The Black Train Part 16

The cas.h.i.+er was fuming, but Collier couldn't let it go. "A s.e.xual effect in what way?"

Sute's shoulder hitched up once. "Some people have experienced an inexplicable...amplification of their...s.e.xual awareness."

Amplification. s.e.xual awareness. Collier's mind ticked like a clock. "You're saying that the house makes people h-"

Before Collier could say "h.o.r.n.y," Sute polished up the inference by interrupting: "The house will incite the desires of certain people. Especially persons who are otherwise experiencing a decline in such desires. My grandfather, for instance, was in his eighties when he stayed there." Sute smiled again, and whispered, "He said the place gave him the s.e.x drive of a twenty-year-old."

Collier had to make a conscious effort to prevent his jaw from dropping.

Just like me, from the second I set foot in the place...

"Mr. Sute? I'd be honored if you'd allow me to treat you to lunch," Collier said.

But why was Collier so fascinated? He didn't even try to discern it. Sute's strange comment about "amplified" s.e.xual desire, and the fact that Collier had experienced exactly that, could have just been timeliness and coincidence-in fact, he felt sure it was.

Still...

The house was having some effect on him-probably due to his boredom and angst. They walked around a busy corner, Sute still ego-stroked that this "celebrity" was interested in his stories enough to actually buy him lunch. Two birds with one stone, Collier thought; J.G. Sute was all too happy to lunch at his favorite local restaurant: Cusher's.

"Would you mind if we sat at the bar?" Collier asked when he noticed two empty stools. Better yet, Dominique was tending the taps, cuter than ever in her dark, s.h.i.+ny hair and bosom-hugging brewer's ap.r.o.n. Collier looked up hopefully, and when she smiled and waved, he could've melted. Oh, man. The perfect woman...

"The bar's fine with me," Sute said, but just then- You f.u.c.kers! Collier's thought screamed. Get the f.u.c.k away from those stools!

A middle-aged couple beat them to the stools.

Collier walked to the end of the bar. "Hi," he said to Dominique.

"I'm glad you came," she said. Caramel irises sparkled. "No room at the bar right now, but there's plenty of seats in the dining room."

Collier stammered, "I was really hoping to get to talk to you-oh, and I have that release form."

"Great. When you're done eating, just come by." Dominique glanced at Collier's unlikely lunch guest. "Getting an earful, huh?"

"Well..."

"Good old J.G. will keep you enthralled," she said. "Last night you did seem pretty interested in some of the town's folklore. Mr. Sute's the one to talk to about that."

"So I gather. But-" s.h.i.+t! "I really wanted a seat at the bar."

Her eyes thinned, and she smiled. "I won't fly away."

Christ, I really dig her, Collier thought. A hostess seated them in the dining room. I'm the one who invited this big dolt to lunch, so live with it. I'll have plenty of time to talk to Dominique later.

"I'd recommend the pan-fried trout cakes in whiskey cream," Sute mentioned. "It's state-of-the-art here, and a Southern delicacy."

"I'll try it. Last night Jiff and I just had regular old burgers and they were great."

Sute's jowly face seemed to seize up. He looked at Collier in a way that was almost fearful. "You-you know...Jiff? Jiff Butler, Helen's son?"

More to gauge reaction, Collier said, "Oh, sure, Jiff and I are friends. He helped me check in." Collier remembered Jiff's similarly odd reaction last night, to Sute's name. "We had a few beers here last night. He was the one who told me I could find you at the bookstore."

The reference seemed to knock Sute off center, from which he struggled to recover. "He's a...friend of mine as well, and a fine, fine young man. What, uh, what else did Jiff say?"

Yes sir, this place and these people are a hoot. What is going on here? Sute was obviously bothered, so Collier acted as though he didn't notice. "He had a few stories himself, though I'll be honest in saying that he was even more reluctant than you telling me them. The most interesting one was something about Harwood Gast hanging himself shortly after his prized railroad was finished."

"Yes, the tree out front," Sute acknowledged.

"And how several years later, just when the war was ending, several Union troops hung themselves from the same tree."

"Quite true, quite true..."

Collier leaned forward on his elbows. "Sure, Mr. Sute. But how does anyone really know that?"

Sute grabbed one of the books Collier had purchased, thumbed to a page, and pa.s.sed it to him.

Another tintype in the xeroxed photo-plate section. The heading: UNION SOLDIERS SENT TO BURN THE GAST HOUSE HANGED THEMSELVES FROM THIS TREE INSTEAD, ON OCTOBER 31, 1864. HARWOOD GAST HANGED HIMSELF FROM THE SAME TREE TWO YEARS EARLIER.

The stark, tinny image showed several federal troops hanging crook-necked from a stout branch.

