The Black Train Part 24

But the idea seemed to taint the power of the legend. Could it really be that bland? "Satanism, then. The Gast myth is just a painted-up version of that?"

"Probably. Inventing stories is part of our nature, I guess-as the highest animal. Detractors of religion say the same thing about Christianity. It's just a caveman legend: the savior comes and plucks the good people out of their h.e.l.lhole existence and takes them to paradise."

"A fair point, for people who consider religion objectively."

"Of course it is. But seeing is believing. Those detractors never get a chance to really see, because they don't believe in anything strong enough to ask to be shown. They believe in concrete and steel and Ford and Mercedes. They believe in Starbucks and Blockbuster and Super Bowl Sunday and reality TV. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are all the saviors they need. And their paychecks, of course. All that s.h.i.+t in their lives prevents them from seeing anything everlasting."

"Money and fas.h.i.+on is the new G.o.d?"

"The new golden calf," she said. When she crossed her ankles under the table, her toes brushed his leg. "Sorry. Wasn't trying to kick you."

Baby, you can kick me anytime you want...and I'd LIKE it... "So with your caveman a.n.a.logy, and objectively speaking, we create ghost stories because we've always been intrigued by them-"

"Not just intrigued. We need them," she said. A squid tentacle slipped between her lips into her mouth. "Cavemen wanted to believe there were ghosts, because the idea reinforced ancient myths of the afterlife."

Collier's brow furrowed.

"Not only are ghosts proof of an afterlife, but they're also proof of a netherworld-or h.e.l.l. If the caveman really believes there are ghosts haunting the woods, what else can they be but unsaved spirits? And if there are unsaved spirits, then surely there must be saved spirits, too. Follow the code and you go to heaven. Don't follow the code, and you're a ghost prowling the woods at night."

Collier tried to make more observations without being the devil's advocate. "So...not objectively speaking?"

"I don't worry about it because I see the reality of G.o.d every day."

"What does that look like, exactly?"

"You have to ask G.o.d to see, Justin," she nearly exclaimed. "It's personal. It's between G.o.d and the individual. If I say anything more, I'll only sound like a Holy Roller again. I don't have to explain why I believe that Christ is my Savior-"

"No, no, I wasn't asking you to do that," Collier hastened. "I understand that it is personal." He feared the conversation was growing too touchy. If he touted any serious Christian ideals himself, Dominique would smell him out as a fake. "I believe in the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount and all that. My problem is following them. Back to what we were talking about earlier. Weakness."

She just looked at him and nodded. "Humans aren't strong-not since Eve bit the apple. That's why G.o.d gives us an out. We either find it or we don't."

He tried to a.s.similate. "Then what did Harwood Gast find? You say that you know there's a G.o.d because you've seen evidence of him in your life-"

"Sure. A bunch of times."

"So if you know there's a G.o.d, then you know there's a heaven, and if you know there's a heaven, then you know there's a h.e.l.l?"

She laughed. "Yeah."

"So then maybe all those cotton fields are cursed. Maybe the Gast House really is haunted, and maybe Harwood Gast genuinely made a pact with the devil, or, well, a demon, which is what Sute suggested. Maybe all those stories are true."

She shrugged. "I agree with the possibility."

"So what about you? I believe you when you say you've seen evidence of G.o.d in your life. Have you ever seen any evidence of anything else?"

Her gorgeous eyes narrowed. "As in what?"

"At lunch, didn't you imply that you had seen something at the inn? I just want to know if you've ever witnessed anything around here that might suggest it's not all a bunch of-"

"Bulls.h.i.+t? Well, in all honesty I can say...maybe. But I won't say what it was."

Collier sighed.

Now she was grinning. "I know. I hate it when people do that, too. But I don't want to say anything 'cos then you really will think I'm a crackpot."

"I swear I won't," he about pleaded. Collier was getting the same jive from everyone around here. "There's no way I'll think you're a crackpot."

"Well..." Her gaze darted up to the waitress. "Oh, here's the check. This is Dutch treat-"

"I'm not Dutch." Collier gave the waitress cash, with a big tip. Then he leaned into the table. "Tell me."

Her reluctance was genuine. "All right, but not here. You paid for dinner, so I'll get dessert..."

A hot fudge sundae on top of...squid, Collier thought in disbelief. He opted for a large shortbread cookie and followed Dominique out of the corner ice-cream parlor. They sat on a bench facing a semicircular half wall of old brick and mortar, which highlighted a large cannon. The cannon had no wheels but sat on a round track and swivel; a pyramid of fat sh.e.l.ls rested beside it. Collier half noticed one of the omnipresent historical plaques: LONG-RANGE ARTILLERY BARBETTE BUNKER AND MODEL 1861 6.4-INCH PINTLE-MOUNTED CANNON. A world of hurt, Collier thought. Beyond them, tourists seemed to emerge from the settling dusk.

