The Unwinding House and Other Stories

by Jared Millet

  “With this engine, we don’t need a signal tower.”

  “It’s not that,” I said. “I want to make a telephone call.”

  ~

  We entered the Black Hills after midnight. A ceiling of cloud rolled in and cloaked the world in shadow. When dawn came, the sky was the color of mud, as was the tower in the tiny Deadwood rail yard. No one manned the station but an underfed boy and a drunkard. I tipped the boy a dollar to leave us alone.

  The signal tower was unremarkable save for its state of extreme disuse. What few knew, however, was that one of Deadwood’s prospectors had invested in Columbia Telephone and Telegraph, and the company had installed an experimental long distance line in the tower’s control room. The telephone company had since been bought out by a rival, but as far as I knew the line was still there.

  The room at the top of the tower was similar to the one we’d visited before, but with more cobwebs. The telephone apparatus sat abandoned in a corner. I held the handset to my ear, cranked the call box, and waited for a response. When it came, it sounded like someone speaking through a wall.

  “Chicago operator … who is this, please … what line are you calling on?”

  “This is Nathan Adsworth with Northern United. I need you to patch me through to Philadelphia.”

  Across the room, Evie activated a terminal. It made an awful screech as it spun into motion.

  “This is Philadelphia,” said a distant voice. “How may I direct your call?”

  “Northern United dispatching office, personal call for Oliver Wills.” I hoped the operator could hear me. Evie waved for my attention.

  “As long as we’re here,” she said, “I’m going to synchronize our train with the tower archives. Maybe there’s a long-term pattern the thief uses.”

  I nodded, then turned my attention as a voice broke through the static like an icepick.

  “Wills,” he said.

  “Ollie, it’s Nate. I’m out west checking on a missing train. I wonder if you could tell me if anyone else has been looking into it.”

  “Which one?”

  “It’s a Merrimac 4-6-0.” It was a long shot, but if our thief had faked the orders to Kinneson, then Wills might be able to tell us where the signal network had been compromised.

  “That’s what I said. Which one?”

  At first I didn’t think he’d heard me. Then I understood. “You mean there’s more than one missing train?”

  “You better believe it. After that fellow in Denver sent you on assignment, he wired back for us to figure out which engine was unaccounted for. I’ve turned up twenty so far. At least three Merrimacs, a couple of Ironsides, one of those big Choctaws—”

  “Can you wire me the list?”

  “Already on it.”

  I pulled the handset away from my ear as Wills yelled at one of his subordinates without covering his receiver.

  “Be sure to get the missing train’s serial number,” said Evie. “I’ve found some funny entries in the automatic logs.”

  “They should be coming through.” As soon as I spoke, an automatic telegraph sprung to life and spat out a stream of numbers, presumably keyed in by one of Ollie’s coworkers. Evie pored over the codes as they appeared.

  “Here,” she said. “I just saw this serial number in the log. This train was here less than twenty-four hours ago. It’s got to be our Merrimac. I’ll feed the data to the Sable. Good lord, Nathan, we’re close.”

  “Ollie,” I said on the line. “Kinneson gave me some orders he supposedly received yesterday from the board of directors. Is there any way you can confirm—”

  “Confirm?” said Wills. “I’ll confirm it’s horse shit. The board ain’t met for a month. Hell, half of them are on a trip to France.”

  “Are you sure? Kinneson showed up with the orders in hand and a big black Cannonball.”

  “The Sable?” Wills sounded shocked. “What the hell’s the Sable doing out west? It’s supposed to be at an exhibition in Atlanta.”

  “I swear it’s right here. I—” I would have gone on, but Evie tore the receiver from my hand.

  “Nate, the train’s leaving without us!”

  ~

  We dashed from the base of the signal tower. Our engine was already halfway out of the yard on the westbound line. Had another train not been in its way, the Sable would have left us behind already.

