Maybe I’m like Doubting Thomas.
Oh, come on, I know the story. I know enough stories, at least. Like Noah and the big old ark that saves him from the end of the world. And Jonah and the big old whale. And how about Joseph and his big old coat of many colors. Okay, maybe it’s not big and old. But I know some of the stories.
Maybe I need just a little more proof.
On this bleak December Saturday, I decide to get some.
Borrowing a short and heavy sledgehammer from Brick is going to help. I figure I might need it, and Brick was the person to ask.
I head to downtown Solitary. It seems abandoned, with only a couple of cars on the main street. There’s nobody in sight. The town feels sad. It shouldn’t feel this way in December. It should feel many things—commercial, busy, Santa Claus-ized—but not sad.
Maybe it’s in the eye of the beholder.
I don’t know. I’m not here to evaluate the town.
I’m here to check out that abandoned boxcar. Or to see if it’s still there.
It takes me a while to get to it. But sure enough, it’s right there in the middle of the tracks, just like it was when I first saw it.
It’s gray everywhere. As I approach the railroad car, the sledgehammer in one hand, I can see the hazy fog around it. It’s like some film director came in and used smog machines for added effect.
As I approach, I recall Newt’s voice in my head recounting the myth he’d heard.
“Back in the old days, they used to run trains into town,” he told me over lunch a few days ago.
I’d asked because I wasn’t sure if I’d really seen the boxcar or it was just another of these great visions I was having. The gift in my wonderful bloodline.
“The story goes that the very last car on the train would be a ‘special’ car, one that nobody would open. They would simply unhook it from the rest of the train and leave it on the tracks. The townspeople wouldn’t dare look in.”
I stand next to the wooden boxcar, kicking the rusted metal of a wheel to make sure it’s there. Just like last time, I feel it.
“People in Solitary started going missing around this time,” Newt continued in a hushed whisper as he ate his bologna sandwich. “People thought it had something to do with a railroad car left in town. They wondered if it had people living in it. What if they were creatures of some sort. So a group of young guys—maybe our age—decided to open the doors.”
I’ve reached the door of the car. I touch the bolt and feel the grime of it on my fingers. I try pulling it, but it doesn’t budge.
Obviously. That’s why I brought this stubby sledgehammer I borrowed from Brick’s garage.
“The guys opened up the door in the middle of the night. Of course it was a dare. But what they found wasn’t anything to laugh about.”
I start pounding the bolt back. It doesn’t move at first, but then begins to grind against the old wood and send bits of rust to the ground.
“They looked inside and found a bunch of bodies. Dead bodies of people who had lived in and around Solitary. People who appeared white as ghosts and drained of their blood.”
The bolt eventually goes back, and I manage to swing open the door.
As I do, I hear the deep mumbling of something.
Or someone.
I can’t see in the darkness of the boxcar, but I can smell what’s inside. Decay and death.
I can make out shadows on the floor. Piles of something.
Then I hear the wailing. And moaning. And crying.
“Someone had been killing people in Solitary and sticking them in this boxcar. To get rid of them. Like some dead animals or something.”
“Help us,” a grainy voice says.
I hear shifting and twitching.
Something in the pile seems to get up. Slowly, as if it’s on two knees.
“Hear us, let us go,” cries another voice, this one a woman’s.
I hold the sledgehammer in my hand, but know that it probably won’t do much to the voices I’m hearing.
“Set us freeeeeeeee.”
Then I feel the bony grip of something reaching out from the darkness, skeleton fingers squeezing around my neck.
A mutilated face suddenly appears in front of me. As it does, I hear what seem to be a thousand screams all go off from inside the car.
I fall back and brush away whatever’s on top of me. The heavy hammer falls beside me.
Gasping and kicking and clawing, my eyes closed, I get whatever it was off of me.
Then everything becomes silent again.
I breathe in and open my eyes and sure enough, the boxcar is gone.
The sledgehammer is still there. The stench in the air is still there. And the pressure from the squeezing hand around my neck is still there.
I bet so are the marks.
For a while, I just lie back on the rocks next to the railroad tracks. I steady my breathing and think of what I just saw.
It was there. I saw it and felt it and yes, even smelled it.
What more do you want?
I don’t need any more.
I believe in what people have told me.
I believe in what Marsh and Staunch and my great-grandfather said.
The thing about being able to see stuff that’s not there.
This is why they want me and need me alive.
What they want me to do with this … I don’t know.
But I know it’s real.
And I know the creatures or monsters or demons that I heard and saw—those are real too.