THE KLACK BROS. MUSEUM

BY KENNETH OPPEL

When the train arrives in Meadows, it seems to Luke to be just like all the other forlorn places they’ve stopped along the way.

Over the PA system a woman says, “Ladies and gentlemen, our station stop will be longer than scheduled. A freight train has derailed up the track. We’ll be here roughly five hours.”

Five hours. What’s five more hours in an already endless trip?

“Want some fresh air?” his father asks.

Luke looks out the window. There is a gravel parking lot beside the weather-beaten station. Curling shingles, water dripping from a busted downspout. Across the road are several bleak houses whose front windows look onto the tracks. In one window he spots an elderly couple sitting side by side on lawn chairs, peering out. The man raises a pair of binoculars to his eyes.

“See that?” Luke says to his Dad. “This is big excitement in Meadows.”

They step off the train. The air has a bite to it. There is snow on the rooftops, and on the grass. Luke looks back at the train, the rolling torture chamber that’s been taking them across the country. He’s spent two nights aboard it already. It is March break and Dad has decided this would be a good trip for them to take together. Mom’s with Olivia in Fort Lauderdale. Luke wishes he were on the beach in Florida, looking at palm trees. There would be girls to look at too. As it is, he is the youngest person on the train—not counting the crying baby that belongs to the exhausted couple from England. Even his Dad is young compared with most of the passengers.

“I didn’t want to come on this trip.”

“You’re loving this trip,” his father says distractedly.

“If you say so.”

His father sighs and looks at him. “Not at all?”

Luke shrugs. Shrugging is very efficient. It could mean anything. Mom says it’s rude.

“So what’s your idea of a good time?” Dad wants to know.

“Just staying at home, chilling, hanging out with my friends.”

“You can do that anytime.”

Another shrug. “It kinda sucks. There’s nothing to do.”

“I’ve told you, it’s a trip I’ve wanted to take for a long time.”

“Cause you’re blocked.”

He sees his father inhale and frown. His father’s a writer and hates that word. “Possibly.”

“I don’t see why I had to get dragged along.”

“Well, you can’t always get what you want,” his father says, and then starts singing the Rolling Stones song. Luke hates it when his father does this. Whenever his father thinks Luke’s complaining too much, he starts singing, looking very soulful and intense, and snapping his fingers in time.

“Please stop,” says Luke.

“But if you try sometimes,” his father sings, “you just might find, you get what you need.”

They walk to the edge of the parking lot. The road goes nowhere in both directions.

“What’re we going to do for five hours?” asks Luke.

A big tractor trailer pulls out of the parking lot, revealing a white sign posted by the road:

KLACK BROS. MUSEUM

15 MILES NORTH

His father sees it too. “I love it,” he murmurs. “Klack Brothers Museum. I wonder what kind of stuff they have there?”

“It’s probably farm equipment.” He’s been dragged to such places on school field trips.

“I can take you, if you like,” says a voice behind them. It’s a man in a pickup, the window rolled down. “I’m going up there.” He jerks a thumb at the back of his truck, which is filled with plastic-wrapped cases of drinks and chocolate bars. “I supply their snack bar. It’s only a fifteen-minute drive.”

Luke fake smiles and looks to his father to make an excuse. But his father says, “You’re sure it’s no trouble?”

“No trouble.”

Luke stares, silent with surprise, at his father. His father is not impulsive by nature, but lately he’s been doing uncharacteristic things. Long walks at night. Swimming. Trying to teach himself guitar. He says these things are meant to “unlock” himself.

“What about the train?” Luke reminds him.

“We’ve got five hours,” Dad replies. “You keep telling me how bored you are. Let’s go see something new.”

“They’ve got some real interesting things up there,” says the driver.

“How would we get back?” his father asks, with more of his characteristic caution.

“I’ll be there a couple hours. I do their plumbing too. I’m coming back this way if you want to catch a ride with me.”

“Sounds perfect,” says Dad.

