Free Fiends by John Farris Page B

stay up all night with the lights on and her door locked, and she didn't care what Enid might think. The guest room where Arne Horsfall would be laying his head was right next to hers, while Enid was safely down the hall. Marjory tried to find enough nail on the pinkie of her left hand to nibble. Over by the pond Ted was teaching Arne Horsfall the technique of fly casting. She turned away from the glare of the windows, crept face down onto her bed, and took a pillow soothingly into her arms.

8
     
    Marjory heard the train like a ghost in a well and saw, as she sat up in the back of their station wagon, the big, blunt yellow and blue diesel engine coming into view through the trees. The tailgate of the wagon was down, blurry asphalt unwinding behind them. She was apprehensive but not scared; Daddy Lee must have seen the train too, and he wasn't going to let anything happen to them: nothing bad ever happened to a Waller, they all just got very old and died of natural causes. Wizened fruit falling from the eternal family tree. But the wagon was getting closer to the intersection with the shining rails and the oncoming behemoth, its headlight flashing in broad daylight. Daddy, Marjory said, calmly and deliberately, stop. Then he turned his head and grinned back at her and she saw that it wasn't her daddy; Arne Horsfall was driving. No brakes, he said. Marjory began crawling toward the tailgate of the wagon. Behind them on the road Enid and Ted were bicycling, and they didn't seem to realize anything was wrong. They smiled and waved to Marjory. She tried to call to them, but couldn't utter a sound. Of course not, she'd forgotten she had been born dumb. Trouble and woe. Why had she let Arne Horsfall borrow the family wagon? Mama and daddy would never forgive her. He wasn't one of them. He didn't belong. But here he was, causing a peck of trouble after they'd gone out of their way to be nice. All Marjory wanted to do was to roll over the edge of the tailgate before the train hit them. But now, in addition to being voiceless, she couldn't move. Marjory lay on her back staring at the green woods flashing by, and she heard the train again, wild and dismal, she could smell the heat and oil and feel its power, but no thank you, she wasn't going to look— God damn it—

9
     
    Marjory, lying on her back on her bed, heart pounding right through the mattress, heard the door of Ted's Firebird shutting and then, a few seconds later, the throaty engine turning over. She felt, for a few panicky moments, incapable of movement, as if she had willed a state of paralysis as a result of the nightmare.
    No, I wasn't there.
    She raised a hand lethargically to her damp face and swallowed several limes as Ted backed around Enid's Corvair to the street. Probably he was working the six to two A.M. shift, Marjory thought. The sun had moved on, it was no longer shining directly into her room, and a whiff of breeze stirred the lace curtains framing the windows. Cicadas were loud in the locust tree that needed to be pruned back from the upper stories of the house; it dragged its branches across the roof and clapboards whenever the wind rose.
    About four hours after the accident, with the house getting crowded, the kitchen table overloaded with all the food brought by the callers (Enid had been hospitalized for shock, but everybody apparently felt little Marj would be ravenous after hearing how mama and daddy had been snuffed out), she had sneaked away on her bike and gone over there to see for herself what it had been like. Carrying grief like weights around her wrists and ankles, a big lead collar enclosing her throat. Pedaling furiously down I he narrow curving road, wind in her face redolent of summer woods and the muddy creek bottom, the light below her handlebars barely peeking into the dark. At the scene of the accident tall corn grew in a wedge-shaped plot hard by the railroad right-of-way, and only in late summer was the view of the tracks obscured