Page 128 of Whistle

Harry remembered that day when a woman came back into the diner looking for her lipstick.

There was a wide stretch of road about two feet long that, unlike a normal section of highway, curled up at each end. Harry reached down, ran his hand over its surface, felt the rough texture, almost like sandpaper. And it was then Harry realized this was the deck of a skateboard that had been worked into the layout.

Harry thought back to when Dylan had told him he’d lost his skateboard. One second it was there, the next it was gone.

“Jesus Christ,” Harry said under his breath. Wasn’t this what witches did? Made a brew consisting of items from people they wanted cursed? Or was that the specialty of voodoo practitioners? Take a lock of hair from someone they wanted to die and attached it to a doll before they stuck pins into—

Speaking of hair.

That grassy field, at the base of the mountain that a train had just vanished into through a rocky portal, looked particularly silky. Hesitantly, Harry ran his fingers through the grass, and, while he knew a more forensic examination would be called for, it sure felt like hair. Was it human hair? Was it a goat’s?

One of the small model houses had a garden in the front yard that was edged with stones. But they did not look like stones to Harry. He ran his finger over the top of them to confirm his suspicion. The stones were teeth.

A small tree drew Harry’s attention. No more than six inches tall, with a slender trunk that fanned out into branches onto which hadbeen glued green clumps of sponge. Harry took hold of the base between his thumb and index finger and wiggled it back and forth until he had pried it off the layout. He brought it up close for a better look. He used a fingernail to scrape off some of the brown paint on the trunk. Underneath, it was white. He picked off the green clumps of sponge and had a look at the branches, one of the narrowest ones snapping off.

Fingers. The branches were finger bones.

Tests would confirm. But that grass looked like human hair, that tree appeared to be made of bone, and, holy shit, that rock outcropping.

He brushed away some of the fake vegetation until he saw what the outcropping was.

A skull.

A train came barreling out of a tunnel. Once it had passed, Harry leaned over, looked into the dark opening, and saw a latticework structure. Strips of material in a crisscross pattern, overlapped for strength to hold up the mountain above.

Harry decided to see just how strong it was. He dug his hand into the tunnel opening, grabbed the top of the portal, and gave it a good yank, revealing what was underneath.

More bones.

A conventional model train buff would probably use chicken wire and plaster to make his mountains, but not Edwin Nabler. No, he had a very different technique. He usedpeople.

Okay, Harry thought.We know what Nabler is now. He’s a psychopathic killer who uses stolen items and body parts to build his creation.But the larger question remained:Why?Was there a purpose to all this? Was somethinghappeningto these trains as they circled at high speed through his macabre setup?

Now that he was here, now that he could see what Nabler wasup to, Harry gave himself permission to think, as they liked to say these days, outside the box. What was going on in this room defied any kind of scientific, rational explanation. What Nabler was doing very likely defied the most basic laws of physics. Nabler had found a way to infuse these trains with some kind of malevolent force, some strange brand of evil intent, and once they found their way into the home of an unsuspecting family, that darkness was unleashed.

I’m losing my mind.

No, he told himself. He wasn’t. From the beginning—okay, maybe not when Darryl Pidgeon had died in that barbecue explosion, but when Nadine Comstock had died with the help of a toy train transformer—Harry had felt that there was something that connected Edwin Nabler to an inexplicable depravity in Lucknow.

Now he was closer to understanding that connection. Once he left here, would anyone believe him? Would his unlawful entry into the premises derail (Ha!Harry thought wildly.Pun intended) his ability to get a search warrant? Would it foul up any potential prosecution and conviction?

Harry believed he had landed in a situation that was outside the bounds of conventional law. Search warrants and suspects’ rights be damned. This was a crime scene of unimaginable proportions, and he’d ensure it was preserved and Nabler, that sick fuck, exposed.

That guy would never see the outside of a prison for the rest of his life. Lucky for Nabler that Vermont abolished the death penalty nearly thirty years ago, so he’d never—

What was that vibration in the front pocket of his jeans?

Harry’s phone, of course.

He’d muted it before coming in here, and even if he hadn’t, he might never have heard it ring over the din of the trains. He dug the phone out, saw that it was a call from the community center. But before he could answer it, he heard a voice.

“What do you think of my trains?”

Harry jumped, dropped his phone, spun around. What he saw standing there, for no more than a fraction of second, was a figure, six feet tall or more, wearing a long dark trench coat, a face featuring a snout and whiskers and pointed ears, almost like a dog or a coyote or a rat, and then Harry blinked—

And now it was Edwin Nabler standing there, wearing a big grin, as well as his usual garb. The vest with the railway patches, the stupid engineer’s cap.

“Please don’t say cute,” Nabler said. “I hate it when people call my trains cute.”

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