Page 146 of Whistle

“That... triggered the derailment?”

Nabler nodded. “It wasn’t planned, but it was without question a high point for me. Perhaps a case of be careful what you wish for. I’ve been ready to retire ever since.”

“Where does some unspeakably evil thing like you retire to?”

Nabler shrugged. “Florida.”

There was a moment of quiet between them. Annie was assessing her situation, and Nabler felt it was only right to give her some time.

Finally, she said, “I won’t agree to anything until I see Charlie and know he’s okay.”

Nabler nodded slowly. “That seems reasonable.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s been with us this whole time. I thought you might have noticed by now.”

Annie looked about the room. “Where the hell is he?”

Nabler raised a palm and waved it slowly in front of him, as if clearing a space on a frosted window. As he did so, one of the trains that had been circling around the room slowed to a stop next to Annie on a track that was slightly below eye level.

It was the passenger train.

“The dome car,” Nabler said.

She focused her attention on the streamlined car with a glass bubble on top, the place where, in a real dome car, passengers would sit so that they might have a more spectacular view during their journey.

Inside the bubble was a scale figure, no more than an inch tall, but detailed enough that Annie could see how it looked remarkably like Charlie.

But then the figure waved its arms. It was not a representation of her son.

It was him. Shouting something she could not hear because they were separated by the dome’s glass.

But she could make out what he was saying nonetheless.

“Mommy!”

Fifty-Six

“Charlie!” Annie shouted.“Charlie!”

Before she could reach out and lift the passenger car off the track, Nabler had waved his hand again and the train began to pull away. Charlie pressed his palms to the glass and continued to call out silently to his mother.

“It’s not him!” Annie said to Nabler. “It’s not possible! You’re playing some trick on me! You’re making me imagine it!”

“Am I?” he replied.

“Like hearing trains in the night. Or when I saw that train bearing down on us at the crossing. It was there, and then it wasn’t. Or like the spiders. It’s all a hallucination!”

Nabler nodded thoughtfully. “If that’s what you think, then I suppose you can refuse to help me.”

Annie began to shake again. She wanted Charlie back. And she was weighing what she was prepared to do to make that happen.

She asked, “You can make him big again?”

“Of course.”

“If I do what you want, what happens to Charlie?”

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