Ashlyn's Radio (25 page)

Leslie stopped singing when she felt the restraint. It seemed to bring her back to awareness. To Ashlyn’s horror, she started moaning. “No, no! Not the needle. Please! I’ll be quiet. I’ll be good! I need … I need to….”

“Mom!” Tears sprang to Ashlyn’s eyes. To the nurse, she said, “Stop it! Can’t you see she doesn’t want it?”

The nurse rolled her mother far enough to poke the hypodermic into her hip.

“Noooo!” Leslie cried.

Ashlyn gasped, tears spurting to her eyes. “What did you do that for? She didn’t want it!”

“I did it because I had to! Because you came in here and upset her. Do you realize that your mother had gone two whole days without a serious incident? And now look at her! She’s right back where we started.”

Guilt knocked the fight right out of Ashlyn. Her mother had had a relapse? And it was her fault? “I’m sorry.” She turned to her mother. “Mom, I’m so sorry. It was selfish of me to come here. I just needed to see you so badly. But don’t worry about me, okay? I’ll be all right. And I won’t … I won’t get on that train, okay?”

“Time for you to leave,” the nurse snapped. “And if you should somehow get clearance to visit in the future, please do not humor her with talk of that train. Understood?”

Ashlyn ducked her head. “I’m going.”

“You certainly are.” And the nurse made sure of it, escorting her to the doors and overriding the alarm to let her out. “And please, if you care anything for your mother, don’t come back until you have approval.”

Caden was waiting for her in the lobby. He stood when he saw her.

“How’d it go? Did you get to see her?”

“I need to get out of here.” Even if she could have kept the tears out of her voice, there was no way she could stop them streaming down her face.

Without a word, he took her hand and led her out into the dazzling sunshine.

A
SHLYN WAS HAVING A
migraine. Or so that’s what the matronly school nurse pronounced it to be when Ashlyn presented herself and described the one-sided headache and the nauseous feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Her grandmother was in Bangor doing whatever she always did on Monday mornings, but the school was able to reach her on her cell phone. When Nurse Wheaton realized Maudette was away, she had offered to accommodate Ashlyn on the world’s lumpiest, most germ-ridden cot located in her office. Unable to hide a shudder, Ashlyn had declined. She preferred to make the twenty-minute walk home, and with Maudette’s verbal permission, that’s just what she was currently doing.

Out of habit, she crossed the road to the tracks. That was the quickest way home.

The sky was overcast, but not sufficiently enough for Ashlyn’s liking. The diffused light that did make it through the cloud cover was bouncing around and sending spears of pain through her skull. The nurse had advised crawling into bed in a dark room and staying there until the migraine passed, and Ashlyn couldn’t agree more with that prescription. Her Podunk Junction bedroom had never seemed more inviting. And with every throb of pain, with every step she took, the prospect of lying down in the dark grew more and more attractive.

Stupid migraine. She’d never had one before, but she hadn’t really needed Nurse Wheaton to tell her what it was. Her mother had had a few battles with them over the years. And when one of them overtook her, life pretty much stopped for Leslie Caverhill until it passed.

“Guess it’s stopped pretty damn well for her now too,” Ashlyn muttered.

An image of her mother in the psych ward, rocking and wailing, stabbed Ashlyn’s brain worse than any migraine pain.

“I told them not to let you come.”
That’s what her mother had said. And equally haunting, though not as heartbreaking: 
“He wants you, Ashlyn.”

The conductor.

In her troubled state, Leslie Caverhill was somehow convinced the conductor wanted her only daughter. But her mother had it wrong! Everything Ashlyn heard — everything she knew — pointed to Rachel being the one at risk of boarding that evil train. It was Rachel the conductor was after.

Another stab of right-side pain.

Whoa!
Ashlyn shot out her arms with it. This one made her wobbly, her knees weakening just as she approached the train bridge. No way did she want to be passing by that path to the river or walking the footbridge on anything but steady feet. She had to sit. Just for a minute.

