Down World by Rebecca Phelps (beach read TXT) 📗

in and out of the station as if in a choreographed dance.

“I said I think maybe we should stay—”

“There it is!” Robbie said, pointing, and he wasn’t able to hide the relief in his voice. Piper sighed, her breath catching in her throat. I wondered how often this happened.

Robbie and Piper hadn’t heard me. Instead, Piper continued to drag me by the hand across two empty platforms to a very shiny old-fashioned train. It didn’t seem possible to me that this was the right one. On the outside, it looked as clean and polished as could be. I thought of the dilapidated library car and the abandoned dining car I had passed through, and I realized that this must have been what the train originally looked like. It had been gorgeous once.

Robbie and Piper both stood by the doors, as if waiting for them to open.

“Come on,” Robbie whispered under his breath. Piper took his hand.

My hands now free, I began furiously flipping through the newspaper pages, trying to find any evidence as to which dimension we were in. But it seemed hopeless. The stories were about people I didn’t know, sporting events with stars I’d never heard of, fashion pages full of people doing their best imitation of Elizabeth Taylor.

Should I suggest that we stay? What if I was wrong?

But then the doors opened. And out popped the head of a man in a faded red cap, wearing a jacket that almost looked like something from an old Confederate Army costume I had seen in textbooks when we’d studied the Civil War.

He looked worn and skeletal, his sharp cheekbones protruding beneath tired, somewhat haunted eyes. He didn’t even seem human, but almost like a CGI character in a movie. I was shocked when he looked right at me, seeing through me, it seemed, with an accusatory glare that made me shiver as I stood there.

I dropped the newspaper, my hands losing all control at the chill that ran through me from the conductor’s glare. His ageless eyes trailed from my head down to my feet.

“Your paper, miss.”

I swallowed the fear down into my throat. “Thank you,” I whispered, leaning down to pick it up.

“Do you have your tickets?”

“You have mine already,” Piper told him politely.

Robbie averted his eyes, looking down at his shoes. “I’ll pay on the train,” he said.

The conductor nodded, and stepped back to allow us to enter. Robbie took both of our hands and we all boarded the train together. My mind had gone blank by that point.

Once we were aboard, as Piper had promised, the train reverted to its former self. We were in the lounge car, where the books were scattered out across the couch. And the train began to lurch out of the station.

I looked down at the now-jumbled newspaper I held under my arm, the front page of the National section now on top. And the headline, in bold text, proclaimed, “New Minister of Treasury Appointed.” And underneath that, shaking hands with a blond man in a sharp military suit, was my mother—looking as she had in the hotel under the lake portal.

“Robbie,” I said, an urgency now making my voice loud and vivid. “It’s the world under the lake! Get off the train. We have to get off the train.”

“We can’t.”

“But we can get home from here,” I insisted.

“No, Marina, we can’t,” said Piper, her voice resigned and tender. She held my arm tightly as the train rumbled beneath our feet.

I looked desperately from her eyes to his, and then back again. They both had the same pitying but firm expression. Piper looked at Robbie, as if trying to decide whether to say what she was thinking.

Then his eyes fell down to the newspaper in my hands, to our mother’s picture, clear as day, staring back at him. But his stone face didn’t even flinch at the sight.

“You’ve both been here before,” I realized as the train began to pull away from the station. My shoulders slumped in despair. “And why can’t we stay?” I asked, though I dreaded the answer.

“Because,” Robbie explained, looking to Piper again for courage. “We’re not really here.”

CHAPTER 18

“What do you mean, we’re not really here?” I asked once we’d made it back to the little bedroom car.

Once again, Robbie glanced at Piper before he spoke, and she offered him a loving smile. It scared me how much he needed her. How lost he was without her.

“The train portal isn’t like the others,” Piper finally answered me. “You don’t take over your other self. You can’t interact with people. Like I said, most of them can’t even see you. It’s like you’re just . . .”

“A ghost,” Robbie finished her thought. An eerie silence fell between us all, and I could feel the weight of Robbie’s pain in every breath that escaped his lips, in the deep, haunted look that had taken over his beautiful brown eyes—the same shade as our mother’s.

“You’ve tried to stay somewhere before?” I prodded.

“When I was first on the train,” he nodded. “The first time it stopped. I didn’t know where I was. I just knew I had to get off the damn train.”

I bit my lip, not wanting to interrupt. I could see him as clear as day. Fourteen years old, skinny and alone. Scared to death. In some strange train station somewhere. “What happened, Robbie?”

“I stood on the platform, watching the train pull out of the station. I was just gonna let it go.”

Piper scooted closer to him on the bed, placing a careful hand on his knee, which he didn’t seem to notice.

“The walls started melting. The people . . .” His voice trailed off for a moment, not betraying a hint of emotion. “It was like they were painted there, and the paint was dripping. It was like the hands that hold the world up around you had decided to let it all drop.”

“My God,” I whispered.

“I ran for the train,” Robbie