It rises from the empty prairie like a mirage, a perfect little village of stone buildings and fences and barns.

“Weirdest thing, isn’t it?” says their driver. “These two brothers, they came out from England about a hundred forty years ago and they ran a circus for a while. Then they decided to build a village in the middle of nowhere. They built a big manor house for themselves, and a school house. There was a racetrack and a cheese-making shop and some livestock, and they waited for people to come. But the railway built too far to the south and wouldn’t give them a spur line. So after a while it became a ghost town. One of the relatives turned it into a museum about fifteen years ago.”

Luke has a sinking feeling there will be old ladies in white caps and pleated dresses telling him how to churn butter. Odd, slow-talking men in barns will show him how rope is made. If he’s lucky a blacksmith will bang on a horseshoe.

“Incredible story,” Luke’s father says, looking around.

His father and the driver make small talk. They drive through a gate and pull up outside a little cottage with a thatched roof. A sign says, Tickets Snacks Gifts. Luke can’t help noticing that there are only three other cars in the entire parking lot.

“You’ll get your tickets in here,” says the man. “And I’ll be leaving about five o’clock.”

“Thanks very much,” Luke’s father says. “Much obliged.”

Luke winces. He can’t believe his father just said “much obliged.”

“Maybe there’s a cowboy hat you can buy,” Luke says as they walk in.

His father gives him a withering look.

White plastic tables and chairs are scattered around the room. A few shelves display dismal local history books with black-and-white photos of fields on the covers. There is a Coke machine and a rack with some chips and chocolate bars on it. An elderly man behind the counter greets their driver.

“Afternoon, Wilfred.”

“Uriah. I brought these folks up from the train.” Their driver turns to them. “This is Uriah Klack. He owns the place.”

Uriah turns his attention to Luke and his father—staring hardest at Luke.

“We’d like to see the museum,” Luke’s father says cheerfully.

“How old’s the boy?” Uriah asks.

“Fourteen.”

“Twenty dollars, please.”

Uriah Klack reminds Luke a bit of Grandpa before he died: tall, like his bones are too big for his skin. His face is a bit sunken in, and his cheekbones stand out like knobs of shiny, polished wood. His knuckles bulge.

“You’ll want to start in the manor house,” says Uriah Klack. “Turn right out the doors.”

Flanking the gravel drive to the big house are rows of carts and ploughs and farm machinery so dull that Luke doesn’t even bother to pause. His father casts a steady eye over it all—as if it means anything to him. His father’s never so much as planted a carrot seed.

“This would be the big plough,” his father says in the solemn tones of a museum guide, “and next to it here, the medium-sized plough. . . .”

Luke grins. “And then we come to the rusty, broken-down plough. . . .”

“The first tractor used on the farm. . . .”

“And this would be the barbed wire collection.”

There’s something a little frightening about the way it’s all displayed neatly on a plywood board, all the different types of lethal knots labeled.

“Some very fine samples,” Luke says solemnly.

“An excellent collection,” his father concurs.

They laugh together. It’s one of the first times in days. This isn’t so bad, Luke thinks. He can tell his friends about the lamest museum ever when he gets back.

The manor house is an impressively large stone pile. The lower floor is all trestle tables covered with little things. To Luke it looks like a school craft fair: miniature carts and horses, model farm buildings and general stores with ancient tinned goods arranged around them. There are Native dolls interspersed with Disney toys, an ancient cash register, a worker’s time clock. The village is ghostly with all its frozen dolls and wooden people—like things that were stolen from a century of dead children.

“Is there anything they didn’t collect?” Luke wonders aloud.

“Stamps. I don’t think I’ve seen any stamps.”

“It’s not really a museum at all, is it?” Luke whispers.

His father shakes his head.

“It’s just a bunch of stuff.”

Luke heads upstairs alone and meanders down the main hallway. Most of the rooms are cordoned off, and you can look inside at the furniture: a bed, a dresser with a washbasin atop it, a rolltop desk and chair, musty old books on top. There are lots of mannequins dressed in period clothing. The plaster is chipped on their faces and hands, and some of their limbs don’t seem to connect properly, sticking out at awkward angles, making them seem restless.

