‘Cat, look there. That’s where a weird-looking black train was parked last night…You’re not thinking what I’m thinking, are you?’
‘Well, not unless you were also thinking that we’ve just missed the turning for the lake path.’
‘Halt! That’s as far as you!’ growled a man, suddenly appearing from down the side of the embankment, dressed like a security guard. ‘This section of the line is closed.’
‘Closed? But why? What happened?’ Arthur asked, seeing that a whole load of trees on either side of the hole had been blown over, and that most of them were blackened and charred.
‘Nothing happened,’ the man replied tersely.
‘Nothing!?’
‘That’s right. And that means that there’s nothing here that you need to be concerned about. Now, be on your way before I phone your parents and tell them that you’re trespassing and poking your nose into things that don’t concern you!’
Pretending for a second not to have heard him, Arthur craned his neck to see what else he could see.
‘Go on! Be off with you,’ said the guard, noticing the cat by Arthur’s feet and becoming more agitated. ‘And take that fleabag with you!’
‘Fleabag, indeed. I bet he has more fleas that I do,’ grumbled the cat, as they headed back towards the main crossing to the lake.
‘You know, Cat, I have this really strange feeling that whatever happened here was somehow connected with that white light last night. Only, I still don’t get why it made my hands go all weird?’
‘And my tail!’
‘Really? What happened to your tail?’
‘It went all black hole-like. It totally freaked me out. I thought I was about to get sucked into myself or something.’
‘Army, train, white light, a huge hole in the railway line. What do you reckon it could mean?’
‘That it’s probably time to get the heck out of dodge, while we still can.’
Arthur stopped and looked at him.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Beats me. I think I heard it on a cowboy film once.’
‘Really!?’
Reaching the road, Arthur found that the barricades from the previous evening had all been removed. The men, too, were gone. The only signs that anything had happened were dozens of scorched patches of ground, all triangular in shape and about the same size.
‘What do you think could cause burn marks like that?’ he asked, crouching down to examine one of them.