The sounds of a town gone insane with rage clung to the wind, chasing after Jerroh Smith. It brushed against his back, chilling his soul in more ways than one. If the lynch mob coming his way caught up with him, there would be hell to pay.

And he wouldn’t blame them, either. Not after what he did. The girl back in saloon would never have another customer, let alone a man that didn’t pay to lay with her.

Those aristocrats in New England called this frontier too wild to be settled. The men drawn to that kind of lifestyle weren’t to be trusted. As far as Jerroh Smith was concerned, he fit right in. In fact, he even dared to say that there wasn’t a man in the Midwest that could stand up to him.

But a group of men, armed and furious; that was a different story.

It was 1886, a year that had marked forward movement in the West. For a man like him, that type of movement also meant opportunity.

Jerroh had stolen away the very moment the girl had gone cold. He slipped out of the saloon, but a scream from inside told him that he wouldn’t have much time to get away. Without a horse to carry his burden, Jerroh had run to the outskirts of town and had hoped to slip away into the trees.

He had only arrived that afternoon and hadn’t yet learned where things were. It didn’t come as a surprise to him to stumble out of the woods onto a train station platform. Most towns kept their stations a little out of sight for fear of the engines exploding. Thick rails that led too far for him to see were imbedded in the ground alongside the platform. There was no one in sight, even though a steam engine, complete with several cars in tow, was parked at the platform.

A quick look over his shoulder showed him the twinkling torches that the townspeople carried. They were heading his way. He must have left more of a trail than he realized.

Hopping onto the last car on the train, Jerroh Smith had planned to take his chances hiding on board the train until the mob had passed.

However, as soon as he placed both feet firmly onto the train, his fate was already out of his control.

WRATH

By D. Golightly

The air was thick. Not so thick that Jerroh couldn’t push through it, but he felt a sort of weight against his chest. Something about the atmosphere on the train was downright depressing. He noticed immediately, but with the mob at his back, he didn’t dare step back off.

Not that he could if he wanted to.

He had stepped on board the last compartment of the last car, the caboose. Bringing up the rear of the train, the caboose was largely filled with crates of supplies. Things that the conductor and steel workers on board might need during a trip across the plains of the west.

The caboose had been the closest to the platform, and therefore the first car that the lynch mob might search. Given that the posse had dogs with them, it wasn’t unreasonable for Jerroh to suspect that they might catch up to him rather quickly. They may continue on through the woods, looking for his trail, but they may also come on board the train. Since they had caught up to him so quickly he wouldn’t have stood a chance in the wilderness, especially since he didn’t know the territory.

Jerroh moved through the caboose carefully, making sure not to knock anything over. The crates were all unmarked, but he suspected that they contained things he may need to hide out for awhile. When it was safe to move more freely, after the mob had passed, he would take what he needed to make his way to the next town.

He came to the door at the far end of the caboose, which would lead him to the next car, and a much better hiding place. He gripped the handle and tugged, but the door wouldn’t budge.

It didn’t appear to be rusted shut. The wood that pieced together the border was in perfect condition, if not a bit dusty. There were no marking of wear and tear, leading him to believe that his was a relatively new car.

He tugged again, and again. Nothing.

Frustrated, Jerroh placed both hands on the handle and planted his feet. He took a deep breath and prepared to put all of his weight behind another final tug.

As his muscles tensed, he felt a shiver run down his spine. The handle began to glow red hot, burning his hands. He choked back a scream of surprise and tried to rip his hands away, but they were held in place by some unseen force.

The now white handle scalded away to skin on his fingers, peeling it back like orange rind. Tears welled in his eyes and confusion overtook his mind.

The unseen force that held his hands in place suddenly gave way and he stumbled back into the car, tripping on his own feet and falling down. He held his hands to his face to see the melted flesh dangling from his hands, horrified.

The door burst open and smoke entered the caboose. He expected to see another train car on the other side of the door, and he did, but not the one he assumed would be there.

Licks of flame had ensnared the entire train, now visible to him through the open door. The fire coated the wood and steel of the car before him, but it did not burn the timber away or char the metal. It flowed smoothly over the framework like a blanket, a gentle and warm blanket.