"That's...remarkable," Collier said. "Every picture really does tell a story."

"There are quite a few such stories, I'm afraid." Sute's forehead was breaking out with an uncomfortable sweat. "Did, uh, did Jiff say anything else? Anything about me?"

This guy is really sweating bullets, Collier saw. Sute's reaction to Jiff's name was as curious as the ghost stories. "Just that he did yard work for you sometimes, and that you were the local expert on the town's history." Collier decided to stretch some truth, to see what happened. "And, of course, he mentioned that you were a successful author and quite respected in the community. A local legend, he called you."

Sute gulped, staring at Collier's remark. "What a-what a generous compliment. Yes, Jiff truly is a wonderful man." Sute patted his forehead with a handkerchief, squinting through more unreckonable beguilement. "Say, Mr. Collier? Do you mind if I drink?"

You look like you need to, buddy. "Go right ahead. I'll be having a few myself."

Collier ordered a lager while Sute ordered a Grey Goose martini. He's so fl.u.s.tered he needs booze. Indeed, the mere mention of the name-Jiff-seemed to pack some hypnotic effect on this man. But Collier was getting sidetracked himself. Whatever odd vibe existed between Sute and Jiff wasn't the point. Collier burned to hear more about- "And Penelope Gast, the wife? I believe Jiff mentioned that Gast murdered her. Is that right?"

Sute settled down when his first sip of the top-shelf martini drained a third of the gla.s.s. "Yes, he did, the day before he hanged himself. And if you want to talk about a person with amplified s.e.xual desires? Mrs. Gast fits that bill quite nicely, and an interesting accompaniment to the nature of the house itself."

"Are you saying that the house was the reason for her high s.e.xual state?"

Sute mulled it over, with another sip of his drink. "Perhaps, or perhaps the opposite. Some claim that the house didn't affect her-she affected the house. The sheer evil of her carnality."

Collier came close to laughing. "Mr. Sute, it sounds to me like she was just another cheating housewife who had the misfortune of getting caught. Being a floozy doesn't mean her house is possessed. If that were the case, the real estate market in L.A. would be in big trouble."

"Just another cheating housewife, or something more? No one will ever be able to say for sure," Sute calmly remarked. "She was reportedly pregnant, and not by her husband. We know this because the local physician had her name in a ledger in his safe."

"So? Maybe she had an appointment for an earache."

"She had an appointment for an abortion. The way they did it back then was-" Sute peered up, mildly pained. "It's uncomfortable to talk about, Mr. Collier. It's an ugly, ugly story, and not one you'd want to hear before eating your lunch."

Collier chuckled. "Mr. Sute, my life is so boring in Los Angeles I can't even see straight most of the time. This is fascinating stuff; I'm really intrigued by it. And besides, it can't be any grosser than the crime section of the L.A. Times on any given day."

"So be it. If you want me to oblige you, I'll oblige you." The large man cleared his throat. "The way they aborted pregnancies back then was by injecting a distillation of boiled soapberry flowers into the uterine channel. This compound-very astringent-would cause a drastic PH s.h.i.+ft in the womb, and usually result in a miscarriage within three days. The town physician's ledger-and keep in mind, this was a private ledger, for his private activities-plainly listed Mrs. Gast's appointment as a meeting for an abortion. And prior to that, Mrs. Gast had had three more appointments for the same procedure-at least three on the record; the ledger went back five years. Of course, she didn't live long enough to make that fourth appointment. Harwood came home earlier than expected-and killed her."

"How?"

Another pained look. "With an ax."

"He axed his own wife to death, when she was pregnant?"

"Yes, and he did so in the very room she'd committed all of her infidelities. She had a special room for these trysts. It was kept locked for her-by the family maid, a slave named Jessa. I shudder to think of how many other secrets Jessa went to her grave with-though I don't suppose she ever really had a grave, not a proper one. See, Gast murdered her, too, when he became apprised of her collusions with his wife."

Collier peeped over his beer. "I almost hate to ask."

"She was...well, she was left out in the fields for the buzzards and the crows."

Sute's pause irked Collier. "Left? You mean Gast killed her and then left her body somewhere?"

Sute finished his martini, ordered another, and stolidly replied, "Gast had her raped to death, by twenty of his most loyal rail workers. Then her body was discarded in the fields behind the house. The ma.s.s rape, by the way, took place in the same room that Mrs. Gast would be murdered in later that day-"

Raped to death. Yeah, it's hard to get grimmer than that.

"-and I might add, since you insist on some of the more morbid details, that Mrs. Gast received similar attentions from Gast's roughriders, while he watched, of course."

