by Alison Stine
She opened her eyes. She stopped dancing, relaxing her position, shaking out her arms and legs. She was my height exactly, I realized. She was just like me. Or I was like her. She reached her arm above her head. She stretched. She looked at me.
“I’m so proud of you, Esmé,” she said.
The light came from behind her, the light I had always seen. In my visions, I mistook it for a spotlight, but I knew now what it was.
“The train. It’s coming!” I rushed forward to push her out of the way, to save her—and tripped, falling into open air. My mother was gone.
I had fallen on my knees between the tracks, and raised my head to face the train’s headlight. But the light didn’t grow bigger, as the train approached. And the light was swinging, bouncing off the tunnel walls. It wasn’t a train headlight at all, I realized.
It was the light in a lantern.
I didn’t have the energy to stand. Maybe my mother had come to help me die. Maybe she was proud of me for making it this far, at least. I watched the dancing light, waiting for the Stationmaster to appear around the curve. I wasn’t going to fight him, not again. I couldn’t. I didn’t have the strength.
I heard a whistle.
But the sound came from behind me. I forced myself to look, though turning caused some muscle I didn’t know I had to ache. There was the headlight, there was the steam, there was the roaring, monstrous train.
It was my mail train.
“I caught you,” the Stationmaster’s voice reverberated off the walls. “I always do.”
I wondered what had happened to Tom, to Mr. Black. I wondered if Clara had run into the flames again, if Tom had been beaten until his body lay still.
I spoke into the lantern’s light. “Who hurt you?” I asked. “What was done to you?”
The Stationmaster came around the curve. I could see him by the light of his own lantern. He was just a man. An old man. Dead.
“Nothing,” he said.
“You were an orphan.” I managed to stand. “You were lawless. You were friendless. You were from bad blood.” I heard the train behind me. The wind pushed my hair into my face. I stepped from the track, inched to the side. Every step ached. “You’re the one,” I said. “It’s you that needs help.”
He was coming closer, striding down the very center of the train tracks.
“You need manners,” I said.
“Little girl.”
“You need discipline.”
“I’m warning you.”
“You need supervision.”
The tunnel was awash in blinding light. The train was a roar, and it was here, here, everywhere at once, filling the tunnel. The tracks shook. We were going to be struck by it, killed by it, both of us. We were going to be mowed down.
I was going to die.
And I wanted to live. I wanted to be seen again, seen by my grandmother and sister, by my friends. I wanted to make new friends. I wanted to figure out my gift, who I was, who my ancestors had been, the women of my family. I wanted to live. I wanted to live. I remembered the safety bays Tom had shown to me, the recesses in the wall for ducking down when a train approached.
But there wasn’t time to find one. I squeezed against the wall, making myself as flat as I could. The space between the wall and the track was so narrow, my toes touched the rail. So I turned my feet to the side, making them parallel to the track. I flung my arms out, embracing the wall behind my back. I was in second position, I realized, my body stretched against the bricks in a stance I had seen my mother and sister do so many times, but had never bothered to try myself; I had never wanted to. All the ballet I had been forced to sit through, all the dancing I had never done—would it save me now?
The train was rattling by me, shaking and roaring. My teeth trembled. My skull quaked. Wind threw grit and gravel in my hair. I felt the train in my bones.
Even as the engine tore through beside us, the Stationmaster reached for me. He would take me down with him, drag me back onto the tracks. He would kill me. He didn’t fear death; he was already dead.
His hand clamped my wrist. With his other, he raised his lantern.
“You need supervision!” I screamed above the train.
And then I ducked.
There was a slicing sound, like the lantern swinging through air. But it was the sound of a hook, the mail hook on the side of the train, cutting off cleanly the Stationmaster’s head.
CHAPTER 22:
Free
Tom found me in the tunnel. As we walked out together, the ghost train disappeared. It just vanished from the tracks.
