone.

  But the peace was replaced with a nameless dread. Something awful was coming. The very air itself was warning us, and it was something I was not sure I could fight. Whatever it was setting these people to rest was making the air itself very, very angry.

  More than merely angry, it was blood-rage. We had wounded it, not through magic channeled, but through compassion. It would not toy with us any longer.

  Now, we were mighty. We had a true weapon that could wound this monster. It was greater than the sins of man that called the monster. I took a shuddering breath. “We can fight it, Nate. That’s what Papa meant. We can defeat it through ruthless compassion.”

  The doll was gone. Gone was the tiny girl and her charred lungs, gone was her smoky breath, gone was her mother, gutted and broken, left to bleed and burn. But the Tate family farm had many more victims, and Silver Arm had left no one alive in his rampage.

  I still felt the weight of her in my arms. No, more than the weight of her, the heavy burden. It was no accident that these poor people were harmed. Geiger did this. He was the only man with a silver arm. He believed he could use lightning and fire, use immense power to push the engines, to drive them harder, move them faster with less coal to make the Pennsylvania Railroad a grand power driven by electric lines.