Spirit (6 page)

M
r. Josiah Jurey's tale of living, breathing witches feeding off some eternal power in the wilderness strained even Tess's and Tobias's credulity. The man claimed the Widow Malgore—whom he called “The Wretch”—was likely to be surviving on demon's blood, walking about, free as you please. He went on to say the other accused, Abigail and Wilhelm, might have shared a similar fate.

“After two hundred years, they're alive,” Tobias said, feigning seriousness. “How interesting. Are you here on a hunting expedition?”

“I have been drawn here. And my work is of a personal nature,” said the old man.

“Ah, a mission of vengeance? One of these things killed your child, perhaps? Killed your wife?”

“One such creature was my wife,” said Jurey. “She killed my child.”

At his words, a chill ran through the car.

“There will be danger ahead,” said Jurey. “And you will all have a part to play.”

“Madness,” murmured Gil.

“It is always madness that brings true insight,” said the foreigner.

Tobias suppressed a laugh. “Do we pay extra for these wisdom…nuggets?”

The foreigner leaned forward and gave him an icy stare. “I will protect even you,” he said.

Annette smiled nervously. “Gunmen, witchhunters,” she said. “Didn't anyone come for ice-skating and sleigh rides? This is to be a carnival, after all.”

Mr. Tawdry broke in: “We heard of this at a séance in Connecticut. Sounded like a thrill.”

His wife smiled. “Our macabre curiosity rears its head.”

It had begun to seem that quite a few of the travelers would be more than happy to see the dead witches come to life. Tess felt herself in wilder company than she at first thought. She began to see how these ordinary people were in many ways hoping for something dreadful to happen—to someone else.

“A-sleighing we will go…,” sang the foreigner strangely, his eyes on Tobias in an odd challenge.
Have you the strength to face this
? he seemed to say.

Still, Annette and many of the others looked perturbed, as if unhappy to see the kind of people they were traveling with. It would seem a few had indeed come for mere sleigh rides and fireworks.

 

Outside, the snow-shrouded woods were silent, ominous. Lifeless. Not even a rabbit disturbed the ground. All the usual wildlife had fled. The train thundered past, a long black scar
blowing ivory steam through the relentless snowfall.

The old town pulled the train closer.

 

Some people still sent Tess and Tobias curious and rude glances, but the train had all but returned to normal. Sattler and Annette were laughing quietly. Tess and Tobias watched them, seeing their own behavior mirrored somehow more gracefully in the way the two lightly enjoyed each other's company. Perhaps Tess had been wrong in thinking Annette could be unfaithful.

Feeling their stares, Sattler looked over, seeming perturbed by what he imagined was Tobias's interest in Annette. Then Sattler noticed the Goodravens' cello cases. “What's in there?”

“Cello,” said Tobias.

“Both of you play?”

Tobias nodded.

Sattler paused. “You aren't going to play at the carnival, are you?”

“I never leave my instrument. It soothes my nerves. We aren't playing for money, if that's what you mean,” said Tobias.

“Good. I thought you were competition. Michael does sketches. We were going to try to earn a bit.”

Tobias regarded him. “He draws portraits? Is he any good?”

“He's awful. But we have the whole thing worked out quite well. See, we show this sketch of me…” Sattler pulled out a drawing pad.

Tobias looked. “That's fairly nice.”

“Yes, we had this fellow back home do it. What we do is, I pretend as if I bought this drawing from Michael, and then
hopefully he gets another customer to step up and get a portrait done.”

“I don't understand. If he can't draw, what happens when they see
his
work?”

Sattler smiled at Tobias, letting him in on the secret. “He never finishes. He pretends to take a long time finding inspiration, then he starts sketching, and it just goes on and on and on. He makes it take forever, and the customer always decides to get his money back. But then Michael acts offended, and he usually ends up getting half the asking price.”

“You annoy these people to death. For profit.”

“Pretty much, yes.”

“This has worked for you before?”

“It's getting us through college.”

Tobias couldn't help but grin. Sattler smiled back.

“Beware the art student with no money,” Michael added gloomily.

Well, Tobias had found some complex personalities to amuse him. Tess, fishing about for a passenger of similar value, looked toward Annette. “How about you? Are you interested in the arts as well?”

