Terminal (Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper Book 4)

by JL Bryan

  “Kroeller will die.”

  “Great! Just what I was saying. Do we have a deal?”

  The apparition looked at me for another long, drawn-out moment, slowly turning my guts to icy slush, and then faded.

  A cold wind arose in the room, though the windows were sealed tight. The old banknotes blew along like tumbleweeds, rustling against each other. Coins lifted up on their sides and began to roll.

  The money swept away into the closet, clinking as it dropped away into the stash at the back.

  “Meet us at the train tracks,” I said to the bandits, though I couldn’t see them anymore. “Before the train comes. Don’t be late.”

  I nodded at Stacey, and we left without another word—not running, but definitely not taking our time as we left that house of the dead.

  “Do you really think they’ll help us?” she whispered as we made our way across lawns and between houses back to my car.

  “Worth a try,” I said. “They took our money and didn’t attack us. Those might be good signs.”

  “I’m sure they’d take the money either way,” Stacey said. “Good luck trying to spend it down at the saloon and the general store, guys.”

  Before we returned to the dead-end street, I stopped at our clients’ house. A light was still on upstairs, but I didn’t alert them to our presence.

  I walked around to the back of their fence. With a boxcutter, I scratched through all the symbols carved by the ghosts. Then I drew new ones, indicating “nothing happening” as well as “keep away.” We needed the stamper out by the tracks tonight, so we couldn’t leave a trap set for the banshee. Hopefully this would discourage her, or any other spirits, from visiting while we were away.

  If things went as I hoped, the banshee would be gone after tonight. We were killing a dozen birds with one stone.

  I called Michael to let him know we were ready. I waited for him at the dead-end street, leaning against the van and watching the woods around me. The night was extremely quiet.

  Michael finally arrived, in his ancient and badly scratched Wrangler, and I explained his job to him.

  “Are you serious?” was his response.

  “Don’t hook it up until you hear from us,” I said, while Stacey passed him a brick-sized military-surplus walkie-talkie from the van.

  “Cell phones aren’t cool enough, huh?” he asked.

  “Not reliable enough,” I said. “We have to get the timing right, but we won’t know when the train’s coming until it’s here.”

  “And what are you going to be doing?”

  “Trainspotting,” I said. “Maybe trying to help a couple of ghosts hitch a ride.”

  “Be careful,” he said.

  I hugged him, and he took the opportunity to kiss me, which was nice.

  “You be careful, too,” I said. “Move fast and get out of the way.”

  Stacey hugged him before he left, seeming to linger against him a few seconds longer than I would have strictly preferred, but maybe that was my imagination. I had bigger fish to fry tonight. Sharks, even.

  After he drove away, Stacey and I hiked again down the narrow path through the dark woods. At the railroad track, we triple-checked our gear, then we waited. Stacey had wisely brought a pair of camping chairs for us. She’s spent a lot more time than I have sitting around in the woods doing nothing.

  “I feel like we should have a campfire,” Stacey said.

  “Probably not a great idea.” I glanced upward at the dense, leafy canopy that formed the tunnel shape over the tracks.

  “Should we sing?”

  “I know you’re kidding,” I replied, and she shrugged.

  “I’m in position, over,” Michael said over the walkie-talkie.

  “Ten-four, what’s your twenty?” Stacey asked, while I reached out to take it from her. “Ten-twenty-three, Ellie’s taking the horn.” Ten-twenty-three means stand by, in the sort of radio code that Stacey usually made fun of.

  “How’s it look over there? Do you think you can set it up?” I asked him.

  “Yeah...I guess I can run them under the fence. It’s going to take a few minutes.”

  “Thanks, Michael. Be careful. Don’t forget to watch for the real trains, too.”

  We waited, and the hour grew later. The temperature in the tunnel dropped slowly but steadily over time, and the air seemed to grow tense, as if packed with static electricity. I heard occasional murmuring in the woods, and the crunching of a leaf or breaking of a stick, like people creeping through behind me.

