The Black Train Part 34

The recounting of atrocities made Collier forget the actual reason he'd come. "Well, no. You don't seem surprised or suspicious that I'm having dreams that detail past events that I was previously uninformed of."

"I'm not surprised," Sute said as baldly as his pate. "I've spoken to many people who've had similar experiences there. Transpositional dreams are commonplace in haunted-house phenomena, Mr. Collier...if you believe the technical mumbo jumbo that's often affixed to it."

Collier tried to synopsize in his head: Gast burned innocent women and children to death in a giant blast furnace...to pay his debt to Satan...

"One thing I forgot to mention," Sute intervened, "is how Gast spiced up his supposed reverence to the devil. The railroad was finished on April thirtieth, and even minutes after the final spike was driven, the first contingent of captives were transported to Maxon. Before Gast and his men returned to town, however, there's the matter of the slaves who worked so devotedly for him."

"You're going to tell me that the slaves sold their souls, too?" Collier couldn't help the sarcasm.

"Not at all. Gast promised them their freedom when the job was complete, but he executed them all instead, a fitting final touch. His security team opened fire on all the slaves at once, firing low body shots so they'd be incapacitated rather than killed on the spot. He wanted them alive for the furnace. It's ironic that the slaves who built the railroad were among the first into the coal bed, Gast's first payment to his benefactor."

Collier sat numb. He felt as though he were sinking into a mora.s.s of distilled putrefaction.

"Sorry, I've strayed," Sute admitted. "You were going to tell me about another nightmare?"

Collier had no good judgment left. "Last night I dreamed I was in the house. I was a woman-I was a prost.i.tute."

"One of Bella's, no doubt. Bella Silver, but n.o.body knows her actual last name. She was the madam at the town bordello."

Collier nodded, gulping. "I went up to the house, and the marshal was there-"

"Braden."

"-with a deputy. We were the first to discover Gast's body hanging from the tree out front-"

"Then this would be May third."

"That's exactly the day, and I know that because I saw it on a calendar at Bella's-" Collier wheezed choppy laughter, knowing how mad he must appear. "There was a hole in the front yard, and shovels, and anyway the marshal ordered me to help him search. We were searching for Mary and Cricket Gast."

Sute sat large and immobile, listening.

"You told me about Cutton yesterday, and how Penelope was murdered, and also about Gast hanging himself," Collier continued almost breathlessly, "so that part of the dream could've been suggestion, but I didn't know about the other two suicides-"

"Poltrock and Morris-"

"Yes, yes, but last night I dreamed what you told me today, and I'm positive I hadn't heard it elsewhere." Now Collier's fingers were digging into his thigh. "In this G.o.dd.a.m.n nightmare I went inside and saw the same thing-I saw Morris with his throat cut and I saw Poltrock with part of his head blown off, and then I went upstairs and I saw Cutton in the washroom where someone drowned him in the f.u.c.king hip bath, and then I looked in another room and saw Penelope lying naked on a blood-drenched bed with an ax in her privates-"

Sute looked alarmed. "Mr. Collier, relax. These kinds of tales can get under anyone's skin. Let me get you another drink to calm you down."

"I don't want another d.a.m.n drink," Collier harped. "I want to know what was in the children's room, the room I'm renting now. In the nightmare I went to open it and it was locked. So the marshal's deputy kicked it open, but they wouldn't let me look! Mary and Cricket were in there dead, right?"

"Correct."

"But they weren't killed in that room-you already said so. So where were they killed? And why were their dead bodies moved to that room after the fact?"

"For an obscene effect, I'm sure." Sute's voice seemed to vibrate in a grim suboctave. "It was Gast. He wanted horror. He wanted the children to be found, don't you see? Read some of the excerpt..."

Collier's eyes surveyed the italics:

. . Gast and his first team had already arrived back in town a week ago, according to the station master. There was no difficulty in discernment, after I'd spoken to Richard Barrison, a plowman, who testified that he saw several of Gast's men digging a large hole next to the front court. Not thirty minutes later, when returning, Barrison reports that he saw the same men refilling the hole. This was shortly before one o'clock in the afternoon. Further deliberation was hardly necessary when we discovered the bodies of those poor girls...

Collier rubbed vertigo from his eyes. "My G.o.d...You mean he-"

"Gast buried his two daughters alive, then went about the business of murdering Jessa and seeing to the gangrape and sequent ax-murder of his wife. Cutton was murdered sometime after one in the afternoon as well." Sute diddled with another drink. "Just before sundown, he ordered Morris and Poltrock to exhume Mary and Cricket's bodies and place them in the bedroom. He closed the door, and locked the dog in with them. He knew that it would likely be days before the bodies were discovered. He wanted them to rot down a bit first, which is why he closed the windows. And the dog, of course, having nothing to eat..."

