It was then that he looked up, away from Wallace under the flickering lights of the train car, and saw skeletons all around him.
They filled the shadows of the car, some laughing, some grinning, some lost to sleep. All with bone where flesh belonged. Those few who sat directly under a light and out of shadow still wore their skin, but their eyes were gone, replaced by whirls of gray smoke.
For a moment, Arlen Wagner forgot to breathe. Went cold and dizzy and then sucked in a gasp of air and straightened in the seat.
They were going to have a wreck. It was the only thing that made a bit of sense. This train was going to derail and they were all going to die. Every last one of them. Because Arlen had seen this before and knew damn well what it meant and knew that—
Paul Brickhill said, “Arlen?”
Arlen turned to him. The overhead light was full on the boy’s face, keeping him in a circle of brightness, the taut, tanned skin of a young man who spent his days under the sun. Arlen looked into his eyes and saw swirling wisps of smoke. The smoke rose in tendrils and fanned out and framed the boy’s head while filling Arlen’s with terrible memories, ones he’d tried hard to forget.
“Arlen, you all right?” Paul Brickhill asked.
He wanted to scream. Wanted to scream and grab the boy’s arm but was afraid it would be cold slick bone under his touch.
We’re going to die. We’re going to come off these rails at full speed and pile into those swamp woods, with hot metal tearing and shattering all around us…
The whistle blew out shrill in the dark night, and the train began to slow.
“We got another stop,” Paul said. “You look kind of sickly. Maybe you should pour that flask out…”
The boy distrusted liquor. Arlen wet his lips and said, “Maybe,” and looked around the car at the skeleton crew and felt the train shudder as it slowed. The force of that big locomotive was dropping fast, and now he could see light glimmering outside the windows, a station just ahead. They were arriving in some backwater stop where the train could take on coal and the men would have a chance to get out, stretch their legs, and piss. Then they’d be aboard again and winging south at full speed, death ahead of them.
“Paul,” Arlen said, “you got to help me do a bit of convincing here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We aren’t getting back on this train. Not a one of us.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Koryta’s first novel, the Edgar Award–nominated Tonight I Said Goodbye, was published when he was just twenty-one and was followed by Sorrow’s Anthem, A Welcome Grave, Envy the Night, and The Silent Hour. His works have been translated into more than fifteen languages. Michael Koryta lives in Bloomington, Indiana, where he has worked as a newspaper reporter and private investigator, and in St. Petersburg, Florida.