And isn’t that exactly why Tom wants to get away from her? From this life? Isn’t that exactly why anybody, even those born into it, would want to shed their skin?

She continues. She calls out his name. She knocks on the nearest door, and a voice from within says they don’t need anything. She tells them she’s looking for her son. The voice, a woman, tells her he’s not in there with her.

Malorie continues.

The train sways.

She knocks on the next door. Nobody responds this time. She imagines Tom standing silently inside. She tries the door. It won’t slide. It’s locked. Now a voice comes. Tells her they don’t need anything. She says she’s looking for her son. We’re on a train. First time ever. Please. Help. Is he in there? No, they say. No, go away. Please.

Malorie continues. She reaches the door. Near to shaking now, she steps between the cars. But before entering the next one, she checks how much space is here, how much room. Could a sixteen-year-old boy fit through the space between cars? Could he jump from here?

The wind crawls up the long sleeves of her sweatshirt. Like the fingers of the creatures she’s never been allowed to look at.

If they have fingers. If they have anything at all.

She doesn’t know. Doesn’t know a thing about them.

Still.

She enters the next car.

Has Dean found anything in storage? An empty casket? Or worse, much worse, a creature in a box, and Dean Watts too proud of his train to be careful when he opened it?

Has Malorie sent Dean to his madness? Has she sentenced them all?

It’s not difficult to imagine Dean beside her again. Suddenly. Forcefully. He’d be saying the same things he was saying before. Using the right words. But she’d hear it. The madness in him. Possibly before he heard it himself.

She knocks on the nearest door in the next car.

“Yes?” It’s a young woman. She sounds scared. Malorie hears her whisper to someone. Is it Tom?

“I’m looking for my son,” she says. “He’s sixteen. Is he in there? Have you seen him?”

“Please, go away,” the woman says.

Malorie feels a sudden stab of rage. She wants to tear the door down, wants to storm into the young woman’s room and ask her how she could possibly only be thinking of herself at a time like this.

“Please,” the woman says. Firm. “Go away.”

And she sounds a lot like Malorie used to. Back when a man on a boat approached her and the kids on the river. Back when people knocked on the door to their room at the school for the blind. Even as recently as when the census man came.