"The dog ate the girls' bodies," Collier droned.

Sute looked a bit sick himself now. "Not...just that, I'm sorry to say..."

"What do you mean?"

The obese man pointed again to the ma.n.u.script in Collier's lap. "Perhaps it's best that you not read anymore. An abridged version might be less offensive." Sute cleared his throat. "The girls were pregnant when Gast put them in the hole, probably considerably so."

"He buried them alive and they were pregnant?" Collier almost shouted his outrage.

"I'm afraid so."

"Rape-related pregnancies?"

"Hardly. See, these young girls weren't so innocent themselves. With a mother like that for a role model? They were notoriously promiscuous and quite willing, at least according to the plethora of letters and resident diaries. And what you're not comprehending is this: Gast wanted their punishment to be rich. After several hours under the ground, the girls were dead and the fetuses miscarried. The corpses were then exhumed-four of them, mind you-and lain in their beds. Hence, the dog's first pangs of hunger were satisfied by the fetuses and afterbirth, and when there was none of that left...it started on the girls. That's the scene that awaited Marshal Braden and his deputy when they forced open that door, and no doubt the same scene you would've witnessed in the nightmare had you looked in the room." Sute sighed. "Rumor has it that the dog escaped, never to be seen again. But you can be sure...it escaped with a full stomach."

And all of that, Collier regarded, happened in the room I'm staying in now...

Was Gast simply a man gone mad, or was it really something worse, something which, for all intents, was impossible? The silence that followed made the room seem darker; Collier's brain felt like nerveless meat. I'm some kind of an antenna, he thought, and the inn is the power source. But did he really believe it was a power source charged by the evil of the past?

He felt older when he pushed up from the chair. "I have to go now."

"It's a harrowing story, Mr. Collier. But now you know all of it. Of course, knowing what you know now, you're probably sorry you ever asked."

"It's my nature." He tried to laugh, and handed back the ma.n.u.script.

"You're sure you don't want to borrow it?" Sute asked.

"No. I wouldn't be able to hack it. I'll be leaving soon anyway."

Sute rose to put the ma.n.u.script up; then he returned the checks to Collier. "I'm sorry to hear that. I hope it's not the town's ghastly history that's sending you away."

Collier lied. "No, no, I've got to get back to L.A." There was a discomfort that continued to itch at him. What did it matter what Sute might say when he was gone? Nothing, he realized. Still, he didn't want anything getting back to Dominique, even though he realized that he'd probably never see her again after tonight.

"Mr. Sute? Please don't tell anyone what I've said today-the nightmares and all."

Sute stood half in shadow now, a smoking-jacketed hulk. "It's all in confidence, Mr. Collier. As I said before, you're an intuitive man. You don't want me to repeat what you've told me. And as with any agreement between good gentlemen, I trust that you'll keep my secret as well."

It was the first time that Collier had noticed the five-by-seven framed picture of Jiff, on the nightstand. I guessed that one right, too...

"I understand. It was nice meeting you-" Collier shook hands. "Thanks for satisfying my curiosity. It's definitely killed this cat."

"It's only a story, Mr. Collier." Sute tried to sound jovial.

"But one that we both know is true..."

Sute shrugged with a smile.

As Collier made to leave, his psyche felt like a watch spring that had popped. I'm not the Boy Who Cried Wolf, I'm the Boy Who Asked Too Much. But he knew this: he'd heard more than he could stand, and now he was going home with his tail between his legs- "Not just yet!" Sute was back at a bookshelf, and slid out some heavy folders. "You wanted to see these."

"What...are they?"

"The daguerreotypes."

A rigor seized Collier.

"Mr. Collier, I know you've had more than your fill of the local lore...but after hearing it all, can you really walk away without ever seeing the only existing photographs of Penelope Gast?"

You b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Collier thought. He remained unresponsive for several more moments, then said, "All right. Let's see."

Sute carefully slid some metal sheets from various protective folders. "Take care to only touch the edges," Sute requested.

Collier found the first stiff sheet obscurely bordered in black; within the border the image seemed to float. Ghostly was the best description of what Collier's eyes fixed on: Penelope Gast gazing askance in a ruffled French-style bustle and petticoat. The embroidered bodice piece hung unlaced down the front to reveal a plenteous white bosom, starkly nippled. Collier gulped. Even in the grainy photograph, she was infinitely more beautiful than the modest oil portrait at the inn.

