At the west end of the room, where there had been a troubling darkness,
there was now a crane atop the tracks, and hanging from the boom was a
massive … something An engine, perhaps.
Though I could see the shape of the crane in the dire red light, as well
as the object that it was lifting, I could also see through them, as if
they were made of glass.
In the low rumbling that had grown out of the faint high-pitched ringing
in the steel, I recognized the sound of train wheels, steel wheels
revolving, grinding along steel tracks.
The crane would have steel wheels. Guide wheels above the track, up stop
wheels below to lock it to the rails.
” … out of the way, ” Bobby said, and when I looked at him, he was
moving, as if in slo-mo, out from beneath the tracks, sliding around a
support post with his back pressed to it.
Roosevelt, as wide-eyed as the cat he held, was on the move.
The crane was more solid than it had been a moment ago, less
transparent. The big engine or whatever the crane was transporting hung
from the end of the boom, below the tracks, this payload was the size of
a compact car, and it was going to sweep through the space where we were
standing as the crane rolled past overhead.
And here it came, moving faster than such a massive piece of equipment
could possibly move, because it wasn’t really physically coming toward
us, rather, I think that time was running backward to the moment when we
and this equipment would be occupying the same space at the same
instant. Hell, it didn’t matter whether it was the crane moving or time
moving, because either way the effect would be the same, Two bodies
can’t occupy the same place at the same time. If they tried, either
there would be a fierce release of nuclear energy in a blast heard at
least as far away as Cleveland, or one of the competing bodies me or the
car size object dangling from the crane would cease to exist.
Although I started to move, grabbing at Sasha to pull her with me, I
knew that we had no hope of getting out of harm’s way in time.
As we reeled toward a moment in the past when the hangar had been filled
with functional equipment, just as the oncoming crane appeared about to
click into total reality … the temperature suddenly dropped. The muddy
red light faded. The rumble of big steel wheels became a higher-pitched
ringing.
I expected the crane to retreat, to roll back toward the west end of the
building as it grew less substantial. When I looked up, however, it was
passing over us, a shimmering mirage of a crane, and the burden that it
carried, which was once more as transparent as glass, hit Sasha, then
hit me.
Hit isn’t the correct word. I don’t really know what it did to me.
The ghost crane swept past overhead, and the ghost payload enveloped me,
passed through me, and vanished on the other side of me. A cold wind
briefly shook me. But it didn’t even stir my hair. It was entirely
internal, an icy breath whistling between my very cells, playing my
bones as if they were flutes. For an instant I thought it would blow
apart the bonds among the molecules of which I’m composed, dispersing me
as though I’d never been anything but dust.
The last of the red light vanished, and the pent-up beams sprang out of
the flashlights.
I was still alive, glued together both physically and mentally.
Sasha gasped, “Raw! ”
“Killer, ” I agreed.
Shaken, she leaned against one of the track-support columns.
Doogie had been standing no more than six feet behind me. He had watched
the ghost payload pass through us and vanish before it reached him.
“Time to go home? ” he wondered only half jokingly.
“Need a glass of warm milk? ”
“And six Prozac.”
“Welcome to the haunted laboratory, ” I said.
Joining us, Bobby said, “Whatever was going on in the egg room last