by JL Bryan
All of that flickered across my brain in about half a second, maybe less.
“Are you sure you don’t want the breakfast vegetable platter?” I asked.
“Sounds a little healthy for me,” Michael said.
“Don’t worry, it’s all deep fried,” Stacey told him. “And served with gravy. You can wash it down with this sugar water,” she added as the waiter brought us mason jars full of sweet tea. We hadn’t ordered them, they just bring them out automatically at The Country Barn, the way some places automatically bring you water, or some Mexican restaurants give you a free basket of chips.
I thanked the waiter, a burly man with a thick beard wearing a polka-dotted shirt under the rooster-logo overalls.
“My pleasure! Good morning, everyone! I’m Ron and I’m soooo glad you’re joining me for breakfast this lovely a.m.! Let me guess...” Ron the burly waiter studied us. “You’re all starting out on an exciting road trip today?”
“That’s it,” Stacey said. “We’re going to see Rock City.”
“Oh, fantastic! You’ll have so much fun, but you’ll need a big breakfast. Today’s special is the Devil’s Scramble Platter--”
“One of those for me,” Michael said.
“Feisty!” Ron said, clapping Michael’s shoulder and looking at me. “This one looks like fun.”
“You should see his mime act,” I said.
“Every day in the park,” Michael added with a perfectly straight face. “Four o’ clock. There’s usually a crowd, so get there early.”
“Oh, I will,” Ron said.
Stacey and I ordered our breakfasts—a Double Cluckin’ Biscuit for me (fried chicken and a fried egg), a Fancy Frenchie platter for Stacey (crepes and French toast). As Stacey had mentioned, there was nothing on the menu you could really call healthy. Jacob, looking particularly horrified at the selection, asked whether there was any basic fruit or cereal available.
“You can get the Blueberry Pancake and Waffle Mountain,” Ron suggested. “It has a few berries on top, just between the maple syrup and whipped cream. You should try it!”
“Any chance of getting just a piece of toast? Maybe a poached egg?” Jacob asked.
“I suppose.” Ron sighed as if disappointed in him, then took our menus and left.
“Okay, here we are,” Stacey said, looking at me.
“So why were we all summoned here today?” Jacob asked. “Is there a murder mystery involved? Someone in this restaurant is the killer? I’m guessing it was the chef, in the kitchen, with the sausage gravy. Did the victim die of rapid-onset heart disease?”
“I just thought it would be nice for us all to get together again,” I said. Which didn’t make a lot of sense, since we’d never gotten together as group before, in a social sense. Maybe a quick change of subject could save the day. “Michael just got back from some advanced firefightery training in North Carolina. What was that like?”
“It was just a lot of hanging off cliffs on ropes,” he said. “The scenarios were based on retrieving inexperienced hikers and climbers from dangerous, off-limits areas of the mountain. We also did a night rapid-water rescue scenario at Nantahala Falls, and none of us drowned, so that was nice.”
“That’s so cool,” Stacey said, beaming at him.
“I don’t want to make his week sound boring, but I did audit a mid-size chain of shoe retailers,” Jacob said. “Three cash flow discrepancies. All minor, easily resolved.” He leaned back a bit, then suddenly jerked upright again, as if he’d forgotten he was sitting on a bench instead of a chair with a back. “I can’t say anything more about it, though. I’m sorry.”
“You’ve been hanging out at shoe stores and you didn’t invite me?” Stacey asked.
“I want to know what you’ve been doing,” Michael said, looking directly at me.
“Uh...well, Stace and I had a client with a false alarm a while back,” I said. “Possums, it turned out. Not ghosts.”
“But possums look like ghosts, don’t they?” Stacey said. “Their little pointy white faces and big black eyes. Right up there with owls, somewhere in the top five most ghost-like animals.”
“What else is on that list? Cats?” Jacob asked.
“Definitely cats,” she said.
“We’re investigating a haunted railroad right now,” I said.
“Oh, yeah,” Stacey said. “We think a ghost train passed by us.”
