Speaker 1: Hullo. I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. Last night I must have gotten
in a round quarter to eleven. I remember my key
scraping the lock, the old door, protesting some scattered rain,
glazing the flags, and the stale, familiar hash of my hull.
I shoved off my jacket, letting it slip from numb
shoulders with a practice flick. It caught on the banister
post as always, as if to say welcome back to
the usual. There's an autumnated hash in the house that
I are a kind of emptiness that grows clever with routine.
My back hit the floor with a soft glapse, beside
the umbrella stand, and I made my way straight to
the kitchen, rubbing the stains of daylight from my temples.
It wasn't until I reached to hang up my coat
to finally retire my armor for the night that I
felt at Wedsden's idea. In a pocket, A crumple of paper,
soft from damp, warm from my body. The faint metallic
trace of ink met my thumb as I drew it out,
A train ticket stop of all things, slightly torn the date,
blurring at the edge where it had leached into the fibers,
but not to night's date. I stood there in the
thin kitchen light, feeling the linoleum chilled my feet, and
stared the stub reed platform two eleven fifty three p m.
Yesterday Except yesterday evening, I was here in this same kitchen,
half asleep over tea in an old paperback, my memories
pinned resolutely back her yawning ire under the lamp, the
radio droning, the wind against the eaves, no trains involved.
I hadn't ridden the rails since the previous morning, hadn't
I From the hallway, the house seemed to lean closer,
old timber straining as though they too were curious. The
stub was oddly warm in my palm, as if having
been pressed close to flesh for arrows. I pressed my
thumb to the ink, then turned it over. The reverse
was blank, except for a faint water mark in the
brush of silence. The smallest echo, A voice draped in memory,
called my name from a near empty, drained carriage. The syllables,
benign but unfamiliar, startled. I squeezed my ass tight when
I opened them. The house was silent. The ticket's stub
felt heavier. I tried to steady myself at the table,
gaze sliding over the detritus of my life, outdated bills
and open bank statements, my laid answer of a frame,
family photos, my parents and the coast, my brother in
his skull blazer, me sullen in someone else's garden. I
shut my phones, crawling through miss messages. Nothing from colleagues,
nothing from friends. I flipped through my calendar, were seats
scattered from my battered wallet. It was all exactly as
I remembered, no gaps, no mysterious expenditures, no impulsive cross
country jaunts. Yet the stop the more I stayed, the
less sense it made. I slept outsigh, half expecting to
find muddy footprints or some stray signed beneath the sodium
street lamp. But the slavs were clean, save for rain
puddles and an old hedgehog's path. My breath fogged in
the cool air. At the threshold, I hesitated, ticket in hand,
as if some answer might ride the wind in. But
nothing came, just the dutiful tick of my own heart
and the distant growl of a late lorry on the
bypass back inside, the faces and the wholeway frames regarded
me solemnly, their eyes bright and reflected light. I slumped
into the kitchen chair. The house felt smaller for my confusion,
walls retreating behind that single inexplicable fact. I held a
ticket for a journey I never made. For time, I
was sure I'd been at home, or was I Flickers
of a station platform, misted in gray, shivered at the
edge of my thoughts. It was as if beyond the
solid comfort of my front door, another me, one deeper
in exhaustion or need, had slipped off to ride the
last train home. The next morning, routine tried to sweep
me up. The kettle steamed its little ghosts, the bathroom
towels chilled my feet, and a cup of coffee I
brewed was just the right kind of bitter. In the mirror,
I looked much as I always did, a face softening
around the eyes, harry, the prematurely silvering or resisting home
and reason, depending on the mood. Slacks, jumper, windproof coat
bag slung at just the right angle. I made a
point to pat my pocket, mumbling to myself, and the
stub now over so slightly brittle, was still there. I've
lived this way few years, a commuticut between what feels
like two worlds. My job in Manchester isn't much to
write home about, though there's no one much left to
write to, just enough admin and minor crises to fill
a week and leave the mine tired. The house is
still legally my aunt's, though the letters now bear my name.
