When the Transcontinental Railroad clawed its way toward Utah in 1868, crews whispered of the Forgotten Mile—a stretch of desert where tracks laid at dawn would vanish by dusk. Chinese laborers burned joss paper to appease angry earth spirits, while Irish dynamiters crossed themselves before blasting through red sandstone.
One sweltering June, a brash engineer named Cornelius Holt took command. He mocked the superstitions. “We’ll lay ten miles before the moon fattens,” he vowed, cracking a whip over exhausted crews.
On the third night, a Paiute elder appeared at campfire’s edge. His braids were threaded with crow feathers, his eyes black as tunnel mouths. “You drill into the Earth Mother’s bones,” he warned. “Fill the wounds with silver, or her breath will swallow your iron snake.”
Cornelius laughed. “Save your mumbo-jumbo for whiskey peddlers!” He tossed a silver dollar into the dark. The elder didn’t blink. “Your metal is dead. Her bones remember life.”
At dawn, crews discovered the rails twisted into perfect spirals. Cornelius ordered more dynamite. As the blast shook the desert, blood bubbled from the drill holes. Horses reared, screaming in tongues no man understood.
That night, the tracks glowed like heated iron. A phantom locomotive materialized, its cars stacked with skeletal laborers swinging pickaxes. Where it passed, the rails sang in Mandarin, Gaelic, and Shoshone.
By month’s end, Cornelius lay feverish in his tent, babbling of “iron teeth chewing the sky.” The crews fled, leaving the Forgotten Mile untouched.
They say every anniversary, the ghost train still runs. Gold spikes melt into mercury where it pauses, and the desert blooms scarlet with poppies no one dares to pick.
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