Deeper into Darkness Page 4

  “I think I know what the grade is going into the pass!” Wilbur Buchanan shouted into the rail car’s intercom tube.

  He rose, red-faced, to his full six foot height. Fine dining had added more pounds than his pinstriped suit could hide. The coach’s floorboards creaked.

  “I built the damn railroad! Keep up the speed. Ladies await in San Francisco tonight.”

  Lucian Welles sat across from Buchanan in the Central Pacific Railroad’s opulent private car. Welles tugged at the starched collar around his skinny neck.

  “Mr. Buchanan,” he said. “The recent snowfall—”

  “Snow!” Buchanan said, incensed. The newer hires knew nothing of the hardships borne to lay this section of the future Transcontinental Railroad. “In the winter of ’66 the Donner Pass work camp was buried in snow. Made the Celestials dig through it, and everyone went back to blasting. This is just a dusting.”

  Welles’ long fingers gripped the red leather-bound ledger in his lap. He cast a nervous glance at the snowscape that rushed by out the window. He pushed his glasses up on his nose.

  “We were going to review some accounts…?”

  “In fact, we’re coming up on Tunnel Number Six now,” Buchanan said, his reverie unbroken. “Had to come down and take charge of the operation here myself once. O’Reilly went all sissy-boy about the Orientals in his crew and they’d dropped to a half-foot a day of progress. Wouldn’t make Utah ‘til the turn of the century at that rate. Had to yank some folks up by their bootstraps and get things moving.”

  “Sir, Samuel warned that the tracks ahead might not be safe,” Welles said, voice a few octaves higher than usual. “He’s a trusted engineer—”

  “Bison balls!” Buchanan said. “He’s getting sissy-boy soft as well. Whole outfit’s gotten weak since we started down the east slope.”

  The train’s whistle blasted to announce its arrival at the tunnel entrance. Number Six was over sixteen hundred feet long and curved.

  Buchanan shook his head. Samuel needn’t waste the steam. Buchanan had cleared the tracks all the way to Sacramento. Rank had privilege.

  The car passed though the tunnel’s portal. Daylight disappeared window by window, replaced by the yellow glow of the wall-mounted oil lamps. The car hit an expansion joint and bounced. Buchanan steadied his bulk against a leather arm chair.

  “It was right at this end where I took the bull by the horns and got the crew back to work,” he said. “A cave-in had buried a dozen Chinamen and the whole operation ground to a halt, as if another carload of them weren’t already on their way from the docks.

  “I stormed into Number Six. No one was doing a damn thing. There’s a bunch of Celestials gathered around some old man dressed in white, while some stinking incense smoldered in a brass cup. The old man was chanting some high-pitched nonsense and burning a stack of money in a plate. Not real money, mind you. A Chinaman wouldn’t part with that except to send it home to Canton. This bearded old man was burning fake money, little notes with dollar signs on them. Never seen anything so stupid in my life.”

  Roiling dark smoke obscured the last of the entrance’s light through the rear windows. Welles cast a nervous glance forward, as if hoping to see through the car’s front wall and spy the tunnel’s awaited exit.

  “So I marched into the middle of this superstitious tribute and kicked the plate so high it hit the roof and shattered. Well to show you how strange they are, the chief Chinaman didn’t even react. Just sat there staring at nothing. Then he looked up to me, pointed with his long filed nails and jabbered some nonsense. I had the company men yank the malingerers out and get the crew back to setting charges. We blasted the rubble, and the dead bastards underneath, to bits. We made two feet four that day, by God!”

  Up front, the engine’s wheels locked and skidded along the track. Their metallic screech echoed in the tunnel like a wounded dinosaur. Both men gripped their chairs as the car’s contents lurched forward.

  Welles’ half of the car exploded. The engine’s coal tender sheared away that side as the light private car telescoped into the stopped engine. A black iron wall stenciled with “CPRR” swept away Welles, his chair, the bed and the whole wall in a swirl of flying splinters.

