The NoSleep Podcast - S20 Ep25: NoSleep Podcast S20E25

Episode Date: March 31, 2024

It’s the Season Finale of Season 20. Come join us around the campfire for tales of traumatic trains. “The Midnight Special” written by Canyon Sanford (Story starts around 00:06:25) TRIGGER WARNING! Produced & scored by: David Cummings Cast: Narrator – Dan Zappulla, Elliot – Elie Hirschman, Jim – Matthew Bradford, Chris – Kyle Akers “The Wrong Side of the Tracks” written by Seth Borgen (Story starts around 00:39:55) TRIGGER WARNING! Produced by: Phil Michalski Cast: Ginny – Jessica McEvoy, Chema – Mick Wingert, Claude – Jeff Clement, John Aught – Peter Lewis, Ginny’s Dad – Mike DelGaudio, Ginny’s Mom – Sarah Thomas, Claude’s Dad – Graham Rowat This episode is sponsored by: GhostBed – Get ready for the coolest beds in the world! GhostBed provides high-quality & super comfortable award-winning mattresses crafted in the United States and Canada. Get 50% off your purchase by going to GhostBed.com/nosleep Betterhelp – This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/nosleep and get on your way to being your best self. Click here to learn more about The NoSleep Podcast team Click here to learn more about the Tales from the Void TV show Click here to learn more about Seth Borgen Executive Producer & Host: David Cummings Musical score composed by: Brandon Boone “The Wrong Side of the Tracks” illustration courtesy of Kelly Turnbull Audio program ©2024 – Creative Reason Media Inc. – All Rights Reserved – No reproduction or use of this content is permitted without the express written consent of Creative Reason Media Inc. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors.

From our earliest days, we've gathered around the fire for warmth and comfort. But beyond the light of the dying embers, there is the darkness. And it's in the darkness of the night where we find ourselves, waiting, yearning for the dawn to banish our fears. But our campfire holds more than fireless. for with us you will hear the tales that make the nightmares engulf you and you dare not close your eyes brace yourself for the no sleep podcast welcome to the no sleep podcast i'm your host david cummings we've come to the end of the line the terminal approaches time to go off the rails as it were Yes, our 20th season wraps up with the finale.

We're on track for two tales, which will hopefully bring the horror and give you a kick in the caboose. But first, I want to share some news with everyone. If you follow us on the socials, you'll have seen us hint at this big news already. But it's time to let everyone know about an exciting new series the No Sleep podcast is a part of. It's called Tales from the Void, and it will be streaming this fall. It's a series of screen adaptations of horror stories from the No Sleep Subreddit. And of the first season, six stories, four of them were featured on the podcast over the years. Included are stories from fan favorites, Rebecca Klingle, aka C.K. Walker,

Manon Lyset, and Matt Dimmerski. And I'm very proud to be an executive producer on this project, and you might even see me on screen as I host a short post-episode interview segment with the authors. Fans in the U.S. can see the show streaming on Screambox, and in Canada, it will appear on Super Channel. And don't worry, we're working hard on securing international streaming providers. We'll be sharing more about Tales from the Void as the spooky season approaches. But for now, you can check the link in the show notes to go to the Tales from the Void website. So, brace yourself to take the plunge into the void with us.

Now let's talk about the season finale. As you may have deduced from my opening remarks, the stories this week are trained on traveling down the tracks. Yes, trains. For some, a bit of an anachronistic form of travel. Some of you might commute by train, be it commuter trains or subways. Others of you may have never gone on a train journey. And yet trains seem to be steeped in horror traditions.

Ghost trains, dark tunnels, abandoned tracks holding sinister spirits. It seems trains hold a special spooky place in our horror-loving hearts. We love horror trains so much we might just be making them the theme of an upcoming season. Hmm, yeah, maybe. So, dear sleepless listeners, we thank you for being with us around the campfire during season 20. We look forward to giving you April showers of horror before we kick off season 21 at the start of May. And now, for the last time, the sun has set.

The fire glows bright. Brace yourself for the darkness of the night. In our first tale, we meet a group of boys who travel down some train tracks in hopes of seeing a dead body. Oh, wait a minute. No, no, no, no, no. Wrong story. Sorry, I think that king fellow did that one. No, no. In this tale, the boys learn of a legend in their town. The legend of a ghost train that can be seen only at night in a certain spot. And as we'll learn from author Kenyon Sanford, the experience the boys have will leave a lasting impact on all of them.

Performing this tale are Danza Pula, Ellie Hirschman, Matthew Bradford, and Kyle Akers. So think twice before you go out into the dark to see a spectral legend, especially if you seek The Midnight Special. I guess it started in the Thunderdome. The Atkins Elementary School had a dome-shaped monkey bar set, and our gang agreed to call it the Thunderdome after a movie only Jim had seen when his father brought it home for Blockbuster and allowed him to watch it once because, quote,

this one was PG-13, and that means it's okay. By fifth grade, the hour you had outdoors after lunch was mostly spent talking to your friends. We sat in the bark inside the bars and talked, mostly about movies or TV we liked, or sometimes we became literary and discussed comic books. Fridays, however, were a little different. We still did the same thing, but Friday afternoons outside were the best because it was like Christmas Eve every week when the anticipation of the weekend, like an unwrapped gift, was sweeter than having it. Anticipation was intangible and it never disappointed. You never

needed to wait to hold anticipation because it was already there. When they say the journey is better than the destination, I tend to agree, unless the destination is the beach or the journey is by bus. That Friday afternoon, we discussed scary movies we liked. Jurassic Park worked. It had come out a few years before we were in the fifth grade, but we still shared books on dinosaurs and agreed we should all have a healthy interest in cloning, considering we would be dealing with it soon.

Maybe 10 or so years on. Jim finally stopped talking about how the Lost World was not as good as the first movie, and then, Elliot spoke the words that started it all. Y'all want to hear about something really scary? We all shook our heads, yes, because being scared was our favorite pastime. When you are 10 or 12 years old, you still get scared by monsters because you don't know that life will be much worse than ghouls and slimy things lurking inside a video cassette. Not yet. I heard about something I think he's going really scare you guys.

Jim cocked an eyebrow. Yeah, what is it? They call it the Midnight Special. Elliot had heard it from his dad, who had heard it when he was our age from another kid, just as these things go. Turns out, the northern border of Atkins, Texas, was where the old railroad tracks that kept the produce and cattle moving from the east in Georgia all the way out to Southern California crossed on their way west. Sometime in the 40s, which I imagine had something to do with World War II, as all things in the 40s did, they outfitted the trains to take prisoners out west in the evening shifts. So, during the midnight hour, you might hear the train roll through and tap the outskirts of town.

And if you listened hard, you might hear the cries of lonely men being taken to prison. Many of these men might be taken to the gas chamber real quick after that. At least that was the story, but I'm not sure what it had to do with what comes next. Fast forward a couple dozen years, and these particular tracks don't carry trains out west. Not with produce, not with cattle, not with men of any kind. Now, nothing crosses the tracks but green weeds, choking the lines and delivering the area back to Mother Nature as best it can. The tracks remain, the wood cracked and looking like a little. a ladder that never was set upright. Nothing goes down the line, at least not officially.

Some say, as all these stories tend to promise, that if you go out to the tracks around midnight and you look to the tunnel that feeds out the tracks, you'll see a train. It's blue, but it also isn't. You can see it, but you can also see right through it. The locomotive has a conductor, just like you saw in the cartoons. He wears a a big hat and his skin is shrink-wrapped around the bones of his face. If he sees you watching, he points right at you and opens his mouth, and there are bugs and light inside, begging to be freed. Then he laughs for as long as the train rolls by you. The train is empty, just a long line of flat pallets with no cars on top, except for one. Right in the middle of the length of the train,

There's a storage car, and the doors are wide open. You can see in. You can look right inside, and what you'll see is the future. Your future. Right there, in blue and nothing, is your future, and you'll know the rest of your life because the midnight special rolled through and looked right back at you. And you'll hear the laugh of the conductor,

the entire snaking length of the tree. train and for the rest of your life. A little bull. Elliot shrugged. Maybe, but only one way to find out. Christopher was eating a payday, but when Elliot began the story, he had been eating a kick-cat. He kept his legs criss-crossed applesauce, and his knees didn't reach the end of his shorts, so he looked like nothing but ankles and shins.

You mean going there at midnight? Elliot nodded, grinning. That's just what I mean, Chris. I say we go out there at midnight and see the train for ourselves. My dad won't take me. He never lets us stay out past nine. Even when he and my mom go out, they always come back by nine. He hates being out late.

Elliot tossed a stick at Jim. We're not going with our dad's dummy. We'll sneak out and go by ourselves. I don't want to sneak out. My dad'll kill me. My mom might kill me too, which means I'll be double dead. You don't come back from that, Elliot. Don't be caught then.

Come on. Do they check your room every night? We all shrugged. Atkins was a homey sort of town. We were all pretty cozy in our southern suburb lives. All of us still had our parents. Most of us had siblings. We all thought we didn't lack for much,

and we were still too young to go around feeling our oats. You guys suck. My dad snuck out to see it he was our age? This could be so much fun. Come on. Elliot kept casting, but none of us were biting. Elliot might have been ready to go against his parents' wishes, but in the fifth grade, the rest of us weren't. No, we weren't sneaking out to see a ghost train. The ironic part about the whole thing was that the ghost train wasn't what ended up scaring me.

It took a couple years, but we reached the end of middle school, and since it felt like we might never see each other again. Elliot convinced us, we were ready. It's now or never, guys. Let's go. Recess and a playground had been replaced by bleacher seats in the gymnasium during lunch hour. Jim had hot pockets, which always grossed me out. Chris, he dropped the tofer once we were in middle school, along with about 50 pounds, pawed at a salad.

I was working on a cold turkey sandwich I brought from home. while Elliot worked us over. He stood while the rest of us sat, moving his hands around like Nixon making his own case. Elliot turned out to be more successful. Elliot, why do you want to go see a ghost train? We're grown up now, and we're 14. We don't believe in that stuff.

Jim, you still watch horror movies like every night, not even good ones. I thought you'd be as stoked as anyone to go see it. Jim looked up from his pepperoni paste Kalachi. that's what they look like to me, and squinted his eyes to Elliot. What are you talking about, not even good ones? Elliot shrugged him off. You're telling me, Children of the Corn Three urban harvest is cinema to you?

You're going to tell me it's good? I'm a completionist. And we love that about you, so let's complete this adventure we've been talking about for years. Chris piped up, dropping his fork into his salad. He had made good choices, lost his weight, and looked pretty good now. But no matter what face he put on for us, we all knew he hated those salads he had for lunch. Still, he liked the looks from the girls enough to keep him going. He went from the young pudgy kid to the most handsome in our group, and we were all really proud of him.

