Amber House: Neverwas (38 page)

parents’ car, which was stopped just before the exit. The driver’s

door was open; I saw Sam’s head above the car hood just before

he disappeared. I started to run between the parked cars in the

lot, taking the shortest route to the exit, keeping low, trying to

avoid the sheriff’s notice. I got to the end of the last of the parked cars just before the sheriff did. Sam threw himself on the ground

in front of my parents’ car, his limbs splayed out like a broken

doll’s. Then Maggie started screaming.

The sheriff stopped of course. “What in hell?” he said as he

heaved himself up out of the car.

Maggie was babbling, shrieking, about the little boy shooting

out from nowhere, dashing in front of her car, so she couldn’t

stop, it wasn’t her fault. “Is he dead? Is he dead?” she screamed.

248 O

Jackson leaned forward to look at me through the window

and gestured with his head —
Come
.

Oh!

Crouched over, I dashed to the sheriff’s car, but someone else

beat me there. A young black woman wearing a yellow scarf.

“Get the keys,” she hissed as she opened the rear door and helped

Jackson up and out.

I snatched the keys from the ignition and snagged the strap of

Jackson’s pack, still keeping low, watching the sheriff and my

aunt. I’d just heard Maggie exclaim, “I don’t know what in the

Sam hill
he was doing,” when Sammy leapt up and started sprinting down the sidewalk. I realized his name must have been a

signal.

“Come back here, boy! Come back here!” The sheriff started

after Sam as Maggie whirled around to climb back into her car,

and the young woman, Jackson, and I ducked down between a

row of parked cars.

“Give me the keys,” the woman ordered, then quickly sorted

through them to find a little silver one she used on Jackson’s

cuffs. I heard Maggie’s car squeal away. I heard the sheriff yell-

ing, “Stop, dammit! You come back here.”

Jackson said to me, “When I tell you, run like hell for the

tracks to the right of the station and don’t stop for anything.” I

saw his nose was bleeding. “Thank you,” he told the woman,

clasping her hand. Then he took my elbow and started moving.

“Run!” he said. And I did.

Behind me I heard the sheriff’s voice. “Stop those two! Stop

’em.” A couple men near the station entrance looked up and

started running to try to cut us off. I could hear the sheriff’s

heavy footfalls pounding after us, gaining ground. I wondered

hysterically if he would shoot.

We reached the tracks. My train was gone. I could see its

caboose just disappearing far down the track. Where were we

o249

supposed to go? A freight train was charging in from the oppo-

site direction, hardly slowing. Jackson grabbed my hand, pulling.

“Faster!” he said.

The men were behind us, all three of them, putting on speed,

sprinting to catch us.

I understood then what Jackson meant to do. Put that freight

train between us and our pursuit. It was almost on us, a wall of

moving noise. Its engineer had spotted the two mad teenagers

trying to outrace his locomotive and started yanking on the

whistle. Its shriek went on and on. “No, no,” I sobbed, but did

not slow. I had to look to leap the rails and keep my footing — I

couldn’t watch the train, but I could feel it coming. Noise and

heat and thunder in the ground. I jumped another rail, singing

with vibrations.
Oh, God, oh, God, oh God
, my brain whimpered as I struggled to gain footing on the gravel between the ties.

Jackson yanked my hand hard, pulling me up, over the last rail.

The train’s wake of wind blew my hair high as we staggered to

stay on our feet on the other side.

All I wanted was to sag to the ground, but Jackson was still

pulling. “
Keep going!
”

Ahead of us, another freight train was beginning to move, to

build up speed, going in the same northerly direction as our

missed train to New York. An open door to an empty car went

past before me; Jackson tugged us right, toward that door.

“Oh, no,” I moaned. I had a stitch in my side, I was sobbing for

breath, and the floor of the freight car had to be at least chest

height. I would never be able to get inside.

We pulled level with the open door. Jackson heaved his pack

in. He shouted to me, “I’ll get in and pull you up. Keep up with

me. Don’t stop.”

“Yes,” I gasped, watching the ground, trying to run on the

thick wooden ties. Jackson jumped, grabbed a metal handhold,

and pulled himself up out of sight.

250 O

“Take my hand!” he called to me. I raised my arm in the air,

reaching blindly, afraid to take my eyes from my footing. “Look!”

he commanded.

I lifted my eyes and swung my arm toward his. My toe hit the

edge of a tie. I started to go down.

But he caught my wrist and held it fast as he pushed himself

upright, pulling me into the air. My feet found the floor of the

boxcar. I straightened up into his arm, holding me steady, hold-

ing me safe.

“Oh, my God,” I sobbed, “I can’t do this. I want to go home.

I just am not strong enough or brave enough or
anything
enough for this.”

“Stop it!” he said. He held me out so he could look me in the

eye. He shook me a little. His voice was harsh and unrelenting.

“Too many people have suffered because of what happened —”

Because of what I did.

“And more people are going to suffer before this is done.”

No. Please, no.

“You can do this, Sare. You can make it to the end. You have

to promise me that you won’t give up, no matter what, or all that

suffering will be for nothing.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. The tarot card —
the nine of Wands:

“Finish what has been started.
”

I nodded my head. “I promise.”

N

Jackson did what he could to make us comfortable, closing the

sidings, pulling a couple sweaters from his pack for us to sit on.

Even with the doors closed, it was still freezing. We braced our-

selves next to each other against the rear wall, the sweaters

beneath us, our packs wedged on either side, my coat over our

legs, his wrapped around us and tucked up under our chins. The

o251

light in the boxcar had been reduced to dusk, with random

beams falling through chinks in the walls.

“It isn’t all going to be like that, is it?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I didn’t bother to see us leaving from the

train station. I had no idea we’d have a problem. Wonder why

we did.”

