by Mark Parker
There, that kind of thing was tolerated.
There, Luke could play out his October fantasies.
The librarian’s nickname was ‘Miss Melanoma’ because of her surgery-gouged flesh. Kids’ creativity, she’d long ago realized, was a thing of awe when it wasn’t so damn hurtful. The sun—which had left her a burns victim, a withered thing scoured by insidious, unseen flames—was equally merciless.
She sighed, conceding. Nicknames weren’t requested; nor did people ask to be born into their families. But assuming they were brave enough to do so, as Luke had been, help could be asked for. And it would be offered in return to those without judgment, and the rare ability to keep a secret.
All aboard the merry-go-round of hurt. Let’s ride it together, sweetheart.
She strode through her workplace of forty years, a lifetime of fees, Dewey systems, and talks with special children. There were fifteen floorboard creaks between the stacks and her office, and she counted them off as she went. Her little routine calmed. Soothed. Though the librarian and the boy were the only ones around to listen. The building, after all, was closed for the night.
She bent behind her mahogany desk, knees cracking, and with the key strung about her neck, unlocked the safe. It clicked open, revealing a book. She snatched it up and about turned.
Fifteen further creaks of wood against wood.
Miss Melanoma glanced about, familiar spite mounting. People no longer visited the library for the purpose of knowledge; it was where they came when they had nowhere else to get their information. Even the computers were underused now that everyone carried the World Wide Web in the pocket of their jeans. And why cart around wrist-snapping novels when Wallaroo’s entire catalog fit snug-as-a-bug inside a single Kindle? Here, the past desperately fought for relevance, invisible ink in reverse. A single tradition lingered, however. One that Luke could attest to.
The aisles were a perfect hiding spot from bullies.
She sat across from him again. He didn’t make much of a superhero, despite the mask in his hand and the cape at his shoulders. Though she had to admit, that bruise on his cheek was mighty convincing—a good old-fashioned shiner.
The librarian laid the book out before them. “Tell me the name of the boy who hit you.”
“Sammy Donaldson,” the superhero said, hugging himself. “When I was little, back in Portland, there was a cat that lived in our apartment building. It was so cute. I used to pat it, give it milk. It was purring against my leg one day and then just snapped. It hissed and clawed. Dad said it played tic-tac-toe with me. I bled so much. Superheroes aren’t supposed to cry. Those are the rules. But I did anyway.” Luke pulled up the sleeve of his shirt to reveal a network of thin white lines in his skin. “Scars,” he said, covering himself up. “I used to love that cat. But then I hated it. I never thought I could hate anything that much again.”
“Until Sammy,” the librarian said, leaning forward so the boy could smell her breath, the stink of rotting things in a crawlspace. “Tall kid. Red hair.”
Luke nodded. “Yeah, that’s him. He slinks around school, always saying he’s got his eye on me. He hit me ’cause I got dressed up. Said, ‘we don’t have Halloween here in Australia…cocksucker.’” Luke covered his mouth. “Oh, I shouldn’t have said that word in front of you again.”
“You’re fine, sweetheart. Without the hatred, it’s just another word.”
“Okay,” he said. “So you know Sammy?”
“Oh, I know everyone in Wallaroo. We librarians don’t just shoosh, you know. We watch.” She held the book. “And we guide children in the right direction.”
He fingered the eyeholes of the mask. “Is that how you’re going to help me?”
“Yes, Luke.” She opened the hardcover as day gave up the fight and let twilight fill the sky outside. A catacomb chill filled the room. She watched Luke shudder as he gazed at her book. Almost all of the pages had been torn out except for the final three. It was to those she turned now. “Your promise?”
“I’ll never tell,” Luke said. His voice was as fragile as the moths beating at the window beside them, desperate for the warmth of the few lamps still burning within. The old woman and young boy watched those bugs kamikaze themselves against the glass, tumbling from sight, their wings broken.
The librarian tore out one of the final pages. She handed the sheet to the boy, closing the hardcover. “Take this home with you, Luke. Read it. Do as it says and Freight Train Tommy will make things better.”
“But there’s nothing written on it.”
“You’ll see what’s written there once it’s full dark. You need stars to read it. I don’t know what it’ll say, Luke. It’s different for everybody.” She drew the book off the table and into her lap. “All I know is that it works. If you do what it says, Sammy won’t bother you no more.”
“Tell me about…” Luke double-checked that they were alone. “Him.” He folded the paper and slid it into the jack-o’-lantern bucket he’d intended to fill with candy. The pumpkin smiled up at him, contemptuous. Luke exhaled, relieved that he hadn’t gone to school in costume, as had been the original plan. No, he’d run home, changed, and then prowled the streets for treats, finding instead two things: disappointment, and Sammy on his BMX bike near the town’s main quadrangle.
The bully had not been alone.