  Buchanan’s chair tore from its mounting and he flew into what was left of the car’s front. He slammed into the wall hard. The world went momentarily dark. An oil lamp, ripped from its mounting, sailed past his head. It smashed into the wall beside him. A ball of fire erupted, and singed his sideburns. Flames spread across the shattered wood around him.

  He clambered out of the destroyed car one step ahead of the fire. The dry, wooden remains lit up like a torch. The light explained everything.

  An avalanche had swept even the snow sheds off the mountainside. A frozen wall of white filled the west end of Number Six. The train’s engine lay on its side, half-buried like a steaming black spike impaled in the side of a great albino leviathan.

  The flames that consumed the luxury car’s smashed remnants crept closer to the pile of coal spilled from the engine’s tender. When that blaze lit up, there wouldn’t be enough oxygen in the tunnel to sustain it. Or Buchanan.

  Black smoke already filled the tunnel’s top third. The entrance was at least fifteen hundred feet back, and the curve up ahead blocked what little light that exit might provide. The fire that threatened to asphyxiate him was also all that kept total darkness at bay.

  Concern for any other survivors never crossed his mind, just the threats of exploding coal dust or choking to death in this underground tomb. He leaned against the wall and began a stumbling walk east.

  The rough rock wall sliced a gash in his palm. He winced and eyed the wound. Blood ran down his lifeline and dripped from his wrist. Each drop spawned a brown dusty cloud as it hit the dirt tunnel floor. The iron rail beside him sang like it was struck by a hammer. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped his hand.

  He staggered forward and out of the burning wreck’s circle of light. Rounding the curve, the tunnel’s entrance appeared like a thumbprint of light far in the distance. Farther from the fire, the air turned cold and damp. The thick scent of coal and charred wood became infused with a lighter, familiar scent, though he could not quite place it.

  “Buchanan,” whispered the wall.

  He jumped away to between the rails. He teetered on the unstable stone roadbed, and gave the wall a nervous, fruitless examination.

  “Buchan-n-n-an,” another voice whispered behind him. The pitchy, drawn out syllables sounded like they had traveled for miles.

  He whirled and searched the darkness.

  “Welles?” he called out. “Damn it, man, don’t lurk about in the dark.”

  Another misty whisper swirled around him, this time one of chattering, overlapping voices. A drop of sweat trickled down the back of Buchanan’s wide neck.

  “Samuel?” His summons arrived as a plea.

  The air went frosty, a piercing chill icier than the snow-swept air outside the tunnel. Buchanan’s halting breath puffed out in short shots of steam. That odd scent returned, stronger. Sandalwood. He remembered now. The tunnel funeral. The Chinese holy man. His pointy, accusatory finger.

  Blood pounded in her ears. He hobbled for the distant entrance as fast as his bulk would allow. His labored steps slipped on the moss-slickened crossties.

  Behind him, spikes flew from a rail like buckshot and pinged against the tunnel walls. The rail’s end rose from the roadbed like a rattlesnake’s head, turned toward Buchanan and struck. It curled around his right ankle, crossed to his left and in two more twists bound his legs in an iron figure eight. The trailing end severed in a shower of golden sparks. Buchanan tripped and fell headfirst into the roadbed. His head struck a rail. Blood ran from a gash above his left eye.

  He looked up, surrounded by a dozen luminous Chinese workers. Their legs faded away a foot from the ground. All wore dazzling white tunics. Most wore wide, woven conical hats. Hatred burned red hot in th
eir eyes. Buchanan pushed himself back onto his butt. His ankles strained against the constricting iron rail.

  “What is this?” he demanded, but the authority in his voice was gone.

  The specter before him pointed past Buchanan’s shoulder.

  “Dig!”

  The spirits on one side floated away to reveal a pyramid-like pile of stones. A flat-tipped shovel leaned against the tunnel wall next to it.

  “You want me to shovel stones?” Buchanan said. His initial fear subsided, replaced by a growing indignant fury. Dead or alive, these were still nothing but penny-a-dozen immigrants trying to order him around. He stood and dusted the front of his vest. “I’m the goddamn Chief Engineer of the Central Pacific. Hell itself will freeze over before I take orders from the likes of you.”

