Ghost Train of Treblinka Page 2

  It was the first time Edmund realized they were dragging their suitcases behind them—a total of two bags on wheels and two across their shoulders. Edmund stood, gave the coffeehouse a last look.

  The name was Spitzenröster, something he found remarkably funny, but it only served coffee. Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t had a single bite to eat since he’d been on the train, and that was at least ten hours ago. Now, sitting here with his friends on the cusp of nostalgia, a grumble awoke in the pit of his stomach.

  “C’mon. I saw a place. It’s on the way to the hostel.” Edmund took the rolling suitcase from Sophie and said, “Please, let me. You guys must be exhausted.”

  She nodded. “We are. I don’t travel nearly as well as I did when my parents dragged us across the country.”

  Edmund left a crisp euro under his mug and led his friends down the street, toward the cemetery. Even though this part of town was rather upscale, he was surprised by the amount of graffiti found alongside the buildings. The neighborhood felt safe, but he remained oddly alert, never feeling truly at ease in an unfamiliar city.

  They passed through the cemetery, the sign reading Dorotheenstadt. From here the street opened up into a large park that ran parallel with a four-lane highway. Still, there were more people about than Edmund had ever seen. Salisbury was minuscule in comparison to Berlin.

  “Have you seen a lot of Europe?” asked Sophie, snatching Bill’s hand as they trundled through the crosswalk.

  Edmund nodded. “I landed in Paris. From there I went to Antwerp, then on to Amsterdam. Last night I was in Hamburg and now here we are.”

  “I’m sorry we got such a late start,” said Bill, adjusting his carryon.

  “That’s my fault,” Sophie chimed in, voice rising with irritation. “My dad . . . he just wouldn’t hear of me traveling at Christmas. My sis came in, then my grandma and then . . .”

  “Guys, it’s fine,” said Edmund, stopping dead in the street and turning around. Sophie’s cheeks were flushed red. “You’re here now, and we’re going to see Addey tomorrow, right?”

  “Have you heard from him?” asked Bill.

  Edmund just shook his head. “No. We’d talked about meeting at the train station in Warsaw tomorrow, but I’m yet to get him to confirm it.”

  “Isn’t this cutting it a little close?” asked Sophie.

  “Either way we’re going to Poland,” said Bill.

  Edmund nodded, pausing for a minute to get his bearings. He used the uncommonly tall university building, the Charité, to help lead him toward their lodgings for the night, and with it, a place to eat.

  “I haven’t been able to get Addey at all,” Edmund said. “He hasn’t returned texts, calls, or emails. Not even video chat, and he used to love doing that.”

  “How long has it been since you actually talked to him?” Bill asked.

  Edmund thought for a moment. The last time had been weird—a text message that said he was glad Edmund was visiting, but wished they could do something else besides heading to the eastern part of Poland and . . . snooping.

  “It’s been over a month,” he said.

  “Oh, wow,” Bill said. “I hope the guy is okay.”

  Edmund nodded, his chin to his sternum. “Yeah. Me too.”

  They stopped in at a quaint little restaurant called the Hirschhaus that was full of mounted deer heads. It was dimly lit, and the food, although not to Edmund’s taste, was rather good. At this point in their hunger, anything put in front of them would have probably been rated five stars. Sophie and Bill shared a large bowl of goulash, complete with beef and vegetables and heavily seasoned with paprika. Edmund had what looked like from the menu a heavily garnished hotdog but when it was brought out, tasted nothing like any hotdog he’d ever had. He simply stripped the mess off the bratwurst and ate it plain, then ordered a bottle of red wine for their table.

  “Gotta love Germany,” he said, toasting his friends.

  “Yep,” said Bill. “Drinking age is eighteen.”

  As they started walking again, Edmund assured them it wouldn’t be much longer, and that their hostel was just over the next hill. By now it was getting late, almost midnight, but Berlin hardly slowed because of the hour. If anything, there were more people out and about now than there had been when he’d ordered his first cup of coffee.

  “So why did you bring your expensive IR camera to Europe with you, Ed?” asked Bill. He was loosened up a little now, the wine warming his spirit, and he exaggerated swinging his arm as he held Sophie’s hand.

