Vanishing Girl by Shane Peacock Read Free Book Online Page A

jumps up onto the bench, then onto its back, his frame so long that his shoulders reach the ceiling. He shoves his hands up through the vent and slams open the steel cover. It rattles on the roof of the train.
    “You can’t go up there, lad!”
    Passengers scream.
    Sherlock grips the sharp rim of the ventilation can and pulls himself up. He can feel it cutting into his fingers. This will take not only arm strength but abdominal muscles.
    “One! Two! Three! Four! …” Sigerson Bell often counts off their calisthenics in the laboratory. The old man does the exercises with the same verve that he insists the boy utilize. Sometimes with too much: flasks go smashing on the floor, pickled human organs end up hanging from their crude chandelier. “This shall be useful to you some day, my boy!”
    Sherlock gets his head through the opening and the blast of air is alarming. In fact, it feels as though it will pull him out of the train and pitch him overboard. But he keeps drawing himself up, folding his shoulders inward, just like Pierce. Blood is trickling down his hands onto his wrists, but he ignores it. He sucks in his breath and yanks his torso upwards. The vent feels as though it will squeeze the life out of him, pressing on his ribcage as he holds his breathas deeply as he can. But he pulls hard and his torso literally pops out of the opening. He bends over the top of the rim onto the roof.
    Then he feels the guard’s hands gripping his ankles, pulling him downward! His thighs are held tightly together by the narrow opening, but Sherlock kicks a foot as hard as he can, feels it connect, hears a groan, and the man’s hands release him.
    Holmes gets his slim hips out, his legs, his boots … and lies flat on the curved roof, holding onto the ventilation can for dear life. The wind is incredible. It feels as though God himself is using all his strength to sweep him off the train. The skin on his face is rippling like putty. Sherlock looks down through the vent and sees the guard lying on top of a middle-aged widow, dressed in black. She is smiling; he isn’t: he’s glaring through the opening at the boy.
    Holmes slams down the lid. The train rocks from side to side, jerking back and forth. He imagines what would happen if he were to fall off. Fractured bones from head to toes: a broken neck, a crushed skull. They would find his corpse limp some distance away. And if he were to be swept under the wheels, he would be severed in half.
    The train chugs and he tries to keep his grip on the vent, wound into the tightest ball he can create, eyes protected from the cinders floating in the locomotive smoke by pressing his forehead to the roof. His arms are tiring, his fingers want to release. He wonders if the railway guard will open the door and try to climb up the ladder at the end ofthe carriage. Probably not. He will think the boy is done for … either in a gruesome fall or arrest at the next station.
    The boy hangs on for what seems like an eternity. Just as he feels he cannot last any longer, the train starts to slow.
The next station!
It gives him an idea. The train heaves and slows again. The whistle sounds.
    Sherlock lets go of the ventilation can.
    The wind blows him down the slope of the roof toward the edge. Crying out, he spreads his fingers and flattens himself to the surface like a spider – and stops sliding. Then, ever so slowly, he inches his way toward the end of the carriage. Thank goodness it isn’t far. The train keeps decelerating. He gets to the end, finds the top of the ladder with a foot, and descends.
    When he reaches the bottom, he hears something to his right … and sees the railway guard coming around the corner, his boot tentatively groping out for a rung, his face contorted with fear as he tries to negotiate his way onto the same ladder. The train is still moving at a mighty speed. Holmes steps off the bottom rung and onto a ridge low on the carriage, cricks his neck around to see the passing