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What the holy fuck was that?

Whatever it was, it was coming from upstairs. He froze, held his breath, waiting for the sound to repeat.

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It was a noise that took him back. If he wasn’t mistaken, it sounded like a toy train he’d had as a kid. A Lionel train his father would set up around the tree at Christmas.

He had no business snooping around the house when no one was here, but then again, if that was a toy train, then maybe therewassomeone here, and they hadn’t heard him banging on the door earlier.

“Annie?” he called out. “Charlie? It’s Fin! I brought treats! You guys home?”

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Evidently not.

Finnegan found curiosity getting the better of him. He had to know what that sound was. He went slowly up the stairs, hand on the railing, and when he’d reached the second floor he stopped, not sure which way to go. The noise had stopped.

He went right, found what was clearly Charlie’s room. The Spider-Man bedspread, the Harry Potter posters on the wall. He returned to the top of the stairs and went the other way, poking hishead into the master bedroom, and then he found the door to the studio.

Finnegan opened the door, stepped inside, and smiled.

There was the drafting table, set up just the way he’d asked for it to be. And from the looks of things, Annie had been doing some work. He walked over, looked at a drawing she was in the middle of, as well as a sculpted figure to match.

“Jesus, Annie,” he said aloud. “What the hell is this?”

A creature that looked like a cross between a rat and a wolf, but standing upright, like a person. Its eyes narrow and menacing, its teeth sharp.

“Annie, baby,” he said under his breath, “this is no Pierce the Penguin.”

He took in the rest of the room. On the floor was a miniature village made up of plastic building kits that Finnegan, again, thought he recognized from his childhood. Model train accessories.

But where was the train? Or the tracks?

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The noise seemed to be coming from the hall.

Finnegan went back out but didn’t see anything. Maybe the sound hadn’t been coming from upstairs, as he’d originally thought, but from the first floor, or even the basement.

He made his way back to the top of the stairs.

Took a step.

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He glanced down. Right there, spanning the top of the stairs, was a train track, and on it, a speeding locomotive with several cars behind it.

It was impossible.

It hadn’t been there a second ago. He was sure of it. He’d comeup these stairs two minutes earlier. There was no way he could have missed it.

But now it was here, and his foot had caught the edge of the track, knocked the red boxcar off, and now he was falling headlong. He reached for the railing but missed, and down he went, step after step, rolling and rolling until he reached the foot of the stairs, not moving, his neck snapped like a stick of celery.

Twenty-Nine

Annie was sitting in the kitchen with the same police officer who had come the night Charlie had disappeared. Standish, her name was. Annie had sent Charlie to ride his bike around in the backyard. She couldn’t send him to his room without having him step over Finnegan Sproule’s body, which remained at the foot of the stairs as the police continued their investigation.

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