The Signal Beyond

The people of Beowawe said the man had railroad smoke in his veins. For forty years, he’d stood beside the tracks, swinging his lantern through the Nevada dust to guide the locomotives westward.

He was a flagman, proud and patient, until the day the coupling broke and sent a freight car rolling down the line. The accident left his legs mangled, twisted things that clattered when he walked. He retired after that, but retirement never quite took.

He lingered around the yard like a ghost that had forgotten how to fade. You’d see him out there at dusk, poking at the gravel with his cane, whistling tunelessly, eyes fixed on the horizon as if expecting something to come crawling out of it. Nights were for stories and the glow of the pot-bellied stove, where men swapped lies about coyotes and train robbers while the wind rasped against the windows.

Then the fires began.

It wasn’t unusual for Beowawe to catch flame in the cold season. Desert air and woodstoves made for easy kindling.

Most of the time, the volunteers doused the blazes before they took hold. But that winter, it was as though the fire had learned patience. It crept closer to the rail yard, smoldering in sheds, leaping to stacks of lumber, always hungry.

The nightwatchman, Harlan Jessup, a quiet man with a large family, was found burned black near the switching station. They said he’d gone in to save a stray cat that lived in the tool shed.

Brady was the first to find him. He’d been called from his bed by the alarm, the sky above the yard bruised red and orange, smoke rolling like surf over the rooftops. When the fire crew dragged Jessup’s body out, something caught Brady’s eye: a figure limping away from the tracks, the dull gleam of a metal brace on his leg catching the light.

The flagman.

Brady’s stomach turned cold. He knew the man’s gait, the slow rocking motion of it, the way he planted his cane before each step as if measuring the earth. But there was something wrong now, something too steady about the limp, too deliberate, as though being guided by an invisible rhythm only he could hear.

Brady followed.

The man’s house stood at the edge of town, half-buried in tumbleweed and cinder. When Brady forced the door, he found the crippled flagman crouched by an oil drum, whispering to something inside. The air shimmered around him, and for a heartbeat Brady thought he saw movement, like smoke swirling against the inside of the drum, taking shape, pressing outward.

“What the hell are you doing?” Brady demanded.

The man froze, his eyes wide and glassy. “You shouldn’t be here, Brady,” he said softly. “They’ll see you too.”

“Who’s they?”

The man smiled, a cracked, weary smile. “The ones behind the lights. Been calling me ever since the accident. Said they’d show me the truth beneath the rails.”

Brady’s gaze dropped to the floorboards. The house vibrated faintly, though no train passed this late. Beneath the floor, something pulsed—slow and deep, like a buried heart.

“You killed Jessup,” Brady said. “You set the fires.”

The flagman’s expression twisted. “Not me. I only opened the way. The fire needs doors, that’s all.” He looked past Brady then, eyes unfocused. “They ride the lines, you see. The rails don’t end in Reno or Salt Lake. They go down. Down where time don’t run straight.”

Brady lunged, tackling the frail body to the ground. It was like wrestling a bundle of sticks.

The man howled, thrashing, but Brady’s anger was stronger. He bound him with a length of cord, looped a noose over the beam, and forced him onto a chair.

“You know the nightwatchman had a family? A wife and five children,” Brady said.

“Yeah,” the old man croaked, “but how’s I ‘spose to know he’d try and be a hero? That ain’t his job.”

“And setting fires isn’t your job.”

The man wheezed a laugh. “You think this’ll stop it? Go ahead. Make your choice, too.”

Brady struck a match and touched it to the curtains. Flames licked up the fabric like eager tongues. “No,” he said. “You’ll make a choice. Burn or jump.”

He turned and left the house, shutting the door behind him.

As he stepped into the cold, the sound came, not a scream, but a long, metallic shriek, like a whistle echoing from deep underground. The ground trembled, and from the cracks in the earth came a faint orange glow.

The rails began to hum.

From a distance, a light appeared, a headlamp, round and blinding, gliding silently along the tracks toward Beowawe. Yet no engine followed, only the light itself, suspended in the smoke. The air smelled of hot iron and ash.

Brady backed away, heart hammering, as the light passed through him. For an instant, he saw the flagman’s face reflected in its glow, eyes hollow, mouth open in awe. Behind him, vast shapes moved in the brightness, long and jointed, coiling like serpents through an impossible sky.

Then the light vanished. The rails were still. The night was quiet again.

By morning, there was nothing left of the flagman’s house, just a black square in the dirt, and the faint impression of two sets of tracks that led nowhere at all.

And sometimes, when the trains pass through Beowawe, the engineers swear they see a crippled man by the signal post, swinging his lantern toward the dark, as if guiding something in that no living man ought to welcome.