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It began as an itching in her fingers.

Annie noticed it two mornings later as she was drinking her coffee. It started in her fingers and radiated up her arms and

began to spread, ever so subtly, throughout her body. At first she thought it was a caffeine rush, that those coffee pods

she was going through at an alarming rate were giving her the jitters, but then she recognized this feeling for what it really

was.

She needed to go back to work.

Her body, as well as her subconscious, were ganging up on her, telling her it was time to stop sitting around.

It was time to create.

Annie had suspected this time might come. She was, in the very core of her being, an artist, and an artist could only put

things off for so long. She had been through a period of self-recrimination over the death of Evan Corcoran, and moved on

from that to an even darker period of grieving John. Not surprisingly, the so-called creative juices had not been flowing

during those times, and at least she’d felt no guilt about that. It wasn’t just Pierce the Penguin who’d been put up on the

shelf. Anything Annie might ever produce was up there next to him.

So when Charlie came down for breakfast the next day, she told him they’d be sharing space. He could keep on playing with

his trains, but she was going to be at her worktable.

“Are you going to be drawing again?” her son asked.

“I think I might.”

Charlie looked pleased. “Are you going to draw Pierce?”

“I don’t know. I guess we’ll see. I started something the other day. I might see where that takes me.”

That, of course, had been that half-rat, half-wolf creation. She’d been thinking about him lately, wondering whether to direct

her talents into this different, gloomier direction. Maybe it was something she had to get out of her system. Considering

the kind of year she’d had, was it even reasonable to think that when she put pen to paper she’d draw a cheerful little penguin?

She could wallow around in the dark for a while and see where it took her.

“So it won’t bug you if I’m in the room while you run your trains?” Annie asked.

Charlie shook his head. “Fine by me,” he said, stuffing a spoonful of cereal into his mouth, milk dripping down his chin.

“But what about your puzzle?”

Annie said, “That puzzle may be what’s driving me back to work.”

If she’d had any fears that the toy train’s relentless chuffchuffchuffchuffchuffchuffchuff would bother her, they were allayed very quickly. While not the same as the city’s background din, it served the same purpose.

A kind of white noise that allowed her to focus on her work. And Charlie barely said a word. He lay on the floor, on his stomach,

propped up on his elbows, and simply watched the train make loop after loop. Occasionally he would slow it down, bring it

to a stop in front of the plastic railroad station, let imaginary passengers get on and off, then throttle it up again.

It was a great toy, Annie thought. Better than any video game, where you sat on your butt for hours on end, staring at a screen.

With toy trains, you were playing with something. But even as she had such positive thoughts, she wondered how long Charlie would be captivated by this activity. How much time could you spend watching an engine, a few cars, and a caboose go around a loop of track?

It did get a bit repetitive.

One thing that had kept him engaged was the addition of several new buildings. The day before, Annie had given in to Charlie’s

request that they return to the antiques store (still, in her mind, more of a junk store) in Fenelon where he claimed to have seen a number of model train kits. Sure enough, he was right. Someone getting

out of the hobby must have cleared out their entire stash. Charlie found, some in the original boxes and others in clear plastic

bags one would use to freeze pork chops, kits whose pieces could be snapped together to make houses, shops, a switch tower,

a radio station, a town hall, and half a dozen common downtown structures. The shopkeeper let them have the lot for twenty

bucks. Charlie was so excited by the haul that on the ride home he attempted to build an ice-cream stand and dropped some

window parts between the seat cushions that Annie had to dig out later.

He had all of them built, and on his floor layout, within a couple of hours and was very particular about their placement.

At one point, Annie had suggested swapping where he had put the town hall and the police station, prompting a curt, “No,”

from Charlie.

So now Annie was offering no further input. Let him do what he liked. A subject she’d not revisited was what he’d said three

days earlier, that this town was where John now resided. She’d been waiting for that other shoe to drop, wondering whether

he’d have more to say about where Dad was spending the afterlife. But it had not, so far, come up again, and she had decided

it best not to push.

Annie had tucked those sketches she’d drawn a few days ago under the pad of paper and discreetly brought them out for another look. She hadn’t decided whether she wanted Charlie to see them. Maybe she was being too protective. He liked monsters as much as the next kid, but there was something about this new creation of hers that was particularly unsettling.