Luke keeps checking the time on his phone. He doesn’t want to miss their ride back to the station. There’s not even reception out here. He passes only one other family, and the girl looks as bored as he does. They stare numbly at each other in mute sympathy. As lame as the train is, the idea of being stranded out here is even worse.

When he enters a large parlor, his eyebrows lift with interest. It’s set up like a circus sideshow, divided into many stalls with tattered but colorful posters over each one: “Cordelia the Human Snake!” and “The Cardiff Giant!” and “The Indestructible Heart!” Eagerly, Luke moves from stall to stall. The human snake is a disappointment, just some big scraps of snakeskin crudely sewn together into a torso. The Cardiff Giant is more impressive—a huge body encased in a stone slab. It reminds Luke of those fossilized people they recovered from Pompeii after the volcano erupted. The indestructible heart is the creepiest of all. It floats inside a big tank of murky water. It looks pretty real to Luke, plump and moist. A little card underneath reads: “The heart of poet Percy Shelley, which remained undamaged even after the body was cremated! Sometimes it gives a beat!”

At the far end of the sideshow is a windowless wooden shack. A sign over the door says: “Ghost Boy.”

Luke tries the door and finds it locked.

“That’s extra,” says Uriah Klack, appearing suddenly to Luke’s right. He smells like clean laundry and cough drops.

“What’s the ghost boy?” Luke asks.

“That’s my star attraction. It’s two dollars, just a little extra. I’ll let you both in for three.”

Luke looks over to see his Dad approaching.

“Sounds like a deal,” his father says.

Luke’s pretty sure it’ll just be another ancient mannequin, but he feels a haunted-house thrill as Mr. Klack unlocks the door with his shaky hand. His father winks at him. He passes through the doorway. A single bulb casts pale red light through a Chinese lantern. Incense can’t quite hide the smell of mildew.

There is a black lacquered chest against one wall, with many small square drawers. Chinese ginger jars are arranged on its surface, along with an incense burner, some kind of writing board, and ink brushes. The scattered plastic toys—a car, a helicopter—seem out of place. Tacked up are pictures of the Great Wall of China and mountains, looking like they were torn from calendars or magazines. In the middle of the room is a stool with a red cushion.

“There’s no one in here,” Luke says, but just hearing himself say it makes the hairs on his forearm lift.

“Maybe he’s on break,” his father chuckles.

“He’s there on the stool,” says Mr. Klack.

Luke stares. “I can’t see anything.”

“Don’t look right at him,” says Mr. Klack. “Look off to the side for a bit.”

Luke does so. In his peripheral vision, a smudge appears atop the stool. He glances over quickly, and it disappears. He looks off again, and this time the smudge gains definition and sharpens into limbs and a torso and the head of the Chinese boy, about his age.

“Do you see it?” he asks his Dad.

“That’s a clever trick. Some kind of video projection.”

Luke glances overhead for a ceiling-mounted projector or a dusty beam of light. There’s nothing up there he can see. He studies the boy on the red-cushioned stool, staring sadly at the wall. He’s dressed in drab canvas trousers and a jacket. The collar and buttons look old-fashioned.

“That’s a nice seat he has there, eh?” says Mr. Klack. “We had an armchair for him a while back, but he seems to like the stool better.”

The ghost boy taps the heel of one of his scuffed shoes against the rung—it’s the only part of him that’s moving. His chest doesn’t rise and fall. But then his head turns and Luke knows he’s looking at him. Luke takes a few steps to one side, and the ghost boy’s head turns to follow. How’s this trick managed? It seems way too sophisticated for old Mr. Klack and his half-hearted museum.

“We take good care of him,” says Uriah Klack. “All sorts of familiar things from his own country.”

“Those are actually Indonesian,” Dad says, pointing at a pair of shadow puppets nailed to the wall. It’s the kind of thing Dad knows.

