Then her eyes fell on the coupling between the cars, the chain rattling there.
It was, she knew, their only chance. She leaned out, tried to unscrew the turnbuckle. It didn’t move, didn’t even budge. The carriages were grinding and clattering together, the ties roaring past underneath in a blur. She heard Walter scrabble up above, heard the big stranger cry out, and then both plunged off the side of the roof, and Margaret gasped in pain and fell back.
It was no use.
She could feel the cuts in her stomach. There was blood all down her front. The wind was in her ears, in her eyes, stinging.
And then, as if from a long way off, Margaret Harrogate slowly grit her teeth, and got back to her feet, and leaned out and pulled at the coupling for all she was worth.
* * *
Alice pulled the trigger.
She watched the bullet go into Jacob Marber, strike him full in the chest, saw him shudder and spin sideways in the wind and then straighten and keep walking, steadily, quickly, toward them.
She fired again, and again, unloaded her weapon, and each time the bullets seemed to strike him and be absorbed by the dark core of him and just pass on and through, somehow, though it made no sense and broke every law of nature Alice had ever trusted in. Marber didn’t react at all, just kept coming on, the air darkening in front of him.
Charlie had crawled to the far end of the roof, clinging to it, and was hollering at her. Alice tried to shove Marlowe after him but the boy wouldn’t go, just peered up at her, his face smooth. It was like something had happened inside him, seeing that woman Brynt.
“Go, Marlowe,” she cried. “Go with Charlie! Go!”
She glanced back at Jacob Marber. And that was when she saw it: a long curved scythe of darkness, like a tentacle of smoke, rising up out of the monster and then thrusting itself forward, toward her, and she couldn’t get out of the way fast enough, and she felt something pierce her side, punch through her ribs with a searing pain, and then she was lifted impossibly up off her feet and held suspended there in the rushing wind, impaled by that darkness.
The pain was more than she’d ever known. She was clutching at the darkness, clawing at it, gasping. And that was when Marlowe reached up, and put both his hands on her ribs, his thumbs folded inward, shining suddenly. His skin was blue, transparent, brighter than she had ever seen it. And she felt the wicked point of the scythe withdraw, and all at once she fell onto the roof and crumpled. The darkness, whatever it was, was helixing around Marlowe now, getting sucked sideways by the wind but re-forming and spiraling all around and he just stood in the middle of it, hands upturned, his little face looking back at Jacob Marber.
Marber was nearly at the edge of the roof, nearly at the gap, not even fifteen feet from them. And Marlowe suddenly held out both his little hands, so small, defenseless, as if to warn the monster back, as if to tell it to stop.
Alice stared, stunned. And the darkness that was circling him all at once hurtled toward Jacob Marber, and surrounded him, and underneath it all the darkness was somehow glowing with that same blue shining until the man was lost utterly in the light and there was only a vague outline of a figure, struggling there, as if trapped in blue amber.
And then Marlowe collapsed.
There came a loud whump, and the blue light arced out and away, and Jacob Marber, on his knees, raised his slow face. His eyes seemed to be bleeding darkness. His expression was twisted in a rictus of pain and fury. He got to his feet. Alice crawled forward, her side ablaze with pain, and she cradled the boy in her arms.
And it was then, all at once, with a slow grinding screech, that the gap between the cars began to widen, the distance to open out, and she could see the tracks racing past below, and the back half of the train was sparking and slowing and pulling away from them.
Alice crouched on the roof, holding the little boy in her arms, her hair whipping out around her face. Far down the tracks, on the roof of the carriage, Jacob Marber stood facing them, motionless, while darkness swirled around him like a swarm of bees. He was watching, just watching, while they raced away, and all the while that he was still in sight it seemed to Alice he didn’t move, until at last he was gone from view, and their train was racing on, northward, into Scotland.
The VANISHING of JACOB MARBER
?
1873
12
KOMAKO AND TESHI
On the night before Komako Onoe—nine years old, twister of dust, witch child and sister to a dying girl—was to meet Jacob Marber in the flesh and witness something extraordinary, something that would change her life forever, she first lay with her little sister on their tatami and prayed.