“You won’t see Freight Train Tommy,” the librarian said. “And Sammy won’t hear him coming, either. Tommy will ride the coal train into town, get the job done, and he’ll climb back aboard before the freight pulls out of Wallaroo. You know how big those trains are, don’t you?”
“Sure do! Dad and Pa took me down to the station when we first arrived and they put a couple of American silver dollars on the tracks. A freight train came along and squished them.” Luke rifled through his jeans. “Those trains are huge. Big carriages and carriages as far as you can see. But man, they move so slow. And I don’t like how they smell, either.” The boy took out a small sack tied off with twine. “It took almost fifteen minutes for the freight to go by before Pa could go and get the coins back.” Luke drew out a misshapen silver dollar and showed it to the old woman opposite him. “I always keep this one with me. Dad said it’s just like our family. The same as everyone else, just a little different.”
“I see,” the librarian said as she stood for the final time.
Luke followed suit, picking up his jack-o’-lantern and mask. “Would you like to keep it?”
“No, sweetheart,” she replied. “No. It’s time for you to go now.” The librarian escorted the boy to the front door and pushed it open, revealing town square, the scene of the crime. Two crows perched on the balustrade threading down to the footpath. They flew away, forgetting to take the remains of their dead mouse with them.
Luke made his way down the steps as the streetlamps stuttered to life around them. Buzzing electricity hummed in her ears. The woman they called Miss Melanoma watched the boy stop and turn to study her. She threaded her arthritic hands, fingered her pockmarks, and thought this superhero such small, easy prey.
Kids like you don’t stand a chance, sweetheart. If not against the bastards of this world, then the crows themselves.
“Oh, and one more thing,” she said, discreet and melancholic. “Once you read the paper, tear it up. Eat the pieces. Every last shred.”
***
Luke ran home as fast as he could, hopscotching from shadow to shadow for fear of Sammy or one of his other classmates catching him in costume again. “I’ve got my eye on you, cocksucker,” the bully had said to him earlier. After the punch.
The October air was stagnant, so very different from the kind back home at that time of year. It filled his lungs as his sneakers pounded the pavement, as he leapt over tracks that would not be ridden until just before midnight when the coal freighter came rumbling into Wallaroo. Everyone knew when the train arrived. Cutlery shook in drawers; photo frames rattled against the walls. It had unnerved the hell out of Lu
ke and his fathers when they first arrived six months ago. Now they scarcely noticed it.
He bounded into the house his father’s company had organized for them, slamming the screen door as he went. Panting, breathless, he tried to slip past the entrance to the living room unseen. And failed.
“You’re back earlier than we thought you would be,” Pa said from where they were sitting on the couch, feet resting on the coffee table. The television blared evening sitcoms, the laugh track so loud it drowned out the dialog.
“Didn’t expect you back for at least another hour,” Dad chimed in, not bothering to rise. “There’s pasta bake in the oven.”
“I’m not hungry,” Luke said. “Feeling unwell.”
He thudded up the stairs, knowing full well that his fathers wouldn’t follow, not for a while at least. It always amazed him when he saw on the news or read online about same-sex parents being so different from those in the ‘traditional family unit’. As best as Luke could tell, his dads were as omnipresent and by-the-numbers as anyone else’s parents.
He thought of the bent silver dollar.
The same, just a little different.
***
Luke sat on the windowsill in his bedroom, positive that he was the only person awake now. He could hear matching His and His snores reverberating down the corridor like the slow-motion clickedy-clack of horses’ feet.
The room was dark. Shadows obscured movie poster faces plastered to the wallpaper; made his old toys and teddy bears blind witnesses to what he was sure must be a crime. Luke was smart enough to know that what he was doing was wrong, but was too desperate to consider anything else. He was so lucky that he’d come across Miss Melanoma when he had. He trusted her.
Librarians didn’t lie.
Like superheroes never crying, that was one of life’s rules, too.
He looked through his window at the quiet street below. The parked cars were faces, their grills exposed teeth drawn back in a scowl. Trees reached for the stars that would give him the light with which to read the blank page in his hands, deep-set eyes peering from their bark. A barn owl sat on the telephone pole and its hoot was just for Luke, a reminder that yes, he was being observed.
Always.
Sammy, his parents, everyone in Wallaroo might not know who called on Freight Train Tommy, but these watchers would. They saw everything.
Luke buried his face in his hands and considered throwing the paper away. But then his palm brushed the bruise and pain reminded him of why he had to go through with it.
As if on cue, the owl turned its attention away. There were no eyes in the trees, Sammy’s avatars. Those were just cars down there. And his parents slept well because they were too wrapped up in themselves to even consider their boy was hurting. No, Luke was alone. Alone with his secret.
“I can do this,” he said to the sky. “I have to.”
And then the words revealed themselves. The script was as delicate and white as those scars along Luke’s arms.