“Yep,” says Mr. Klack, nodding. “Just wanted to make him feel right at home.”

“Hello,” Luke says to the ghost boy, curious to know the limits of this illusion.

“Doesn’t talk much,” says Mr. Klack. “Not since I’ve had him. My father said he used to talk sometimes. Probably got discouraged. Anyway, he only knows Chinese.”

Well, that’s convenient, Luke thinks.

“You’ve never had anyone here who speaks Chinese?” Luke’s father asks. Luke looks over, wondering if his father’s just playing along. Surely he doesn’t think it’s real.

“In Meadows? We don’t get many people out here,” Klack says.

The ghost boy opens his mouth and says something, so softly Luke can’t hear.

“See?” says Mr. Klack excitedly. “He’s trying to say something to you. I had a feeling he’d talk to you. You’d be about the same age. Listen! he might try again!”

The ghost boy’s lips part and he speaks once more. Luke thinks he makes out a foreign language.

“I don’t know what he said.” Luke feels frustrated—he senses he’s being made a fool of and he doesn’t like it. But his skin is prickly with the possibility this is real.

Luke sees his father walking all around the Chinese boy, studying him from different angles. He reaches out a hand.

“He doesn’t like being touched,” Mr. Klack says simply.

“Is that right?” Luke’s father replies.

“There’s this thing he does,” Mr. Klack adds.

Luke’s father touches the ghost boy on the shoulder—and pulls his hand back quickly with a pained grunt.

“What?” Luke asks in alarm.

His father is moving his lips and tongue around like he has a terrible taste in his mouth. He pulls a tissue from his pocket and spits into it. “It’s like having aluminum foil crammed into your mouth!”

“Are you serious?”

“Told you,” Mr. Klack says.

“It’s not real,” Luke blurts out, a little scared now. “Dad?”

“So how did you come into possession of a ghost?” Luke’s father asks, ignoring his son.

Luke can’t tell if his father’s just having a joke with Mr. Klack. He wants to bolt from the room, but he’s transfixed by Mr. Klack’s voice.

“He was in my great-grandfather’s collection. From the circus days. Uriah had all sorts of freaks and oddities in his show, and he was very proud of his ghost boy. Exhibited him across the country. You see that handbill there?”

He points to a small framed poster on the wall, advertising the Klack Bros. Circus. There’s so much text on the poster, it takes Luke a moment to find it: “The Ghost Boy of Peking!”

“There’s no end to the things he collected,” Mr. Klack continues. “I’m still digging it all out from the attics and barns, labeling it real careful.” He nods at the ghost boy. “He was just a jar of ash. I was about to throw it out when I saw him. He comes with the ashes, you see.”

Mr. Klack nods at a slim jar atop the chest of drawers.

“His actual ashes are in there?” Luke asks.

“Can’t go far from it,” says Mr. Klack.

“Why’s it tied to the wall?” Luke’s father wants to know.

“He tries to shake it off the shelf sometimes,” Mr. Klack remarks.

“I see,” Luke’s father says solemnly.

“Why’re you talking like you believe this?” Luke demands.

When his father looks at him, Luke knows he’s not joking. Luke can’t stand it a second longer. He steps forward and puts his hand on the ghost boy’s shoulder. Cold numbs his fingers. He sees a mountain, feels its ice-cold breath. Workers with tools step toward a hole in the rock face, and a terrible sensation of dread wells from it—and that’s all, because Luke pulls back, terrified.

“He was talking to you, wasn’t he?” says Mr. Klack, his eyes shining with expectation. “I heard him talking!”

“Luke, what happened?” His father has a hand on his back.

“I . . . saw some pictures. People on a mountain.” He wants a drink, something to wash the taste of soot and desolation from his mouth.

“He’s never done that with anyone before,” says Mr. Klack. “I’ve been worried about him lately. I think he gets lonely.”

“He is lonely,” Luke murmurs. How else to explain that dreadful windswept cold that passed through him?

