Outlaw Train by Cameron Judd

house with a sign advertising meals. He rode toward it, though some voice in his dream consciousness warned him to ride on. He did not heed the voice.
    He then saw himself seated at a table, his luggage beneath the table and between his feet. He was the only diner in the restaurant, if such the simple room with a bit of rough furniture could be properly called. He was seated with his face toward the front of the house, his back nearly against a filthy and oddly stained curtain that hung from ceiling to floor.
    A plate of food was set before him and he began to eat. From behind the curtain came shuffling, whispering sounds, and the clump of a footstep. In the dream, Luke began to turn and look behind him. The curtain bulged toward him and something heavy and tremendously hard struck him brutally atop the head, sending him pitching to thefloor, blood and brains spilling. In the dream, Luke saw himself dead on the floor. He watched wretchedly as his corpse drained, quivered, and settled, then looked up to see Katrina Haus standing in the corner of the room, smiling as she watched his death.
    “Might you have a dead loved one you wish to speak with, Marshal?” she asked in her bell-like Germanic voice.
    With that, the dream vanished and Luke Cable of the real world awakened and stared breathlessly at the ceiling above his bed, welcoming the realization that what had just happened was nothing but nocturnal imagination. Even so, he reflexively reached up to gingerly touch the top of his skull, half expecting to find it cracked open like a dropped egg. It was whole, uninjured. His respiratory paralysis passed and he sucked in air as if he’d just run a mile.
    The rest of the night passed with little sleep. Each time Luke dozed off he found himself back in that Kansas prairie inn, hearing the noises behind the stained curtain and knowing what was going to come next. So he mostly lay awake, shunning dreams. He mentally listed the oddities of recent days to keep his mind occupied and awake.
    He’d never encountered such a flurry of strangeness: a mysterious severed leg beside a railroad track—not only severed, but impossibly mummified; an unusually beautiful young woman coming to town and promising to communicate with the dead relatives of locals, while meanwhile practicing the old and dishonorable profession of prostitution;an injured old man living in the attic of the emporium, hiding from the world the shame of his impairments; a traveling town marshal who had gone off to Kentucky and then seemingly vanished from the earth…
    “Well,” Luke said aloud to the night, “with things this strange, at least it’s not likely to get any stranger any time soon.”
    He stared across his bedroom and hoped it was true.
    Around dawn, he was very nearly asleep again, but his rest was broken prematurely by the persistent hammering of a fist against his front door. Luke rolled over, swearing softly, then got out of bed and pulled on his trousers.
    Dewitt Stamps was at the door, apologetic for having disturbed his boss at such an early hour.
    “Luke, there’s something I need to tell you,” he said. “It’s Ben Keely. I think he might be back in Wiles.”
    “Come on in, Dewitt,” Luke said, suddenly alert. “I’ll make us some coffee.”
    Dewitt concentrated on his coffee with the same intensity he once reserved for alcohol. After two cups and meaningless chatter about everything from the death of a local dairy cow to the need for a good window washing at the jail, Luke put Dewitt onto track.
    “Why do you believe Ben is back?”
    “I seen him.”
    “What? Where?”
    “Just outside of town. Near the jail, yesterdayabout half past four in the afternoon. I went to go to the privy and seen him through that gap in the trees. Riding, he was.”
    “What did he have to say for himself?”
    “Never got to talk to him, Luke. He was riding t’other direction and I don’t know he ever seen that I’d seen him.”
    “You didn’t