Heat vapors surrounded him and he began to sweat instantly. The thick air grew thicker with the heat and it pressed against his chest, forcing him to breathe harder. The confusion, which had struck him like a well placed slap, grew thicker as the air did.

With wisps of smoke circling his hands, a side effect of having his own flesh suddenly cook while still attached to his person, Jerroh managed to stand up. He nearly feinted from the strain, but he leaned forward enough to force his body to move toward the door.

He stumbled against the doorframe and his eyes went wide with the sight of the ground swiftly moving beneath him. Somehow, someway, without him realizing it, the train had begun to move. It had already picked up speed and looking down, passed the metal chains that connected the cars together, the ground was blurry with movement.

“What the hell is going on?” he muttered.

“Hell,” a voice spoke. “You use the word loosely, mortal. The fear of such a place should make you tremble and make you unable to speak the word.”

The voice surrounded him, making it impossible to determine where it had come from. As Jerroh leaned against the wooden doorframe, he felt another chill crawl down between the bones of his spine.

“What? Where…where are you?”

“Aboard this vessel, I am everywhere, mortal,” the voice continued.

“I don’t understand,” he replied.

Instead of vocalizing a reply that Jerroh could comprehend, the hiss of the train’s brakes squealed. The momentum of the entire train shifted, and Jerroh was catapulted through the doorway. He slammed into the door of the next car, shoving it open against his will, and tumbled into the other, darker car.

He rolled several times before stopping. His ribs, several of them now bruised from the sudden impact, burned with pain. He coughed as he tried to stand, and after two failed attempts, finally managed to get back up.

He looked to the door he had been thrown through and it slammed shut. The only light available to his eyes had been from the fire surrounding the outside of the train, and with the door now shut, he was in total darkness.

He felt the chill in his spine again, but this time it spread to his arms and legs. As opposed to passing quickly through his system, this time it remained constant. He felt his own nerves snap to attention and his entire body felt like it was being assaulted by an otherworldly force.

The car he was trapped in now had tables and booths running along the sides. He leaned against one to support himself, feeling the burning pain in his fingers once his scarred and seared flesh pressed against the tabletop.

“Who are you?” Jerroh Smith demanded. “What are you?”

A thin blue light pierced the rims of the windows along the walls of the train car, cutting through the utter darkness like a knife. Each window was outlined in the blue light, which matched the lowering temperature of the air. Jerroh fought against the constant chill in his nerves, watching with macabre interest at what was unfolding before him.

The window blinds suddenly flipped open, all of them at once. The source of the blue light was revealed to be more licks of flame, burning brightly and at such a high temperature that the fire had turned color. The edges of the flames were stark white and they tickled the wood frames of the windows, but didn’t dare come in fully, as if something kept them at bay.

Jerroh shivered again. He saw his breath condense in the air. It made no sense to him. His eyes told him that he was surrounded by fire, on a train hurtling through a vortex of heat. But his other senses told him that he was surrounded by the artic frost he had only heard of from travelers.

He fell into the center of the car, crumbling to his knees. The air was growing so cold that it was becoming difficult to breath. The puffs emitting from his mouth were growing less and less frequent.

At the far end of the car, opposite from the side he had been thrown through, Jerroh saw something softly push through the steel. A form, round and smooth, began to mold itself from the steelwork of the train car, amazingly never cracking or even making a sound.

He kneeled before the shape protruding out to him, mystified at its appearance. It came to just mere feet from his face and continued to carve itself out of the bent steel.

Soon it became apparent that the shape being formed was that of a skull, its top curved and smooth, and its bottom contorted into a mandible and teeth.

Jerroh watched, stunned and horrified. His muscles were sore and numb from the cold.

The skull opened its mouth and began to speak, drawing breath from the same source of power as the otherworldly flames surrounding Jerroh. “You have killed,” the skull said.

“Who are you?”

“The girl was not the first innocent whose blood you spilled,” the skull continued. Even though its rigid jaw possessed no tissue or muscles to use for speech, it somehow managed to form words. “You have led a life of murder, rampage, and cruelty. For this you were led to me. For this you will suffer.”

“Who are you?” Jerroh demanded.