And, I must admit, a little jealous. I don't have anything else going on. Elliot pumped his fist and pointed at Chris. That's a spirit. When are we talking about doing this? Like what night? I just need to ask my parents. No, man, don't ask your parents.

It's more fun this way. Why wouldn't I ask my parents? I know they'll say it's okay, so I have nothing to gain from not telling them. Plus, plenty to lose. Because if you tell your parents, then they'll know. And if my stepdad asks your parents, parents where we've been, he won't be happy.

Yeah, okay, I guess. I figured if my parents did find me sneaking in, I'd tell them the truth and hope for the best. I was always on my best behavior, and if I shrugged it off as something I thought was a little embarrassing because it was childish, they'd probably be okay with it. Jim was still stewing about the bad movies comment. He took film, for whatever reason, personally. He finished one of the hot pockets and bid into the next, ham and cheese, as if it actually were, before he spoke next. I don't know, man. Why does it matter? It's just a silly story.

Elliot looked at Jim, his hands no longer telling the story along with his words. His eyes were accenting his speech now. Because, Jim, because. Because we never did it when we were kids. Because we're going to be leaving for house. school soon. And because I've got nothing else to do. That good enough? Good enough for me. Chris seemed genuine, not just humoring Elliot. Sure. Okay, but you have to watch the next children of the corn movie with me. Elliot pumped his fist again and pointed at Jim. That will not happen, but we can watch something. Something maybe... Elliot moved his hands, flat like blades and parallel to the floor, and danced his fingers around.

Something with ghosts. We all tossed something at Elliot. Napkins, salad leaves, empty hot pocket sleeves. He took it in good humor. We waited for Friday. We met at the gas station headed out of town around 11 at night. I told my parents I was headed to bed early, around 10. They believed me because most nights I spent in my room around 8 to 10 anyway, working on my short stories.

I had been sending them out and even received my first rejection letters. I was becoming a better writer, and I enjoyed it, so I kept working even when nothing was being published. I just kept telling myself, this is just the way it is now. Keep working, keep working, keep working. The rejection slips made me feel like I was in the game. game at a young age, so I never felt too bad about it. I carried a paperback in my back pocket like I did everywhere I went, and still do. Testament by David Morell. Good book, but a downer. Jim told us he left home around nine and told his parents he was going to stay with Chris.

Jim ended up at Chris's house, dropped his bag in the bedroom upstairs, and they snuck out together down the pipe outside of the second story. My parents had gone to bed at 10, so all I had to do was not make any noise headed out our front door. Elliot never talked about home much anymore since his stepdad moved in, so to hear that his parents weren't home and he went out the front door was the most we had known about his home life in a couple of years. We walked out to the edge of town and came to the tracks a half hour before midnight. Jim had a pocket full of slim jims.

I liked those, actually. and Chris had the first candy bar any of us had seen him with since the fifth grade. What? It's Friday. I'd like to treat myself. We all thought that was a good idea. For some reason, it made us feel better about the whole thing. I sat with Elliot over at a tree, a few feet from the tracks. The tracks only came around one corner on the northeast part of Atkins. A tunnel on the right that came through Rook Hill spit out the tracks that curved around the border of Atkins and lasted for another half mile, before another tunnel took the tracks into

Grover's Pass and near Silver Lake and past the Carter County boundary. We were all about halfway between the two tunnels, so the train, we all talked about it like it would happen, not like it should, would pass right by us and give us plenty of time to see it coming and going. The night sky looked like a satin sheet pulled taut. The stars bright like pinnful. pricks in the fabric. The stars, like everywhere, I guess, went dimmer as the years went by in the town proper. But out near the edge of Carter County, they've always been as bright as that night. When I look at the stars now, I often think back to the night when we finally learned that we would grow old. I talked to Elliot under the tree, while Jim and Chris competed to see who could

throw rocks the farthest. I still wasn't satisfied. with his answers on why the midnight special was so important to him. Why, after years of moving from adolescence to our early teenage years, he never gave up hope to go see it. He recited the same stuff he had said at that lunch hour, but it didn't convince me so well, like warming up last night's supper in the microwave, and it never tasting is sweet. He never did give me an answer I liked, but I think I figured it out after he was gone. Chris's digital time X went off at 1155, enough time for us to be ready. They put down their rocks, and Elliot and I stood up, myself knocking off the leaves still clinging to my 505 blue jeans.

We gathered around the center of the tracks, where it came closest to the town in the parabola between tunnels. We stood there, and no one said a word. No one dared to. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Chris check his watch. Five minutes late, boys. Not all trains run on time. Elliot was looking down at the center of the tracks, not at either tunnel. As if on cue, we felt it. I remember the rumble in my toes, working its way through my shins and up to my shoulders,

slowly, like molasses creeping backwards. into a tree. The ground shook for a minute or more before I heard anything, but then I did, coming from my right. I still had my doubts about the midnight special, until I heard the faint sound of a train whistle. Suddenly the tunnel was lit so bright, I would have believed it if you told me there was a bonfire inside. But it was blue. The light. The light, poured out of the tunnel, and the face of a large train appeared. It didn't look like a modern train, but like one I had seen in this movie, the train robbers, where John Wayne takes gold off a black locomotive for Anne Margaret. This train was not black, but blue, but only where

the outlines of the train would have been. The rest was there, but it also wasn't. I couldn't quite see through the train, but I couldn't quite see the whole thing either. The wheels turned, and it came right towards us. I looked over at Jim and Chris, but they didn't see me. They just kept looking at the train. I looked at Elliot, and he looked back at me just for a second, and we both turned our attention back to the train. By now it was within 50 yards of us, and I started to make out the conductor. Elliot was right. The conductor saw us watching him, and I swear he made eye contact only with me. But the rest of the guys would probably tell you the same thing.

His hat was comically large, with vertical stripes of blue and nothing. His skin was pulled tight around his skull, as though another person was behind and it grabbed the excess fat, pulling as hard as they could. What I had not heard was that he would not have eyes, but just some of the excess fat. sunken caves where they should have been, with dark caverns where the pupils might be hiding. The caverns looked right at us, if they could look, and then the conductor pulled up his hand. The skin so tight you could see the individual digits of bones in the fingers and pointed. He dropped back the top of his head, while his bottom jaw stayed stock still,

and inside his mount lived the only genuine light around. I did not see bugs, but I heard the most terrifying laugh crawl out of his mouth like a man riding out of quicksand. I still hear the laugh. The conductor's car pulled past us, and we all stood watching it as it moved from our right to our left. Suddenly, we were looking at nothing as the empty flat cars moved into our view. I shook my head, tried without success to clear it, and looked to my right, seeing only the blue and nothing flats coming out of the tunnel. Then a new car came out and clambered down to us,

followed by nothing but more flat cars. At this point, I don't remember what I was thinking. I simply waited until the storage car pulled in front of me. Once the open storage doors were directly in front of me, I lost all sense of the universe. I was overtaken in a swarm of blue light and no longer stood on green grass covered by night. Instead, I was standing on a wood-paneled floor,

looking at a brown chestnut desk. On the bureau was a computer screen, and the words I could read, they were being tight, I could see them being typed, were simply the end. I panned my vision over to the left and a stack of thick hardcover books with my name along the spine in different vibrant colors.

colors like a rainbow that only moved vertically. To the right was a framed photograph of a man, a woman, and beautiful children. The man looked a little like my dad, but that wasn't my mother, and none of those kids, three boys, two girls, were me. I only had a glimpse at the room with the desk, with the books, and with the photograph, but I desperately wanted to live there. never having considered before what my future life might look like, I knew instantly that this was what I wanted. As soon as the thought crossed my mind that I would never want to leave, I was sucked back into reality,

or what passed for reality that night. I was looking at the car headed to my left, and the doors closed by themselves as it departed from view. The train kept rolling until it finally disappeared into the tunnel, with a final flash of cobalt light and the final echoes of the conductor's laugh, echoing off the walls of my head. We stood for a while, no one's saying anything. I kicked dirt in front of me, not because I wanted to, but because I felt compelled to do something. Elliot was the first to speak.

Let's go home, guys. We did. I first learned that Elliot passed away from me. Jim. After middle school ended that summer, Jim and I stayed at Atkins High School. Chris was taken out to go to a school his parents had hopes might end with the football scholarship. It did, and Elliot's stepdad moved them away when he lost his job at the aluminum chair factory. We lost touch, the way old friends always seemed to do. The funeral was light in attendance. It was in Dallas, ten. It was in Dallas, ten. Ten.

or 12 miles from the gallery where he jumped off. Jim said he saw pictures from the scene, and they made him cry. I didn't need the photos to cry. I did it all by myself, before I even made it into the funeral parlor. The only family there was a half-sister. Jim told me that he caught up with Elliot a couple years back on Facebook, and Elliot shared pictures of a daughter that was in Phoenix. He showed me the pictures because she didn't make the funeral. It was a cremation, and Jim got the ashes. Chris was not able to make the funeral because he was coaching a college team. I won't say which one, but you could Google it. That was in the playoffs. They lost, and he was free the next weekend to meet us in Atkins. He told us when he arrived that he would

have come anyway, win, lose, or draw. We believed him. We all met at Pat's Pub. This was the first drink we ever shared together, and we purchased a fourth that went untouched, and shared about recent successes. Chris had his team and a new contract in negotiations to secure him for the next five seasons. Jim had his law practice,

and it kept him shaking hands with all sorts of men and women. He seemed to know everyone and have more money than he knew what to do with, so he was venturing out to other enterprises. His newest acquisition was a drive-in theater off the border of Austin that had been vacant for a decade that he was going to renovate into a repertory location. If he had to pay out just to keep it up and he was the only one showing up for his double features, it would be worth it to him. I shared news of my latest book deal. I had finally been accepted a year after college for the second novel I wrote. The first was utter nonsense.

And the next five books were all published and sold well, too. Pay was good, and I could write full time. I still received some rejections on my short stories, but I didn't tell them that. I also told them that Rachel had just found out she was pregnant again, and we would be expecting our fourth child soon, the first girl. We made it out to the tracks 30 minutes before midnight. I was carrying the urn. It wasn't really an urn.

was a cardboard box with a plastic bag of ashes inside, and I walked over to the tree I had sat with Elliot under. I took a copy of First Blood with me, mostly for nostalgia. Jim and Chris tossed rocks. We hung out until Chris's phone alarm went off five minutes before midnight. We stood in the same spot we had stood in as kids and waited. No train. We waited until two in the morning. Maybe because we thought there might be a time delay issue. Eventually, I turned to Chris and Jim and asked them what I never had before. So, what did y'all see that night? You mean other than a ghost train?

