“And what do you want?” Lena asked.
The little girl made a creepy half smile because most of her cheek was blown out. “I want the old woman. Dead. And I want you to kill her for me.”
“You heard the old lady. You have no power here,” said Lena.
“I do not. And I can’t force any of you to do it. But . . . I’m asking you to do it.”
“Why would we listen to you?” said Edmund.
“Because I’m not going to leave here until you do.”
“You just want this back,” said Addey. He held up the vial, and for a moment the little girl and Otto both dropped their stoic faces.
“That belongs to me,” the girl said. “And I will have it back.”
“We’re done here,” said Matilda. She’d started to walk off.
“I have been here since the beginning of time!” screamed the child. The dead on the train held their ears. “You humans are nothing more than animals. You will run out of firewood. You will run out of food, water, medicine. And in the end these people will bring me your head on a platter and beg me to take it!”
Matilda turned around, and for a moment the light from the house made her look at least fifty years younger. She was a strong woman, to be sure, but that was the first time she’d ever really looked the part.
“You’re scared,” she said. It was such an odd thing to say at the moment but the ghosts standing in perfect unison, like bees in a hivemind, just stared. “After all these years you still can’t control everything. You aren’t all powerful. And you still fear change.”
“Change made me strong.”
“It also made you weak. What will happen next time? The two of us together—it’s always interesting, isn’t it?” Matilda started to stroll down the hill. Otto and the girl both took a synchronized step backwards. The old woman threw her head back and laughed.
He climbed aboard the engine while the little girl struggled to lift herself up and roll into the car. She peeked out from the same place that Matilda had all those year ago when she grasped the Entity, effectively spreading a cancer that ate away at the bad things of the world.
“Remember what I said,” the little girl uttered. The engine came alive, blowing smoke, bellowing a warcry. “Bring me her head and I’ll go away.”
With that, the train pulled out, slowly at first, but then picked up speed. It wasn’t going away, only circling Krakus House like a giant, ghost-filled merry-go-round.
Ozelki – Krakus House
January 17th, 2019
True to its word, the Ghost Train did not leave through the night. Edmund tried to get a little much-needed sleep but every time he shut his eyes, the engine, as if sensing his slowed heartbeat, blared its whistle. He shot out of bed more than once, only to look out the window and see nothing but a cloud of smoke.
Somehow Marcus survived the night, Brian using the cigarette lighter from the SUV to cauterize the wounds enough to stem the bleeding. He said he believed Marcus’s liver had been nicked, and if that were the case he wouldn’t get better until he had a professional tending his wounds. For now, he lay in and out of a drunken stupor, fevered and most likely still going to die, despite Matilda and Brian’s best efforts.
His state of consciousness was a little better than Sophie’s, who remained in a fitful sleep. Bill had carried her up the steps and put her on the bed, then fell asleep next to her with the door open. In fact, they’d all slept with their doors open. The train had united them—strangers no more.
Matilda gave Addey an empty room—the one he’d stayed in last month, actually—but he didn’t even use it. Instead, he spent most of his time in the common room where Brian slept next to the fire alongside his dying friend. Addey kept watch, looking at the train through the windows and making sure no one attempted to walk out the front door should the Entity call them.
“You haven’t slept any?” asked Edmund, walking down the steps and finding his friend sitting at the bottom.
Addey shook his head. “I’ve been asleep for a month. I’m scared to shut my eyes. What if I don’t wake up?”
“I don’t think it works that way, bud.” But he didn’t believe that. He very much believed that people newly awakened from comas often slipped right back in.
“It’s good to see you, Ed,” he said.
“You too. I guess we didn’t get a proper hello last night.”
“We didn’t. I can’t believe you came here.”
“I just couldn’t leave without knowing. I had to know what had happened to you. We had plenty of chances to be out of Poland. Bill and I are at odds right now over it.”
“Bill will get over it,” he said. “We’re all safe. For the time being.”
“Where’s the vial?”
“In my room upstairs. Makes me nervous just carrying it around.”
“Yeah, I guess it would. I wish we could get that thing out of here,” said Edmund.
“Not sure that’ll be possible,” Addey said, pointing out the window. Currently the train was stopped, but the car in front of the house was filled to the brim with dead men, women, and children. Their lifeless eyes were turned curiously toward the BnB.
“Why do you think it stops sometimes?”
Addey shrugged. “Maybe it’s still causing destruction out there. As many train cars that’s in its set. . . the engine could be halfway to Germany right now.”
“It’s like one of those tree snakes, with its tail coiled around a branch.”
Addey smirked. “And we are the branch.”
“Hey, Ed?” called Bill from up above. “Come up a sec, will ya?”
The men on the stairs looked up and found him there, leaning over the railing, stuffing some kind of bread into his mouth. Addey threw up a hand to wave. Edmund nodded and left his friend there on the steps to watch a sleeping Brian and Marcus.
Bill had wrapped Sophie like a mummy atop the bed, but that had been smart thinking because the house was far colder this morning than it had been last night. Each of the rooms had a fireplace in them, but Bill, like Edmund, had trouble keeping one stoked.
“How’s she doing?” Edmund asked.
