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“Charlie!” Annie shouted. “Charlie!”

Before she could reach out and lift the passenger car off the track, Nabler had waved his hand again and the train began to

pull away. Charlie pressed his palms to the glass and continued to call out silently to his mother.

“It’s not him!” Annie said to Nabler. “It’s not possible! You’re playing some trick on me! You’re making me imagine it!”

“Am I?” he replied.

“Like hearing trains in the night. Or when I saw that train bearing down on us at the crossing. It was there, and then it

wasn’t. Or like the spiders. It’s all a hallucination!”

Nabler nodded thoughtfully. “If that’s what you think, then I suppose you can refuse to help me.”

Annie began to shake again. She wanted Charlie back. And she was weighing what she was prepared to do to make that happen.

She asked, “You can make him big again?”

“Of course.”

“If I do what you want, what happens to Charlie?”

“Nothing.”

“Would you turn him into the same thing you’d turn me into?”

“What do you think I am, Annie? Some kind of monster?”

“I’ve seen what you are.”

“I wouldn’t do that to Charlie. We formed quite a bond on the way up here. As I said, he’s a fine boy.”

“What will happen to him?”

“I’ll see that he gets home, back to the West Village, back to your place on Bank Street.”

“But without his mother.”

Nabler sighed. “Yes. But there is extended family, is there not, who will take him in? And a substantial estate by now. You’ve

had a very successful career. The boy will be well provided for. No worries there.”

“What will the story be? I’m just missing? Presumed dead?”

“Mere details. Don’t trouble yourself with them.”

“Will he remember? Won’t he know what happened here, what happened to his mother?”

“No.”

“What do I... become?”

“Something so much bigger than yourself. I can help you with that. I’ve never brought anyone into the sliver before, but it’s

been done. And once it is, you’ll wonder why you ever had any objection.”

“What will you do to him if I refuse?”

“Well, in that case, it will be the status quo around here, even if the market for toy trains isn’t what it once was. The

layout needs some freshening.” Nabler thought a moment. “His fingernails would make excellent patio stones.”

Annie said, “Okay. I’ll do it.”