Dominique dug into the sundae as if ravenous. As each spoonful was savored, Collier saw the wet s.h.i.+ne of her lips and tongue-tip in a Daliesque clarity; nightfall hovered around the radiant face and the gem-s.h.i.+ne of her eyes. "I'm such a pig, but this is so good," she reveled. "You sure you don't want some?"

"No, thanks, I'm stuffed." When he imagined his stomach's reaction to ice cream mixing with Korean spices and squid, beef, and half-cooked egg-plus all the beer he'd had today-he s.h.i.+vered. In all, he had to force himself to eat the cookie.

Then he imagined something else: when she raised the next spoonful to her parted lips, she froze. Suddenly she was topless and sitting spread-legged on the bench, the quirky Christian reverting to her college-tramp roots...

Her mouth sucked the ice cream off the spoon, where it sat on her tongue till it melted, and then her lips expelled it. The slew of white cream marbled with hot fudge began to run a slow line down her chin, over the hollow of her throat, and between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. It stopped to pool in her belly b.u.t.ton, and that's when the fantasy put Collier on his knees licking it out. His hands molded her hips and slid up her ribs as his tongue followed the track in reverse. He evacuated the adorable navel, then sucked upward over a quivering stomach. His mouth could feel excited blood beating in vessels beneath succulent, perfect flesh. No thoughts formed in his own mind, just the carnal craving. She had become his own ice-cream sundae. When his tongue laved her cleavage, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s vised his cheeks.

When his tongue slathered over the fudge-covered cross, he recoiled- It burned like a tiny branding iron.

"-and, see? Those are some of the very first tracks, right there."

Collier's head surfaced from the dirty delusion like a bubble breaking sewer water. She'd been talking but he hadn't heard any of it.

"What's that?"

She pointed past the cannon, to the brick-paved street. Two parallel lines crossed the quaint lane, and the lines seemed sunken beneath the bricks.

"Oh, railroad tracks," he finally recognized. "Gast's railroad, I presume."

"Right. See that plaque there?"

Another old brick wall sported the plaque: ORIGINAL SITE OF DEPOT NUMBER ONE, OF THE EAST TENNESSEE AND GEORGIA RAILROAD COMPANY-1857.

Collier looked at the strangely rustless rails. "So the original track still exists?"

"Oh, no. Most of it was taken up after the war-for reparations. But they left these here, and there are a few more sections around the town, even with the original ties. But this site, right here where we're sitting, is where the madness of Harwood Gast officially began in 1857. It ended less than five years later in an area in Georgia called Maxon."

"Maxon," Collier uttered. "I don't think I've ever heard of the place."

"That's because it doesn't exist anymore. The Union army razed the entire area. There's nothing there now except scrub."

Collier thought back. "Mr. Sute told me that Gast actually built the railroad to take prisoners to some sort of concentration camp. Was that this Maxon place?"

"Yes," Dominique grimly replied. "And the prisoners weren't captured Union soldiers, they were-"

"Civilians. I remember him telling me that, too. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, from a military standpoint, I mean."

"Neither did Dachau and Auschwitz, until you consider the motivation behind it all. It wasn't logistics or efficiency-it had to be evil."

"So Harwood Gast was the Hitler of the Civil War?"

"Maybe worse, simply because Gast was never political. He was a private citizen," she said. "He was never in office, and he never bid for office. He simply built his railroad and killed himself."

Collier smiled darkly. "His service was done, the pact complete: building a railroad that had no military use during a war. Himmler answered to Hitler, but Gast answered to a higher-or I guess I should say-"

"A lower authority," Dominique finished. "At least that's if you believe the legend."

"Which, by the way, you haven't really said if you do or don't," Collier added, "but just a little while ago you told me you didn't necessarily disbelieve the stories...which leads me to my next point..."

"You are one persistent beer writer," she laughed. "All right. I'll tell you what I saw that night."

They walked the fringes of the main drag as the town turned over to nightlife. Carriage-style streetlamps drew floating lines of light down the street.

"Just, please," she said halfheartedly, "don't tell anyone this because it makes me look idiotic."

"You have my word."