“The Stationmaster went away like that,” I said. “I didn’t look, but I felt it. He was there, then he wasn’t. Just wasn’t. It made a gusting sound.”
Tom nodded as if he understood.
“I don’t think he’ll come back, this time,” I said. “It feels different. I don’t … sense him anymore. I think this was what he needed—what he wanted—all along, to have someone hold him accountable, to call him out, to yell at him, to punish him. He wanted to be caught.”
Tom helped me over the tracks. “How did you think to do that?”
“Remember Clara and the hot chocolate? Grandma said it’s the thought that counts.”
He smiled. I could see his grin flashing in the darkness, and then I noticed the dark wasn’t as dark as I remembered. Gray light filtered between the trees, and the sky above them was navy-colored. It was almost dawn.
We left the tunnel, walking beside the track, the tall walls rising up on either side of us, twenty feet or taller, majestic, though they were crumbling and scarred. I became aware of a rustling on top of the walls. I looked up to see a shadow standing there at the edge of the forest. It was a boy.
“Who is that?” I asked.
Another rustling. Another figure stood on the opposite side.
More figures appeared to stand on the top of the tunnel walls. They had come from the woods, and stood silently at the tree line, shoulder to shoulder. They flanked both sides. They stood looking straight ahead, an honor guard for us, marking the way.
They were ghosts.
“Children,” I said.
“Kids who wanted what you did, to catch the Stationmaster, to stop him.”
As we passed them, the ghosts faded, one by one, as suddenly as they had appeared.
“They got what they wanted,” I whispered. “They’re free.”
There was another surprise for us: Clara stood at the top of the hill in front of my grandmother’s house, dawn breaking over her face.
“Are you all right?” I asked. “Did you die again?”
She shrugged. “Last time, I think. Once more, for the memories, you know.”
Behind her, people and ghosts were coming out of the house, my grandmother and Martha, the Firecracker and Mr. Black. They seemed very small and far away.
I stood where I was, and stared at Clara. The sun was coming over the hills, and I could see it reflected golden in her eyes, the first glimmer of light I had seen there, I realized. “You seem different,” I said.
“It’s over. He’s gone. The man who killed me and my brother is gone.”
“But that’s not what you wanted.”
“That is.” She pointed, and I looked behind me, at Tom grinning as wide as I had ever seen him. He held out his hand and I took it.
Clara sighed. “I suspect you’ll go to hell, Esmé, so I imagine I won’t see you.” She looked down through her lashes. “But until then, have some fun for me, will you? Promise me you’ll try it, that fun thing, while you’re still alive?”
“I’ll try,” I said.
She flicked her hair and half turned, as if she was going to greet the group coming down from the house. She raised her knee to skip. Then she vanished, into the hill, into the grass. She just turned and faded, like a light switched off.
“Clara!” I said. I felt Tom’s fingers lacing tight in mine.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I think i
t’s all right.”
“What’s happening now?”
“Now,” he said, “I think your grandmother’s business falls away sharply.”
“Excuse me?” my grandmother said. “Was that the drunk one?”
“Ma’am, I beg your pardon,” Mr. Black said. “I am the drunk one. At least, I was drunk yesterday.” He frowned. “And the day before. And … one hundred and something years prior. But today,” he raised his index finger, “today I have not touched a drop.”
Martha slid to his side, slipping her arm through his.
“Kiss her,” Tom said.
“Oh yes,” Mr. Black said. He cleared his throat. He lifted his hand to Martha’s face, to touch her check and draw her close.
“Oh, is this what it’s like then?” she said.
“Yes,” Mr. Black said. He bent his face to hers.
Martha smiled until her eyes shone, then closed her eyes for the kiss, then—
“No!” I said. “Wait!”
They were gone. They were gone together. They were sunlight. They were air.
I sank onto my knees on the hill.
“What’s happening?” the Firecracker said.
“We need to go,” my grandmother said, touching my sister’s shoulder, and turning her away. “Make breakfast, make ourselves useful. Esmé’s going to need us.” They trudged off to the house, my grandmother looking back over her shoulder once—almost at me, I thought. But it couldn’t be.
