Welcome back to The Stain, an ongoing serial set in the world of What Remains, from Written Ward.
Whether you’ve been with us since that first trip into the cellar or if you’ve only just found your way to Fenwick, I’m glad you’re here.
This story is meant to be read in order, so new readers—or anyone who might need a refresher can catch the previous episodes by clicking on the links below:
Do Not Clean Glass
The Sock Monkey
One Week
How to Give Orders to a Dead Man
Right Down to the Minute
For everyone who’s following along, I hope you’ll share your theories or ideas about what’s going on here. Thank you for being part of this little community. Now, let’s get back to the story.
Nate had that far-off look again. He’s hearing it again. I shoved him. Hard. Maybe a little too hard? No matter. You have to take your fun where you can find it. And if a crisis isn’t the right time to push your cousin around, when exactly is?
“Ow—what?” His voice trailed off while he rubbed his shoulder. He was focused. Good. I needed his attention. “She’s back!” I pointed to the window. Grandma’s old station wagon was turning into the gravel parking lot. How angry was she?
We stepped closer to the large display window at the front of the store. Not right up against it, so she wouldn’t see us watching. She buzzed into a parking space and the entire car lurched forward as it jerked to a stop. That wasn’t good. That same woman had hauled all of us kids—I have a lot of cousins—all around Nicholas County. Riding in the back of her station wagon was almost like being on a roller coaster… especially if she was angry. And the way she’d just parked made me think we were getting ready for a trip to Kings Dominion.
She sat in the car for a long moment before the door opened. Her feet came out first to find the gravel. She gripped the top of the door with one hand, the frame of the car with the other, and pulled. It took her two tries to stand. Once she was up, she stayed there, one hand still on the door, like she was deciding if it was safe to trust her balance. The same woman who used to fling that station wagon through curves like it was a roller coaster now needed a moment before she trusted herself to take a step.
She reached into the car and pulled out a grocery tote bag.
“We better go help her,” Nate said, but I was already on my way out the door.
“Grandma!” I called out. “Is everything okay?”
She looked past me to Nate and then her eyes returned to me. “I don’t know, Hank. Is it?” She held the bag out for me.
The tote was warm and smelled like freshly made biscuits. I started to make a joke about how biscuits always make everything okay, but then I saw how her eyes were red. Instead, I said, “We’ve made progress.”
Nate caught up to us. She smiled at him and I couldn’t help but notice that he got a smile and I got chores.
“Nathaniel, will you help me up the steps?” She reached out and took his arm. I followed behind the two of them as we made our way into What Remains.
Nate led her straight to the back where our work table was still covered with papers, maps, and notes we’d scribbled since yesterday. At the center of the mess was the notice that Vallow had left behind.
I set the tote down and quickly gathered the papers into a pile. I buried the notice somewhere in the middle of the stack and pushed it all toward the back. No point in shoving visual reminders of my mistakes in her face.
“Hank, why don’t you get coffee started?” Grandma asked. “Nate, I brought some orange juice that I squeezed fresh this morning because I remember how much you enjoyed it when you were little.”
“Grandma, you didn’t have to…” Nate said.
“Now, hush.”
I busied myself with a decades-old Mr. Coffee that I’d inherited with the shop. Grandma and Bessie had bought it sometime during the Reagan administration and never saw fit to buy a newer model. “If it ain’t broke…” Bessie would always say. I smiled at the memory and then my conversation with Allison intruded. Old man Cottrill had died at exactly the time when Vallow had said he would be collected. That meant we had five days and—I glanced at the clock—ten hours and twelve minutes left.
I felt a hand touch my arm and looked down to see Grandma standing at my side. “And I brought strawberry preserves for you, Hank.” She gave me a smile. “But you’ll have to get the butter out on your own. I forgot to grab a stick before I left.”
“I… eh, I can do…” I couldn’t help myself. I leaned down and hugged her until she slapped my chest.
“I’m still mad at you, but that boy needs us, so it’ll keep.”