“What kind of train?” Jacob asked.
“Yeah, what did it look like?” Michael asked.
“We didn’t actually see the train,” Stacey said. “It was just kind of a cold wind. But really eerie. I guess you had to be there.”
“Where was it going?” Jacob asked.
“The tracks run from the old Silkgrove Plantation and end at the modern CSX line to Charleston,” I said. “Stacey and I will have to walk the tracks soon and see what’s there.”
“Sounds very Stand by Me,” Michael said. “You think you’ll find a dead body?”
“It would be nice if we found a corpse just lying there by the train tracks,” I said. “That would make our job easier.” My timing was the opposite of perfect—our waiter had just arrived and now stood at my elbow, giving me a horrified look. “Uh...inside joke,” I told him.
“I don’t even want to know,” the waiter said. “But call me over if you plan to do a rendition of ‘Lollipop.’” He refilled the sips of thick, too-sweet tea we’d taken. “Your food should be out in a moment. We’re waiting on the poached egg.” He glanced at Jacob before walking away.
“Do you think he’s mad I ordered off-menu?” Jacob asked.
“I’m sure he’ll recover from the horror,” Stacey said.
“I want to know more about the ghost train,” Michael said. “What does it do? Shuttle souls to the afterlife?”
“The fast train to hell,” Jacob said. “I bet the air conditioning sucks.”
“I don’t know if it takes anyone anywhere,” I said. “I’d guess it just runs up and down the track. There must be ghosts onboard trapped in some kind of psychological loop. A train itself wouldn’t leave a ghost—it’s just a machine—so the ghost train must be some kind of symbolic manifestation.”
“Oh, obviously.” Michael nodded along.
“We’re meeting with Grant from the Historical Society later today,” I said. “We’re looking for group trauma, maybe a train wreck.”
“This whole case has been a train wreck,” Stacey said. “It feels like nothing’s coming together. There’s too much going on.”
“So it’s not the train to heaven or hell, just a train to some old ruins,” Michael said.
“Ellie says there’s no heaven or hell, anyway,” Stacey said, winking at me.
“I said I don’t know,” I corrected her. “I’ve never been dead, so I can’t say what comes after.”
“But you deal with ghosts all the time,” Michael said.
“That doesn’t mean I know where they go after they leave our world,” I said. “Or if they continue to exist at all. Maybe when a ghost moves on, that’s the end of its existence. Total peace. Or...maybe not.”
“It’s strange that you’d work with the dead and have no real opinion about the afterlife,” Michael said. “That’s kind of...interesting? Confusing?”
“I know!” Stacey grabbed Michael’s arm, nodding rapidly. “That’s just what I said.”
“What do you think, Stacey?” Michael asked her.
“About the afterlife?” She shrugged. “I was raised to believe it was, you know, heaven or hell. I can’t say working with ghosts has made me think it’s less likely there’s an afterlife. To me, all these ghosts running around kind of prove there must be something...”
Michael was nodding along, glancing from her to me.
“Jacob?” I asked. “What do you think?”
“I’ve always thought death was a dead end,” he said. “We’re just here temporarily, then gone. This did not help me adapt when the dead started spea
king to me.”
“So what do you think now?” Stacey asked.
“It’s definitely more of an open question now. It could be like Ellie says, though—a ghost could be some kind of energy imbalance that needs to be fixed. They definitely indicate that some elements or traces of consciousness must remain after the physical body dies.”
“My, you are a morbid table,” the waiter said, returning with plates heaped full of sugars and carbohydrates. He distributed them among us. “Double Cluckin’ Biscuit...Fancy Frenchie...Devil’s Scramble...Your poached egg and plain toast will be out in just a bit,” he told Jacob. “Can I get you anything while you wait? More tea?”
“Some water would be great,” Jacob replied.
“I’ll see what we have.” The burly waiter bustled off.
“I really don’t think that guy likes me,” Jacob whispered.
“Maybe you should’ve ordered the Gravy Train,” Michael said.