“But he seems to like you,” says Mr. Klack. “What I’m saying is he could use some company. A boy his own age.”

“What?” Luke says, shaking his head. He has a swimmy feeling of unreality.

“He’s getting faint. I don’t want him fading away altogether. I’ll give you a good price,” Mr. Klack says to Dad.

Dad looks confused for a moment and then laughs. “Hell, I’ll let you have him for free.” He claps a hand on Luke’s shoulder. Luke shrugs it off.

“No, sir, that won’t do. It’s got to be a fair price. I’m a fair dealer. How about a hundred dollars?”

Again his father chuckles, though more guardedly. “I think I’ll hold on to him a little while longer.”

“I’m joking,” says Mr. Klack. When he smiles all the hollows and peaks of his face are exaggerated into a puppet mask.

Luke still hasn’t adjusted to a world in which there are ghosts—and isn’t sure he wants to. He needs to get out of this room, to forget everything that’s happened. He pushes past his father and leaves. Mr. Klack comes after him.

“You sure you don’t want to talk to him some more?”

“I wasn’t talking to him.” Where’s his father? He wants this creepy Klack person away from him.

“But he showed you something. He was showing you things.”

“I didn’t like it,” Luke murmurs.

“There’s probably other things he’d show you.”

“I didn’t like it!” Luke says more loudly. “Dad!”

His father emerges from the room. “We should get going.”

“Well, it’s a shame we can’t let these two have more time together,” says Mr. Klack, his brow furrowed. “I’d like to know what that boy’s story is.”

“Good-bye,” Luke’s father says to Mr. Klack.

As he moves down the hallway, Luke’s aware of Mr. Klack watching them, just standing there staring. He wants to run, but his father is beside him, walking steady, though there’s a tense expression on his face. In movies, men like Mr. Klack unexpectedly produce deboning knives, or needles filled with lethal drugs.

When they emerge from the manor house, Luke sees the pickup that had brought them turning down the gravel drive toward the highway. His father gives a yell and waves his arm, running after it a few steps, but he’s too late, and the truck disappears around the corner. Luke’s heart starts to pound. His father never does stuff like this. He hates making a scene.

“We’ll call a taxi,” his father says, dragging out his cell phone.

“There’s no reception,” Luke says dully, wondering if there’s even a taxi in a place like this.

His father persists, holding his phone out every which way.

“There’s a payphone by the snack shop,” Luke says. He remembers because you hardly ever see them now. “Dad, are we okay?”

His father’s jogging toward the snack shop, Luke hurrying after. “Of course. I just don’t want to miss the train.”

“That wasn’t a real ghost,” Luke says, wanting his father to agree, to explain, but he doesn’t say anything. They reach the pay phone, and his father snatches up the receiver.

“Do you have coins?” he asks Luke. “It doesn’t take credit cards.” Luke notices his father glance back at the manor house. There’s no one there.

Luke gives him a couple of quarters. His father’s hand shakes slightly as he puts them into the slot.

“That guy was creepy,” Luke says. “Wanting to buy me!”

“It was a joke,” says his father.

The quarters come right out the bottom. His father tries again, and then with assorted nickels and dimes. They all come out.

“Maybe the operator will connect you, since the machine’s broken,” he tells his father.

His father presses zero and frowns. “It’s very staticky . . . hello? Hello? Can you . . . hello?” Eventually, after a bit more shouting, he hangs up. “They can’t hear me.”

“What’re we going to do?” Luke asks.

He imagines them running down the gravel drive, out onto the road, trying to flag down traffic. There are only two cars in the parking lot, and Luke’s willing to bet the ancient farm truck belongs to Mr. Klack.

“Hello!” comes a distant voice, and Luke looks up to see Mr. Klack calling out from a second-story window of the manor house. “I need to talk to you!”

“I don’t want to talk to him,” Luke whispers.

“Me neither,” says his father.