We all joined Nate at the table. I handed him a juice glass and set the butter down next to the biscuits that he’d placed on a plate. “Isn’t it kind of late for biscuits?” he asked.
Grandma and I looked at one another. “You’ve been gone from West Virginia too long. It’s never a bad time for biscuits,” she said.
I realized then that he’d never been to Tudor’s Biscuit World. That was an oversight that bordered on criminal, and if he lived past the week, we’d have to make a trip to Craigsville to fix it. No. Waiting was too big of a risk. I’d drive, obviously, but we’d have to do that sometime before the deadline, because I couldn’t live with myself if the man died before having one of their Peppi biscuits.
There are a lot of ways to make biscuits. Some people make them thin, with a toasted crust that’s almost crunchy. Others prefer them soft. Grandma made cat’s head biscuits, named for their size. She didn’t much like them that way herself. They were harder for her to chew, but she made them because she knew I loved those big biscuits. Grandma never said sorry. She baked.
I passed the plate to Grandma, then Nate, and took one for myself. I watched them fix their biscuits, but my mind kept drifting back to our plan. Truth was, it wasn’t much of one. It was, however, the only approach I could think of that made any sort of sense.
I didn’t want to rip off the bandaid again, but we were going to have to face this sooner or later. I reached into the pile of our research papers and pulled out Vallow’s notice. Grandma saw the yellowed slip of paper as soon as I pulled it free. She started to say something and stopped.
That was good. Well, maybe it was good. More than likely, she was waiting to see how deep of a hole I’d dig, but at least I had a chance to sway her to my side. “Grandma, you were right about the trains. They stopped coming through Fenwick in ’87. Nate found the paperwork showing the railroad later closed the line for good in 1990. Now, it seems to me, Vallow’s the kind of guy who’d follow an order into the grave… and apparently, quite a bit farther. So we show him the new orders. Timetables, abandonment notice, the whole official stack. He checks the dates, sees his route is gone, and tells Nate there’s no train for him to catch.”
Nate looked at the notice and then back to me. “You’re assuming the new orders cancel everything he’s already done. But he delivered this after the line had closed. There’s not even a train platform out there anymore, but he still signed this and set a pickup time for me. Even if he accepts your paperwork, what makes you think it cancels the freight he’s already agreed to collect?”
Nate was naming every objection I’d been trying not to say out loud. I leaned toward Nate and put on my best smile. “He’s scheduled a pickup. Fine. But the railroad has closed the line. No trains, no platform, no Fenwick stop. We put the paperwork in front of him and let him do what he’s spent his whole life doing: follow orders.” I glanced at Grandma. “For once, the government’s timing might actually help us.”
Grandma set her biscuit down and watched us both. Her eyes moved from Nate’s stained finger to my face. “You don’t know if it’s gonna work,” she said quietly. “You’re gonna bet that boy’s life on a piece of paper and some pretty words.”
I didn’t have an answer that would make her happy, so I just kept my smile and nodded.
After we finished eating, Grandma stayed in the back to pack up the leftovers and clean the few dishes we’d used. We’d offered to help, but she insisted we get back to work. We had to print out copies of all of the documents that would be needed in just a few days.
The old printer chugged and wheezed, spitting out page after page of abandonment records and employee timetables. Nate was hunched over the laptop, cross-referencing the dates when the B&O line officially ceased operations.
Suddenly, he jerked up straight. He looked off to the side as if he could see all the way to Holcomb. I put a hand on his shoulder to bring him back to the present. He looked up at me and mouthed the word, “whistle.”
“I know,” I said quietly, just loud enough so he could hear.
He started scrolling through a maintenance report, then gripped the edge of the table. His shoulders rocked in little uneven jerks, like he was riding over an old dirt road. The table didn’t move. Neither did the printer beside him.
“Nate?”
He looked down at the floor. “Can’t you feel that?”
Grandma had said Bessie’s daughter heard the rumble of an approaching train. Had she felt it too? Had Grandma ever seen her shake like this?
