Innocent Blood

He heard a small boy laughing. He saw a child’s legs, running between the railroad cars.

‘I’ll tell you something, Frank – this place is teeming with memories. I can feel them. I can hear them. All the people who rode on those trains, all the people who came to meet them when they arrived. And boys, Frank. All of the boys like Danny who climb up on to those locomotives and dream about being a grown-up.’

Which is something that Danny will never be, Frank thought.

They must have sat on that bench for nearly twenty minutes. The sun moved around so that it was shining through the windows of the nearest passenger car and Frank had to cup his hand over his eyes. He glanced at Nevile, but he was still sitting up straight, his hands clasped together, staring at nothing in particular.

‘Anything?’ Frank asked him.

‘Oh, he’s here, all right,’ said Nevile matter-of-factly. ‘He’s here, but he’s hiding.’

‘Isn’t he going to talk to us?’

‘Give him time.’

They waited another five minutes, and then Nevile said, ‘All right,’ and stood up.

‘What is it?’ Frank asked him.

‘He wants to talk to us. He’s in that old locomotive over there, beside the tree.’

Frank felt his heart beat quicken. Nevile began to walk across the tracks and Frank followed him. Halfway toward the locomotive he stumbled on the ballast and nearly fell, and he felt almost as if somebody had deliberately tripped him up. Ever since he had met Nevile, he had become increasingly aware that the world around him was jostling with spirits, some of them mean, some of them kindly, but most of them bewildered and lost.

They reached the locomotive and stopped beside the footplate. A plaque said that it was a Central Pacific 4- 4-0, dating from the 1860s. It had a huge bell-shaped smokestack and the steps up to its footplate were shiny and worn with age.

‘Are you going to go up?’ asked Nevile.

‘Do you think he’s really there?’

‘He said he was. I don’t have any reason to doubt him.’

Frank took hold of the first rung, but then he hesitated. ‘Crazy, isn’t it? I think I’m scared.’

‘Whatever’s up there, Frank – whether it’s Danny or not – it’s only a spirit. It can’t hurt you, you know that.’

‘Yes,’ said Frank, although he didn’t feel much more confident. He climbed up on to the first step, and then the next, and then he was level with the footplate. He was still half dazzled by the sun, so he couldn’t see Danny at first. But as his eyes became accustomed to the shadow he saw that Danny was standing in the far corner, his hair sticking up, his face pasty white. He was wearing a man’s shirt with faded brown stripes, its sleeves so long that his hands were hidden. He was barefoot.

‘Danny?’ said Frank, a catch in his throat.

‘Is he there?’ asked Nevile.

Frank looked down at him and nodded.

‘Go on up, Frank, I’ll follow you.’

Cautiously, Frank swung himself into the cabin. Danny stared at him but didn’t smile, almost as if he didn’t know who Frank was. It could have been the fact that it was so shadowy, but it felt distinctly chilly up here.

‘Danny?’ Frank repeated, trying to sound reassuring. He was only a spirit, and he probably wasn’t Danny at all, but he looked like Danny, and there was nothing Frank could do to stop himself from feeling protective toward him.

Nevile climbed up to join him. He looked at Danny intently, moving his head from side to side to examine him from several different angles. ‘Fascinating,’ he said. ‘You’d think he was real, wouldn’t you? Look at the shadows on his face. He’s not there, but he has shadows on his face.’

‘I won’t be Danny anymore,’ the boy whispered, scarcely moving his lips.

‘What?’ said Frank. ‘Why not?’

‘Danny’s better now. He’s still sleeping, but he’s better.’

‘You mean that I can talk to him? The real Danny? My Danny?’

The spirit nodded distractedly.

‘So when will that be?’

The boy looked away, as if he were thinking about something else, and didn’t answer.

‘When?’ Frank demanded, but Nevile laid a hand on his shoulder, as if to warn him to be patient.

‘Danny,’ said Nevile, ‘or whoever you are, I need to ask you some questions.’

Danny shook his head. ‘I can’t answer questions. I’m not allowed to.’

‘I want you to tell me about Dar Tariki Tariqat. I need to know who they are.’

‘Daddy hurt me. Every time he hurt me he said sorry but he always did it again. It was the same with all of the others.’

‘There were others? How many?’

‘I’m not allowed to say.’

Nevile went up very close to him, and leaned over him, so that he could talk very quietly into his ear. ‘Did you belong to Dar Tariki Tariqat? You don’t have to say it out loud. All you have to do is nod your head.’

Frank watched him and waited, but Danny didn’t say anything, and he didn’t nod his head, either.

‘You’re not Danny, are you?’ Nevile asked him. ‘You’re not even a boy. Can you tell me who you really are?’

‘No. I’m not allowed to. Daddy hurt me and he did all those things to me.’

Danny paused, and then he slowly swiveled his head toward Nevile, almost as if he were a life-size doll, and he stared at him with eyes that had absolutely no expression at all. ‘Daddy said that it was our special secret, for ever and ever.’

‘Listen,’ said Nevile, ‘I need to know if you were members of Dar Tariki Tariqat. You and all the others.’

‘They were hurt too, all of them.’

‘Is that why they want to set off those bombs? Is that why they want to kill off all of those television shows?’

‘It’s a secret.’

‘Shit, this is getting us no place,’ Frank said, exasperated.

‘No, wait a minute,’ said Nevile, and then he turned back to Danny. When he spoke, his voice was very soothing, without any inflexion, as if he wasn’t asking questions at all. ‘The place where you meet the others, that’s a good place, isn’t it, where all of you feel much better. You can talk to each other, you can tell each other all about the pain that you suffered when you were young. For the first time in your life, you feel as if somebody understands you and how much you hate the world for what it’s done to you. The way the world mocked you, when you were desperate for help.’

Danny was staring at him, unblinking. ‘Yes,’ he whispered.

‘When you were young, you saw all those families on television, didn’t you, but you knew that it was all lies, because nobody could be that happy, could they? On television, children had fathers who didn’t hurt them and frighten them and force them to do horrible things that they didn’t want to do. Children could sit at the dinner table without feeling scared all the time, in case they said the wrong thing, and got slapped, or beaten. But you knew that life wasn’t like that, didn’t you?’

Danny didn’t reply, but lifted his right hand and covered his eyes, peering out through the cracks between his fingers.

‘But then,’ said Nevile, so quietly that Frank could hardly hear him. ‘Then, when you joined Dar Tariki Tariqat, you weren’t alone. You met people who understood exactly how much anger you had inside you – people like you who could never forget and never forgive. You didn’t want therapy, did you? You didn’t want to adjust. Who wants to adjust to a society that can treat children worse than animals?’

Danny covered his face with his left hand, too. ‘Yes,’ he said in a muffled voice.

Frank said, ‘Nevile – where are you getting this from? Is this true?’

Nevile stood up straight. ‘I’m getting it, indirectly, from him. Or her, actually. You