Orson Brisk #3 — Tales from the Rails
It’d been a good, long while since I’d been that riled up. An’ a grown man oughtta be able to admit when he’s behaved poorly. I can do that. I shouldn’t’a hollered and spat and stamped my feet like I did, but how was I s’posed to act, when so many crazy things had gone on right in front o’ my eyes?
Seein’ a ghost was one thing. I was used to that. But seein’ a man materialize outta thin air? Watchin’ the ghost o’ yer dearly departed mama explode into a million tiny ghost pieces? Gettin’ pulled into some kinda hell-version o’ yer childhood? I’d be surprised to see even the Good Lord himself actin’ any better after all that.
An’ then that smart fella chucked me through some kinda portal with that Tobias fella, an’ suddenly we’s surrounded by butterflies, an’ before I can catch my breath, they chucked me through another portal into some kinda daggum office! Who were those men? Why’d they have to get to meddlin’ with my mama? At first, I tried poundin’ on the door, yankin’ on the handle, screamin’ for ’em to let me out. I knew they were out there. I could hear ’em talkin’. But I realized they weren’t listenin’ to me, so I looked ‘round for another way to get out.
Somethin’ wasn’t right about the light in the room. I looked up an’ saw the ceilin’ was covered in all kinds o’ newspapers, glowin’ like daylight. I ‘membered the butterfly room had glass walls an’ a glass ceilin’, so I reckoned the ceilin’ in here was glass, too, an’ somebody had covered it up. There were some filin’ cabinets with papers stickin’ outta them in one corner o’ the room, an’ in the other was pro’lly ‘round a dozen or so animal tanks on shelves around the room, like the ones you’d keep a lizard in. When I looked inside ’em, it was caterpillars.
There was a desk with a computer on the far side o’ the room. The desk was covered in papers an’ empty coffee cups. Sittin’ next to one o’ the cups was a pill bottle. I rattled it ‘round for a second, watchin’ the little pink pills shake an’ shimmy. The wall behind the desk was lousy with all sorts of newspaper clippin’s like the ones on the ceiling, an’ in the middle of it all there were fifteen pictures of people. They all had pushpins in them with red string tying them together in all sorts’a which-ways. Three of ’em had big, red circles drawn ‘round their faces.
One of those ones was a picture of me.
“What in the hell’s all this, then?” I said to myself, startin’ to feel scared. I guess I was secretly hopin’ those men had found me on my train by accident, meddled with me just because they were bad, an’ that’s what bad men do… But it looked like they knew exactly what they was doin’.
“Orson Brisk,” said a man behind me. I hadn’t even heard the door openin’. I whipped ‘round fast as I could.
“Now see here, fella,” I started to say, thinkin’ I was gonna see the smart fella. But it wasn’t him. I was stupefied for a few seconds while I tried to figure out why I recognized the man in front of me. He had long, brown hair, an’ wore a funny hat with a dark jacket. I saw a glint o’ gold as he tucked away a pocket watch.
“‘S good to see ya ‘gain,” he said. He talked funny, a bit like the smart fella, but there was somethin’ else in his voice. He sounded like he knew things. “I can’t remember how long ago we met, now, but for you, I reckon it’s been right ‘round forty years.” An’ then it clicked.
It was the outsider, the one I met back when I’s just a kid, who set me up with my first train.
“How in the — ” I didn’ even get to finish what I was sayin’ a’fore the office door opened and the smart fella from earlier walked in. Tobias wasn’t with him no more.
“Ah,” he said to the outsider, “I’m glad yer already here, Stranger.”
I could feel somethin’ bubblin’ up in my gut again, like that anger that had me stompin’ and hollerin’. I didn’t know these men, I didn’t like these men, an’ I sure as hell wasn’t gonn’ stick around to find out what these men were plannin’ on doin’ to me. I put my head down and charged at the smart fella, hopin’ I could push ‘im outta the way, get to the door, an’ get outta there. But it was the strangest thing — when I did it, I had a strong Dijon-view feelin’, like I’d already done it before.
“Yer gonn’ tire yerself out if ya keep doin’ this, Orson,” said the outsider.
“Maybe if we just explain why he’s here, we wouldn’ hafta keep rewindin’ him,” said the smart fella. He hacked a cough into his elbow. When he took his arm away, there was a dark blood stain. His eyes got real wide an’ he looked at the pills on the desk. He took a step towards them, but his legs gave up.
“Shayan!” hollered the outsider, swooping forward to catch him. “Orson, on the desk,” he shouted at me.
“Why should — ”
“Just get the damn pills!”
I did as I was told. I didn’ trust him, but I wasn’t gonn’ let the smart fella die. I took a knee next to the two men and fiddled with the pill bottle cap. I looked in the smart fella’s eyes, and I saw there were dozens of green things slithering out from underneath his eyelids.