“Which one was that?”
“Hash browns with gravy, sausage with gravy, scrambled eggs with gravy,” Stacey said.
“Does anybody ever die of a heart attack here?” Jacob asked. “Just eating at a table?”
“Yes,” Michael said. “I mean, we did have a heart-attack call right at this location. He wasn’t eating, though. He was walking out and keeled over on the parking lot. I think he had the Gravy Train.”
Stacey hid her face behind her hands, as if supremely embarrassed.
Jacob’s food arrived—wheat toast and a poached egg, each item served right in the center of its own large, mostly empty plate, a sarcastic gesture by the kitchen staff.
We began to eat. My Double Cluckin’ Biscuit was twice the size of my fist, stuffed with fried egg and fried chicken, implying a kind of philosophical question about which came first. Or which to eat first, anyway. Food like this would leave me drowsy and full of regrets, but I was still feeling drained from the ghost feeding on me. I told myself I needed the calories to rebuild my energy.
“So I’m assuming you want me to walk the tracks with you?” Jacob asked, looking at me. I hoped Stacey hadn’t told him anything about the case—she knew she wasn’t supposed to, because psychics weren’t supposed to get advance information about a haunted site, and Jacob was our main psychic consultant these days. We’d already said too much, really, but all he really knew was that the rail line was haunted, which he would have figured out the moment we arrived.
“Yeah, Jacob should come with us!” Stacey said.
“I want to see this ghost train, too,” Michael said. “I’m picturing a locomotive with like a big skull face, a razor-sharp cow catcher for teeth...”
“We’ll be lucky to see a shadow of a train, if anything,” I said. “But, yeah, it would be great if you both came.”
“Yeah, Michael can, uh, put out any fires,” Stacey said. “If the ghosts set any.”
“He can do more than that,” I said, feeling defensive even though I knew Stacey was kidding. “He has medical training.”
“I’m on duty tomorrow,” Michael said.
“What about today?” I asked.
“Aren’t we meeting with Grant?” Stacey asked. “And I need to rest sometime. I didn’t get a long nap like you.”
“We’re meeting with him this afternoon, but how long could it take?” I asked. “I’d rather look at the train tracks later, anyway, closer to sunset when the ghosts will be more active.”
“Does that work for everyone?” Stacey glanced around, and both of the guys shrugged, nodded, and went back to eating. Male communication at its finest.
Then a column of waiters and waitresses emerged from the back, wearing straw hats and plush Grandpa Rooster caps, all of them clapping their hands in time. At the end of the line danced Grandpa Rooster himself, or at least some guy in a big mascot-style Grandpa Rooster costume.
“Cock-a-doodle-doo!” the wait staff sang. “Happy birthday, too! We’re so cock-a-doodle happy, let’s all crow for you!”
They were coming our way. I gave Stacey a questioning look.
“I slipped the waiter a note,” she said. “It’s your birthday, right? Didn’t want you to miss out.”
“You told them it’s my--” I began, but the loud, singing wait staff gathered around the table drowned me out. Grandpa Chicken bobbed and ducked around the table, as if scratching for grubs, while a waitress placed a big straw hat adorned with a stuffed rooster on my head.
I glared at Stacey while the wait staff did a chicken dance all around me. Stacey was laughing her head off, having gotten her revenge for me bringing us here in the first place. She snapped an unnecessary number of pictures with her phone, while Grandpa Rooster insisted I stand to be applauded by the entire restaurant, my face beet-red with embarrassment.
Chapter Eleven
Out in the parking lot, Stacey and Jacob stepped aside to talk quietly at one end of the restaurant’s big porch. That left me walking alone with Michael, which made me weirdly uncomfortable, especially when I saw the questioning look on his face.
“So, you’ve been distant and mysterious lately,” he said. We reached the cargo van out in the parking lot, and I leaned back against it, crossing my arms as if to ward off any threat of serious conversation.
“Haven’t I always been mysterious and distant?” I asked.
“Extremely.”
