Thirteen

Dark, dark world.

Through the thin slits of vision his swollen eyelids afforded him, Adin Brown could make out only a mottled film of dark color that shifted and shrank as he tried to focus, the dim light moving as if he were still underwater, still fighting for air, his lungs straining. Yet he could not be in water now; that much he felt sure of. This place was too gritty and dusty, too dry. The air itself hurt his eyes. His body itched and his head throbbed, and under his hand he felt things that were sharp and hard. Was he dead? Was this Sheol, the shadowy land of forgetfulness where he was destined to dwell, or the Hades his grandmama had warned him of? A place without his loved ones, without God?

He ran a hand over his face and found the surface changed, his flesh painful to touch and adorned with grit that fell in clumps. His hands were free, he realized. He was no longer bound; the ropes that had held him were gone and the flesh where they had been was raw. He was no longer in the tub. No longer in that strange room. Had he been freed? Had he really been left to live after seeing the faces of his captors? The face of his interrogator? He turned his body over painfully, stretched out, and kept feeling blindly, reading this new dark place as if by braille. He found something cold like iron, something solid. Did he bring his injuries into death? Should he not be free of pain if he was dead, or was this punishment? As if in answer, ears that had only heard ringing now heard something else—a roar. A deep, powerful roar was building. His hand shrank from the iron and he rolled over, finding more of it with the other hand. Under his body was dirt and planks of wood as well as lengths of iron, he now realized. And something was approaching, something building. The iron under his hand began to vibrate, harder and more urgently. He strained his eyes, catching only faint details. Tracks. Train tracks. He was on train tracks.

And a locomotive was coming.