Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. The train doors close with an
abrupt metallic slide, their concussion a coming down the length
of the carriage. I count for redistant chimes as the
conductor signal's departure from the platform. A minor station I'll
never see in daylight, A town known Erne for its
long factory shadows and the shop bite of river wind.
It's one twenty three in the morning, according to the
Austere clock overhead. I never needed to check the town
to know. Nothing good happens at this I own tracks
like these allow his trembles under foot as the train
pulls away, sending a subtle vibration up through the soles
of mus shoes and into my legs. Thin bob light
reflects against the polished steel, making intricate little sea waves
along the corridor's panels, except for the rhymc lurch and
sway of the coach, except for those little squeaks where
the carriage joints protest. I'm aware of a silence, not
pure absence, but a silence that seems to lean in.
There's only a handful of us awake. I pass a
cluster of inflexible gray seats and glimpse one woman sleeplessly
peering out. It feels resing into pure black. Further down,
just past the staff galley, a wide blue velvet core
blocks the entrance to the sleeper suite. Nobody says why
the suite is closed to night. The company line is maintenance,
but the porters will muttering in corners before we lived,
and I know from briefings that it was sealed only recently.
A thick company locks at twisted through both houses of
the door. As I approach, the air cools perceptibly a
current of something metallic and faintly herbal. The overhead speakers
emerge from static. A voice only partly human repeats the
next stop in a curiously slurred English, the vowels drawn
out and watery. When the speaker dies, the hollow quiet
is left. I lift the miniature tapeer corder from my
jacket pocket, plastic battered at the corners, the sticky residue
of old labels under my thumb. I speak softly, just
under the breath. Gasmoreland on Route one twenty three a
m boarding the eastbound service, They said to leave this alone.
But something in that room is not maintenance. That's not
what sets people talking. It's not a night train unless
someone's watching you from around a corner. I'd like to
believe I'm the observer, the one catching details, making the connections.
Nobody else wants to see that to night. The buck
of my neck is too exposed, as if in seen
eyes ride the rails alongside me. I cross the cordon,
my badge visible, not enough to justify, but enough to
sloth the response. Two burly men in button blazes glance
at me from the staff compartment, but they don't rise.
I move carefully to feeling the change in the air.
As I approach the suite, the first thing I see
is the cup of tea porcelain, the steam still swirling
from the surface, as though where tever hand left it
had done so only moments ago. The cup sits on
a tiny ook shelf built into one wall, adjacent to
a neatly made bed wall, blanket folded at a perfect angle,
pillow indented only slightly, hinting at restless sleep. At the
foot of the bed. A pair of men's shoes arranged
hoe to heel on a precisely aligned rug the wall.
It lies beside a silver watch, both items squared away
with deliberate care. Every element hints a preparation for departure,
But there's no sign of horrid motion, no trace of panic.
I heaviness lingers, not the weight of grief, but something
more like the echo left after an argument to memory.
A psychic brewse, A faint chop citrus of bergamot lifts
from the fresh tea mixing with residual wool, a note
of something animal and warm. I step inside enough to
let my eyes drink in the stillness. There is not
even a crease in the blanket. A jacket hangs in
the closet rail faint. They must e as if the
room's owner only just set it down, expecting to put
it on again in minutes. But there is no owner,
not any more. Footsteps behind me, quick and impatient, ma'am.
You need to step out, says the taller of the two,
his axe and clipped in that company man way. He
does not touch my shoulder, but positions himself like a barrier.
I need thirty seconds, I say, level, not meeting his eyes.
His silence is loaded, but he relents. Maybe he's been
told not to escalate with breast tonight, even freelance. I
scan again, the way the condensation beads in the window,
the slip is touched by the wardrobe. The paper schedule
left open to a page mark to Night Express. The
electric clock blinks and linking at two seven. I take
in a feeling, try to imprint it. Some one has
come missing, and the room is perfect, except for the
fact that it should be tragic, but isn't. No drama
only vakes his stretch thin as a film. The guards
shuffle closer. I float one last question, any sign, any
word from the man whose slips now go uneased. The
shorter one younger glances at his partner forcues, before murmuring,
no one saw him leave. Records are clear. I let
them musher me out. The last thing I register is
the way the affeels, as if charged, waiting for something
that never arrives. Back outside the suite, the steel door
shut with soft finality. I leave a fingerprint on the
recorder's button, a mark embedded in its cheap plastic. This
is why you don't let go, I whispered to myself.
Not when there is a crush nobody's answering. By the
time I return to my crumped apartment, the memory of
that birth, untouched perfect, has already begun to arrange itself
in my mind, alongside a thousand dollars. But this one
will not lose its clarity. Home is a shoe box
above a shuttered store France, whiles crawling with unframed print outs,
sea ox headlines, coffee rings, red string, bridging time between places,
Strangers vanished, the space's church quite except for the intermittent
grind of the radiator. A gurgling testament to defrod repairs.
My desk horn at the corners, crowding itself with spent pins,
half filled note buzz checklist sits under a single bowl,
bright enough to pierce the sound of a slow clicking drip.
In the kitchen blends with the city murmur seeping through
double windows. I run my hand along a folder mut
whilst lend this route, this line where the night pole
secrets tight around its frame. To Night's notes are new
sil row in my voices. I replay them on the
agent tape. I catch the hitch in my words when
I describe the untouched tea, the echo of internal calculation.
If I close my eyes, I hear the railway subgeranean
grind gives tune the dark. I don't tell anybody how
familiar it is to be drawn toward the forbidden corner
of things. My phone rattles across the table, vibrating itself
off a stack of inverses, I answered, before it rings twice.
Cass Moorland, I say, affecting a broadcast smoonness I haven't
felt in years. On the other end, Jules's dry snort,
Ye've been awake since what yesterday? Ye sound like a
ghost A close, I replied, light but still paying rent.
He sighs, sorting through his own sheaf of print huts.
I can hear the clicking of his keyboard, the exasperator shuffle.
Let me guess you're on the night train again. Please
tell me you're not poking around the sleeper cars. I
was looking, I allow, or for what's missing? Shules waits
for me to elaborate. Then you're chasing another one. The
company block boxed. The company says, this maintenance, But you
know the code red cleaning procedure. That's not maintenance. Through
the line, a silence, almost conspirat oil He's been my
only steady reader, the kind of friend who means it
when he says, don't burn out, Cass, you can't run
after every shadow with you as closed. Not every mystery
is a story. Sometimes it's just an empty space. I
do not answer directly. Instead, I take a slow breath
and say, there's a pattern always as he want to
help me find out how many disappearances on this line
got classified as resolved with no ticket out, no CCTV
aggress You're going to pitch this Shules's torone is more
warning than question. In the morning, my editor owes me one.
