As we stepped onto the wooden platform, the train’s door sighed closed, and it swept quickly away like sand blown from a dune.
“Where are we?” I whispered.
Finn smiled. “I think . . . I think we found paradise.”
53
The only time Finn and I had ever seen the wide-open sea was during the games. But this place was a long way off from the sand-swept serenity of Fire Island. In the distance, beyond the night-dark trees, there was a row of brick bungalows, and far beyond that, taller apartment buildings. But we weren’t in a neighborhood. The ghost train had dropped Finn and me in the middle of a beach.
The moon was low over the dark water, and the waves glistened silvery-white as they rolled across the sand. In modern day—now—this place was a large, crescent-shaped public beach. It smelled a little bit like the fish counter at the grocery store, and more subtly like Roumelade’s vegetable seaweed soup. The ocean sound was strange. It was a hushed roar, like a stadium of people cheering heard from a long distance away. On a hot summer day, the beach would fit thousands of people seeking to cool off in the sea. Now, though, there weren’t any people here. Just Finn, me, and the figments replaying a gilded past.
I hadn’t realized Finn was still holding my hand until his grip tightened.
The breeze blew over us and carried the sounds of an orchestra playing a swift, trumpeting march. I’d never been anywhere that had so many figments. Scratch that—so many happy figments.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” I asked.
Finn shook his head. “No. I didn’t know it existed. I wonder what happened to it.”
“Why do you always have to die for me to wake up?”
“What?”
“Every time we ride the ghost train, I don’t wake up until you die.”
I watched as his expression shifted—one moment open, the next closed.
“What happens if you don’t die?”
“I guess we wouldn’t wake up.”
“Hmm.”
I wasn’t sure I believed that.
“Come on.” Finn tugged me down the beach, and when I stumbled in the sand, he flashed a grin over his shoulder. At his smile, I stumbled again. He laughed, and his laughter blended with the sound of the ocean.
Ahead was paradise, and that was where Finn pulled me. It was the ghost of a hotel, but it was more beautiful than any hotel I’d ever seen. There were pathways on the beach, with meandering flower beds, all lit by Chinese lanterns and gas lights encased in colored globes. The glass globes were every color of the rainbow, and the lights winked and glittered as we followed their trail. The orchestra music was drifting over the sand from a band shell, and I caught a quick glimpse of moonlight striking a trumpet, and the bow of a violin.
The ghost lights led us to the hotel. In real life, I might catch the figment of the hotel in a blink, a translucent structure: there one moment, gone the next. Or it might only be visible out of the corner of my eye. But in these nighttime train rides, figments were as real as everything else.
The hotel was beautiful, like the tiered skirts of my ruffled satin dress. It was nearly as long as the beach, and it stood three, sometimes five stories high. There were circular towers and minarets. A covered porch wrapped around the legs of the hotel, and second-story verandas were covered with cloth awnings that flapped in the winds of a century ago.
The ghost hotel was overflowing with people. The porches were covered dining rooms. There was an ice-cream parlor. A confectionary. A croquet and archery lawn. There were carriages and horses on the beach. Thousands of people were dining, dancing, and strolling in the moonlight.
The men were dressed in light flannel suits and wore straw hats. The women were in long, elegant white dresses that caught the wind and looked like clouds skittering by. There were children digging in the sand, building castles that looked just like the hotel.
Finn laughed and pointed toward the sky. There was a hot-air balloon rising behind the hotel. It was attached to a rope. It hovered over the tallest minaret, and then it began its slow descent back to the ground.
“Imagine what it was like,” I said, watching the figments frolic, “riding the train here on the weekend. It’d be nice to leave everything behind in the city. They look happy.”
I nodded at a couple dancing near the band shell.
Finn’s mouth lifted at the corners. “Do you want to swim?”
I thought about the last night we’d ridden the train together, and how Finn had drowned in a Clark trap.
“No. How about . . .?”