  Our black diesel had shifted to another spur while one of its cousins slowed to avoid it. The Sable began picking up speed again when Evie and I caught up to it. I flung myself onto the engine’s rear coupler and grabbed Evie’s wrist just as the rail switch opened the forward line. Once aboard, we barreled through the crew compartment toward the control cabin, but the train’s dogsbody blocked us.

  “I’m sorry,” it said. “Only authorized personnel are allowed beyond this point. Northern United Railways apologizes for any inconvenience.”

  “Inconvenience?” I keyed my identification code into the dogsbody’s panel, but instead of recognizing my authority it held its ground and repeated its warning.

  “I’m sorry. Only authorized personnel are allowed—”

  “Stow it,” said Evie, shoving past the mechanical porter. “No one’s stealing this train on my watch.”

  I kept an eye on the dogsbody, unsure what it would do next.

  “Do you know where it’s taking us?” I asked.

  “Work it out.” She tossed me a map from a drawer under the control panel and started banging instructions into the Perrilloux’s control pad, all to no effect.

  I fingered the slip of paper in my pocket. “There’s always the kill code.”

  “No. If we can’t regain control, the best thing might be to ride this out and see where our thief is taking us.”

  “That’s risky, but all right.” I wrestled the map open and looked for the route west of Deadwood.

  There wasn’t one. The map showed all the newest lines and several that were still under construction, but in the region we were traveling there was nothing.

  “Evie,” I said, “where the hell are we?”

  She looked at the dogsbody as if it would answer, then ran back out the door. I followed to find her climbing the rungs to the locomotive’s roof.

  The railroad twisted along a ridge line. The ground fell away to the north and south, the folds of the Black Hills clearly visible in either direction. The rail yard had already vanished to our rear. Evie sat on top of the train. Not so brave myself, I clung to the ladder.

  “Multiple missing trains and now an unmapped rail line,” I said. “Our thief’s been busy.”

  “If there is one.”

  I was about to ask what she meant, but Evie seemed to slip into a dream. As she stared ahead along the line, I had the oddest feeling that she wouldn’t say more. I climbed down to the safety of the engine room to see if the dogsbody would at least pour me a beer.

  By nightfall we were still twisting westward across the crumpled landscape. Evie came down and made a halfhearted attempt to slow the engine, but it clearly had a mind of its own.

  I kept toying with the idea of entering Kinneson’s kill code, but we were now too committed to use it on a whim. The dogsbody made the Sable’s food and drink stores available, then retreated into a corner. I nibbled on a bit of cheese and stared at the unbroken blackness outside. What Evie’d said about the train thief, or possible lack thereof, nagged me.

  “May I ask a question?” I said. “What do you think we’re eventually going to find?”

  “A nest of bandits. A rival company stealing our designs.”

  I could tell from her voice that wasn’t what she believed, but I let it rest and lay down on a bunk. The morning would bring what it may.

  ~

  Sunrise lit the peaks of the Bighorns while the rest of the world lay in darkness. It was my turn to ride the roof, not because I had to, but because Evie had become so distant that I preferred to be apart from her company. As far as I could tell she hadn’t sl
ept a wink, but had spent the night in electronic congress with the mind at the heart of our machine. She hadn’t regained control, but at least she had coaxed it into responding to her queries. What questions she’d asked, and what answers it gave, she wouldn’t say.

  That morning was the coldest it had been since our trek began. Our path sloped upward, and as dawn crept down the mountains I felt a clarity I hadn’t known for days. Moss-covered boulders lined the trail to either side. The faintest touch of white still capped the highest reaches. A wisp of cloud marred the horizon ahead.

  But it wasn’t a cloud. It was steam. I hurried down to the cabin as the news tumbled out of me.

  “There’s a train ahead. It might be the Merrimac.”

  “How far?” Evie didn’t sound surprised.

  “Two miles, maybe three. It’s hard to tell at this—” I hadn’t finished before she’d bolted to the window and leaned out.

  “Is it our ghost?” I asked.

  “I think so. There shouldn’t be any other trains out here.”

  “I’m using the code.”

