Light as a Feather, Silent as the Grave

Chapter 26

Panic fluttered up from my rib cage to the back of my throat. Over the last few months I'd grown to distrust the dark. During my time at my dad's in Tampa I'd forgotten just how much more terrifying a situation could be when it was impossible to see anything.

"Maybe we should bang on the door and whoever just locked us in will come and let us out," I suggested, knowing that obviously our journey would probably come to an abrupt end if we were to do that. However, now our exit strategy from the boxcar was going to be tricky even if we sat in the dark for the next few hours until we rolled into Long Beach. Our fate would depend on someone wanting whatever was in the cardboard boxes around us, and being that powerless was the worst thing imaginable. Even worse than being caught and delivered directly to the local police.

Trey hesitated and I could practically hear wheels of thought turning inside his skull. The longer we waited to decide what to do, the less likely the yardman who had just locked us into the car would hear us even if we pounded on the inside of the boxcar with our fists for help. Rail yards were loud and sometimes bustling with train activity. My first inclination was to believe there wasn't any immediate danger in staying locked into the boxcar until we reached Long Beach. But I still hoped for Trey to suggest that we try to catch the yardman's attention before the train began moving again. Surely, there were worse things than spending three or four hours in a stagnant, pitch-black box, but I couldn't imagine what they might be at that moment.

"You've got that flashlight?" Trey finally asked, revealing that he preferred to tough it out on the train over risking detainment by the police.

Without being able to see what I was doing too well, I groped around in the plastic bag from the hardware store and found the flashlight I'd bought. It took several attempts of opening the battery panel and flipping over AA batteries before it produced a weak beam of yellow light that hit the wall of the boxcar almost forty feet away from me. The light cast a murky din on the rest of the boxcar, making it seem much dirtier and smaller than it had when the open door had allowed natural light in.

"Oh, that's not scary at all," Trey quipped sarcastically. "One ray of light just turned this boxcar into a crime scene."

Trapped, we made seats for ourselves on the floor with our winter coats and settled in for the ride as the train lurched back into motion toward the coast. Tense anticipation replaced the carefree spirit of the last two days we'd spent crossing the Southwest. There was no doubt in my mind now: we'd allowed ourselves to be imprisoned like gullible fools, and something very bad was coming our way. We were exactly where Violet's evil spirits want us—practically in a cage waiting for them to determine our fate. It was a sickening feeling that made it impossible to relax.

Trey leaned back against a cardboard box and crossed his outstretched legs. "I remember last year around this time, sitting in detention and telling myself I just had to endure one more year, you know? Just one more year of high school—nine more months spent staring at the clock in a classroom—and then I'd have my diploma and be able to do anything I wanted with my life. I thought senior year was going to be just a matter of keeping my head down and managing to not get expelled." He hung his head, and inhaled deeply. "I never imagined getting locked in a cargo train in Southern California while on my way to strip a high school gymnast of her evil powers."

The burden of the situation my friends and I had created back in September when we'd played Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board with Violet weighed heavily on my shoulders. Trey's playful bitterness was one of the things I loved most about him, and I wished to see a sparkle in his eye but knew that was too much to expect given the strangeness that had grown between us since our time at Esther's house. "I'm sorry," I said helplessly. No amount of remorse on my part was going to get us out of the boxcar more easily.