Thunderland (43 page)

Boom!

A tidal wave of scorching heat shoved him forward. It pushed him faster than he could have ever managed to run—actually lifted him a few inches off his feet—and then drove both him and Linda to the hard, wet ground. The heat engulfing him was so intense, he barely felt the pain that flashed through his rattled body.

Lying there, he wondered if he was going to die. He wondered if he cared anymore.

Linda groaned. She crawled forward, away from the inferno.

He started to crawl, too.

They reached the damp grass in front of a hardware store. There, the air was merely warm, not hot, and it was possible to draw breaths without choking on any lung-searing fumes. Breathing deeply, he savored the air as a dehydrated man might have savored fresh water.

He rolled onto his back. Through bleary eyes, he looked at the destruction they had fled.

It was worse than he expected. Rippling flames covered the gas station, the Buick, and the black car. Spires of smoke rose high into the stormy sky, and trails of burning gasoline spurted from the ruined pumps and sloped toward the street. As he watched, the flaming portico fell and crashed to the fire-blanketed concrete.

He was about to check on Linda when something in the conflagration caught his attention. A blob of black smoke, darker and thicker than the smoke that churned from the blaze, drifted out of the destruction. It rolled toward them.

Thomas sat up, wiping his eyes, desperately needing to clear his vision.

Beside him, her face smudged with dirt, Linda sat up, too.

The whirling pillar of sooty vapor dissipated ... and a giant of a man miraculously appeared in its place. He wore a black tuxedo and a matching top hat. Like a stage magician on his way to an engagement in Las Vegas.

“I know I’m dreaming,” Thomas said. “God in heaven, I’ve got to be dreaming.”

Linda’s mouth hung open, trapped in a silent scream.

The man walked right up to them, a black cape fluttering around him. He gracefully doffed his hat, and when he smiled, his teeth gleamed.

“At last, we meet,” he said in a smooth, rich voice. “I assure you, my doomed friends, the pleasure is all mine.”

Jason. I want you to know that I’m proud of you. Remember that forever...

Jason snapped awake to Granddad’s voice echoing through his mind. He looked around, disoriented by a clattering, rhythmic noise and harsh yellow light. Shielding his eyes, he blinked slowly. When his vision adjusted, he saw that he was lying on the red vinyl seat of a fast-moving commuter train.

Granddad was not around. Jason must have heard his voice in a dream, though intuition led him to believe that something terrible had happened to his grandfather.

He sat up.

He was in a double-deck passenger car, the same kind he and Granddad often boarded when they traveled to Chicago. As far as he could see, he was the sole person on board. Darkness pressed at the big windows.

He checked his watch. The digits had stopped at 9:14.

He gasped. Nine-fourteen? When he had awakened in his bedroom after falling out of the tree, it had been about twenty minutes past three o’clock, and the watch digits had been frozen then, too.

Above his wrist he noticed two faint puncture wounds. He remembered—Mr. Magic’s loathsome cane-creature had bitten him. Its venom must have knocked him out.

Apparently, after he blacked out, Mr. Magic had allowed him to sleep for several hours in the real world, and then he had returned him to Thunderland, at 9:14 that night.

But why? When he tried to stand, his legs buckled, and he grabbed the back of the seat to keep from falling.

Once he regained his balance, he walked to one end of the car. He looked out the window. Tall trees lined the tracks, and railroad cross ties vanished beneath the swiftly advancing coach.

He noted that there was no door at his end. There was only the window. There were no doors on the sides of the car, either; the only door was located at the other end, and it appeared to lead into another passenger car.

He walked down there and slipped into the next compartment. It was as deserted and well lighted as the first car, and it also lacked any side exits. The only exit led to a third compartment.

The third car was identical to the first two, except there was no doorway at the end, and no window. He put his ear against the cool wall where the door should have been. He heard the locomotive—or something that sounded like an engine—humming, whirring, and clicking.

He returned to the first coach. He gazed out of the portal that overlooked the railroad. He guessed that the train was traveling around sixty miles per hour, maybe faster.

Why had Mr. Magic put him on it?

No matter what else she faced in the rest of her life, Linda knew she would never face anything that could compare with this night. Her perceptions of reality had been turned upside down and inside out. She had progressed beyond the denial stage, but it might be years before she could put this in perspective—if she lived that long.

She and Thomas were in the passenger coach of a speeding commuter train, in one of three double-deck cars coupled with the locomotive. Weary to the bone, still shocked to a degree, she had resigned herself to sitting on the vinyl seat near the front window. Thomas, however, paced the aisle, grumbling to himself, sometimes smacking the seats he passed. Like her, his face was streaked with dirt, his pants were soiled and torn, and his shirt was ripped in several places. Unlike her, he had not calmed down.

While they lay on the ground after crawling away from the burning gas station, Jason’s bogeyman, who identified himself as Mr. Magic, had thrown his massive cape over them. When he snatched it away only a second later, they found themselves magically transported to the train.