Yeah, you know what I mean. Chris looked at Jim and went first. I saw myself on a football field. Lights were shining down on me, and people filled the stands cheering. I saw myself just like doing what I loved. Sports in some way or the other. I looked at Jim. You?

I saw myself making movies. I shook my head. What? Yeah, I saw myself making movies, like directing them and stuff. I continued to shake my head, like a bobblehead with a loose spring. That's impossible. You're not directing movies now, right? No.

Jim squinted at me, the cotton of his purple polo shirt being gently pushed in the wind. I saw myself writing books and having a wife and five kids and stuff. Now I'm doing it. I saw my future and so did Chris, right? Well, I don't know if I saw my future. I just saw what I loved. Like what made me happiest at the time. Yeah, I'd like to think I direct all the time, like in front of the jury. I tell them stories and direct them in my cases. That's why I always liked watching movies.

I feel like I used that now, telling a good story. None of it made much sense to me, thinking all these years that the Midnight Special was a teller of fortunes, not a mood ring, not insight into what made you happy at the time. Did any of you guys ask Elliot what he saw that night? Chris looked at Jim. Jim swallowed. Yeah.

What was it? Jim took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Like a prisoner he was reluctant to release into society. I think he knew that the longer he stalled, the longer until he had to tell us. I asked him a couple weeks ago. He brought it up. He told me he never cared much about the story until his dad passed,

and it felt like a way to honor his memory. He said he was never happier than walking with us to see the Midnight Special. but when the car pulled in front of him, he said he didn't see anything. Like, he saw the train, and he saw the storage car, but inside was just nothing. I mean, yeah, he said he saw him nothing. And when we walked back, he went home and cried. He figured he just would never have anything to look forward to.

Didn't help that his stepdad caught him sneaking in, drunk again, and whipped him with a telephone. I think all those things in one night really did a number on him. I didn't say anything for a while. I nodded along with Chris as Jim told his story. We all looked at each other and eventually decided it was time to spread the ashes. Jim did the honors, spreading them under the tree and across the tracks. I cried again, thinking that Elliot had the short end of the stick.

I had heard more from Jim that past week, about the stepdad that hurt him, and it apparently was even worse when they moved away from Atkins. for a new job. They lost that within a month. He drank, and then so did Elliot. He never kept work down, and neither did Elliot, and Elliot's marriage went the same as his stepdad's did, a bitter divorce and custody battle that Elliot couldn't afford.

Apparently this was the real reason they linked up again. Jim just hadn't wanted to tell us they reconnected over legal services he did for free. We walked back to town, where they were, all invited to stay at my house for the weekend. Saturday and Sunday were good, but that Friday night, walking back from the railroad tracks, I thought about the midnight special. I thought about how it was supposed to show your future, but maybe it didn't, and how dangerous it was to believe the lie that someone knew everything about you.

To believe in yourself, not someone else's solution for you. Maybe I never wanted to be a writer. Maybe I never wanted five kids. Maybe Elliot was more than nothing. No, I knew that was true. Elliot was more than nothing. He was an old friend, and those are hard to come by. You can't make old friends.

On the way back, I heard laughter, faint but sharp, following me. It still does. In our final tale, we visit a graveyard. Ah, but this is no ordinary graveyard, because the bodies buried there aren't ones formerly of flesh and blood. No, they were once frames of steel and iron. That's right, it's a graveyard of old train cars. And in this tale, shared with us by author Seth Borgon,

we'll meet Ginny and her friends as they stumble upon this mysterious place and learn about the train formerly known as the Iron Baron, a train that still holds secrets and horrors of the past. Performing this tale are Jessica McAvoy, Mick Wingert, Jeff Clement, Peter Lewis, Mike Delgado, Sarah Thomas, and Graham Rowett. So if you're out wandering, make sure you know the way. You don't want to get caught on the wrong side of the tracks. In the woods behind my house, just off the trail at the first big curve, the ground disappears, an almost 90-degree incline straight down. Four stories, maybe five. When you're standing at the very top looking down, it might as well be a thousand. At the bottom,

just more of the deepest, darkest woods this side of the last ice age. Folks around town called it Popper's Grave because it was the cheapest way to dispose of a body. Just get it rolling, and it's gone. I don't know if anyone's ever done that. It's probably just one of those things adults like to say to each other. But for us kids, Popper's Grave was serious business, mythic even, the last unchecked box, the last untouched dare left hanging in the ether, Excalibur jutting from its stone just waiting for some King Arthur to come along. Who didn't want to be the first kid to ride their bike down Popper's grave? Not me or Chema, that's for sure, but just about everyone else we knew did.

Some claimed to have done it, but no one ever claimed to have seen it. That's how we knew they were lying. That's how we knew the day that Claude did it. He really was the first. Claude came over after lunch, said today was the day, and Chama and I followed. We made our way along the trail, Claude walking his bike, Chema and I on either side. We'd left our bikes back at my house. Where we were going, we were not going to need them. Nobody was talking. Deep inside the cool of those woods, the trail of cicadas, the way the sunlight flickered through the leaves,

We understood even then that we were as free as life was ever going to allow us to be. Sixth grade had just ended. It was the summer of 91. I would not live to see the summer of 92. We left the trail at the big curve, Claude's bike chain clicking like a movie projector. Before long, we were at the top of Popper's grave looking down at the world below. Years of rain runoff had carved out a flat strip of clay about a foot and a half, half wide that ran the whole way down, eventually disappearing into thick, primeval brush.

This was known as the chute. Claude positioned his bike at the top of the chute. He didn't look nervous, probably because he wasn't. He was never nervous before doing something incredibly dangerous. That's what Chema was for. Chema was short for Jose Maria Rodrigo Fortunado, a long romantic name for an unharmedic. undersized sixth grader with bad eyes and a tangible fear of just about everything. He kept his thick, horn-rimmed glasses perpetually strapped to his head with a pair of red crokeys

because he was afraid of losing them and not being able to find his way home. He said his parents made him wear the crokeys, but that wasn't true. He was not a fan of Claude's antics. He was not a fan of antics of any kind. As far as he was concerned, the world was going to kill us with or without our help. So why help? No, he was there because I was there. Sometimes I pushed Chema to do things he would never do on his own. And sometimes I pulled clawed back when the fall looked too steep.

Which maybe I should have been doing right then. Not that it would have done any good. Hey, Ginny, what's that thing people put on graves? Flowers? No, I mean like, like words. An epitaph? Yeah. What's a good epitaph for this? How's this?

Claude Hoyt. He died doing what he loved. Something he wasn't supposed to. Not bad, not bad. Chema? Claude Hoyt. It was all downhill from there. Boy, you guys are good at epitavs. Anyone ever tell you that before? Literally no. Claude refocused his attention on the shoot. Sitting there, kind of smirking at what might kill him, arms crossed, a breeze rustling his sleeves, his mop of yellow hair. He reminded me of a flag, not a national flag. More like a county fair

flag. Or a flag emblazoned with your friend who's kind of stupid, but you like him anyway. Jeez, I thought, he's really stupid. And then, almost casually, he kicked off. He careened down the hill, his gears grinding like dimes in a garbage disposal as he went. He hit the wall of brush at the bottom and disappeared. The sound of his bike disappeared. The leaves and branches he'd just crashed through, reformed, and went still. Two, three seconds later, it was like nothing at all had happened. We were just standing there.

Is it possible that we don't actually know anyone named Claude and that all of this was just in our mind? Come on. At the most forgiving angle we could find, we scooted down into the belly of Popper's grave, gravity doing most of the work for us. We followed the trail of broken branches until we came to a sudden rise in the earth. Claude hit that rise going,

who knows how many miles per hour, and took flight, soaring another 30, 35 feet before finally coming to a stop. There, his bike lay on its side, the front tire spinning. Several feet away, draped in cool shade, hands on his hips. Claude was just sort of looking around.

We approached. He didn't seem to notice us. There wasn't a mark on him. Shame. Without a broken bone or two, I don't think anyone's going to believe us. Huh? Oh, right. In true clawed fashion, he was already on to the next thing. Hey, where are we?

I don't know. I've never been to this part of the woods before. I don't think anyone has. This place feels weird. As soon as he said that, I realized he was right. It didn't just feel unfamiliar. It felt off in a lot of little ways. The trees seemed too tall. The shade from their leaves felt more like a storm rolling in than shade. Above, the sky and sun felt too far away. The chute felt far away. Home suddenly, felt far away. No, they have.

Chamon edged the ground with his foot. Just not recently. We were standing on an almost totally grown-over set of railroad tracks. Knee-high weeds and tree sprouts rose up around corroded rails and spikes the same color as the dirt. Beneath a blanket of dead leaves, the decomposing ties held together like frosty mulch under our feet, but had basically kept their shape. Chamo went on, looking very serious, sounding very serious. I don't know how to tell you guys this, but these tracks shouldn't be here. Chema loved history.

He loved it the way Claude loved defying odds. History is the story of how everyone died, he used to say. Read the right stuff, history becomes a how-to manual for not dying a gruesome death. He had a particular affinity for local history. If something in his own backyard wanted to kill him, he wanted to know about it. There's only one track that runs through town. It's the only track that's ever run through town. Built by the Central Midwestern Railroad in 1901, and it runs east-west.

This track... Jama adjusted his glasses again to emphasize the point he was a... about to make. Runs north-south. Claude got that, doing-math look on his face. Meaning what? I don't know what it means. I'm just saying these tracks shouldn't be here.

I looked one way, then the other. Then where do they go? Chama pointed south. I'm guessing that way feeds into the east-west track. He pointed north. That way, wherever they go, they don't ever leave these woods. I didn't like how Chama worded that. They don't ever leave these woods.

Neither did he, I could tell. Claude, on the other hand, picked up his bike and started walking north. And here I was thinking nothing interesting was going to happen today. About a half mile later, we found a massive chain link fence threaded with green privacy slats. barbed wire lined the top. The tracks we were following disappeared under a gate that was locked with a thick chain and a padlocked the size of one of my mother's paperback novels. I examined the lock.

