Hell Train (26 page)

A small, thin figure appeared in the doorway, too dark to make out, and yet there was a familiarity about it. Reaching out an arm to steady itself against the wall, it made its way toward him.

It was a boy of seven or eight years, with protruding ears and black hair fringed over his eyebrows in a pudding-basin cut. Thin, pale legs emerged from short blue flannel trousers. He wore a ragged woollen vest and a blue jacket several sizes too large. His brown sandals were torn and scuffed.

‘Can I sit here?’ he asked in French-tinged English, studying Nicholas with large dark eyes. He looked as if he was recovering from a serious illness, and had yet to find his sea-legs.

Nicholas moved over, eyeing the boy warily. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘My name is Jean-Guy,’ the boy replied. ‘Where am I?’

‘You don’t know?’

‘No. I was sitting on the bay looking out at the ships, and then—’ He looked about, frightened.

‘You were summoned,’ Nicholas explained. ‘I cannot tell you more.’

‘When can I go home?’

‘When you have fulfilled your task, I imagine.’

‘I cannot stay long. Mama will be angry with me. She is at home, making
bouillabaisse
for supper. I promised to help.’

Nicholas had a sudden bad feeling about where the seemingly innocent conversation was heading. ‘Where do you live, Jean-Guy?’ he asked.

‘In Nice with my mother.’

‘Do you have no father?’

‘My mother says my father died before I was born.’

‘What is your mother’s name?

‘Marie-Helene.’

At that moment, Nicholas knew he was sitting with his son. He reached forward and hugged the boy. There was nothing of him; he was undernourished and sickly. He wondered what on earth he could say that would not hurt the child, and decided to keep his counsel. Jean-Guy had been summoned to test him. The question was how?

‘Do you have anything for me?’ Nicholas asked, releasing him.

Jean-Guy thought for a minute. ‘Yes, I believe I do.’ He felt inside his vest and pulled out an oilskin packet. He seemed surprised to find it there. Nicholas accepted the packet and carefully unfolded it. Inside was a knife with a chased silver blade. He had won the knife in a game of poker at the casino in Nice, taking it from an Arab who had accused him of cheating. Before they had fallen out, the Arab had explained that the
Kusha
was meant to be carried in a special compartment attached at the side of his belt. Its double-sided blade was heavy, downward-curving and engraved in geometrical lines, with a filigreed silver grip.

‘It’s very beautiful,’ said the boy, reaching out to touch it.

‘No,’ said Nicholas, pulling the knife back. ‘It’s very sharp. It has killed many men.’ He remembered the stories the Arab had told him about the blade. ‘Why have you brought it with you?’

The boy’s brow furrowed. His countenance was so melancholy that he almost moved Nicholas to tears. ‘I think you have to kill me with it,’ he said.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘That’s what the man said. I’m to give you a message. The message is this: you have a choice. Kill the son you abandoned, or kill yourself. That’s all he said.’

So this is the nature of my test,
thought Nicholas bitterly.
I’m to trade my life for the life of the son I walked away from when I was but eighteen years old. How can I choose? The lad means nothing to me. And yet—

He looked back at the shaking boy, sitting with his thin arms wrapped around him, and drew him close. ‘Don’t be frightened, lad,’ he said. ‘I won’t harm you.’

But the choice needed to be made. ‘How long do I have to decide?’ he asked.

‘You must make your decision before we have sat together longer than five minutes, or we are both lost,’ said Jean-Guy tonelessly.

There had to be a way out, but the test seemed to present an impossible paradox. If he made what he suspected was the righteous choice and saved the boy’s life, he would die, stranding Isabella alone. But if he chose the selfish path, he would surely fail the test and lose his soul. The boy wiped snot from his cold nose and stared at him with huge sad eyes.

‘Tell me something of your mother,’ said Nicholas, anxious for clues.

‘She misses my father.’

‘Surely she found another father for you?’

‘No, she could not.’

‘Why not?’

‘She loved my father very, very much and prays for his soul each night before she goes to bed. She is a good Catholic. Our neighbours are mean to us because she has no husband.’

‘Do you go to school?’