From one of the barns comes the family Luke saw earlier. They’re walking toward the parking lot, in the direction of an SUV with North Dakota plates. That must be them. His father’s already walking toward them.

“Excuse me,” he says, smiling. “My son and I missed our ride back to the train station. We’re passengers on the Canadian. Are you heading through Meadows by any chance?”

Luke notices the man look at his wife, uncertain. She hesitates. They both glance at him. Luke tries to look as harmless as possible.

“Um, okay,” says the man.

“Thank you so much,” says Luke’s dad. “My name’s Paul Morrow, and this is my son, Luke. We’re from Toronto.”

His father strikes up an amiable chatter, to prove they’re not criminals or psychopaths. Luke keeps an eye on the manor house, watching the empty window where Mr. Klack’s head appeared. They reach the car, and Luke climbs into the backseat with his father and the girl, who doesn’t look very happy to be sharing her domain. They’ve just slammed their doors when Mr. Klack emerges from the manor house. He’s walking with a stiff, quick-legged gait, arms waving.

The car engine muffles his words, but Luke thinks he hears, “Hold up! Hold up there!”

The driver slows down. “Does he want to talk to you?” he asks Luke’s father.

“I think he’s just waving good-bye,” Luke’s father says, waving enthusiastically. “He’s a bit eccentric. Did you talk to him?”

The man looks uncertainly but keeps going. Mr. Klack is still hobbling down the drive, waving and shouting. All Luke’s muscles are clenched, and he’s holding his breath. He doesn’t exhale until they’re through the gate and turning onto the highway back to Meadows.

In the dining car, Luke eats hungrily. His father seems distracted. They haven’t really said much about the Klack Bros. Museum, like they can barely believe it happened. Already it seems far away, disappearing over the horizon like the train station they left an hour ago.

He eats some more mashed potatoes and looks out the window. Fields roll past in the last light of day. He stops chewing. In the reflection he sees someone sitting beside him. He turns and looks at the empty seat. His forearms course with electricity.

“Dad?” he whispers.

“I see him too.”

Luke stares straight ahead and sees the faint ghost boy in his peripheral vision, looking at him. His foot taps noiselessly against the leg of his chair.

“Why is he here?”

Luke looks around the dining car. No one else has noticed the ghost boy. He’s just a pale smudge in the brightly lit car, easily dismissed.

“There’s something he wants to tell you maybe,” Dad says quietly.

Luke can’t believe they’re talking like this. Like it’s all true and this is really happening. He feels the presence of the ghost like a cold weight in his stomach. He puts down his fork.

“I don’t get it. How’s he here? Mr. Klack said he stays with his ashes, and his ashes are in the museum.”

His father says nothing. He reaches into his jacket pocket and lifts out the slim jar.

Luke stares, horrified. “Mr. Klack put it in your pocket?”

“I took it.”

Luke’s not hungry anymore. As they walk back to their cabin, his head feels like it’s filled with TV static. Inside, his father locks the door.

“Why?” Luke asks.

His reply is simple. “He’s got a story.”

“You stole the ghost!”

“No one else’ll ever have a story like this.”

“You stole—”

“How can you steal a ghost?” his father says impatiently. “It doesn’t belong to anybody. You can’t own a ghost. All I want is his story.”

“He can’t tell his story!”

“He’ll tell you. You had a rapport with him.”

From the corner of his eye, Luke can see the ghost boy sitting at the edge of his bunk, staring at him forlornly.

“He wants to tell you something,” his father says. “It’s you he keeps looking at.”

“You get his story,” Luke says.

“He doesn’t talk to me. I tried again.” He winces, remembering.

“I don’t want to touch him,” Luke says. “It doesn’t feel good. It scares me.”

“There’s nothing to be scared of. . . .”

Luke laughs. “How would you know? You know all about ghosts?”

“Aren’t you even curious?” His father sniffs dismissively. “Or maybe you’re not interested in anything.”

“It’s not my fault you’re blocked,” Luke says angrily. “Think up your own stories.”