There didn't appear to be a slot for a key, as if the lock was designed to only ever do one thing, and it had already done it. We began working our way around, looking for another way in. It was slow going. Ancient trees grew right up against the wall. the fence's edge. Whatever this was, it had been carved right out of the forest at its deepest and darkest before our parents were born. We eventually came to a spot where one of those ancient

trees had fallen, taking a segment of fence down with it. Inside, spanning roughly the size of a football field, where two rows of train cars lined up side by side instead of end to end. A real-life train graveyard. The cars were in various stages of ruin, ranging from wrecked to unrecognizable heaps of scorched metal. Claude hopped up onto the fallen tree for a better look. I'm going to be honest, I'm not sure of finding an old train at the end of an old train track is the most awesome or the most boring thing we've ever done. Surprisingly, it was Chema who went in first. If he hadn't, maybe none of us would have. Everything about the fence and where it was located and what was inside was making a strong argument for getting the hell away from there.

But he didn't. And we followed. Because that's the way with three friends. Where one of you goes, the other two follow. Uncharacteristically giddy, Jima made a beeline for the train's engine. It can't be. There's just no way! He rubbed away some soot.

revealing faint, stenciled lettering underneath. You guys are never going to believe this. This is the Iron Baron. The Iron Baron! When it became obvious, those words meant nothing to us, Chema added. It's famous. How does a train become famous? You ever hear of the Hindenburg? The Titanic?

Yeah. Like that. In 1911, Chama explained, the Iron Baron, the crown jewel of the Central Midwestern Railroad, was taking its regular Western route when it came up on a notorious troublesome curve known as Dullahan's Cut. Instead of slowing down like it was supposed to, the Iron Baron sped up. However fast it was going, no one knows for sure,

the Iron Baron jumped its tracks at Dullahan's cut, like grape shot fired from a cannon. Cars went flying, twisting, tumble. mumbling, barreling across a mile and a half of craggy barren land before finally coming to a stop. Some of the cars burned for a while until there was nothing left that would burn. The others, they didn't do anything, just sat there still as pictures. Middle of nowhere, middle of the night, helped in to arrive for two whole days. Not that there was anyone to help. Of the hundred and twenty-three passengers and crew, the officials and crew, the officials.

word was no survivors. The unofficial word, it eventually got to the point where what was left simply couldn't be counted. Chamas' exact words were, you can't count the berries after they make the smoothie. I looked around, no footsteps in the dirt, no litter in the scrub grass, no graffiti tags on the cars, no sign that anyone other than us had ever been here. This might be a dumb one. question, but what's all this doing in my backyard? That I literally couldn't tell you. The crash didn't happen anywhere near here. He shrugged. My guess is that the railroad just wanted to put it somewhere no one would ever find it. I thought about how Popper's grave first got its name. The cheapest way to dispose of a body. Just get it rolling and it's gone. At this point, Claude's interest

matched Chamas. They stood shoulder to shoulder, transfixed on the wrecked engine, fixated on whatever morbid series of events was playing out inside their boy brains. The kind where it's all right what happens because the people involved aren't really people. Weird. It is weird, I grant you, but that's not even the weird part. The weird part was what they found right inside there. Chama pointed to the engine car. The engineer and firemen were tied up. They're throats cut to the bone, and the furnace was so loaded with coal, it was still hot when the rescue crew showed up. Which means...

Claude took a step closer and pressed his hand against the side, as if some of that heat might still be in there. Which means someone wanted what happened to happen and went to an awful lot of trouble to make it happen. Do they know who? Nah, some passenger or some employee. There are some theories. Whoever it was, they assumed they died right along with everyone else.

Seems like an awful lot of work just to die. Man, you guys are crushing those apataphs. Claude grinned at me. I did not grin back. I'd just about hit my limit. I wanted to go. Graveyards are cool and all, but this place was too many graveyards at once. And no one had buried the bodies.

This place, it felt like the opposite. of hollowed ground. With the tall trees growing up and over the high fence walls, it felt like we were standing at the bottom of a giant aquarium filled with human suffering. Yes, I wanted to go. Instead, Claude began winding his way between the cars. Chema followed. Reluctantly, I followed Chama. Standing in between two particularly devastated passenger cars, Claude let out a whistle. Boy, it sure must have been something. Yeah, a crime scene.

I get that. I get that. He obviously did not get that. But, I mean, if you have to go, what a way to do it, right? Going that fast, hitting that pass, hell bent for steel, taking flight, soaring into all that darkness. I don't know. I'd kind of like to know what it's like. that can be arranged.

It was a voice that didn't belong to any of us, that didn't belong to anyone we knew, that didn't seem to come from anywhere in particular, close and far away at the same time, in the air, the trees, the other side of the fence, the inside of our own heads, a sharp, crystalline voice, like a shard of glass slacing through a vein.

It was the worst sound I'd ever heard. In fact, it already has. A pair of arms reached out of the passenger car behind Claude. Hands that were too pale and fingers that were too long coiled around him, yanked, and he was gone before the sound he was making could become a word. In the time it takes to blink, Chama and I were staring at two tennis shoe prints in the dirt and an open door leading into an empty train car.

Uh-huh. I looked at Chema. His eyes were dinner plates. The rest of him struggled to reject what his eyes had just shown him. Is it possible we don't actually know anyone named Claude and that all of this was just in our minds? Somehow, I wasn't feeling anything. It was like I was an empty room because all of the terror in the world had wedged itself into the door frame. In the meantime, echoing off the walls of that empty room,

room was the inescapable fact that if it'd been one of us, Claude would already be on that train. I decided to act while that was still possible. Come on. I tugged on Chama's shirt just enough to let him know we were doing this, and I ran for the door leading into the passenger car. Right behind me was Chema, because that's the way with three friends. The second we were inside, the light was different. The air was different.

The train was moving, metal gliding along metal beneath our feet. The door we just entered through was sealed tight, black night whooshing past on the other side of the window. Don't ask me how, but somehow we expected this. This, stepping up from a sun-blanched train graveyard and onto a moving train, was always going to be the next thing that happened in our lives. The car was filled with men, women, and children just casually going on about their business, chatting to one another, reading, smoking, drowsing. The men wore boater hats, cravats, and waistcoats.

The women had lace collars and hats plumed with feathers. Girls with ringlets and boys in short pants and knee socks slept, shifted in their seats impatiently or tried their best to do whatever their parents were doing. Jema waved his hand in front of a man's face. They couldn't see us. They couldn't hear us. Is this our now? Or there then?

I think this is something in between. What happens if you touch one? What happens if you touch one? I put my hand on the shoulder of the woman closest to me. She didn't react. More than that, she seemed incapable of reacting, like a hall of President's robot made out of skin and bone instead of rubber and gyros. A thin trickle of blood oozed out of the woman's ear.

If the woman was in pain, could feel her own blood making its way down her neck. She couldn't react to that either. I told Jama. Yeah, this guy's bleeding too. They all were, we soon realized. Only a little, dabs and dribbles of red here and there. But their own blood was as invisible to them as we were. Oh.

It was the same voice from before. A man wearing a navy blue conductor's tunic with brass buttons and gold trim stood at the far end of the car. I have to say that's a little surprising. I took a step forward. Chema was right behind me. His eyes perched over my shoulder. Where's Claude? Oh, is that his name?

Not that it matters. Do you not think the world was capable of... profound darkness before it was inhabited with creatures with names. There is no power in a name, you see. Only blood. The same long, pale hands that pulled our friend into this place, reached into a waistcoat pocket and pulled out a pocket watch. He studied it, then looked back at us. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Normally a virtue in my line of work. Today, however, we have a very strict schedule to keep. Those hands, they weren't just long. They were too long, too many knuckles. His arms were too long. His torso. His smile had too many teeth. Each eye had two pupils.

The irises mashed together like infinity symbols. Things you might not notice unless you were really looking. Maybe he was human once, but now, like everything else in this place, he was something in between. He put away his pocket watch. If you must know, he is with two very diligent Central Midwestern employees at the moment. I can't imagine him being in better hands. Chema and I looked at each other. The engine.

You, however, I don't have anything for you, except maybe you. free passage. Not that you'll want any part of where this train is going. We're not as scared of you. I admired that Chama got the words out, but it was hard to believe him. If Claude were here, I would have believed him. Too dumb to be scared, even in a situation like this. But he wasn't here. And wherever he was on this train, I couldn't help but think he'd finally found something that terrified him. Do you see all these people? The conductor gestured to the passengers with his spidery fingers.

They're not scared, either. But that won't change what's going to happen to them. I'm sorry, what has already happened to them. Speaking of which, lots to do, I must be off, but do enjoy the ride. He tipped his cap. and disappeared through the door behind him. We followed. Only a few seconds passed before we were in the next car,

but there was no sign of the conductor. Again, we were surrounded by passengers casually killing time between two points on a map. Though they were just as oblivious to their injuries, these passengers were a little bit more battered than the last, a little bloodier, a little bit more bruised, the bruises deeper shades of red and purple. And judging by the vibrations beneath our feet, the train was moving just a little faster.

A woman pointed at something on the other side of her window for a child sitting next to her to see. The woman's glove was blood-soaked. The finger bent in an impossible direction. The window was as black as volcanic glass. Whatever it was that they were seeing, the little girl smiled with red teeth. In the next car, the wounds were even more pronounced. Red arm bones bursting out of sleeves. Glossy burns.

Eyeballs are crushed inside their sockets like chewed gum. A little boy chasing another little boy. Brothers, maybe, bolted down the aisle. We pressed to the sides to let them pass. The second little boy's jawbone dangled from his face by a single tendon. Chema couldn't look away. Couldn't move. Hey, Chema?

Yeah? He just stood there. There, transfixed. His arms pressed to his body, staring at the boys. They were tussling at the far end of the car, the jawbone flopping around like a fish in a boat. Got any epitaphs for us? Um. He looked at me, sort of surprised to see me there.

Back to the boys. Then back to me. Um, Ginny McCovey and Chey Mufortunato. Let's fly next time. Nice. Remember to tell Claude that one. He nodded. We each took a deep breath and pressed forward. In the dining car, the passenger's injuries were so severe it was impossible to differentiate between their skin and the meat on their plates. Utterly unaware of their mutilated forms, they chatted with one another.

They drank. Forks clinked. The train was moving so fast, the windows rattled. Eyes forward, our arms pressed to our sides. We weaved our way through the mangled weight staff as they served and refilled glasses from the aisles. A man smoking a cigar was missing his head from the bridge of his nose up. What was left looked like a bowl filled with wet strawberries. With each pull on the cigar, blue smoke blossomed out of the strawberries. We were almost to the next door when we heard the conductor's voice somewhere behind us. We stopped.

Children, I am about to give you the best advice you have ever received in your entire lives. He was at the other end of the car, leaning against the doorframe. His watch cupped in his tendril fingers. How had he gotten behind us? There's still a time to get off. Stay back, Freak Show. Stay back. Have I done anything to stop you? Have I impeded your progress in any way?