“It’s my fault. My nocturnal schedule. This client I have now, she’s pregnant. Not just a little bit pregnant, either, but ready to pop out an actual fully-formed infant any day. It would be great to clear the ghosts out of their house before that happens.”
“I can see that,” he said. “And how long have you been on this case? Three weeks?”
“How long are you going to be on my case?” I asked, feeling defensive again.
“Until I’ve got you solved.”
“And then what?”
“And then we’ll see,” Michael said. “Seriously, breakfast was great. I’ll be sweating sausage grease for weeks. How are you spending the rest of the day?”
“Sleeping for a while,” I said. “Then Grant wants to meet at the old railroad terminal. You could come if you wanted. The train museum might not sound exciting, but it’ll still be less depressing than watching your friend’s cover band.”
“I already apologized for that,” he said. “Even I didn’t know they were that bad.”
“The best part was when the drummer got an earache and they had to cut the show short.”
“Yeah, that was pretty great. So we’ll do the haunted railroad museum this afternoon, then the haunted tracks tonight?”
“Who said the railroad museum was haunted?” I asked.
“The old terminal, right?” he asked. “Isn’t it haunted? I remember going there on Halloween when I was five or six years old. They had a haunted locomotive, one of those huge old black steam trains, with jack-o’-lanterns and spiderwebs.”
“You don’t think that was just made up for Halloween?”
“I guess, you know, looking back on it, yeah.” He shook his head. “Never mind.”
“I’m sure it’s a little haunted,” I said, patting his arm sympathetically, as if he were a disappointed child. “Every other old place in this city is.”
“Okay, take me to my bed,” Stacey said, leaning against me as she arrived. “Or anywhere close to it. My front steps would be fine.”
“You can sleep in if you want,” I told her. “Michael’s going to the old terminal with me.”
“What? I wanted to go there,” Stacey said, suddenly more awake. Then she gave me a sly look and patted me on the back. “Oh, sure. You two go have fun. Trains are totally romantic, am I right? The open country, the lost days of yesteryear...”
“Maybe you can swing by the office later and organize the accounts receivable invoices for next week’s collection calls.”
“On a Saturday? That’s a Monday job.” She stuck out her tongue, then climbed into the van, looking exhausted.
“I’d better take the kid home,” I said to Michael. “We had kind of a wild night.”
“I hope I didn’t miss all the good parts already,” he said.
“Don’t worry. We’re just getting started. There should be plenty of scary parts still ahead.” I stepped closer to him, then went ahead and kissed him, since I’d been the one getting cagey and avoidant lately. He didn’t fight back, and pulled me close against him for a few very warm and pleasant seconds.
“It was good to see you again.” Michael said.
I watched him stride back across the parking lot, tall and strong, his shaggy brown hair rustling in the breeze, until Stacey laid on the van’s horn, startling me into action.
Michael glanced back in time to see me get startled and stumble over my own feet on the way to the van door. That was very cool of me. I’m sure I looked cooler than Scarlett Johansson in a Fonzie jacket as I caught my balance against the van and fumbled with the door handle.
I gave Michael a quick, awkward sort of half-nod and then climbed into the van.
“Took you long enough,” Stacey said, yawning and stretching.
“I was just, um...”
“Being a freak?” Stacey asked.
I nodded and started up the van. No point arguing with her when she was obviously right.
We drove away from The Country Barn, the breakfast sitting heavy in my stomach like a pound of deep-fried regret. I couldn’t say it put me in the mood for a long walk down deserted, ghost-infested train tracks, but maybe things would be better by the evening.
Chapter Twelve
The railroad museum is a giant brick roundhouse surrounded by a few little spurs of dead-end rail that used to connect our fair city to the rest of the continent, but were now reduced to parking spots for the antique passenger cars, cabooses, and locomotives on display.
Grant Patterson was already there, emerging from the shade of the roundhouse, dressed a little theatrically in a serge suit and boater hat that might have been fashionable back when these cute old steam trains were serious business.