“The sheriff had a swastika. Just like that creep when we went

to get your ticket. Maybe they were connected to Jaeger?”

“Maybe. But they didn’t stop us. We can still make this work.”

He put his arm around my shoulder to keep me a little warmer.

“You were pretty impressive back there, Sare.”

“I was scared out of mind back there, J,” I said. I didn’t want

to think about it. “You have any idea where we’re headed?”

He shook his head. “The tracks branch in four different direc-

tions a little north of here. One line toward New York, two into

Pennsylvania, and one west. No way of knowing till we get there.”

I remembered something. I fished Maggie’s silk purse out of

my pack, peeked inside, and pulled out one of Sam’s Christmas

gifts. I held it out on my palm: a little functional plastic compass.

“Think this’ll help?”

“That ought to. If I know which way we’re headed, I can fig-

ure out how and where to catch the train back to New York in

the morning.”

“ ‘In the morning’? Great. My parents are going to be

hysterical.”

“We’ll figure out something you can tell them before we get

there.”

“I’ll be seventy-two before they let me travel by myself again.”

“Day after tomorrow, they won’t remember a thing about it,”

he said. A true believer.

The rocking of the train combined with the exhaustion of the

day to fill my mind with a craving for oblivion. My head found

Jackson’s shoulder. I slept there until he spoke my name.

252 O

“What?” I said, jerking upright.

“You were having a bad dream.”

“Where are we?”

“Pretty much at the end of the line.”

“We coming to a station?”

“Nope. We hit a long climb. We’ve slowed way down. We’re

hopping off.”

“We’re hopping off a moving train?” I said, panicked again.

“You can do it,” he said, and I heard the smile in his voice. “It’s

a lot easier than hopping on.”

He yanked open the side door. Frigid air spilled in. I put my

coat on, slung my pack over my shoulder, and forced myself to

walk to the edge of the car. The moon was down to a slim cres-

cent, but it cast enough light to show that the train was running

along a narrow ribbon of leveled ground that fell away sharply.

“No way,” I said.

Jackson came up next to me, zipping up his backpack. “I’ll get

out, you toss this down to me, and then you jump. I’ll catch you.

It will be all right.” In an easy movement, he crouched, planted

his hand, and disappeared over the edge. His head popped up

after a couple seconds as he jogged beside the door.

“The pack,” he said. I tossed it to him and he transferred it to

the ground. “Now you,” he said, but I couldn’t make myself. “Sit

on the edge,” he directed. “Then just push off. I’ll catch you. I

promise.” Still I hesitated. “Got to hurry, Sare. This thing is

going uphill and I am running out of steam.”

I sat. I braced my hands. I pushed off.

He caught me and held me as my feet slid in the gravel at the

edge of the slope.

“What do we do now?”

Clouds threatened to extinguish what little light we had from

the moon. The air was substantially below freezing, and a light

snow dusted the ground, with more drifting down lazily.

o253

“We’re walking back down the tracks about a half mile.”

We set off between the rails, his arm linked through mine to

keep me steady. He took up his pack as we passed it.

It grew steadily darker. A sharp wind blew up the gap the

tracks made in the trees on either side, burning my cheeks with

cold. I had no idea where we could be headed. Aside from the

moon and the wind, there was not a hint of light or sound any-

where around. We walked between the two rails, keeping

centered by the dull gleam of moonlight on the metal. “This is

the way people get hit by trains, you know,” I fretted.

“Not to worry,” he said cheerfully. “We’re here.”

CH A P T ER TW E N T Y-SE V E N

K

Jackson directed me over the rail and down a slight embankment.

A small shack materialized from the darkness. “What is this?”

“A place for railroad workers. My sense is, it isn’t used much.”

He bent down, felt along the ground, then stood with a large

rock in his hand. He climbed the steps. I heard him hammer-

ing on something metallic, then the sound of metal sliding on

metal. “Come on,” he said. He pushed open the door and we

went in, out of the wind. He felt the wall beside the door for a

light switch.

“Wait a minute,” I said, slipping my pack off my shoulder. I

found Maggie’s black purse, opened it, and searched the insides

by touch. I fumbled for a second, then “Voilà,” a small blue flame

sprouted from the lighter in my hand.

“Oh, you’re good,” Jackson said. “Exactly what we needed

again. What are you — psychic or something?”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “Sammy insisted I take this. The

compass too.”

“Huh,” Jackson said. “He’s an odd little guy, isn’t he? And I

mean that in the best possible way.”

I smiled and agreed, “He’s an odd little guy. But as far as I

know, not a fortune-teller either.”

“Just someone who believes in being prepared?”

“I guess,” I said.

We set to work trying to make ourselves comfortable. I

located and lit a lantern. Jackson pulled the drapes closed over

the single window. “Keep out some of the cold.”

o255

The room was maybe ten by ten, containing a table, four

chairs, a set of hanging shelves with some canned goods and a

stack of folded blankets, a Franklin stove, a bag of old news-

papers, and a pile of cordwood. A door in the back wall led to a

lean-to add-on that held a functioning toilet and sink.

“All the comforts of home,” I said.

Jackson chuckled. “If you live in a freezer.”

It was true I could see my breath. Pennsylvania was a lot

colder than Maryland, and outside air spilled in through gaps in

every surface. We went to work building a fire in the stove.

As the stove heated, it took the worst of the chill out of the

room, but it was still far from comfortable. Jackson pulled a

chair near the stove, shook out two of the blankets, and draped

one around me. He spent a few minutes stuffing some of the

worst cracks in the walls with newspaper. Then he poked

through the stuff on the shelves. “A few cans of food up here.

There must be a can opener too.”

My hand dove back into Maggie’s purse. Triumphantly, I held