“Oh, I understand little of the arts,” Annette replied energetically. “I've decorated my father's inn where I work, and that's the extent of it. But I have an idea that the arts could be used to help children learn about the world and history and all that.”

“Really?”

“I've been thinking I might help the blind students from Salem. You know, they have so little. They're relocating their school up
here because they've been given a cheaper arrangement for land. All those rich Boston investors rebuilding Blackthorne were so kind to them, once those children stood right in front of them as a choir, singing hymns. Anyway, I'd like to do my part by teaching them to paint.”

“Teaching blind children…to paint.” Tess strained to imagine it. “What fascinating work they would produce. But you yourself don't know how to paint?”

“Oh, no, not at all.”

“Ah.”

Tess stared out the window. Strange, wispy whorls of snow spun out of the forest. The train's huffing and clacking drowned out other sounds, but the world outside seemed caged; the wind was like an eager animal wanting escape, straining to be unleashed. The sky was cream and gray, preparing to storm, a pale tiger lying in wait.

From every window Tess could see white-capped trees sheltering nothing but darkness. She had the impression the train was now breaking through a membrane into a place out of time, not just a void between townships, as Elaine had suggested, but a long, solitary kingdom of loneliness.

A deathscape.

 

In its mind's eye, the creature watched as the train approached a bend near a frozen lake, a vast sheet of ice, and it observed an unnatural heat wave that penetrated the air, and then vanished. It was as if the locomotive were wrapped in a glistening, invisible curtain, and then suddenly this wave shot away from the train into the trees, too quickly to be noticed.

In the distance was a huge herd of elk, rattled, agitated.

The wretch was witnessing these events from a considerable distance, examining the situation, seeing all the elements at work.

Its hand was clawing at the water in a small, smoldering pit built into the floor of a ramshackle house. The pit was encircled by bones, human spines linked together. The skull of a dead elk floated up from the turgid water.

Far off in the forest the locomotive approached the herd of elk.

 

Tobias put his hand to his temple in excruciating pain. A moment later Tess felt it, too. She looked out the window again. At first she saw only a colossal sheet of glass, a bright
nothingness
surrounded by trees. It shocked her; a white hole in the world. But it was just the blinding gleam of the frozen lake.

As Tess took this in, she became aware of something under the rattle of the train; the sound of something big moving in the woods.

A gentle mist embraced the locomotive, passing, leaving beads of moisture on the window glass. Tess reached out her hand to the window closest to her.
Warm
…As she took her hand away, she could see a herd of elk galloping alongside the train. Their hooves on the ground made a powerful drumming.

It caught her completely by surprise.

They had emerged from the forest across from the icy lake. The herd was now a single force of nature, moving nearby as the express chattered on.

The hordes of elk thundered closer.

They were keeping pace with the train.

People beside Tess turned, taking note in awe—the blur and clatter of the herd silencing everyone. The elk were racing the train, the huge, dangerous animal mass smashing across the snow. It was a mesmerizing sight.

For a split second, a shimmer seemed to pass over the elk, as if they were a mirage, and a momentary crackling phenomenon played upon their antlers like lightning. Then the creatures suddenly rushed into the path of the engine.

 

They dashed across the rails in a throng. The engineer screamed. The first elk intersected with the front of the train, and the engine plowed into them—cutting the huge stampede with a horrific clatter of horns and the thump of raw meat. Elk were hurtled, flying into the air, the cluster of animals shotgunned apart by the cowcatcher, as the train reached a segment of battered, loosened rails.

With a shower of sparks, the train lost its hold on the track.

The old engine slipped sideways, derailed, plowing into the snowbank.

 

Tess closed her eyes as Tobias threw himself over her.

The engine smashed into the snowy earth.

And the world went dark for everyone.

When Tobias awoke in the upturned train, Tess was nowhere to be found.

T
obias pulled himself out of a gaping hole in the side of the car. From the corner of his eye, he saw wisps of light shoot off into the forest away from the wreckage. Dizzy, in a daze, his heart beating in panic, he crawled away from the half-destroyed express coach, searching for Tess.

He could see her lying in the snow up ahead. He ran to her quickly, turning her over. She seemed unhurt, with only a few scratches. She looked up, numb.

“Something dragged me,” she said.

They turned back to the trench behind her in the snow. Her body had indeed been dragged from the train.

She'd been pulled out of the car.

There was nothing else around her to indicate what had done this, no foot tracks or odd markings.

