It was a locomotive, and that malevolent dark cloud was boiling out of its stack, thick snakes of black steam. A whistle screamed, and Eric could feel the vibrations under his feet now, the rails trembling with the approaching weight, loose gravel rattling.

The train was moving faster than any he’d ever seen, and he was standing right in its path. He stepped to the side and caught the tip of one shoe on the rail, stumbled and almost fell as he lifted the tripod and scrambled down off the tracks and into the grass where the fallen leaves lay. When the locomotive thundered by him, he had to turn from the tracks and lift one arm to shield his face. Then the whistle split the air again and he looked up at the boxcars whirling by and saw that the train was colorless, all shades of black and gray except for one white car with a splash of red in the Pluto Water logo. The door of this car was open and a man hung from it, his feet inside the car and his torso extended, weight resting on the hand clasped to the edge of the door. He wore an old-fashioned suit with a vest and a bowler hat. As the car approached he looked at Eric and smiled and tipped his hat. It seemed like a gesture of gratitude. His dark brown eyes held a liquid quality, shimmering, and Eric could see that he was standing in water, some of it splashing over the side, glistening in the darkness that surrounded the train.

Then the train was by, an all-black caboose at the end, and the accompanying cloud lifted and Eric stood staring into the sky, looking at nothing. A car came down the road, swerving into the oncoming lane briefly as it passed the Acura, and the woman behind the wheel gave Eric a curious look but didn’t slow, went on toward West Baden Springs on the heels of a train she clearly hadn’t seen.

8

THE SENSE THAT CREPT over him then was unlike anything he’d ever experienced before, reality and the world he knew separating and speeding away from each other. He’d seen the train so clearly, had smelled the heat and felt the earth shudder. It had been real, damn it.

But now it was gone. Faded into the evening air like an apparition, and he was sure that the woman who’d just passed by had not seen a thing. There was not so much as a trace of smoke in the sky.

Even the wind was gone. That thought brought the spinning leaves back into his mind, and he turned to the camera and flicked open the display window. The leaves had been real. He had that crazy shit on tape.

He punched the rewind button and then play, jumped through some film from the casino until he reached the gloomy field and train tracks and the…

empty sky.

There were no leaves in the air on this tape. Nothing except the tracks and the trees and the tall grass waving in the wind.

He went back to the casino shots again, played the video all the way through, squinting at the screen, and again saw no trace of the spinning leaves.

“Bullshit,” he said aloud, staring at display. “Bullshit, you are so full of shit…”

“I thought a camera could never lie,” someone said from above him, and Eric lifted his head and looked up to see a young black guy watching him. He’d pulled up behind the Acura and gotten out of his car and Eric hadn’t noticed any of it as he stood there staring obsessively at a camera that was calling him a liar.

“I’m not certain,” the guy said, “but I think I was on my way to meet you.”

Eric cocked his head and gave a closer look. The guy was tall, probably six four at least, and very dark, with short hair and wide shoulders. Dressed in jeans and a white button-down shirt that hung loose and untucked.

“Kellen Cage?” Eric said. This was not who he’d expected to be doing a thesis on the history of a rural Indiana town.

“Ah, so you are Eric.”

“How did you figure that out?”

“In your e-mail you said you were working on some sort of film project. And I’m no detective but I can’t imagine there are many people walking around here with a camera like that.”

“Right.”

“What are you shooting?” Cage said, surveying the area.

“Ah, nothing. Landscape, you know.”

“Yeah? Well, you ought to park somewhere else, man, or at least close the door. Somebody’s gonna take it off, you leave it like that.”

Kellen Cage had walked closer, all the way down the hill, and he looked even younger now. Maybe twenty-five, twenty-six at best. His size was more evident down here, too. Eric wasn’t a small guy-six feet and one hundred and eighty pounds that had been pretty hard pounds before he’d left L.A.-but this Kellen Cage, taller and broader and knotted with muscle, made Eric feel tiny.

“So what’s the problem with your camera?” Cage said when Eric didn’t respond.

“Nothing, man. Nothing.”

“You were giving it one hell of a lecture over nothing.” He had his head leaned to the side, was studying Eric with a skeptical look. Eric didn’t answer, just set to work removing the camera from the tripod and replacing it in its case.

“So what kind of film are you doing?” Kellen Cage asked.

“Oh, just a minor thing, nothing worth talking about but something that pays, and considering doing more. What about you?”

He was struggling with the camera because his hands were shaking, and he hoped Cage hadn’t noticed.

“Been coming down here for months,” Cage said. “Working on a thesis for my doctorate up at Indiana. I’d like to get a book out of it, though. Came down and thought, man, there’s a lot here. Hate to waste it.”

“Focusing on the hotel?”

“Nope. All the historical attention paid to this place has revolved around the hotels and Taggart and Sinclair, but there’s a strong black history, too. Joe Louis came down here all the time, used to train here before big fights, thought there was some sort of magic to the springs. Swore he never lost a fight after leaving the place. He didn’t stay in this hotel, though-stayed at a place called the Waddy that was for blacks. And they had a baseball team made up of porters and cooks and groundskeepers from the hotels who played with the major-league clubs that came down here for spring training. Played well with them, is the way it’s told, beat the Pirates once. The black teams they had down here could’ve played with anybody.”

Eric finally had the camera in the bag. It took him a few seconds to realize that Kellen Cage had stopped talking and was waiting on a response.

“I read some about Louis,” Eric said. “Didn’t know the baseball stuff.”

“Oh, there’s plenty of more important elements to it, but I always catch myself telling the sports side first. Most of what I’m doing is focused around that Waddy Hotel. It’s important to bring these two hotels back to life. I just want to make sure the Waddy doesn’t get forgotten.”

Eric slid the camera bag over his shoulder, then went to pick up the tripod, dropped it, and nearly lost the camera bag when he bent over to pick it up. Kellen Cage reached down and took the tripod.

“You want to go on to the hotel and grab that drink as planned?” he said. “No offense, my man, but you look like you need one.”

“Yeah,” Eric said. “Yeah, I could definitely use a drink.”