Seize the Night

I took one bottle of water to Orson. In my absence, he had struggled off his side and was lying on his belly, though he seemed not to have the strength to raise his head.

Cupping my left hand, I poured some Evian into it. Orson lifted his head barely enough to be able to lap the water from my palm, at first listlessly but soon with enthusiasm.

As I repeatedly replenished the water, I reviewed the physical damage he had endured, and my increasing anger ensured that I’d be able to hold back my tears. The cartilage of his left ear appeared to be crushed, and the fur was matted with a lot of dried blood, as though he had sustained a blow to the head with a club or a length of pipe. Blunt instruments were one of Mr. John Joseph Randolph’s specialties. In his left cushion, half an inch from his nose, was a blood-caked cut. A couple of the nails in his right forepaw were broken off, and his toes were sheathed in hardened blood. He had put up a good fight. The pasterns on all four legs were chafed from the wire, and two were bleeding, though not seriously.

Doogie had finished snipping the wires that bound the kids and had moved on to Conrad, who was still out cold. Using a spool of the killers’ wire, he had shackled the man’s feet. Now he was using more wire to cuff his wrists behind his back.

We couldn’t risk taking the two men with us, back through the maze. Because crawling was required in some of the tunnels, we wouldn’t be able to bind even their hands, and without restraints, they would be completely uncontrollable. We would have to send the police back here for them — assuming the entire structure didn’t collapse from the stresses of the time-shifting phenomena occurring overhead.

Although I might have changed my mind later, at that moment I wanted to immobilize them, seal their mouths shut with tape, put a bottle of water where they could see it, and leave them here to die painfully of thirst.

Orson had finished the Evian. He struggled to his feet, wobbly as a baby, and stood panting, blinking the filminess out of his eyes, looking around with interest.

“Poki akua,” I told him, which is Hawaiian for dog of the gods.

He chuffed weakly, as though pleased by the compliment.

A sudden pong, followed by a nerve-jangling squeal, as of metal torquing violently, passed through the copper room. Both Orson and I looked at the ceiling, then around at the walls, but there was no evident distortion of the smooth metal surfaces.

Tick, tick, tick.

I dragged the heavy cooler across the floor to Orson and opened the lid. He looked in at the icy water sloshing among the bottles of Evian and vegetable juice, and he happily began to lap it up.

On his side, curled in the fetal position, Randolph was groaning but not yet conscious.

Doogie clipped off a few feet of wire, all he needed to finish binding Conrad, and passed the spool to me.

I rolled Randolph facedown and hurriedly wired his wrists together behind his back. I was tempted to cinch the bonds as tight as those on the children and Orson, but I controlled myself and made them only tight enough to ensure that he could not free himself.

After securing his ankles, I looped wire from the shackles at his feet to those at his wrists, further limiting his ability to move.

Randolph must have awakened as I began to apply this final restraint, because when I finished, he spoke with a clarity not characteristic of someone just regaining consciousness: “I’ve won.”

I moved out from behind him and hunkered down to look at his face. His head was turned to the side, left cheek against the copper floor. Lips split and bleeding. His right eye was pale green and bright, but I saw no evidence of animal eyeshine.

Curiously, he appeared to be in no distress. He was at peace, as if he weren’t trussed and helpless but were merely resting.

When he spoke, his voice was calm, even slightly euphoric, like that of someone coming out of a light Demerol sleep. I would have felt better if he’d ranted, snarled, and spat. His relaxed demeanor seemed to support his unnerving contention that he had won in spite of his current circumstances. “I’ll be on the other side before the night is gone. They stripped out the engine. That wasn’t a mortal wound. This is a sort of…organic machine. In time, it has healed. Now it powers itself. You can feel it. Feel it in the floor.”

Those rumblings, like passing trains, were louder than before, and the spells of calm between were shorter. Although the effect in this room had been less than elsewhere in the structure, the noise and the vibrations in the floor were at last gaining power here, too.

Randolph said, “Powers itself with the littlest help. A storm lamp in the translation chamber two hours ago — that’s all it took to get it running again. This is no ordinary machine.”

“You worked on this project?”

“Mine.”

“Dr. Randolph Josephson,” I said, suddenly remembering the name of the project leader I’d heard on Delacroix’s tape. John Joseph Randolph, boy killer, had become Randolph Josephson. “What does it do, where does it…go?”

Instead of answering me, he smiled and said, “Did the crow ever appear to you? It never appeared to Conrad. He said it did, but he lies. The crow appeared to me. I was sitting by the rock, and the crow rose out of it.” He sighed. “Formed out of the solid rock that night, in front of my eyes.”

Orson was with the children, accepting their affection. He was wagging his tail. Everything was going to be all right. The world wasn’t going to end, at least not here, at least not tonight. We would get out of here, we would survive, we would live to party, ride the waves again, it was guaranteed, it was a sure thing, it was a done deal, because right here was the omen, the sign of good times coming: Orson was wagging his tail.

“When I saw the crow, I knew I was someone special,” Randolph said. “I had a destiny. Now I’ve fulfilled it.”

Once more, the fearsome twang of torquing metal punctuated the rumble of the ghost train.

“Forty-four years ago,” I said, “you’re the one who carved the crow on Crow Hill.”

“I went home that night, fully alive for the first time ever, and did what I’d always wanted to do. Blew my father’s brains out.” He said this as if reporting an achievement that filled him with quiet pride. “Cut Mother to pieces. Then my real life began.”

Doogie was sending the kids out of the room, one after the other, along the tunnel to where Sasha and Roosevelt waited.

“So many years, so much hard work,” Randolph said with a sigh, as though he were a retiree pleasantly contemplating well-earned leisure. “So much study, learning, striving, thinking. So much self-denial and restraint through so many years.”

One killing every twelve months.

“And when it was built, when success was at hand, the cowards back in Washington were scared by what they saw on the videotapes from the unmanned probes.”

“What did they see?”

Instead of answering, he said, “They were going to shut us down. Del Stuart was ready right then to pull the plug on my funding.”

I thought I knew why Aaron and Anson Stuart were in this room. And I wondered if the other kids who had been snatched and killed all over the country were related somehow to other people on the Mystery Train project who had disappointed this man.

“Then your mother’s bug got loose,” Randolph said, “and they wanted to know what the future held, whether there would even be a future.”

“Red sky?” I asked. “Strange trees?”

“That’s not the future. That’s… sideways.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw the copper wall buckle.

Horrified, I turned toward where the concave curve had seemed to become convex, but there was no sign of distortion.

“Now the track is laid,” Randolph said contentedly, “and no one can tear it up. The border is breached. The way is open.”