  “Addey thought . . . well, I thought, it would be neat to do the ghost thing again. You know, since you’re here too. Get the Nun Hunters back into active duty.” This last part he took on a serious tone, almost militaristic.

  “What’s a Nun Hunter?” asked Sophie.

  Edmund turned around, switched hands on the rolling suitcase. “You haven’t told her? Aw, c’mon, Bill. Are you embarrassed?”

  “What? Tell me,” insisted Sophie.

  “We had a little group back in high school,” said Bill. “Me, Ed, Adlai—Addey I mean, and a few other guys. We fancied ourselves paranormal investigators.”

  “Like those TV shows?” Sophie asked.

  Edmund snorted. “That stuff is fake. We were going to be better than that.”

  “What’s with the name?”

  Bill said, “Because a lot of the places we investigated were old Catholic churches. We were sure we’d see a dead, creepy nun floating around.”

  “Oh,” said Sophie, giggling. “I just assumed it was because you didn’t see anything. Get it? None Hunters?”

  “Very funny,” said Bill.

  “So you want to go chasing ghosts?” Sophie asked. “That’s it?”

  Edmund nodded. He could see the hostel now, nestled along a copse of squat little shops. Smoke puffed from the chimney and he was looking forward to being inside now that the wine was starting to wear off.

  “Could be fun,” Bill said. “I’m sure Europe has no end to ghosts.”

  Very true, Edmund thought. But he had one specific in mind. He’d mentioned it to Addey, as well, but it wasn’t received with as much enthusiasm as Edmund would have liked. Still, if they were to see Addey tomorrow, he hoped he could convince his friend to go on one last hunt. After all, Edmund had been interested in this particular haunting since the day he’d read about it.

  The German name of the hostel was so long with so many dotted letters that Edmund didn’t even try to understand it. A lot of German people, at least those under thirty years old, spoke English, and as such, a trend started where most every sign would be accompanied by the English translation just below it. The name of their hostel was simply, “The Gold Raven.”

  Edmund Riley’s first rule of travel: Sleep cheap. The big money on any trip should be spent doing things that were fun or interesting. Who cares how fancy the room looks in which you’re sleeping? This hostel was clean, but smelled musty. The beds weren’t even beds at all, but wooden pallets on the floor covered by a thin pad, a sheet, and a blanket. Edmund had his own room and Sophie and Bill shared the one across the hall. As far as he could tell, there weren’t any other occupants here which was good. He didn’t like the idea of the communal bathroom down the hall.

  Edmund said his goodnights and was sure Bill and Sophie were both sound asleep by the time he’d brushed his teeth and changed into his pajamas. For a little while he sat looking out the window, nursing a bottle of water he’d brought all the way from the train station in Amsterdam. He pulled out his phone, the soft, white glow illuminating his face in the darkness of the room.

  He was horrible at returning phone calls and texts. His mom and dad had both sent messages to wish him a Merry Christmas. He’d also gotten one from his eleven-year-old sister, Megan. He had replied to them all a day after New Year’s Eve. Even his quote-unquote girlfriend Samantha had sent him daily texts yet he only responded to the ones that were direct questions.

  Bored,
unable to fall asleep right away, he lay on the pallet and scrolled through his messages. He’d sent so many to Addey in the last month. The first ones, simply greetings and niceties that read, “Hey”, “What’s up?”, “You okay?” were all received, as noted on the delivery timestamp in his messaging app. The later ones, the more desperate ones such as, “Adlai, where are you?” and “We’re still meeting you on the 8th, right?” were never delivered, as if his phone had been shut off. However, Addey had managed to leave one, final text that made Edmund both sad and worried at the same time.

  True, he may have lost or damaged his phone, and if that were the case, Edmund had no other way to contact him. When Addey left in the middle of their tenth-grade school year, Edmund had failed to get another number.

  Around the same time Addey stopped returning texts he also stopped updating his social media. Even though he wasn’t as avid about keeping an online presence as most Americans, Adlai did check his messages regularly and post the odd photo of the night sky. He’d not logged into his account in over a month.

