one of the weekly runs the train made up the spur from Salinas, moving through Santa Cruz, then running up to the end of the track. It was a pointless run, except for one thing.
It kept the right of way open, protected the Barrington Western Railroad’s right to use it.
It was a boring run, the only interesting part of it being the northern leg, when the train ran steadily backward, creeping slowly along while a member of the crew stood in the caboose, watching the track and giving an unbroken stream of all-clear signals to the engineer. But once it reached the dead end forty miles north of Barrington and started back, the crew was tired, more inclined to watch the moonlight playing on the sea than the track ahead.
After all, in the twenty-five years the engineer had been making the run, there had never been an event worth reporting to his supervisor. So tonight, as the train hit sixty along the straightaway north of Barrington, and the engineer prepared to begin his slow deceleration to the fifteen mile speed limit through the town itself, he wasn’t really pitying too much attention to the track ahead.
Not that it would have made any difference, for by the time he saw the object on the track as he came around a curve, it was far too late to stop the train anyway.
Still, he slammed on the brakes and shouted to the fireman. “Jesus Christ! Looks like some idiot dumped a bag of garbage on the track!”
The train began to slow, the brakes screaming as the engineer pulled hard on the lever.
Then, as the brilliance of the headlight caught the object in the full glare of its beam, he realized that the object wasn’t a bag of garbage at all.
It was a person, crouched down between the tracks, hunched over, his back to the train.
The engineer hit the horn, and a blast of noise tore the night, rousing a flock of sparrows from their roosts in the trees along the track. They burst into flight, disappearing instantly into the night.
The person on the railroad tracks didn’t move.
The engineer felt a sheen of sweat break out over his whole body as he realized what was about to happen, and that there was no way on earth he could avoid it. The inertia of the big diesel engine was enough that even if he managed to lock the brakes completely, the machine would lunge on, steel skidding against steel, sparks flying.
But it would not be enough.
The train bore down on the object, losing speed with every second. For just a split second the engineer prayed for a miracle.
It didn’t come.
The engine struck the person on the tracks, and as the body flew into the air, the engineer realized it was a boy.
A young boy, dressed only in worn jeans and a red shirt.
Oddly, he found himself wondering if the boy had worn the red shirt on purpose, so the blood wouldn’t show as much when the train struck him.
Not that it mattered, the engineer reflected as the train finally ground to a stop two hundred yards farther on. Red shirt or not, the force of the blow when the train hit him would have turned the boy into little more than an unrecognizable mass of torn flesh and broken bones.
Instinctively, the engineer looked at his watch. It was almost half past four in the morning.
A miserable time to die.
Though the room was dark, so dark he couldn’t see anything at all, Jeff Aldrich knew he wasn’t alone. And the room was big, too. So big he couldn’t sense either the walls or the ceiling, though he was certain they were there.
He could, however, sense the other person in the room with him.
Adam.
It was Adam who was there, lost in the dark somewhere, looking for him.
Jeff called out to his brother, but there was no answer.
He took a tentative step forward, feeling his way in the dark, but touched nothing, felt nothing.
He called out again. “Adam? Hey, Adam, where are you?”
Though he’d shouted at the top of his lungs, his voice seemed tiny, constricting in his throat, the words barely audible, even to himself.
Now the fear began to close around him, reaching out of the darkness, touching him, its slender tentacles wrapping around him, seeming to draw him into the darkness itself.
“No,” he moaned. “I’ll find him. I’ve got to find him.”
He struggled against the fear, tried to run away from it, but now his feet seemed mired, as if he were caught in a thick, wet mud, or quicksand.
He struggled harder, screaming out again. “Adam? Adam, I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry, Adam!”
He began pulling himself free from the mud, and then he was running, running through the darkness as fast as he could. And around him the darkness changed.
He wasn’t in the room anymore. He was outside now, and though everything looked the same as it had before, it was still different.
And he was getting closer to Adam — he could feel it!
Finally, ahead, he saw a point of light.
The last of the fear drained out of him as he ran toward the light, his heart pounding, his legs aching from the effort. But he couldn’t slow down, for the light was Adam. If he could get to it—
It began to take shape then. No longer a point, it was a beam now, and it was shining down from overhead, though when he looked up, he couldn’t see the light’s source.
But in the beam, seeming almost to be suspended in midair, he could finally see Adam.
Adam was looking at him, his eyes accusing him.
Jeff stopped. “Adam?” He uttered the word uncertainly, for there was something different about his brother, something he didn’t understand.
He reached out, thrusting his hand into the beam of light, trying to touch his brother. But as his hand entered the beam, it disappeared, and Adam, still staring at him, began to laugh.
“You thought I wouldn’t do it, didn’t you?” Adam asked. “You thought I’d chicken out. You
Jeff felt a terrible wave of remorse wash over him. “N-No,” he stammered. “I didn’t think that I—”
But it was too late. Even as he spoke, the beam of light began to fade away and his brother’s image began to shimmer, then slowly disappear. As the last of the light died away, Jeff screamed out his brother’s name once more.
“Adam!”
• • •
In his room on the third floor Josh MacCallum lay wide awake. He’d been lying there for what seemed like an eternity, listening in the darkness.
Sometime earlier — he didn’t know how much earlier — he’d awakened, hearing a sound.
It hadn’t taken him more than a moment to realize what it was.
The elevator, its gears grinding, its cage rattling in its frame.
Instantly, Jeff Aldrich’s tale of the ghost of Eustace Barrington had popped back into his mind, and his first instinct had been to hide his head under the covers and try to blot the sound out of his ears. But then he’d realized what was happening.
It was Jeff himself, riding the elevator in the darkened house, and no doubt laughing silently at the scare he was giving him.
So Josh had gotten up, pulled on his bathrobe, then gone out into the hall, creeping down the dark corridor until he came to the elevator shaft.
He could still hear the sound of the machinery.
But the elevator wasn’t moving. In fact, when he peered down the shaft, he could just make out the top of the cage barely illuminated by the chandelier in the foyer.
The sound had suddenly stopped. Josh had held his breath, afraid even to move.