Who's letting you ride for free? In fact, if memory serves, I was the one who told you where you could find your friend. If memory serves, you're the reason he's here in the first place. The conductor shrugged and smiled his grotesque smile. I merely escorted him through a door he was going to walk through anyway. Believe me when I say, I've done far worse than that in my time. Yeah, you made the door!

The conductor's smile vanished. That's right. I did. Bought and paid for with the blood of 123 souls. Well, it will be 123 when all said and done. You know, I could just as easily make it 125. His smile returned. But what are we talking about, really, three cherries on my Sunday when one would suffice?

How vulgar! What would people say about me? I made the door, yes, and you walked through it willingly, even though you were terrified right down to your marrow of what you might find on the other side. I admire that. And you've come this far. I admire that. And you're terrified right now, right this second, more terrified than you ever thought possible. Yet here you are, staring into an abyss at the bottom of the abyss. Completing whole sentences standing on your own two feet. Astonishing, really. And all I'm trying to do is reward all that courage. So hear me. It's too late for your friend. It's not too late for you.

We're not leaving with how Claude. The conductor shrugged again. There's an old saying in the railroad business. I think it applies. Running out of track always wins the argument. He turned and slipped through his door. We pressed on. The last car separating us,

from the engine was the coal car. The only way through was over. We opened the last door and were nearly knocked over by the blast of air. In front of us, the ladder on the back of the coal car looked a hundred miles away. Below, a track word like the blades of a blender. One ill-timed bump, one misjudged movement, we were liquid. Because he'd do it for us? Because he'd do it for us.

I leapt onto the coupler, pushed off, and grabbed for the ladder. The train was vibrating so violently, the metal felt electrified. Literally holding on for my life, I pulled up, swung my body over the lip of the car, and landed in a bed of shaking coal. When Chema tried to do the same, the train jerked and his hand missed the ladder. I grabbed his wrist, his wild momentum pulling him too far in one direction and then the other. He was just about gone from my grip when he was just about gone from my grip when he was. when one of his feet caught a rung, then his free hand.

Together, we hoisted him onto the car. Somehow, we were still alive, and the only thing separating us from Claude was a bed of coal the size of a slip and slide. All we had to do was get to the other side. Considering how far we'd come, seemed like nothing. We were wrong. The train was moving so impossibly fast at this point

that the dancing sheet of Black Rock had no too. tangible surface. It was like trying to crawl across the inside of a giant popcorn popper. With each movement, we were just as likely to go under as move an inch. And still, the train found more speed. 20,000 tons of steel hurtling along the tracks like a flat stone skipped across a pond, bouncing like a plane taking flight. Moments of weightlessness lifted us up in the air, slammed us back down, and lifted us up again. Up ahead, smoke. and sparks plumed out of the iron barren stack. Inside the cab glowed a hellish orange.

Everything else in every direction was the darkest dark I'd ever seen. And somewhere out there in all that darkness was Dullahan's cut, waiting, waiting for what had already happened to happen. I could feel how close it was, as if the cars were already burning, as if the wind whooshing past my ears were the screams of a hundred and twenty-three dying passengers, the smell of their coppery blood filling my nostrils. No, we were not going to make it. The conductor knew that, had always known that. The second he pulled Claude out of our world and into this one, it was already too late. He'd left nothing to chance. Damn him. Cheymo was just a little

bit ahead of me, scrambling furiously to pull himself forward, going nowhere. Just before the train left the track for what I knew would be the last time. I wrapped my arms around him, pitched our combined weight, and rolled us over the side of the car and into the endless blackness. We landed on the ground with about as much force as rolling off a couch. The dirt beneath us was hot and dry. Birds chirped. I opened my eyes and found myself staring into a blue summer sky.

Next to us loomed the twisted, rustic. it out, sun-baked husk of an empty coal car, its wheels half-sunk into the earth and brimming with weeds. Are we dead? Do you feel dead? A little. We pulled ourselves to our feet. I think that means we're alive. We were back on our side of the door, back in the train graveyard, back among the rows of derelict cars. No time had passed. With the exception of the exception of Claude, our lives were exactly where we'd left them. Just a few cuts and bruises and a thin layer of soot covering our skin and clothes for our trouble. In the next row over, the conductor casually stepped off of the caboose. The dark ritual begun nearly a century before

was finally complete. Back in the real world, he looked human again, on the outside, at least. He looked at his normal hands, his normal arms. He was pleased. He saw us watching him and called out. Hello there. I'm glad you decided to take my advice. He looked around. I say, what year is this?

Oh, you know what? On second thought, don't tell me. He opened his pocket watch, nodded, and tucked it back into his vest. I want to be surprised. Besides, it doesn't really matter. I am a fast learner. With that, the conductor strolled away, whistling a little tune. He left the graveyard through the downed section of the fence.

The whistling faded away like a train disappearing into the horizon on its way to a new town. And then the next, and then the next, and then the next. We told our parents, and then the police, only what they were going to believe, that we'd found a train graveyard deep in the woods, that inside the graveyard, a man dressed in a conductor's uniform grabbed Claude, dragged him into one of the train cars, and disappeared. Even that sounded unbelievable, but they found the graveyard, along with four sets of footprints, one belonging to an adult, and Claude's bike.

That's all they've been. found. That's all they were going to find because they didn't have the slightest idea what they were looking for. I hadn't seen Cheema for about a week when he asked me to meet him at the library. Typical Chema coping strategy, he'd been reading and rereading anything he could find on the great Iron Baron crash of 1911. I found him huddled in front of a microfish reader and a part of the library I'm pretty sure only he knew about. I pulled up a chair. He started talking without looking away from the screen. According to the Iron Barron's manifest on the night of the wreck,

the conductor's name was John Ott. He pointed to the name on a list of the dead. It is assumed he died in the crash. His body was never identified, but a lot of the bodies were never identified. And if he was ever seriously considered a suspect, there's no word of it in the papers. John Ott.

I rolled the name over in my mind. John. John. knowing his name didn't change anything. It made him no more or less real to me, no more or less human, no more or less evil. It didn't make what he took from us

any more or less of a cosmic violation. Naming a mountain doesn't make it a mountain. The same goes for oceans, hurricanes, monsters. There's no power in a name, he'd said. only blood, which means we know who he is and where he is and what he's come here to do, and if we tell anyone,

it's beds with arm straps till we're 18. There's more. Oh, great. Chama turned the knob on the micro-feas reader, sending ancient news pages whooshing across the screen. He stopped on a sepia photograph of a hollow-eyed man wearing a miner's hat, holding the dead body of our friend, the wreckage of the iron barren smoldering in the background. Unlike learning the conductor's name, I was pulverized by the realness of Claude's death.

It probably didn't show, but I always found something reassuring about all the stupid chances Claude took. No matter how many ridiculous things we saw him do, he never broke a bone. He never needed stitches. He never chipped a tooth. The basic fact that he was still above. of ground and walking the earth always made me think that maybe the world wasn't the death trap I was afraid it was. Well, he's below ground now. Yeah. Where do you think they buried him?

Chema let out a long, defeated, sigh. Who knows? An unmarked grave in some potter's field, probably. A popper's grave. He nodded. A popper's grave. I couldn't look away from the picture. as if looking away was the same as leaving him behind a second time.

The caption read, Rescue worker seen here with unidentified crash victim. No reference was made as to why the victim's hands and feet were bound. True to form, Claude died without a mark on him, smirking at oblivion. A week ago, that picture didn't exist and was taken almost a century ago. Both things were true. A week ago, Claude was alive, and he was decomposed earth six feet below an unmarked grave. Both things were true. And then I realized something, the person I was the week before, wouldn't have been capable of. On both sides of the door in the train graveyard in the woods behind my house, Claude Hoyt had been reduced to a headline. In between, however,

nothing was written. There, a train hurdles through a perpetual night. Passengers that are already dead live forever, waiting for a stop that never comes. Inside the engine, a 13-year-old kid who shouldn't be there in the first place is smiling because he knows his friends are coming to pull him back if the fall is something he isn't going to survive. And just because we hadn't done that yet. That doesn't mean we weren't going to. I didn't say anything for a while. What is it? You're not going to like it. Judging by the look on his face, he knew what I was going to say. He knew what we had to do. He knew where we had to go. No, he didn't like it. He didn't like it at all. But that's the way with three friends.

one of you goes, the other two follow, or die trying. Do you know what a prairie meeting is? There's no earthly reason why you should. The only reason I know it is because it's the kind of thing you pick up knowing Seema Fortunato. Where he picked it up, who knows? A prairie meeting sounds sort of pleasant, doesn't it? Something along the lines of Laura Ingalls and Johnny apple seed drinking spice tea in a sunny meadow somewhere. But that's not what it is, not even close. A prairie meeting is what they call it when two trains traveling in opposite directions along the same track collide. How do you go about untangling a thing like that? How do you go about turning that wreck into two separate and whole trains again? You can't, right? On a molecular level, it seems to me,

some collisions can never truly be undone. The same goes for people. When we first met Claude, he'd just moved to our street. Instead of unpacking boxes or looking for new friends or exploring or doing any of the other perfectly reasonable things a kid might do when they're the newest new kid in town, he wanted to see if he could jump from his new roof to his new pool and live. Chema and I just happened to be walking past. not really heading anywhere.

When we saw this kid with wild, blonde hair standing on his roof in a bathing suit, knees bent, arms stretched back like wings. What's he? He's not. And then he did. He jumped, silently disappearing from sight. We threw down our bikes and ran to the backyard. When we got there, the water was roiling, and the kid from the roof was now standing on the cement lining the pool. dripping lead and knocking water out of his ears, beaming.

Made it. It wasn't even close, really. Why did you do that? I've never had a pool before. That is not an answer to that question. But it was the only one he was going to get. The kid threw on a t-shirt, stepped into a pair of flip-flops, and started walking. Come on.

I heard the pizza shop downtown has a pizza that's so spicy, you have to sign a waiver before they let you order it. wide-eyed, not fully comprehending what had just happened, we followed. And we've been following Claude Hoyt ever since. Even now that he was dead. The day Chema told me the conductor's name, the day we sat and stared at the photograph of our friend's dead body, the day we knew we had to go back through the invisible door in the train graveyard, the sun was low in the sky when we finally left the library. Half the sky was clear blue.

the other half orange. On the orange half, the darkening tree line looked like it was on fire. I wanted to go to the train graveyard right then. Chama wanted to wait. We needed to prepare, he insisted, to learn as much as we could about what we were up against, to choose our moment instead of letting the moment choose us. Just because he was right, that didn't mean I wanted to hear it. Every second we left Claude in the in-between place was the universe on a tilt. Every second the conductor was in our world was a ticking bomb. Nothing in our lives is ever going to make sense ever again. What does being ready for what we're going to do even look like?

