Tell My Sorrows to the Stones Read Online Free PDF

face, so wide that it hurt. Weak as she was, she staggered to her feet. She slipped in her own blood and nearly fell, but she ran for the train.
    “Jonah,” she whispered, under her breath. “I’m here, baby boy.”
    Sarah rushed alongside the first car, looking through the gauzy windows. Images floated within, faces that loomed up from a grey nothing beyond the glass. Some of them seemed to be in pain, while others only looked lost, their eyes vacant. The transparent figure of a little girl gazed out at Sarah with hope in her eyes. Sarah shook her head and ran on. She did not want to linger on any of those faces.
    The second car gave her no answers and so she moved on to the third, wondering if she should have tried the other side of the train—wondering how long she had before the train began to move again and whether she should just try to get on board. Had enough of her blood been left behind on the tracks for that?
    After the third car, she began to panic. Sarah ran.
    “Jonah!” she called. “Where are you, sweetie?”
    Halfway along the fourth car, she staggered to a halt. One hand fluttered to her mouth, smearing blood on her face. She laughed into her hand.
    Jonah waved to her from the window. Then he retreated, as though getting up from his seat.
    Sarah ran to the door at the end of the car. She could see through it to the trees on the other side and the river beyond, but the train itself had substance. It pulsed and gave off a strange luminescence, which might only have been the influence of the moon. The 3:18 was a ghost in and of itself, ridden by phantoms. But Sarah had not forgotten the story that had first brought her here. Near death herself, she could see it well enough.
    Now she reached toward the handle beside the door, expecting her fingers to pass through the misty nothing of that spectre. Instead, her bloody hand gripped cold metal.
    “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
    She put a foot on the metal step below the door, and hoisted herself up into the open door at the rear of the car. Immediately, the train hissed and lurched, slowly starting forward once more. She could hear the clack of the rails and the breeze as it began to depart.
    Sarah looked up and saw Jonah standing in front of her, on the platform at the back of the car. His precious face was just as she remembered, open and smiling, eyes full of love. Jonah reached for her. A shadowed figure loomed behind him, but she paid the other ghost no mind as she put out her arms to her son.
    Strong hands snatched him backward, lifted him up and away from her.
    “No!” Sarah cried.
    The ghostly figure coalesced from the shadows, and she saw the face of the man who held Jonah.
    “Daddy?”
    He held Jonah against his chest. The boy wrapped his arms around his grandfather’s neck, clinging to him, resting in that embrace.
    Sarah’s father stared at her, his eyes somehow more real than the rest of him, peering out at her from the grey realm of spirits.
    “Stop holding on to us, honey. We’re fine. The only thing that hurts us now is you not living the life we can never have. We’ll see you again, when it’s time.”
    Turning Jonah away from her, he reached out with his free hand—a gossamer thing, translucent and floating, a bit of nothing and shadow—and touched her face. He gave her a wistful smile, and then he shoved her.
    Sarah tried to reach out and grab hold of the door frame, but her fingers passed through it like smoke.
    She fell backward from the slowly moving train, hit the ground and rolled. By the time she looked up, she could hear it picking up speed, could feel the breeze of its passing, but she couldn’t see it any more.
    The 3:18 had come and gone.
    Sarah stared at the place where it had been until even the most distant whistle had disappeared, and all she had left was the memory of it. Somehow she knew that she would never hear the whistle of the 3:18 again.
    For what seemed an eternity, she sat and waited to