Deloksgsate

In a small town east of Chicago, there's a little amusement park called Deloksgate. It has a horror theme. When I was born, it belonged to a man who called himself Van Helsing. He had a name of his own, but no one knew it. It seemed like he'd been there forever, a living reference to Bram Stoker's book. We met on Halloween when I was four years old.

Van Helsing watched from the last car of the main attraction, the old steam train that rolled through haunted woods. His steel gray eyes followed me like searchlights as I laughed at an old woman in a black hat with a face covered in thick, green paste. I didn’t shriek or shy away like the other children. It was almost sunset, time to go home and beg for candy in our own neighborhoods while the park got scary enough for the big kids and grownups who would come later. I pouted because I was jealous of my cousin Cathy, who was old enough to stay all night. I looked away from the witch and stared back at the man on the train. One hand rested on the hilt of a long saber hanging from his belt. He knelt so that he could look me in the eye and asked for the pleasure of my company on the last ride before dusk. He winked at my father and said

"She will make a ghost rider one day." One huge hand, cold and pale as polished marble, reached out and helped me onto the back of the last car. We sat on the platform that extended beyond the roof. Only an elegant, wrought iron railing, draped with misty cobwebs, separated us from the empty air above the tracks. The engineer released the brake. An instant later, a wailing cry echoed across the park. It was a long, high, mournful note drowned out as it faded by the clatter of those heavy, iron wheels.

Later that week, while other kids made paper turkeys for Thanksgiving, I was still hanging on to Halloween. I demanded to go back. It was wholesome fun, not too expensive, and it had been the only thing to do since the dance hall closed back in ‘74. Mom took me. Dad was happy to see me taking an interest in the business that employed half the town. Van Helsing waived admission and showed us around. From then on I demanded to go every weekend. Mom thought it was a phase, but Dad, whose brother was a park actor, a ghost rider, was glad. He sat me down at the kitchen table and talked about the future.

"Your uncle Bobby makes enough to send his little girl to private school, and his job's not goin' anywhere. They can't ship fun parks overseas!" The phrase confused me. When Suzy Parker's dad lost his job, I thought, they didn't put him on a ship. He stayed right here, and after a while, Dad started calling him a wino. "You keep sending my princess back to that park," he said to my mother. “Crazy old Van Helsing might make her a ghost rider someday."

I kept going back. I spent most of my Saturdays there, the solemn shadow of a giant in the little black cape my father bought when he saw me playing ghost rider with my brothers' toy trains. Mom watched from a distance, but once assured that Van Helsing wasn’t pervert or a serial killer, she came around to Dad’s point of view. I followed him like a puppy, trying to make my small steps match his long strides. My eyes were darker, but they moved like his foggy orbs, always watching, never staying in one place for too long. I spoke as he did, deliberately and infrequently. It sounded comical in my shrill, girlish voice. Free passes began to come in the mail. I grew up small, thin, and quiet. When the jabber of my brothers and Dad’s career talks were too much, I would go see my widower uncle Bobby and his daughter Coraline. When we walked to school together, strangers thought we were twins.

In early November of the year I turned twelve, I was old enough to stay in the park after sunset. After a few nights of feeling wonderfully grown up, Van Helsing took me on a tour of the old horse barn that held the costumes. The masks worn by the actors on the midway all looked the way I thought they would. The uniforms of ghost riders past hung in neat rows on pegs, black capes and suits like an army of used clothes. Their twin dueling pistols, each engraved with a name, hung silent beneath the capes that hung like bat wings. Van Helsing glanced at them and turned away. He led me on, towards the wolf masks. He took one of the heavy rubber faces down from a shelf.

"But that doesn't look like the ones in the haunted forest! Could it be the light?" He didn't answer. That always was his way of telling me to figure it out for myself. He walked back over to the uniforms and tore open a crate. Inside was an oilskin cape. It had two layers, one that fell to the shoulders and another that hung down as far as my ankles. Under it was a velvety suit that looked like something the better-dressed gamblers of the Old West would have worn. There was a belt. No guns hung from it, but the short sword of a ghost rider dangled tantalizingly. There was also a small, sharp, silver knife and a set of black leather gloves.

"I will wait outside while you put it on," he said. He turned on his heel. The meaning of the gift sunk in. I flung myself at him in a bear hug. When he darted to one side, I would have fallen on my face if he hadn’t caught me. "Trainee," he said, "that is conduct unbecoming of a ghost rider." One lip twitched, and his coolness exploded. It was the first time I had ever heard him laugh. I changed. We got on the train.