  One spirit floated up on each side of him. Inches away, they opened their mouths, lips curled back to reveal dagger-like teeth. From deep within each, a wailing, piercing, high-pitched scream blasted forth.

  The two waves of sound shot through Buchanan’s ears and crashed together in the center of his head. The resulting explosion felt like it vaporized his brain. He shrieked and dropped to the ground. He covered his ears to no avail. The sound rattled his teeth. He feared he was about to disintegrate.

  The auditory assault paused. The two spirits retreated to the edge of the roadbed. Buchanan looked up through his fingers. The lead spirit pointed again to the stones.

  “Dig!”

  Buchanan raised himself to his feet. Every muscle quivered in the attack’s aftermath. He pivoted back and forth as he navigated to the pile of stones, hobbled by the twisted rail that joined his ankles. He skidded down the roadbed and jerked to a stop. The spirits surrounded him in a circle of incandescent white. He picked up the shovel. It burned against the cut in his palm.

  “Shovel it where?” he asked. His voice cracked.

  The chant rose up from all the spirits as they began a slow, swirling dance around him.

  “Dig, dig, dig, dig…”

  He drove the shovel into the pile of stones. His shoulders burned as he lifted a load of rocks and flung them across the tracks. He drove the shovel into the pile a second time and flipped another collection of rocks to his left.

  When he returned to the pile a third time, it was just as it had been when he started, undiminished by his two previous efforts.

  “What the hell?”

  A spirit sailed by his ear and delivered a little yip, just loud enough to make his eyeballs feel like they were about to boil out of his head.

  “No! No! I’ll dig. I’ll dig!” He dug and discarded a third shovelful. The pile on the rails did not grow. The pile at the wall did not shrink. The task would never be complete.

  Buchanan took solace in one thought. They couldn’t keep him here forever. There was a destroyed train here and a snow-blocked entrance at Number Six. It was just a matter of time before residents of the real world arrived, and saved him from the hands of these Chinese spirits. They couldn’t hold off the whole CPRR.

  ♦♦♦

  The next day, Mike O’Reilly gave the charred remains of the Central Pacific’s prized private car a kick with his boot. Snow flaked from his red hair as he shook his head in regret. CPRR President Stanford was not going to like having his favorite car demolished.

  “Send up two engines and a crane from the coast,” he said to his assistant. Only the two of them risked making the initial inspection of the crash. “We’ll dig through the snow and pull the engine out head-first instead of ripping up rails dragging it all the way back up Number Six.”

  The assistant made notes by the light of their lanterns.

  “Samuel was a good engineer,” the assistant said.

  “Too good to do something this stupid.” O’Reilly practically spit the words out. “This catastrophe has Buchanan’s fingerprints all over it. The strutting bastard. If he wasn’t dead in the remains of that coach I’d kill him myself.”

  The assistant fought off a chill at the memory of the charred corpse. They turned for the tunnel’s east entrance.

  A sound echoed up ahead, like the muffled sound of a shovel against gravel. The assistant froze.

  “We’re the only ones here,” the assistant said. “What was that?”

  “Who knows?” O’Reilly said with a dismissive wave. “Number Six has made strange noises since Jackass Buchanan blasted the cave-in victims to pieces. Usually sounds more like hammers on spikes, though. Guess the spirits decided to take up digging.”

  Building the Transcontinental Railroad was an amazing accomplishment. But the Chinese immigrants hired to build the Western third endured awful conditions. Wishing them a little revenge inspired this story.

  Ω

  Table for One

  Vladimir “The Wolf” Rostovitch sat alone at the table in the dim restaurant. His two bodyguards stood at the entrance and redirected any potential customers to other establishments. Frank Molfetta, the owner, had invited The Wolf for a private supper.

  The Wolf’s shaved head gleamed in the single overhead light. Beneath his black jacket, the tips of crude tattoos poked out from his open white shirt. A gold wolf’s head medallion hung from the matching chain at his thick neck. He leaned back in his chair and sipped a long-stemmed glass of red wine with the casual air of a king on his throne.