Should be okay.

Of course, there’d be no trains coming — the ghost variety or otherwise — in the daytime. So Ashlyn plunked herself down on a rusted rail. Cringing against the pain, she curved her back to lay her head down on her knees and closed her eyes tightly.

She’d just rest here a minute. One peaceful minute.

The world took on a silence as Ashlyn sat there with her head down. As the moments passed she found herself tuning everything out around her. No cars passed on the road behind her. No birds chirped in the cool fall air; no dogs barked in the distance. The peacefulness, the blessed absence of sound, helped her headache. And as she sat there, she could again imagine nothing better than being in her upstairs bedroom, the curtains drawn to blacken the room completely. God, she could just
swim
right in it now. The feel of the darkness. The closeness of it around her.

But then Ashlyn could imagine it a little too well. The press of it turned sinister. She could literally feel the black depth pressing across her shoulders, chilling over her back. Bleeding right down through flesh and bones as if trying to consume….

She sat up straight and opened her eyes. Good God! It was almost completely dark out! But how could that be? She’d only rested a minute. She was sure of it. The skies had been overcast, sure, but just a moment ago, there had been plenty of watery morning light filtering through the cloud cover. Now the skies were nearly black. Her heart leapt, and with it, the throbbing in her head ratcheted up. Were they in for a tornado? A hailstorm? Severe thundershowers? All three?

Ashlyn leapt up and looked down the tracks toward the school. The ancient pines lining the rail bed had begun to bend and toss with a sudden wind that seemed to blow right through her now, too. She glanced up to see the sky filling with heavy, rolling clouds. They felt oppressively low, those clouds, completely blanketing the earth.

She lifted her hand in front of her eyes. It looked oddly gray as she brought it close, mere inches from her face. What the hell?

Suddenly, Ashlyn wished fervently that she were about to be hit with a severe storm or whatever nature could throw at her. For that would be a perfectly natural explanation for what was happening. Unfortunately, she knew with gut wrenching certainty that what she was immersed in right now was no mere freakish weather change.

This was deeper.

This was evil.

Pain forgotten, every nerve in her body on razors, Ashlyn turned toward the presence she now sensed looming behind her.

Jesus!
The train!

She stumbled back quickly.

The midnight black engine towered just inches from her face. As her gaze climbed, it seemed to rise ten feet above her, its black iron skin almost blending in with the darkened sky as it sat there, unmoving.

How the hell did it get there? In the middle of the day? It only came through at night. That was the legend. That was the damned
deal
. And how had it arrived without the slightest sound to alert her?

Just then, the engine chuffed loudly, like a smoke-filled giant clearing its throat. Though it didn’t budge so much as in inch, the feeling that it was about to plow her down was overwhelming.

In full flight response, Ashlyn stumbled backwards again, this time trying to get off the tracks, but she tripped on the steel rail and landed hard on her butt and her out-thrown hands. Her left palm stung from being punctured by the crushed rock, but she didn’t so much as look down at the wound. Alongside of the train now, she could only look up, up, into the conductor’s evil face.

“And so we meet again, little girl with the Caverhill eyes,” the voice of evil said.

Ashlyn stared up into those malevolent, sunken eye sockets. Fear slicked her whole body in an instant sheen of sweat, and her mouth went dry. But even in the grip of terror, she was thinking, thinking, thinking. Mentally she measured the distance between herself and the conductor, who stood once again in the engine-room door of that damnable dark train.

He couldn’t reach her, she realized. Not without stepping off that train. And that he wouldn’t do. As he stood there looking down at her, she was suddenly certain that he
couldn’t
get down from his hellish perch. No, the victims had to come to him, had to take their ticket! His goal was to lure suffering souls closer. Ensnare them within his seductive promise of an end to their suffering.

Ashlyn wasn’t budging. Not in body and not in heart.

