The Black Train

they wouldn’t let me look! Mary and Cricket were in there dead, right?”

“Correct.”

“But they weren’t killed in that room—you already said so. So where were they killed? And why were their dead bodies moved to that room after the fact?”

“For an obscene effect, I’m sure.” Sute’s voice seemed to vibrate in a grim suboctave. “It was Gast. He wanted horror. He wanted the children to be found, don’t you see? Read some of the excerpt…”

Collier’s eyes surveyed the italics:

. . Gast and his first team had already arrived back in town a week ago, according to the station master. There was no difficulty in discernment, after I’d spoken to Richard Barrison, a plowman, who testified that he saw several of Gast’s men digging a large hole next to the front court. Not thirty minutes later, when returning, Barrison reports that he saw the same men refilling the hole. This was shortly before one o’clock in the afternoon. Further deliberation was hardly necessary when we discovered the bodies of those poor girls…

Collier rubbed vertigo from his eyes. “My God…You mean he—”

“Gast buried his two daughters alive, then went about the business of murdering Jessa and seeing to the gangrape and sequent ax-murder of his wife. Cutton was murdered sometime after one in the afternoon as well.” Sute diddled with another drink. “Just before sundown, he ordered Morris and Poltrock to exhume Mary and Cricket’s bodies and place them in the bedroom. He closed the door, and locked the dog in with them. He knew that it would likely be days before the bodies were discovered. He wanted them to rot down a bit first, which is why he closed the windows. And the dog, of course, having nothing to eat…”

“The dog ate the girls’ bodies,” Collier droned.

Sute looked a bit sick himself now. “Not…just that, I’m sorry to say…”

“What do you mean?”

The obese man pointed again to the manuscript in Collier’s lap. “Perhaps it’s best that you not read anymore. An abridged version might be less offensive.” Sute cleared his throat. “The girls were pregnant when Gast put them in the hole, probably considerably so.”

“He buried them alive and they were pregnant?” Collier almost shouted his outrage.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Rape-related pregnancies?”

“Hardly. See, these young girls weren’t so innocent themselves. With a mother like that for a role model? They were notoriously promiscuous and quite willing, at least according to the plethora of letters and resident diaries. And what you’re not comprehending is this: Gast wanted their punishment to be rich. After several hours under the ground, the girls were dead and the fetuses miscarried. The corpses were then exhumed—four of them, mind you—and lain in their beds. Hence, the dog’s first pangs of hunger were satisfied by the fetuses and afterbirth, and when there was none of that left…it started on the girls. That’s the scene that awaited Marshal Braden and his deputy when they forced open that door, and no doubt the same scene you would’ve witnessed in the nightmare had you looked in the room.” Sute sighed. “Rumor has it that the dog escaped, never to be seen again. But you can be sure…it escaped with a full stomach.”

And all of that, Collier regarded, happened in the room I’m staying in now…

Was Gast simply a man gone mad, or was it really something worse, something which, for all intents, was impossible? The silence that followed made the room seem darker; Collier’s brain felt like nerveless meat. I’m some kind of an antenna, he thought, and the inn is the power source. But did he really believe it was a power source charged by the evil of the past?

He felt older when he pushed up from the chair. “I have to go now.”

“It’s a harrowing story, Mr. Collier. But now you know all of it. Of course, knowing what you know now, you’re probably sorry you ever asked.”

“It’s my nature.” He tried to laugh, and handed back the manuscript.

“You’re sure you don’t want to borrow it?” Sute asked.

“No. I wouldn’t be able to hack it. I’ll be leaving soon anyway.”

Sute rose to put the manuscript up; then he returned the checks to Collier. “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope it’s not the town’s ghastly history that’s sending you away.”

Collier lied. “No, no, I’ve got to get back to L.A.” There was a discomfort that continued to itch at him. What did it matter what Sute might say when he was gone? Nothing, he realized. Still, he didn’t want anything getting back to Dominique, even though he realized that he’d probably never see her again after tonight.

“Mr. Sute? Please don’t tell anyone what I’ve said today—the nightmares and all.”

Sute stood half in shadow now, a smoking-jacketed hulk. “It’s all in confidence, Mr. Collier. As I said before, you’re an intuitive man. You don’t want me to repeat what you’ve told me. And as with any agreement between good gentlemen, I trust that you’ll keep my secret as well.”

It was the first time that Collier had noticed the five-by-seven framed picture of Jiff, on the nightstand. I guessed that one right, too…

“I understand. It was nice meeting you—” Collier shook hands. “Thanks for satisfying my curiosity. It’s definitely killed this cat.”

“It’s only a story, Mr. Collier.” Sute tried to sound jovial.

“But one that we both know is true…”

Sute shrugged with a smile.

As Collier made to leave, his psyche felt like a watch spring that had popped. I’m not the Boy Who Cried Wolf, I’m the Boy Who Asked Too Much. But he knew this: he’d heard more than he could stand, and now he was going home with his tail between his legs—

“Not just yet!” Sute was back at a bookshelf, and slid out some heavy folders. “You wanted to see these.”

“What…are they?”

“The daguerreotypes.”

A rigor seized Collier.

“Mr. Collier, I know you’ve had more than your fill of the local lore…but after hearing it all, can you really walk away without ever seeing the only existing photographs of Penelope Gast?”

You bastard, Collier thought. He remained unresponsive for several more moments, then said, “All right. Let’s see.”

Sute carefully slid some metal sheets from various protective folders. “Take care to only touch the edges,” Sute requested.

Collier found the first stiff sheet obscurely bordered in black; within the border the image seemed to float. Ghostly was the best description of what Collier’s eyes fixed on: Penelope Gast gazing askance in a ruffled French- style bustle and petticoat. The embroidered bodice piece hung unlaced down the front to reveal a plenteous white bosom, starkly nippled. Collier gulped. Even in the grainy photograph, she was infinitely more beautiful than the modest oil portrait at the inn.

“Genuine daguerreotypes were hard to come by,” Sute explained, “and outrageously expensive for private citizens.”

Collier thought of Hollywood producers who had professional sculptors cast their wives’ nude torsos and hang them on the wall. This was the same thing for rich men of the mid-1800s. Putting one’s wife on a pedestal.

“Tintypes were more common during and after the Civil War, but the images were inferior and tended to lose detail after time. Gast spared no expense to immortalize the image of his wife.”

And then have her gang-raped before he dropped an ax between her legs…Collier looked at the next, this one even more racy. Mrs. Gast stood poised with a togalike garment snaking up one leg, between her legs, then around her neck. Her legs were model perfect. The toga covered one breast; her right hand