The Cypress House (2 page)

    The
train clattered on, and though night had settled, the heat didn't break. Sweat
still trickled along the small of Arlen's back and held his hair to his
forehead. He wished he could fall asleep; these hot miles would pass faster
then. Maybe another pull on the flask would aid him along.

    He
opened his eyes, tugged the lids up sleepily, and saw a hand of bone.

    He
blinked and sat up and stared. Nothing changed. The hand held five playing
cards and was attached to a man named Wallace O'Connell, a veteran from Georgia
who was far and away the loudest man in this company. He had his back turned,
engaged in his game, so Arlen couldn't see his face. Just that hand of bone.

    
No,
Arlen thought
, no, damn it, not another one
.

    The
sight chilled him but didn't shock him. It was far from the first time.

    
He's
going to die unless I can find a way to stop it
,
Arlen thought with
the sad, sick resignation of a man experienced with such things
.
Once
we get down to the Keys, old Wallace O'Connell will have a slip and bash his
head in on something. Or maybe the poor bastard can't swim, will fall into
those waves and sink beneath them and I'll be left with this memory same as
I've been left with so many others. I'd warn him if I could, but men don't heed
such warnings. They won't let themselves
.

    It
was then that he looked up, away from Wallace under the flickering lights of
the train car, and saw skeletons all around him.

    They
filled the shadows of the car, some laughing, some grinning, some lost to
sleep. All with bone where flesh belonged. The few who sat directly under a
light still wore their skin, but their eyes were gone, replaced by whirls of
gray smoke.

    For a
moment, Arlen Wagner forgot to breathe. Went cold and dizzy and then sucked in
a gasp of air and straightened in the seat.

    They
were going to have a wreck. It was the only thing that made a bit of sense.
This train was going to derail and they were all going to die. Every last one of
them. Because Arlen had seen this before, and knew damn well what it meant, and
knew that—

    Paul
Brickhill said, "Arlen?"

    Arlen
turned to him. The overhead light was full on the boy's face, keeping him in a
circle of brightness, the taut, tanned skin of a young man who spent his days
under the sun. Arlen looked into his eyes and saw swirling wisps of smoke. The
smoke rose in tendrils and fanned out and framed the boy's head while filling
Arlen's with terrible recollections.

    "Arlen,
you all right?" Paul Brickhill asked.

    He
wanted to scream. Wanted to scream and grab the boy's arm but was afraid it
would be cold slick bone under his touch.

    
We're
going to die. We're going to come off these rails at full speed and pile into
those swamp woods, with hot metal tearing and shattering all around us
...

    The
whistle blew out shrill in the dark night, and the train began to slow.

    "We
got another stop," Paul said. "You look kind of sickly. Maybe you
should pour that flask out."

    The
boy distrusted liquor. Arlen wet his lips and said, "Maybe," and
looked around the car at the skeleton crew and felt the train shudder as it
slowed. The force of that big locomotive was dropping fast, and now he could
see light glimmering outside the windows, a station just ahead. They were
arriving in some backwater stop where the train could take on coal and the men
would have a chance to get out, stretch their legs, and piss. Then they'd be
aboard again and winging south at full speed, death ahead of them.

    "Paul,"
Arlen said, "you got to help me do a bit of convincing here."

    "What
are you talking about?"

    "We
aren't getting back on this train. Not a one of us."

    They
piled out of the cars and onto the station platform, everyone milling around,
stretching or lighting cigarettes. It was getting on toward ten in the evening,
and though the sun had long since faded, the wet heat lingered. The boards of
the platform were coated with swamp mud dried and trampled into dust, and out
beyond the lights Arlen could see silhouetted fronds lying limp in the
darkness, untouched by a breeze. Backwoods Florida. He didn't know the town and
didn't care; regardless of name, it would be his last stop on this train.

    He
hadn't seen so many apparitions of death at one time since the war. Maybe
leaving the train wouldn't be enough. Could be there was some sort of virus in
the air, a plague spreading unseen from man to man the way the influenza had in
'18,
claiming lives faster than the reaper himself.

    "What's
the matter?" Paul Brickhill asked, following as Arlen stepped away from
the crowd of men and tugged his flask from his pocket. Out here the sight was
enough to set Arlen's hands to shaking—men were walking in and out of the
shadows as they moved through the cars and down to the station platform,
slipping from flesh to bone and back again in a matter of seconds, all of it a
dizzying display that made him want to sit down and close his eyes and drink
long and deep on the whiskey.

    "Something's
about to go wrong," he said.

    "What
do you mean?" Paul said, but Arlen didn't respond, staring instead at the
men disembarking and realizing something — the moment they stepped off the
train, their skin slid back across their bones, knitting together as if healed
by the wave of some magic wand. The swirls of smoke in their eye sockets
vanished into the hazy night air. It was the train. Yes, whatever was going to
happen was going to happen to that train.

    "Something's
about to go wrong," he repeated. "With our train. Something's going
to go bad wrong."

    "How
do you know?"

    "I
just
do,
damn it!"

    Paul
looked to the flask, and his eyes said what his words did not.

    "I'm
not drunk. Haven't had more than a few swallows."

    "What
do you mean, something's going to go wrong?" Paul asked again.