  “Shouldn’t we have done something about the real locomotive?” Stacey asked, speaking just above a whisper in the cold silence. “Over at the museum? I guess the museum probably wouldn’t let us.”

  “I’m not sure the ghost train has much connection to the physical locomotive that inspired it,” I said. “The train is the focus because that’s what all the ghosts have in common, since most of the people would have been strangers to each other. It’s compiled from all their memories. For the passengers, it represents the way out, maybe the way to move on altogether. Kroeller doesn’t want them to leave—doesn’t want his own dark secrets to get out, maybe—and so he’s keeping them off the train. He’s controlling the train and not letting it stop, not letting it pick up the passengers.”

  “So the ghost train’s like...symbolic?” Stacey asked.

  “Of the passengers’ desire to leave and his desire to keep them here.”

  “Then what about—”

  “Shh.” I gestured at what I’d seen down the track—a red ember of light, drifting slowly in our direction. Maggie Fannon was out walking, and last time we’d seen her, the ghost train hadn’t been far behind. She’d come from the direction of the river and the plantation ruins.

  I put on my thermals and watched the pale blue shape of Maggie approach, carrying her icy-cold light.

  “Maggie Fannon,” I said, moving closer to the tracks. It’s so much easier to get their attention once you know their names. “Is the train coming?”

  She stopped walking and seemed to look at me, though I could only see suggestions of her form on the thermal.

  “Angus Kroeller controls the train, doesn’t he?” I asked. “And he betrayed you. Left you dead in a cheap hotel room. Did you love him?”

  Maggie’s cold form stood unmoving for a moment, then advanced on me in an eyeblink. I reached for my flashlight to defend myself, but she was much too fast. I could feel the anger radiating from her.

  A sudden pressure squeezed inside my chest, as if an ice-cold hand had seized my heart, stopping it from beating. You’ve seen Temple of Doom. I gasped and swayed on my feet.

  Then it stopped, and I stood in the middle of the tracks, alone. A red glass lantern hung from my hand, burning brightly, casting an infernal glow around me. I wore an alluring red dress with puffy silk around the sleeves and a heavily brocaded bust. The body inside it was not my own.

  Maggie. I’d thought she was killing me—and maybe she was—but she was also shoving her memories into my head. For a ghost, that seems to be easier than creating a series of auditory apparitions to simulate a speaking voice.

  As Maggie, I walked along the same stretch of tracks, but they were not nearly so rusted out and overgrown. A wide streak of night sky was visible overhead, ragged at the edges from oak and pine limbs just starting to claim the empty space above the disused track.

  In front of me waited the junction with the main north-south line. The old spur line on which I walked hadn’t yet been truncated, sealed with a fence, and forgotten. All of that still lay in the future.

  I stood a few feet away from the junction and lifted my lantern high as the bright glow of a train’s headlight approaches. The ground rumbled as it grew closer. I swung the lantern, drawing my long red hair in front of me to hide my face, hoping the engineer would be too distracted by my dress to remember anything else.

  A high metallic screech filled the night, and clouds of sparks flew from the train’s whee
ls. The engineer, seeing my emergency lantern, had thrown the brakes, stopping for me.

  Across the main line, the O’Reilly brothers and James McCoyle hid in the woods. When the train stops, and while the engineer looks my way, the three of them will climb up behind him with their guns drawn.

  I became aware of guilt and conflict swelling inside me. I never meant to have feelings for McCoyle, never meant to see him as anything but a mark for Kroeller’s scheme, a pawn to help carry out the heist Kroeller and I had planned.

  Maggie’s thoughts were bleeding deep into mine, our identities blending. I tried to get some psychological distance from her within our shared head.

  McCoyle was fifteen years older than Maggie, but he had a confidence that put her at ease, and an adventurous attitude that made her feel alive. He was filled with colorful stories about life on the Western frontier, and he wanted Maggie to escape to the Caribbean with him after the robbery, where they would supposedly buy a sailboat and a house by the beach. Sounded pretty idyllic.

  She was supposed to be working with Kroeller, but she detested him. The man was a piggish worm, and he kept trying to take her to bed, an idea that revolted her. She wanted no more contact with him.