He laughs. I sound may brittle by fatigue, and what
will make him bite? Cass. People never just vanish, not
from seal trained cows. I let the hook haang in
the air for a moment. I'll call you after the
lion click's dead. I let the quiet seat back. Whatever
assurances Jewels could offer, I pull out the morning's headlines,
scroll through the familiar obtuse language. Disruption on nightline service
delays expected, no foul plays suspected. Only the subtext breeds.
I scribble and underline not code words for missing. By eight,
I am at my laptop blinking at a half written pitch.
I phrase everything precisely because my editor, Helen will check
every verb for liability. She's been at the paper for
twenty three years, seen too many urban legends with bylines,
as she calls them, becass. I have an inbox of
strange stores. Why is this one worth it? Her voice
when I call is unheard but interested. The tone she
resolves for idea is not entirely lacking in merit. I
recite the Corfax passenger, missing sealed sleeper, personal effects and
disturbed cr evasive security logs showing no eggres She hums,
typing as she speaks. We covered so many of these
incidents in the nine has always got buried in corrections later.
You sure there's a story left that management hasn't cauterized.
Not sure which makes it better? I think this connects
to previous disappearances. There's a pattern and something someone keeps
it from surfacing. I'll give you three days in the
freelancers fee plus expenses, Helen says, But if you make
me waste my lawyer's time, I grinned despite myself. No
wasted time. You'll get your story. Showel's texts as I
hang up, congrats. Don't let the night eat you alive.
Remember sometimes puzzles stay and soul for a reason. I
type back, if you're so sure, help me with logistics,
train times lost, c CTV polls any crew stuck on
this circuit A winking emoji, You're insufferable, But his next
text is a link to the company's duty rosters, last
modified a week ago. I read until my eyes blur.
Among the names, one stands out, Myleo Arten, the passenger
who never checked out. By the afternoon, the sun angles
sharply through dirty panes, and the traffic noise is doubled.
I tie my hair back, slide the recorder and a
new pack of batteries into my bag, and head to
the Terminalus squad glass and tell Maze that smells always
inexplicably of bleach and cold coffee. The train waits under
sodium lights, nose pointed east cars shimmering with old polish.
There is a bad check went at boarding man by
man and women in identical navy pockets. Both wear the
unhappy look of people recalling unpleasant instructions. Routine is everything.
Conductor's double check tickets, announcements boom, riverhead steel doors. When
along tired runners tonight, there's a small cluster of regulars,
a mother and a restless child, two older men invaded wallsuits,
a couple indulging in late snacks. I tag along the platform,
pausing at intervals to drop pocket notes. An older porter
passes by. His face is lined as iron linen, eyeswear.
I offer casual questions about the schedule, about the sweet
under lock. He shrugs, shakes his head, the practice movements
of a man who knows what to say, but even
more what not to night trains and old beasts. He
offers with force chair some things get fixed, some things don't.
His hands fidget on his cart, as if the metal
offers him protection. I press any one complain about noises,
lights going out. His mouth flattens, and he looks past me,
inventing a task further down the platform. By the fourth
hour of travel, I've worked through three interviews, most barely
more than practice denials. Those who know I press offer
and readable glances guard it smiles. One younger crewmember with
the moon pale complexion and bitter nell slipped closer, clears
his throat, howdier, looking into what happened last week. Don't
expect anyone to talk. The night train kind of has
its own routine. I angle my recorder me. He glances
at the lock sleeper, then at colleague, checking tickets quietly.
Nobody leaves the night train by accident, And what happens
in the dead stretch. Nobody locks that We just ride it.
Before I can prod further, he's gone, riding luggage behind
a bulkhead in a corridor by the galley. The glass
window frames the darkness outside, fields hedgerows, the odd sagging signal,
all washed and mute at night. Somewhere behind my reflection,
the terrain falls away, nothing visible but the occasional fence
posts running parallel and the ripple of cloudless sky. The
train moves into its rhythm, impervious, purposeful. My next formal interview,
a woman in her fifties, seasoned by decades as Cree,
yields only this. There's rules on this line. He break them,
things break you later. I note specifics. The cleaning cot
always doubles back outside the same compartment. Porters mutter about
bad runs on certain shifts. On this train. Time seems
more rumor than in fact. In the dining car, trays clatter,
and conversation is hush, as if talk itself could awaken
something sleeping in the rails. When I mention this wheat,
our young porter drops the spoon. Nothing but trouble comes
out of the car. Don't sit up watching it if
you value your rest. Night folds and unfolds in the windows.
Reflections smeared and warped. By the time we cross into
the old territory fields, derelict lights, unreliable. The passengers hunch
closer to themselves and steward as is moved briskly to
spensing tea with mechanical efficiency. The two conductors post themselves
in a corridor near the sweet, nervous but determined, as
if minding a low burning fuse. The train pulls around
a looping bend in a distance. A cottage lamp flashes.
I sketch it in my note book, hanging on to
every fleeting landmark I hear the shop sudden clown of
metal are metal as which draw in a new direction,
chosen and visible to those sleeping on board. So this
is the landscape that shelters what nobody names the sundless
country in the press archives. I unne the details. I
need mylovert in the Missing Passenger, forty eight civil engineer
commuted every fortnight by sleeper for some government contract. He
boarded at the central station after midnight, confirmed on the
passenger manifest, he reserved the suite and didn't speak to
any one on route. At least that's what the surviving
reports say. Trains of Time samped logs for every door's movement,
every corridor entered Milo's room. Record shure the electronic lock
engage from inside at one fifty four a m. Then
never disengaged, not until the company men forced entry at
the next major station. No tampering, no second negress, no
sign of technical malfunction. Yet he was gone. I chase
up the witness statements bland, cautious. One passenger, a frequent
overnight traveler, remembered seeing Milo in the lounge, half dozing
over a cup of tea two in the morning. He
looked hard to kept checking his watch, then glanced up
as the announcement came through. She recalled a moment uncertain.