  “Don’t!” She grabbed my collar. “Don’t you dare. If you do, we’ll never find out what’s at the end of this line.”

  Our eyes locked as I peeled her fingers off my shirt. There was pleading in her eyes, and something she wasn’t telling me.

  “All right,” I said, “but sooner or later this chase will have to end.”

  ~

  We came at last to a pass through the mountains and our engine slowed to navigate the turns. I sat on the rear platform and watched the peaks behind us when, just as we rounded a bend, there appeared to our right a mountain of metal.

  “Evie!”

  She came and watched as we passed the iron wreck of a railway construction tower. It was mostly intact, but its front wheels had tumbled blindly into an open ravine, a ravine that our own train promptly sailed over.

  I gasped and clutched a rung behind me. The ground plummeted away as the engine bore us across a trestle that seemed to have been designed by a lunatic. The rails were level enough, but the beams that supported us had been arranged like a pile of toothpicks. It was as if the bridge had been constructed by a blind giant feeling its way by touch alone.

  “Is this real?” asked Evie. Her voice held the reverence of a supplicant at the Pearly Gates. I stepped inside and looked forward through a window. We neared the other side of the ravinve, and waiting for us on the next ridge was our phantom Merrimac.

  This nonsense had gone on long enough. Evie had left the controls unguarded. I pulled Kinneson’s slip from my pocket and typed the command to kill the other train.

  The Sable screamed.

  Steam shrieked from its stack, the brakes flung loose, and the locomotive jumped forward so quickly that the trestle shook underneath us. I reached for a handle to steady myself, and that’s when the dogsbody slammed me from behind.

  It wrapped its arms around me and dragged me toward the door. I scrambled to break free, but my feet could get no purchase. The dogsbody pinned my elbows to my sides and carried me to the rear of the train like a bundle of firewood.

  I cried out for help; my assailant was relentless. In the crew cabin it spun me around to face the door, clearly intent on throwing me into the chasm. Accelerating, the dogsbody reached the end of its tether and for a moment all I saw was sky.

  Evie grabbed my wrist, spinning both me and the dogsbody around. She snatched my arm with her other hand and pulled with all her strength to drag me away from the gorge. I tried to help, but in the grip of the dogsbody my feet could gain no purchase. The automaton locked itself in place and squeezed with mechanical might. If it couldn’t throw me out, it was apparently going to crush me.

  “Stop kicking your damned feet,” Evie shouted. “Plant them on the floor and stand.”

  I clung to her voice like a rope. My feet at last found purchase and I thrust my body upward, breaking the dogsbody’s grip. Evie yanked me forward and we both toppled into the control room.

  The train lurched to a stop with an enormous bang. As the pounding in my chest subsided and my head began to clear, I realized that we’d collided with the Merrimac. The Sable had gone utterly mad, and so, it seemed, had Evie.

  “Out!” She pulled me back to my feet and thrust me toward the same exit that the dogsbody had tried to throw me out moments before. When I saw that we were now over solid ground, I jumped and rolled to the side.

  There was a clang as the Sable collided with the Merrimac’s lumber car a second time. Smoke rose from the dead train’s stack, but the arms that fed wood to its furnace were lifeless. The pistons that drove its wheels were still.

  “Damn you, Adsworth,” said Evie. “Stay here.” She ran to the disabled Merrimac and I was glad to keep out of her way. My pulse still danced like a boxer and I found it hard to draw breath.

  Evie vanished into the other train’s engine room. The Sable extended its communication arm, but the Merrimac’s was as flaccid as that of a corpse. The Sable clutched it and pulled, not roughly, but as if it could coax it… back into life?

  When I was a child, I saw a squirrel run down by a carriage. The creature’s sudden death had shocked my young sensibilities, but not so much as when another squirrel, immediately after, ran to its dead companion and tried to wake it. The motion of the Sable, if not identical, was essentially the same.

  “No,” I said aloud. “That isn’t possible.”