  She’d been wrestling with how to tell McCoyle the truth and still keep him. So far, she couldn’t see a way, but she had to act before Kroeller came to track them down at the safehouse in Florida. Maggie had stupidly given that information to Kroeller before deciding she was going to turn against him and stay with McCoyle.

  The train ground to a halt, the locomotive passing me by several feet before it fully stopped.

  “Bonsoir, mademoiselle.” The engineer looked down on me as though from a balcony, tipping his hat. Malcolm Dumont, I remembered from the file, French Canadian. His enormous mustache puffed and waved in the wind. “What troubles the beautiful lady this evening? Malcolm is here now, you need cry no more.”

  He shouted, and I heard a struggle as McCoyle and the O’Reilly brothers arrived from behind him.

  I took a man’s hat and a black bandanna from the canvas satchel by my feet, tying the cloth over my face before I draw out my revolver.

  The memories flickered forward.

  In short order, the engineer, brakeman, and conductor were tied up and kneeling on the tracks in front of the huge grill of the cowcatcher. Then the gang hunched in the woods as McCoyle dynamited the safe in the cargo car.

  The mood among the robbers was jubilant as McCoyle and I unloaded the cash and coins. The O’Reilly brothers entered the passenger car with their revolvers raised to shake out some extra money.

  There was no railroad cop on duty. Kroeller has assured me of that. The lack of security around the big bank transfer made the heist appealing to everyone involved. I told McCoyle and the others that I had the information from a friend who worked for the railroad and just wanted a cut, which was true enough, as far as it went.

  Inexplicably, the passenger car erupted and ripped open along one side, flames exploding through the shattered windows. A chorus of screams rose from the fire.

  Gunshots thundered near the front of the train. Clutching my canvas bag full of cash, I backed away toward the woods until I could see the front of the locomotive.

  The lanky blond brakeman and the doughy, middle-aged conductor laid across the cowcatcher, shot dead. The flirtatious engineer knelt, his arms still bound, his eyes wide with horror. He looked me right in the eyes, and then his forehead erupted as the bullet took him from behind. He drops across one of the rails, dead eyes still gazing at me, at the woman who’d flagged him down and brought him to his death.

  The shooter stepped over the dead engineer, toward McCoyle and me. It’s Kroeller. Why was he here? That wasn’t part of the plan.

  With rising horror, I understood. He’d killed a slew of people tonight. His intention must have been to kill McCoyle and me, too, and keep the money for himself. I’d taken him for a corrupt but generally bland and mediocre man, but there was a monster inside him.

  I seized McCoyle’s arm and screamed for him to run.

  We escaped into the woods, each carrying a satchel of stolen money, but Kroeller chased us.

  The memories became fast and confused. We traded gunshots with Kroeller in the dark woods. I desperately wanted to kill Kroeller, because then I would never have to tell McCoyle the truth.

  McCoyle shot Kroeller in the leg, and the railroad cop collapsed to the ground, crying out in pain. McCoyle’s was hit, too. He had two dying words for me: “Run. Live.”

  Then I ran alone, lugging two canvas satchels. I followed the old disused spur line toward the river, racing along the ties, simply because it was the fastest path away from the burning train. I was spattered with my dead lover’s blood, and I had nowhere to go and nobody left on my side.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Ellie!” Stacey shouted, gripping my elbows and giving me a hard shake. “Earth to Ellie. Come in, Ellie.”

  “Huh?” I blinked, trying to disentangle my thoughts and my general sense of self from Maggie’s memories. “How long was I out?”

  “Like ten, twenty seconds? Your face went all pale. I took off your thermals.”

  “Did I miss the train?”

  “No train yet.” Stacey eased me toward one of the camping chairs.

  “Maggie answered my question. She was definitely not in love with Kroeller.” I stopped walking and looked around. “Where is she?”

  Stacey checked through the thermals. “Not seeing her right now.”

  “I was hoping she’d help me flag down the train,” I said.

  “Well, it’s not like she’s very good at it, right?” Stacey asked.