It was a strange announcement, not the usual stops, but
something else. I thought maybe I'd fallen asleep for a
second and dreamed it and now the swhere as he
heard footsteps in the corridor as light mylo's wheet, heavy measure,
deliberate and iron, nothing moves. Figured it was the late sweep,
but the porter said they didn't check the corridor after midnight.
His eyes darted as he recounted it, a man still
deciding if he trust his own memory. Details develop and
evenly growing into something outside official lines. There are no
prints except Milo's in the door or the cap. The
sealed windows always a source of mild complaint, unblemished. The
pocket watch found on the night stand still ticks diligently,
keeping time for no one. On my second pass of
the suite, I pay special attention to the personal items.
Everything is incautious, off putting order. The wallet, bills neatly stacked,
tickets arranged by date, a travel notebook with lists in numbers,
each grossed through and careful buyer. The sense of deliberation
is acute. This was not the room of someone in crisis,
but of someone tiding up for an invisible guest. I
kneel by the bed, pushing past the faint, lingering warmth
of the wool blanket, scanning with a small flashlight there
slept under the matter's edge. Her paperback novel aged and
fished along the spine. Not an unfamiliar book, but the
name on the inside cover scrolled and blew in a
different handwriting than the travel note book. The margins are
spiked with cryptic sideways, comments, dates, and what could be
trained times. Some lines are underlined excessively, as if guiding
the reader toward a puzzle no casual reader would solve.
I record a note my voice lowered, book retry from
Milo's sweet author gy railand title worn off margins anertated,
not in Milo's handwriting, something off, a pattern, a ritual.
Maybe the energy in a compartment homs a subtle agitation
that makes my arms prick with goose flesh. I closed
the book, tucking it into my bag, and rising with
the sense that I've tiptoed into someone else's unfinished story.
Outside the porter of the older man with linen lined
as herrors passed, His body language suggests an ear and
urgent only to him. I ride the next train with
my senses tuned higher. Porters fly through duties, regulars don't
linger by the suite, and nobody so much as glances
at the cordon door, a sept me a cup of
tea never sits long before being cleared. Now the security
room is behind to keep at and rarely washed glass.
The night tech athin man named Mark with bright jumpy
eyes lets me lean in under the unspoken rules of discretion.
His price probably a favor one day and the thrill
of sharing forbidden facts. We cycle through the recent recordings.
Grainy video timestamped patterns emerge at two fifteen in the
night Mile, a vanish a figure in crewe un four
moves by the suite. I freeze the frame. The insignia
stitched on his breast is run by at least ten
years and a shapen eagle threa abear with a style
the company retired the previous decade. The figure's face is
blowed not by low resolution but by an anomalous glow,
the Kindie gift from lens flare, except there is no
light source. In two later segments, the camera picks up
the PA system, activating without touch. Announcements play locations that
don't belong to the stretch. Now arriving at Dowlurs, please ready,
all belongings except dolars bone down. In nineteen seventy two,
and the timetable hasn't listed it since before I was born.
Mark looks askance, wishing he hadn't agreed to this. We
watch again. Static interferes with the audio words, elongating consonance double,
like someone rehearsing the liturgy of a different route. I
cross reference the footage with manifestraks that same night. The
logs should detail every staff presence. Instead, some files are blank,
others inexplicably reset to the system's menu screen at one
zero am. Every anomaly appears for three to twelve minutes,
then vanishes. There is no log of Milo disembarking, although
disappearance is clustered. They follow patterns, forming a series rather
than isolated incident. A week after Milo, a professional commuter
leaves a lock suitcase in the overnight lounge, if vanishes
despite never leaving the cow's coverage area. Then another, a smartphone,
new model slips out of a man's hand in the
corridor and is never retrieved. Security locks again grow fuzzy
around these moments over it and are lost in the
digital churn. Each time, something else remains behind. Sometimes it's
the battered paperback, it's margin note shifting slightly, perhaps changed
by unseen hands. I thumbed through the book from Milo's suite.
The handwriting in the margins varies, not just aning, but
pressure cadence. A careful program might even think the notes
all layer some message encoded in repetition or rhythm. I
flick to a page marked with a scarlet ribbon. There
an old name appears. J Fern runs sixty four b
Night Unbroken. I jot it down, though it means nothing
to me yet back with mock, I let myself become
swept up in the rhythm of investigation, chasing each anomaly,
not just as a mystery, but as a song with
recurring motifs. The book is always present, always unotated, always
left behind when something else is taken. An emergency call
from Helen abrupt in the twilight Cass companies bent out
of shape. You've poted a nest culprit had On's answers
about your badge access step lightly. I nod, watching the
cock blink toward midnight again, unostot. At the next meeting,
three company mean sum of me for a routine interview.
Their suits are cut too sharp, their eyes never at ease.
The reference confidentiality, threat and exposure remind me how quickly
freelance's contracts can be revoked. But when I press a
hint at historical disappearances, the unlugged cord or veil fierce
slips into their voices. We perform due diligence, your chasing
fairy tales. Yet their hands fidget, their jawls lock. It's
not merely bureaucracy, but something deeper. I leave the meeting irritation,
prickling my palms. Joles has perched on my steep When
I returned, hair and tidy, a travel mug in each hand.
This is getting unsafe, he says, frowning. Someone's following your
file requests, maybe even your apartment. He offers a coffee.
How much are you willing to lose over a missing
engineer in an old ghost line? Whatever it takes, I say,
surprising myself with the finality, He eyes me resigned. At
least take precautions, don't go alone. The company isn't the
only thing that wants this. Forgotten Jewels gives me a
tiny mic barely the width of a pencil. Lead just
rechoed everything, Even if I end up in the logs
I joke lighter than I feel. He forces a smile,
especially then the night bends back toward the railway. I
meet again with the aged porter, now off duty, sharing
a cigarette in the gap beside the platform's tool shed.
He flicks the lighter with shaking fingers, looking off into
the burnt orange night. You want to know about the stretch,
he asks, low, almost gentle. There's a place to stretch.
Nobody logs it. The train slows, winnows, blackout, clock stall.
He flicks ash, eyes distant. It's when you're riding through
you feel time, rle the wrong way, overalls, wake up passengers,
best scene, head down, I record everywhere, though I sense
this is as much warning as revelation. Days pass the
patent titans were capitulating, like a nervous phrase in a melody.
No one requests. Then one morning, as thunder triples, a
tone of the traffic outside, my phone flashes in alert
another missing young woman, this time Lena Toley. She'd been
involved in activism over public transport transparency, had written obeds
about company negogence, campaigned for better monitoring on the night lines.