“I’m still invisible,” I said.
Tom sat down on the grass beside me. “I don’t think it’s permanent. You have a gift. It’s a little hard at first. But you’re getting practice.”
“I’ll be out of practice soon,” I said. Now Clara was gone, Mr. Black, Martha …
“Don’t forget the Builder,” Tom said. “He’s going to need a lot of convincing that that house of his is done. That could take years.”
I groaned. “That’s never gonna work.”
“You have a big gift, Ez,” Tom said. “But you’ll grow into it.”
“This is a very awkward growing stage. Much worse than getting taller. Which I’ll probably also never do.”
“You will get taller,” Tom said. “And grow old. And fall in love.”
“I already did that,” I said. “I think I already did.”
“Me too.”
My voice was a whisper. “What’s going to happen now?”
“I don’t know,” Tom said.
“Will I be able to see you? Or hear you? Or sense you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will we find each other again?”
“Yes,” he said. “Of that, I’m certain.” He put my chin in his hand, and tilted my head like Mr. Black and Martha. My eyes flickered up until they were looking into his. More color had come into his face. More light had reached his eyes. He looked more alive now than ever, now that he was drifting from me, now that he was almost ready to go.
I felt the tips of my own fingers tingling, like blood was returning to them after they had been asleep. I felt a flush in my chest.
“Tom Griffin,” I said. “I love you.”
“I don’t think that goes away,” he said. “I don’t think any of that feeling goes away, ever. No matter what happens or doesn’t happen or can never happen. I love you. That lives with you.”
He kissed me, one of the those kisses that goes on forever, one of those kisses I had never had before—and only a few times since—the kind that causes the sun to come fully over the hill, the clouds to turn colors, the birds begin to sing. Dawn rose in the sky, and warmed it. When morning light hit my skin, I could feel it—and when I reached to touch Tom, I couldn’t.
He was there. I knew he was there, somehow, somewhere, some part of him. I could feel him still: in the grass of the hill, in the summer light and the singing birds, in the tear-shaped leaves, in the birches. But I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t hear him. Was this my gift? Just knowing I wasn’t alone—no one was—knowing the dead were still with us, that they were always with us?
It wasn’t a just. It was everything.
I sat for a long time on the hill, being comforted with Tom’s presence, Tom’s memory, Tom’s love. And then I went inside, where my grandmother had spotted me through the window.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my family: Nancy and Herman Stine, Andrew Stine and Katie Berki, and Ashley Stine and Andy Bachman. Thank you to my wonderful agent Carol Mann, to my editors Rachel Winterbottom and Natasha Bardon, and to everyone at HarperVoyager. I am grateful to all of my friends, and thank the following people especially for their assistance, inspiration, and encouragement with this project: Geri Lipschultz, Ellee Prince, Brad Daugherty, Matt Glass, Angel Lemke, Marlene Tromp, Jordan Davis, and Jeff VanderMeer (my first and only fiction teacher). Thank you to my students over the years, especially to the writers at the Denison University Jonathan R. Reynolds Young Writers Workshop. To my fellow faculty and teaching assistants there: you have become like family, and I am lucky to have you in my life. Thank you to my book brothers and sisters at HarperVoyager. Thank you most of all to Henry and James.
I wrote Supervision in the Rose Main Reading Room at the New York Public Library on 42nd Street in Manhattan. And to the library security guards who, over the course of a year, became my friends, and gave me support, company, and tough love: this book is for you too. You told me to go after my dream. Because of a public library, this book was written—and I encourage everyone, after finishing it, to find their own dreams in a library.
About the Author
Alison Stine lives in the Appalachian foothills of Ohio. She works as a freelance writer/reporter and is an urban explorer. Her work has been published in The Nation, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Supervision is her first novel. You can follow Alison on Twitter @AlisonStine
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