  “Still...” I shrugged. Stacey had a point. “The last time the engineer stopped for her, he ended up dead on the tracks.”

  “Maybe it’s better if she hides, then,” Stacey said.

  “Is it just me, or is it freezing?” I checked the Mel Meter. Not only was the temperature sinking fast, into the thirties already, but the electromagnetic readings were off the charts.

  Up and down the tracks, I heard whispers and soft footsteps. I didn’t want to point my flashlight at them, but I felt the rising anticipation, and I could imagine the shades gathering alongside the tracks for yet another try at catching the next train out of here, as they must have been doing for years and years.

  A low, cold wind blew along the tracks, rustling through the high weeds like an invisible creature.

  “Here it comes,” I whispered.

  “Ellie, are you sure about this?” Stacey asked.

  “When am I sure about anything?” I stepped into the middle of the tracks, facing into the wind. It blew westward, from the direction of the river, carrying more frigid air with it.

  “Ready?” Stacey asked. She stood with remote controls in her hands. The stamper was beside her, with a trap loaded and ready to go, and then we’d set up three more, which Stacey or I would have to seal by hand if their sensors detected a ghost. All four traps had a heap of old banknotes at the bottom. Stacey hadn’t lit the traps yet, because we didn’t want to distract the bandit ghosts too early.

  “Hold steady...” The wind picked up, roaring faster. A rattling sound rumbled along the tracks. “Now, Stacey!”

  “Finally!” Stacey said, clicking buttons.

  The array of floodlights switched on, arranged in rows on either side of the tracks, all of them pointed at the approaching sound. Intense red light flooded the tunnel, like the glow of a volcano, painting everything a hellish hue. We’d picked up red stage light gels and placed them on every floodlight we had.

  The skeletal old train became visible, still many yards away from me but approaching fast, rattling and belching black smoke. The train apparition was a good sign that we’d gotten the driver’s attention, I thought.

  “Dumont! Malcolm Dumont!” I called out, holding my ground as the rattletrap train chugged toward me, wheezing out black smoke, plates of metal hanging loose fr
om the locomotive like the scales of a dying lizard. I figured the engineer’s name might help, or at least couldn’t hurt.

  The train rolled on, directly toward me, with no obvious sign of stopping.

  I raised the ghost cannon, which had also been fitted with a gel, and fired it up, casting a massive beam of blinding red light directly into the locomotive cab. There was no way the engineer could ignore it, I hoped. I waved it side to side, the old train lantern signal for “stop.”

  Through the cracked windshield, I saw the engineer. Dumont did not resemble the eyebrow-waggling French-Canadian I’d seen in Maggie Fannon’s aggressively overshared memory. His face was a sooty, grimy skull under his engineer’s hat.

  I shouted the engineer’s name again, three times, as if I were summoning him in a mirror at a slumber party.

  I can’t say whether it was the ghost cannon or his name that did it, but a long, awful peal screeched through the night. If you’ve ever heard the sickening crunch of a bad car crash, imagine that, but stretching on and on and never seeming to end.

  Jets of growing sparks sprayed out from the wheels on either side. My pulse quickened as the front of the locomotive filled my view. Greasy trails of flame erupted all over the locomotive, letting off thick, acrid black smoke, as it screamed and rattled its way to a halt in front of me. Blistering heat rippled off the enormous black grill, which was taller than I was.

  I coughed at the eruption of greasy smoke. My eyes watered. I switched off the ghost cannon and tried to shake the red gel filter away from the lens, but the gel had melted in the intense light and welded itself to the glass. It was going to take some time to clean it up, and I had none at the moment.

  He emerged from the smoke, a bulldog of a man, the kind who might have thick muscles under all the fat. His face was piggish, as far as I could see through its layer of soot and ash. He wore a derby hat, tie, overcoat, and a cigar smoldered in his fingers.

  I recognized Angus Kroeller from Maggie’s memory.

  “You should really quit those things,” I said, nodding at the cigar, which smelled like burning engine grease instead of tobacco. “They can kill you.”