Her name comes up off and among staff. Lina's departure
was abrupt. The circumstance is a mirror of myloes. She
boarded the train, laid assigned a suite in the same corridor,
and was last seen arguing about time discrepances near the galley.
The attendant described her as agitated but focused. By dawn,
Lena was gone, her compartment locked from the inside. Effects
laid out with eery precision. I visit the scene before
the company closes it off. Her shoes low pumps, this
time perfectly aligned, an open notebook, phone faced down and
drained of power on the nightstand, a cup of tea,
the pale chine edge bearing a faint lipstick mark. There again,
the paperback, this time with new notes, handwriting, small and tight.
The book is almost a totem, now passed from one
disappearance to the next. Security footage shows Lena entering the
suite at one fifty eight a m. She never re emerges.
No camera catches staff entering after her. The logs on
this night are even tighter, more stringently concealed. Someone's learned
how to hide the evidence, but the pattern now a
sharp edged, irrefutable. I gather all the detailed objects, sidgnatures,
echoes in the system. I ma at the times the
transfer of that battered book. The clues arrange themselves like
the workings of a ghostly clock, each piece corresponding to
a vanished part of some secret mechanism. Obsessed, I dig
deeper into both Mallow and Lena's histories, pouring through barely
legible municipal rolls. A link emerges, nearly hidden by layers
of misdirection, both having direct connections to a singular, decade
old disaster nineteen seventy five. Though dead at wreck were
in a night train derailed outside an obsolete station called Dalhurst.
The company quietly burned the story. Bod is never recovered,
passengers reported lost in transit. A strange note in the
paperback's latest margin catches my eye. Forgive the unbalanced return
the count. Another page names erase dead's claimed in darkness,
I cross reference every vanish with passengers or crew associated
even remotely with that ancient incident, Each missing person, each
Masleigh briefcase, each out of fact linked by some tenuous
cryptic tied to that wreck. I play the recording for
Jewels in my daar paper choked kitchen. When he hears
the marginal note. I see Fio spark in his eyes.
You have to stop the cass, he says. They won't
let you publish this. You're making yourself a target. This
is bigger than one missing person. You're inviting whatever ghost
live on that rail into your own story. But the
line is already drawn. My path curves only forward. I
call Helen. I want one last ride, I tell her,
I want to see what the dead stretch actually does.
This is more than rumor. She hesitates, But crowd's approval.
Be careful casts. Some stores only end in footnotes. Nobody reads.
Don't become the last line in someone else's ledger. I
pack my recorder, the batter book and Joses Mike. I
don't say goodbye, just now to the empty air and
head down the stairs into the Prador and chasing a
train that runs through time as much as territory. I vow,
no matter where it leads, not to turn away. The
clock above the street links new and musciless. As I
make my way to the one place that has always
refused to be mapped, I wake surrounded by the silence
of readiness. My bag zip with everything I might need,
laid for warm. I detached behind my recorder, battered paperback
pressed flat between the pages of my current note bed.
A flicker of anxious energy paces in my chest. As
I descend the building's stair will each landing echoing the
city beyond. Just beginning to move in sullen anticipation of
the day. I check the time five seventeen a m.
My train departs at six two, but experience tells me
to move early, to watch the platform as it grows
busy and then quiet again. The main termin all looms ahead,
all glass under hard white safety lighting, utilitarian and featureless,
except for the night staff hauling bins and tugging on
there next to shake off the dregs of their dreams.
Outside the sky is pale, nickel, liminal, neither night nor day.
In the half filled waiting area. A nod to a
janitor whose headphones leak music so tiny and dissonant it
might have been a warning. I circle the coffee stand.
A couple of security cause q warily muttering about endless shifts.
One glance is my way, recognition or just the curiosity
was served for regulars who look out of place, said desire.
I retreat, collecting a styrofoam cut its surface damp and
in and drift past the departure monitor, the east boundless
on time Platform fourteen. As the boarding coal chime's low
and almost apologetic, I settle into the loose column of
waiting passengers. An elderly woman with the tartan scarf and
umbrella clacks her tongue as she watches her phone. Two
school aged siblings tumble against each other, half awake, leaning
into a mother's embrace. I catch the eye of a
conductor i've seen before, younger than most, the lines around
his eyes deepening as his smile flickers and vanishes again.
He scans my pass His monitor in greeting is practice
night Line Express all the way to Hemsley Junctions. We
four o fours out of service to night Sorry for
the ink convenience. We appreciate you of flexibility. His grip
on my ticket lingers by a second tu lawn, his
gaze flecker sideways. He's been told to watch for someone.
I think. I nod step inside and let the carriage
absorb me. Inside, the air feels different, not quite stale exactly,
but burdened by something in said, perhaps anticipation, perhaps the
collective unspoken understanding of nights too long and windows too dark.
The PIA system murmurs the safety protocols with the slight
clicking lag of a misaligned recording, and add for early
morning breakfast service voiced by someone with a too bright
accent punches through, but just below that a click, a
tiny catch before a monotonous hum overlays the background as
if an old line sun trainman's chant lingers before being
swept away. The sweet corridor is cordantite. I run my
hand along the thin velvet rope, feeling the rough nab
against my finger tips. The lock sets the same type
I saw before, but freshly reset to blinking green, no
access a clock A porter lingering further down, watching clipboard
in hand, trying not to appear as though anything is awry.
I move further into the main corridor, settling into an
empty seat by the window, close enough to see both
the sweet entrances in the companion LNGE. I keep my
hood up, tap off for now, but my phone camera ready,
no book in my lap. The first ire ticks by
with the mundane tea served tickets check to the periodic
that of passing signals through the glass. Sodium station lights dwindle,
replaced by black hedges or river flashing silver at the
hint of an engine barn miles out. From time to time,
I catch the faces of the crew as they passed,
Hence some already fatigued lifts thinned each time. Glance into
the closed sweet door, and then away. I woke the
length of the train once, using the need for air's predicts.
The door to the staff galley is partly ajar. I pause,
listening inside a raised whisper, a list of names read
too softly for clarity. I shift, and the conversation stops.
Someone says she shouldn't be on this run. Silence, the
door click shut. Back in my seat, I removed the
paperback from my bag. I flipped to the inside cover again.