***
The freight train rumbled into town, carriages stretching off to the horizon. Its weight and rattle shook the earth, as it always did. Unlike those sleeping in the streets, the birds in the trees along the tracks had not learned the lullaby of its chugging engine. They took flight, cawing as they pin-wheeled into the black. Rabbits scattered. Kangaroos bounced back into the desert.
A dark shape leapt from between two carriages with the grace of a dancer, and landed on the gravel lining the train’s thoroughfare. Quick, assured footsteps crunch-crunch-crunched as the shape skipped out of sight and into the deeper shadows of the nearby scrub.
It accrued hitchhikers as it went. Spiders strung between the trees through which it ran. They didn’t bite, nestled in its hair instead, dangled from its swinging hands like a child’s yo-yo. Only Tommy’s purpose here in Wallaroo was not a game.
Conspiratorial cloud hands strangled the moon, and in doing so, assured that Luke and the librarian’s secret remained intact. The thrum of the freight train dimmed but did not disappear. It masked the sound of its feet as it ran. Nobody heard it coming. Nobody ever did. This was not the first time it had disembarked, stinking of coal, and wound its way through those streets, as determined as a bubble of blood stalking veins in search of a heart to stop.
Many, many pages had been torn from that book.
It reached its destination and climbed the walls of the house without pause. The closed window was grimy and speckled with the reflection of stars, though it could still see its target sleeping inside. That was no worry, no worry at all. It pulled the scissors from its coal-blackened coat and tapped against the glass, the startled spiders darting across its face, weaving webs of fright and desperation.
Sammy woke. It watched him sit upright in bed. Even though the boy’s instincts would be screaming at him to run, to go get help, to call the police, Freight Train Tommy had a way of making people do things they otherwise wouldn’t.
Such was the strength of stars.
***
The door to the librarian’s house was unlocked. She sat, waiting, perched in her rocking chair in the corner of the mirror-less living room. All about her the little trinkets that defined her life—photographs, dusty figurines, books—trembled with the midnight train.
Her hands were balled into fists. Blood trickled from where her nails had pierced the flesh. A prayer of pain.
And it had been answered.
Despite the chug-chug of the slow train that wouldn’t linger for much longer, she could hear the sound of it rushing up onto the veranda, pushing the door open. There was not a light on in the house; the librarian had learned long ago that electricity scared it away, so the entrance was dappled with shadows.
A black shape against all that black. The earthy stink of coal.
“Come to me, Tommy,” she said, standing. Blood peppered the floor.
A moment of deliberation passed in which the librarian heard only the slam of her pulse, so loud and insistent it extinguished even the train’s echo, the clack of her fine china in the cabinet. But Freight Train Tommy came when it was called. It emerged into moonlight.
“Mother,” Tommy said, its arms open wide. Spiders danced across a gaunt face caught in perpetual decay, a face that had not aged beyond its eight years. Its smile split old skin. Grave soil spilled from its mouth.
The old woman took the child in her arms and hugged it. “Please stay,” she said. “Stay.”
But it could not. Tommy pulled away and sprinted from the room. It would only have a few more minutes to get back on the train that had killed it.
The librarian sat in her chair again and wept. Soon the engine faded, taking with it the vibrations. She thumped her hands against her chest, over and over, despite the stabs of her arthritis as bone grated bone.
Rocking in the dark.
A ticking clock.
Crickets chimed through the door it had left open.
There were only two more pages left in the book and then her child would be hers to keep again. Tommy’s last freight ride. Then they could live out the last of her days together—a special, well-earned time. Every second would count. It had to. The librarian knew, deep down where the cancers lurked, that they would not be reunited in the beyond, assuming the beyond existed at all. Tommy was an innocent, and she had that near-empty book in the safe below her desk as evidence that she was not. Hell’s flames were not as subtle as those of the Australian sun.
But just as hot.
***
Dawn scorched the earth once more. It crept in through Luke’s window, filled the jack-o’-lantern candy box as though with flame. The boy opened his eyes. He rolled over the sweat-stained mattress and reached for the glass of water on the bedside stand. His mouth still tasted of the paper he’d swallowed the night before.
It had been bitter.
Luke swung his legs onto the floor. He was feverish, nevertheless lighter. A terrible anchor had been drowning him since he’d first arrived in
this town with his parents, though he sensed the chain had been broken. He rose from the bed. Free.
The squawking made him jump and he stifled a scream with the back of his hand. A crow flapped its big black wings against the window outside as it struggled to keep its balance on the sill. Spiders scurried over the crosshatched screen.
Luke drew closer, the glare of the sun strong enough to make him squint. He shielded his face as he drew to the spot where he’d seen his personalized revenge spelled out in what had been, Luke was positive, a child’s hand.
He glanced down. The bird was feasting on something bloodied and wet, something that had been left on the sill for Luke to find. It was enough to bring a jet of hot vomit up his throat and splatter the carpet between his toes.