‘No, I must help my mother make paper flowers to sell in in the
Cours Salaya
.’

Nicholas was overcome with shame. To have fathered a boy and walked away, leaving his mother in penurious circumstances when he was winning fortunes at the gambling tables, was abhorrent to him now.

He picked up the knife and felt its weight. Touching his thumb against the blade, he watched as a pearl of blood formed on his skin. He could cut his own throat and barely feel a thing.

But what of Isabella? How would she survive? Guiltily, he realised that the train was forcing him to ask questions about his own nature that he had never asked himself. ‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he told the child. ‘But if I leave, how will you return?’

‘I think I am just supposed to close my eyes, and I will awaken at home,’ he said solemnly. ‘I will either awaken there, or in paradise.’

Nicholas told himself that he had intended to go back and see Marie-Helene when the time was right, but he doubted that this was the truth.
How can I prevail if I can’t even be honest with myself?
he thought. ‘Tell me about your life,’ he said.

‘Each morning I arise at five and eat with my mother, and we make the flowers. Then we go into the market with them, returning home at midnight. It is a hard life for both of us. We have no-one else but each other.’

The train rattled over a set of points and began to descend a hill toward its final destination. ‘You must make your choice now,’ said the boy.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

THE HUNT

I
SABELLA AND THE
elderly etymologist headed out into the corridor. Isabella carried the cage containing the fever tree leaves, and Mr Freely had collected his net, but if the insect could bore through a solid wooden wall, there seemed to be little chance that it would be stopped by some pieces of string on a bamboo pole. Isabella cursed herself for giving in to her curiosity, and knew that the only way she could win now was by stopping the beetle before it came for her.

‘It must be in the next carriage,’ said Mr Freely. ‘It can’t go far.’

‘Why not?’ Isabella asked.

‘It uses up too much energy. It will need to feed.’

In the next compartment, a fat farmer’s wife sat with stale cabbages piled at her feet and her eyes shut. Mr Freely and Isabella gingerly entered.

‘Please, Madam, don’t be alarmed,’ said Mr Freely, raising his hands in a placatory gesture, ‘we have a rare beetle on the loose. Have you seen it?’

The fat lady made as if to speak, but when she opened her mouth no sound emerged. Instead there was a terrible whirring noise and the bug drilled out. It must have entered from the back of her neck. She coughed blood over the shocked pair, her eyes widening in pain and terror.

As she fell forward, the bug roared up to the ceiling, hovered motionless for a moment like a hummingbird, then dived back into her, burrowing another hole, this time through her coat and shirt and the fatty flesh of her chest, and out with a bloody explosion into the wall behind.

Mr Freely peered into the splintered hole in amazement. ‘Incredible,’ he exclaimed, not without a hint of admiration.

An eruption of wood and a crack of glass brought them running. As the bug smashed its way from compartment to compartment, causing havoc, they were barely able to keep pace with it.

‘I said to Mrs Freely we must take it alive,’ panted her husband. ‘We have to recapture it. We may never get a chance like this again to study such an exotic creature.’

The insect was powering its way through to another cabin when the drone of its wings suddenly stopped. Cautiously, Isabella and Mr Freely peered in but could not spot it.

They entered slowly, searching the seats, but the compartment appeared empty. ‘Wait—over here.’ Mr Freely pointed to the entry hole in the wall, but no exit.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Isabella. ‘There’s nowhere else for it to go.’

‘We have to trap it. It’s a female. It’s looking for somewhere warm to lay its eggs.’

Isabella bent down, searching the seats. As she looked, she felt something moving slowly up her leg. She turned in time to see the beetle disappearing under the hem of her dress.

She watched in horror as the lump beneath her clothes continued moving upward. Carefully and quietly, with the minimum of movement, as one would when faced with a nest of hornets, she unbuttoned her outer skirt and dropped her petticoats.

‘Don’t kill it!’ cried Mr Freely, throwing out his hands in protest. They watched as it burrowed about in the undergarments, but before the etymologist could seize the lump it shot out, back into the corridor.