That is how I feel every day of my life. But I always leave the house eventually. We passed the presto freeze, long lines sneaking from its two windows. The red picnic tables jammed with bodies. The life and laughter faded away behind us. The fireflies were out. The melanie sweetness of fresh-cut grass hung in the air. None of it got through.

Summer wasn't summer anymore. We'd put our hands through the paper mache of reality and felt what was on the other side. The world before that was like a dream. All right. We tried it close. Claude's way. We'll try it your way this time. My way, funny. Where was my way when I ran into a train graveyard like a kid and it was Christmas?

Well, where was Claude's way when I pulled you off the train leaving our best friend to die alone? For about a block, nothing was said. Then Chama bumped me with his shoulder. In case you didn't notice, we're alive because of you. I bumped him back. In case you didn't notice, we are kids. We left it at that. We walked the rest of the way in silence. We started preparing.

Chema went about learning everything he didn't already know about the original Iron Baron crash. From there, he would work his way out unearthing everything he could about who or what we were up against, the man who in 1911 told the Central Midwestern Railroad that his name was John. aunt. My checklist included studying a book, Chema, went to great lengths not to touch. He brought it to my house in a brown paper bag and slid the bag to me with his foot. He belonged to my grandmother.

I think it'll help. The book was ancient, bound in cracked ox blood leather, and smelled like smoke. It was called Rivers of Time, Oceans of Blood, written by unknown, transcribed by unknown. Jesus, Chema? Was your grandmother a brouha? My grandmother was born in Santa Fe and watches Wheel of Fortune. I looked at the title. Then back at Chema. If my eyebrows could talk, they would have said, are you for real? Chama shrugged. Maybe she was Brouha adjacent. I tried handing the book back to Chema. You should probably read this. This seems more like your kind of thing. He jumped back. Then you don't know me at all. There's no way I'm reading that thing. I don't even like going to sleep knowing it's in the house. In fact, that book is yours now.

I'll handle this side of the veil? Jamo waved his arms, indicating the tangible world. And you'll handle that side of the veil. He pointed in the general direction of the train graveyard. Over the next week, I read Rivers of Time, Oceans of Blood, four times. What it did more than anything was put into words what felt true when we were searching for Claude in the in-between place. That blood is the currency of the universe. The more you ask of the universe, the steeper the bill. Slicing a pig's throat can keep your family alive during a brutal winter.

opening a doorway through time and space, something like that just might cost you a passenger train full of blood. Maybe that's where the term an arm and a leg came from. And that was just to open the door. To complete the ritual, the traveler needs blood from the other side. A life for a life. Perhaps John Ott hadn't counted on the Central Midwestern Railroad going to such great lengths to erase the Iron Baron

from the face of the earth. Perhaps he hadn't counted on it taking 80 years for the life he needed to come along. But it did. As for how Chama and I were going to get back into the in-between place, I was hoping there was at least one more thing John Ott hadn't counted on. You see, if there's one thing I know about boys, I assumed he'd left the door open behind him. In fact, I was betting everything on it.

We never called Claude's dad Mr. Hoyt. The first time we met him, he said to us, you don't have to call me Mr. Hoyt. I'm just Claude's dad. Ever since then, all we ever called him was Claude's dad. To this day, I don't have the slightest idea what his name actually is. Starting somewhere around then, our parents playing trivial pursuit together

became a pretty regular thing around the house. In the two weeks following Claude's disappearance, It wasn't at all surprising that no one felt like playing. What was surprising, at least to me, was that on day 15, they did. Claude's dad came over around 7.30 p.m. He and my parents sat down at the kitchen table, and my mom popped open the box. I stood watching from the entranceway. It seemed too soon for board games.

Too soon for patterns and laughter. As long as Chayman and I had Claude's rescue a plan, we didn't have to grieve. But the adults sure didn't know that. Yet, there they were. Rolling dice, eating white cheddar cheese, popcorn. My dad, needling Claude's dad for not knowing anything about sports. You can't just say Lou Gehrig every time it's a sports question. Why not?

I know for a fact the answer to at least one of the questions in that box is Lou Gehrig. It'll be right eventually. My mother stifled a laugh. He's got you there, Kevin. Yeah, it's a little thing I like to call strategy. Maybe you should look into it the next time you're not watching sports. You're hopeless. You're hopeless.

That seemed like a strange thing to say to a man whose only kid disappeared 15 days ago. Then again, there was a lot about adults that didn't make sense to me. When you're an adult going out of your mind with grief, maybe there comes a point when a few patterns and a little laughter is exactly what gets you through the day. I took a few steps into the kitchen. Hey, Jen, feel like playing? I shook my head.

I'm sorry to interrupt game night. I just wanted to ask Claude's dad if he's heard any news. News? News. About Claude. For a moment. Claude's dad looked like he was trying to remember the lyrics to an old song. His bemused smile just sort of hung there.

Then faint recognition clicked in his eyes. Oh, yeah, Claude. He nodded a few times. So did my parents. Like, yeah, that name does sound awfully familiar. Right, Claude. I do hope they... I hope.

And then he trailed off. What I was seeing wasn't avoidance or denial. In a very real way, Claude's dad only vaguely remembered having a son. My parents only vaguely remembered that their daughter saw her best friend get abducted by a stranger in the woods two weeks before. I looked around the room. We were surrounded by evidence of Claude's existence. A dozen pictures of him were stuck to the refrigerator door. There were pencil marks on the doorframe where my parents recorded our heights on our birthdays.

On a telephone pole outside, I could see one of the thousands of missing posters Claude's dad hung all over town the day after Claude disappeared. For Christ's sake, he was answering to the name Claude's dad. But for whatever reason, Claude's realness and the realness of his disappearance were drained. from their minds. For the wedge. My mom pulled out a fresh card. What disease was combated with a vaccine first made from the pus of cowpox sores in 1796? Oh, I know this one. I know this one. It's right on the tip of my brain.

I don't think he knows this one. I'll give you a hint. It's not Lou Gehrig's disease. I backed out of the room, leaving the adults to their perfectly lovely summer evening. Not a care in the world. Lucky them. Chema was at the library. Of course he was. He jumped when I touched his shoulder.

Of course he did. I told him what just happened. Yeah, my parents said something to that effect as well. How come we remember? Maybe that's part of the ritual. Maybe because they haven't been where we've been. Maybe John Ott wants us to remember. Speaking of which,

Jamah swiveled towards his micro-fish reader and sent images flying across the screen. I've been going through old headlines all week. 1911, 1910. It was a crazy time. Industrialization, mechanization. Badly made machines becoming more and more a part of daily life with almost no oversight or safety standards. Look at this. Some new disaster just about every day.

He stopped scrolling. The Great Fire of 1910, also known as the... The devil's broom, 90 dead. Beneath the headline was a photograph of a forest reduced to cinders and a bathtub where a house once stood. In the corner of the picture, a group of onlookers passively take in the devastation. Chama pointed to an onlooker who was staring at the camera instead of what the fire had left in its wake. Thin frame, thin face, a waistcoat and a watch. That smile.

The picture was too grainy to tell for sure if that was the conductor from the Iron Baron, but it couldn't be ruled out either. Jama scrolled again. Stopped. The Triangle Shirt Waste Factory Fire, March 25, 1911. 146 people burned and trampled to death. In the picture, a seemingly endless row of open caskets lined up side by side in a warehouse. burned rigor-mortis limbs jutted out of the caskets people were passing by in a sad procession looking for the remains of loved ones except for the one face looking at the camera instead smiling cradling his pocket watch in his slender hand more scrolling a month after the triangle shirt-waist fire the s s lucetania sinks off the coast of cape point chama pointed to a face in the crowd

more scrolling. Four days later, a passenger train in South Africa derails while crossing a bridge, killing 31, injuring just as many. Chama pointed to a face in the crowd. John Ott, traveling the world, mastering his craft, a virtuoso in a new medium, killing lots of people all at once, letting progress take the fall, and then just casually walking away. Chema nodded. Who knows how far back it goes? We just know where it ends.

I don't think we do. I don't think he came here because he was done. I think he came here because he was bored. And he's a fast learner. Wordlessly, Chama and I stared at the monitor. We thought about bullet trains, crowded subways, airplanes loaded with jet fuel, nuclear reactors. The murky face stared back. If we looked at it long enough, I fully expected it to wink at us.

What I said next went without saying. I said it anyway. We're running out of time. The next morning, my parents were glued to the news. A train had derailed ten miles west of us, not a passenger train. A freight train loaded with hazardous materials. chemicals I couldn't pronounce, let alone spell. Some of the cars had ruptured, leaking their contents into the ground.

Others were burning, pouring black, poisonous smoke into the air. What was that? What did they just say about the water? Is our water safe to drink or not safe to drink? I don't know. You were talking. There, they said it again. What'd they say? They said the crash poses no threat to the water table. I don't know. That sounds like something you tell people, when the water table's not fine.

And they haven't said anything about the air. When my parents noticed that I was watching and listening from the next room, their tones and body language changed. Lightened. Parents lie for all sorts of reasons. The scariest is when they're scared and don't want you to know it. Oh, hey, sweetie. My mom was going to great lengths to put a bounce in her voice.

Didn't know you were up. My dad turned the volume down to zero. Same old news. Why do they even call it the news? They should just rename it bad news. Am I right, sweetie? Everyone was sweetie all of a sudden. Here's an idea.

Counter-programming called good news. Who'd watch bad news when they can watch good news? Right, sweetie? He wasn't saying real things. And I wasn't listening anyway. Instead, I was focused on the now silent television screen. The camera panned from our local Channel 43 News Anchor live on location to a shot of burning tank cars, then back to the news anchor. For a fraction of a second, long enough, I assure you, the camera landed on the face of an eyewitness.

Only he wasn't witnessing the unfolding catastrophe. He was looking directly into the camera. Smiling, basking, the conductor John Ott was looking directly into my camera. living room, directly into my eyes. Anyway, I, uh... My dad stood up awkwardly and blankly looked around the room. I have to go to work. Bye, sweetie!

My dad was already gone. My mom lost again in images of a derailed train pumping poison into our backyard. There was a knock at the front door. It was Chema. What he said next went without saying. He said it anyway. It's time. I ran upstairs to my room, grabbed our gear, and we were almost out the door when my mom stopped us.

Where are you kids going? Nowhere. Just out. Unless there's some reason we shouldn't. She looked at the television screen. Then at us. The television screen. Us.

