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Gavin heard a buzzing.

At first he thought he was having a dream about a bumblebee. No, not just one. Given how loud it was, it had to be a swarm

of bumblebees. Hovering around his head. Wait, now some of them were crawling around in his hair. He wanted to swat them away,

wave his arms around wildly to try to disperse them, but when he tried to do that, he found that his arms would not work,

as if pinned to his side.

“Get off me! Get off me!”

He opened his eyes, blinked several times as they became accustomed to the bright light hanging over him. The buzzing ceased.

“You’re awake,” said Edwin, standing before him, something black and shiny in his hand.

Gavin kept blinking, struggling to focus. The world around him was blurry, as though he were looking at it through a dirty

window.

“What’s going on?” he asked sleepily.

“You nodded off,” Edwin said. “You were under a little longer than I expected.”

“What did you... I can’t... I can’t move my arms. Mr. Choo... Edwin, what’s going on?”

Gavin looked down, saw that he was secured to a wooden chair by countless loops of duct tape. His arms, hanging straight down, were tight to his body, and his calves were held to the chair legs with more tape.

His vision began to clear, allowing him to make out what was in Edwin’s hand. Electric hair clippers, like a barber would

use.

“You’re scaring me,” Gavin said. “Come on, let me go. Get this goddamn tape off me.”

Edwin smiled, put the clippers on a nearby workbench, pulled over a second wooden chair, and sat in front of Gavin.

“I take no pleasure in this,” he said. “You seem like a nice enough fellow, Gavin. Down on your luck but a decent guy, in

my estimation. I don’t usually take time to chat in circumstances such as this, but it’s so rare that I talk about my work.

It’s not as if I’m in an office somewhere and can shoot the shit for a while with someone at the water cooler. It’s simply

not the nature of my vocation, and if there’s a downside to what I do, I guess it would have to be that.”

A tear was running down Gavin’s cheek. “Please. Just... I just want to go home.”

“Home? What home?” Edwin chuckled. “Your truck? A park bench? What is this home you speak of?”

“Whatever it is... whatever it was you wanted me for, I’m not interested.”

“Gavin, I really do need you. I hope you’ll give me a chance to make my case.”

Gavin said nothing.

Edwin sighed. “Here I am blathering on when there’s work to be done.” He stood, flipped a switch on the hair trimmer, and

approached.

“Hey! Don’t!” Gavin writhed about in the chair, struggling against the tape.

“Stop jumping about or you’re going to hurt yourself,” Edwin said. He came around behind Gavin, brought the cutting edge of the trimmer to the base of his neck, and cut a path upward. “You really do have excellent hair. It was one of the first things I noticed about you.”

“You some kind of fucking serial killer pervert?” Gavin asked, spitting the words out.

Edwin clicked off the shears and came around to face Gavin, holding a long black lock of hair in his hand. “I take great offense

at that, Gavin. Certainly the pervert part. My interests are much nobler.” He draped the hair on the workbench. “When this

has been dyed and cut into the proper lengths, it will look very realistic. Have a look.”

He pointed to the grasses on a hillside on the railway. “See what I mean? Now sit still. The less fuss you make, the faster

this will go.”

He powered up the shears again and went back to it, cutting one path after another across Gavin’s scalp, the man trembling

throughout.

“You’re a sick fuck, that’s what you are,” Gavin said.

Edwin faced him, smiled, and took a moment to reflect. “What I am, Gavin, is... I am happenstance.”

“Happen what?”

“I suppose, more accurately, I am the opposite of happenstance.”

“You’re a fucking loon, that’s what you are. In your stupid engineer hat and stupid vest with railroad badges all over it.

A certifiable lunatic.”

Edwin ignored the outburst. “You know how people will say something happened just by chance? Someone was in the wrong place

at the wrong time. They were looking one way when they should have looked the other, and wham , the bus hit them. A hunter walking through the woods trips on a tree root and shoots his buddy in the head. Someone’s walking along a slippery sidewalk and a sheet of ice falls off a building and slices their head off. What were the odds? What dumb luck?”

“Please...”

“And the truth is, in a lot of cases, that is what happens. Dumb luck. Fate. Their number was up. But it doesn’t happen that way often enough. Bad luck sometimes needs

a helping hand. It needs to be enabled . Hold still. Just a little more off the top.”

He ran the shears over Gavin’s head, more lengths of hair landing on the floor. He turned the shears off, stood back, and

admired his handiwork.

“If I had a mirror I would hold it up for you,” Edwin said, “but it’s as neat a job as I’ve ever done, which is odd, considering

that the others were in a more compliant condition at the time. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been at something. You can

always improve.”

