Ashlyn's Radio (32 page)

She played the lyrics back again in her head:

That train ain’t gonna break, when she comes.

When she comes!

Till it meets the end of the line,

There’ll always be another time,

She just has to get on board, when it comes

It struck her then that the first line wasn’t quite right. She closed her eyes, straining to hear it again, exactly as it had come from the radio. And then … omigod, she had it! It wasn’t the train ain’t gonna break
when
she comes! It was the train ain’t gonna break
till
she comes.

And oh God, yes! It wasn’t break, it was
brake
!

She needed to pull the brake!

She opened her eyes to find the conductor much closer, watching her face intently, waiting to see the despair and acceptance there when she opened her eyes. It took just a split second for him to see her eyes held not desolation but determination.

He roared and lunged at her, but she leapt away. Desperately, she scanned the engine room. There! Marked with a faded, red sign — Emergency Brake Valve. She faked in the opposite direction and he checked his momentum. That allowed her to change direction, duck under his arm and reach the switch.

 “Noooo!” he cried, freezing with his arm outstretched toward her when he saw her hand on the switch.

“Say goodbye, Freakshow.” She started to pull the switch.

“Wait!”

Despite herself, her hand stilled at the thundered command.

“If you do this, it’ll send your father straight to hell. You don’t want to do that, do you, Ashlyn? After everything he’s done for you?”

His silky words broke around her, persuasive, insidious. She shook her head. “Shut up! He’s already in hell.” But her grip had already loosened.

“But he doesn’t need to stay here. Not if I release him from our bargain. His spirit will be free.”

“No,” she whispered. “You lie.”

“Not about this, Ashlyn. And wouldn’t you like to be with him, your father? I can make that happen.” Somehow, the conductor’s bony face managed to arrange itself in an expression that seemed kindly. Benevolent. “I know you never had a chance to know him. He missed so much. Gave up so much for you. You two could catch up on everything you missed out on. You could have that father you always wanted. A father who loves you above all other things. I know you’ve wanted that, Ashlyn. I know you’ve needed it. And now you can have it. I can give you that.”

The conductor’s words arrowed deep into her psyche and drew all those feelings to the surface, the yearnings of a fatherless daughter. In her mind’s eye, she saw all those birthdays when she’d wished for a father as she blew out the candles. She saw herself at school, telling those lies about an imaginary father as she made a Father’s Day card like the other kids. Hard as her mother had tried, there had always been a void there. And now she had a chance to fill it, not with a generic father replacement, but with her real father. The father who loved her.

But Patrick Murphy was dead. The only way for her to be with him would be if she also….

“All you have to do is take a ticket.”

She glanced up to see that he’d come closer again, almost within touching distance, and in his hand he held a glowing white ticket. Oh, how inviting!

Ashlyn, no! Not the ticket. Don’t listen to him. Don’t listen.

With every shred of her will, she brought her father’s face to mind.

Don’t listen to him, Ashlyn. He lies!

Then her father’s face dissolved and she saw Caden’s beautiful face, wreathed in fear and love and faith.

Come back to me, Ashlyn
.

Her father’s face again.
You’re at the end of the line, Ashlyn! You know what to do!

Caden again:
I love you, Ash
.

Wait a minute — he hadn’t said
that
.

But he
was
saying that! He was saying it
right now.
She knew it in her bones, heard it in her head.

Come back, Ash. Come back to me.

The conductor moved closer, close enough to see how soft her eyes had become. His own sunken orbs gleamed with victory.

“Take the ticket, Ashlyn Caverhill, with those Caverhill green eyes.” He held the paper out toward her.

Again she felt the fantastic pull of his hypnotic words.

Felt it and threw it off.

Straightening her spine, she began to sing, in a voice so high-pitched it hardly sounded like her own:

That train ain’t gonna brake till she comes.

Till she comes!

Till it meets the end of the line,

There’ll always be another time,

She just has to get on board, when it comes

The conductor lunged at her, his eyes blazing with fear and fury.

She pulled the switch.

Immediately, the train’s wheels seemed to lock, gripping the steel rails.

“Nooooo!” the conductor howled, his face starkly terrified now. “Oh, you fool! You little fool!”

That’s when Ashlyn knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she’d done the right thing. The conductor was petrified for his own shriveled up, evil soul. But if any doubt lingered in her mind, it would have been erased by what happened next.

As the brakes gripped the rails, the train’s momentum began to slow amidst the squeal of metal on metal. And as it slowed, it began to shake and shudder beneath Ashlyn’s feet. But what riveted her attention was the conductor. He had also started to shake, impossibly fast it seemed to her. Then she realized he wasn’t so much shaking as flickering, as though he were here on this plane, but just barely. Another dimension had a grip on him. He flailed against it, as if beating back unseen demons of his very own.

Then the whole train began to flicker. It had almost stopped now, the screech of the brakes fading. Finally, it shuddered to a complete stop. The train was flickering so fast now, Ashlyn’s stomach pitched sickly. One second the train’s deck was beneath her feet, and the next she felt suspended in nothingness above the empty rail bed. And the conductor’s face! As he screamed soundlessly, agonizingly, his reality flickered from the full-fleshed conductor Catherine Brennan would have recognized to the flashing white bone and sinew and sunken red eyes Ashlyn was familiar with. Then, in an explosion of light, he was gone.

Then the train itself was gone, and Ashlyn was falling through the air.