  It all troubled Edmund but hopefully the mystery would unravel tomorrow. Addey knew of the meetup. Even if his phone was damaged and he’d lost all contact information from his friends in America, he still knew they’d planned to meet in Warsaw tomorrow afternoon.

  As Edmund rolled over and shut off his phone, he fell asleep hoping his friend would be there, and that he didn’t have to carry such worry across the rest of Europe.

  Berlin to Warsaw

  January 8th, 2019

  Edmund Riley’s second rule of travel: Travel cheap.

  As he looked out the large, slightly tinted economy class window of the train, he couldn’t help but think the view was probably the same in first-class. Sure, they saw those gorgeous vistas two-seconds before the cattle in economy class, and they had slightly more leg room, but the price Edmund and his friends paid to take them from Berlin to Warsaw was but a fraction of what those stooges in the suits had proffered for a little extra space.

  It was a long trip, only a couple of hours less than it took to fly from Pittsburgh to Paris. His travel rule may very well change after seven hours in a steel box, zipping east through open fields and sudden, dense forests. Most of what he saw out the window was uneventful, reminding him of farm country back home, with less emphasis on commerce. It was a beautiful countryside, with gently falling snow along sloping hills, but Edmund cared more about the card game in front of him than the cows wearing blankets.

  Whenever a group of friends played cards, it was unspoken that they played to the least-common denominator. Edmund didn’t know how to play Rummy. Sophie nor Bill knew how to play Poker. But all three had mastered Go Fish at an early age. And why not play a child’s card game? Here they were, three children, barely twenty, racing across the European countryside without a care in the world.

  “I feel like the attendant keeps staring at us,” said Sophie, drawing up her cards.

  Edmund cast a glance over his shoulder and caught her a few rows up, pouring steaming tea for a gentleman by the bathroom door.

  He shrugged dismissively. “I think she’s trying to figure out what we’re playing. I wouldn’t imagine many people between Germany and Poland play Go Fish.”

  “Who you talking to?” Bill asked, and then took a long swig from his water bottle. “You haven’t stopped checking that phone.”

  “Samantha,” said Edmund, drumming fingers across its screen.

  They all knew about his girlfriend back home, but he hardly acknowledged her at all these days. Edmund was caught somewhere between growing up and staying a child, and the transition was weighing heavily on him. It destroyed most every relationship he tried to have. Besides, it wasn’t Samantha at all he was trying to text.

  “She’s a bit of a night owl, huh?” Sophie said.

  “What?” Edmund asked.

  Sophie’s eyes glanced up to the centrally-mounted television showing the train route, and in the corner of the screen read the time—it was early, just twenty minutes to nine o’clock.

  “Isn’t it about three in the morning back home?” asked Bill.

  “Right,” he said. “She just worries, is all.” They seemed to accept that answer and he was glad because he didn’t feel like piling on more lie, nor did he want to admit he was checking up on Addey.

  By now Edmund probably seemed like a crazy person with the number of texts and calls he’d attempted to make to his old friend. Bill, while also being a good friend, had only tried recently to contact him, to lay down a more concrete plan for meeting in Warsaw later today. As of now, it wasn’t feeling so promising.

  Bill was looking at Edmund, and in that moment, he was sure his high-school buddy knew the secret for what it was—Edmund was truly worried about his friend.

  “So how did the two of you end up together?” Edmund asked, feeling the sudden need for a change of subject. He turned to Sophie and said, “I remember you from school, but I never . . . I dunno, I never figured the two of you would date.”

  “I fell in love with his pictures first,” she said, looking up at Bill admiringly. He just grinned as he reshuffled the deck.

  Bill had been the school newspaper photographer when Edmund attended West King’s Cross High. Sophie was the yearbook editor. It was simple math that their paths would converge and, being the likable fellow that was Bill, and the hopeless romantic that was Sophie, the two started dating in their senior year. By this point Edmund had already moved to Salisbury, but he kept in contact with Bill.