She threw a hollow smile on her face. No reason at all, sweetie. Everything's fine. Just fine. Come home when the streetlights come on, okay? I will. When I said that, I didn't know it was a lie. But I knew it might be.

We entered the woods. We left the trail. We made our way down into Popper's grave. We followed the overgrown railroad tracks to the train graveyard. We pushed through the police tape. We went to work. Though devastated in the wreck, the Iron Baron's engine car was basically in one piece.

We climbed in and cleared away decades of dried leaves and debris. I reached into my backpack and took out a battery-operated, handheld blacklight that I got at the store at the mall that sells crystal unicorns, decorative swords, and battery-operated handheld blacklights. What if it's not here? It'll be here. I switched on the black light and waved it over the engine floor. The light revealed two fan.

clouds of incandescent turquoise where the conductor slit the engineers and the fireman's throats. Next to the clouds, the black light illuminated a circle about the size of a manhole cover. Inside the circle was a triangle, both drawn using the engineer and fireman's blood. Like I knew it would be, like I needed it to be, the symbol was still intact. I propped the black light up on the brake handle, purple light flooding the floor. We sat down, the circle and triangle symbol dimly glowing between us. What now? Now, all we have to do is knock on the door.

You say that, but why do I have the feeling that you're talking about something that isn't knocking? Yeah. I took a long sewing needle out of my backpack. I'm going to need some of your blood. I know it. Not a lot. Just a puncture in one of your fingers. I have to do it too.

Chema slipped his glasses up over his forehead, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose. It was the physical act of Chema attempting to keep an open mind. Okay, just so I understand. He took his hand away, his glasses falling back into place. We knock on the door. He made air quotes around the words knock and door. Then what? Then we should be back in the in-between place.

Sure, but when! John Hought was trapped in the in-between place for 80 years before we came along. How can we be sure we're going in after he snatched clawed, but before the crash completes the ritual? You're going to love this. I guarantee you I am not. Before I... I made a stabbing motion with the needle.

We have to use our hearts to tell our blood where we want to go. Santo Siano. You really got yourself an exact science there, haven't you? Newsflash, you're the one who told me to read a book called Oceans of Time, Rivers of Blood, that you got from your grandma. Guess what, Carl Sagan? It's not a science at all. I was losing him. Actually, I couldn't believe he'd made it this far. If we were going to do this, I needed to give him something real to hold on to.

to be honest, I needed it too. I know you liked that Claude took all those stupid chances. But do you know why Claude liked to take all those stupid chances? Chema shook his head. I asked him about it once. We were at that allotment where they're building all those new houses. They had just cleared the trees. It was just a big, muddy field then.

They hadn't even dug the artificial ponds yet. The only thing they'd built was part of the sewer system. About every hundred yards or so, there were these half-buried cement bunkers with metal grates on top. Claude being clawed, he decided he was going to go into one, crawl through the pipe, and come out the next one. So he went in. Some time passed, then more time passed,

then a lot more. And then I thought, What in the hell am I going to do if he gets stuck down there? What if he's already stuck? What if saving his life hinges on what I do right now, and I'm just standing here? What if it starts to rain before anyone can figure out how to get him unstuck? It would serve him right, dying down there. Save everyone the trouble of having to buy a casket and dig a hole.

Well, some number of excruciating minutes later, he popped out of the grade on the other side, like it was nothing. I don't remember exactly what I said, but it was something like, What in the hell is wrong with you, you psychopath? If this is what being your friend is like, what's the point of being your friend? And I ran off. He came over later that evening, looking like I'd never seen him before. If it had been anyone else, I would have described the look as contemplative. He proceeded to explain to me what in the hell was wrong with him.

When his mom was dying, he was so. supposed to go into her room at the hospital to tell her goodbye one last time. But when he went in, he froze. He couldn't say or do anything. His mom was just bones and tubes at that point, but she was conscious. She told him it was okay to be scared. That the world's a pretty scary place sometimes. She said she was scared too. But sometimes when you're too scared to do something takes on a life of its own, and it follows you forever. And she didn't want that for him. I'll tell you what, she said.

After today, every time you're too scared to do something, but you do it anyway, that'll be you telling me all the things you wished you had said today. Everything that's in your heart. And I'll hear it every time. Head down as if in prayer, Chema took all that in, processing this new information much faster,

than I did at the time. That was right before he and his dad moved here, wasn't it? A month before we found him jumping off roofs and into swimming pools. I nodded. I know you're scared. I'm scared too. But if we don't do this, it will follow us forever. It and everything it encompassed washed over him.

The lines of his face drooped, snapped back into place. hardened. You know what? Now that I think about it, I don't have room in my life to be scared of one more thing. He held out his finger. Two quick punctures later, red beads hung from the tips of our left pointer fingers.

The sides of our fingers pressed together, we put a single smudge of blood on one of the corners of the triangle, then the next, then the last. That was the knock. We waited for an answer. Inside the symbol, the Iron Baron's metal floor began to move, rippling like the surface of a purple ocean.

I knew that if I were to touch it, my hand would go right in. But we were beyond trial and error. To itself, magic is a system of gears turning inside a clock. Those gears were turning all around us now, just waiting for the right click. When it came, the floor became like sand pouring into the symbol like, the throat of an hourglass, pulling Cheyma and I forward and down. It felt more like falling into a sleep than into a cold black hole, but that's what we did.

Darkness followed. The spinning gears of the universe became the rhythmic kachunk, kachunk of a moving train. The cold became night air howling in through the engine's open windows. I opened my eyes. Everything was lit orange by the inferno blazing inside the fire, box. The engineers and the firemen's bodies lay in heaps. The pools of blood beneath them, and the freshly drawn symbol on the floor looked black and glossy in the firelight. Chima was stirring to his feet, and there in the corner was clawed, bound and gagged and alive,

kicking at his restraints like a jackrabbit. We cut him free, removed his blindfold, got him up, and nearly hugged the life out of him. Took you guys long enough? He looked at the two dead bodies. What did I miss? We have a lot to do and too much to explain. How much information do you need? I don't know if you know this about me,

but I'm not really what you'd call detail-oriented. It was comforting to learn that spending an unknowable amount of time tied up in a cosmic wait station beyond time and space hadn't affected Claude in any discernible way. We're about to ruin the day of the guy that brought you here. Or maybe get killed. One of those two things. Are you in?

We climbed through the engine's rear window and clambered on to the edge of the coal car. Wind hushing all around us. I pulled a length of rope out of my backpack. At one end of the rope, I'd tied a small boat anchor my dad kept in the garage, despite the fact that he had never in his life owned a boat. I tossed the anchor to the other side of the coal car and pulled until it caught. Then I tied the other end off on our side. Claude found all this a little puzzling.

This isn't our first time! One by one, we shimmied across the coal bed. While the rope definitely helped, the train hadn't built up enough speed yet to make crossing without it impossible. Chema said something to that effect. And based on what he thought the plan was, he was right.

Chema and I had talked about just jumping off the train as soon as we'd found Claude. But all that would do was prolong the ritual. John Ott would still be lurking inside the train graveyard waiting for some other poor bastard to come along. Then we talked about attempting to stop the train before it hit Dullahan's cut, preventing the crash altogether and killing the ritual.

But then he'd just try again, and again and again until he got it right. No matter how we figured it, the world wasn't safe no matter where or when. the conductor ended up. In other words, we couldn't let him leave the in-between place alive. And for now, that's all Chama needed to know. The first car following the tender was loaded with crates and trunks.

All three of us were half in, half out the door. Over the howl of the wind and the churn of the engine, we had to shout to hear ourselves. Claude, the conductor is somewhere on this train, but we don't know where. We need his pocket watch. Is that a magic pocket watch? No, it's probably just a pocket watch. But we need it. It's the only thing on this train he cares about.

Claude was a little disappointed that the watch wasn't magic. But to get the watch, we need you to get behind him. And for you to get behind him, you're going to have to do something incredibly stupid. To keep himself steady, Claude was clutching the ladder leading up to the roof. With a tilt of my head, I indicated the ladder. What do you think? I was speaking Claude's language. He understood immediately.

He looked up to the top of the ladder and the inky blackness beyond. His eyes shining like new stars. What's a good epitaph for something like this? Claude Hoyt! Don't worry! I know a shortcut! Claude Hoyt. Given a choice, I'd prefer the ladder.

Yeah. Either one of those will be fine. I swear you guys should write Apatast for a living. Anyway, don't do anything I wouldn't do. He grinned at me. I grinned back. He disappeared up the ladder. Car by car, we made our way through the train,

the sleepers, the dining cars. With each new car, I knocked twice on the ceiling with a broom I found in the storage car, followed by a two-stomp response. When we got to the first passenger car, There was still no sign of the conductor. I knocked on the ceiling. The passengers still couldn't see or hear us.

If we touched them, they couldn't feel it. If one of them came walking down the aisle, they'd bowl us right over if we didn't squeeze out of their way. They were like machines on an assembly line, constantly making and then remaking the same night, over and over and over again. They're not bleeding yet. We must be too far from Dolahan's cut.

We still have a little time. Oh, good! I would hate it if I thought our time trapped aboard this limbo death train was almost at an end. We had some time, but we were running out of train. The last car before the caboose was the smoking car. Brown leather chairs and plush velvet love seats lined the walls. Less than half the seats were taken. Linguid passengers took in the scenery through black windows, chatted with their neighbors, dozed. Several women held long-stemmed holders in their gloved hands.

Blue smoke made ribbons in the air. A man with a pipe folded and then refolded his newspaper. Several moments after we entered the car from one side, the conductor entered from the other. We just sort of looked at each other. I knocked once on the ceiling. Like last time, the conductor looked basically human, but just a little off,

malformed from too much time trapped in the in-between place. limbs too long, fingers too long, too many teeth, too many pupils. You, you're not supposed to be here. This hasn't happened yet. He was more amused than anything. Then his amusement faded. He looked around, as if the train were suddenly filled with the smell of an incomplete ritual. The other one, he's not where he's supposed to be. Where is he? You're living in the past, John Ott.

The conductor looked at his watch. So I am. He tucked the watch back into his waistcoat. And in that past, I let you live. I also told you there's no power in a name. Well, that wasn't entirely true. Knowing your names, Ginny McCovey and Jose Marrault, Rario Rodrigo Fortunado gives me a certain amount of power.

It's how I'm going to find your homes and bathe in your parents' blood and burn your neighborhoods to cinders for all the trouble you've caused me. You'll be irretrievably dead by then, but you'll still know I'm doing it when it happens. You're not going to do anything stuck in here. the last time I looked, you don't have the blood to finish your ritual. Don't die. The way he was looking at us, our skins might as well have been clear plastic. He could see blood thrumming through our jugulars as clearly as if we were wearing neckties.