He grabs the pillow off his bunk, and his winter coat.

“What are you doing?” his father demands.

“I’m not sleeping in the same cabin as him,” Luke says. Or you, he thinks. “I’d rather sleep in the dome car.”

It’s late and the train is quiet. It’s off season and there aren’t many passengers aboard—and most of them are so old they’re probably already asleep. On his way to the rear of the train, he passes lots of empty berths. Who would want to take the train anyway?

He climbs the stairs to the empty dome car. The lights are off and he has an amazing view of the stars. In the distance he can see the darker shadow of the approaching Rockies. He’s glad he’s brought his coat. He tries to get comfortable in his seat, but it doesn’t even recline. He half expects his father to come after him, but he doesn’t.

Luke is desperate to lie down and sleep. He leaves the dome car and starts walking forward to his cabin. He passes one of the porters having a cigarette, blowing his smoke out a little window between the cars. He nods to Luke as Luke passes. Luke doesn’t want to go back to the cabin, and when he passes yet another empty berth, he wonders if anyone would know if he took one. He checks for the porter then slips inside. He zips up the thick curtain, stretches out, and is soon asleep.

But he’s aware of not sleeping well, and being cold. He wakes in darkness, shivering. Beyond the window, a moon hangs over the hills. In the splash of silver light he sees the ghost boy hunched at the end of his berth, knees drawn up to his chin.

Luke backs up against the wall, his hand knocking against something hard. The jar of ashes. His father must have put it there. He looks at the curtain of his berth and sees it’s slightly unzipped. His father put it in here with him—like locking him in a cage with a wild animal! What was he hoping? That Luke would get the ghost’s story? He starts to fumble his way out of the berth, but he catches sight of the ghost boy, eyes wide with grief—and hope. Luke hesitates.

“What do you want?” he whispers.

Urgently, the boy says something that Luke can’t hear.

“I can’t hear you—”

But the ghost boy just keeps talking.

“Stop, stop,” Luke says in frustration and pity. “It’s not working.” He chews his lip. He looks out the window.

Then he reaches out and puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

The cold pulls him in. There is a mountain and a work camp cut into the cliff. An old-fashioned locomotive steams impatiently at the end of the line while men—white, Chinese—unload steel rails. Luke feels himself moving toward a gash blasted into the side of the cliff, and then he’s inside, descending with a group of men. Darkness squeezes him. At the end of the tunnel men drill holes, inserting wads of explosives. Then the men all rush back, crouch behind barriers. There is a terrible sound, and smoke and grit boil past. The ground stops shaking. The smoke begins to clear. Men are standing. Without warning, a second explosion bowls them over, and a thunderclap comes from the ceiling before it collapses.

Luke pulls his hand back and shakes it to get the circulation going. His heart is racing.

“You worked on the railway,” he whispers to the ghost boy. He studied it last year in school. They had to blast through the mountains to lay the tracks. Thousands of Chinese worked the most dangerous jobs, for half what the white men made. “Is that how you died? In a blast?”

The Chinese boy looks at him solemnly, expectantly. Luke reaches out again.

Broken bodies are laid on the ground. Even though the boy’s body has been burned and crushed, Luke recognizes it. It’s nighttime. A man steps among the corpses, examining them quickly, then lifts the boy’s limp body over his shoulder. Luke floats after him into the woods. A second man meets the first. Money changes hands. The second man sews the body into a sack, loads it onto the back of a cart, and drives off down a rutted mountain road.

“That doesn’t look right,” Luke mutters, pulling back his hand and blowing warm breath onto it. “Why’d they take your body?”

He knows the only way to get the answer. He touches the boy’s shoulder again.

