“If you say so . . . ,” Clem said. He checked his shotgun and nodded to himself. “So, do we go after him?”

“You want that reward money, don’t you?” the Stranger said.

The Pilkington man grinned, then spat on the ground. ”Right now,” he said, “all I want to do is fill this fucking clown with holes.”

“He’s not a clown!” the Stranger said, exasperated.

They tracked Pogo down Main Street; past doors hammered shut from the inside, with eyes that tracked them behind heavy blinds and offered no help. Pogo had slowed down. He kept turning his head, staring back after them. There was something hungry and cunning about his face. He reminded the Stranger of a wild, captive animal, of something that had been locked up inside its own head for so long that it had gone mad with it long ago, and all that it wanted to do now was hurt and maim and kill. Pain was his only joy.

Pogo led, and the three men followed. Outside the railway terminal, heavy bags were placed in orderly rows, waiting for loading. Powdery substance spilled at their edges. Beyond lay only the Escapement, and the railway tracks disappeared into the distance. The broken moon hung in the sky. The stars shimmered and danced in the black night ceiling of the world. Pogo stood on the wooden platform and raised his arms in the air, glaring down on them. The Stranger raised his gun and the others followed suit. It had the air of a well-ordered execution.

The men opened fire.

The faux clown’s body danced like a marionette on invisible strings. The gunshots tore off his striped clown suit and blew away his jaunty cap and shredded his wig but still he stood glaring down on them in defiance. Behind him there opened a great blackness and the Stranger knew it was the substance in the air, showing him that other place, but Pogo no longer existed there, and the bullets seemed to offer him no harm.

Pogo had disappeared from view as though he’d dropped underground, and a rope whispered through the air and looped around Clem’s neck and tightened. Clem could not cry out and he was dragged out with inhuman force, and he disappeared down the hole. The Stranger and the Kid exchanged weary glances and the Kid shrugged and his face twisted in pain from his wound. The Stranger said, “Stay up here and cover me.”

The Kid nodded. They approached the hole and the Kid trained his guns on the entrance and the Stranger dropped down into the ground. The fall was shorter than he expected. He could see seams of white substance in the walls, faintly glowing in the dark.