She took a fresh sheet, taped it to the slanted table, with the intention of taking another run at it. The first attempt had

been done with her eyes looking elsewhere, so this would be a more serious effort. She’d never considered, until now, doing

a dark graphic novel, something for a totally different audience than she’d appealed to in the past. Unless, she thought wryly,

she turned Pierce into an avenging penguin on a campaign to slaughter all the corporate overlords who’d contributed to global

warming and the shrinking of the polar ice caps.

For her own amusement, she dashed off a Pierce wielding a machine gun with a word bubble that read, “Take that, motherfucker.”

She chuckled to herself, took a moment to enjoy it, then crumpled it up and tossed it in the trash.

Back to the rat-wolf.

She started with his head. Concentrated on details. The shape of his snout, the menacing look in his eyes. She did a few quick

lines to suggest whiskers. She went back to the eyes, narrowed them to slits. Yeah, that added a new level of creepiness.

“Whatcha doing?” Charlie asked, flipping over onto his back and looking at his mother.

“Nothing much,” she said. “Just trying out all these new pencils and markers. Fin set me up very nicely here.”

“Do you feel like a snack?” he asked, which actually meant that he felt like a snack, and wanted his mother to get him one.

“Go down and have a look,” Annie said. “And could you bring me back a Coke?”

Charlie departed, allowing Annie a moment to sit back and have a look at what she’d done.

“We meet again,” she said, shaking her head in wonder. She might have put it out of her mind for years, but she’d not forgotten what she’d imagined seeing through her mental window. The face of that man in Penn Station. His smile. It had seemed so real at the time, but she was a child, with an overly active imagination.

Annie leaned slightly over the table when she heard Charlie coming back. She wasn’t ready for him to see this yet. He handed

her a can of Coke and nibbled on a chunk of cheese and a handful of crackers he’d found for himself. He flopped back onto

the floor and continued what he’d been doing before.

Annie worked on the creature’s body for a few minutes until she noticed she was losing her natural light. She glanced up at

the skylights. Where had the sun gone? A bank of clouds the color of ink had moved in.

“Looks like a storm coming our way,” she said to Charlie.

He looked up. “Whoa,” he said. “I’m going outside to look.”

He was on his feet in a second and heading for the door. The train continued to run.

“Aren’t you going to turn off—”

But he was already running down the stairs. “Stay on the porch!” Annie shouted.

She slid off her chair and considered, briefly, turning off the train, or at least easing back the throttle to slow it down,

but it had been running nonstop for a couple of hours without a problem and Charlie would likely be back up here shortly,

so she left it alone.

Annie came down the stairs, not at a gallop like Charlie, but one careful step at a time. It had become so dark, so quickly,

that she flicked on the front hall lights before she joined Charlie, who had left the front door wide open and was standing

at the top of the porch steps, gazing into the dark sky. The wind was picking up and there were flickers of light in the creases

of the clouds.

“Lightning!” he cried with excitement, pointing.

And five seconds later, a thunderous clap loud enough to make them both jump.

“ That was close!” Annie said.

As if turned on by a switch, rain instantly came pelting down. Charlie took half a step back under the porch roof to keep

from getting wet.

More lightning and another crack of thunder. Annie slipped her arm around Charlie’s shoulder and pulled him close.

“Look!” Charlie said.

He was pointing not at the sky, but down toward the road. It was Daniel’s wife, Dolores, who’d spurned Annie’s attempt at

neighborliness that first day. She was walking down the driveway of their home toward the road, arms hanging down at her side,

seemingly oblivious to the rain. She crossed the road without looking, not that there was ever much traffic, but still , Annie thought. Dolores moved as if in a trance, reminding Annie of Charlie during his rare episodes of sleepwalking.

“She’s getting soaked,” Annie said.

“She’s looking right at us,” Charlie said.

Dolores continued her robotic walk, her arms hanging motionless at her side. The rain had plastered her gray hair to her skull.

There was another bolt of lightning and an almost simultaneous crack of thunder that felt more like an earthquake. Behind

her, Annie had a sense the front hall lights had gone off. The storm had kicked out the electricity.

“Mrs. Patten!” Annie cried as the woman got closer. “Is something wrong?”

Dolores’s black pants and a gray button-up sweater that she had rolled up to her elbows were as soaked as if she had just come out of a pool, but she gave no indication that the rain was causing her any discomfort. She stopped about ten feet from the bottom of the porch steps.