The annotations grow strange of the further eger. Some are
simple watch for the midnight count. Others are almost poetic.
Where the signals cross memory fails. I circle a day
to October nineteen seventy four, Though dead and incident, the
only line bolted twice. A conductor knocks gently at my table.
Everything okay here, ma'am, his badge read to Pollard, his
face half shattered by corridor light, I'm fine, I say,
pushing my recorder potway into view doing a passenger profile.
Would it be possible to speak to someone about the
night's schedule sun time? His chin dips. Worry that's handled
through our public relations line. Not much to say. Most nights,
I've heard there's a stretch that isn't on the timetable.
Why's that for a breath? His professional mask falters. Just
scheduling efficiency. Some stretches don't have stopped tracks, get old,
nothing for passengers to worry about. Still, you always do
walk through on that, like, don't you? He glances at
the closed suite. We keep an eye on things, yes,
but everyone sees put. That's all. He moves on before
I can thank him, casting another look at the courton door.
The sky outside bruises to war dawn, then falls back
into a deeper dark. We fly through empty place platforms,
desolate siding stations, where the lamps burned despite nobody ever disembarking.
My own reflection overlays the window, my face hungry, almost
someone else's as screwable thoughts. As I go in the
next carriage, a family has taken up three whole rows.
The youngest child eyes wide and unable to sleep, presses
his face to the glass. His mother hushes him sharply.
As the lights flicker, the conductor reappears, urging quiet over
the trains tannery. The voice returns again, just slightly wrong.
The consonants trailer. All passengers, please remain in your seats
during transit between stations. I make a mark. Voice modulated slows,
the stops, just shy of familiar mimics a tired station chief.
At two six, the temple shifts. The train slackens ever
so slightly. Only a veteran listener would hear the subtle
stretching of time, the engines' rhythm softening. As we enter
what I know must be the unlogged stretch. The display
above the Sweet's corridor toggles, then goes blank. I stand,
shouldering my back, crossing toward the galley. The corridor shivers
as a gus pulse from one unlatched window, the scent
of cold earth and wet steel flooding briefly in process.
Daus alcove, a dormark authorized only stands open. A crack
inside the flicker of a screen, the pale glow of
a manifest blinking name scrolling by in a halting rhythm. In
the reflection, I see mark the night, each hunchy as
bright as before. He glances up. But don't stay here,
he murmurs, but presses a tiny slip of paper into
my hand as I pass his stairs, haunted, his jaw tight.
The count is always off. That's all he will offer.
I slide back to my seat, unfold the paper. A
series of numbers train I D, each ioated with the time,
all clustered between two zero and two thirty. A m
all correspond dates I recognize from my Foule's Knights of Loss,
each paired with a compartment number, none ever publicly mentioned.
A cold wash runs down my spine. I clutch the
book in my notes, checking and rechecking the time. The
p A system hicps. This time the words are clear
as glass, now approaching the name, glitching syllables stuck. Then
please prepare to disembark, I jot, unwilling to trust memory alone,
not a scheduled stop name and stated ritual phrasing. Somewhere
down the corridor, a door opens. The porter, linen lined
eyes passes as catch mine. He nods gravely without breaking stride,
as if acknowledging we are both participants in the same
and spoken drama, caught in the machinery of tracks in time,
no longer and observer. I feel the train's subtle gravitational shift,
the fabric of its history warping around me. Every minute
seems becomes the rehearsal for something I have only begun
to understand. The train gruns as a coastin to the
dead stretch, momentum, heavy carriage, light muting into a medicinal blue.
My breath leaves a faint blur on the window surface.
Is the scenery outside thins to nothing, No hazares, no signals,
only the uncertain smear of empty fields flowing by in
slick impressionistic darkness. Above, the soft pa speaker buzzes the
line court in a shallow loop of static. Is A
distant mechanical voice mutters a half finished phrase, Please prepare
to disembark. The words hang incomplete in the hush. Every
nerve seems to fire along the length of my arms,
up my spine, anchoring me. In the moment, I glance
at the battered paper buck still sitting open on my lap.
Margin notes calling along the edges, the old ones faded
to translucency. The conductor Pollard walked by a moment ago
jawsat ice skating past me. Another are far fewer footsteps
in the corridor at if half the crew is simply
evaporated into shadow. The lock light and the cord and
sweet outside my field of view blinks softly, as if
echoing the secret. Only it remembers I try my phone again.
No signal, no data, no ghost bars, just the mechanical
live clocks stuck at two six. The whirl flattens mark
is gone from the tech alcove. The slip of paper
he pushed into my hands train id run nimbus times
lies beside my notebook. I copy each carefully. The lines
on my palm swept beneath the stylus. I steady my hands,
determined not to falter. I dig out jewels as microm
I can, slip it under my collar, feeling the small
device press its certainty against my skin. The buzz in
the arc light above intensifies, then cuts out for a heartbeat,
plunging dial into a dimmer shade that makes the colors
too honest. Doors do other compartments stand just slightly. Ajar
and the other passengers adot the big tension of their
travel and strong turbulence. The old woman in the Tordan's
guy off exchanges a glance with her reflection, as though
to reassure herself she's still real. A children two seat
are o silent now faces pale lit press shut, as
if rehearsing for some private catastrophe. I clutch the paperback
tighter and run my finger over the uneven script in
the margin. October nineteen seventy four. Dead Head names a
race deads claimed. In darkness, A sharp jostle rocks through
the train, and every object in sight vibrates, as though
a distant underground engine. Its vernet scares into an alien rhythm.
My bag yaws against my legs. The conductors are all gone.
The corridor to the staff galley is vacant. The stretch
beyond to the next skull lost in half shadow. I
make my move. I stand and walk quietly. I strained
on the velvet rope, still closing off the sealed suite.
Pollard is on the interior side, now pacing smoothly movements. Nervous.
He spots me, but says nothing. Muth pressed. Then his
gaze telegraphs both apprehension and duty. He is not simply
following orders. There's a personal stake in this routine repression.
He looks away and wraps a coated pattern on the
locked sweet door. There is an answering hunh. I pretend
to study my phone, but every sense is tuned to
the exchange. The buzz resolves into a key turning, and
the sweet door releases imperceptibly more vibration felt through the
souls than anything heard. I retreat, hugging the wall, slipping
into the utility lck of behind the galley where I
watched Mark work the previous night. The pane inside is
still unlocked. Access gain more easily than it should be.
