walking distance from Carolina’s. It meant Opari and I could observe everything without the additional distractions and crowds of Union Station. Opari suggested we take Willie along, reasoning we might need an “adult” with us to explain our presence, if asked. I agreed and briefed Willie on the entire event, carefully leaving out any references to the Fleur-du-Mal.
We left Carolina’s house at approximately 2:00 P.M., saying we were on our way to the park.
“It looks like rain is coming,” Carolina warned.
“We’ve been wet before,” I said and tried to avoid her eyes. Even though I had good intentions in mind, I could feel the weight of my lies piling up.
We were outside the station by 2:30.
“Spread out and walk around,” I said, “and look for anything strange. Find all the entrances and exits. Let’s not go inside until the last minute.” I knew Opari and I carried our Stones, but if the Fleur-du-Mal was involved, I also knew they would be useless against him or any other Meq.
In a drizzling rain, the Orphan Train arrived at 3:00 sharp. A large group of people stood waiting at the platform, I suppose in order to get an early glimpse. The two dozen or so children on board were supposed to exit the train with their chaperones and then be taken to a nearby theater, where they would be lined up and looked over by families and individuals.
The three of us scanned the curious, leering crowd. “The faces of these Giza remind me of the Carthaginians,” Opari said sarcastically. “And believe me,” she added, “there was little welfare in their eyes.”
One by one, the children stepped down from the train. Most were in oversized coats and shoes. All were tired and hungry. Only the older children bothered to see anything around them. One in particular, about my height, wearing an old black raincoat and a knit cap pulled down to the eyes, seemed to scan the crowd incessantly. Their chaperones were mostly women and all were wearing wide-brimmed hats and long dresses. They looked worn down by the miles, the job, and the hard, wooden seats on the train.
“No bloody damn good, this,” Willie said quietly.
Opari leaned in close to my ear and whispered, “Why do you think Unai and Usoa have chosen such a train, my love?”
I thought back to Cornwall and Caitlin’s Ruby and what Trumoi-Meq had told me. Though he hadn’t been specific about location, he said Unai and Usoa crossed in the Zeharkatu in 1908. That meant they were in their early twenties now. I thought they must be acting as chaperones, probably through Reverend Bookbinder, but if Usoa had become delusional, that would be unlikely. I watched more and more children stepping down, orphans who had known no other life than scraping by on city streets. Carolina had said, in many instances the Orphan Train was the only chance those kids would have, but it didn’t look like much of a chance to me.
“Maybe someone chose it for them,” I said.
In any case, Unai and Usoa never departed the train. Minutes later, the chaperones had the children walking in straight lines and shuffling off to the theater to find out their fates. The crowd lingered, then drifted along behind. We waited. The two cars that comprised the Orphan Train stood empty and silent. In the distance, there was the grinding, gnashing sound of other cars being coupled and uncoupled.
“Do we want to be takin’ a look inside, Z?” Willie asked.
“I think we should,” I said and glanced at Opari. “But just us, Willie, okay?”
“I’ll be right outside, Z.” He winked and nodded toward the open door and the steps leading up to the train.
Slowly, I walked on board and turned to my right, entering the compartment ahead of Opari. I was expecting to feel the net descending, the sensation I always felt in the presence of evil. I felt nothing. Yet, there was a foreboding, a weight in the silence. Cheap magazines and dime novels lay scattered in the otherwise empty wooden seats. Odd bits of clothing and a dozen toys were strewn through the car—chipped, broken, missing parts. We walked to the end of the aisle. Neither of us said a word nor made a sound.
We crossed to the next car and as I reached out to open the door, I paused and Opari touched my arm from behind. I heard a strange sound coming from inside the compartment. My “ability” enabled me to hear a barely audible, irregular bubbling sound, somewhere to the back of the car.
“Do you hear that?” I whispered.
Opari pressed her fingers into my shoulder. “No, my love. I hear nothing, however…there is something…”
“What?”
“I smell death.”
I knew Opari’s instincts and “abilities” were vast and refined over millennia. She would not be mistaken and there was no more time for caution. I pushed the door open. Inside, it was a complete change from the other car. Deep shadows and occasional bars of light crisscrossed the long compartment. Over half the window shades were drawn. Blankets were bunched in most of the seats or thrown over the backrests. This was the car used for sleeping, probably because they didn’t have enough blankets for two cars.
We walked through, glancing in every seat on both sides of the aisle. Nothing. Then I heard the bubbling sound again. It was just in front of me, in the last seat on the left. I ran the few feet remaining and turned to look in the seat. What I saw made me sick with grief and rage and broke my heart with a deep blow.
It was Unai and Usoa. They were under a thin gray blanket. Unai was leaning against the window and Usoa was slumped in his lap. Unai looked asleep. On his head was a simple beret, the kind seen anywhere in Bilbao. He resembled my papa in his early twenties. He wore an old jacket and a white, collarless shirt underneath that was no longer white. It was drenched in crimson blood. Unai’s throat had been slashed just above the collar line, ear to ear. I couldn’t see Usoa’s face. Her throat had also been cut ear to ear, then someone turned her head at an angle and removed the lower part of her right ear, the one in which she wore the blue diamond. I bent over them to see if their backs had been carved with a rose, the Fleur-du-Mal’s signature. There was nothing on their backs, but he might not have had the time. The bubbling sound came from Usoa’s neck and the razor-thin slice across her throat.
Why? Why? It made no sense, no sense whatsoever. My mind raced. I thought back to the orphans as they stepped down from the train. I focused on every face. The kid with the knit cap and the long raincoat, the only one who kept scanning the crowd—
Inside, there was a small, shallow closet. Two axes were strapped against the back wall, along with a warning written in white paint: “FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY!” Crouched on the floor directly below the warning, a boy about seven or eight years old stared up at me with brown eyes the size of half-dollars. His mouth was stuffed with what looked like a biscuit. It was wrapped in cloth and he held it there tightly with one hand, probably to keep from being heard. In his arms, he was cradling a two-year-old, and his other hand was over the child’s mouth and face. The child was lifeless with open, fixed eyes staring blankly into space, and they were neither green nor brown, but blue. The boy had most likely witnessed the murders through the crack in the wall, and in his fear and terror, he had accidentally suffocated the child while trying to save it. The boy was unaware the child was dead. He was in shock, and yet once he searched the eyes of Opari, he relaxed, releasing his grip and his own consciousness. He fell forward and I caught the dead child in my arms, just as the boy let go his hold.
“Quickly—” Opari said without hesitation. “This boy needs our attention and protection.”
“Owen Bramley,” I said. “We should get to Owen as soon as possible—for the boy, for everyone. Let’s find Willie. He can get us to Carolina’s and Owen will know how to keep this among ourselves.”
I picked up a spare blanket from one of the seats and wrapped the dead child in it, then draped another blanket over the bodies of Unai and Usoa.
Opari held the boy in her arms. He was nothing but skin and bones, one of the poorest of all the orphans on the Orphan Train. She led the way out, but turned once and asked me a question. “Is this the way he usually does it?”