In that moment, I was more conscious of my own blood than ever before in my life. We're a long way from the engine. How are you going to get us there? One of two ways. You can just stand there when I come for you, which would be easier for you. Or you can run each step carrying you closer to where you're going to wind up anyway, which would be easier for me. The choice is yours. I chose a third option, the one that begins with me running at the conductor and swinging the broom handle with all the strength I had directly into his smug, toothy smile. In the second it took me to close the distance, I swear I saw those teeth growing longer,

like time-elapsed footage of icicles forming. He caught the broom handle mid-swing, wrenched it from my hands, and tossed it away. My momentum still carrying me forward. The conductor wrapped his elbow around my neck, spun me so we were both facing a wide-eyed Chema, and he began choking the air out of me. You. He pointed a long finger at Chema. You love the Iron Baron so much, you'll die in it.

And you... He tightened his chokehold to indicate he was now talking to me. I'm going to put my thumbs through your eyes and tear you in half from the top down. In each hand, I'll be holding half your skull and one arm and one leg, and then I'm going to drop them like wet sheets. The wool of his sleeve didn't feel like... like wool. It felt like cold skin. Beneath the sleeve, the conductor's musculature writhed like a tangle of snakes. My consciousness seeping away, I found words forming in my head. From where I

couldn't say, they weren't my words, and what I heard wasn't my voice. What is a track, said the voice, if not a vein. What is an engine, if not a pulse? My heart, I realized that. I was a then, was beating in time with the movement of the train. As for the one you came all this way to save, he's coming with me. You'll be happy to know I've decided to keep him alive for a little while. He'll scream for years before losing his mind entirely. What sounds he'll make after that is anybody's guess. And then, when all three of you were...

finally reunited. I profoundly encourage you to ask yourselves if all this was worth it. He unclamped his elbow and lifted me in the air by my collar, my feet hanging two feet off the ground. His right hand coiled around my head. His thumb pressed into my eye. Not enough to damage it, but enough to know what was coming. When his left hand tightened around the other side of my head, my one still uncovered eye caught a flicker of movement. A tug at the front of the conductor's waistcoat, followed by something gold glinting in the light. Whatever it was, the conductor noticed it too. His grip on my cranium became an afterthought as he looked about for what had happened. When he realized his pocket watch was gone, he let me go entirely. I dropped to the floor in a heap.

Where is it? Where is it? Frantically searching the folds of his clothes and the ground around his feet, it took the conductor a moment to realize Claude was standing right behind him, holding the watch. When he did, Claude tossed it to Chema on the other side of the car. The conductor made a desperate grab for the watch mid-air, missed, and landed on his knees. Both Claude and I, and maybe even the entire ritual, were all but forgotten. The conductor's whole universe was Chema Fortunato. Chima backed up to the open door and dangled the watch directly above the car's gnashing steel wheels.

The ties underneath flying by like floors on an express elevator to hell. Stop. Stop. Stop. Hey, John, Aunt, I have an epitaph for you. Time's up. Chima let go of the watch. The conductor charged forward, howling in rage, terror, anguish, other emotions there will never be words for. His long arms outstretched. Chema lunged out of the way.

Grasping for what was already gone, the memory of where the watch had just been, the conductor dove through the door and disappeared beneath the wheels like a sapling through a wood chipper. The train didn't even jostle. For all that had just transpired, the passengers didn't appear the least bit impressed. Claude helped me to my feet. We joined Chama peering over the edge of the car, at the couplers, a thin, grated walkway, the tracks a smooth blur. Holy cow, I can't believe that worked.

I can't believe you caught the watch. Our shared sense of new relief and the rhythmic lull of gliding metal were shattered when a skinless arm leapt up from under the car and landed on the floor with a thud. The hand attached to the arm wrapped itself around Chama's ankle and yanked. I grabbed onto Chema. Claude grabbed onto me. All three of us fell backwards to the floor. Holding on to one another, we watched as what was left of John Ott hoisted itself onto the car. Head, neck, and torso, a rising moon of mangled sinew. Its skin was flying off like strips of string cheese, flesh and uniform unspooling from muscle tissue and winding itself around the

wheels below. We were out of clever things to say. Us, the conductor. All that was left was to hold on for dear life. We held firm. The conductor held firm. Even without skin, the conductor's face registered an expression of sheer determination, a will that was almost pathetic in how one-dimensionally human it was. He had come so close, after all, too close to let it, to let it, to let it, to Let it. Finally, when the conductor's body had unspooled to little more than pulp-soaked bones, the hand let go, and the train ate John Ott once and for all. We lay there, breathing. Seconds ago, there were three John Ott's. One was plotting the great Iron Barron disaster of 1911. One was conjuring chemical spills and God knows what else in 1991. And one had been haunting an

undiscovered train graveyard for 80 years. They were all gone now. And all that was left was five unrooted fingernails and five thin streaks of blood trailing out the door. Time's up. Nice. We opened the car's side door. The night rushed past us like a sideways waterfall. Now what? Jump! What happens then? That's all he needed.

With two quick steps, Claude flung himself out the door. I guess convincing Claude to jump off on moving train was always going to be the easy part. Chema looked a little worried. He peered out into the howling wind and bottomless darkness. Me, on the other hand, I may be physically incapable of jumping off moving trains. Need a push? Would you mind? What are friends for?

One healthy shove later, I was alone. Not really, though. Just because the passengers couldn't see me, that didn't mean they weren't there. I scanned the half-filled car. There they were. Chatting, taking in the night air, just killing time.

I said before they seemed more like machines on an assembly line than people. But they were people. To John Ott, they were machines, things, bags full of material components. But no, they were people. People who just happened to have somewhere to be on some night in 1911. They were mothers and fathers and daughters and sons. They were the sum total of generations that came before,

and they were everything they might have been, if not for a madman throwing a dart at a map. John Ott needed their blood for his ritual, but also would have done it for nothing. He deserved to die, but not more than the 123 people who'd been riding this train for the past 80 years deserved to live.

Because that's where magic comes from, not blood, life. The passengers were starting to bleed now, out of their noses, their mouths, their ears. The smell of tobacco smoke became burning meat, burning hair. The train noticeably picked up speed. I had to hurry. Dullahan's cut was approaching.

As I made my way to the engine, it was comforting to know that my parents were going to forget me, and it was comforting that my two best friends were going to remember. I don't know if that makes magic very kind or very cruel. Maybe it's like people. It took my body a minute to adjust to the fact that I was no longer on a speeding train. My mind, too. Ginny's push-out-the-door had placed me in the train graveyard as gently as a flop onto a soft bed.

The dirt was brittle and warm. The air was hot. A cardinal somewhere was calling. I was alive. Someone was standing over me. I shielded my eyes from the sun with my hand. That wasn't that terrifying. I disagree.

He helped me up, swatting dirt off my back. Where's Ginny? She'll be along. We stared at the smoking car's twisted charred remains, waiting for Ginny to come tumbling out of the misshapen door. And we waited, and waited. After about 20 minutes, the smoking car began to fade away. It became translucent.

Then it was gone. The other cars followed, taking with them the in-between place, the door, the book. Ginny. Within seconds, Clod and I were standing in an empty fenced-in lot. The fence disappeared all around us. Wide, centuries-old trees began to materialize

as a tree formed around me a gentle, invisible hand just sort of nudged me out of the way. The sun disappeared behind the ceiling of leaves. A soft breeze rustled in those leaves. The ancient trees creaked. Everything that was going to happen had happened. Uh, was this part of the plan? My insides felt hollow.

As a matter of fact, I think it was. When Claude returned home, it was like he'd never been away. John Ott's chemical spill never happened. and Ginny's disappearance, on the other hand, absolutely wrecked her parents. For about a week, it was all anyone could talk about. And then, just like last time, Ginny McCovey slowly became a memory nobody could hold on to. Nobody except us.

Later that summer, Ginny's dad waved to claw to me from his yard as we passed by. He was working on his lawnmower, not a care in the world. We waved back. Hey, Claude, is it true you rode your bike all the way down Popper's Grave? Yeah. He whistled, shaking his head in wonder. Man, that's amazing. Say, you fellas know why it's called Popper's Grave?

Cheapest way to dispose of a body. He chuckled and pointed to the woods behind his house with his thumb. Seriously, though. You kids be careful back there, all right? I'd hate if something happened to. you. All right. He waved again and went back to his lawnmower. There was Ginny's bike,

leaning against the wall in the garage. Behind that window was her room filled with her stuff. There was Ginny's dad waving hello to Ginny's friends. And where's Ginny? Wasn't even a thought in his head. To be fair, we weren't wondering where Ginny was right after then either. We didn't have to. We already knew.

A few days after Ginny decided. disappeared as soon as my parents would let me out of their sight. I went looking for her. All information on the great Iron Barron disaster of 1911 was gone, replaced by a few anemic articles about a bizarre murder suicide that took place that night aboard the Central Midwestern's flagship train. For reasons unknown, the train's conductor slit the engineer in fireman's throat and tried to derail the entire train by pushing the engine full throttle through an infamously treacherous hairpin curve. Before reaching the curve, the conductor took his own life

by throwing himself beneath the wheels of the accelerating train. His body was found some distance behind, mangled beyond recognition, except for a hand clutching a gold watch. By all accounts, his attempt to derail the train would have been successful, if not for the quick actions of a young orphaned stowaway who saw what happened

and brought the train to a stop. Found her. I dug a little deeper and found something else. Her current address. Claude and I rode our bikes to the edge of town. In all, Greenleaf Cemetery was less than an acre with woods on three sides. Pretty soon, it would be all woods. Not time mischief.

Just time. No one got buried there anymore. No one cut the grass. No one tended the leaves. It's a place kids go to scare themselves the predetermined amount. I didn't like it at night. In daylight, it was mostly just peaceful. The three of us had been there a thousand times.

We were there again. We pushed open the heavy iron gates and wound our way through the weather-worn headstones. Like a lot of these kinds of cemeteries, green leaf was filled with people who were too young when they died, but would have been dead now anyway. soldiers, mothers who died in childbirth, children with stones small as shoeboxes with lambs carved into the face. It didn't take us long to find what we were looking for. Claude and I stood next to each other. Our shadows marking the time across the newest headstone in Greenleaf, though it wasn't new at all. Virginia Dare McCovey, it read, 1898 to 1975.

And there was an epitaph. Sorry, boys. I had a train to catch. And the light of dawn approaches. Our tales must come to an end until the next time we gather. We'll keep the fire burning until you return. That is, if you dare to remain sleepless. The No Sleep podcast is presented by Creative Reason Media.

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