Her ghost has long since found better haunts. I sometimes
think the routine is a tight weave. Every morning, I
check the forecast, slip down the lane to the station,
and blend with the other ghosts of the platform. Miss
Cess Hackett greets me with her near tooth smile as
she unlocks the ticket office. Neonm Vess flickering in the mist.
Mister Billings, twice retired, appears precisely at seven eight is
cane tapping and his gaze worry for delays. The guard
on the late service rarely makes eye contact, though I
sense an understanding in our brief glances, and as are
the only nearish thing in town, pouring coffee as if
it were wholly always with a softer morning love that
seems to mean something, though neither of us ever says,
the town is a patchwork of memories. I no longer
bother trying to collect faded brick, low murmuring terrace houses.
A single public does lost orders before ten and expects
no rebellion. You can see railway embankments everywhere, slicing the
town into manageable pieces. The station sits at the confluence,
half artery, half barrier, at the comings and goings, defining
what little life endures. On foggy mornings, the platforms seem infinite,
stretching into haze of uncertainty. On bright days, they just
look tired. My past is not especially worth recounting, except
that it led me back here after university and heartbreak,
A couple of loud family arguments and one small private loss.
That dozen need words these old streets. Despite all a comfort,
I've made myself at home in the edges of things,
still lately I felt time thickening. Sleep is troubled. Mornings
are heavy, and sometimes I wake to find that I
left a glass in the wrong room, or a light
burning in the attic. Memories shifting like misselled letters age
I've told myself or else The mind slow protest at
repetition that was until last night, when the stub appeared,
and the world's invisible line seemed to twist bloodlessly beneath me.
I let it sit on the entryway table, daring myself
to brush it aside with the grain post office receipts
in the rubber band I always forget to put away,
but it drew my eye again and again. What I
most wanted was to dismiss it, blame some mistake or
a prank of tiredness. Yet each routine gesture, coffee, shower, packing,
the lunch fells slightly altered, as if the house itself
was waiting to see what would come next. Something or
some one was expecting an answer. The days that followed
refused to return to normal, as much as I wish
they would. On Tuesday, while reaching for a scarf on
the whole peg, my fingers brushed another slip of paper
wedge between my gloves. Another ticket stub slightly damp. I
pall last night stayed the same time, same platform. My
breath caught a pulsive, unwelcome recognition raised through me. I
tore open the kitchen drawer, rummaging through spare batteries and
old take away manews. Two more stubs, curled and fin
and sticking together, tumbled out. Each one was stamped for
a different night, always the previous, Always near midnight, you know,
I told Sara, folding the creased ticket on the countertop
while I collected my usual. Either someone's pranking me or
I've got the most boring case of sleep walking in history,
she laughed, though the sound came hollow. You too, weird
that old miss s Atkinson was an earlier, said she
keeps finding the tap running in the morning. Mister Billings
told me he woke up in his dressing gown, choose
and all. I smiled at the jerk, but could see
the shadow flicker behind us. Mare. By the time I
got to my desk at work, I searched through my phone, photos,
calendar reminders, even called my scatter shop manager Phil to
confer might had no late emergencies, nothing missing except asleep
from my bones. The arrows after sundown were starting to
feel thinner, condensed, muffled, as if I were living less.
Each night that evening, I wandered through the house as
if hunting my own footprints. Streams always so lost, began
to stir on the edge of her headlight. Flickering glimpses
of long platforms curved into infinity, a child sing song
voice skipping in impossible directions. I shuddered. If I saw
anything out of place, it was only how routine had
taken on a watery cast. The next morning, standing on
Platform one in the cold, there stung with understatement, the
regular crowd of re papers nodded, shuffled, yet they two
eyed each other side on. One woman clutched a train
ticket as if she feeled losing it. Mister Billings double
checked his watch, mouth working as he counted under his breath.