“Jerroh Smith, tonight you will suffer torment compounded by the torment you have made others suffer. Tonight, aboard my vessel, you will know that vengeance has found you!”

“WHO ARE YOU?”

“I am the demon tasked with dispensing unholy justice. I am the spirit of vengeance.”

“WHO?!?”

“I AM THE GHOST RIDER!”

Jerroh found himself lifted into the air, suspended by that unseen force he had come to dread. His limbs were spread out, stretching his body to its limits. He hung in the center of the car, completely vulnerable to the steel skull that had spoken of his condemnation.

“My kind exists because of your kind,” the Ghost Rider said via his construct. “I ride this train in search of your kind, as your kind gives me purpose.”

“What…what are you going to do…to me?”

“That has yet to be seen. The voices of your victims have yet to be weighed in the judgment.”

“Voices?”

The artificial skull retracted back into the wall, its mouth open and laughing. Jerroh felt himself pulled along with it, racing toward the wall that the skull had formed from. He slammed into it, smacking against the steel as the skull melted back into a flat surface.

A door formed in the wall around Jerroh’s body and opened, with the unseen force shoving yet again from one car to the next. He felt the cold air burn away as blazing heat briefly surrounded him between cars. He glanced down just enough to see the red hot rails upon which the train rode, then he was shut away into the next car with darkness encapsulating him again.

He gasped for breath, feeling his chest practically cave in with every mouthful of air. He glanced around his new surroundings, unsure of what to do next. So far, this ghostly train had been a torturous place that he would only otherwise experience in his nightmares. He doubted that whatever his eyes would show him would be explainable.

A soft light arose at each table along the sides of the car. From those accumulated lights he could make out silky cloth draped over each table. Silverware had been placed at each seat and plates were at the ready to have food placed upon them.

“A dining car?” he muttered.

He tried to stand, but his knees both gave out. Jerroh looked over the tables, each set for a meal but with no one present to partake.

At first he thought that there would be no torment here, that his torturer would leave him be for a moment. His mental recess was short-lived; transparent souls began to fade into view, all seating at the dining tables.

The specters all stared at him, eerily watching silently as he returned their vacant stares. He attempted to stand again, and this time he succeeded. He looked around the room; there were dozens of them, all staring quietly.

“Is this it?” he laughed. “Huh? Ghost Rider? This is your big move?”

He took a few steps into the center of the car, almost giggling as he continued to trade glances with the spirits. “Impotent shadows? What am I supposed to…wait. Wait.”

Jerroh paused as he caught the gaze of one specter in particular. A waif of a woman, he tattered dress hanging from her thin body. “You,” Jerroh said. “I know you. I knowyou.”

The ghostly woman’s shadow looked away finally, as tears began to stream down her face. She noticeably sobbed, but her cries of anguish were silent. Her voice had been ripped from her the moment she had died.

“I remember you. Tennessee. Silver City. You were a maid in that hotel there.”

The other ghosts are her table began to bang their fists in anger, and if they had voices, he would have heard them jeering him. The girl continued to cry uncontrollably, her face now buried in her hands.

“You were pretty. Too pretty for that place. I remember you. You flirted with me while I played cards. After the drunks cleared out, I took you upstairs. We had some fun.”

“The fun you claimed that night cost her life,” the Ghost Rider’s voice spoke, shaking Jerroh’s unsteady stance. “You slashed her throat and left her for the innkeeper to find the next morning, after you had deserted.”

“She brought that on herself!” Jerroh proclaimed. “The whore couldn’t handle herself and she didn’t last the night.”

Jerroh felt something brush against his shoulder. He spun about, startled, to see that another specter had risen from his seat and came up behind him. This once-man, with a beard over his chest and ragged overalls, had anger seething behind his transparent eyes.

“And you!” Jerroh said. “I jumped your claim. You fought back. Not well enough, though.”

“His anguish keeps him here,” the Ghost Rider said from nowhere. “The anguish you will soon feel for yourself.”

Several of the lingering spirits, upon seeing one of their number gather the strength to approach their killer, began to leave their tables and approach Jerroh. Her saw them one by one come to him, nearly swarming him, and he recognized them all. He recalled each life he had encountered and then brutally taken in savage selfishness.

