The Black Train

Collier continued to be astounded by his interest in this. And now…Nude pix of Penelope Gast. I’ve GOT to see those.

It took another moment for the next question to click in his head. “Mr. Sute…Was anyone murdered in my room?”

“I’m quite happy to say…no, Mr. Collier.”

Collier—even though he wasn’t sure he believed any of this—was relieved.

“And there you have it, the short version anyway.” Sute’s distraction continued. He seemed to keep peering over Collier’s shoulder, out the restaurant’s plate-glass window. “I won’t bore you with certain other testimony— things said to have been witnessed in the house.”

“Finally. Ghosts.”

“Yes, Mr. Collier. Ghosts, apparitions, and every conceivable bump in the night. Footsteps, voices, dogs barking—”

“What?” Collier snapped.

Sute smiled. “Yes, as well as regressive nightmares, hallucinations—”

“What do you mean, regressive nightmares?” Collier snapped.

“—and even demons,” Sute finished.

Collier plowed his next beer. He didn’t like to be taken for a fool. Was this bizarre fat man a master storyteller? Or…

He hadn’t heard any dogs barking exactly, but he had seen one, or so he’d thought. He’d found his own sexual responses exploding…something Sute claimed to have happened to others. And the nightmare he’d had? It had regressed him back in time, all right, to a mindboggling atrocity that involved a railroad during the Civil War.

And he’d heard voices, too, hadn’t he? Children, a woman, a man.

Now this.

“Demons?” Collier asked.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Let me take a stab at it,” Collier tried to mock. “Harwood Gast was really a demon, I’ll bet. To do the devil’s bidding on earth.”

Sute chuckled at the attempt. “No, Mr. Collier. It’s actually something even more contrived than that.”

“Really?”

“There’s long been the suggestion that Gast sold his proverbial soul…to a demon.”

Collier rubbed his eyebrows, if anything, laughing at himself now. That other stuff? It was just human nature, plus too much beer. He was seeing what the fabulist in him wanted to see. People make any excuse to think they’ve seen a ghost. More human nature, primal human nature. He was the Cro-Magnon listening to the scary story in the cave, and just knowing that that sound he’d heard in the woods was a Wendigo or a lost soul.

And now Sute was professing demons.

“I’m glad you said that, Mr. Sute. Because now, your story isn’t really that disturbing anymore.”

“I’m glad. You don’t believe in ghosts then?”

“No, not at all.”

“Nor in demons?”

“Nope. I was raised in a Christian family—” Collier felt an inner gag. Peeping on a sixty-five-year-old woman taking a bath, coitus interruptus with Lottie, getting drunk to the gills, plus a burning, unabated, unrepentant LUST…Jesus, what am I trying to say? “What I mean is, I’m not what you’d call a practicing Christian, but—”

Sute nodded, with a cryptic smile. “You were influenced by the faith. They say that more than half of the Americans who even call themselves Christians never even go to church.”

That would be me, Collier realized.

“But I think what you’re trying to say is that some of your upbringing, in the midst of Christian values, has remained with you.”

“Right. And I don’t believe in demons.”

“How about Christian thesis in general? Do you believe that?”

“Well, yeah, sure. The Ten Commandments, the New Testament, and all that. Blessed are the pure of heart. I mean, I guess I even believe in Jesus.”

“Then you believe in basic Christian ideology,” Sute observed more than asked.

His hypocrisy raged. I’m profane, I’m lustful, I’m gluttonous, I’m a pretty serious sinner, but, sure, I believe it. “Sure,” he said.

Sute rose, and pointed at him. “In that case, Mr. Collier, then you do believe in demons. Because Christ acknowledged their reality. ‘I am Legion, for we are many.’ And on that note, I must excuse myself momentarily.”

Collier watched him depart for the restroom.

The conversation’s shadow hovered over him. In truth, he didn’t know how to define his beliefs at all. When he turned, his vision was cut off by a pair of ample breasts in a tight white T-shirt, and a silver cross between them.

“Did I hear you right? You were discussing…Christian thesis?”

Collier looked up, slack-jawed. It was Dominique. She’d removed the apron and was standing right next to him.

Collier didn’t know how to reply. He was hypocritically claiming a Christian ideal to explain why he didn’t believe in demons? I’d sound like a complete tube steak. Dominique—at least it seemed —was a genuine Christian, not a phony. For a moment, he even thought of lying to her, just to impress her.

And she’d see through that…like I see through this empty beer glass.

Finally, he said, “Mr. Sute and I were just talking subjectively.”

“About what?” she asked in a heartbeat. A little catsmile seemed to aim down at him.

Collier tried to sound, well, like a writer. “Theoretical Christian interpretation of demonology.”

She shifted her pose, to stand with a hand on her hip. “Well, Jesus was an exorcist. He cast out demons like he was a football ref throwing penalty flags.”

Collier’s thoughts stumbled. This is the girl of your dreams, dickhead. Maintain conversation. “So…true Christians believe in demons?”

“Of course!”

“And the devil?”

“Well, Jesus wasn’t tempted in the desert for forty days by the Good Humor Man. If you believe in God, you have to believe in the devil, and the devil’s minions. Lucifer isn’t a metaphor—jeez, I’m so tired of hearing that one. He isn’t an abstraction or a symptom of mental illness.” She groaned. “God punted him off the twelfth gate of heaven—once his favorite, the angel called Lucifer—for his vanity and his pride. The friggin’ devil, in other words, is a real dude, and so are his demons. If you don’t believe in demons, then you can’t believe that Christ cast them out, and if you don’t believe that, then that’s the same as saying the New Testament is bullshit —”

Collier sat stunned, by the variety of her animated explanation.

She finished up with a nonchalant shrug. “So if a person who calls himself a Christian doesn’t believe the New Testament, that person is no Christian at all. Simple.”

Collier could’ve laughed at her diversity, or remained stunned by her conviction. Before he could comment, she asked, “So what brought this conversation on? It’s not exactly what I would expect America’s premier beer chronicler to be yakking about at lunch.”

Now Collier did laugh. “I guess some aspects of religion snuck their way into my curiosity about the town lore.”

Dominique rolled her eyes at the empty martini glass. “Oh, so he’s the one ordering umpteen Grey Goose martinis.”

Collier craned his neck up at her. Sunlight sparkled off the cross on her bosom like molten metal. “Do