“Are you going to kill me?” Gavin asked.

Without hesitation, Edwin nodded. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

“If you let me go, I won’t tell anyone. Nobody, I swear.”

“But Gavin, I need you. You’re material. It’s a two-step process, you see, and it’s ongoing. The layout there loses its potency

without new material.”

“What were those bones? In that bin?”

Edwin chortled. “Those are bones. In a bin.” He frowned. “And, as you may have noticed before you nodded off, not nearly enough.

There’s more work to do. And I would imagine your bones are every bit as good as your hair.”

“What are you talking about? What two-step process?”

Edwin thought about the question. “The first step in the process is to build my creation here. Sourcing the right materials. Like yourself, and others, or animals, or personal items I have liberated from people and worked into the project. The bones are like framing. The blood for coloring. The hair for grasses. A lost comb is fashioned into a miniature rake. A pen is an electric pole. That way, it all becomes very organic . You see what I’m saying?”

Gavin, trying to buy some time, but also, despite overwhelming fear, undeniably curious, asked, “Like a living thing?”

Edwin laughed. “Well, not quite. But made up of what was living, and what was attached to the living. That’s what gives it its essence, and when it has that, then I can run the trains through it, so that they can absorb that essence. It’s all very technical. I hope I’m not boring you.”

“No, go on. Tell me more. I’m... I’m interested.”

Edwin smiled, understanding that Gavin was trying to buy time. But he took pleasure in explaining what he did. “Quality control

has always been something of an issue. It can be difficult to measure how much each train has absorbed, how much happenstance

it carries, so you send it off into a household and you don’t know what you’re going to get. Will Mom get a simple paper cut,

or will she fall down the stairs and break her neck? Will a toddler get his finger caught in a drawer or end up at the bottom

of the pool? But something will happen, and that’s what matters.”

Edwin dropped into his chair again and crossed his legs. “I’ve been at this a long time. Have my own area of specialty. There

are lots of us out there, working in the sliver. Finding our own ways to insinuate ourselves into people’s lives.” He smiled,

waved an arm at his handiwork. “I chose this. It works for me. It meets... a creative need. Not that there aren’t other

ways to go about it. And I’ll admit, I’m a bit tired. You might be inclined to think that someone— something —such as myself lives forever. That those of my ilk never die. That we have always been and always will be. Well, that’s simply not true, my friend. I wouldn’t mind turning over the business to someone else one day, but you need the right candidate. They wouldn’t have to do it with trains. Art, perhaps. A lovely painting you could hang on your wall that made the magic happen.”

Edwin ran his hand over his face wearily. “I’ve made some mistakes lately. Getting older. I was sloppy with Mr. Tanner. Shouldn’t

have left him at the side of the road where what was left of him could be found. I did better with Mr. Hillman. He’s over

there, by the way.”

Edwin pointed to an outcropping of rock—about the size of a melon—that popped out of a hillside. It had, if this was possible,

a kind of profile to it.

“Oh Jesus,” said Gavin.

Edwin leaned in close so he was almost nose to nose with Gavin. “I don’t expect this to give you a lot of comfort at a time

like this, but you should know that you are part of something important. Something bigger than yourself. Something almost...

cosmic. Am I getting through to you at all?”

“I—I could be your assistant. I could help you. Get what you needed. I could—I could work on the trains. I’m good at construction.

Or—or I could be the one to take over for you. So you could retire. What about that?”

“As tempting an offer as that is, I’m afraid I’m going to have to say no. You don’t have what it takes. One day, the right

person will come along, but it’s not you. I’m glad we had this chance to chat, but I must finish up.”

The lights flickered briefly.

Edwin looked at Gavin apologetically. “Still a few glitches tapping into the town’s network. Don’t want an electric bill that

attracts too much attention, do we?”

The lights stopped their flickering, then gave up altogether, plunging the room into complete darkness. A red-tinted, battery-powered emergency light tucked up into the corner of the room came on, casting a dim, blood-like glow for five seconds before power was restored and the lights came back on.

But during those five seconds, how Edwin Nabler presented himself to Gavin was altered. He was no longer that pixieish man

in his silly railroad vest, but something else altogether. Silhouetted against the red light, he was a different shape. Taller,

but round-shouldered. A face that seemed to have grown a snout, and were those... whiskers?

The lights flashed back on.

Edwin appeared just as he had before. But there was one thing different about him this time. He no longer had hair clippers in his hand. He was wielding something shiny. And sharp.

Gavin began to scream.