One tried to grasp him, but the capacity to seek revenge had left these shadows long ago. Another brushed by him, his bloodshot eyes mere inches from Jerroh’s face. Still another managed to graze him, and Jerroh swore he also felt drops of water touch his arm from the one he had drowned in a river in Mississippi.

“Back off,” Jerroh said.

Nearly twenty spirits surrounded him, all brushing by him and forcing him to stare directly into their faces. The dead flesh was see-through, but Jerroh was growing terrified of their obvious growing strength. Where one had only been able to lightly touch him before, another was now able to shove him.

“Get away from me.”

The shadow of a thick and burly man that Jerroh had swindled and stolen from, leaving him for dead in the dry desert, tossed a punch that mostly went through Jerroh’s jaw. He felt the force of the hit move him and he stumbled back, falling through a dozen spirits. With each soul he passed through he felt a tug at his own mortal coil.

The spirits wanted his life for their own, as if they could return to life by sapping away what drove him to breath.

“Get away from me!”

Miraculously still on his feet, Jerroh shoved through the swarming spirits. In their collective strength they had managed to regain a semblance of a voice, and the low muttering and guttural squalls soon grew steadily louder.

Within seconds, he began to understand what their ghostly cries were saying to him: “Guilty.”

The fingers of his right hand stung as they found the wall behind him. Frantically, he spun to face the doorway and pushed his way through. Immediately he was again assaulted by the fiery whirlwinds that surrounded the train between cars. He didn’t wait for the unseen force to take him over this time. Instead, he wrapped his singed hands around the rungs of the ladder and climbed above the maelstrom.

Roaring winds threatened to dislodge him from the rungs, but he held for dear life. Once atop the car he caught his first glimpse of what surrounded the train other than molten fire.

Where a forest would be, there were towers of sulfur. In place of tumbling hills, there were fields of lava. Where a night sky would hang, there was a dense fog of stifling soot.

“My god…”

“God has no place aboard my vessel,” the Ghost Rider’s voice told him.

The unseen force, the invisible hand of the Ghost Rider, whose power seemed limitless as it pertained to Jerroh’s fate, ripped the legs out from under the fugitive. He clawed for something to grasp on to and save himself from whatever horrific seen awaited him next, but there was nothing.

He dug his fingernails into the roof of the train car, but even as he scraped away his fingernails the unseen force was relentless.

He flew into the air, flying through the layers of fire and smoke that encapsulated the train. The shear heat ripped the oxygen from his lungs and he began to choke on the very air.

Spinning head over heels, the Ghost Rider yanked Jerroh Smith to the head of the train and sucked him down into the last doorway.

The door, like the others, swung shut and enclosed him to his final fate. Jerroh gasped from sweet oxygen, happy to find it in abundance here.

He lay on the floor for a handful of moments, grateful to be away from the monstrous Hell that was just on the other side of the cabin. He panted, wondering why God had forsaken him and tossed him to this foul demon.

“You seek God?” the Ghost Rider’s voice said. This time his voice was different; it was closer. “Ironic. You never sought His favor before. Mortal, you will never be capable of knowing the Savior’s embrace. If you were, you would not be here.”

Jerroh gasped for another breath. He turned his head and saw that he was now in the engine room. The clasps for the coal furnace that powered the locomotive were thankfully tightly shut. He couldn’t bear to look into the furnace, not when he knew what a true furnace could look like.

Beside the furnace were a pair of legs, and unlike the ethereal people he had encountered before, these legs were opaque. Solid and stout, these legs belonged to an actual person.

Finally, someone to help him.

He crawled to the legs, which were covered in leggings made from thick pelts. He clutched them desperately, determined to not let go of this man that would surely save him. If there was a person on this train, someone who could be here and stand the trials of the Ghost Rider, surely they would take pity on him.

“Please,” Jerroh begged. “Please, help me.”

A pair of hands gripped Jerroh’s shoulders like vices and pulled him up. The man was taller, taller than Jerroh. The hands were gloved in thick rubber mitts, the type that conductors wear when shoveling coal into the furnace. Even through the mitts padded the man’s hands well, his fingers still dug into Jerroh’s shoulders. He winced in pain as the man lifted him straight up.

