The words that she had spoke and the way she had sung them was enough to grab my mind’s attention. As much as the words disturbed me, they also soothed me to sleep. It was like the thought of a mother running her fingers through her child's hair and adding a good night kiss for good measures. For me, the latter was always soothing, yet disturbing all in itself at the same time.
“Good night, Maria,” I softly whispered.
I wasn't cold anymore, I had fallen into a deep, restful sleep, and I felt Maria was gone.
I was nodding in and out of sleep, almost in a dream state, when I saw Maria standing up on the railroad track. She was looking down on me wide eyed, with her peculiar grin. She looked to be a blur through my eyes, I had succumbed to the exhaustion and cold that I was enduring at the moment, which made me care less about her presence.
A rush of mystic energy passed through my soul, as the outside of the barrier began to slowly fade. The moon lit this new world up unlike on the other side where everything seemed so dark. The generally low laying fog seemed to act as an extra shield for my protection. My two new friends, the beasts that I had slain in the vines, accompanied me onto the railroad. The hound’s eyes seemed to glow some kind of silver in the night, as if something unseen may have overtaken their souls in the short distance that we had gone. The beasts that once seemed so intimidating at first, almost annoying, now seemed humbled.
The hounds sniffed around in this new world, occasionally locking eyes with each other and exchanging what seemed to be mad grins.
On Down The Line
In all this time I guess I never questioned why we never came across a street crossing. I must have ventured these tracks a good 25 miles by now and hadn't recalled a single one. As bizarre as the thought seemed, I began remembering the way the trees looked as I stared out the train car. I began studying the tree line and all the little details about it. The trees began to look more compacted together. I had a hard time catching a glimpse of anything outside beyond, but it seemed I could vaguely make out a glimpse of sunshine on the other side. This of course must have been my imagination, seeing as though the sky became thick with overcast, and began to lightly mist.
The sky grew darker, the farther down the line the long haul freight went, as the sun looked as though it had seen its last light of the day. The land the train had entered now, looked nothing like the world I knew a short time ago. That new world seemed alien to me, I was a newcomer there in that strange land. I took one more swig from the bottle that had become near and dear to my heart. I laid back in that broken down train car, resting my head on my rucksack and closed my eyes.
The Cross
I turned the second curve a half hour later, almost expecting another surprise on the other side. I never looked back at the strange cross that just didn't fit in with its surroundings. It seemed useless in its location, just as Opal did in hers. Opal was waiting to die much like the cross on the side of the track
The decision to head south was warm in my heart, the swamplands would be the beginning of my ambitions down yonder, along the was way. I had emptied my crudely labeled coffee can full of money and tucked it away safely in the liner of my boot. I decided to travel light, carrying everything in a rucksack and not concerned so much about food and shelter, I'd worry about that when the time came. The only thing that was any concern to me at that point was a pack of Marlboro cigarettes and a bottle of whiskey Gary called Navajo Headache that had no label. He always said was for a special occasion, this journey seemed special enough to me, the hell with what he thought about it.