I sat in the cafage, odding notes, stubbs lined up
beside my mug, feeling absurd? Was there the only one
who noticed? For merely the only one to speak? The
idea of a collective mystery, of half the tent stumbling
through vanishing eyros, returning each dawn with aching bones and
the nickling sense of having just missed something began to
settle like a weight of blanket across my mind. The
suspicion grew roude. The stations were more crowded than usual
at dawn, as if people myself included, were finding themselves
on the platform before even waking. The pattern was too neat,
too consistent for chance. The late train, always to last
ourt near midnight was haunting us, perhaps more literally than
anyone wanted to admit. The puzzle refused to lie still.
I needed proof, if not for the world, then for myself.
So I dug out my old concorda barely functional, the
battery sputtering, but honest enough to catch the mundane. That evening,
I set it up on top of the shoe rack,
aimed at the door, blinking red in the dusk. My
plan was simple. If I left, if I dreamed myself
on to the last train out, I'd see it no
more doubts. In the morning, I watched the tape longs
held still, nothing, friars, just static, the muda creek of
the hall, the fridge humming through plaster. Then, at eleven
forty eight p m. I appeared, slow, shoulder squared in
some one else's posture, face slack, ayes opened but empty.
I took my coat, slipped outside, and closed the door
behind me with careful politeness. Thirty minutes later the hallway
was empty again. My recorded self returned, face and change,
and vanish up the stairs. I pressed back in my chair,
hand clutching the mug so tight it quaked. The finality
of the footage was as cold as a blow. But
it was only me. Conversation was missus Hackett took on.
You wait. The next morning I caught her before opening.
I need to ask you something on, I said, careful
not to name, I fear too soon. She adjusted her scarf,
smile slipping. If it's about the benches, I find them
occupied more mornings now, sometimes by people I know. They
never remember why. Olivron at number seventeen sound asleep at
five thirty, called on and ticket crushed in his palm.
You too, I suppose, so. I spoke to the station manager,
a man warm then by delayed freight runs and the
uncanny art of deflecting complaints. I invented a story about local vagrancy.
Suggested checking the CCTV. He too tired to object, led
me to the cramped office, screens flickering and monochrome. We
scrubbed back through files. There I was every night at
midnight platform two. I boarded the train alone and steady,
the same on four other night, always returning before dawn.
On some night, others from town joined me equally blank
face heads bout as they stepped through the carriage doors.
None of us could remember why. Attempts to approach people
at the station yielded little mister Billings forced a laugh
and changed the subject. A younger woman paled and muttered
about sleep deprivation. Every explanation felt hollow, staged in a panic,
I rang my doctor, stammering through symptoms, doubts, fears. After
a run of tests and sympathetic shrugs, my jeeki found
nothing as sleep cycles, labs and scans need as accounting
sheets try to reduce stress, she offered, sometimes our minds
lived to protect us. Still I pressed on mapping the
ticket stobs, cross referencing dates, scrolling on a note by
the sequence of each night. There was a rhythm. Every
seven days, A cluster of us rode the midnight train,
just as blank and lost as eye. The stacks of
local newspapers, yellowing musty in the library's dim back room
offered a wider context. A story decades old, barrowed beneath
reports of winter snow and football scores. Ghost train returns,
read one headline dated nineteen seventy six. The store r
recounted rumors of tannsfolk vanishing for a night each March,
reappearing at sunrise by the old mill, confused and exhausted,
unsure how they got there. Some swore it was nothing,
an old wife's tale. But beneath the words at chill Ran,
I found myself deep in the archives on a Sunday afternoon.
The clock outside the reading room, measuring out the slow,
relentless fold to dark summoned a local astorian. By the
look of the very neat pan haatanitated the article accident
date see parish records. It seemed the story had happened before.
Another ticket appeared on my nights and Tuesday folded into
my library receipt that day Basiscan the parish files from
nineteen seventy nine, I stumbled upon a thin, yellowed envelope
talked into the margin of an old report. Inside was
a clipping eleven killed as early trained to rails outside
town March seventeen. I read it three times, throat tightening.
The deuryilment happened in the same line we all used
on a clammy in distinct March night nearly fifty years ago.
