The scream of the locomotive’s whistle cut through the
night air like a knife through flesh. The tracks lay barren, broken and
disjointed upon the ground, having been reclaimed by the soil decades before.
The whistle’s wail tore through the complacency of the present again and the
train came after it, sliding headlong towards disaster. A torrential downpour
erupted from the cloudless sky, both obscuring the moment it happened, but
suggesting why the engine left the rail that night so long ago. The impression
rushed through the end of its fateful course as a figure partially present in
both times at once, but truly a part of neither, watched.
A moment later and fifty years ago Tácharan lets go of
the rail and the heavens are again clear, the train vanishing back into the
past, and the sounds of the surrounding city replacing those of the death cries
of those who have not walked the earth for long
years. The mystery was partially solved. Among the wreckage of the past
had lain the body of the ghost he encountered the day before. The book the once-living
man had carried then had been flung clean of the disaster and survived. A
passerby had collected it, either as a grisly souvenir, or as a trophy from
their actions.
What mattered now was that it was possible that the book
and the secrets it held yet existed, despite all reports to the contrary.
Tácharan had a new quarry in his hunt, one many decades gone for others, but
entirely traceable for one who ranges across time as others would the streets
of the city. One day, and soon, the ultimate fate of the book would be
uncovered. Even if it were lost in physical form to the ages, the knowledge
within could be recovered by viewing pieces of its voyage through time. And it
would be.
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