The grinding of the wheels seemed ominous that night. It was moonless. In the theme park’s ongoing plot, these nights were the peak of the vampire clan's strength. The other ghost riders nodded to me as I climbed aboard. Van Helsing positioned me with my back against the door of the last car. It was the train's storage room, full of props. He stood in his usual place, farther out on the balcony. Half way through the ride, I heard sounds like footsteps. I turned to look at him. He had already drawn his sword. I pulled mine from the sheath as he placed a finger over his lips. He brushed back the hair that hung around his ears and listened harder. I was silent and still. He hadn’t told me the night's storyline before we boarded, so I was scared, afraid I would mess up the plot if I even breathed wrong. I fidgeted and stepped to one side, no longer along the center line of the car.

I felt air move near my face. Steel glinted in the light of two oil lanterns on the back of the caboose. Van Helsing roared and through me back against the railing on the opposite side of the car. I heard his saber ring when it hit another blade in the dark. There was a scream, a death rattle, and another clash of blades. Air hissed through teeth. He fell backwards. I tried to catch him and fell myself. When he didn't get off of me, I elbowed him in the back. He groaned. I pushed him off. I smelled blood. The stage blood packs I had seen all smelled like dish soap, but this was a thicker scent, dull, but without the sweetness. I pulled a candle out of the lantern and held it near him. I thought he might be playing, just another practical joke to scare me, until I saw that the vest of his suit was torn.
Van Helsing's costume was the most expensive in the park. The vest and shirt were destroyed. I put my hand against the hole. There was no plastic. Blood spurted rhythmically. I tore off my cape and pressed it to the spot just under his ribs. His eyes slowly opened. He tried to talk. Bloody froth rose from his lips. He managed one word.

“Real.” I swallowed hard and blew the silver whistle that hung around his neck. As I moved, my foot hit something soft. I turned, and there was a head. It seemed human except for its long fangs, still trying to bite my leg. I picked it up and beat it on the wrought iron railing until it stopped moving. I threw it down on the tracks and wiped my hands on my cape. The door at the back of the caboose opened, and a ghost rider stepped out. She unbuttoned his shirt and bandaged him as if she had done it a thousand times before. She blew what sounded like an S.O.S. The train picked up speed.

She shook her head. There was another whisper of movement. She took the whistle from around his neck and blew four more times. “Come on. Help me get him in there.” We pushed him through the door. She propped him against a box, and we locked it behind us. I picked up my sword. She draped the whistle around her neck. Then she struck at something in the dark. Two more ghost riders appeared. By the time it was over, I had a long gash running down one cheek. The first ghost rider said it would leave a scar just like the one that split one side of Van Helsing’s face.

Someone put a band-aid on the cut. Uncle Bobby called my parents and said I wanted to spend the night with Coraline. By the time I climbed the path from the midway up the hill to his Victorian mansion, all the other ghost riders had arrived. Most shook my hand. Two or three tried to give me awkward hugs. His housekeeper came out of the master suit into the parlor. Dieuthao Tran ushered me into the bedroom.

“Stupid man,” she murmured. “Finally reason to live after work. Could stop, but still ride train.” She shook her head.

“He’s not stupid!” I said. “The blade that hit him was aimed at me!”

“Not stupid for saving you,” she said.

“Stupid for send you to fight unprepared. You wish to see?” I nodded. She pulled open a heavy, wooden door, sighing as if she’d warned him every night for years.
At the back of a long room, surrounded by windows that went up to a ceiling as high as the roof of my house, there was a huge canopy bed. It was draped in red and gold.

“He loves you as I love my daughter,” she said. She pushed me towards the bed and walked out the door. I stared at the ceiling. Van Helsing's bedroom was the size of my living room with windows longer than I was tall. At one end was a huge canopy bed, draped in red and gold. He was propped up on pillows like a king, covered in thick, heavy blankets. He wore a black silk robe like the kimono I'd seen in a movie once. His skin was paler than I’d ever seen it before. There was a small chair beside the bed. I pushed the covers down a few inches and found his right hand. It seemed like there was fire inside trying to burn its way through. I sat beside him all night. Ghost riders came and went. I found out they ran their own blood bank and kept a storehouse of antibiotics for these situations. Some whispered to him, hoping he would hear. A tear occasionally found its way into the cut on my face like sandpaper. By Saturday morning, he was wandering from hallucinations to nightmares.
I helped Mrs. Tran take care of him.

"He see you here," said Mrs. Tran. "No see me. You bring back to us." I sat beside him and told him that what he saw wasn't real. When he tried to fight whatever it was, I got up and did it for him. I picked up the heavy sword where it was propped against the wall and swung it at the air. Around sunset, he finally fell asleep. "Fever break or die soon," she said. I nodded mutely. She shook her head again and told me she wished I would go home. She didn’t try to make me though. “Ghost riders too stubborn for me.” I sat down in the chair beside his bed. I drifted off when the sky began to lighten outside.

