Polvec was on high alert, as every person there was a thrall under his spell. Whenever he chose not to kill someone, to add them to the train, he could beguile them to do whatever he wanted. And early in the fifties, he began to build a town around his lair, painted to blend in to the natural wooded landscape. He’d been smart enough to know spy planes would always take pictures of Poland from the air, so he made sure Polvec was always invisible.
Currently there were around thirty men and women who lived in Polvec. It operated like a real town, and for the first time the Entity was seeing new generations of people populating the streets. No one ever came looking because no one cared. Poland was wild in the 40s, and it was wild today.
The Entity didn’t have much use for humans, but they served two very important purposes at Polvec. First, there were the guards. Many of those that the Entity chose for this came from military backgrounds and were adept at small and long rifles. They patrolled the mountainside, within the border of the fence, and made sure the lair was never disturbed.
The second group was the scientists. They were the most important people in the world. He always looked into the heads of those who heard the call, if he could, to see if they knew their way around a laboratory, had any experience with infectious diseases, biology or virology, then he put them to work rather than kill them outright.
As the Ghost Train pulled down the deserted street of Polvec, up the hill that the child Matilda had walked all those years ago, the Entity saw something was very wrong. Two of the guards were down, shot dead and lying in pools of their own blood. They were wearing their white fatigues, as to match the snow-covered mountain, only now their backs were splotched red. He could have tossed them into the train and made them ghosts. They would have told him what had happened, but he was starting to put it together on his own.
Otto pulled the train into the tunnel, past the pile of railroad scrap that he’d disassembled all those years ago, and stopped at the end, right by the labs. The back of the train, some three miles away, was still wrapping around Krakus House.
The burly man stepped off the engine—the Entity used Otto’s eyes and ears as short-distance surveillance. He couldn’t move more than a hundred feet from the train, but he rarely needed to go any further than that. As he surveyed the lab, he was angered by what he saw, by what he’d allowed to happen.
All of his scientists were down—it had been a firefight. They were clutching guns, as every person who lived in Polvec was required to have one. But they had fought and died valiantly protecting the work that the Entity had started back in the sixties. All of the computer monitors were shot up, as were the testing chambers, the centrifuges, all of it. He glanced into the quarantine cell and found all the live subjects still there, lingering at the end of their lives just as planned, their skin mottled with so many sores that they look dressed in polka dots.
This place was little more than a processing room for silver panhandlers during World War 1. With the help of his thralls, he turned it into something magnificent, a biological research facility that would rival any other on the planet. And now it was gone.
Only one person moved inside the lab, and the Entity had felt his presence the moment he entered. At the rear of the room, collapsed by a filing cabinet was Piotr Galin, the zoologist who had single-handedly pushed the research to new heights. He’d done more in a week than the biologists had in twenty years. The formula was perfect. Now, he was on the floor, blood dribbling down his lips, a revolver still clutched in his hand.
“What happened?” the Entity asked. It came out in German but Piotr understood.
“The Brits,” he said, voice cracking.
The Entity knew them—they were the last two healthy specimens, and Piotr had taken great interest in them because he wanted to see how the formula would react to their specific genome. They’d been kept alive but that had been a bad idea. They never should have been allowed to enter Polvec, but the Entity hadn’t been able to detect them. Now that he was so strong and able to move into parts of Poland like never before, his range of detection shifted when he was far away. He’d been near Czechia when they hopped the fence.
“They . . . did this?”
“They had help. But it was a massacre. We weren’t prepared.”
“You’re weak. The lot of you.” The Entity grabbed the revolver and placed it on a table, then lifted Piotr up by the arm. The dying man stiffly rose to his feet, coughing a great glob of blood onto the floor. “Get on the train.”
Piotr knew what that meant, but nodded his head and staggered away. He’d made it two feet before he half-collapsed against a rolling gurney and held himself up with shaky legs. He turned back around and said, “You should know something else.”
The Entity, by way of Otto, raised his eyebrows.
After the dying man told him of the ultimate slipup, Otto picked him up and tossed him over the window of the first car. The man wasn’t dead yet, but he would be soon. Right now, the Entity was growing angry because the last eighty years were about to be erased by a boy and two Brits who seemed to know their way around guns better than the thrall he employed.
But now they were all congregated at Krakus House. He had little power there, certainly none over the old woman. She’d never strayed far from his mind, hadn’t even strayed far from his location. He thought she’d died soon after the train was born, but then the house went up, the Opeikun setting up a base right in his backyard. That was probably the case all over the world where creatures like him roamed, but he had to remind himself that there were no other creatures like him. He was a beast from out of the shadows, and he would stay in the light forever or somehow be shoved back into darkness.
But how could he fix this problem? The old woman would protect them, and as long as she existed, he was powerless. Time had strengthened him—he was stronger now than he’d ever been. She had not changed since her youth. If anything, she was weaker now than ever, crippled by the curse of age.
He had a plan because one of the benefits of existing forever is the unmatched time to think. Humans were simple. Humans were predictable. And now that he had Poland in a vice, it was time to test them in ways they’ve never known.
