The Voice of the Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

far side of the mountain, accelerated, crossed a trestle, picked up more speed, entered a straightaway, really moving now, rounded a wide curve with a violent clatter, wheels whizzing, took a sharper curve with a dangerous tilt, and moved faster, faster, faster.
    “For God’s sake, don’t wreck it,” Colin said nervously.
    “That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
    “Then your dad will know we’ve been here.”
    “Nah. Don’t worry about it.”
    The train flashed through the Swiss station without slowing down, rocked wildly on the edge of disaster as it negotiated a switchback, roared through a tunnel, and entered a straightaway, picking up speed by the second.
    “But if the train’s broken, your dad—”
    “I won’t break it. Relax.”
    A drawbridge began to go up directly in the path of the train.
    Colin gritted his teeth.
    The train reached the river, swept beneath the raised bridge, and plunged off the track. The miniature locomotive and two cars wound up in the channel, and all the other cars fell off the rails in a brief splash of sparks.
    “Jeez,” Colin said.
    Roy slid off his stool and went to the scene of the accident. He bent down and peered closely at the wreck.
    Colin joined him. “Is it ruined?”
    Roy didn’t answer. He squinted through the tiny windows in the train.
    “What are you looking for?” Colin asked.
    “Bodies.”
    “What?”
    “Dead people.”
    Colin squinted into one of the fallen cars. There were no people in it—that is, there were no figurines. He looked at Roy. “I don’t understand.”
    Roy didn’t look up from the train. “Understand what?”
    “I don’t see any ‘dead people.”’
    Moving slowly from car to car, staring into each of them, almost entranced, Roy said, “If this was a real train full of people that went off the tracks, the passengers would have been thrown out of their seats. They’d have cracked their heads against the windows and against the handrails. They’d have ended up in a big tangled pile on the floor. There’d be broken arms, broken legs, smashed teeth, slashed faces, eyes punched out, blood over everything.... You’d be able to hear them screaming a mile away. Some of them would be dead, too.”
    “So?”
    “So I’m trying to imagine what it would look like in there if this was real.”
    “Why?”
    “It interests me.”
    “What does?”
    “The idea.”
    “The idea of a real train wreck?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Isn’t that kind of sick?”
    Roy looked up at last. His eyes were flat and cold. “Did you say ‘sick’?”
    “Well,” Colin said uneasily, “I mean ... finding enjoyment in other people’s pain ...”
    “You think that’s unusual?”
    Colin shrugged. He didn’t want to argue.
    “In other parts of the world,” Roy said, “people go to bullfights, and deep down inside most of them hope they’ll see a matador get gored. They always get to see the bull in pain. They love it. And a hell of a lot of people go to the auto races just to see the bad crackups.”
    “That’s different,” Colin said.
    Roy grinned. “Oh, is it? How?”
    Colin thought hard about it, trying to find words to express what he knew intuitively to be true. “Well ... for one thing, the matador knows when he goes into the arena that he might get hurt. But people riding home on a train ... not expecting anything ... not asking for trouble ... and then it happens.... That’s a tragedy.”
    Roy laughed. “You know what ‘hypocrite’ means?”
    “Sure.”
    “Well, Colin, I hate to say this ‘cause you’re my good friend, my real good friend. I like you a lot. But as far as this thing goes, you’re a hypocrite. You think I’m sick because the idea of a train wreck interests me, but then you spend most of your spare time going to horror movies or watching them on television or reading books about zombies and werewolves and vampires and other monsters.”
    “What’s that got to do with anything?”
    “Those stories are filled