  A bang came from the Merrimac, then a chug from its engine and a shout of triumph. A drumbeat of pistons followed as the machine revived and its connecting arm twitched. Evie stuck her head through the engineer’s window.

  “She’s all right!”

  “Is there no one aboard?”

  “Of course not,” she said. “Get up here. I need you to stoke the boiler.”

  And so we got the engine going. The feeder arms for the lumber never moved, but the train’s other mechanisms slowly resumed their normal functions.

  Hauling wood to the fire felt like a form of atonement. Despite my sense of reason, I’d begun to accept what was becoming more evident. There was no “train thief.” These two locomotives, and possibly all of the missing engines, had not been stolen by some master criminal. They were self-motivated renegades, riding the rails of their own free will.

  “Do you see this?” Evie pointed to an inscription above the Merrimac’s console. “The same stamp is on the diesel back there. The Sable’s computing machine may be smarter, but they were both assembled and trained at the same plant, in the same year. In a way, they grew up together.”

  “Do you think all the missing engines are from the same batch?”

  She shook her head. “The locomotives are too many, too different. But then, most of the others simply disappeared. They covered their tracks pretty well.” She smiled at her unintentional jest. “This one’s different. Our ‘ghost train’ was trying to be found.”

  Its communication arm, I couldn’t help but notice, was still conjoined with that of the diesel.

  “She was trying to get the Sable’s attention,” I said, “and it was trying to find her. When it learned that we were on the trail, it arranged to join us. Could it have faked that telegram to Kinneson?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Evie, “but the signal towers could have.” For the first time, there was an ounce of fear in her voice. “Nate, we’ve stumbled onto something huge. Something unheard of.”

  Linked, the engines pushed slowly forward. The grade shifted to a gentle downward incline, and a warm breeze rose from ahead. An hour passed and the tracks made a bend to the left, hugging the side of the mountain as we descended toward a valley floor. I looked out the window and my heart almost stopped.

  Below us stood a village of iron, of rails and towers, of trains and machines living free of Man’s control. It was more than I could accept, even given all that I’d seen. Our locomotives moved slowly, so I jumped from the engineer’s compartment to land in the springy mountain
grass, catching myself to avoid rolling down the hill. I sat on the slope and stared at the metal city as my world tumbled upside down.

  The trains squealed as they halted. I heard the soft footfalls of Evie’s approach. Her hand was warm on my shoulder.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “No, I’m not. I don’t know if I should be elated or frightened. What have we done?” I tore my eyes away from the city. “What have we created? Is this a miracle or the devil’s work?”

  “My dad asked the same thing about me and my sisters.” Our engines waited patiently behind her, still holding hands. “I think they’re essentially children.”

  “But at least children have someone to guide them and teach right from wrong. These trains… The Sable tried to kill me.”

  “Only to defend another. I know how you feel. I’m frightened too. But whatever is happening in this valley is too important for us to turn our backs on it, and it might be too big for us to stop.”

  A stone sank in my gut.

  “When I used the kill code, it sent a location signal to Kinneson. Do you think the towers will have stopped it?”

  Evie’s eyes widened. “They couldn’t stop an override with such a high priority. It wouldn’t be physically possible.”

  “Then we have to assume he’s on his way. What do you think he’ll do when he finds this?”

  “He’ll destroy it,” she answered without hesitation. “He won’t understand something like this. He’ll kill every train in that… city, and he’ll probably put every working Perrilloux out of commission until they can figure out how to prevent whatever is happening here from occurring again.”

  And I would be responsible. A part of me did believe that we should destroy these creations before any more broke free of our control, but I recognized that thought for what it was: fear of the unknown. But what if these engines had vestiges of souls? Shouldn’t we stay their destruction until we knew for sure?

  Down in the valley, a second rail ran northwest in the direction of Montana, or possibly Yellowstone. Far in the distance, another train approached with freight cars in tow. Did it carry supplies and fuel for the engines currently in residence? How had it acquired such goods — through the secret collaboration of signal towers and more faked telegrams to unsuspecting station agents?