"I don't get it. Mrs. Gast was gang-raped to death, too? I thought you said she was killed with an-"

"She wasn't quite raped to the point of death-this by Gast's particular order. After a few hours, and when she was just about to give up the ghost, that's when Gast put the ax to her."

"Then she was dumped in the field, like the maid?"

"No. He left her body to rot in the bed. Ironic that she should die by such means in the very room whose purpose she kept hidden from Mr. Gast. No doubt those four previous pregnancies by men other than her husband germinated in that room as well, and I suspect much else."

"You keep mentioning this room-I wonder which room it is exactly..."

"It's on the main stair hall. Mrs. Butler doesn't even rent that one out. Room two." Sute looked at him. "Which room are you in, Mr. Collier?"

Collier winced at a twinge. "Room three."

"You're in an interesting spot, then. To your left is the room where both Jessa and Penelope Gast were murdered. And to your right, the original commode closet and bathing room."

"What...happened there?"

"He drowned one of his foremen there, a track inspector named Taylor Cutton. Cutton had the bad luck of being one of Mrs. Gast's secret suitors. Somehow Gast discovered this and drowned Cutton in the hip bath, among other things."

Eew, Collier thought. I hope it wasn't the same hip bath I saw Mrs. Butler was.h.i.+ng herself in last night...

The topic was at last getting the best of him. When the food arrived, it smelled delicious but he only picked at it. Several more pints of Cusher's Civil War Lager took some of the edge off the nefarious story that he'd essentially forced Sute to relate. But he did ask, "And this ma.n.u.script you wrote, the one too harsh for publishers-do you still have it?"

Sute's face was pinkening a bit, from a third martini. "Oh, yes. It's gathering dust on my shelf."

"And that's the entire story of Harwood Gast-the entire legend of the man?"

Sute nodded. "And I think a lot of it's probably quite accurate. Most of the sources are very authentic. Whether you believe the supernatural angle or not, Mr. Collier, you can believe this: Harwood Gast was purely and simply an evil man."

"Mrs. Butler said the same thing."

"And she's well advised. Some of her ancestors lived in this town when all these things were happening, and mine, too. I appreciate your interest, though. It's quite flattering, I must say. Here's my card." He slipped one across the table. "If you'd like to borrow the ma.n.u.script, or browse through it, don't hesitate to ask. But-please-call first."

"Thanks," Collier said. "I might take you up on that."

"I can also show you some of the original daguerreotypes that I didn't elect to put in any of my published books. There are a few nudes of Mrs. Gast, if you're...interested in seeing that sort of thing."

Collier's brows jiggled, but then he thought, Nudes? "Oh, come on, don't tell me she did p.o.r.nography, too. They must not have even had it back then."

"No, nothing like that, but just as aristocrats of earlier eras would have their wives painted in the nude, the same went when photography was invented. Daguerreotypes and other early forms of photography were very expensive, and reserved only for the very rich. Well, Harwood Gast may have been the richest private citizen in Tennessee back then. He had several nudes taken of his wife, for his own viewing. She's quite a comely woman."

Collier continued to be astounded by his interest in this. And now...Nude pix of Penelope Gast. I've GOT to see those.

It took another moment for the next question to click in his head. "Mr. Sute...Was anyone murdered in my room?"

"I'm quite happy to say...no, Mr. Collier."

Collier-even though he wasn't sure he believed any of this-was relieved.

"And there you have it, the short version anyway." Sute's distraction continued. He seemed to keep peering over Collier's shoulder, out the restaurant's plate-gla.s.s window. "I won't bore you with certain other testimony-things said to have been witnessed in the house."

"Finally. Ghosts."

"Yes, Mr. Collier. Ghosts, apparitions, and every conceivable b.u.mp in the night. Footsteps, voices, dogs barking-"

"What?" Collier snapped.

Sute smiled. "Yes, as well as regressive nightmares, hallucinations-"

"What do you mean, regressive nightmares?" Collier snapped.

"-and even demons," Sute finished.

Collier plowed his next beer. He didn't like to be taken for a fool. Was this bizarre fat man a master storyteller? Or...

He hadn't heard any dogs barking exactly, but he had seen one, or so he'd thought. He'd found his own s.e.xual responses exploding...something Sute claimed to have happened to others. And the nightmare he'd had? It had regressed him back in time, all right, to a mindboggling atrocity that involved a railroad during the Civil War.

And he'd heard voices, too, hadn't he? Children, a woman, a man.

Now this.

"Demons?" Collier asked.

"I'm afraid so."

"Let me take a stab at it," Collier tried to mock. "Harwood Gast was really a demon, I'll bet. To do the devil's bidding on earth."

Sute chuckled at the attempt. "No, Mr. Collier. It's actually something even more contrived than that."