of the darkness. Maybe it was the Pubes, boogying madly to a song called “Velcro Fly” while they worked themselves into a sacrificial killing frenzy.
He thought of Blaine the Mono, a train so fast that it travelled across the huge, haunted world trailing a sonic boom behind it, and that led him naturally enough to thoughts of Charlie the Choo-Choo, who had been retired to a forgotten siding when the new Burlington Zephyr arrived, rendering him obsolete. He thought of the expression on Charlie’s face, the one that was supposed to be cheery and pleasant but somehow wasn’t. He thought about The Mid-World Railway Company, and the empty lands between St. Louis and Topeka. He thought about how Charlie had been all ready to go when Mr. Martin needed him, and how Charlie could blow his own whistle and feed his own firebox. He wondered again if Engineer Bob had sabotaged the Burlington Zephyr in order to give his beloved Charlie a second chance.
At last—and as suddenly as it had begun—the rhythmic drumming stopped, and Jake drifted off to sleep.
16
HE DREAMED, BUT NOT of the plaster-man.
He dreamed instead that he was standing on a stretch of blacktop highway somewhere in the Big Empty of western Missouri. Oy was with him. Railroad warning signals—white X-shapes with red lights in their centers—flanked the road. The lights were flashing and bells were ringing.
Now a humming noise began to rise out of the southeast getting steadily louder. It sounded like lightning in a bottle.
Here it comes, he told Oy.
Ums! Oy agreed.
And suddenly a vast pink shape two wheels long was slicing across the plain toward them. It was low and bullet-shaped, and when Jake saw it, a terrible fear filled his heart. The two big windows flashing in the sun at the front of the train looked like eyes.
Don’t ask it silly questions, Jake told Oy. It won’t play silly games. It’s just an awful choo-choo train, and its name is Blaine the Pain.
Suddenly Oy leaped onto the tracks and crouched there with his ears flattened back. His golden eyes were blazing. His teeth were bared in a desperate snarl.
No! Jake screamed. No, Oy!
But Oy paid no attention. The pink bullet was bearing down on the tiny, defiant shape of the billy-bumbler now, and that humming seemed to be crawling all over Jake’s skin, making his nose bleed and shattering the fillings in his teeth.
He leaped for Oy, Blaine the Mono (or was it Charlie the Choo-Choo?) bore down on them, and he woke up suddenly, shivering, bathed in sweat. The night seemed to be pressing down upon him like a physical weight. He rolled over and felt frantically for Oy. For a terrible moment he thought the bumbler was gone, and then his fingers found the silky fur. Oy uttered a squeak and looked at him with sleepy curiosity.
“That’s all right,” Jake whispered in a dry voice. “There’s no train. It was just a dream. Go back to sleep, boy.”
“Oy,” the bumbler agreed, and closed his eyes again.
Jake rolled over on his back and lay looking up at the stars. Blaine is more than a pain, he thought. It’s dangerous. Very dangerous.
Yes, perhaps.
No perhaps about it! his mind insisted frantically.
All right, Blaine was a pain—given. But his Final Essay had had something else to say on the subject of Blaine, hadn’t it?
Blaine is the truth. Blaine is the truth. Blaine is the truth.
“Oh Jeez, what a mess,” Jake whispered. He closed his eyes and was asleep again in seconds. This time his sleep was dreamless.
17
AROUND NOON THE NEXT day they reached the top of another drumlin and saw the bridge for the first time. It crossed the Send at a point where the river narrowed, bent due south, and passed in front of the city.
“Holy Jesus,” Eddie said softly. “Does that look familiar to you, Suze?”
“Yes.”
“Jake?”
“Yes—it looks like the George Washington Bridge.”
“It sure does,” Eddie agreed.
“But what’s the GWB doing in Missouri?” Jake asked.
Eddie looked at him. “Say what, sport?”
Jake looked confused. “Mid-World, I mean. You know.”
Eddie was looking at him harder than ever. “How do you know this is Mid-World? You weren’t with us when we came to that marker.”
Jake stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked down at his moccasins. “Dreamed it,” he said briefly. “You don’t think I booked this trip with my dad’s travel-agent, do you?”
Roland touched Eddie’s shoulder. “Let it alone for now.” Eddie glanced briefly at Roland and nodded.