The screens are in diagnostic mode, the familiar security grade
replaced by scroll in manifest a passenger list that impossibly
includes names from both the living and the dead, including
Myles Varden, Lean, Itoley, and frozen. Above the visible list
my own I hasten the radio frequency. I catch it
as Mark's voice, anxious filtering through static counts off, counts
always off. Passenger are not in the log wide, his
whispers cut off by the emergence of the same unplaceable
pa voice more warble, now, prepare, prepare, please, prepare to you.
I toggle the secondary feed harp, handing the cameras flicker stutter.
A sequence of video frames appears overlays of crew members
and uniforms, not matching any I've seen styles a decade
gone colored bands of the old company hard caps instead advisers.
Something shifts in the background, a granularity that suggests another
layer of surveillance. At intervals, a blurred figure passes a
gap and possibly faceless conductor of shadow flickering through the
screen in the margins of each frame the times damp
fractures nineteen seventy four, two thousand one, nineteen eighty six,
jumping cycling, repeating. I scramble and grab what footagure can,
copying it to a spare drive in my back, and
sure if the files will hold are degrade In the
day's light hound shaking, I returned to the corridor's polotics
is the sweet and nearly collides with me. What are
you doing here? His voice is low and urgent. He
blocks my path without raising a hand, the old tactic
of shadow authority. I offer only truth for refusing to
step back. I know about the disappearances, Milo, Lena, others.
He know too, You're part of it. He works his
mouth just once, his eyes dit to the sweetest lock,
blinking again a minute pulse. He leans close, shielded by
the hum of the passing train. There are debts every
run through this sum The company settles once, sometimes people,
sometimes items. It's not my choices beyond me. His voice
is so soft I can barely catch it. Don't get chosen, cast,
don't draw eyes. He shows past is half warning, still echoing.
I stay frozen, death or a moment to everything but
the roar of my own pulse. Voices decline and revive
in the neighboring cars, Whispers sliding under doors. Someone may
be Markols out for quiet over the radio, then fade
abruptly into nothing. I inch down the corridor. The Sweet doll,
still closed, now amids a vibration just distinct enough to
be felt, not heard. The light scattered for a single blink.
There is a second paper about visible on the shelf
by the sweet threshold, identical to Milo's copy. Margin notes again,
different looping handwriting, suggesting a woman's hand. The repetition the
ritual is absolute, A slight movement at the corridors into
porter unlocks a side duxss panel, eyes red rimmed from
lack of sleep or something else. He glances up, sees me.
He shrinks back. You are not supposed to be here,
he mutters. But a press close. There's a count, I murmur,
showing him the slip of numbers. The list is always
a person short. Every misintraces to the old wreck, the
dead head incident. He shareers, shakes his head. We just
ride it. The stretch expects an offering, and the company
pretends to balance the accounts, old rules, old debts, those
things that can't be solved with a letter of apology.
A lurch in the car, hard breaking, Novi announced. The
train speed drops through a small fog port. I make
out the glint of overills, veering away, an ancient siding,
overgrown with weeds. Station House Bairey is sulllow, wet in
the moonlight. Valhurst, I think immediately, the raised place never
marked on nearer maps. The compartment ere turns sharp, making
ma Co cough. The porter's hand shakes as he closes
the panel. Stay quiet, he says, don't draw notice. Some
runs they take a thing, a suitcase, a watch, bad runs.
They take someone who knows too much. He goes, melting
into the mechanics of the train. The pH hops again,
this time voiced by Resonance. I have not heard the
texture of and tred secret straining at the edge of language.
The nar arriving at the place name, skates and wins,
back slurring a place between stops tone as much as word.
I paced the corridor, testing every panel. The sweet slock
emits an irregular rhyth now slow, sammer, anticipatory. I place
my hand against the door. It thrumbs with a fine,
impossible energy, like the tuning fork just before it silenced.
People pass travelers, days to crew. Even more so, the
second copy of the paperback seems to radiate presents. Part
of me expects the door to swing wide and reveal
the shape of the Vanish sitting with their hands folded neatly,
as if waiting to be called forward. But the room
remains perfectly sealed, every trace curated, except for a growing
coal that leaks into the gap below the jam. I
duck away his pol ob returns for his clipped bucking
an order over his shoulder to lock down the galley.
The tear and clatters all passengers to remain seated. He
calls tone now enforced by something private, a tamber I
had not heard in him before. We will be in
the stretch for the next fifteen minutes. No walk in
the corridors. No one argues when a mother's tone sharpens
her child fussing. Pollard softens niels and presses a hand
to reasure, showing himself a vestige of a person rather
than company. Something about his restraint makes the hidden a
gent even sharper. The sweet held, the tea left, and
the oak ledge inside still steams, bull and broken. I
retrace each point, the slippers, the clock blinking at two seven,
the tiny margin note repeating by each paperbacker run and broken,
debt returned. I slide my recorder from my back and
thumbet on, narrating low. Nothing about this as chance, the
old disaster of dollars to the company's ledger, all folded
in this moment. The count's never write. The offering is
never enough. I'm closer now. If I disappear, the evidence
is in this log in my voice. The radio at
my ear spotters then clear as it once mock again
heard whispering and code. Someone's trying the list their passing names.
Crewe passengers there picking stay inside, don't wait, they're looking static.
Then a voice that is in his half drowned in
a synthetic echo, Moorland Sweet four O four unpaid balance.
My blood chills. The train slabs another handful of speed,
grip on the rails and steady outside. Nothing but battered
posts and nodded hawthorns, moonlight, etching the abandoned Dollar station,
further from reality. I moved toward the vestibule where Marks
radio signal stows, feeling like I am trespassing across every
line of license. The corridor bends opens into the Crewe
utility section. I find Mark hunched at a screen, scanning
for security loaks pulled from backup tapes, his face damp
with fear. When he spots me, he starts nearly appending
a flask at his feet. You have to see this,
he stammers, waving me over. The manifest displays in glitching colors.
The can is not just off a surcursive. The name's
not just unfamiliar but impossible. Some are I annotated by hand,
repeating one thing over and over. Dead, had no passage,
no return. I lean in heart racing. Who's putting these through?
He shakes his head. It isn't any of us. Now,
Sometimes the systems just know. I was told never to ask.