A big bonfire burns. The sack is added to the flames. A man watches from the fire’s edge. His wide-brimmed hat hides his face. He’s reading from a large book. The sack burns away and the body is reduced to coarse gray ash. The man bends down and collects the ash into a jar. Luke feels like he himself is being squished into that jar, shoulders jammed in, head pushed roughly down, his body no longer his own, his will broken. The moment the stopper is sealed on top, blackness wraps itself around him—

—and is ripped away to give a view of bars, and people staring in at him: men laughing, women holding hands over their mouths in fear, a child crying and tugging at a father’s hand. Luke feels utterly defeated and hopeless.

On the wall, high out of reach, is the jar of ashes.

Luke drags his numb hand away, panting. “They burned your body and . . . made you a ghost.”

The ghost boy points excitedly out the window. Luke cups his hands against the glass and peers out at the mountains spiking the sky. Close beside the tracks, a dark river runs between snowy banks. He looks wonderingly back at the ghost boy.

With great effort, the boy raises his arm and mimes throwing something to the floor.

“You want me to break the jar?” Luke says.

The boy does it again, more emphatically, then points out the window.

To Luke it can only mean one thing. The ghost boy wants to be released, outside, in the mountains where he died.

“Yes,” Luke says, “I will.”

He pulls his shoes on and unzips his berth. He needs to find a window he can open. The ones in the cabin don’t, not in the dome car either. Then he remembers the porter, smoking. He grabs the jar and heads for the back of the car.

From the berth, a big-knuckled hand darts out and grabs his wrist. Luke gives a strangled cry as Uriah Klack’s bony head protrudes from the curtains.

“I need my boy back.”

Luke tries to pull free, but the old man’s grip is like a metal claw.

“Let me go or I’ll yell!” Luke croaks.

“Shhhh,” Mr. Klack hisses. “Now then. You give me the jar back. You’ve stolen from me.”

“I didn’t steal anything!”

“I could call the police. You don’t want your dad to go to jail, do you?”

“You’re the one’s going to jail,” Luke says, “for keeping him prisoner.”

“I’m not keeping him prisoner,” Mr. Klack says in astonishment, his grip still tight.

“He’s like a slave! You just make money off him.”

“I’m taking care of him.”

“You don’t own him,” Luke says. “You can’t own someone.”

“He isn’t a someone, he’s a ghost. And he’s been the property of my family for over a hundred years.”

“He wants to be free!”

“Is that what he told you?” Mr. Klack sits up and swings his bony legs off the berth.

“Yes!”

“I wouldn’t go believing what a ghost tells you, son. They’ll tell you all sorts of things. You don’t want to go letting that ghost out of the jar. Ghosts can do terrible things if you set them free.”

From the corner of his eye, Luke is aware of the ghost boy, watching him mournfully.

“See those big, sad eyes of his,” Mr. Klack says. “Don’t be fooled. He wants revenge.”

“Not on me!” Luke says, and wrenches his arm back so hard Mr. Klack spills off the berth onto the floor. Luke twists free. He feels bad leaving an old man on the floor, until he sees Mr. Klack spring up with a speed far beyond spry.

“You give my boy back now,” he says, hurrying after Luke.

Luke bolts down the length of the car to its end. The window there has a complicated latch, and it takes him a moment to figure it out. He opens it. Cold wind swirls in. He lifts the jar to throw. Mr. Klack grabs his other arm and pulls him away from the window. The jar falls from Luke’s hand. It hits the floor and the top cracks open. A bit of gray ash spills out. Mr. Klack gives a gasp and steps away like it might burn him.

From the corner of his eye, Luke sees the ghost boy smiling.

Luke snatches up the jar and hurls it out the window. For a second it catches the moonlight as it curves toward the river, and then he can’t see it anymore.

He turns and looks at Mr. Klack triumphantly, but he feels like crying. The old man says nothing, just wipes a big hand across his face and walks off.

When Luke returns to the cabin, his father sits up in his bunk and turns on the light. He looks at his son expectantly.

“Invent your own stories,” Luke says, climbing into his own bunk and facing the wall.

It takes him a long time to fall asleep. When he finally does, he’s thinking of the black river beside the tracks. The water would carry the ashes down through the mountains, through slow curves and surging gorges, to the sea.