Unnerved, Tobias looked out across the winter landscape.

Elk corpses lay everywhere. One fearful elk that had survived clattered past to join a few others, which fled across the frozen lake. Human bodies and debris were strewn across the snowbank. The locomotive engine itself lay far ahead in the snow, and the first cars of the train were thrown about behind it.

To both Tess and Tobias, the universe seemed muted, stoppered up. They just stared for a moment, their breath ghosting the air. The middle cars, including theirs, were off the track but near it, some still linked up, and the last part of the train, unhooked from the rest, remained on the rails and intact.

The Goodravens got to their feet, facing the train and the jumble of three derailed cars nearby. Where they stood now was a blank slate of snow; behind them, a dense, winter-dead forest. Across from them, and across the train tracks, there was the frozen lake, and then more trees. Some of the train had slipped from the rails in that direction; thus there were derailed cars on both sides of the tracks.

Most of the massacred elk lay spread around the front of the engine, though some of the corpses curved around Tess and Tobias in a wide, bizarre crescent of brown and blood red.

“God…what were these animals doing here?” whispered Tobias. Elk in the northeast were a decidedly rare sight, though pockets of them were seen occasionally. Still, this was not natural. And…

“Do you hear that?” whispered Tess. “Those are dead screams.”

Tobias nodded. The sound of the freshly dead left a peculiar ringing hum, but never had they heard it so powerfully. “They'll trail off in a while. Just…stay calm, Tess.”

Other passengers began emerging from their car. A few who had been thrown onto the snow began to stir, waking.

“I think we're good and sound,” Tobias said. “Nothing broken?”

“No,” said Tess, but she felt herself filling up with nausea and confusion. “I think I've got to get out of here. It's too much…”

“Tess. It's going to be all right.” He looked over at the wreckage, took in a lungful of cold air. “We're going to understand this.”

Though he was rattled, he sounded firm, and his voice steadied Tess. He looked again at the trail in the snow, and then at the train. Curious, intent, he began moving toward the train. She watched him make his way back to the coach, where the college boy, Sattler, seeming shocked and mystified, was sitting on the car that had been turned upon its side. Blood was caked on his blond hair.

Tobias said nothing to him, his mind fixed on some urgent mystery.

Sattler looked toward him. “There are people moving in there,” he said slowly, peering down into the car. “We should get them out.”

“I suppose someone should,” said Tobias. Tess could just hear them. She watched as Tobias climbed onto the coach.

As Tobias looked down, all he could see was a mess of people and metal. Sattler stood blankly beside him. It was a daunting sight, and neither had any idea where to start.

“Should we just pull them out?” asked Sattler. “Maybe that's not good…”

Inside the car, the historian, Gil, was helping his wife, Elaine. He looked up, confused but not injured. “The train came off the tracks…,” he said to them.

“Indeed it did,” said Tobias, grim and unruffled.

Sattler was biting his lip, clearly upset. “I think maybe we should
move them, unless they're trapped. We have to keep them warm while we wait for help.”

Tobias nodded. “Any way to
get
help?”

“I'm not really sure.”

Below them, Tess turned. She could hear other survivors now. Everywhere, out on the snow, in the train cars. Moaning. Screams.

She looked over at Tobias, but he was preoccupied, slapping Sattler's back. “Well, you head up the rescue; you seem to be an upstanding gent,” Tobias was saying, moving to examine the metal hole, the torn steel of the roof.

“What are you doing?” Sattler asked him, angered by his giving orders.

“I'm going to be busy for a moment. You find that…indeterminately foreign fellow, he'll help you….”

But the foreigner was out already, on the ground, emerging from the car's rear door, carrying an injured Josiah Jurey on his back. Tess looked over at the foreign man and realized this was the first time she'd had a good look at him. She couldn't tell how old he was, but he was unusually tall, sharp and striking-looking, with features she decided were Italian, and he wore a long duster coat and black boots. He had the swagger and air of an elegant outlaw, and, as he threw off his coat, it was clear he had a greatly overdeveloped physique. He was almost monstrously big, but Tess confessed to herself he looked somewhat heroic. It was rather a comfort to know he was there.

The Giant and the Skeleton, as she called them, had survived for the moment. The foreigner set Josiah Jurey down on the snow
nearby, holding his head up. Jurey was hurt badly, perhaps mortally, but his alert eyes were on the woods. “Is witchcraft done this.”