Light came through my eyelids. I shied away from it. I wanted to hide. No, I thought, don't. Sleep and you won't have to think about-

"Mary Isabelle," he croaked. My eyes snapped open. I looked at him. His face was the color of the ashes in the bottom of a fireplace. His steel-gray hair was streaked with white. He looked less living than dead. I burst into tears. "Why are you crying?"

"You almost died," I sobbed.

"I did." He didn't seem particularly surprised.

"M-my fault."

"This is not your fault. It is mine for putting you on the train before you knew." Remembering the train, his blood on my hands, on my cape, on the boards under our feet, I sobbed louder.
"Come here," he said. I sat on the edge of the bed and leaned back on the pillows. He gingerly laid one arm behind my head. I cried into his shoulder for a long time.

"Will you die?" I asked.

"I will not die today." I only remembered the others when I went to get him water.

"Dead, or awake?" Asked the housekeeper when she saw me.

"He is awake." Her eyes shifted from pity to rage. She went into the master suite. I followed nervously.

“Stupid! You endanger child! Even if only you die, she ready to inherit Deloksgate?! Fight demons every night?! You wish that for her before can drive a car?! At your bedside two days, swing sword in air when you see things from forest! I nearly lost head to child with sword! No eat! No sleep! Soaked in your blood! Too good for you!” Her fury overwhelmed her English and spilled over into what I assumed was Vietnamese. She left. I’d never seen anyone challenge him before.

“Will you fire her?” I asked.

“I will not punish a good woman and a friend for being more sensible than I. Besides, I could not manage without her. Without Mrs. Tran, I would not remember to eat. Besides, our attacker was a genuine vampire. Would you like to explain my occupation to her replacement?”

“Oh,” I said.

“That was my reason for bringing you along. How was I to explain the situation?” I didn’t answer. “Now that you know something of a ghost rider’s life, you are free to refuse it. Would you rather live as your parents and siblings do?”

“No.”

“You will have little time for social niceties. It is unlikely you will find a mate or have children.”

“No.”

“It is unlikely you will die in your bed.”

“No.”

“The day may come when you throw yourself at a sword for another.”

“No.”

“You will watch your friends and colleagues fall around you.”

“No.”

“If they are transformed by vampires or werewolves, you may have to kill them yourself. You may one day need to hold a gun over my heart, or your uncle’s, or your cousin’s, and pull the trigger. You may need to do the same with a stake. You will not be turned away?”

“I’ve made up my mind.”

“I chose well.”

Over the next several months, he healed. Mrs. Tran said he prowled around the house wanting to get back to Deloksgate as soon as he could stand. I came over when one or the other called me and said they were about to loose their minds. That was sometimes more than once a week. When I visited, Mrs. Tran made me big, home-cooked meals. I’d had Asian food before, but not with the care of grandma’s cooking. He was back to work within eight weeks, although he stayed behind his previously unused oak desk for a long time. After some months of rest, he spent three weeks of nearly constant swordplay getting his reflexes back up to speed. It was nearly spring when he decided he was fast enough to get back on the train. I fought beside him on Fridays and Saturdays. After what I’d seen the monsters do to him, it wasn’t hard to kill.
He taught me that Deloksgate was a place where two worlds ran together. He made me read scrawled translations of old tomes in French and German. I had to study every Indian legend about the place. He told me about the world on the other side of the trees.
"I have seen you in church, Mary Isabelle," he said one rainy afternoon.

"I've got to take communion and go to confession every Sunday. I want to make my peace with the Lord before I get on your train!" He laughed.

"That is why the park is closed on Sunday mornings. You have heard of purgatory?"

"I thought they decided it didn't exist."

"It does not, or not in the way they thought. If one could walk through the forest and come out on the other side, one would not arrive at Deloksgate's back fence. One would find a barren, blighted landscape wandered by creatures more bloodthirsty than those of the forest. On the other side, one would find the encampments of a great army. It exists to contain them, to hold them at bay.

It is said to have been commissioned by God three thousand years ago, though no one really knows how it began. They are like the ghost riders but more numerous and far less efficient. They say His legions are occupied with more important matters. He wanted to give humans the job, but He was afraid that they would finish it and turn to conquest. His solution was to give them a bureaucracy so complex that turning from their purpose would be impossible.

The board of directors, seventy strong, is scattered throughout the cosmos. They must all be present at a vote. No one has ever managed to gather them long enough to replace their incompetent general or begin a campaign. Both men and women fight, though they would say both drill. A few times in a generation, deserters find their way through the forest into Deloksgate. Most become ghost riders. Mixed with the African and European genes of this town is the blood of other worlds. It undoubtedly flows in your veins. The first woman ghost rider was your mother’s grandmother. She was born a long way from here.”

“He doesn’t talk about her.”