"Genuine daguerreotypes were hard to come by," Sute explained, "and outrageously expensive for private citizens."

Collier thought of Hollywood producers who had professional sculptors cast their wives' nude torsos and hang them on the wall. This was the same thing for rich men of the mid-1800s. Putting one's wife on a pedestal.

"Tintypes were more common during and after the Civil War, but the images were inferior and tended to lose detail after time. Gast spared no expense to immortalize the image of his wife."

And then have her gang-raped before he dropped an ax between her legs...Collier looked at the next, this one even more racy. Mrs. Gast stood poised with a togalike garment snaking up one leg, between her legs, then around her neck. Her legs were model perfect. The toga covered one breast; her right hand cupped the other. The light long curls of her hair seemed to illuminate about her head. Did he detect the faintest freckles in her cleavage?

He never saw it coming. The next sheet showed Penelope Gast lying totally nude across a reclining settee like an odalisque in a Turkish harem. The detail was shocking, as well as his ability to make out a single freckle just above the c.l.i.toral hood. And the woman's pubis had been completely shaved.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

I.

Collier drove. He had to clear his head. He wasn't sure where he was driving-the airport for all he knew.

For all he knew he was leaving Gast and its questionable horrors without even a good-bye. He could abandon his luggage, he could even abandon his laptop. Mrs. Butler already had his credit card number for the room bill.

I'm actually afraid, he realized.

Collier didn't want to go back to the inn.

The Bug swept around the snakelike turns of the side roads out of town. Did it want to get out of here, too? Then Collier's mind jagged: What am I doing?

It's ridiculous to leave my laptop and luggage just because of a ghost story. Could he possibly spend one more night in his room, knowing what had happened in it? And the rooms on either side? Sandwiched by murder...

Then a more rational reality touched him on the shoulder. I can't just leave town without saying good-bye to Dominique...

She'd think he was an imbecile, or worse, just another drooling, insincere c.o.c.k-hound who fled the scene when he realized he'd never get her in bed.

Even if he never saw her again, he couldn't have her think that.

I need something good to happen. He laughed and the wind mussed his hair. Hey, G.o.d, can something f.u.c.king GOOD happen to me today?

But why should G.o.d do anything for him?

His stomach rumbled. He hadn't eaten today and it was well into the afternoon. But when he considered the mutt's last meal in the Gast House, he doubted he'd have any appet.i.te for a long time...

A sign told him the interstate exit for the airport was only five miles distant. Christ, do I even know what I'm doing? He pulled into a last-chance rest stop with a gas station and Qwik-Stop. At least try to eat something, he forced himself.

He thought of the most racist cliches inside; the clerk wore a turban and could've pa.s.sed for a suicide bomber. "One dollar six cents!" he was yelling at an unkempt woman with smudges on her face. She had four quarters on the counter and was trying to buy a hot dog in a foil bag. "But it says a dollar each!" she cried. A dirty toddler stood at her side. "I just want to split a hot dog with my kid!"

Collier watched as he poured himself a coffee from the back of the store.

"Tax!" the clerk sniped in his radical accent. "Now get out! You cannot pay so you must leave or I call police! You homeless go somewhere else! Why you come to my store? In my country you be sterilized and put on work farm!"

"f.u.c.ker!" she wailed. She grabbed a handful of ketchup and relish packs and ran out with her kid.

Collier's hand went unconsciously to his pocket, for change. But then his cell phone rang. s.h.i.+t! I told Evelyn I'd call her! For most of the time he'd been in Gast, he'd left the phone in his room, but now he saw a dozen missed messages stacked up. Several were from his soon-to-be ex-wife but he also noticed even more from Shay Prentor, his producer. And that's who was calling now.

"Hi, Shay-"

"Justy," came the distant voice. "Been calling for two days, my friend. Does the Prince of Beer not want to talk to his good friend and producer or does he not know how to charge his cell?"

"Sorry-" Why's he calling? "I'm out of town right now."

"Yeah, your lawyer told me, said you were in some b.u.mf.u.c.k place in Arkansas, or West Virginia-"

"Tennessee."

"Justy, Justy, it's pretty much the same thing. Moons.h.i.+ne and incest, cruelty to animals..."

"It's not quite that bad. A town called Gast..."

"Oh, yeah, you can bet I've heard of that. Jesus Christ, Justy, what are you doing there?"