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Twenty-One

Anna doesn’t immediately follow Tommy.

Because it’s not him. It can’t be. He’s dead and ghosts don’t exist. Come to think of it, she’s starting to doubt she saw anyone at all.

It’s late, she’s exhausted, and she’s spent hours subsisting only on adrenaline and rage.

It wouldn’t be a surprise if she started to see things and sense people who aren’t there.

Or maybe it’s just memories that Anna senses, swirling like the snow outside.

She and her family spent so much time aboard the Phoenix that every car has them.

Giggling with Tommy in an upper berth of the sleeper car.

Playing penny poker with a group of traveling salesmen in the club car.

The dining room is especially full of them, Anna realizes as she moves through it on her way to the rear of the train.

She’d sat at every table and likely eaten off every plate.

Looking at one spot, she remembers being there with her parents and Tommy on the Phoenix’s maiden voyage, when her overjoyed father offered her a sip of champagne. Its bubbling fizz tickled her nose.

At the table next to it sits the memory of playing Go Fish with Tommy and her mother.

Then there’s the booth in the corner, where they all ate dinner on what was to be their final trip aboard the Phoenix as a family.

The whole time, Anna had tried to muster the courage to tell them about Dante.

That they’d been dating in secret. That she loved him.

That nothing they could say would make her feel differently.

She never could bring herself to do it. A few weeks later, there was no need.

Anna shakes her head, pushing away the memories. They didn’t cause her to see things. Nor was it her imagination or a trick of the light or anything else people use to explain things away.

Someone is moving around this train.

And she’s going to find out who it is.

Walking with renewed purpose, she passes through the lounge and into Car 11. At Room B, she knocks on the door until Seamus answers. Peering at her in confusion, he says, “What’s wrong?”

Everything, Anna thinks. “Nothing,” she says. “Just making the hourly rounds.”

“I can do it, if you want.”

“No. I’ve got it.”

Anna continues down the car, rapping on Reggie’s door until he answers. “Making sure everything is okay,” she says.

In Car 12, she no longer bothers trying to explain herself. She simply knocks on all three doors in the car. Sal, then Lapsford, then Dante. When she sees that each one is in their room, she moves on.

It’s the same in Car 13 and Room A, where Herb gives another nervous peek through the cracked door. Anna sidesteps to Room B. Edith’s room.

She knocks.

There’s no answer.

She knocks again.

Still nothing.

Anna twists the knob and the door clicks open. She steps into the room, thinking that Edith might have fallen asleep.

The room is empty.

Back in the hallway, Anna looks to the last place she saw Edith. The observation car. In the center of the door is a round window that resembles a submarine portal. Fitting, for it feels to Anna like she’s just been thrust underwater as she approaches it.

Breathless. Panicked. Swept up in a dangerous current that takes her through the door against her will, unable to stop despite knowing what waits on the other side.

Edith.

Anna finds the woman on her back in the middle of the observation car, her arms flopped at her sides and both legs slightly bent at the knees. Edith’s eyes remain wide open, as if she’s staring at the night sky above, even though there’s no life behind them.

Wrapped around her neck is a cord from one of the drapes, which someone had used to strangle her.

The scene is so horrible that Anna’s forced to look away. A flinch that even Aunt Retta would understand. She turns her gaze to the car’s windows instead, seeing nothing but a curtain of snow, rustled by wind that whistles against the side of the train.

They’ve entered the heart of the storm.