“There were some strange rumors surrounding her origins.” He smiled. “The survivors of the journey call the world they left 'Delok' or 'Deloch'. I knew a man once who made the trip from this side. He was bitten by a werewolf on his way home, so he could not tell me what he found."

Van Helsing returned to his old life, but he didn’t seem the same. He moved as quickly and surely as ever. After the first few nights, he regained the ice cold confidence that had kept him alive for so long. Maybe it was the white streaks in his hair. I felt like something changed. He missed meals, barely slept, and was still stronger, faster, and more obsessed with his work than any living thing I’d ever seen. Something was off, though. It seemed like one gear in that elegant machine had lost a tooth.

He taught me to hold werewolves at bay with a sword. I learned it the morning after a full moon, the day before Halloween. We practiced. I hit him on the head with a wooden sword hard enough that he barely kept his feet. It left a bruise. Even when he was exhausted and preoccupied, no human had ever gotten close enough to leave a mark on him before. He was proud of me. He made a public announcement that he’d been beaten up by a girl. Still, it made me nervous.

Seven years later, on a normal night no more dangerous than any other, Van Helsing was fighting a werewolf. It caught his cloak with one paw as it jumped backwards off the train. I went after him with three others. We followed a trail of blood, hoping against hope that he had kept the monster at arm’s length even as it pushed him further into the forest. We closed in as the moon began to sink and the faint glow of the morning lit the east. I heard low voices.

"We will leave this world together. Neither of us will be a suicide." Shots rang out. I found him on the ground, six feet from the body of another man. He had been bitten, and each had been shot with a silver bullet. One of his dueling pistols was in the dead man’s hand. He told me to take the saber and sheath I’d never seen him without. It was my inheritance. We held him as he died.

“Mary Isabelle,” he said, “Do not let them put the werewolf in the potter’s field. In life, he was my brother. Pray for our souls. Our mother named him Abendroth von Braun. As for me, God himself may call me Van Helsing.” He smiled at me, took my hand, and breathed his last. We left the clearing, covering our footsteps as we walked back towards the tracks. The forest was silent and still. I went up to the house, told Mrs. Tran, and reported a missing person.

The funeral was at Our Lady. The big sanctuary was packed. They said he’d been killed by a drifter, a stranger no one had ever seen before. We said we’d seen a man who seemed disoriented, maybe drunk, near the tracks. Van Helsing thought he might freeze to death on the cold night. He followed him into the woods, where the stranger must have managed to take one of his guns. Everyone knew ghost riders carry live ammunition. The Deloksgate Forest was huge, and bear sightings occurred, on average, more than once a month. We needed a plausible story, but we all felt a little bit guilty about telling the whole town he died like that. It would be a really embarrassing way for a ghost rider to go. Everyone said I was as generous as he when the local paper found out I was giving the killer a decent burial.

Van Helsing left me everything. There was a real name in his will, but there was also a clause that said he’d haunt me if I told anyone, not that I would have minded. I live in his big, old house with Mrs. Tran. It was hard without him, but the ghost riders saw me through. I started training with the saber. It felt too big at first, made for someone eighteen inches taller, but it seemed to fit better after a while, even though I’d stopped outgrowing clothes three years before. Months passed, and after a while they turned into years. People started calling me Van Helsing. No one’s known me as Mary Isabelle since I laid my mother in that same graveyard. I don’t see my siblings much.

I found out I'd inherited a small but well-kept castle in Austria. I've visited only once. I don't have much free time, but I'd like to go back someday. In Van Helsing' papers, I found no evidence that the house and park had changed hands more than once before, when the original owner, who founded Deloksgate in 1889, died mysteriously. He passed it on to his twenty-two year old eldest son in 1897. His only other living child, a young man of nineteen, was also on the payroll.
There was an old picture of the two brothers together. One was Van Helsing. It wasn't an ancestor he took after. There was no mistaking the lines of his face, his bearing. The way his eyes flashed was his alone. I couldn't swear to the identity of the other, but he looked like the man I had found in the forest, cured of lycanthropy by a silver bullet. On the back, he had written that the younger one disappeared three weeks after the picture was taken. They'd been separated for the better part of a hundred years.

I'm in my forties, but I'm not aging the way the kids I went to school with do. My hair is turning gray, but not much else has changed. I've yet to feel the urge to find a successor. Tonight is Halloween, and I see the back door of the caboose opening. He steps out on the balcony. His uniform is perfect. His sword is shining. The white is gone from his hair. He smiles. Behind him stands his brother. Coraline’s mother and so many others have come home tonight to ride my train. This is our family reunion, the night when the gate to our world opens most easily for terrible things that want to come through. We’ll all fight together, living and dead. He looks at me, glowing with pride, and says I’ve done well. I give the signal, and the train moves off.