Running after it in her underwear, Isabella realized they had reached the train’s observation platform at the rear, where Nicholas was sitting talking to a large-eyed child who looked remarkably like him. Neither of them appeared to notice Isabella. It was as if they inhabited a different sphere of existence.

The bug was hovering above the railing, darting and buzzing beside them.

‘It won’t leave the train,’ said Mr Freely with assurance. ‘It has a food source now.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Isabella, puzzled, her attention torn between the beetle and the man who had come back for her.

‘I’m rather afraid that’s my fault. I think I gave it the taste.’

‘What do you mean?’

The bug swerved and turned, heading back toward them.

‘I fed it,’ said Mr Freely apologetically.

‘What did you feed it?’

‘I fed it my wife.’

The bug flew straight at Isabella. Mr Freely was watching in great excitement. For him it was obviously another chance to witness the creature’s feeding rituals at close range. The bug dived right at Isabella’s open mouth. She clapped her hands over it as it diverted towards her eyes. Its legs scratched crimson lines on her palms and wrists as she fought to hold it away from her face.

The insect’s force was incredible. It remained inches from her eyes, its mandibles snapping crazily. No-one had ever grabbed it before. She fought to keep its wings from opening wide and allowing it to reach full power. The beetle hovered above her and tipped its carapace to unfurl a curved crimson stinger, bloated with poison. It whipped the stinger at her, but could not quite reach her face. She recoiled in revulsion, wondering what kind of entity could create such a creature.

Isabella flung the
Coleoptera Freely
aside as hard as she could. It hit the rear wall of the observation deck and dropped to the ground.

‘No, you mustn’t hurt her!’ Mr Freely yelled. He dropped to his knees, looking for the bug.

It came flying back up with an angry drone and hit Mr Freely hard in his surprised face, ploughing straight through his right eye. He rose and turned to Isabella, spraying her in blood. The bug flew out and burrowed back in. Then out, and in again, stitching a bloody pattern through Mr Freely, who shook violently as he was riddled with passages. ‘She wants to lay eggs!’ he cried, ‘I’m to be her nest!’ He sounded thrilled at the prospect, then dropped onto all fours and fell on his face.

Isabella could hear the bug buzzing inside him. She bent over him with the cage held open above his head, expecting the bug to come roaring out of the top of his skull. But as she listened, the whirring died away.

Tracing the insect as it moved down through Mr Freely’s body, she flinched as it came tearing out of his rear end. The bug flew straight into the cage held in Isabella’s hands, but was travelling so fast that it smashed the wooden prison to smithereens.

Isabella found to her disgust that she was covered in the less savoury parts of Mr Freely. Shocked, she looked back at Mr Freely, who was still convulsing violently.

‘Mr Freely?’

Suddenly the entomologist’s body jerked upright as if attached to strings, and he vomited egg sacs over Isabella. A gourmet might have suggested that they looked like ravioli in oyster sauce. Covered in egg-sac slime, Isabella screamed and stamped them into the ground. The cage lay shattered on the floor. The bug was still free.

She understood instinctively that she had to kill it in order to survive, but how? She had no weapons, nothing with which to lure it except the scent of her own body.

But that, it seemed, was enough. The beetle appeared from the darkness and roared after her once more. She could only leave the deck, where Nicholas and the boy had failed to notice her plight, and run as fast as the swaying carriage permitted her. She knew that the insect would be closing in behind.

Fool!
she thought as she ran,
fool!
You mentioned Pandora aloud and the train presented you with a box that should not be opened! Could you not have withheld your curiosity for once in your life? Always causing upset as a child, and still you have not learned a thing!

Diving into the nearest compartment, she slammed its door but the bug came right through it, shattering glass and scattering oak splinters in her hair. Isabella screamed, and the train’s whistle magnified her terror, echoing it into the dark hillside.

The
Arkangel
’s wheels turned ever faster as the stoker shovelled coal into the boiler, readying it to receive a soul.

As Isabella hurtled through the train, pursued by the bug, she began to realise just how many passengers had died during the course of the
Arkangel
’s journeys. And then she had reached the engine, and there was nowhere else to run.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

THE DECISION