“Come up here, get out of the rain!” Annie said.

She seemed not to hear. She looked at Charlie, then at Annie, and began to speak.

“What were you thinking?” she asked.

“I’m sorry?” Annie said.

“What were you thinking?”

“ Please , get out of the rain.”

There was another flash, more thunder. Dolores did not move.

“For fuck’s sake,” Annie said under her breath, and stepped out from under the cover of the porch and closed the distance

between herself and Dolores, the rain continuing to pelt down, drenching her almost instantly.

“What were you thinking ?” the woman asked again, her voice pitched higher this time.

Annie put her arms around her, said, “Let’s get you home.” But Dolores twisted away from her, and this time raised her right

arm and aimed it at Charlie, extending an accusing finger at him.

“What were you thinking?” she asked.

As thunder continued to rumble, Annie again tried to coax Dolores to turn around.

“Dolores!”

It was Daniel, running across the road, limping with each stride, as though moving his legs that quickly was causing him no

small amount of pain. “Dolores!” he shouted a second time. “For God’s sake!”

He slipped his arms around her waist from behind when he reached her. She still had her arm extended, pointing at Charlie.

“Come on, honey,” he said, rivulets of water streaming down his face. “We’re going home.”

She turned and looked vacantly into his eyes, as though taking a moment to place him. “What were they thinking?” she asked

him.

He got an arm around her shoulder, looked at a drenched Annie, and said, “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“She’s having one of her... spells. I’m so terribly sorry.”

“What can I do?” Annie asked.

Daniel shook his head. “Nothing. I just have to get her home.”

And with that, he escorted his wife back to their place. Annie, in no rush now to seek cover from the rain, stood and watched

them go. Once they were safely across the road, she turned and mounted the steps to the porch, a troubled Charlie waiting

for her.

“What’s wrong with her?” he asked.

“Her... mind. Dementia. She doesn’t always know where she is or who she’s talking to.”

Charlie did not ask for a further explanation.

Annie glanced down, assessed herself.

“Charlie, can you run upstairs and get my bathrobe? It’s hanging on the bottom of the bed.”

He was gone like a shot. Annie slipped off her shoes, peeled off her soaking socks. She would wait until she could wrap a

robe around her before getting out of her pants and top. When Charlie returned, robe in hand, he told her the lights were

all out.

“Yeah,” Annie said. “The storm. Don’t open the fridge. I don’t know how long it might be off.”

She unbuttoned her blouse, quickly took it off, then slipped her arms into the robe. Now covered, she got out of her jeans. She entered the house with her clothes rolled up into a ball and took them to the small laundry room off the kitchen. She dumped the clothes into the washer for the time being. With the power off, she couldn’t wash or dry them.

Charlie, in the kitchen, asked if he could make a peanut butter sandwich, since all the necessary ingredients were in the

cupboard, not the refrigerator.

“Go ahead. I’m gonna put on some dry clothes.”

As she climbed the steps, she could hear the train continuing to make its circular journey. The power, she figured, must have

just come back on. But when she looked back over her shoulder, she could see the front hall light remained off.

She went into the studio.

Chuffchuffchuffchuffchuffchuffchuff

Annie flicked the switch for the pot lights recessed into the ceiling. They did not come on. Next, she tried the lamp that

hung over her desk. No joy there, either.

She walked over to the train layout, her bare toes inches from the edge of the track. She wondered whether the train was battery-powered,

but there was the transformer, connected to the wall outlet by a black cord. It needed electricity to operate.

Chuffchuffchuffchuffchuffchuffchuff

It made no sense.

Annie knelt down, turned the throttle back to its starting position, but the train continued to run. She shuffled over to

the outlet and pulled out the plug.

The train continued on its circular journey.

“Charlie!”

Still in the kitchen, he evidently could not hear her. She would take matters into her own hands. As the locomotive sped past,

she grabbed it from above, lifting it from the track. Because the other cars were coupled to it, they all tumbled off the

rails, creating a brief racket.

The room was suddenly very quiet. The locomotive in Annie’s hand seemed to tingle, sending minor vibrations up her arm and into her shoulder.

Outside, the thunder continued to rumble like a full-sized locomotive bearing down on the house.