Page 13 of Sinistram
“Do you see anything?” Mark asked.
Travis nodded. “There’s a swirl of spirits around the engine. They don’t seem angry or dangerous, but they’re staying close to the Otto, so they’re not just ghosts from the park.” He paused. “There’s one in particular, a man in his young teens, who seems particularly connected.”
Travis closed his eyes and concentrated. “Sadness. Loss. Despair.” He opened them to look at the engine. “It belongsin a memorial. I understand Ted’s reasons for keeping it, but I certainly wouldn’t want that energy near me all the time.”
“Look: salt.” Brent pointed to where a faint ring of white could be seen through the park’s crabgrass.
Travis looked out over the rest of the display. Brent heard people talking, children laughing, and live music from the direction of the food court. Either they weren’t picking up on the psychic residue, or it didn’t bother them.
They moved on, following Mark to stroll around the grounds. “I don’t know if other people have engines from different disasters, but I wouldn’t doubt it. Although they might not be as willing to talk about it,” Mark told them. “Thought you ought to hear his story for yourselves.”
“Yeah, thank you. Not sure what to make of it, but it’s another piece to the puzzle,” Brent replied. “And just in general, this show is pretty cool.”
“I know, right?” Mark grinned. “Once we make the rounds, we’ll get you fed and send you on your way. The food is awesome.”
The frontier village was a set of storefronts made to look like an Old West town where craftspeople sold everything from handmade soap to leatherwork and more. Women spun yarn on spinning wheels while talking to customers, who reminisced about the past.
Outside, a fiddler struck up a lively tune near where people carried plates of grilled meat and all the fixings to picnic tables.
They dug into their food, leaving conversation for later. When they cleared their trays and headed back toward the parking area, Brent bumped Travis’s arm.
“Penny for your thoughts.”
Travis chuckled. “You’ll get to hear them all the way back to Pittsburgh for free. But at the moment, other than thinking lunch was really good, I was considering how people take forgranted things from the mine could be haunted. It’s not a new idea.”
“Given the death toll, the places should be lousy with spirits,” Brent replied. “My question is, why aren’t they?”
“Because the mines and mills and factories employed their own witches.”
They both turned to look at Mark, who shrugged. “I heard about it from my dad and grandpa, but other people heard the stories, too,” he said. “I guess it was cheaper to hire a witch to dispel the ghosts than it was to fix whatever safety problems kept killing people.”
“That makes sense…in a sick sort of way,” Brent admitted.
“And now, after all this time, the old protections are faltering,” Travis said. “If the rumors are right and someone or some group is causing trouble, or there’s a bad moon rising, breaking what’s left of those spells might have helped.”
“More dangerous for civilians, but also for the hunters,” Mark agreed.
They drove back to Mark’s place. Travis and Brent put their backpacks in Travis’s car. “Thanks for everything, Mark. Let us know if you hear anything else,” Brent said.
“Still going to the Darr Mine today?” Mark asked.
Brent looked to Travis, who nodded. “It’ll be early afternoon by the time we get there. Might be nice not to be tripping over tree roots in the dark for once,” he replied.
“You need me to follow you down and lend a hand?” Mark asked.
Travis shook his head. “Thanks, but I think we’ve got it. Be sure to tell Donny and Father Leo we said goodbye.”
“Of course, if we get thrown around too much, we might need to call you about those two other mines with ghost problems,” Brent added.
“You know where to find me,” Mark told them. “Unless something dire happens, I’m spending the next couple of days in the garage, catching up on some repairs and bodywork.”
Travis and Brent waved as they pulled out of his driveway and headed to the mine. They had everything necessary in the trunk, including shotguns, rock salt, holy water, and a grenade launcher, just in case.
They rode with just the music from the radio for the first while. Brent was thinking about everything they had seen and heard, trying to fit the new information with what they previously knew, looking for the all-important holes in what they were missing.
“You still think we’re dealing with a tommyknocker?” Brent asked after they had driven for a while.
Travis nodded. “Mine lore is big on trolls, gnomes, and those kinds of creatures,” he replied. “Tommyknockers andcoblynsshow up in the lore from Cornwall, and the earliest miners at Darr would have been from Cornwall and Wales before the Poles and Slovaks came. For most of them, the remedy was the same: a binding spell and iron chains.”