Nate had lost his place on the page. He slid his stained finger across the trackpad, searching for his place.
“It’s getting louder,” Nate whispered.
“That’s a good thing. It means this is almost over. We’re almost ready now, Nate,” I said as I gathered up the papers I’d brought with me from the back room. “Tuesday at 9:14. We’ll meet him where the old platform used to be and serve notice.”
“And I’ll be right there with you,” Grandma said from the doorway. I didn’t know how long she’d been standing there, but it was obvious that she’d overheard everything. Her face had that determined look she got when she’d decided she was going to get her way. “You’re not going to confront him without me.”
“Grandma, it’s too dangerous,” I said.
She didn’t argue. Instead, she walked to the worktable where the sock monkey lay. She picked it up and cradled it against her chest as she made her way back to the front of the store where we were. “Vallow took Bessie’s daughter. That little girl never got to grow up because of him and now he thinks he can take Nate? Maybe your plan will work, maybe it won’t, but I’ve got a plan of my own. I’m going to shove this sock monkey in his face and make him understand the pain he has already caused this family. He’s not going to cause any more.”
“Grandma, you need to put that monkey down. It might be dangerous. I haven’t had the chance to finish…”
“Hank Shaw, you need to hush. First, you’re not Bessie. You can’t just touch something and know all about its history. So don’t try to pass yourself off like you can tell me if this monkey is cursed or not. Second, it’s not cursed. I had this monkey decades before you were even born. If there was something evil trapped in here, I would know already. So shut your mouth. I won’t listen to that nonsense anymore than I’ll listen to you tell me I can’t go to the platform with the two of you.”
Over the next few days, I tried to talk Grandma out of her plan several times, but she wouldn’t even discuss it. As far as she was concerned, the matter was closed. So the three of us spent every day locked up in What Remains.
Bessie’s daughter had drowned while the adults were distracted. The most important part of our plan now was simply keeping Nate alive until Tuesday. I wondered if Vallow would even be able to claim him as freight if he wasn’t already dead by that point. I didn’t want to depend on that as an escape clause, but it certainly beat the alternative.
We kept the store closed during that time and treated Nate like he was trapped in bubble wrap. No, you can’t go upstairs. You might trip and fall down. No, you can’t go outside. A car might skid off the road and take you out. What are you doing touching that toaster? I’ll cook for you. Then there were the whistles Nate kept hearing and the rumble he could feel more and more often. You can imagine how sick all of us were of one another by the time Sunday afternoon came around.
“What about that place you guys told me about? The biscuit place. Why don’t we go there?” Nate asked.
A Tudor’s biscuit did sound like just the thing, but it just wasn’t safe. “We can’t, Nate. Tudor’s is all the way in Craigsville. That’s at least a twenty minute drive. It’s too dangerous.”
“No,” Grandma said. “The boy’s right. And it’s not twenty minutes. It might be fifteen, but if you know what you’re doing, you can make it ten. Maybe twelve if there’s traffic.”
“Yeah, if you’re driving, but we’re trying to be safe here, Grandma.”
“You’ve spent days tellin him what he can’t do. Let the boy have a biscuit.”
“He’s already had your biscuits, Grandma. Anything after that is going to be a disappointment.”
She gave me a smirk and then jingled her keys. “Nate, get in the station wagon. I’m takin’ you to Tudor’s. Hank, you can come along if you want. Or you can just stay here and fret. The choice is yours.”
This was ridiculous. The entire trip was too dangerous. Letting Grandma drive… I just didn’t even have words to describe how bad it was. I won’t even try. Instead, let me just say that she tore out of that parking lot like she was racing the Devil himself. I gripped the door handle as she backed out fast enough to make the tires squeal. “Sweet mercy, Grandma! Slow down.”
“I’m driving perfectly fine. You know that. So does Nate. I was hauling you kids around these roads before you could even ride a bike.” She turned left onto Route 20 and began to drive in earnest.
