46 The CRNW (1/2)

It felt like ages since Phillip last had a cigarette, usually it would calm him, make him think more clearly but now it only felt like smoke in his lungs. Where did it go wrong? How did it happen in such a way that Anna suddenly just vanished from existence? Was it when he heard that voice in the forest? 'It will take more than a kiss to get her out here?' Who was that? What did it mean? And how dis this voice know Anna to begin with, unless, it was infact Anna's doing. Could she have been the witch all along? Playing him like an instrument, but if she played him, why did everyone else around him die, or be turned into a wolf? He was Anna's main focus from the start! She allowed him in, she gave him food, she asked him for the warmth of the embrace, she promised him she would help! Yet now, Phillip was empty, no father, no Suzette, no men with AK's to assist him, fuckol! He had nothing left! Accept Benson! But Benson was useless! A fat pampered pig ripe for slaughter! Benson could never help him sort this fokkin shit out!

”Phillip?” Benson broke his thought

”What!?” He subconsciously bit at him making the man shrivel.

”What now?”

Phillip looked into the darkness, there was really only one way to know for sure what really happened around here, and thats to go where the witch told him to go.

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”What do you know, of the Copper river and north west railway?”

”That piece of haunted shit!? Alot actually, i read up about this place before i came, and a lot of spooky shit is going on there”

Phillip turned to Benson ”Like what?”

”In the day of the so called 'copper and gold rush' of the Kennecott mine, many people from all around the country came to make a fortune. Back in nineteen oh seven the two hundred mile stretch of railroad was built by the Kennecott copper corp. It bridged yawning canyons, and crossed the ferocious copper river. During its construction thousands of workers were required to dig through snow avalanches and miles of rock, and it was as hard as it sounds to build, many workers died building that thing. But this railway and the Kennecott copper mine created alot of jobs, and it was a full thirty year boom. Yet practically over night it went bust, and the surrounding communities turned into ghost towns. McCarthy hung on due to some gold mines in the area, and only with the establishment of the Wrangell St.Elias national park did the area come up again”

”Interesting piece of history Benson, but explain the spooky part?” Phillip asked and started walking, the bar was a way out, drown your sorrows in alcohol.

”With all the workers who died building that railroad, and those who perished in the Kennecott mine, stories of phantom visions and screams of disembodied voices started surfacing” Benson explained as they got to the bar and sat down. Both ordered a beer and Benson continued the story.

”It is so bad infact son, that after seventy five years the government of Alaska doesn't want to build real estate there, the workers say they see tombstones appear then disappear all along the old railway, even some of the tools in their belts have vanished... Fuck, for a place to scare off the government, its properly haunted” Benson said sipping his beer. Phillip downed his and asked for another, when the barman gave him a second he nodded.

”The woods of Alaska are full of old settlements of Russian explorers, doomed by the cold, stories of animals who carry the souls of dead people around still surface today, sure you're interested in going there?” The thick moustached man asked.

”Maybe, is there any connection between that railway and the initials CRNW?”

”Why yes, Copper river and north west, CRNW are initials of that railway, but...” The barman chuckled.

”The workers who built it thought they came to make a fortune, later they realised they will work themselves to death there, which was true in some people's cases, so they gave it a nickname, Cant run, and never will”

Phillip's heart slammed his chest, how did he not take that into consideration!? The signs were there from the very beginning! In the plane already Suzette whispered a warning, even in his dream with that wolf!

'Now you caught up, took you long enough, soldier' the voice said in his head. Phillip felt his mind crumble, he was daft, blind, stupid.

'I wont call you stupid or daft soldier, but you were blinded from the truth'

”Who are you!?” He asked in his head.

'I already said, come to the Kennecott mine, and ill reveal everything'

Phillip looked up at the barman ”Do you know Anna?”

The barman frowned, then smiled wiping a glass clean.

”So you met her hey?”

”Who? What is she?”

”Shes a spirt, lost, the story goes her husband was working on the CRNW when he fell from a ledge to his death, they were staying here in Chitina when it happened, Anna apparently died of a heart attack when she heard this, but her ghost still remains here, waiting for her husband to return, every man who looks like her husband, she lets in but strangely all the men who has fell for her spell has died, just as her husband has” The barman had a smirk on his face when he put the glass down.

”Dont go near ledges or cliffs tourist, just a warning” He shrugged.

Phillip drank slowly from his beer, Benson said that railway crosses canyons, falling to his death seemed like a shitty way to go, and then there's Anna, she felt so real, he felt her warmth against him, all just a trick played on him? Or just a poor lost woman.

'I never give her the satisfaction, i always interrupt her' the voice said again.

”Why?”