Don’t cry, she told herself.
The last thing she wanted to do right now was wake up Bill and Jenn.
Little by little, she felt sleep creeping up on her, but she took no comfort from it.
Soon, she realized, the nightmares would start.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The man shuddered as his computer screen filled up with photos of the grisly murder scene.
The body, bound by tape to the railroad tracks, looked like some sort of decapitated mannequin—at least until he brought up the hideous close-up photos of the victim’s neck. Then he was looking at images of an almost clinically clean cross-section of her trachea, esophagus, and spine, like something out of an anatomy textbook.
And here was the head, lying where it had rolled down the stony embankment. The woman’s expression of horror looked much too wild, too exaggerated, to be real, as if it had been painted onto a mannequin’s head.
But the man knew that it was all too real.
This was all his doing.
He had bound this woman in place, where she couldn’t escape her fate. And he had done the same with another whose pictures were also here on this site.
But until now, he hadn’t seen the results that were on display here. He’d had to rush away from both murder scenes before the victims even began to regain consciousness. He’d had to get as far away as he could in order not to get caught.
In fact, he’d never intended to even see these abominable images—and he certainly hadn’t intended for them to be on display before the whole world.
But he should have known better.
What he’d done was evil, even he harbored no delusions about that, and yet …
What kind of a world is this? he wondered.
What kind of people would studiously photograph these images and display them where even a small child could unwarily stumble across them?
He was a sick man and he knew it.
But he was living in a truly sick world, in which people’s worst cravings were provoked and slaked. The people who’d taken these photographs and put them on display had done so of their own free will.
He’d had no choice.
He’d been obeying the power that held him in its thrall—the visions and the voice that wouldn’t leave him alone.
Now he felt a terrible nausea welling up inside him. But was it at the sight of these photographs?
No, some evil spirit was tormenting him again, just like yesterday, and four days before that. After the killing near Allardt, where these pictures were taken, he’d sworn to himself never to do this again.
He’d fought against the spirit until he’d become violently, physically ill.
And now?
Fight it, he told himself.
Surely looking these images of what he’d done ought to be enough to deter him from ever doing such a thing again.
But even now, he felt the fight ebbing out of him, and physical pain surged through his entire body, and emotional pain seared his brain—pain that could only be eased in one terrible way.
He could hear an audible voice whisper in his ear …
“Soon. Very soon.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was night.
Riley was walking along a length of railroad tracks, enjoying the fresh warm air and the bright, moonlit sky.
Then she heard a whimpering voice directly behind her.
She turned around and saw a woman bound with duct tape to the tracks, her neck against one of the rails.
Riley felt as though her heart jumped up in her throat.
How was this possible?
She’d just passed that spot a second or two ago. No one had been there then.
She rushed to the woman and knelt down beside her. The woman seemed to be just regaining consciousness.
“Where am I?” the woman murmured. “What’s happening?”
Riley said, “Don’t worry, I’ll get you loose.”
But as she began to struggle with the seemingly endless coils of duct tape, the task quickly seemed impossible. The tape ripped off in sticky loops, but the woman was still bound.
Then she heard another whimpering voice.
She looked up saw another woman bound the same way just a short distance off.
Riley gasped aloud and ran toward her, trying again to pull loose the tape that bound her. Again the tape looped and snarled, but this woman, too, was still tied to the track. Then she heard another whimpering voice and looked up and saw another bound woman, and beyond her another, and beyond her another …
Riley couldn’t count the number of women who lay bound to the tracks before her.
Then she heard a heavy rumbling and saw a light blazing up ahead.
It was an oncoming train.
Riley stood waving frantically.
“Stop!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “Please stop!”
She heard a grim, gravelly chuckle behind her.
She turned around. Standing on the tracks a short distance away stood a tall, gangly man wearing the full-dress uniform of a Marine colonel. His face was heavily lined with bitterness and drink.
“What are you thinking, girl?” the man said with a laugh. “Do you think you can stop a goddamn locomotive?”
Riley recognized him instantly.
It was her own father.
But how could it be him? He’d died last October.
“Daddy, you’ve got to help me,” she said. “We’ve got to get these women loose.”
“I’m afraid you’re on your own, girl. Now maybe if you’d bothered to come to my funeral …”
He shook his head and let out a scoffing chuckle.
“Naw, I didn’t care a damn about that. I’d have skipped it myself, except I didn’t have much choice, being the corpse and all.”
Riley could hear the crescendo of rumbling behind her. The light from the approaching locomotive threw her own shadow over the tracks and illuminated her father brightly.
“Daddy, what can I do?” Riley asked.
She heard a pleading tone in her own voice.
“Your job,” her father said. “Do your goddamn job. Just don’t get any ideas that you’ll do any good. Remember the laws of physics. An object in motion stays in motion—unless it’s stopped by something bigger.”
He laughed a mean, ugly laugh.
“And there’s no bigger object in all the world than evil. It’s like some locomotive hurtling through outer space until it hits a planet or gets swallowed up by a star or something even bigger.”
“How can I stop it?” Riley asked.
“Don’t be stupid. You can’t. Still, it’s your job to stop it. That really stinks, doesn’t it? It was like that for me in ’Nam, fighting a war that couldn’t be won. Well, now it’s your turn to fight and lose. It’s all for shit, everything you do. And it’s in your blood. It’s your inheritance. Good luck with it. I’m through with it.”
Riley’s father turned and walked off the tracks and disappeared into the surrounding darkness.
Riley whirled back around to face the long row of bound women and the ever-brightening headlight and the roaring crescendo of the engine. She could feel an intense vibration beneath her feet.
Now she knew—the locomotive, the oncoming train, was nothing less than the juggernaut of evil itself, an endless succession of sadistic monsters and helpless victims, and they’d keep coming one right after another no matter how hard she tried to stop them.
But her father’s advice was all she had in life:
“Do your goddamn job.”
She dashed forward, stepping over the victims one by one, yelling over the deafening noise and blinded by the engine’s blazing light, waving her arms frantically.
“Stop! Stop! Stop!”
Suddenly the air was split by the deafening shout of the train whistle.
Then Riley realized that it wasn’t a train whistle at all.
It was the motel room phone ringing beside her sofa bed.
It was her wakeup call.
Riley groggily picked up the phone and thanked the receptionist making the call.
She turned toward her colleagues, who were turning in their beds and grumbling to themselves.
“Wake up, guys,” she said. “We’ve got a job to do.”
*