everywhere with its blade. I physically jolt as each new image flashes. Full body spasms that make me feel like I'm being shocked by a car battery. Flash, shock, jolt, Annie getting tortured. Flash, shock, jolt, Annie getting raped. Flash, shock, jolt, he cuts, he cuts, he cuts, dear God, he won't stop cutting. Her eyes fill with agony, her eyes fill with terror, and eventually they empty and fill with an endless gaze at nothing. Still alive, but no longer there. The killer is joyous, exultant. He is doing a rain dance, and the rain is blood. I watch as my friend dies. It is slow and awful and without dignity. By the time he is done, she is long since gone, a gutted fish. Watching her die, this woman I held as a child, this woman I grew up with and loved, it's like being back in that bed, watching Matt scream.
I have not truly wept for Annie since she died. I find that I am weeping now, that I have been throughout. They are silent tears, rivers running down my cheeks. They mourn the death of the only other person besides Matt who knew all of me. I am alone in this world. I have no roots, and it is unbearable. Annie, I think--you so didn't deserve this.
I don't wipe them away. I'm not ashamed of these tears. They make sense.
The video finishes playing, and everyone is silent.
'Play it again,' I say.
Play it again, because there is a dragon inside me, and she is awakening. I need her to wake up angry.
14
S O, LET ME get this straight,' Alan says. 'He not only shot this video, he sat down and edited it?'
Leo bobs his head up and down. 'Yep. But not on this computer. Hard drive isn't big enough, and there's no editing software on it. He probably brought a high-powered laptop with him.'
Alan whistles. 'He's a cold one, Smoky. That means he sat and edited the video while your friend was lying there dead, and Bonnie was watching. Or worse.'
No one has said anything about my tears. I feel empty, but I am no longer numb. I respond.
'Cold, organized, competent, technically proficient--and he's definitely the real thing.'
'What do you mean?' Leo asks.
I look at him. 'He's crossed a line, as a person, and he'll never come back from that. He loved what he was doing. It really made him come alive. You're not going to do something you love that much just one time.'
He looks at me, taken aback by this concept. 'So now what?'
'Now you all get out, and we get James over here.'
I hear my own voice as I say this, note its coldness. Well, well, I think. It's started. It's still there. How about that?
Charlie and Leo look confused. Alan understands. He smiles, not really a happy smile. 'She and James need some space, is all. We have plenty to do in the meantime. You want me to take over for James at the ME's?' he asks me.
'Uh-huh . . .' My reply is distracted and distant. I barely register it when they leave. My mind is a huge, open space. My gaze is fixed on the faraway.
Because the dark train is coming.
I can hear it in the distance,
I met the dark train (as I call it) during my very first case. It is a thing hard to describe. The train of life runs on the tracks of normality and reality. It is the train most of humanity rides, from birth to death. It is filled with laughter and tears, hardships and triumphs. Its passengers are not perfect, but they do their best.
The dark train is different.
The dark train runs on tracks made of crunching, squishy things. It's the train that people like Jack Jr. ride. It's a train fueled by murder and sex and screams. It's a big, black, blood-drinking snake with wheels. If you hop off the train of life and run through the woods, you can find the dark train. You can walk next to its tracks, run alongside as it passes, get a glimpse of the weeping contents of its boxcars. Jump aboard, move through its corpse cars, through the whispers and bones, and you will reach the train's conductor. The conductor is the monster you are chasing, and he has many guises. He can be short and bald and forty. He can be tall and young and blond. Sometimes, rarely, he can be a she. On the dark train, you see the conductor as he really is, underneath the fake smiles and three-piece suits. You stare into darkness, and at that moment, if you look without flinching, you will understand. These killers I hunt are not quiet and smiling inside. Every cell in their body is an unending, eternal scream. They are gibbering and wideeyed and evil and blood-covered. They are things that masturbate as they gobble human flesh, that groan in ecstasy as they rub themselves with brains and feces. Their souls don't walk: They slither, they spasm, they crawl.
The dark train, simply, is where I remove the killer's mask in my mind. Where I look and don't turn away. It is the place where I don't back off, or excuse or look for reasons, but instead accept. Yes, his eyes are filled with maggots. Yes, he drinks the tears of murdered children. Yes, there is only murder here.
'Interesting,' Dr. Hillstead had remarked during one of our sessions, after I had explained the dark train to him. 'I guess my question--and my concern--Smoky, would be: Once you get on, what keeps you from never getting off the train? What keeps you from becoming the conductor?'
I had to smile. 'If you see it--really see it--then there's no danger of that. You can see that you aren't like that. Not even close.' I turned my head to stare at him. 'If you really unmask the conductor, you realize that he's alien. He's an aberration, a different species.'
He'd acknowledged me, smiled back. His eyes didn't seem convinced. What I didn't tell him was that the problem wasn't becoming the conductor. The problem was to stop
That's the price you pay for riding the dark train. A part of you becomes a solitude that normal people will never have and no one else can ever enter. A little sliver of you becomes alone, forever. Standing here, in Annie's death place, I can feel it rushing toward me. When it's coming, whether I'm just watching it pass or moving through its cars, I can't have others around me. I get distant and cold and . . . not nice. The exception is a fellow hobo. Someone else who understands the train. James does. Whatever other faults he has, however much of an asshole he can be, James has the same gift. He can see the conductor, ride the rails.
Removing all the metaphors, the dark train is a place of heightened observation, created by a temporary empathy with evil. And it's unpleasant.
I look around the room, letting it seep into me. I can feel him, smell him. I need to be able to taste him, hear him. Rather than pushing him away, I need to pull him close. Like a lover.
That is the thing I never told Dr. Hillstead. I don't think I ever will. That this, that intimacy, is not only disturbing--it is addictive. It is exciting. He hunts everything. I only hunt him. But I suspect my taste for blood is just as rich and strong.
He was here, so this is where I need to be. I need to find him, and snuggle close to his shadows and maggots and screams. The first thing I sense is always the same, and this time is no different. His excitement at the invasion of another's boundaries. Human beings divide themselves, create spaces to call their own. They agree between them to respect that ownership. This is very basic, almost primal. Your home is your home. Once the door is closed, you have privacy, relief from keeping up the face you show the world. Other human beings come in only if invited. They respect this because it's what they want as well.
The first thing the monsters do, the first thing that excites them, is to cross that line. They peek into your windows. They follow you throughout your day, watching. Maybe they enter your home while you are away and walk into your private spaces, rub up against your private things. They invade.
And destruction of others is their aphrodisiac.
I remember an interview with one of the monsters I caught. His victims were young girls. Some were five,
