The wind is rushing by. My ears can barely hear anything else
now. Screams and heat is all around me. Warm sticky blood is trickling down my
forehead and into my eyes. As my vision is becoming blurrier, I can tell that my
arms are broken in multiple places. I try to get to my feet, but my legs are
trapped underneath one of the many seats strew about the upturned car. Everything
goes a searing white for a moment or perhaps hours. I can’t think straight,
only the pain is at the forefront of my mind. I think about my family, will I
see them again? The cacophony slowly becomes quieter, perhaps I’m becoming used
to the horrible sounds around me. Then everything fades to black.
I am once again conscious, but I’m no longer in the train
car. Every day it’s the same nightmare, well as much as one can have a
nightmare during the day. It’s been the same thing over and over again for 150
years. One may be wondering how that’s even possible? I do hope you’re not
thinking that I’m a vampire. Don’t be silly; those only exist in the minds of conspiracy
theorists and people who watch to many teen heartthrob movies. I’m a ghost, and
not one of your crazed I want to destroy the world kind of ghosts; no I’m just a
want to live my death in peace kind of ghost.
Perhaps you’re wondering how I came to have this affliction?
Well I had the phenomenal delight of dying on a train bound for California
during the tail end of the California gold rush. I was on the B&O headed
out to St. Louis to pick up my wife, Margaret, and our daughter, Emeline. We
would have then continued all the way to California together. I had been in New
York City working out some of our finances and other obligatory errands. But my
train, never made it to St. Louis, somehow it got accidently diverted in
Grafton, West Virginia and came to a crashing halt in the middle of the night near
Columbus, Ohio. The aged conductor, who must have been losing his eyesight,
never saw it coming.
All our bodies were brought to Union Cemetery, a quaint plot
of land on the Olentangy River. There were about sixty of us on the train when
it happened, most were asleep, which I imagine made it a more peaceful way out.
Not the hell and horror I woke up to as the last minutes of my life were being
wrenched from me. But that is all in the past now. Now I rest during the day in
my grave and come out at night to watch the stars and consider the big
questions of the universe. I really never thought it would be like this at all.
You might be wondering: does everyone become a ghost when they expire? Simply
put, no. I can’t say where most people go, but it isn’t here. And I doubt
staying behind has anything to do with unfinished business. Everything I had
needed to do was taken care of. I feel entirely satisfied with how my life
went. Sure, I might have liked more time with my family, but they would be set
with the insurance payout.
-V-
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