Her shadow angled before him, a s.e.xy cutout. "Several years ago a wedding party hired the restaurant to cater their reception. They rented the atrium at Mrs. Butler's inn. It all went fine, but at one point just before we brought out the desserts, I looked in the far corner of the room. There are a lot of little nooks on the sidewalls where Mrs. Butler keeps all those bookshelves and display cases full of Civil War stuff. Between two of those bookshelves, there's a little alcove that's hard to notice-"

Collier remembered immediately. "Right. And there's a desk there, with very elaborate carvings and little drawers and compartments."

Dominique nodded. "And also a tiny portrait of Penelope Gast on the side, like someone hung it there to keep it hidden. Anyway, I'm counting heads for the desserts-some of the wedding party had already left, so I wanted to get the number right...and I see someone sitting there."

"At the desk?"

"At the desk. It's this guy hunched over the desk writing something. I hadn't seen him before, so I figured he was a late arrival and maybe he sat down at the desk to fill out a wedding card or something. I go over there and ask him if he wants a homemade Napoleon for dessert."

"Yeah?"

"He stops writing and looks up at me-and this guy is, like, really ugly. Real pale face, crabby hands, big hooded eyes-and something messed up about his nose-looked like it had gold foil on it or something-and there's this bizarre-looking red hat sitting on the desk, too. He looks at me like he's p.i.s.sed off I interrupted him, and he says, *Napoleon? I met him in Egypt, and he was absolutely deplorable.'"

"Huh?" Collier emphasized.

Dominique's bare white shoulders shrugged. "That's what the guy said, so I'm thinking he's drunk and making some strange joke. I ask him again if he wants dessert, and he kind of grimaces and says, *Can't you see I'm busy? I have to pay more to Harding, out of the railroad account. Mr. Gast just put in an order for fifty more, to send to Maxon. They're wearing them out down there.'"

"Wearing..." Collier began.

"That's what he said, didn't explain. But I didn't care, the guy was a snot to me, so I left him there and went to help my people serve dessert. I ask my a.s.sistant manager if she saw when the guy had come in, and she says *Who?' and I point to the alcove. *That weirdo sitting at that desk,' I say. But-"

"When you looked again, he was gone," Collier supposed.

"Right. Gone."

Collier thought as much. "A creepy story, for sure. But...is that all?"

She playfully slapped him on the shoulder. "No! That's just the beginning. See, I shouldn't tell you the rest-you'll just make fun of me."

"Tell me the rest!"

They turned a darker corner, a side street of shops that had closed earlier, and just one candlelit bistro with people having c.o.c.ktails at outside tables. Dominique's bright white apparel and lambent skin made her ghostly now in the lower light.

"So the reception's a big success, and the bride's father pays the bill and tips hard. Most of the people are gone by midnight, but a few stayed past that for drinks. I let my people go home after they got everything loaded up, and I stay to serve the drinks and listen to these drunk people in tuxedos jabber. At one point I look out the window and I see someone walk by-two little girls in white dresses."

Collier's throat tightened. "Was...there a dog?"

She looked at him funny. "A dog? No. Just the two girls. But then something else catches my eye, on the stair hall. Another figure. Guess who?"

"The guy at the desk?"

"Yeah, and now he's wearing that imbecilic red hat. I see him go down the hall. I'm positive I saw him. He even looked down at me and scowled. Could be wrong about the two girls in the window, but I'm sure I saw him. I figure he's a guest staying at the inn, maybe the crotchety old guy with the nose was the kids' father or grandfather or something. No big deal, right?"

"Okay."

"By one, everybody leaves, so I'm just doing the lastminute cleanup, shouldn't take me more than an hour. I want to get out 'cos I'm tired. Mrs. Butler shows up to see if I need a hand, so I ask her how many guests are staying at the inn that weekend, and she says none."

"Oooooo," Collier remarked.

"Um-hmm. Ooooo. She tells me she's going to bed and I can lock up when I'm done. If I need anything, I can just call out for Jiff 'cos he's around mopping the floors."

Collier errantly touched her shoulder. "Please tell me you went upstairs to look around."

"Of course I did. But by now I have to admit I was a little freaked. Most of the lights were out, and the place was real quiet. I'm positive that no one came down the stairs because you can see both stairwells from the atrium. So I go up..."

Collier was becoming intrigued. "Yeah?"

"It's dark up there. The minute I set foot on the landing, I regretted it. But I look anyway. All the doors were open to air the rooms...except one. It was locked."

"Room two?" Collier asked.

She looked surprised. "Yeah."

"That's the room next to the one I'm staying in. It's also the room where Penelope Gast and her maid were murdered."

Dominique's look of surprise darkened. "I didn't know that. How do you-"

"Well, I mean that's what Mr. Sute told me," Collier amended.

"Wow," she paused, reflecting.

"So-come on-what did you see upstairs?"

"Nothing," she said.