8

Go to sleep, boy.

Tom found himself back on the train going north from Boston. Coleman Collins, not Del, sat beside him, saying, 'Of course, this isn't your train. This is Level One.'

'Trance,' Tom said. 'Voice.'

'That's right. Wonderful memory. While we're here, I want to thank you for all you've done for Del. He's needed someone like you for a long time.'

A wave of sick feeling, disguised as friendliness, flowed from the magician, and Tom knew he was in deeper trouble than any the troll-like men could have caused him.

'Would you like to see Ventriloquism? That's fun. I always enjoy Ventriloquism.' He smiled down at the boy as they swayed along in the crowded train. 'This is all very elementary, of course. I hope you'll stay long enough for me to show you some of the more difficult things. It's all within your power, I assure you.' 'We'll be with you all summer.' 'Two and a half months is not long enough, little bird. Not nearly. Now. Where should that voice come from? Up there, I fancy.' He lifted his distinguished face and nodded at a grille set in the car's ceiling.

Instantly a hysterical voice crackled out: 'EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! BRACE YOURSELVES AGAINST THE SEAT IN FRONT OF YOU! BRACE YOURSELVES… '

The magician was gone. A fat woman in the aisle beside Tom's seat shrieked; she had been holding a paper carton containing several cups of coffee. As she shrieked, the coffee sailed upward, spinning into the air.

Now many were shrieking. Tom folded his head down between his knees and felt hot coffee spattering his back. The jolt knocked him off the seat entirely, and the noise of the wreck was a nail driven into his eardrums. He could see the woman staggering backward down the aisle, her face caught in an expression between terror and dismay. The railroad car lifted its nose into the air and began to tilt sideways. 'They broke my leg!' a man yelled. 'Jeeesus!' His yell was the last thing Tom heard before the sound of an explosion going off loud as a bomb a short distance down the track. 'Light,' came the voice of the magician. A shattering burst of whiteness, caused by another explosion, flashed through the car. Inches from Tom's head, a Dixie cup shot up into flame. Tom batted it away, but could not see where it went. 'Jeesus!' screeched the man with the broken leg. The uptilted car swayed far over to the right and began to topple.

All about Tom, who was now lying faceup in the aisle, the burns on his back singing like an open wound, people groaned and screamed: the car sounded like a burning zoo.

He gripped one of the seat supports and thought: I'm going to die here. Didn't a lot of people die?

When the car struck the ground, the screams intensified, became almost exalted.