Page 106 of Whistle

But in the meantime, Edwin Nabler was determined to give it his all, and that was exactly what he had been doing. The progress he had been making back here was impressive, if he did say so himself, and Gavin’s contributions to the project had been most welcome.

His hair, once dyed green and brown and cut into short lengths, was used to create a grassy field. His rib cage, once draped with plaster-soaked paper towels and painted green, had served nicely to make a small mountain. And his teeth, once extracted and filed down, came in handy when Nabler set his mind to making a little rock garden in the miniature town square.

Nabler had also been consumed with putting down more track. The longer the route, the more opportunity for a train to absorb the qualities of that through which it passed. What Nabler was creating was a nurturing nest, the loops of track akin to the small sticks and blades of grass a bird collected and stitched together. To enter this area behind the shop was to immerse yourself into a literal web of tracks. Visitors—and there would surely be more of those who would get to see his handiworkonce—would have to duck andweave to work their way to the center of it, not unlike some jungle explorer navigating a pathway obstructed by vines.

What a beautiful thing it was.

And there were always trains running. A cacophony of sound that might be annoying to the non-enthusiast, but it was a glorious medley to Nabler. There were multiple loops of track that allowed him to run eight, nine, ten trains at any given time. The chorus of metal wheels traversing metal track was a symphony.

ChuffchuffCLICKETYCLACKclicketyCLACKwooWOOchuffCLICKETYchuffCLICKETYchuffWOOchuggachuggaclackclicketyCHUFFCHUFFclicketyCLACKwooWOOchuffCLICKETYchuffCLICKETYchuffWOOchuggachuggaclackclicketyCHUFFCHUFFclicketyCLACKwooWOOchuffCLICKETYchuffCLICKETYchuffWOOchuggachuggaclackclicketyCHUFF...

It was a good thing he’d found a way to surreptitiously tap into the town’s electrical grid.

His current favorite train consisted of three blue Chesapeake & Ohio diesels pulling a long line of tanker cars. It clickety-clacked past on one of the upper tracks, roughly eye level for Nabler. He squinted as it sped by, imagining it was a real train hurtling toward some yet-to-be-realized catastrophe.

So, what next?

While there was always more to be done on the layout—and to accomplish that, Nabler would need morematerial,including not just actual people, but their personal items—it struck him as prudent to ease up for a period of time. Lucknow’s rate of calamities was on a noticeable upswing. Nabler believed it highly unlikely anyone would connect the dots—even if someone did, they’d question their own sanity suspecting that a toy train somehow played a role—but it didn’t hurt to play it safe. That meant turning out product that was a little less, well, high-voltage. Dial it back some. Once things settleddown, he’d do some modifications to the production process and resume selling sets with a high level of chaotic potential.

It was good to have a plan.

Over the din, Edwin heard a sound.

The bell.

“Ah!” Nabler said. “A customer.”

Thirty-Five

Harry sat in the diner, nursing a coffee and rereading his notes, going back not only to the disappearances of Tanner and Hillman—what struck Harry as the starting point of Lucknow’s recent troubles—but to more recent events, including one that happened only that morning.

After that incident two days earlier—the adorable family dog that had gone feral—he didn’t think anything could top that. Then he got the call about trouble over on Braymor Drive.

“Woman says her son’s choking to death on a pack of cigarettes,” the dispatcher said.

“What?”

“Tried to get her to tell me more, but she wasn’t making sense, said he was trying to turn himself into a chimney, and then she started screaming, and—”

“Ambulance and fire on the way?”

“Yeah.”

As Harry brought the cruiser to a screeching halt at the address, he realized he had been here before. The red Ford Torino in the driveway was something of a clue.

This was where Delbert Dorfman, the racist dickhead who had spray-paintedosamalover go homeon the window of Ahsan Basher’s convenience store, and later thrown a rock through it, lived.

Harry jumped out and ran toward the house, and stopped brieflywhen he saw what was happening on the roof. There was a man in his mid-twenties up there, on his back, staring into the sky, barefoot but wearing a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt. There was smoke billowing up from his face.

It was, Harry was pretty sure, Dorfman.

Harry noticed a TV tower at the side of the house, figured the man had gotten onto the roof by climbing it rather than using a ladder, since there wasn’t one in sight. Partway up the tower was a heavyset woman Harry guessed to be in her fifties, screaming.

“Stop it!” she shouted. “Come down here right now, Delbert!”

But Delbert was giving her no mind. He was busy having a smoke.

Or, more accurately, smokes.

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