His eyes closed from the pain in his shoulders, ribs, hands, and other places, Jerroh felt helpless and alone.

“Helpless and alone,” the Ghost Rider said. “Just like your victims.”

Jerroh felt tears form in his eyes. The voice was coming from in front of him. This man who he hoped might save him would more than likely condemn him.

“Your presence gave your victims their voice again. I heard what they chose to say. It is over, Jerroh Smith. Open your eyes and accept your fate.”

“No!”

“The fires of Hell will do what you are too much of a coward to do.”

Jerroh felt fire ignite within his own eyelids, and within seconds the thin veils of flesh that shut the light out from his pupils melted away. He now had no choice but to look upon the Ghost Rider directly.

The white skull appeared as it did in the beginning: the same contours and teeth, like a macabre sculptor’s dream. Dots of fire hung where eyes would be and an aura of blue and white fire surrounded the head completely.

“Now look into the same pain you forced upon so many others,” the Ghost Rider said. “Look…into my Penance Stare!”

Jerroh’s own soul became entwined with dozens of others as he felt his mind pour directly into the demon’s eye sockets. The pain that the nearly intangible spirits on the train, the ones he had killed and tortured in life, swept over him like a tidal wave.

He felt a noose tighten around his neck.

He guzzled gallons of water, with no hope of air ever returning to his lungs.

He lay in a pool of his own blood, which had poured from his body after being shot.

He experienced every second of a dagger being plunged into his heart.

Every manner of death he had dealt out over the years had returned to him, tenfold. He lost control of his bowels as the process overwhelmed him and his mind cracked.

“In my other life I was a priest,” the Ghost Rider told him as he maintained the Stare. “I felt the anguish of my flock, and was powerless to seek vengeance. I spoke of irony before. Ironic, is it not, that God has left both of us now?”

Jerroh heard every word and felt the hotness of his breath as he spoke. He choked on his own spittle as he endured the ferocious intensity of the Penance Stare.

The Ghost Rider’s laugh echoed in his ears as the tumultuous journey that was the Rider’s ultimate weapon abided. Finally, Jerroh saw through his own eyes again, even if it was into the bone face of the Ghost Rider.

“The sins of man are plentiful,” the Ghost Rider said, “and you, Jerroh Smith, have committed many of them. There is one sin, however, that defines you. One of the Deadly Sins, those that are the most damnable.”

Jerroh’s eyes had crusted over with the glazed look of a man destroyed. He heard, but was unable to reply.

“You served out death because it suited you. You did the things you do not because you are misunderstood, or because you are righteous in some twisted way.”

The Ghost Rider carried the limp Jerroh over to the furnace. He held the fugitive aloft with one hand still clasped tightly on his shoulder, and with the other he flicked open the iron door that sealed off the blazing coals from the cabin.

“You had no just reason to act so evil. You could not be redeemed. You killed out of anger, indignation. You, Jerroh Smith, are the worldly incarnation of Wrath.”

The Ghost Rider lowered Jerroh to the furnace, allowing the searing heat to cause boils to form on the man’s face.

“Now, as is my duty as the spirit of vengeance, you will feel my wrath.”

With one swift movement, the Ghost Rider plunged Jerroh Smith into the hot coals of the furnace, which burned with hellfire unlike anything else seen on Earth. The cries of agony were nothing compared to the satisfied laughter of the Ghost Rider, which echoed on in Jerroh’s ears.

As Jerroh succumbed to his final fate, overridden by the fury that was the demon conductor of the dark train, his own soul split into pieces.

The Ghost Rider’s locomotive, a product of his charge in un-life, had never appeared to the angry mob that was in pursuit of Jerroh Smith. The townspeople went about in search of him, but they would not find satisfaction that night.

Once Jerroh’s body had been obliterated within the cinder’s of the Ghost Rider’s furnace, all that remained was the cleaned skull of the fugitive. It appeared alongside dozens of others on the outside of the engine’s boiler, only visible to the future damned that the Ghost Rider would one day cross.

The red hot rails upon which the demon train coasted faded from view as the Ghost Rider’s heavy laughter dissipated into the night, his task of seeking vengeance for the innocents now complete.