It was only a couple of feet, but it was like stepping out into midair without making the conscious choice to do it. One moment, the train was beneath her, and the next she was falling. It was just good luck that she landed on her feet, albeit with a spine-jarring jolt. Instinctively — maybe those breaking moves Hoopz had tried to teach her were finally paying off — she bent her knees deep, then went with her momentum in a forward roll.

She came to rest some distance west of where she’d landed, and oh God, everything hurt. Her back, her knees, her ankles, her left hip, her skinned elbows. But nothing hurt badly enough to drown out the other injuries, which probably meant she was all right. She flexed her ankles and knees successfully, and then sat up. She was shaky, rattled and skinned up, but everything worked. Nothing was broken.

That’s when she spotted Caden running toward her. He was coming around a bend in the tracks, laboring hard, and she realized he must have been chasing the train from the moment she climbed onto it. He’d let her go to face her destiny, but now he was coming after her.

“Caden!” She climbed to her feet.

He stopped, obviously seeing her for the first time when she stood. “Ashlyn? Omigod, Ashlyn!”

Then he was running like he had wings. Like he hadn’t already covered miles of track at top speed.

Ashlyn started running toward him, her pains forgotten. Her chest was pumping for air by the time she reached him, and she couldn’t begin to imagine how much his lungs must hurt, how badly his muscles burned. But it didn’t stop him from catching her in his arms and lifting her off her feet in a bear hug.

“Oh, Ash, you’re all right! You are all right, aren’t you?” He let her feet touch the ground again. “Oh, God, say you’re all right.”

Standing on shaky legs, she clung to him, panting and laughing and crying. “I’m better than all right. I did it! The train is gone, Caden. I pulled the emergency brake and the train’s brakes locked, and then it started shimmering and shuddering until it just … disappeared.”

“And the conductor?”

“Same thing. He just flickered like crazy when the train stopped and … well … sort of shorted out in a big explosion. And Caden, he was terrified! His soul was definitely going someplace he didn’t want to go.”

“Good.” His arms tightened around her and she felt the hard shudder that went through him. “Oh, God, Ashlyn. I was so scared.”

Ashlyn’s throat tightened as she returned his fierce embrace. Then his mouth was on hers and she tasted the salty taste of tears. His, hers.

Blindly, she kissed him back with an answering desperation. His hands swept her body as though to assure himself she was unbroken. Then they raked over her again, this time with unmistakable carnal purpose, and Ashlyn responded.

For long moments they surged against each other, sliding, building a sweet, sweet friction. Then he slid his thigh between hers and gripped her butt to pull her tight against him, and she thought spontaneous combustion was a real possibility. She wanted him now. Right now. She wanted him to pull her down right here beside the tracks in the ultimate life-affirming act. And so lost was he to this tumult of emotion, she knew she could have her wish. All she had to do was not stop him.

Which was why she pulled away. He’d been the strong one for her all along. Surely she could be strong enough for both of them this one time.

He didn’t exactly let her go, but he loosened his grip to allow some space between them. She looked up at him, and because she knew it was there in her face for him to read, she said, “I love you, Caden Williams. I’m not sure when it happened, but there you go. And I’m not saying that just so you’ll have sex with me.”

He choked out a laugh. “That’s good. ’Cuz I love you too. So much it feels like my heart could burst with it.”

“That’s the running,” she offered helpfully, and he laughed again. “Seriously, I know you love me. I could feel it. When I was on the train, when the conductor was trying to get me to take a ticket, I swear I could
hear
you saying that.”

“Oh, baby, I
was
saying it, in my prayers. All I could think was
I love you, come back to me
. And you did.”

He kissed her again, but Ashlyn drew back reluctantly. “We’d better get back. Rachel will be going crazy with worry.”

He straightened. “Oh, crap. Yes.”

They jogged back, not at the breakneck pace Caden must have set for himself, but an easier, more sustainable pace. Even so, they had to stop every half-mile or so for Ashlyn to catch her breath. But when they rounded the last bend, Caden caught her hand and drew them to a stop.

“It’s okay. I’m good to keep going,” she panted. “We’re almost there, aren’t we?”

“Look,” he said pointing down the tracks.

The shades! They were all milling around the area where they’d left Rachel.

Had they started escaping the train the moment Ashlyn pulled the brake, and just drifted back to congregate there? Or had they, when the train disintegrated, just automatically materialized at the very spot where they’d boarded?

And what was that stuff blowing around? Some sort of litter fluttered around in the moonlight. They looked like bits of paper….

“Tickets! Oh, Caden, those are their tickets!”

Caden laughed. “They’re free,” he said. “Finally free.”

Then one of the shades broke away from the others and started making his way toward Ashlyn and Caden.

Patrick Murphy, still clutching his ticket.

Ashlyn’s stomach clenched.

Her father was coming down the tracks to meet her.

“I
T
’
S HIM
.”
ASHLYN COULD
feel the tears on her cheeks, but made no effort to wipe them away. “Oh, Caden,” she quavered. “That’s my dad.”

“Go, babe. You’ve been waiting a long time for this.”

“Only my whole life.”

Ashlyn took off in a jog toward the figure coming toward her down the tracks, while Caden lagged a respectful distance behind. Patrick still held the ticket in his hand as he walked toward his daughter. He hadn’t been blasted straight to hell like the conductor had tried to make her believe would happen. He was here. Right here, standing before her as Ashlyn drew to a stop.

Patrick Murphy looked very … real. He’d been just the shade of his soul on that train, but here, now, he looked somehow more substantial. More … person-like. Not fully flesh, but less translucent. There was color to his complexion. Depth to the curls in his hair. A definite sparkle in his brown eyes.