Magic Time: Ghostlands Read Online Free PDF Page A

guessed it was the smell she liked best. Old wood, wind-whipped, giving up ghosts of pine and creosote.
    The old Union Pacific tracks cut due south into the Medicine Bow Range, north into the gray sage foothills of the Shirley Mountains, then east across the Laramie Range, where ages ago sharks the size of sperm whales had settled down to die, later joined by maiasaurs and T. rex. The call had come echoing off the hills, and Mama Diamond turned, facing their heights, squinting up her good eye against the ruthless slate light. But if there was a train, she couldn’t see it.
    She watched for a time, patient but vaguely alarmed.
    Now came the whistle again, closer, almost taunting (no need, surely, to blow a whistle in all this emptiness). Mama Diamond had the unsettling thought that she should climb down off the platform and paste her ear to the steel track like the Indians in the old matinees. She’d probably pull a muscle if she tried it—get stuck there, and the train (if there was a train) would split her head open like a cleaver splitting a vine-ripened tomato.
    But there was no need to listen to the tracks, because here was the train itself, suddenly visible winding out of the foothills like a black millipede scuttling from a crevice in a basement wall. It was blurred in the distance, so she couldn’t be certain if it had topped the ridge or actually burst out of the earth itself. She tried to resolve the shape of the thing, peering into an ice-breath of wind that made her eyes sting and water, but all she could at first make out was a featureless assemblage of rectangular boxes, like a subway train.
    As it approached, however, it seemed to take on complexity and ornamentation, and she wasn’t sure if her eyes were playing tricks or—crazy thought—the train was actually changing as it drew near, deciding how best to present itself.
    It came chuffing down toward Burnt Stick, and Mama Diamond stepped cautiously back into the shadow of the depot. Her mouth was dry again, but she had left her canteen on the porch, the chill air turning its surface cold as a tombstone as it lay atop the Clancy paperback.
    The train began to slow.
    Sweet Jesus, Mama Diamond thought, what dark miracle is this?
    It was no ordinary train—as if she needed convincing of that, in a world without machines. It now clearly revealed itself as a single engine with a long string of passenger cars. The engine was antique-looking but shiny clean, like a coal-burner dragged out of a museum. The passenger cars were rounded and streamlined like the old transcontinental sleepers. Both the engine and cars were a carapace black, and the passenger windows, too, held the same darkness, no light piercing through. The insides, Mama thought, must be cold as a freezer. And who in their right mind would paint a passenger car that kind of black? If it was paint; the whole thing looked cast in onyx.
    The train slowed, came huffing to a stop like something out of a dream, and Mama Diamond began to wish she had taken the trouble to hide herself, began to wish she had not even come here, that she had stayed inside like a sensible person. Though she suspected there was no hiding from whatever the train carried.
    She thought about how peaceful it had been just a few minutes ago, when she was alone with her book and the sleepy hum of the town.
    The train halted, hissing hot breaths of steam. Mama Diamond tried to get a look at the driver. But the cab windows were blacked as well.
    From within the cars, Mama Diamond discerned a new sound, of movement and bodies, and a burbling of voices that might have been men or beasts or something in between. Her stomach tightened, she felt the bristly, gray-steel hairs on her neck rise.
    A passenger door slid open on the first coach and Mama Diamond jerked her head in that direction.
    A man climbed out. A man with long black hair pulled hard back and held by a white-gold clasp, wearing black fathomless shades, black shirt and slacks