The appearance of the entity and the instantaneous teleportation, by themselves, were enough to push Linda to the brink of her sanity. But there was more: addressing them in the train with the patient manner of a teacher, Mr. Magic claimed responsibility for the mysterious, disturbing calls and visits that she and Thomas had recently received; he had given Jason the bike; and he had fulfilled “more of Jason’s secret wishes” as he put it. He was engaged on a zealous mission to win her son’s loyalty, and she and Thomas were merely pawns in his game, toys for his amusement.

His fantastic story would’ve made Linda cackle until her throat bled if she hadn’t understood that everything he said, every inconceivable detail, was true. She had seen plenty of proof. She didn’t
want
to see or hear anything else, didn’t want to spin theories on how any of this was possible. Her brain was ready to shut down.

Thomas continued to pace, grumbling.

“Thomas, please sit down.”

“Hell, no.” He glared at her. ‘We won’t get out of this by sitting on our asses. We have to move, act, fight. You’re not a passive woman. You should know better than to tell me to sit at a time like this.”

“We’ve tried everything,” she said. “There aren’t any exits, the windows won’t break, and we don’t have the gun anymore. What else can we do?”

He crossed his big arms over his chest. “You’re the writer. You tell me.”

“We do what that thing told us to do: we wait and leave it up to Jason.”

“To hell with that shit. He wants us to sit here and wait for the train to smash us to bits. Shit, there might not be another train coming down the tracks. He could have said that to scare us.”

“You know he was telling the truth. Thomas, it’s out of our hands. What happens to us depends on Jason and what he chooses.”

For a moment, Thomas looked as though he would continue the argument, and then his shoulders sagged. He plopped down next to her and dragged his hand down his grimy face. “That’s what scares me. I’m not sure the boy’s gonna make the best decision.”

“He will. Have some faith in him.”

Thomas seemed doubtful.

“He has to,” she said. “He’s distant, but he doesn’t hate us.”

Thomas turned away from her.

She wanted to grab him and shake him, scream at him that their son was not a murderer and that, on some level, he loved them and would make the choice that would save their lives; but she did not grab Thomas, did not touch him. Because she did not know whether she believed everything she wanted to say.

Jason spun at the sound of an opening door.

“Ah, you are awake.” Mr. Magic strolled into the coach. “How was your sleep? Refreshing, I hope?”

Jason had no patience for Mr. Magic’s silly mannerisms. “Why did you put me on this thing?”

Mr. Magic wrapped one thin hand around a shiny support beam and rested his other hand on his cane. The cane did not transform into the creepy snake-centipede beast. It was a normal stick.

“I placed you upon this train because I believe in free will,” Mr. Magic said.

 “You call throwing me on here and trapping me inside giving me free will?”

“You misunderstand me,” Mr. Magic said. “Admittedly, thus far, I have not granted you much choice in these matters. But that is about to change.”

“How’s that?” Jason said. “You’re gonna let me choose if I want to die by stabbing or a bullet in the head?”

Mr. Magic chuckled. “You have quite a macabre imagination, my friend. No, the choice I am presenting to you is much easier. It is also infinitely more appealing, if I do say so myself.”

“Go ahead,” Jason said. He did not expect Mr. Magic to give him a choice he would want to consider, but if he could delay the inevitable battle by listening to him, he would. “I’m all ears.”

“Good.” Mr. Magic leaned leisurely against the handrail. “You have been unaware of this, but another train is traveling on these same tracks. On it are your mother and your father. As you are, they are trapped inside. Obviously, there are no engineers or other such people here to control the rails. Therefore, this train and your parents’ will soon collide, ensuring the deaths of all aboard. Excluding myself, of course.”

Jason stared at him, skeptical. But when Mr. Magic returned his stare forthrightly, Jason knew he had told the truth. Further, the comic-book-style disaster he described was typical of him. From the beginning, Mr. Magic had exhibited a flair for melodrama: the over-the-top action, the sensational event. His decision to use colliding trains as the climax of this mad adventure matched his style.

Jason went to the window. He saw only giant trees ranked along the tracks. If the other locomotive really thundered toward them, it was not close yet.

“Do not despair; all is not lost,” Mr. Magic said. “You are being given a choice, remember? Here is my offer: you can choose to remain on this coach and perish in a dreadful accident. Or you can join me and, by doing so, save your own life and the lives of your parents.”

“No way,” Jason said. “Even if I joined you, you wouldn’t save them.”

Mr. Magic raised his hand. “I give you my word, Jason. Do you realize how many opportunities I’ve had to murder your parents? Originally, my plan was to destroy them, but I’ve had a change of heart. I believe their fate is best left in your hands. I promise: you join me, and they will be spared.”

“What if you’re lying?” Jason said. “You might have killed everyone already and be saying this only to trick me into giving in.”

“Quite simply, you must trust me, Jason. Are you willing to bet your own life and your parents’ lives on the nonexistent possibility that I am being deceitful?”

Jason did not answer. Mr. Magic had him beat on that score. He was not sure that Mr. Magic was being honest, but he was not going to wager anyone’s life on the chance that he was lying.