Craig turned and walked towards the tunnel mouth, his fear a hard, hot nugget in his chest. He stopped at the entrance, looking up at those teeth of ice that hung like threats from the rock. He should end this. The knowledge could be locked away again. He could become a sane man, searching for ski-thieves and drunks, drinking coffee with hotel managers and having dinner with tour operators. He was in Hell, but he had the power in that black radio to get himself back to Purgatory at least. Craig put a hand to his shoulder and touched the black plastic box. He fingered the switch and looked deep into the blackness.

There was a singing noise. High and sweet, the metal tracks vibrating with it. And the chanting had stopped. He stared into the gloom and when the single round light that had begun as a small thing became a big thing, his body took the initiative from his dazed mind, and sprinted out of the way.

The train took a long long time to pass, and while it did Craig McGee waited dumbly, hugging his resolve to his breast, waiting to call his men and end this insanity.

It was the only way. He was mad. Mad to see what he was seeing, to believe what he believed. He knew that now. He would simply keep that madness a secret, the way he had always kept it a secret.

The train was ninety-seven boxes long, and when it had snaked away, leaving Craig in a snowy silence, the radio also remained silent.

Because as the last car of coal swept away, in its wake the mangled body of Sylvia McGee twisted and tumbled on the tracks, making the snow bloody with the progress of her tattered remains.

Getting past those cops had been easy. Billy had slipped out of the bathroom window and scrambled along the porch roof. No one could see you up there, and better, you could reach the drooping mid-branches of the big pine that hung over the woodpile. Billy had grabbed hold of one and swung himself over the fence, dropping softly down into the neighbours’ yard, followed only by a quiet thump of shaken snow as the branch bounced back up. Piece of cake. He was off through the back yards of Oriole and out into the next street without anyone seeing a thing.

Although he had been scared, he had also been exhilarated. The wolf hadn’t told him his Dad was heading back to the Corkscrew Tunnel. He just kind of knew it when he’d put that coin into his hand.

At that moment in the bedroom, he’d suddenly smelled diesel fumes and that metallic musty smell that wafts out of a tunnel after a train has just passed through. He knew his Dad was thinking about where he had to go back to. So Billy was going too.