The train’s whistle blew and a large cloud of black smoke filled the tunnel. Piotr, now noncorporeal, stood up in the car and left the lair, the first time in many days since the train had taken him away.
Ozelki – Krakus House
January 16th, 2019
There was much to tell, but the immediate story Matilda wished to discuss was why there was a man currently bleeding out across her nice bearskin rug. Lena and Edmund searched the place over for medical supplies but were satisfied with hydrogen peroxide and clean towels.
“You, boy! Help me!” Matilda was pointing at Brian, who looked almost as bloodied as the dying man on the floor, but only because he’d carried him out.
Brian nodded and bent down to help the old woman move him onto his side so she could inspect the wound. He wasn’t crying out, but Edmund saw a gush of blood ooze from his gut as they moved him.
“Was it a bullet or a knife?” asked Matilda. “I can’t tell because it’s a clean cut.”
“Bullet,” said Brian. “Must have went right out his backside.”
They rolled him flat again, and Matilda doused two towels with hydrogen peroxide, then stuffed one beneath him and one on the frontside of the wound. She snapped her fingers to get Brian’s attention and said, “Here, hold pressure.” He did as she asked without question.
Bill had pulled Sophie to sit against the steps but her body was as limp as the man bleeding out. Her breathing was slow, but steady. Matilda moved over to her, pulled back her eyelid and gave it a thorough look. Finally, satisfied, said, “She’s fine. The train stupor, is all. Let’s hope she’s not out as long as this one.” Matilda hooked her thumb back at Addey who just stood by the door, as if unsure if he was invited to come in.
The girls, Margo and Gerta were sitting
at the table, talking quietly. Neither of them had ever seen something like this, and the train had frightened them so badly that they didn’t dare separate from the group.
“What’s it want?” asked Gerta. “Oh, God, my mum will be scared out ‘er mind! We have to get out of ‘ere!”
“We will, darling, we will,” Margo comforted. “These men aren’t going to let anything happen to us.” Edmund didn’t like the shrillness of either girls’ voice, so he paid little attention to what they said.
“Is anyone else hurt?” asked Matilda, turning a circle around the room.
Nine others, in various states of energy, said no.
“It’s still out there,” said Addey, looking through the window. “But it’s stopped. I don’t see the engine.”
“Why isn’t it ramming down our bloody throats?” said Brian, switching hands against Marcus’s bloody stomach.
Matilda said, “Long story. But it won’t bother any of you as long as I’m here.”
“Believe her,” said Edmund, just as the Brit’s brow furrowed in skepticism.
“Lena, put on some soup,” the old woman said. “We have guests who are undoubtedly hungry. And I’m sure they have quite the tale for us.”
For some reason, all eyes turned to Addey, rather than Brian.
Edmund’s friend simply nodded. It was almost painful to see him awake because he still didn’t look like himself. The weeks spent in the nursing home had left him gaunt, eyes sunken and cheekbones poking through. He’d grown plump back in America, enjoying all the fatty delicacies found on every street corner. Now, his jeans hung from his hips and his shirt was so baggy that it was impossible to tell if he were hiding abs or a gut.
“I went to Polvec a month ago.” His grin turned sheepishly toward Matilda. “It was a bad idea, just like you said. There’s a spot on the far side of the mountain where the rain has washed out the earth beneath the fence, and I was able to slip in through there.”
“Why, Addey?” asked Bill. “Why did you even bother to go there?”
“Because he was searching for his grandparents,” said Edmund.
“That’s right. Mama and Tata told me they heard the train. That was back when I was in high school. I was so depressed. I never talked about it. But I went back home because there were so many unanswered questions. I’m sorry, Edmund. I shut down on you. I should have told you what was happening in my life.”
“It’s okay. I can relate. We all can relate.” He flashed a look to Bill who dropped his head and said nothing, only stroked Sophie’s hair.
“Anyway, I did a lot of investigating. A lot of train searching. I found out all the things you probably found out as well, Ed. Otto, the train and the way it only comes out at night and in January—two things that are no longer set in stone.”
It took Edmund a moment to realize what he meant, but now that he thought about it, Addey’s video was shot last month, in December. That should have been an early warning that the train was growing in power.
“The more I learned, the more afraid I became. And this is all after I hyped up the ghost hunting to you, Edmund. I wish I’d never mentioned it. I sent you a message, telling you that I didn’t think it was safe, but that was the night I heard the call. My grandparents were calling my name, and I was hearing them as clear as I’m hearing you now.
“I left, but I pulled my camera out because I knew I was going to die. I knew that the train had lured me. I don’t know how I had the strength to fight the call, but I did. I filmed the train, and at the last minute . . .”
“Otto came for you and you ran off, leaving your phone,” said Edmund.
“I dropped it in the snow, but yeah . . . how did you know?”
Both Bill and Edmund brought him up to speed, telling him of how they’d visited his parents and then the nursing home. They saw the pictures and the video—countless times until the phone broke.
“This was all a month ago right?” said Lena. “Why were you back there again tonight?”
“Because I had to see it for myself. When I woke up, I stumbled out into the hallway, and on the television was the train. It made my blood cold! I got dressed and hitchhiked my way back here.”