  He remembered Sophie, vaguely, and the night Bill had texted and told him that the two were dating, he quickly pulled out his yearbook and found her—a plain, short-haired freshman in a black and white photo who wouldn’t catch the eye of chess club nerds. But now, Sophie was quite the bombshell and if Edmund was being sincere, actually out of Bill’s league. Still, he was happy to see them together, in a relationship that Edmund didn’t think himself capable of cultivating and maintaining.

  Sophie drew from the deck and that’s when Edmund noticed the tiny, yet pretty diamond on her ring finger.

  “So you guys are engaged?” he said, feeling a tiny twang of jealousy that he couldn’t explain. Was it because he wanted Sophie? Of course it wasn’t. What he wanted was to be mature enough to handle an engagement and subsequent marriage of his own.

  “We are,” she said, smiling proudly and holding up her hand and wiggling her fingers so that it caught the overhead lights.

  “Congratulations,” Edmund said flatly, but didn’t mean for his voice to come out so stilted. The smile quickly returned to his face.

  Around noon, lunch was served. Unlike the planes he’d been on, Edmund found it unique that the train employed a chef who, upon order, made whatever the passengers wanted from the menu. The European trip was Edmund’s first long-haul, as his dad had called it. Until now, he’d only been as far as Florida. And as such, Edmund was not what the fine folks on this train would call ‘cultured.’

  So for lunch, Bill had a beautiful cut of smoked beef, Sophie had a lemon fennel chicken dish with a Kaiser gouda roll, and Edmund had a large bowl of macaroni and cheese. To be fair, it had an odd, flaky cheese topping that he was certain he’d never seen in America, so his meal had a smidge of cultural cuisine to it.

  After the dining attendant had taken away their dishes and refilled their drinks, Sophie excused herself to the bathroom. No sooner had she left their little group did Bill whip a box out of his jacket pocket and place it on the table.

  Before Edmund could raise a question, Bill said, “So the ring Sophie’s wearing is a SuperMart special I got on sale for twenty dollars. But this . . .” His voice trailed off as he flipped back the lid.

  Inside was a ring, and even with Edmund’s limited knowledge of such things, he knew this was no twenty-dollar ring. The band was gold and the stones were diamonds, carefully arranged in a figure-eight. Bill didn’t work—he was still living at home, just like Edmund and Sophie, so it
was a wonder that Bill’s uptight dad had sprung for such a rock.

  “I’m going to make a real proposal at Dracula’s castle,” said Bill. It took Edmund a moment to catch his meaning, but then remembered that after meeting up with Adlai in Poland, they were going to shoot straight down to Romania and tour the fabled Vlad the Impaler’s supposed home.

  “That must have cost a fortune, dude,” said Edmund, admiring the array of sparkles.

  Bill made a derisive little snort, as if it didn’t matter. “We both agreed to save money for this trip and she insisted I not worry about another ring but I can’t have her going around wearing that cheap thing for the rest of our days. So I picked this up last week at Vanderbilt Jewelers.”

  “How’s your dad doing with all this?” Edmund asked.

  If he remembered correctly Charles Sanders was a ‘douchebag pain in the ass’ as far as Bill was concerned. Bill came from money (unlike Edmund whose dad didn’t start making a decent salary until the Salisbury move) and his dad lorded that over Bill’s head all the time.

  “He was fine when we were in high school. When I put off going to college for a year, he blamed her. And when we got engaged it made things even worse. But we made a deal: When I get back, we’re going to get married first, and then it’s straight off to school.”

  “She’s a great girl, really,” said Edmund. “I’m really happy for y—shit, here she comes! Put it away.”

  Bill scrambled to get the box closed and the ring back into his pocket before Sophie sat back down. Edmund, to stifle his grin, for he knew if he looked Bill in the eye he’d burst into a fit of laughter, began shuffling the deck of cards.

  “Has anyone been able to reach Addey?” asked Sophie.

  She called him by the nickname Edmund had given him long ago, although she never knew him well enough to say it. Addey had been an exchange student since his freshman year and Edmund had been his best friend. But halfway through tenth grade, Addey left unexpectedly. Something had happened to his grandparents but Edmund never got the full story, nor did Addey ever talk about it. Their relationship grew even closer through the magic of social media. It had been two years since Edmund had seen Bill, but four years since he’d seen Addey.