Bentley Little - The Burning

He joined them. Although the dark train was still more than a mile off, everyone stopped at the edge of the path, afraid to move closer. The feeling of dread emanating from those motionless black cars was powerful even this far away, and Henry remained alert, on edge, ready to bolt should even a puff of steam emerge from the smokestack.

"Slow train to the coast," Stuart whispered next to him.

Henry remembered the euphemism. They'd used it in the army to refer to someone who'd died. There was one kid in basic training who had keeled over while running, been taken to the infirmary and never returned, and when asked for details about what had happened, the DI had said simply, "He took the slow train to the coast." That was Henry's first exposure to the phrase, but like everyone else in his unit, he'd used it excessively over the next three years, eight months and twenty-eight days. It had been decades since he'd heard, said or even thought of the term, though, and the image conjured by Stuart's whisper frightened him even more.

Slow train to the coast.

The coast.

He thought of his dream, the vast expanse of water, and that linguistic connection, tenuous as it might be, caused his skin to ripple with gooseflesh. Again he sensed meaning and purpose just beyond his reach.

All of them were quiet, those who dared speak whispering like Stuart. The train waited- like a lion, Henry thought-and the rangers waited, too, wondering what was going to happen next, whether the train was going to speed away, disappear into thin air, turn and crash into them and their cabins ... or sit there forever until one of them grew brave enough to approach it and investigate.

He looked from Stuart to Pedley to Raul to Murdoch, then turned back toward the train.

Why was it here? What was its purpose?

Were the twins on it?

The desire to learn the answer to that question was almost enough to get him to walk across the sand to find out.

Almost.

There was the blast of a steam whistle, one short quick burst that made them jump as one. There were noises in that sound that should not have been present in the whistle of a train, subliminal tones he could neither hear nor identify but that for some reason made Henry think of multitudes screaming. He was about to run away, following an instinctive desire to flee back into a cabin so he wouldn't be out in the open, when the black train took off, not starting slowly, and picking up steam, but departing instantly at full speed, like accelerated film footage. In seconds, it was past the dunes and gone from sight.

"What in fuck's name was that?" Raul breathed.

"Yeah," Stuart said.

"Ray's dead," Henry told them numbly.

"A train?" the superintendent said skeptically. He looked around at the faces of the rangers before him and obviously did not see what he'd hoped to see. Henry looked around, too. There was no embarrassment or hesitancy on the features of his coworkers, only grim determination and barely concealed fear.

Hope disappeared from Healey's face. He sat down resignedly on one of Ray's chairs. "Tell me what happened."

All eyes turned toward Henry. He was now the point man for all of this mumbo jumbo. He'd found Ray's body, and though he hadn't said anything about the twins, they all knew by now that he was the one who'd discovered the vandalized rock art. Which apparently granted him some sort of authority.

Sighing, Henry explained in a matter-of-fact, step-by-step manner exactly what had happened. He left out the part about the shadows in his cabin and following the shades of the Oriental babes over to Ray's, but in order to keep the story as emotionally true as possible, he described his uneasy feelings and the certainty he'd felt while looking at Ray's cabin that something terrible had happened inside. Then he talked about the train. They'd all seen that, so he held nothing back, describing that black locomotive in all of its hellish glory, explaining how even from far away he'd sensed its dark power. The others nodded as he spoke. He saw the fear on their faces, recognized it, felt it again himself.

"I guess what we're saying," he told Healey, "is that we need some assurances that something will be done to protect us. We're out there every day while you're safely in your office-"

"My office isn't that safe," the superintendent pointed out.

"All the more reason for us to come up with ... some sort of plan." Henry realized he was floundering. He had no place left to go.

"There's something out there," Stuart said. "And I don't want to meet it face-to-face."

Henry glanced out the open door. The state police had left only a few minutes prior, taking with them signed statements from the witnesses and, under plastic, Ray's body. It was the same forensics team that had come out to examine the still-unidentified woman and Laurie Chambers, and one investigator had joked that they ought to set up a satellite station here at Canyonlands, though no one had laughed. Henry thought now that the remark had hit too close to home. They were all on edge, waiting for someone else to die, and he wondered if any of the other rangers were thinking of quitting or, at the very least, transferring to another park. He certainly was.

No. That wasn't true. He was thinking about leaving Canyonlands in an objective, disassociated way, but he was not actually considering it.

Because of the twins.

There was a stirring between his legs, and he tried to think of something gross so he wouldn't get an erection: run-over squirrels, squished bugs, dog shit.

He suddenly realized that everyone was looking at him again. He'd zoned out and had no idea what turn the dialogue had taken. It seemed as though someone had asked a question and was waiting for his response. His gaze settled on Healey. "I'm sorry," he said, shaking his head to indicate his distracted state. "What?"

"I said," the superintendent repeated with exaggerated patience, "what do you think we can do to alleviate this problem?"

His mind ran down a host of options: restricting access to sections of the park, always working in teams of three, hiring a shaman... .

He thought of the twins.

Henry looked around the room at his fellow employees. "I don't know," he admitted. "I don't think there's anything we can do."

Seventeen

Bear Flats, California

"I can't believe it," Leslie said.

Jolene leaned back on her friend's couch, sipped her wine. "Believe it."

"But I don't understand why you haven't gone back. I mean, this is amazing stuff here. Aren't you the least bit curious?"

Jolene sighed. How could she explain to her friend the utter wrongness of that cellar, the horrible fear she'd felt while down there, the terrifying nightmares she'd been having ever since? She couldn't, she realized. Those were feelings too profound for words, sensations that could not be translated into language. "No," she lied. "I'm not curious."

They were silent for a moment, both of them sipping their drinks.

"A penis?" Leslie said finally. "Really?"

Jolene nodded.

"So you think Chester or one of the other Wil-liamses was some kind of serial killer?"

"I guess," Jolene said.

But that wasn't what she really thought, was it? That wasn't the reason she hadn't gone back. The truth was that her fear ran far deeper than that, was far more primal. It was the childhood fear of ghosts and monsters and the vast unfathomable unknown, and it was connected to the face she and Skylar had seen through the window at night. And the graves.

"Do you think I could see it?"

"The penis?" she said, stalling.

"The house. Everything."

Jolene shook her head.

"Come on!" Leslie prodded. "What's gotten into you?"