The names listed were both familiar and strange. Henderson's clements
one or two spelled differently but echoing the town's careful
stoic surnames. Then my own sen named, acting quietly near
the bottom. Just seeing it amowed me. I pressed my
nails into the arms of the chair. My memory twisted
Nasa climbing my throat. There was something else, a woman's cry,
low and urgent, warning me not to board, the benchy
scrape of metal, the walt'spinning. For a brief instant, I
thought I tasted blood, rust and fear, tangled as one,
then nothing. I hurd home to rewatch the camcord of footage.
The same scene played out to myself leaving, returning, but
this time in the middle, just for a second, that
there was a double of me, feigned as a breath
on a frosted window, seated on the stairwell, watching myself
walk by her eyes. My eyes were bottomless. It became
clear that the train Jonas were not just sleep walking,
but some twisted echo of the accident, the pain, the confusion,
the lost names and faces. Each year we boarded, because
in some way we always had every one I saw
on the footage, everyone caught in This pattern had a link, however,
distant to those long lost passengers. I took this trembling
to missus Hackett, expecting her to laugh ordousness, or at worse, scold,
But instead she guided me into her cramped wall pippered office,
and voice shaking, handed me a notebook. The pages were
covered in ferrantic looping handwriting, her own scribbled in the
drawn IROs, recounting brief dreams and odd encounters each March.
Most startling, she claimed to have found herself once sitting
on platform benches in the early morning, unable to recall
walking there, I think she whispered, We're all still traveling, sometimes,
fingers stained with newsprint and dust from all files. I
started to arrange what might pass as evidence, ticket stubs, camcorders, stills,
all clippings, as sketches of the station. Mapped my attempt
to model the recurrences. There was a passengery at all,
a clasp of virtual The cycles peeked around mid March,
just as the fog thickened and the clocks threatened their
annual betrayal. The nights of the accident, coincidences abounded a
full moon at the town's ancient festival, always the same
bad weather as those scripts were being followed. I brought
my findings Desire, who poured us both a cup and
hunched over my paper. Mess with the seriousness were served
for only the most pressing gossip. My mom, she said, quietly,
tracing the list of surnames, always did something out each marked.
Foundmud on her shoes, ticket in the wash, though she
hadn't left the house. I never thought much of it. Later,
old mister Billings reluctant, but Kagey confessed that as a child,
he'd found his father outside the morning after the derailment anniversary,
staring into the fog, refusing to say where he'd been.
Sometimes he muttered, places, remember what people can't. The more
I heard, the more I suspected this was not a
haunting in the traditional sense, but a kind of communal
sleep or katromacing through blood lines and habit tightening around
us in spoken guilt. In the library, I uncovered a
batter diary the survivors recored. Its author recounted being drawn
to the tracks, losing eyes to the dream of tunnels,
unable to resist boarding the train. Each year, on certain nights,
the urge returned. I sketched the time table again the
night of the derailment, and changing for decades with those
involved for their kindri Levine the journey, unable to fully
wake until the following dawn, trauma passed down inscribed the
muscle and bone, the tracks beneath our humanity, hummindo, sad,
patient refrain. As a day slipped toward another anniversary, my
compulsion grew fear simple toward the station, prickling at the
neck whenever the wind row is up to dark. I
resolved to meet a pattern head on, to record everything.
If the journey demanded a witness light, it be me,
eyes open. On the morning of March seventeen, I scrolled
reminders to myself on every available surface. Don't leave the house,
lock the doors, wreck of voice memos. The town itself
bristled with the knees, commuter's whispered, avoided each other's eyes.
I kind of hung a seemed to stretch beneath the
tedium of bags and coats. By dusk, the air sparked
with static, and my nurse yoned open, cawing at the familiar.
I had in my chair, fawn poised notebook, a hand
every sensurraining, Yet as midnight loomed, a thick dressness rolled
in a gentle drawer, irresistible and numb. My resistant slip
grain by grain, the gravity of the old line becoming physical.
