Edward Lee - The Black Train

“It’s only a story, Mr. Collier.” Sute tried to sound jovial.

“But one that we both know is true…”

Sute shrugged with a smile.

As Collier made to leave, his psyche felt like a watch spring that had popped. I’m not the Boy Who Cried Wolf, I’m the Boy Who Asked Too Much. But he knew this: he’d heard more than he could stand, and now he was going home with his tail between his legs—

“Not just yet!” Sute was back at a bookshelf, and slid out some heavy folders. “You wanted to see these.”

“What…are they?”

“The daguerreotypes.”

A rigor seized Collier.

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

You bastard, Collier thought. He remained unresponsive for several more moments, then said, “All right. Let’s see.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER THIRTEEN I

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

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

I’m actually afraid, he realized.

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

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

What am I doing?

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

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

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

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

I need something good to happen. He laughed and the wind mussed his hair. Hey, God, can something fucking GOOD happen to me today?

But why should God do anything for him?

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

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

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

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

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

“Fucker!” she wailed. She grabbed a handful of ketchup and relish packs and ran out with her kid.

Collier’s hand went unconsciously to his pocket, for change. But then his cell phone rang. Shit! I told Evelyn I’d call her! For most of the time he’d been in Gast, he’d left the phone in his room, but now he saw a dozen missed messages stacked up. Several were from his soon-to-be ex-wife but he also noticed even more from Shay Prentor, his producer. And that’s who was calling now.

“Hi, Shay—”

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

“Sorry—” Why’s he calling? “I’m out of town right now.”

“Yeah, your lawyer told me, said you were in some bumfuck place in Arkansas, or West Virginia—”

“Tennessee.”

“Justy, Justy, it’s pretty much the same thing. Moonshine and incest, cruelty to animals…”

“It’s not quite that bad. A town called Gast…”

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

Collier knew something was wrong; Prentor only called him “Justy” when he wanted something. “I’m finishing a book—you know, for my other career, which I need desperately now since you’re dumping my show. Why are you calling? You need me to clean out my desk, like, right now? ”

“Oh, Justy, Justy, you’re a regular bebopper with that wit. I just wanted to tell you the bad news—”

“What could be worse news than ‘you’re fired’? You laid that line on me a week ago.”

“No, no, the bad news is Savannah Sammy’s Sassy Smokehouse just dropped from number three to number four.”

Collier frowned. “Shay. How is that bad news for me?”

“Not for you, for him! That cocky cracker!” Prentor unreeled fuzzy laughter. “The good news for you is that we just tabbed the ratings for your last six shows, and you’re now number three.”

Collier almost dropped the phone in the coffeepot. “I thought I was eleven—”

“Not now, my friend. Your show has officially caught on. I’m not jiving you, Justy. You’re actually only a few points off of number two. Emeril ain’t happy, I can tell you that.”