Inside the car, Thorn had reached forward and pulled away some of the crate's packing material, until at last he could see a piece of the Wall. The stonelike painted substance looked centuries old, ravaged by time, the colors having faded quite badly. In one section, Thorn's eyes fell upon the likeness of a small child, but here the face was smudged and not clearly defined. Thorn pulled away at more of the packing.

Outside, the massive line of cars continued to pick up speed. They bumped and jerked along, led by a front car with enormous rust-covered points extending menacingly before it. The cars had reached a juncture in the tracks when, suddenly, the tracks switched as though by themselves, and the line of cars began to move into the same track as the one on which the Thorn container car had been parked.

Warren closed his eyes again, as he fervently murmured prayers. Up above, the raven continued to circle, though now with increasing speed and intensity.

Inside the boxcar, Thorn ripped away another section of the crate, revealing a painting of Satan as an adult in his awsome maturity, clinging to the side of a precipice. But this Satan's face was also almost indistinguishable.

Have I gone mad, too? Thorn thought. There is no evidence here.

But just as Damien had been so persistent in searching for the truth about himself, now Richard Thorn was even more persistent in wanting to see all the paintings that covered Yigael's Wall.

He tore back the rest of the crate.

And there before him at last was the face, a face as clear almost as though painted just a few years before. It was a face Thorn knew only too well.

It was the face of Damien Thorn.

There were some differences, of course. Instead of hair, evil, fork-tongued serpents writhed out of the scalp, and instead of human eyes, there were the yellow, slit orbs of a cat. But the face was that of Damien. There was no mistaking it.

Just then the long line of boxcars came barreling toward the single Thorn container car. Warren, absorbed in prayer, opened his eyes in sudden panic, too late to move away from the sharp-pointed tips of the rust-covered prongs on the first car zooming directly toward him. They plunged swiftly into his body, impaling him against the front of the car. He cried out from the horror and excruciating pain, as he hung wriggling from the points, like a living butterfly pinned to a wall.

The crash sent Thorn sprawling to the floor. The Wall behind him started to tip over in his direction. He saw it coming and barely moved out of the way as it crashed down against the floor of the car on the exact spot where he had only a moment before been standing. It splintered into a million tiny pieces.

The evidence he had come so far to discover was gone.