“She talked in her sleep last night. I couldn’t understand what she was saying, but that’s good right?”
“Yeah, I’d say that’s good.”
Bill walked over to the window and looked out. It was the only thing they could do—watch the train and wait.
“I just need to say I’m sorry for how I acted before,” said Bill.
“Not necessary,” Edmund said, voice rigid.
“Yeah, it is. If not for you . . .” His voice trailed off, eyes turning back to Sophie, sleeping as still as a porcelain doll.
“You would have done the same for me, or for Lena.”
Bill smiled. “You mean Samantha.”
“Yeah, Samantha. That’s what I said.”
Bill just shook his head, but he was still smiling. “Yeah. That’s the thing I realized. I would do the same for you. We’re all friends, we stick together.”
“Damn right we do. Now we just have to figure out how to get out of here.”
“Or how to make the train leave.”
“Do you think any of the others would . . . you know, take the Entity up on his offer?” Edmund asked.
“Of our group? No. I’ve only had a few conversations with the PIs. Those girls . . . who knows. And certainly not Lena.”
“Okay. Then I guess we do what we can to wait it out. Won’t the military or someone come? A whole country can’t stay cut off from the world.”
“I think the train is far more capable of keeping things away than we give it credit for. When it’s stopped like that . . .” Edmund pointed out the window, to where the boxcars sat motionless. “. . .I think the front end is raising hell.”
“They’ll nuke us,” said Bill. It was so matter-of-fact that it caught Edmund off guard. He was probably right.
“Let’s hope they took note of how ineffective mis
siles were and back off.”
“That’s asking a lot, but I pray that’s the case,” said Bill.
Just then Sophie turned over and Bill rushed to her side, lifting her arm and trying to wake her.
“Soph? Sophie? Wake up, baby. Please?”
“Bill . . .” she said, and his eyes lit up. Hers, however, remained closed.
“She’s coming around,” said Edmund. “Just stay by her side.”
He nodded and started to say something, but the train lurched forward, the whistle far away, but loud enough to make Sophie tremble in her sleep.
***
The first three days they created routines and seemed to do a fair job living them. Lena and Matilda had inventoried their food and firewood and thought they could survive another two-weeks before things would become dire. Matilda told them that January was the off-season, even though Krakus House catered to the Ghost Train fan club. The heavy season for backpacking travelers was November when air rates were the lowest, and that’s when the pantry would be stocked to maximum capacity. They had one strike of good luck though—the boy who sold them firewood had delivered a truckload the morning before the train wrapped itself around Krakus House.
“We’ll hack up the tables and chairs before we freeze to death,” said Lena one morning. She and Edmund were sitting by the fireplace. Marcus was only a few feet away, and he’d even woken up a few times to take in his surroundings, only to fall back asleep. His skin was a putrid yellow color.
“I hope that won’t be necessary,” Edmund said.
“It won’t be. Besides, we’ll run out of food before firewood.”
He just shook his head. The Polish sense of humor left something to be desired.
“Where does the old lady stay?” asked Edmund. Matilda was hardly ever seen, only when she appeared in the kitchen to help her granddaughter prepare food on the small propane hotplate.
“She’s been spending a lot of time downstairs.”
“But why? None of the equipment works.”
“That’s where the voices are the quietest.”
“Sorry?” he asked.
Lena smiled, and rolled her eyes a bit, as if she’d forgotten to tell him something. “Sometimes . . . she hears the dead.”
A week ago, Edmund would have laughed, but not after having spent time around the old woman. She’d known her friend Gus was dead. It made sense now, the way Matilda seemed to step out of herself, the way she would look at him as if she weren’t really seeing him. Those pauses weren’t because of a stroke-addled mind. She was listening.
“Does she hear the ghosts on the train?”
“Sometimes,” Lena said. “And when she does, it can be overwhelming. There’s so many of them.”
“What does she say to them?” Edmund asked.
“She says nothing. She can’t talk to them. But they can talk to her, and they are scared and hate their existence.”
“It must be horrible.”
“You have no idea. Imagine living that life. Being born the wrong race, forced to live in a filthy ghetto. And then, instead of the mercy of the camp, the mercy of the gas chamber, forced to live eternally on the train. I wouldn’t want babcia’s ‘gift.’ It must be terrible to hear their cries.”
“Imagine if they could fight back,” said Edmund.
“What?”
He thought back to the picture of the holocaust train he’d seen in the newspaper on the night he met Brian and Marcus. All those people being loaded into the cars—thousands of them—and it was ordered by only a handful of guards with guns.
“What if all those ghosts just turned on the Entity? Decided they didn’t want to be slaves anymore.”
“I don’t think they have the option to fight,” said Lena.
Edmund looked into the fire, the flickering embers that reminded him of the fury of the train. “Maybe they do and they just don’t know how.”
She said nothing to that, only contemplated it with distant eyes that also stared into the fire. Edmund and Bill played cards on the floor with the girls—both Margo and Gerta were looking less kempt since there was no hot water. Indeed, they all had been a few days without a bath, but it was better to be filthy in icy Poland than sun-scorched Morocco.
