Page 77 of Whistle

The high beams caught something. Up ahead, on the opposite shoulder. Where the road rose slightly to meet the railroad crossing.

Something small and blue and moving.

Charlie, in his pajamas, his back to the headlights. He was walking slowly, had almost reached the crossing. Annie didn’t hit the gas, didn’t want the sound of a racing engine to startle him. Once she was alongside, she stopped the car in the middle of the road, headlights still on and flashers activated, and jumped out.

“Charlie,” she said, walking briskly to catch up to him. He was no more than thirty feet ahead of her. “Charlie, honey, it’s Mommy.”

Charlie had reached the crossing and gone left a few feet, standingbetween the rails, rusty just as Daniel had said. The ties underfoot were broad, rotted slabs of weathered, rotting wood.

Annie caught Charlie by the arm and knelt before him. She took both his small hands in hers and spoke softly to him.

“Charlie? Charlie? It’s me. It’s Mommy. You need to wake up.”

Charlie, eyes open, seemed to look right through her.

“Come on, sport. You need to wake up and we need to get you home.” She gave his hands a squeeze. “You really scared the crap out of me, you know that?”

Charlie said, “It’s coming.”

“What’s coming, sweetheart?”

Still looking vacantly beyond her, he said, “It’s coming.”

Charlie raised an arm and pointed over his mother’s shoulder.

Before Annie turned to look, she could feel a vibration in the ground beneath her. A truck, she thought, heading for the crossing. Her car was still in the middle of the road, but she’d left the lights and emergency flashers on. It was impossible to miss.

But Annie didn’t see a truck, or a car, approaching from either direction. She looked back at Charlie and asked, “What’s coming, Char—”

And then his face lit up, as though he were on a darkened stage and suddenly hit with a thousand-watt spotlight.

A deafening, primal, earthshaking roar followed, causing Annie’s heart rate to skyrocket.

Annie whipped her head around to see what was bearing down on them.

It was a train.

The engine’s headlight was so bright, so all-consuming, that it was impossible to see the rest of train it was attached to.

Annie wanted to scream, but there was no time for that. Shefigured she had no more than a second, maybe two, to grab Charlie and throw them out of the train’s path.

She pulled him in tight and in the moment before she jumped, the light was gone.

The vibrations ended.

The deafening roar ceased.

Slowly, Annie looked over her shoulder again. Save for a few stars in the sky, and the lights from her car, there was only blackness.

Charlie stirred in her arms.

“Mommy?” he said, looking at her as though he really did see her, his voice full of innocence and wonderment. “Where am I?”

Twenty-Six

By the time Annie had bundled Charlie into the car and returned to the house, the night was ablaze with the flashing lights of two police cars. One was sitting down by the road, the other up by the house. Annie brought the car to a stop by the porch, a uniformed officer meeting her as she got out from behind the wheel.

“I found him,” Annie told the woman, who identified herself as Officer Standish. Annie opened the back door of the SUV and carried out Charlie, who was groggy but awake. “I’m sorry.”

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