  Frank shuffled in from the kitchen. He was a stout man with a shock of black hair only recently salted gray. Sadness etched his drawn face. A white apron, splotched dark brown from his kitchen work, encircled his waist. He carried a large salad.

  “Your salad, Mr. Rostovitch,” Frank said. He placed the bowl on the white table cloth. The Wolf nodded.

  “Your business is empty,” The Wolf commented. Years in New York hadn’t thinned his thick Russian accent.

  “First night open since the funeral,” Frank said. “Just you here tonight, and I am the only staff, giving you and your dinner my full attention.”

  The Wolf pointed at Frank with a slosh of his wine glass. An errant drop stained the cloth with a red splash. “Wise move on your part. Rumor was you may have harbored me ill will.”

  “No, no,” Frank said. A trace of fear crossed his face. “Just the opposite.”

  “My position,” The Wolf sighed dramatically, “requires difficult decisions. But I am forced into them. People create intolerable situations.”

  Frank shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He averted his eyes.

  “Now your son,” The Wolf continued, “he created one of those intolerable situations.” He stabbed a fork at his salad without looking. “At the club, at my own club, he treated my son Yuri with gross disrespect.”

  The Wolf’s definition of disrespect was broad. Frank’s son had stepped in when a drunken Yuri had torn off the blouse of a female patron. She had rebuffed the budding mobster’s advances.

  “You understand the position that puts me in,” The Wolf said. “My son must be respected. He will take over the business someday.”

  Frank had planned the same for his son.

  “The death of any young man is a tragedy,” The Wolf said with a mouth full of lettuce. “It pained me to order it.”

  Frank looked at the floor. He softly repeated a Sicilian proverb his father had favored. “Family cannot go un-avenged.”

  The Wolf pointed his fork at Frank. “Precisely. And your acceptance of the situation is good for you.” He waved his fork at the four walls. “Otherwise, business could suffer. Your fire insurance could lapse. Accidents happen.”

  Frank nodded and backed through the swinging kitchen door. The Wolf tore a chunk from a loaf of bread at his table. He ripped the piece in half with his teeth, gave it a few violent chews and swallowed.

  Frank came back through the doors. A large white plate steamed and sizzled in his hands. The Wolf sniffed and smiled.

  “You’ve prepared my favorite?” He pushed the salad away.

  “Of course.” Frank slid the plate before the Wolf. A saut
éed steak filled the platter, garnished with onions and red peppers. “I hope it’s to your liking.”

  “In Vladivostok,” The Wolf reminisced, “we always ate what we hunted. It gave you the strength and the spirit of the beast it came from. Every real man has eaten Siberian tiger steak.”

  The Wolf chopped a section from the steak’s corner and shoved it in his mouth. Frank held his breath in anticipation. The Wolf smiled, his black eyes alight.

  “Excellent,” he declared. “Better than usual.”

  “A special order,” Frank offered. “A prime cut from a young bull.”

  The Wolf pounded his chest. “I feel stronger already!”

  Frank nodded and turned for the kitchen. As he passed through the swinging doors, he shed the dour mask he’d been wearing and smiled. He rounded the empty steam table and stripped off his apron. He wadded it up in a ball and tossed it on the stone cold grill. He strode out the back door and into the night.

  The pale, naked corpse of Yuri Rostovitch lay face down on the kitchen prep table, mouth gagged, hands bound underneath. Flaps of bloody skin lay like peeled onion skin from his back to his knees. A steak-sized chunk of flesh was missing.

  Seriously, you never wondered what really goes on in a restaurant’s kitchen? You need to start.

  Ω

  Nora’s Visitor

  Nora Lovell bit her lower lip. The anticipation of her husband’s return had her nervous as a cat.

  Out her upper bedroom window, darkness enveloped the long approach to their Maine mansion. A cold north wind whipped the bare trees back and forth. At this time of year, everyone with good sense had already returned to civilization. Nora should have left the summer house and returned to the city weeks ago. But she decided to wait. Mr. Hiram Lovell’s carriage would pull up at any moment, returning him from his steamship voyage and England. Then she and her husband would have the servants pack the house, and they would move back to the city. Together. Like a proper couple.