Billy thought what he’d seen must have been produced by a defect of mind, a rip in his vision; but before he could refine this thought into opinion, the lump atop the car flared like a sail filling with wind, and he recognized it for a creature of sorts—a rippling, leathery sail-like thing that resembled a manta ray without a tail. Twenty feet across if it was an inch and fringed with cruel, hooked claws. There was an irregular gray splotch at the center from which was extruded the debased caricature of a human head, a bald monstrosity with a mottled scalp, sunken eyes, and a leering, fanged mouth. The thing held aloft for a handful of seconds, then folded into the shape that reminded Billy of a taco shell, funneling the wind away, and sank down once again onto the car, which immediately began to twist and shudder beneath it, making Billy think of a train in an old black-and-white Disney cartoon that had danced along the tracks to Dixieland jazz. Rivulets of glowing yellow fluid spilled out from beneath the creature’s edges, flowing down the side of the boxcar, and the roof of the car arched upward, bucking convulsively, the way a cat’s back twitches when you tickle it. The assaulted train gave a high-pitched shriek that didn’t have the sound of any train horn or whistle with which Billy was familiar, and appeared to scoot forward, starting to pull away from Billy’s train. And then the creature raised up again, its body belling. It released the last of its hooks, and the wind took it in rippling flight past the open car where Billy stood gaping, passing close enough so it seemed that ugly little head stared at him with a pair of glittering black eyes and a mouth full of golden juice in the instant before it vanished.
Billy hadn’t been afraid while the creature was attacking the train. It had been too compelling a sight. But now he was afraid—now he put what had happened together with all the other strange things he had experienced, and the whole made a terrifying shape in his mind. He glanced at the big man, who was in the process of fluffing up his pillow sack again. The dogs, quiet now, were watching him attentively.
“Call them things ‘beardsleys’,” the big man said, when he registered Billy’s bewilderment. “Friend of mine name of Ed Rogan was the one started callin’ ’em that. They used to call ’em somethin’ else, hut he changed it. Said they reminded him of his eighth grade math teacher. Fella named Beardsley.” He gave the sack a final pat and lay back. “They ain’t so bad. Hardly ever take more’n a few pints. You’ll see worse where you’re goin’.” He closed his eyes, then cocked one open toward Billy. “Bet you might just know ol’ Ed. He useta ride the northern line like you. Called hisself Diamond Dave.”
“People been sayin’ Diamond Dave’s dead. Ain’t nobody seen him ’round for years.”
“He’s doin’ right well for a dead guy.” The big man shifted about until he got comfortable. “Best thing you can do is get some sleep. I know you got questions, but what I’m gon’ tell you’s gonna go down a lot easier tomorrow.”
If the man hadn’t gone right off to sleep, Billy might have told him that he had no questions, he knew he was traveling east through the land of the dead, on his way to whatever hellish corner of it had been prepared for his eternity. No other explanation fit. It would have been nice, he thought, if death had taken away the pain in his lower back and cured his sciatica; but he supposed—like the man said—there would be worse to come.
He shuffled over to where he’d tossed his pack and sat with his back to the end wall. Stupid ambled up, plopped down next to him, and Billy pulled a wadded-up bandanna from his pocket and cleared away some of the saliva from the dog’s muzzle. “Dumbass,” he said affectionately. “What you think you gon’ do, you got at that damn thing? Motherfucker woulda wrapped you up and took you home for a snack.” It occurred to him then that if he was dead, Stupid must be dead, too. That pissed him off. The bastards had no right to go tormenting his dog. This so troubled him, his eyes teared and he began feeling sorry for his dead self. He dug into his pack and hauled out a pint of Iron Horse. Unscrewed the cap and sucked down a jolt. Most of the wine went into his stomach before he could taste it, but what he did taste he spat back out.
“Jesus…fuck!” He sniffed the neck of the bottle. It smelled horrible. Something must have gone wrong with the batch. It was his last pint, too. He’d wind up drinking it anyway, but for now he didn’t want to put up with having to puke. He was wore down, the borders of his consciousness crumbly and vague, like he was coming down from crank. He scrunched himself up to fit the floor and rolled onto his side. Set the pint by his head. The gentle rocking of the train made it seem that the fire-breathing stallion on the label was charging directly into his eyes.
When I woke the next morning, my eyes fell to that same label, but instead of reaching for the bottle in desperate need as I would have the day before, I had a flashback to my last mouthful of Iron Horse and turned away, coming face to face with Stupid, who licked my lips and nose. I got to my feet, feeling less achy than I might have expected. And hungry. That was odd. It had been ten years easy since I woke up wanting breakfast. Pieczynski was still asleep, encircled by the other dogs. I supposed now that he had stolen them all. He was one butt-ugly son of a bitch. That long nose had been flattened and spread, probably by bottles and fists, until it resembled a nose guard on an ancient gladiator’s helmet; and his mouth, thick-lipped and wide, bracketed by chiseled lines, made me think of the time my dad had taken me bass fishing, the part before he’d gotten drunk and decided it would be funny to use me as the target for his casts.
Maybe I was dead, I thought. I didn’t see any other way to explain how I’d felt so bad every single day for the last three, four years, and then, after one night’s sleep, it was like I’d never had a drink in my life. And it wasn’t only a sense of physical well-being. I felt strong in my head. My thoughts were clear, solid, defined. Even though it had only been seven or eight hours, I was already starting to perceive the Billy Long Gone of the previous night as a different person, the way you might reflect on how you behaved when you were a kid. But I wasn’t sure what to think about what I had seen, whether the “beardsley” had been part of an alcoholic fugue or if it had some basis in reality.
I pushed two fingers hard against the wall of the car and felt a slight resilience. Like pushing against stiff leather. I wondered if I was to cut the surface, would glowing yellow blood spurt forth? That could explain the light that illuminated the car. And the warmth. I dug a jackknife out of my jeans pocket, opened the blade, and laid the edge against the black surface; then I thought better of it. I didn’t want this particular car to go to twitching and heaving itself around. I folded the knife and put an ear flat to the wall. No pulse I could hear, but I thought I could detect a faint stirring and that caused me to pull my head back in a hurry. The idea of a live train didn’t rattle me all that much, though. Hell, I’d always thought of trains as being half-alive anyway. A spirit locked into the steel.
I went to the door of the boxcar and sat gazing out at the land, wishing I had something to eat. We had left the marshes behind and were rolling through a series of hills with long, gradual western slopes and steep drop-offs on their eastern sides, as if they were ancient access ramps of some long-demolished freeway that had been overgrown with tall grasses. The sky was a clear, deep blue with a continent of massy white cloud bubbling up from the northern horizon. Up ahead were bigger hills, dark green in color, lush-looking. The air was soft and pleasantly cool, the air of a spring morning. I took off my shirt to enjoy it; in doing so, I caught a whiff of my body odor. No wonder Stupid was always licking me—I smelled like something two days dead.