“Holy HELL,” I yelped. “What’s’a matter with ‘im?”
“No! Just one pill!” the outsider yelped. I looked down and saw I’d poured all the pills into my hand. I put four of ’em back in the bottle, put one on the smart fella’s tongue, closed his mouth and rubbed on his throat. He swallowed an’ gasped for air, an’ I watched them green things snake back into his skull an’ disappear.
The man sat up an’ rubbed his eyes. “It’s getting’ worse, fast,” he said to the outsider.
The outsider nodded. “That’s why we gotta stay focused. Now more ‘n ever.”
“Now hang on a goddamn minute!” I said. Both men looked at me. “What the shit was all o’ that, now? First, y’all kill my dead mama. Then you snatch me up an’ lock me in this…this…caterpillar prison. That outsider I ain’t seen in forty years shows up lookin’ like he hasn’t aged a single second. An’ now the smart fella’s got teeny-tiny snakes livin’ in his goddamn eyeballs!”
The men sat on the floor an’ blinked slowly at me.
“None o’ this makes any sense!” I said, poundin’ my fists on the ground. “Why ‘m I here? Who the hell are y’all? Why’s my picture on the wall? An’ what do you want from me? All I want is to get back to my train and keep on not botherin’ nobody.”
The smart fella took a deep breath an’ stood up. “They’re plants,” he said, stickin’ out his hand to help me up. “Vines. Not snakes.” The outsider stood, and I took the smart fella’s hand to join ‘em.
“Why the hell you got vines in yer eyes, bubba?”
The outsider took off his hat an’ scratched at his head. “Well, Orson, that’s part o’ why yer here,” he said.
The smart fella nodded his head. “We got a lot to tell ya.”
I learned the smart fella’s name was Shayan, and the outsider’s name was Stranger. I told him there ain’t no way that’s his Christian name, an’ he told me it sure ain’t, but that’s what everyone called him an’ so should I.
Shayan wasn’t kiddin’. He and the Stranger must’a spent hours tellin’ me all kinds o’ stories ‘bout time travel, other realities, an’ evil empires from the future, an’ whatnot. They said mama’s ghost wasn’t no ghost at all, but was really a “temporal disturbance made of anomalous matter.” I had to triple check with ’em to get those words right. The bad guys, them future Jupiter fellas, were just waitin’ for the right time to use her an’ trap me, Tobias, an’ Shayan, hopin’ we’d die in that crazy ghost zone.
“But why were they wantin’ to kill me?” I asked. “An’ why’d they lump me in with Tobias and Shayan? I ain’t never met them before today.”
Well, they had answers for all o’ that, too.
If yer readin’ this, I ‘spect ya pro’lly already know a lotta this, so I’ll skip the details. To be honest, I can’t even remember most o’ them anyway. But it turns out me, Tobias, Shayan, an’ the twelve other folks with pictures on the wall were big-ole threats the evil Jupiter fellas needed to get rid of.
Me! Threatenin’ some kinda future space king!
I told them they was downright ravin’ lunatics if they thought I was a threat to any-old-body, and the Stranger said he reckoned just about everybody was a ravin’ lunatic in their own way. Some folks have plants growin’ outta their eyes. Some are train conductors that meet with their mama’s ghost every year for Christmas. An’ plenty others are “normal-lookin’” folks with their own kinds o’ lunacy kept hidden away.
“Orson, I set you up with yer life on the rails all those years ago hopin’ this exact moment would happen,” the Stranger said. “Every second o’ yer life for the past forty years has been buildin’ up to what I’m about to ask you to do for me.”
I shivered when he said it. All at once, I felt like I was real far from home. An’ I felt like I wouldn’ be goin’ home for a long, long time.
…
Y’know, it’s silly. I still didn’ really have a reason to trust Shayan an’ the Stranger. But the more I listened to ’em, the more I wanted to believe ’em. That Orson Brisk had a part to play that nobody else could. An’ that’s what I was lookin’ for all along, with mama, wasn’ it? Somethin’ to believe in. A purpose.
With Mama gone an’ double-gone, if I walked away, I’d’ve just been a nearly-sixty-year-old man who throws a temper tantrum every time somethin’ happens that he don’t understand.
So I chose to believe in somethin’ new. To focus on the mission the Stranger gave me and to not fret about the rest.
They couldn’t teleport me away the same way they had earlier, because of some kind o’ convoluted thing havin’ to do with the Jupiter fellas, so they set me up with a train to call my own.
I told them that was mighty fine, because I preferred travelin’ on trains to bein’ teleported anyway.
I said goodbye to Shayan and the Stranger an’ charted a route through a brand-new world.
The first person I had to find was a fella they called Speedy Jame.