But why her? Why did she warrant this special appearance? Everyone knew the train came always at night.
Only
at night. But this afternoon, evil had darkened the sky so it could appear before her.

“What do you want with me?” Her voice came out a little shaky, but it didn’t lack for volume. “Leave me alone! Leave us
all
alone.” By
all of us
, she meant Rachel, of course, but she didn’t even want to
think
her friend’s name in the presence of this monster. This evil sonofabitch who offered those deadly, damnable tickets to the most vulnerable souls in the village.

As if reading her thoughts, the conductor’s hand reached into his pocket. As slowly as before, as determinedly as before. Smiling as always, he produced a ticket. Its brilliant white glowed in his hand against the now-dark day.

“Is this what you’re so afraid of, Ashlyn Caverhill from Toronto?” His sleeve fell back from a skeletal wrist as he held the ticket high. “It’s a simple ticket. A simple way out of Podunk Junction, this miserable little village. It’s a ticket — oh I guarantee — away from the pain of this world.”

Ashlyn blanched. “But I know the real cost.”

“Oh, it’s not so much of a price for a tired, weary soul. A bargain, some would say. That’s what Patrick Murphy said, so many years ago. Didn’t you know that Ashlyn? How tired and how weary you made your father’s soul, even before he knew you? Even before you were born.” The conductor shook his head sadly. “All because of you.”

Ashlyn felt light headed, as if the cutting words the conductor spoke had drained the warm blood from her body. But it wasn’t just the words themselves that weakened her now. It was also his swirling voice. It held a depth. A mesmerizing one. Though he didn’t whisper, it was as if Ashlyn had to somehow reach for those words — reach
into
those smooth, silky syllables. She didn’t want to hear them! But she couldn’t tear herself away from those words he spoke — those heartbreaking words about her father and how he’d come on board the train all because of her. She couldn’t help but listen to the story she’d always longed to know, and the heartbreak she had to own.

“And even your mother would be better off without you,” he continued. “You know it, don’t you, Ashlyn Caverhill? You know the burden you’ve placed on her all these years. Why, even your grandmother didn’t want you. Didn’t she say as much?”

Ashlyn felt the tears stinging at the backs of her eyes and after the briefest moment, running down both her cheeks. She blinked through the tears. And through this watery haze she saw the shift in the conductor’s own gleefully glowing eyes. His head was bent even more now, as he looked down at her. Somehow she’d inched closer to the train as he’d hypnotically pulled her in. She struggled to pull in a long breath. Struggled to pull back from him as the conductor bent his body down. Oh, but the words he spoke, how they broke her— 

“Ashlyn, don’t! He lies!”

The conductor snapped his head around as if a shot had been fired.

Again the warning voice cried out. “Snap out of it, Ashlyn! Run, baby girl!
Run!
”

The voice cried into Ashlyn’s consciousness. Leaping to her feet, she scuttled backward, her eyes glued to the train. But she forgot about the embankment. Seconds later, she was rolling and somersaulting toward the river’s edge. Clutching at the tall grass, the earth, anything she could, she managed to arrest her flight before landing in the river. Well, almost. One sneakered foot actually dipped into the cold rushing water as she lay there. Completely winded, her chest pumped like a landed fish in a futile bid for oxygen.

Gasping, lungs burning, she drew herself up onto her knees to look back up the hill.

The conductor glared down at her and roared his rage. He threw his head back and his bony fists flashed as he shrieked with madness. And the untaken ticket — oh sweet Jesus, the one her fingertips had been so close to grabbing — crumpled in his shaking grip. “I could have had her! This … this very day … this very one! The last of this cursed line!”

The train whistle shrilled to punctuate the conductor’s rage, the sound impossibly loud, rattling the hollow spaces inside her and drilling into her brain. Ashlyn clapped her hands to her ears, screwing her eyes shut against this new, sharp pain. Oh, God! The migraine had been nothing compared to this. It felt as though her eardrums — maybe her head itself — would explode from the whistle’s piercing pitch.