To the Left of the Tracks

The gravel at the edge of the tracks rock Samuel’s ’04 Red Chevy, and as he presses on the breaks, red and blue lights erupt behind him.

Samuel turns around. The lights from the police cruiser flash, consuming the darkness. He reaches for the blanket lying over the passenger seat, throws it over the bloodstained shovel sitting on the seat. He grips the steering wheel. Sits straight up. It’s well past midnight and he doesn’t have much time.

Turning around, Samuel takes a deep breath. Jackson is sitting on the right. His eyes are toward the window. He clinches a spiderman action figure close to his chest.

“I want to go home,” Jackson says.

The boys eyes are wide. The look is enough to make Samuel want to turn around and drive home. Samuel knows he shouldn’t be out here past midnight. Shouldn’t be doing this at all. Its all in his head, he tells himself.

“I know, son. I just has to check on something alright. Its not far from here.”

Samuel wipes his eyes. He wants to be back at home, under the sheets with his boy. Reading a book or talking about the stars or telling another warm story about Mommy. But he knows he needs to be here. And the longer he stays the worse it will get.

Moments later, there’s a knock at window. A flashlight beams into the car. Samuel gently lowers the window, letting in drops of rain. He takes a deep breath.

“This train station has been cordoned off,” the officer says.

“I know – ”

“That your son?”

“Yes.”

The officer straightens his back. More radio chatter. The rain is getting through the window, dripping on the door.

The officer takes a step back from door. He’s wearing a thick rain coat. His eyes aren’t visible in the darkness, and the rain drips against the badge to the right of his belt.

The heat of the flashlight falls from Samuel’s face. It traces to passenger seat, then to Jackson in then back, then on the passenger seat again.

“What’s underneath that blanket?”

Samuel swallows. He can hear Jackson breathing hard. The asthma again. The toy spiderman falls to the ground.

“Tools,” Samuel says. I work construction. “Well, I used to. Its just me and the boy now so life hasn’t gotten a bit more complicated.”

Jackson is breathing harder now. He’s whispering to himself, words that Samuel doesn’t quite understand.

“You’re the…your wife was the professor that – ”

Samuel nods.

Louder radio chatter. Drops of rain pool atop the officers rain coat. The temperature drops slowly in the car. The officer takes another glance at Jackson in the back seat and says, “I’ll be out patrol for another hour or so, I strongly advise you go home. The rain’s coming down hard. We’re expecting flooding tonight.”

Samuel nods.

The officer takes another step back from the car. He pauses for a moment, then gets back in the car, and drives slowly up the bridge adjacent to the station.

***

An hour later, Samuel gets out of the car. Rain drips from his cap. The trees and branches move in ways that don’t seem natural, and can’t help but wonder if someone is watching him.

He walks to the passenger seat, opens the door, removes the blanket, and pulls the shovel out. He sharpened it last night when Jackson was sleeping, and always tried to wash Mary’s blood from the splintered wood. But that never worked.

He calculates in his mind how long its going to take to get back to the station. Having to park far enough off the road so that officer wouldn’t see him meant losing valuable time. By dawn, he needed to be back home. If the area truly floods, the first responders will be out and someone might see him.

Jackson knocks on the window. Samuel opens the car door, then picks up the spiderman toy and hands it back to him.

“Are you going to be long?” Jackson says.

Samuel leans forward, kisses his son. “I’ll be as fast as I can. You know I love you.”

Samuel tells himself to keep it together. He tells himself that he’s honoring his wife by doing this. By checking on her body. Making sure that its still there. But he can’t help. He feels awful. What kind of father leaves his son in the car, in the middle of the night.

“Dad,” Samuel says.

“I have to go baby,” Samuel says.

“What was he saying about Momma?”

“Who?”

“The policeman.”

Samuel glides his hand to his son’s neck, feeling his blonde hair interlace with his fingers. He puts their heads together and hopes he can keep it together for the next moment or two. He’s too young to remember what happened six years, but he knows something happened. And one day he’ll have to explain it.

He tells him to stay in the car. And that if anything happens to honk the horn three times.

***

Samuel’s rain jacket is drenched, and the mud on his boots has turned to a thick black by the time he gets back to the station.

He takes shelter for a moment by the hold station. He peers through a cracked window at the station turned museum now. Inside, there’s an old model train set in the center of the room, and maps on the walls outlining the train lines between Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. A small desk sits in the corner that is used to sell conductor hats. One sat in the corner of Jackson’s room, at least for a while.

The guilt of leaving his son behind still racks him. But he tells himself again that he had no choice. When Mary got sick, and when the weird things started happening, when she said she had to go, she made him promise Samuel promise to always make sure. Just make sure.

When his legs feel rested, he starts his trek on the train tracks, where had wanted to start an hour ago before getting pulled over. He’d taught himself how to find the body. Start at the train station. Count 1100 paces. On the correct plank you’ll see an asterix. Then turn to the right into the tree-lines. Another 100 and your there. A little blue marker only he would see. That’s where she is.

He starts to count. Goes to 100 and then starts again. Then 200, and starts again. When he reaches 300, just before the tracks disappear around the bend, he see’s the water pooling over the track. And just above it. A dark silhouette.

He stops. Whatever number he was on drops from his mind as the silhouette looks up. Looking past the water dripping from his hat.

“Hello,” he says.

The figure doesn’t move.

He walks forward, tripping on a wooden plank several feet from the tracks. When he this the ground, bits of gravel bite into his arm, shooting pain through his entire body.