Another figure passes the open door, poll out, superior, hat drawn, low,
lips tight. His glance is a half second two long,
spishing in the brows. He judges will be next. Marxhand's
trouble over the keyboard, the final name on the Liskolitch's
forward Moreland to see the time stamp a dat, a
line perfectly to the overreck then leaping nineteen seventy four,
two thousand one. Now they want you as the accounting
this run, he whispers. You can't be in the corridor
when account ends if you, or you'll be taken. That's
how it works. What about Lena Mallow? He shakes, tears
in his voice. Now, company couldn't stop it. People got
in the way of the books, or tried to tell
the truth. They are not the first. We both go silent,
listening as the Piatrans Night Transit complete in ten minutes,
all manifest obligations will be balanced. The train's world shrinks.
No Internet, no way to call for help, Only the glowering,
looping presence of the dead stretch, the paperwork, and the ritual.
I collect my bag in duck out, choosing instead to
retreat into the shadows of the next car, careful to
stay behind the curtain of the clina's closet. Voices pass
in the corridor, crew reciting from memory, reading over passenger names,
a kind of oral litany, ritualized and cold, sweet four
O four unoccupied, last account of four Morland. See my
heart jumps. I press on, sliding open a bookhead into
a crawl space between cars, the gap barely wider than
my shoulder. The rumble, the vibration is violent. Here, the
sol as of routine banished. I can see through to
the farc eye, to a narrow slipt window that opens
onto the old siding. Moonlight pulls over buckled rails, while
grassplit with frost. A shadow moves outside to possession. Brief
and silent. A small group in hooded coats face is
hidden behind the curve of time is elf a ledger
passed hand to hand, each page turned and nnotated. I squint.
The roll book is ancient, pages thin and torn, ending
pen scoring names, ticking all who stays, who leaves, one
figure taller than the others passes a piece of folded
white paper to Pollard, who takes it, flinches, tucks it
into his coat. In other turns, showing the briefest glimmer
of a face I recognized Leana's wide urgent eyes. Bushy blows,
twisting up into the void. The company's hierarchy is involved,
but the mechanism exceeds them. A ghostly bureaucracy, writing debts
and disappearing ink. I crouch, trembling, notebook against my lips,
record hot in my hand from the vestibule, Mark passes,
stooping whispers if you can run, do it now. The
count re sets at actual midnight. Any unfinished business remains
until the next passage. But I need evidence. I wait,
breath shallow. The roll call resumes outside. A voice like
gravel and rain calls Morland see sweet four O four
No answer, Yeather pentakes a line regardless. The utility door
swings in, and I flatten myself behind a trunk, holding
back ashad. Two porters faces sickly enter, discussing the next ledger.
We can't keep this secret, one says, fear bleached. It
grows every year. The account's always incomplete. The conductor, now
in full virtual mode, badge it and had overly formal
cuts in. We have to maintain a run. If the
account is left open, the train never leaves the stretch.
That's the rule. Outside the ritual nears it end. Voice
is lower upon the paperback, feeling a pulse, now a
real pulse in its pages. I yank it open, seeing
the handwriting against whirling, my name written in blacking at
the margin, dated not today, but over twenty years ago.
Footsteps Paulard enters the crawl space, lantern in hand, face Haggard.
He spots me crouched and falders cass last call. You
are on the list, stay or step out, but choose now.
I stand to my full height, defind tat by fear.
Why me, Because I looked? He sighs, a defeated sound.
Because you looked a new dig and that's the only
sin that matters. We don't want this, but the count
old rules must balance or the train everyone get stuck.
You ask for truth. Truth? Is this? The ledger has
its own hand. I left the book toward him. Is
this how it began? Was it always a ritual? A
sacrificed to the tracks. He lowers his head. It started
with that wreck. Yes, the company papered it over, so
the train counts for itself. Now we just try to
keep up. Another voice calls chilling mechanical, not quite inside
the car manifest closing all debts due lost chance for appeal.
The compartment temperature drops abruptly, frost slimming the edge of
my recorder. I rush out, dotting down the corridor, passing
the dead sweet as the light on his lock flickers
and then dies. The corridor head glows with odious phosphorescence,
the boards and panels flickering new and old at one's
frails that were and raels reimagined. I dive into the
adjacent suet, sealing a lot behind me, and crouch at
the floor. I press to the gap underneath. I see
feet passing, some in modern shoes, some in perior dress,
all going nowhere. The ritual and wines culminates. I page
through the book. Each new margin fills as I turn,
words blooming, unpaid ditch transfer, no departure till account closed.
A small foot outside the procession halts over the incart hanway.
The same warp voice calls one in balance sweet four
O four proceed. The handle rattles. I hold my recorder
up from ready, waiting for the next event. Instead of footfalls,
there is only silence of silence, filled with expectation, like
a trial in a long closed room. I feel then
the coal press of memory, as if one million train
logs are fused into this time looks sweet. Then a
finite change. The rear compartment's door creaks. Mark unmistakable, leans in,
eyes wild, beckoning. Come, there's a way out if they
don't find you in the ritual. You're a free till
the next balance. Hurry. I run, hot, pounding following Mark
through tight utility stair. We emerge in the baggage car.
Shadow shapes behind us, now voices rising, List is still open.
List as a cascade of static shuts it down. Mark
pulls me toward a small operation's hatch. Go leave the
train soon as the stretch is through. Don't look back,
don't run for the suet. He hands me a small
satchel inside Lena's recorder tape, still spooling, her final words
captured in a frightened tremor. I hear someone walking. I
hear the same name, over and over. I don't want
to break I pocket the recorder. Mark stays behind, retreating
into shadow, backing toward the old ledger and its keepers.
The door slam shuts tight through a fot window. I
see Lena, or someone much like her, press against the
glass from the outside, her eyes pleading for rescue, for closure,
for a recount. Shadows swirl, never resolving into figures either
fully alive or dead. As the train growns up to speed,
the stretch clears, air warms faintly, and the tanner resumes
approaching Hemsley Junction. Thank you for ridding with us this night.
Passengers stir. Their face is dazed as a froes from
a heavy sleep, will where only distantly that time has
moved past them. In the interval, the mother hugs heir child,
eyes rimber it, glancing around as if to confirm everyone
she loves still accounted for. The old woman in Taunton
collects her umbrella and stares out at nothing, nothing a
litany I cannot decipher. Follow art merges from the corridor,
face drained, ushering passengers through the mundane judas now head
counts or check tickets. No mention of the vanished or
the ordeal. I linger by the sweet, the lock now
dark and innocent. Crew file pass, call for baggage, check's scan,
Only the compartment yields nothing. Slippers, a teacup, the batter,
paperback now spying up, margin, notes rearranged once again, my
name gone, replaced with another marks. Perhaps the ritual's tally
never ends, only rotates. I step off the train into
the stunt hush of early dawn. Footsteps equin on chilled concrete.
