The Burning

Like him.

The government and its machine would try to tone down that aspect or eliminate it entirely, might even go so far as to claim that a bomb blast from some terrorist organization was responsible for the damage to the White House. Looking at the video in front of him, such an idea seemed ludicrous, but the American people had been misled before and today's press corps were not nearly as diligent in their sleuthing as their brethren forty years ago had been. They were more likely than not to accept the party line, particularly if the White House handed out 'exclusive' photo ops and interviews, passing them out to the various media outlets.

The administration might still pull it off.

Or not. And his career would go into hyperdrive.

Assuming he solved this case.

He pushed all thoughts of public perception and the press from his mind and clicked through real-time shots of each affected room of the White House, looking for the president. If he'd been injured or killed, all bets were off. It would be an entirely different game then.

But there he was as the invisible train began to come to a stop in the Oval Office, taking out one entire wall so the room looked more like a horseshoe than an oval. The president was standing on top of his desk, face red and contorted with rage, screaming what looked to be orders, although the sound of his voice could not be heard through the chaotic noise issuing from the speakers. If this video or a still from it ever made it out of the bureau into the real world, Rossiter thought, the president would look like a complete madman and his political career would go down in flames.

An agent less scrupulous than himself might leak exactly that, once all the furor died down in a few months.

The president was knocked off his desk and fell backward, bouncing off his chair onto the ground, as the train finally came to a complete stop. The rug was torn and bunched up, chairs had been tossed aside and shattered, but the desk had only been pushed a little and was still intact. From behind it, the president rose to his feet. Marine guards and a phalanx of Secret Service agents rushed into the office, followed by the chief of staff, to whom Rossiter grudgingly gave a few points for showing unexpected bravery. They all made sure the president was unharmed, then, against his angry protestations, surrounded him with a human shield.

Everyone seemed to be holding their breath, waiting to see if anything emerged from the invisible train. Ghosts, perhaps. Rossiter was holding his breath as well, and as the minutes passed and nothing happened he grew more and more anxious.

One of the marines stepped forward, bayonet extended, and tentatively tried to touch the unseen engine.

But the weapon passed through open air.

The train was gone.

Twenty-six

In the Passenger Car

The train was moving, traveling, though Dennis couldn't feel it. There was no swaying, no rocking, no sense of motion. Neither the engine nor any of the other cars made a sound. He knew they were on their way to someplace, even if he didn't know where.

He walked through the passenger car, not surprised to find that every seat seemed to be filled. The faces he passed were all Chinese and were all pale and ghostlike. It was what he'd expected, but it was unnerving nonetheless. No one seemed to be looking at him-no one seemed to be looking at anything; they just stared blankly ahead-but he knew they were aware of his presence, and he was acutely self-conscious as he walked past them down the aisle. They envied him his life, and though their faces remained passive, he could sense the resentment rolling off them in waves.

He reached the end of the passenger car and pulled open the metal sliding door to the connecting corridor. Again there was no sound, no movement, and he felt off-balance passing from one car to the next through such a calm, even space.

He slid open the door on the opposite side of the connector. This car was empty. He could have any seat he wished, and he chose one in the center so that he'd be able to see or hear someone approaching him from either direction.

Dennis looked around. Aside from the ghostly passengers in the other car, he might have been on an Amtrak to New York.

No, that wasn't quite true. For outside the windows was a world filled with darkness. And though the floor was now solid beneath his feet, and the doors and seats he'd touched seemed perfectly normal, he could still sense in his fingers, like a tactile memory, the strange, sickeningly organic feel of the handle he'd used to pull himself onto the train and those first few seconds of disgusting springiness beneath his shoes as he'd entered the other passenger car.

Where were they going? he wondered again. This-ghost-train followed no tracks, so theoretically they could be headed anywhere.

The door at the front of the car opened, the one through which he'd entered, and a lone man approached slowly down the aisle. He, too, was Chinese, but he seemed different from the other passengers, more modern in appearance, though he wore strange homemade clothes unlike anything Dennis had ever seen before. His manner was muted and subdued- dead-like the others', but there was an intelligence animating his expression. Or, more accurately, an awareness. And he stood before Dennis and bowed before sitting down next to him.

Dennis moved next to the window. The air from outside felt cold.

'Mr. Chen,' the man said. It was a statement, not a question.

He had been summoned. He had been led here. The man knew his name.

'Yes?' Dennis replied. The fear revealed itself in his trembling voice.

His ghostly companion began talking, and Dennis listened as other voices filled his head, as the blackness beyond the window brightened.

And began to show him things.

Bear Flats, California

After devouring the diary (a somewhat inappropriate description since at one point Chester Williams had actually eaten the flesh of one of his victims), Jolene and Leslie asked Ned Tanner, the police chief, whether they could remove some personal effects from the Williams place. It was a crime scene, he told them at first, but after further entreaties, he admitted that investigators had learned just about all they were going to from the site. So with an officer accompanying them, the two women returned to the mansion on what was probably a wild-goose chase, looking for additional diaries that might shed some light on what they'd discovered so far.

Only it wasn't a wild-goose chase.

In the secret cellar where Skylar had been found, Jolene found another marionette made from stitched body parts lying atop two oversized leather-bound books that looked like family Bibles but that, she realized almost instantly, were diaries. Neither the diaries nor the marionette had been there before. She was sure of it. And a quick glance at Leslie's face confirmed her suspicions.

It was as if someone-something-had wanted them to find the books, had known they were coming and specifically placed the journals where they might easily be discovered.

'This is it,' she said for benefit of the policeman accompanying them.

'Yeah,' Leslie added. 'Anna May wanted us to go through these, but we were so shaken up after what happened that we just forgot all about them.'

The journals were heavy, so they each took one, declining the policeman's offer of assistance. Leslie lifted off the puppet first, and she grimaced as she did so, though she held it only by the strings and did not touch the object itself.

Skylar and his grandmother were still at Leslie's house. Jolene was afraid for them to go back home- it knew where they lived-and until she knew for certain that everyone was safe and out of danger, they were staying together. She'd even briefly considered letting Skylar go back with his father temporarily,