Edmund watched them often, mainly because neither of the Swedish ladies seemed to click with the rest of the group. Whenever a conversation began, they found a way to exit it, and Edmund often caught them off in some remote part of the house, talking quietly.
He excused himself to go to the bathroom and noticed that the door to the kitchen was hanging open. Instead of going up the steps, he rounded the counter and went down, immediately feeling a shiver run up his spine because it was at least ten degrees cooler in the pantry-slash-War Room than it was upstairs.
Matilda was sitting in the room toward the back, the narrow space that separated the bank of computers from the stacks of dry goods. She was in a rocking chair, her motley-colored quilt draped across her lap. Her frail, splotched fingers were knitting by candlelight, and Edmund couldn’t help but feel a little claustrophobic by the place she favored to live during this hardship.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. He didn’t really know what else to say as a conversation starter. “I could warm you some soup or something.”
She looked up at him, eye adjusting to the shape in the light. The room was pitch black if not for her pulsing, tableside candle. But Edmund could see her hands fold down across her lap, the smile spread over her face.
“That’s sweet of you, but no.” She coughed, and in the silence of the room, he could hear the rattle in her chest—what his dad had called the Death Knell when Edmund’s grandmother had died in the nursing home, from complications due to pneumonia.
“Why don’t you come upstairs? It’s a lot warmer.”
“I don’t mind the cold, Edmund. But I do like the quiet. Come, sit with me.” She waved a hand and for the first time he noticed there was a chair opposite of her, out of the candle’s glow.
He pulled it closer to where she sat and seated himself. She put her needles away and turned to him, a slight adjustment that seemed to pain her. There was a soft, golden glow on her skin, making her look like parchment.
“It’s still there,” he said. “The train, I mean.”
She nodded. “Of course it is. He’ll not go anywhere until I’m dead, which may be sooner rather than later.”
“Don’t say that,” he said. “You don’t know that.”
“People are predictable as often as they are not,” she said. “One of those up there will be the death of me. I’d wager one of those girls. They’re young, they haven’t learned to appreciate life yet, and they may be just stupid enough to believe that the train will simply go away once I’m dead.”
Edmund said nothing, because deep down, he agreed with the old lady.
“I need to ask you for a favor,” she said.
“A favor?”
“Yes. When it’s done. When I’m dead I mean . . . stop with the eye-rolling! Now listen. When I’m dead, the wards upon this place will not hold him any longer. He’ll be able to come right in. When I’m dead, I want you to look after Lena.”
“I will,” he said. That favor was simple.
“That’s not all. There’s every chance that you will all follow me into death. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already suspect. But if you can get out. If the Entity slips up at all and you can get away . . . head to Treblinka.”
“The camp,” he said as much as asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She turned away, as if she didn’t know, or as if she were hearing something Edmund could not. “I don’t know. You just need to go there after I’m dead.”
“We will. But stop saying that. You’re not dying on my watch.”
“Such cliché, American,” she said, then launched into another cough so horrid it made him cringe.
“Will you at least sleep up there? This chair can’t b
e good for your bones.”
“Safety in numbers, right?” She said it in jest, smiling crookedly.
“Normally, but the train easily thwarts numbers. Why do you think no one has heard the call?” Edmund didn’t think the wards that she spoke of protected the house from that. Addey had heard it a month ago, and so had Sophie.
She shook her head, dismissively. “Because he doesn’t need to call them. They’re more useful alive. Right now he has several able-bodied people who could run a knife through my heart.”
“I’m not going to let that happen,” said Edmund.
She smiled and stood up, then placed a hand to his cheek. It was icy.
“I think I will take you up on that soup, boy.”
***
Another four days saw the group becoming increasingly more agitated with each other. The girls—Gerta and Margo—were running out of what Edmund called ‘elective supplies’—makeup, hair and skin products, and little orange pills that Margo was fond of popping into her mouth when she thought no one was looking. Once those things were gone, they were truly ‘roughing it.’
The first fights didn’t begin over food as Edmund would have figured, but over firewood. True, there was plenty out back and you only had to go within eight feet of the nearest train car to grab it from the pile, but Lena and Matilda made the decision that it shouldn’t be squandered on individual rooms. So the whole group decided they would stack all the chairs and tables to a corner in the common room and put down bedding on the floor. That way they could feed the two main fireplaces and keep one room warm, rather than several smaller ones. Lena and Matilda normally slept in a joint bedroom on the third floor, and it was easier for the old woman and her knees to stay downstairs.
Sophie continued to sleep, and after Bill carried her down and put her in front of the rear fireplace (Marcus had the one up front because invalids came first), she was looked after by several people. Lena and Matilda took turns changing her soiled clothes while Bill held up a blanket for privacy. Even Edmund and Addey helped to spoon feed her chicken broth.
Marcus was starting to wake up, helped along by the bottle of antibiotics that Gerta found in her purse from when she had her wisdom teeth extracted. He was much quieter than Edmund remembered, but getting shot in the gut probably humbled someone. He listened intently as Brian explained their current predicament. Marcus just seemed content that Addey had made it out okay after risking his life to spring the PIs.
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