The Girl With the Bad Dreams

Chapter 10

In order to get home, Carlin has to take the train. In order to take the train, she has to get on at Belmont station.

She pauses before she enters. All the way from halfway down the block she can see the police tape. She swallows and forces herself to keep walking...another quarter block and she can see the chalk outline where Andrea's body once lay. Some morning commuters are crowding around, taking selfies with the police tape in the background. Others push past them, cursing at them for holding up the line. Carlin closes her eyes in pain. She wants to just push her way into the crowd, allowing herself to get swept up by the tide of people and pulled past the scene of the horrific crime.

But instead she's drawn to it. She pushes through the stream of morning commuters, shouldering her way against the flow of traffic. She reaches the police tape and stares down at the bloodstains.

And then she notices a piece of paper flapping in the wind against a corner of the fence.

Carlin crouches down, stretches her arm under the police tape, and grasps the paper. She pulls it through the chain link and unfolds it, smoothing it down against her thigh.

It's one of the pages of Jake Lester's police file.

Carlin begins to walk around the station, pushing her way against the human tide, ignoring the curses of those she's making late for their train or ruining their selfies. She doesn't care about their minor inconvenience – all she cares about are the pages of the file. She finds them here and there, blown into corners of the fence or the escalator. She collects every single page except for one:

It's caught between the El tracks, close to the dangerous electrified third rail.

Carlin looks both ways. The platform is crowded with people, but no train is coming.

So she jumps.

One of the commuters behind her freaks out. "Someone's on the tracks!" she yells. The commuter reaches for her phone. But instead of calling 9-1-1 she starts taking pictures.

The crowd surges toward the platform, fascinated by a scene of impending death.

Carlin grabs the last page of the file and turns back to climb up out of the tracks.

There's a screech and Carlin turns to see a train approaching fast.

Multiple bystanders reach out their hands to help Carlin. She grabs one at random and tries to climb out.

But suddenly the bystander's grip loosens around Carlin's fingers. His eyes roll back in his head and blood spills from his mouth. Then he tumbles forward off the platform.

Carlin falls beneath him, landing painfully on the steel rails. The bystander's body smashes into her, knocking the wind out of her. Stars swim in Carlin's vision but she blinks them away and looks up at the edge of the platform, gasping for breath.

The stranger in the hoodie looks down at her, his bloody ka-bar knife clutched in his fist.

Carlin scrambles to her feet. She jumps for the edge of the platform, grabbing onto it with her finger tips.

The stranger in the hoodie slams the knife down on her fingers. Carlin screams in pain and falls.

An instant later the oncoming train slams into her.

Carlin wakes up with a stifled scream. She's fallen asleep in a taxi cab. The driver is twisted in his seat, looking back at her, his arm slung out across the passenger seat. "Ten bucks," he says.