    Arlen
held on to the truth, felt the words heavy in his throat but couldn't let them
go. It was one thing to see such horrors; it was worse to try and speak of
them. Not just because it was a difficult thing to describe but because no one
ever believed. And the moment you gave voice to such a thing was the moment you
charted a course for your character that you could never alter. Arlen
understood this well, had known it since boyhood.

    But
Paul Brickhill had sat before him with smoke the color of an early-morning
storm cloud hanging in his eyes, and Arlen was certain what that meant. He
couldn't let him board that train again.

    "People
are going to die," he said.

    Paul
Brickhill leaned his head back and stared.

    "We
get back on that train, people are going to die," Arlen said. "I'm
sure of it."

    He'd
spent many a day trying to imagine this gift away. To fling it from him the way
you might a poisonous spider caught crawling up your arm, and long after the
chill lingered on your flesh you'd thank the sweet hand of Providence that
you'd been given the opportunity to knock the beast away. Only he'd never been
given the opportunity. No, the stark sight of death had stalked him, trailed
him relentlessly. He knew it when he saw it, and he knew it was no trick of the
light, no twist of bad liquor upon the mind. It was prophecy, the gift of
foresight granted to a man who'd never wished for it.

    He
was reluctant to say so much as a word to any of the other men, knowing the
response he'd receive, but this was not the sort of thing that could be
ignored.

    Speak
loud and sharp,
he thought,
just like you did on the edge of a battle,
when you had to get 'em to listen, and listen fast.

    "Boys,"
he said, getting at least a little of the old muster into his tone,
"listen up, now."

    The
conversations broke off. Two men were standing on the step of the train car,
and when they turned, skull faces studied him.

    "I
think we best wait for the next train through," he said. "There's bad
trouble aboard this one. I'm sure of it."

    It
was Wallace O'Connell who broke the long silence that followed.

    "What
in the hell you talking about, Wagner?" he said, and immediately there was
a chorus of muttered agreement.

    "Something's
wrong with this train," Arlen said. He stood tall, did his damnedest to
hold their eyes.

    "You
know this for a fact?" O'Connell said.

    "I
know it."

    "How
do you know? And what's wrong with it?"

    "I
can't say what's wrong with it. But something is. I got a . . . sense for these
things."

    A
slow grin crept across O'Connell's face. "I've known some
leg-pullers," he said, "but didn't figure you for one of them. Don't
got the look."

    "Damn
it, man, this ain't no joke."

    "You
got a
sense
something's wrong with our train, and you're telling us it
ain't no joke?"

    "Knew
a widow back home who was the same way," spoke up another man from the
rear of the circle. He was a slim, wiry old guy with a nose crooked from many a
break. Arlen didn't know his name — hell, he didn't know most of their names,
and that was part of the problem. Aside from Paul there wasn't a man in the
group who'd known Arlen for any longer than this train ride.

    "Yeah?"
O'Connell said. "Trains talked to her, too?"

    "Naw.
She had the sense, just like he's talking about. 'Cept she got her sights from
owls and moon reflections and shit like you couldn't even imagine."

    This
new man was grinning wide, and O'Connell was matching it. He said, "She
was right all the time, of course ?"

    "Of
course," the man said, and let out a cackle. "Why, wasn't but nine
year ago she predicted the end of days was upon us. Knew it for a fact. Was
going to befall us by that winter. I can't imagine she was wrong, I just
figured I missed being raptured up and that's how I ended up here with all you
sinful sons of bitches."

    The
crowd was laughing now, and Arlen felt heat creeping into his face, thoughts of
his father and the shame that had chased him from his boyhood home threatening
his mind now. Behind him Paul Brickhill was standing still and silent, about
the only one in the group who wasn't at least chuckling. There was a man near
Wallace O'Connell whose smile seemed forced, uneasy, but even he was going
along with the rest of them.

    "I
might ask for a tug on whatever's in that jug of your'n," O'Connell said.
"It seems to be a powerful syrup."

    "It's
not the liquor you're hearing," Arlen said. "It's the truth. Boys,
I'm telling you, I seen things in the war just like I am tonight, and every
time I did, men died."

    "Men
died every damn day in the war," O'Connell said. The humor had drained
from his voice. "And we all seen it—not just you. Some of us didn't crack
straight through from what we seen. Others" — he made a pointed nod at
Arlen — "had a mite less fortitude. Now save your stories for somebody
fool enough to listen to them. Rest of us don't need the aggravation. There's
work at the end of this line, and we all need it."

    The
men broke up then, drifted back to their own conversations, casting Arlen
sidelong stares. Arlen felt a hand on his arm and nearly whirled and threw his
fist without looking, shame and fear riding him hard now. It was only Paul,
though, tugging him away from the group.

    "Arlen,
you best ease up."

    "Be
damned if I will. I'm telling you —"

    "I
understand what you're telling us, but it just doesn't make sense. Could be you
got a touch of fever, or —"

    Arlen
reached out and grabbed him by his shirt collar. Paul's eyes went wide, but he
didn't reach for Arlen's hand, didn't move at all as Arlen spoke to him in a
low, harsh voice.

    "You
had smoke in your eyes, boy. I don't give a damn if you couldn't see it or if
none of them could, it was there, and it's the sign of your death. You known me
for a time now, and you ask yourself, how often has Arlen Wagner spoken foolish
words to me? How often has he seemed addled? You ask yourself that, and then
you ask yourself if you want to die tonight."