Chapter 18
Violet went first. Alfie followed, carrying a wooden tray laden with several covered plates.
They had two freshly cooked steaks, cold leftover potatoes and vegetables, and half of a pineapple upside-down cake.
It was a bit of a patchwork dinner, but the four of them would make do with what they had.
Violet had warned the waiter—Wilbur—that they’d be back for coffee later, but by now, he seemed to have taken a shine to her, and promised he’d brew them a fresh pot.
The moment they stepped into the rearmost sleeper car, all thoughts of the meal they’d foraged left her. The little boy lingered in her mind, of course. He’d seemed aloof and yet somehow haunted. She would have pursued him immediately, except Wilbur had come out with the tray just then.
The cigarette smokers were still blocking the way. One of them had a fat cigar between his teeth and struck a match, trying to light it, swaying on his feet more from alcohol than the motion of the Imperial Limited, or so it seemed to Violet.
“Oh no!” cried the woman with them. She slipped down from the upper berth and snatched the cigar from his mouth. “You’re not smoking that thing in here.”
The man protested, laughing as he tried to retrieve his cigar. “Come on, now—that’s expensive.”
“I don’t care if it cost you a year’s wages. I’ll toss it out a window if you don’t promise not to smoke it here!”
The other man threw up his hands, his own cigarette pinched between his fingers. “I’m on her side. Cigs are one thing, but it’s not fair to the other passengers if you set off that stink bomb in here.”
They finally noticed Violet and Alfie, and again flattened themselves to allow passage.
The cigar man glanced down at Violet. “What do you think, little lady?”
Violet felt sick. “Take your pleasures where you find them. You don’t know what’s coming next.”
He crowed. “There you go! Advice from a beautiful stranger! Give me my cigar!”
They kept arguing, but Violet no longer listened to the words.
As she walked toward the door that would allow them to pass through into the second sleeper, she found her appetite had vanished.
Her throat felt dry. The image of the little boy’s hand on the edge of that curtain forced itself back into her mind.
With her hand on the latch, she paused.
“Want me to go ahead of you?” Alfie asked.
She exhaled loudly, then yanked the door open and stepped through.
The sour twist in her gut frightened her.
She thought she might throw up again, and she quickened her pace.
The door rattled shut behind Alfie. She could smell the steak under the metal cover on the tray, but instead of making her hungry, it added to the bitter roiling in her belly.
She held her breath as she hurried onward.
Unable to stop herself, she glanced down at the first lower berth.
Nothing moved behind that curtain. No child’s fingers tugged the fabric.
The tiniest glimmer of relief ignited in her.
Maggie Wise had hinted at dark things so many times, joked about witchcraft and shadows and things that crawled and flew and seethed with malice.
The man watching the house while she died had unnerved Violet, and she’d been terrified when he had attacked them.
But only the little boy with his bloodshot eyes had made her truly consider how much the world’s ordinary people didn’t know.
Relief washed over her as she put that first berth behind her.
“You all right?” Alfie asked.
“Good. I’m good. Let’s just get dinner to the boys. We kept them waiting.”
The words had barely left her lips when she caught her shoe on something hanging out of one of the berths on the left.
Violet stumbled and fell to her hands and knees, and Alfie barked as he nearly tripped over her.
The plates slid on the tray, but he managed to keep it from all toppling out of his grasp.
“What happened?” he asked.
Violet stared at the arm dangling from inside the curtains of that lower berth. At the dark streak on bare skin. The last thing she wanted to do was open that curtain, and she knew if she hesitated at all, she wouldn’t be able to do it.
She swept the curtain aside.
The white-haired man inside wore rumpled pajamas, stained with blood. The front of the pajama top had been ripped open, as had the chest beneath the cotton.
Alfie dropped the tray. Plates shattered, metal covers clattered. Violet was too horrified to scream, but she found she could not draw a complete breath. She stood, backing up against the berth behind her.
With the first breath she managed, she realized all the clatter had drawn no attention.
She glanced up and down the sleeper car. Not a single berth had been disturbed. Many were still in the dining car or the lounge, but surely this old man hadn’t been the only one already turned in?
On an upper berth, farther forward, the curtain hung partly torn. Something dripped over the edge, fat drops falling to the floor of the corridor.
“Violet,” Alfie whispered. “Keep going. Fast and quiet.”
He sounded frightened, and that terrified her.
Heart quickening, breath shallow, she marched forward as if nothing at all was amiss. Only that was a lie, wasn’t it? If nothing had been amiss, she would not have been striding so quickly, fighting the urge to break into a run, trapped by indecision between holding her breath and screaming.
A moan came from a lower berth on her right.
Her shoe squelched in sticky liquid on the floor, and she could smell it then, the metallic stink of blood.
If she’d slowed down, Alfie would have propelled her forward, but Violet did not need further encouragement.
The end of the car might have been thirty feet ahead.
She glanced side to side but not back—no need to get a better look at what they’d already passed.
The train shook.
A curtain rattled open, drawn back by those same long, thin fingers.
The second-to-last upper berth. An arm extended from within, too long, too thin, bits of what looked like thin tree branches growing out of flesh the hue of poison mushrooms. The thing in that berth began to unfold from within, one leg sliding out.
Violet screamed. She reached back for Alfie, only to find he’d stopped short, staring at the face of the thing that skirted to the edge of the berth.
Despite what he’d said, she knew that he wanted to turn and run the other direction, and maybe she would have wanted to do the same—might even have done it—but Malcolm waited in the baggage car.
Every muscle in her body wanted to run the other way—all but one. Her heart drove her onward.
She grabbed Alfie’s wrist and yanked him after her.
They stumbled forward, then ran. The thing on that upper berth caught her hair, tangled its fingers, dragged her close.
Alfie shouted, grabbed its wrist, and began to smash its arm against the edge of the berth.
Its fingers opened, and Violet reeled backward and crashed against the berth behind her.
No one emerged. No curtains drew back. She understood this was because the thing in the upper berth had killed them all.
Just before she bolted, she caught a glimpse of it, and saw that the thing wasn’t alone.
It had only reached out with its left arm.
In its right arm, the thing cradled a young boy in stained overalls.
Benjy, he’d said his name was. The boy had streaks of blood on his face and a vacant look, as if he slept with his eyes open.
He huddled against the grotesque thing’s pale, narrow chest, his thumb in his mouth like an infant.
Violet couldn’t breathe. Tears filled her eyes.
Alfie grabbed her around the waist and half carried her toward the door to the baggage car. He muttered to himself, words so fast and breathless they were hard to make out.
They sounded like a prayer.