At eleven fifty, I found myself lacing my shoes, coat
half way on my head swam vision tilting gently, but
my legs moved steadily. I caught the sight of myself
in the whly mirror, pales a milkrem eyes betraying flickers
of old sorrows. I stepped outside, inhaled the breathless fog,
and walked down the lane toward the station, take its
stub already pressed in my palm. The station was shrouded
in miss platform lance buttery and low. A handful of
others gathered on edge, equally silent faces, familiar eyes hollow.
With the knowledge of this forced pilgrimage, with barely a word,
we drifted on to the midnight train as it slayd
it sundless into the platform. Inside the carriage was timeless,
overhead lights stuttering gloss, impossibly dark. The few passengers sat
in rutied cymmetry, hands clasped, gazes averted. I recognize Missus
hacketts Ar's mother, even old mister Billings, all seeming to
exist fractually beside themselves. Flashes of nightmare pressed in glimpses
two rain street windows, the landscape melting and reshaping itself
in impossible ways. I overheard snatches of conversation, words tumbled
as though under water. Across the aisle, A child murmured,
a rhyme voiced both young and ancient. At some point,
a conductor I could not say if he was real,
walk the aisle, reciting names from a faded manifest My
own echoed painfully in my chest. With each iteration. The
tension of ratcheted tighter, hearts racing in silent synchrony, the
train lurch breaks, hissing, the light strobe viciously. I felt
the moment before disaster, metal shearing, the universe cantonate terror.
I saw flashes of my own family, a relative lost
to history, as seat left empty by chance of fey.
Somewhere in the screaming metal voices rose a chaos of
demand and pleading, some desperate to let go, others determined
to forget. I tried to speak, mouth dry as dust.
Desperation sees me I shouted my own name, firm and full,
and the spell cracked. The carriage stilled, my visions snapping
into clouity. Gradually the train slowed. When it stopped, I
stumbled off, feet hid in cold concrete. Morning light, biscus
and blue seeped through the mist. The station was empty,
saved for a dozen days, faces all adrift and blinking
as if new to the day. In the weeks that followed,
the town softened, as if some bandage had been removed.
There were no new tickets, stubs, no unexplained absences from home.
The faces at the station seemed lighter. Movements, less wary.
I'd passed familiar travelers, Missus Hacketts or or even mister
Billingson caught the faintest nods, a quickening of the eye's
small gestures, mocking experience best left unspoken. Nobody discussed the night,
yet between those of us who had boarded the last train,
a current of silence acknowledgment ran. It was enough, a
small mercy that each of us had not faced it alone.
I set down my experience in a weather journal, weighing
the urge to share the truth with the town's historian
against the desire to let sleeping memories lie some mysteries
I thought served the piece best by remaining private. The
station itself thressed in a new coat of paint, ventures
were mended, the departure board updated a tiny gestures toward renewal,
or at least an intent to move past what could
not fully be forgiven. Still, every so often, a mild
shiver would run up my spine at the dust rattle
of passing trains. I would find myself, just for an instant,
catching my own reflection in dark glass, searching for the
faint outline of that other self. On the night of
the next anniversary, returning home from a meal share of
hestant laughter, I found a slip of paper pushed beneath
my door. Another faded tickets, step crease and worn, pinned
to it, a half sheet of lined paper with a
single line, and my own hurried hand. Some journers never end.
I breakfast my phone, shind Sorrow's message glowed in the screen.
Saw a group at the station at midnight, just standing,
didn't get on, look like they knew some I watched
from my window that night, lights off, gaze handle toward
down moving road in the shadow station beyond the town
slept and through the mirk. I glimpsed, just for a
heart beats, streak of spectral lights, gliding past a train
with no timetable, riding a truck on the memory could map.
I sat back the stub press between trembling fingers. Memory,
like grief, rarely travels in straight lines. Not all journeys
are to be remembered, and not all passengers ever truly arrive.
Some part of me I know, will always be waiting
for the lust train home, and that is the end.
Thank you for listening, and I will see you in
the next one.