“Sir?” Tess watched the old-timer curiously.

“There shall be a time of renewal for them. We should strike now. While their energy is spent.”

Tess looked up at Tobias, who shook his head, shouting down to the large man, “Sir, can you leave him for a moment? I see here…many other people who need help.”

“This must be done first,” said Jurey, and he pulled the giant closer. Tess watched as the foreigner listened and nodded, and took from the old man a fistful of crosses and necklaces, amulets of some kind, which he pocketed. Then Jurey gave him something else, but Tess couldn't see what it was. She was not entirely sure if the other man was taking Jurey seriously, but he seemed to accept each item solemnly. Then, as Josiah Jurey lost his last strength and closed his eyes, the foreigner eased him down and pressed one of the crosses into the old traveler's hand.

Immediately, the foreigner pulled from his belt a long pistol (one of many), and loaded it. He headed past Tess, off toward the woods, away from the wreckage.

Tobias stood on the train and watched the tower of a man striding away. “What does he think he's…” He shouted to the foreigner: “We have need of you here. Sir? Sir!”

“Wilder,” the man said without turning back.

Tobias was aggravated. “Wilder? That's your name?”

“It's the name I've taken.” The foreigner continued on, as several injured people moaned for help near his path. He would not be taken off course. Whatever Jurey had told him to do, Wilder
took it as a life-or-death matter. He was fast disappearing into the woods.

“That man is mad,” Tobias complained. “Bring some people over to assist us, Tess, quick as you can.”

As Tess stumbled past Jurey's thin body, his eyes suddenly opened. In shock, she stared down at his white face and gaping mouth, as his breath poured out of him and shrouded him like smoke.

“Child,” he whispered. “Whatever it is that gives you strength, they will take it from you. Don't give it up. Find anything that gives
them
strength…and seize it.”

His slackening breath took away the remainder of his words. His dead eyes unleashed a tear that froze upon his face, and Tess hurried away, not looking back, wading through the snow toward the next car.

Her voice shook as she cried out, “Does anyone know of a way to call for help?”

The plea was picked up; she heard people shouting it everywhere. No one knew how to get help quickly, and Tess was beginning to feel ill from the ocean of fear and worry all about her.

She knew Tobias would sense the emotions just as strongly. Their empathic tendencies, as he often called them, seemed louder, deeper, clearer here in the woods. Tess felt overwhelmed by the bursting, sorrowful passion of so many wounded. And it was the fright she sensed—shrill, icy, coming in flashes of blue light—more than any pain, that threatened her most.

She heard a voice from inside one of the cars, a male voice.
“We have too much blood in here…. Help me…Help me…”

Unable to trace the sound, Tess yelled in desperation, “DOES ANYONE KNOW THE NEAREST HOUSE?”

There was no immediate answer, and Tess wandered toward another train car ahead, to be confronted by its horrors. At first in the shifting light of the snowfall, she could make out only arms and legs through the window, and she couldn't make sense of what she was seeing…then amid the moving flesh she saw a man clawing his way over the pile of bodies, pulling himself out through a smashed window.

Tess felt her heart shudder—the man had no legs; they were shorn off below the knee, but they were not bloody, as though burned off, cauterized. He crawled up, automatic, inhuman, clambering over people—

Tess watched in shock as the legless man emerged—reaching out his hand to her, desperate.

She couldn't move. He pulled himself out, his ragged legs thrashing, as he tumbled atop her onto the snowy ground.

He was pressing her down into the cold. He writhed, grunting, a mass of flesh and fear. She struggled, but he was heavy, and seemed to have no sense of what he was doing. His whole body was shuddering uncontrollably, and she felt as if she had hold of an immense fish that was losing strength with every moment in the air. The motion of her hand brushed past his severed limb, and then she grasped snow, trying to pull herself away. She thought she might be covered in his blood, but there was no blood. And then suddenly the bottom of his legs were there now—where jagged, useless stumps were a minute ago. Tess stared at him in horror. He couldn't seem to believe it himself,
his eyes stretched wide. She couldn't speak. He collapsed in the snow.

She untangled herself and pulled free of him. She was in shock, she told herself, and shock leads to hysterical visions.
Calm, now. Calm. Calm.