Chapter 19 #2
He yanked on the chain again, wedged one shoe against the wall and put his weight into it, but the thing would not come loose.
He missed the confidence he’d had in his Browning.
Glancing over at the crate of Maggie’s remains, he wondered how much of this she had anticipated.
How much had she known would happen? She should have warned him. He’d have been better prepared.
If he had believed her.
The lock tore out of the frame. The door crashed inward.
Malcolm saw the thing on the other side as it stepped across the threshold.
Mushroom pale, it opened its eager mouth with a crack of shifting jawbone.
Yellow saliva drooled from the corners of its mouth, sliding over black-stained canine teeth.
Violet screamed as the thing lunged for her.
Malcolm snatched at its coat, instinct overriding shock.
The coat had been camouflage, he realized, even as he yanked hard, dragging the beast backward with all his strength.
It fell to the floor of the baggage car, rolled once, then pushed itself up, rising sinuously, a snake from a fakir’s basket, as if it could mesmerize them with its presence alone.
A wave of stink and despair filled the baggage car.
“Get the child out of here!” Alfie barked at Violet.
Malcolm saw the boy then. Small and slight, he’d followed the creature in.
His pupils were pinpricks, as if he’d been drugged, but his fingers curled as he stalked toward Violet, ready to tear into her.
The look in his eyes made Malcolm think of the raven.
He tried to call to Violet, but the creature started toward him again.
Its features were smooth, with eyes and nostrils and a mouth that looked carved into its face.
Dark veins bulged from its skin, and Malcolm stared at the small, dirt-clodded branches that jutted from its neck and the thick root that bulged from the side of its head, rough gray tree bark showing.
“What the hell are you?” he asked, not expecting an answer.
But answer it did. Showing teeth. “An old friend of the family.”
The words sounded liquid in its mouth, strangely accented, and its breath carried a stench that made Malcolm’s gorge rise. Sorrow soaked into him as if he’d been bathed in it, and Malcolm knew it was unnatural. He’d felt it before, in the train station. It radiated from this monster.
He stepped back, lifted the heavy iron chain, and stared at the demon, if demon it was.
The train shook harder, as if it might rattle itself to pieces.
The rain pounded the roof and pelted the windows.
Beneath the roar of the locomotive, Malcolm could make out distant thunder, and perhaps another scream from the train’s engineer.
He’d entirely forgotten the shape he’d seen out in the darkness, and that first scream, but now he knew whatever had leaped on the moving train, it had been something like this thing.
“You don’t have to die,” the little boy said. He looked from Violet to Alfie to Malcolm, but it was almost as if he were blind. He looked, but did not appear to see them. Lost somewhere inside his mind, interacting with the world but barely aware of it. “Root didn’t come here for you.”
Root.
Malcolm looked at the creature. Saw it smile, spilling more of that foaming yellow drool.
The door to the baggage car had been destroyed, smashed off its hinges, but no conductor had appeared.
According to Violet, everyone in the first two sleeper cars was dead, but what about the third? Would anyone come to help them?
From the smile on the creature’s face, he didn’t think so.
The chain in his hands felt heavier.
Root ripped off its coat. Branches and knotted, rough-barked roots jutted from other parts of its body. There were grooves, as if things had been pressed into its flesh long enough to leave permanent impressions, like the fossils of prehistoric plants.
“Fuck me,” Alfie groaned. “How are we supposed to…”
The words trailed off, but Malcolm didn’t need for him to finish.
“Leave us be,” Violet announced, taking a step toward Root. The boy shifted to block her path. “We’ve done nothing to you.”
Root turned away from them. Malcolm felt a moment’s relief, but the thing walked toward Maggie’s crate. It spared not a single glance for Elias’s stinking corpse. As it lay its hands on the edge of the crate, Malcolm heard the scratching of claws on wood once more.
“I’ve tasted the blood of two dozen souls and more tonight,” Root said. “I’ve no need for yours. Go quickly, and remember the next time you kneel in prayer who really gave you life.”