Lying on the ground, he feels rain on his back. The metal tracks conceal the bottom half of his view. But he can see the silhouette. A bit closer now. Long hair that droops down to the shoulder. Head down. The mouth moving.

He says hello again, then pushes himself up. He wipes the brim of his hat but when he looks back up.

The figure is gone.

He wants to scream. He wants to home. He can hear his wife telling him to go back to Benjamin. At least, if she could see him now that what she’d say.

Or maybe she’d remind him that he’d quit on so many other things in life. Would today be so different? And that’s when he realizes, he has no idea what count he’s on or how much further he needs to go.

***

He counts to 500. Then checks the left set side of the plank. Six years ago, he’d used a sharpie and put a small “x” to notate when to turn into the woods, but now he can’t see it.

Samuel walks forward, then back, then forward again, looking for the “x”. His legs burn. His socks are drenched, and the rain is so cold its starts to making his hands tremble.

Its far till first light. He doesn’t have long now, and surely Benjamin is getting worried.

He walks until the water is pooling above the tracks, then he goes until its ankle deep, then his knees.

Surely, he walks far enough by now.

He turns toward the tree-line. His boots stick to the mud. Each step, its like the world is telling him to stop. To turn around. Please don’t go in there, through those trees.

The voice of his wife bounces in his head. She’s telling him not to make the same mistakes she made. To trust your gut. There is evil that lingers in dimensions we do not know, and we hope we don’t have to meet it.

But he keeps moving forward, not trying to block out her voice, but allowing himself to focus on something else. Like the songs Julia sang to Benjamin as they fell asleep together. Or the way she greeted him every time Samuel came to the door. So excited to see him.

He grips the shovel tights, slides down the small incline. Walks into the darkness beneath the trees. The rain isn’t as hard, but its almost impossible to run. He grabs the flashlight from his belt, turns it on.

The pattern of the trees in front of him, the view of the city behind him. That’s not what tells him that he’s close.

It’s the guilt he feels.

Despite her pleading that she was getting sick, screaming at the top of her lungs that one day she was going to hurt him or possibly Benjamin.

He reaches the tree-line, dipping behind the darkness of the trees like it’s a curtain. He’s not far now. The guilt he feels is so strong its dug deep into the soil.

A voice calls from the ground. Quiet, like a whisper. So gentle it fills the air around him. She’s telling him it has be done. The same thing he’s done every year for the last six years. “Promise me you’ll check Samuel. Promise me.”

He grips the shovel. The metal end hits the ground.

When he stops digging his clothes are drenched and wooden splinters from the shovel are nestled deep in his hand.

He throws the shovel to the ground as flashing red and blue lights break through the thick fog. He bends town, feeling the wet dirt.

Her breathing feels closer. There’s a break in the brain. Footfalls on the tracks. He turns around.

It’s her.

Samuel call out

She says nothing.

He calls out again.

On the third try, she looks up, and says, “Hello?”

A strand of hair, drenched in dirt, covers her eyes. Her voice is sweet, but lost in the fog. He takes a step forward.

He can hear the sirens now.

Her hands are blackened, and red. Her arms droop at her sides.

He takes a step forward. He wants it to be her. Prays that its really her and maybe this whole thing has been just one terrible fucking dream. The grief and guilt of the last seven years collapse on him, and he screams out into the night. But he knows that impossible.

The same voice cuts through the fog again, but Samuel can’t understand. Its tired, guttural, and pleading.

Samuel runs thick into the fog, and that’s when he hears it again.

“Hello?”

The voice, its stronger now. Female, and gentle just like hers. And she sounds alone. Just like she was this whole time, these past six years.

But she’s dead, he tells himself. And you did. She asked you to do it and you did it and you didn’t try hard enough to convince her otherwise.

He takes another step forward. When he clears the fog, he’s sees someone standing a few feet from him. Barefeet sinking into the mud. A green dress. Wide eyes.

“Samuel?”

He knows this has to be impossible. She should be in the ground, but she’s not. How is that possible?

But there are so many things he wants to say to her. He runs up, drops to his knees, and grabs her feet. The shovel lays at his feet. He tells her that he only wanted to do the right thing for her and Benjamin.

Shen puts a hand on his shoulder, then looks down.

“You did what I asked,” she said.

“I never wanted to do what I did. I thought I was doing the right thing. When you got back from your trip you were so sick and so obsessed with – ”

“I was consumed. There was something else wrong with me. Something had ripped its way inside of me,” she says.

And that’s when he hears it. In her voice. Its different now. Almost playful, but never in a way she sounded.

This isn’t right. Something isn’t right.

There is something moving in her eyes, running in circles. A hint of a smile breaks from the corners of her mouth. The grip on his shoulder titghted.

Samuel falls away, grabbing the shovel.

He realizes it now. Mary was right the whole time. Something had gotten ahold of her.

The sirens and lights are at the edge of the tree-line. Benjamin’s voice his is breaking through the woods now.

But Samuel stays quiet. He doesn’t want him. He shouldn’t have to see this…whats about to happen. The thickness in the air is gone.

The thickness in the air is gone. He feels the weight of the shovel in his hands. Gripping the wood hard, he looks directly at the things standing in front of him.

Its no longer his wife now.

Its growing. Taller. Limp fingers extending like a branch. Eyes that look so human, but are something else.

There’s another voice in his head. And this one, he knows, is really hers. Its telling him to be brave.

He waves his shovel high in the air, swinging it, as it slices through the cold air. He screams again, then runs forward, straight at it, and into the darkness.