“Grandma, please slow down!” Nate said. “You don’t have to prove that you can make it to Craigsville in ten minutes. I believe you.”
I glanced over at her speedometer. It said she was doing twenty-five. The way the trees were whizzing past, I knew that she was going a lot faster than that. “When was the last time your speedometer worked?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about my speed,” she said.
“Hank,” I heard Nate say from the back seat.
I turned around so I could see him and he said, “I think I saw Jesus.”
“I know. He waved at me,” I replied.
“Will both of you hush. I have to focus. My eyes aren’t as sharp as they used to be.” She looked over at me as she said it and gave me the biggest smile.
Somehow we made it to Tudor’s. I wanted Nate to have the full experience so we went inside… or at least that’s how I presented it to Grandma. The truth was, I just wanted to be out of that car for a moment. Feel solid ground under my feet.
“What’s good here?” Nate asked.
“Depends on your tastes,” Grandma said. “A lot of people like the Peppi. That’s pepperoni and cheese on a biscuit. Of course, there’s the classic ham and cheese or you can get it with egg.”
“I think Nate should have the Politician,” I said.
Grandma gave me a confused look and asked, “Why’s that?”
“Well, his entire future depends on negotiating with Vallow. Seems fitting to me.”
“The politician? That’s a weird name for a sandwich. What’s on it?”
“Boloney.” Grandma laughed. “Boloney, egg, and cheese.”
We ordered, and Nate admitted Tudor’s was every bit as good as we’d promised. I enjoyed my Peppi right up until we reached Grandma’s station wagon. Then I remembered she was driving us home. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to keep that biscuit down. Grandma’s driving didn’t necessarily go well with a full stomach.
Tuesday came and we gathered in the parking lot of the Fenwick Post Office just after nine. A train stop had once stood here on the slope leading up to where Route 20 meets Routes 39 and 55. Now, there was only grass, gravel, and the sound of the Cherry River. The lights of What Remains looked warm and inviting from where we stood on the other side of the road.
I’d been gripping the printed abandonment records so hard the pages had crumpled. I made myself loosen my grip. Grandma stood beside me, her jaw set, cradling the sock monkey against her coat like a weapon. Nate stood on her other side.
“It’s here,” he said. “The whistle. It’s so loud I can’t hear anything else.”
The smell of creosote filled the air. Light from the pole lamp next to the Post Office showed what I thought was mist swirling in the night air. As I watched, it gathered and began to take on shape. It seemed to glow from within. Within moments, a train platform jutted out from the side of the hill. A mail crane formed beside it, and then a small depot building.
I thought Nate was going to fall over. He had both hands pressed over his ears. I couldn’t hear a thing. Just the river. I put an arm around him to steady him.
A joke about Nate looking like he’d just seen a ghost was right there. I didn’t make it. Instead I asked, “Are you okay?”
Before he could answer, Grandma said, “Look.”
I turned. Beyond the platform, a red lamp glowed on the front of a locomotive. It was moving toward us across the ground where the tracks used to be. A breeze carried the smell of machine oil to where I stood.
I glanced down at my watch: 9:11 PM.
Three minutes.
CHANGES to Written Ward
My schedule has recently changed and it’s had an impact on my ability to stay on top of this newsletter. This installment is a week late because of those changes.
I don’t like being late. It makes me feel like I’ve failed each of you and I don’t like feeling that way. Next week, I’ll publish the last installment of this serial and after that, I’ll continue posting updates, but probably on a monthly cadence.
This means that I’ll have to cancel—or at least postpone—future episodes of my Spoken Ward podcast and the Found Treasures updates.
You have my apologies. I don’t like these changes, but feel like they are necessary. I appreciate each and every one of you and the patience you have shown and continue to show me. Thank you.
Thank you for reading and for joining us from the beginning.
If this installment made you think of someone who might enjoy a strange little shop and the things locked away in its cellar, please consider sharing it with them. Personal recommendations are how Written Ward finds new readers.
Until next week. Mind the rules!
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