As they neared the tracks, a curious sight appeared: an engine and two cars backing toward them down the tracks from the west.
'It's our train,' said Doyle. 'It's our train.'
Hurrying to catch up to Jack as he climbed the embankment, from a distance they saw Larry leap from the cab and meet Sparks as he gently laid his burden down. Larry fell to his knees. The single, simple cry Larry gave out when he saw his fallen brother rent the still surface of the night like a spear.
Doyle and Eileen made their way up the slope. Larry knelt on the loose cinders, Barry in his arms, brushing an unruly cowlick of hair off his forehead.
'Oh law, oh law no, Barry, oh my boy, look what they've done, look what they've done to you ... look what they done to him, Jack, oh my boy, my poor boy.'
Sparks stood over them, eyes lowered, face hidden in shadow. Eileen turned away to bury her sobs in Doyle's shoulder.
Larry shifted, and a slice of moonlight fell across Barry's face. Doyle saw Barry's eyes go up to meet his brother's and focus there. They seemed to momentarily sustain the dimmest filament of life.
Barry moved his lips. A sound came out. He repeated it.
'Fin ... fin ... ish,' Barry had said.
Then Barry drifted back down into the void that now possessed him.
Tears streaming from his eyes, Larry looked up at Jack,
who gestured to himself. Larry slowly shook his head. Sparks nodded, understanding, gave a look to Doyle, and moved away. Doyle put both arms around Eileen and guided her far-ther down the tracks.
Doyle looked back over her shoulder. Larry bent down to kiss Barry's cheek. He whispered something to him and then slid his soft hands around his brother's neck. Doyle turned aside. Eileen trembled violently in his arms.
A short time passed. Doyle and Eileen looked at each other, but the intimacy of their shared distress felt insupportable. She looked away. Doyle sensed she had of necessity retreated to higher ground inside herself. He wondered intuitively if the resulting gap between them would ever again be breached.
Larry closed Barry's eyes. He cradled the body, rocking it slowly as if trying to soothe a child to sleep. Sparks stood over them, looking back toward Ravenscar. Dancing lights, lanterns, great numbers of them, moved along the tracks in their direction.
Doyle took Eileen on board the train. She collapsed onto one of the seats. Through the windows, Doyle watched Sparks crouch beside Larry and speak to him. Larry nodded, lifted up his brother's body, and carried it to the front of the train, out of sight.
Doyle heard shots, moved to the rear of the car and out onto the platform. The lanterns were a quarter-mile away. Bullets whistled through the air, pinging off the steel. Doyle steadied the rifle on the handrail and fired at the lights until he'd emptied its chambers.
The wheels of the engine engaged, and the train accelerated, pulling away from the pursuit. Before long, the lanterns faded to pinpricks of light that disappeared entirely into the darkness.
Eileen refused the brandy Doyle offered. She moved somnolently to the berth in the rear, turned her face to the wall, and lay silently, without moving; sleeping or not, it was difficult to tell.
Doyle did not spare himself a glass, draining it in two pulls. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror above the bar. The haggard, muddied, bloodstained visage staring back at him resembled no human being of whom he had memory. There are certain untoward advantages to shock, exhaustion, and grief, thought Doyle; a point is reached where one is no longer capable of feeling anything.
Opening the connecting door, Doyle climbed along the side of the tender, hand over hand along the guard line to the engine. Barry's body lay on the floor of the cab. Jack's cloak served as a shroud; a boot extended from under its cover, rocking casually with the motion of the train. Larry stood at the throttle, staring straight ahead at the rails.
'We're ten miles from the main spur,' said Sparks over the roar of the engine. 'The track's clear ahead.'
'London?' asked Doyle.
Sparks nodded.
Doyle looked out at the desolate, downy moors, alien and unforgiving as the surface of the moon, lifeless as the body under the shroud. The cold bite of the air whipping through the open cab felt cathartic.
'I'll be inside,' said Sparks.
Sparks climbed back to the passenger car. Doyle loaded coal into the fire from the scuttle, refilled it from the fuel car, then stood by in silence, ready to offer support only if called upon.
'You never heard him sing,' said Larry after a while, without looking at him.
'No.'
'That boy could sing like an angel. Had a voice like to ...'
Doyle nodded, waiting patiently.
'He told me to go.'
'What's that, Larry?'
'We drew 'em away from the ruins—that was the idea. Half those bastards went down 'fore they got near us. But a few doubled back behind. Had us pinched, dead to rights. He tells me to run. I says never, no sir. He says Jack needs least one of us can drive the train. I say it should be him. He says he's the oldest, and I has to do what he tells me.'
'Was he the oldest?'
'By three minutes. He kept the gun, see. And I got off that hill....' Larry wiped his eyes with his sleeve. 'Took a mess of them buggers down with 'im, didn' he?'
'Yes, he did.'
'We talked about it occasional, you know? Which of us would go first. He always said it would be him; Barry, see, he took chances. And he weren't afraid of the end, not at all. From what Mr. Sparks taught us, he always said maybe death was just the start of something. What do you think, guv?'
Larry looked at him for the first time.
'I think that it is very possibly just the start of something,' said Doyle.
Larry nodded, then looked down at his brother's form beneath the flapping edge of Jack's cloak.
'Mr. Sparks says you killed the man wot did this to him.'
Doyle nodded.
'Then, sir, I am ... forever in your debt,' said Larry, his voice breaking.
Doyle said nothing. He wasn't sure he could speak. Time passed. Larry wiped his eyes again.
'If you don't mind,' said Larry, apologetically, 'I'd like to be alone with him now.'
'Of course.'
Doyle put out a hand. Larry shook it, once, without looking at him, then turned back to the throttle. Doyle worked his way back along the siding to the passenger car.
Sparks sat at a table, the decanter of brandy open, two glasses set out. Doyle took a seat across from him. Sparks filled the glasses. They drank. The warmth of the liquor spread through Doyle's belly, allotting some small distance from the horrors.
Doyle told Sparks how Alexander had appeared in the courtyard of the inn, how they had then come to Ravenscar, leading to the confrontation in the great hall. Sparks listened intently to his thorough account, asking questions only about Alexander, Doyle's impressions of him. When Doyle was done, they sat in silence for a while.
'Are they just all mad?' asked Doyle finally, his voice low. 'To believe they'll bring this ... being back to life.'
Sparks thought for a while before answering. 'What about those things in the basement of the museum? Can you offer an explanation?'
'Can you explain the life force?'
'One can have an opinion.'
'But an explanation may be one mystery that's beyond us.'