“You didn’t go home first? Call your parents?” Lena asked.
Addey snorted and rolled his eyes. “My parents don’t give a damn about me. Never have. My grandpapa and grandma were who raised me. I know they are on that train. I don’t need Otto’s siren song to convince me of that. But I knew Polvec was hiding something. It’s the source of the train’s power, or at least a closely guarded secret.”
“And now we know why,” said Brian.
“You do?” Matilda asked. For once, the old lady was as clueless as the rest.
“Thanks to Edmund here, Mark and I learned about this Polvec. The locals weren’t friendly, they never are when they meet you with AK-47s, but that’s besides the point. We hopped the fence and started snooping around. We stayed hidden for little while but then were discovered.
“This man, that Piotr character who went missing a few days ago? He showed up right when we were going to be shot full of holes and asked them to keep us alive.”
“Piotr is alive?” Lena asked.
Brian nodded. “Oh yeah, lots of people were still alive. The train may call them, but it doesn’t call them to death. It calls them to serve. Anyway, thank God this here boy showed up and sprung us.”
“You helped them escape?” Bill asked Addey. He simply nodded.
“Damn right he did. We were to be experimented on, and I seen just what those experiments looked like. The boy let us out of our cage, Mark and I snuck up on a bloke and took his gun. Then it was an all-out firefight. We took down probably a dozen of ‘em, but Mark took a hit right in the gut. We were able to leave Polvec the same way Adlai here got in, packed up Mark in the back and that’s when we ran upon Edmund here and the lady there.” He pointed over to Sophie whose eyes were still clamped shut.
“Tell me about these experiments,” Matilda said. She was looking down at Marcus and Edmund could see it in her eyes that she knew he wasn’t long for the world.
“It was awful, mum. They had these injections, right? And after only an hour, the people would start to break out in horrible sores. Those would start at the trunk and move to the limbs. I watched people scratch so hard that they were bloody afterwards. They didn’t suffer very long, that was the grace of God, because they got sick—some kinda fever—and died not long after.”
“God,” said Matilda, barely above a whisper. “He’s done it.”
“Done what, mum?” asked Brian.
“And who?” added one of the girls from the table. They had been hanging on Brian’s words.
“The train. The Entity,” she said. “He wants death and now he’s found a way to spread it more effectively than ever before. He’s engineered typhus.”
“But isn’t there a vaccine for typhus?” asked Bill.
“There is, but I’m betting this strain is immune,” said Brian. “You didn’t see the lab. These ghosts have worked hard to enslave smart people to build a research facility to make the typhus.”
“We have to tell someone,” said Lena. “The CDC or WHO.”
“We’re way ahead of you,” said Addey. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a flash drive and a tiny, capped test tube holding a dingy green fluid inside. “We swiped their samples, downloaded their schematics. If we could get this to the right people, perhaps they could reverse engineer it. Find a cure.”
Bill stood up and looked at the flash drive with wide, fearful eyes. “Shit, Addey. Does it know you took that? It’s gonna be pissed.”
And so it was.
Just as he said it, the train bellowed from outside. Noise sprang up all around them as the cars began to move in reverse, the ghosts inside springing to a frenzy. The trainset was moving so that the engine could once more reappear close to Krakus House’s front door. Those inside gathered at the window and watched through th
e darkness as the chugga-chugga slowed down to a crawl and then with a hiss of steam the engine stopped just where it had earlier, when it took Timothy the Bookish Guy who would never read a book again.
Otto hopped off and stood in the muck, looking Krakus House over as if it were the first time he’d ever seen it. The alligator wrench was still in the engine, and to Edmund it looked like he was wringing his fists. He took a few steps forward and stopped, as if he were waiting on something.
“Stay behind me,” said Matilda. “I think my old friend wants to have a talk.”
Edmund couldn’t believe that so many people were rallying behind the old woman because most hadn’t seen the power she commanded over the Entity. Most of them didn’t even know the train was an Entity. They all filed out the door except for Brian, who’d sat on the floor and kept a firm hand pushed against his friend’s wound. Bill even leaned Sophie against the stair post and followed his friends.
Matilda walked toward Otto who only stood his ground, sizing her up. She stared at him, and he returned it with equal venom. Edmund realized that he had control over most everyone, but this woman had bested him since she was a mere five years old.
“Leave this place,” she said. “You have no power here.”
Otto smirked, then rattled something off in German and turned around, heading for one of the train cars.
“What did he say?” asked Bill.
“He said that he’s not here to talk to me.”
Otto picked up a child from the first car and placed her on the ground. Although Matilda wouldn’t recognize her after so many long years, it was the second girl that Klaus Wagner shot dead when the Entity put the suggestion in his head. Now, the little girl with half her head collapsed stood there and spoke in English that wasn’t perfect, but passable.
“The old woman is a hindrance to me,” the child spoke.
“Who are you?” asked Edmund.
“I am Gertrude Panza. I am Otto Herzog. I am this train. I am death.” When she spoke, it didn’t just come from her lips. It came from all their lips. The dead on the train and Otto. They were connected as one voice . . . one Entity.
Ghost Train of Treblinka Page 20