The air is ordinary again, yet nothing inside remains untouched.
The commuter stream away into the bloodless first light, but
I hang back, clutching my notes. The book Lena's record
of bearing her last moments. Shields finds me by the
outer doors, face drawn, every bit of accompass. He drives
me to his flat, insists I lie low, stores my
tips in a coated box, promises just for now, but
even he seems skeptical that anything will come of it.
We draft the story, names, times, clues, labor over message,
drafts for Helen, for regulators, for anyone who listen. Each
attempt is rebuffed, vanishes into silence, files corrupted or lost
in transfer, even when we male physical evidence print outs
bat of books. There is no reply. We spend long
hours listening to the tapes. Sometimes in the background, the
towny cracks, and over the static I catch the same phrase,
manifest closing, next balance, my own name occasionally ghosted in
the digital snow. We try to erase it, overwrite it,
but it returns. Jills grows distant, eyeing his own dolways
with suspicion. It's too much, he says one evening, too
tightly wound, too self protecting. Some puzzles are traps more
than riddles. He looks at my battered paperback, now on
his desk, with the margin notes faded to a blank grayness,
as if erasure is ongoing. A NodD understanding we both
know I am no longer a separate from the ledger.
Time passes, I am alone again, hunched at my kitchen table,
the apartment now a tangle of cables and note books.
I listen to my own voice and the recorders. Sometimes
underneath I hear the faintest echo of the train wheels
on rails, and name muttered, and the ritual silent demand.
Sometimes in the static lace quiet, I hear my name
Moorland see, And in the background, the drone of the town.
I next balance, next run, prepare one evening. As the
light phase, I fish out the batted paperback from my back.
Inside the front cover. The margin is blank, awaiting an entry.
For a moment, the urge burns in my hand to
write something, anything, to offer a closing, but the pencil hovers,
refusing the impulse. The ledger is always open, and every
page is a door. I caose the book and set
it gently on my window sill on the street below.
And I thus glide silently pass headlights, glancing off my
window panes, slicing my shadow into fragments along the wall.
I catch my own reflection, drawn, tired, mot with the
echo of vanished names. I wonder not for the first
time whether I am already counted among them. I hear,
very faintly, the trained announcement in the dark, my name
woven into the freshold just before sleep. Next run, next name,
sweet four O four. I do not answer, And that
is where it ends. I do not answer. There is
the low grain static of departments, silence broken only by
the distant rumble of trains knifing through the cities. Under belly.
I sit, waiting for a knock, some signal that things
are still mutable, that the closing of the book and
the refusing of the ritual carries any weight outside the
rum of paperwork and passenger lists. But the flat remains quiet.
Street lights casting pale striped to cross stacks of notes
and evidence boxes. The ritual has left its mark, a
vacancy inside me, as if something vital was traded for
knowledge that once sits still. Joel calls once, just as
dust settles again, his voice hollow, wavering, at the edge
of retreat cass He says, have you noticed odd mail
items out of place? His voice nearly cracks. My copy
of the log's gone, and the backup drive keeps grupting itself.
Photos vanish from my phone. He doesn't wait for reassurance.
Be careful, he finishes, and hangs up. Later, I try
to build a timeline, pinning slips of ourn notated pages
and ticket stubs to my cockboard. It makes less sense
as time falls away from the ritual. The longer scrutinize,
the more the patent buckle's names begin to shimmer. Certain
dates for right themselves. Mennight calls and email drafts disappear
before my eyes, as if torn from both machine and memory.
The only constant is the dog eared buck, always within
arm's reach, its cover now warm with my touch. The
urge to retrace grows. I walk City Street to rund On,
always looping near Himsey Junction, watching rails blink into shadow
under the sodium lights. The urge becomes habital, lawning without object,
the twinge of unfinished business somewhere beneath the hum of
tires and the spitting crackle of electrical lines. I think
I hear train wheels, the same haunting rhythm from the
night that unraveled the ledger, invisible but insistent. I do
not step on to the platform, not yet. They slip by.
News from the company drives up, Messages go unreturned. None
of my store's surface, even those on other subjects. Editors
pivotu sides step polite and vague. At the public archives,
I catch one of the attendants, a young woman with
wary eyes, glancing past me to a supervisor. Whenever I
request manifests for instant reports from the dead head run
each time, she says there is nothing left in a
file for that period. The repetition a kind of liturgy.
Only one thing changes on my doorstep. Tucked under an
advertising flyer is a bout of Manila envelope, sealed without
return address, inside another copy of the paperback, this one
dog eared near the midpoint, the margin filled in precise
blue ballpoint neat lipping letters identical to my own. The
day atop the annotation reads the following day, as if
anticipating what I will write tomorrow. The note inside is
brief Ledger completed. Next run, bring your own story. I
search my bag, my desk, my bedside table for the
battered original. It is gone. I hesitate before reading further.
The margin note pulls in my mind, casting a ripple
across my memory of the ritual. I recognize the recurse
of logic ow obsession and proximity make you complicit. A
name waiting on the ledger. Still part of me once
needs to know the boundaries, to see if closure is possible.
Even now, I make one more attempt to break through.
She also agrees to meet subdued and guarded in the
far corner of a cafe, where the hit of espresso
machines covers any whispers. He looks exhausted stubble shadow in
his cheeks, eyes weary. You've got to stop the cass,
he urges, voice flat. It's not that they're hiding you.
It's like the world went hold this. Every bit of
evidence slips out, every name on the log, eventually unreadable.
I'm forgetting faces from the old tapes. Even Lena's voice
it fezzes out. He admits that the codes he've written down,
the times and names, every physical artifact is warping, as
if reality is sealed tight against the telling of this
particular story. Hugh Bylines even dropped off the staff list
at the paper. They say you never wrote a thing.
A jolt runs through a recognition of the ritual at work,
not only within the compartment's walls, but in the infrastructure
of the world. The larger balances accounts, not just in
passenger bodies, but in erasure, memory, record, history itself. I
clutch the paperback newly sent, hoping the act of holding
it will lodge me in the present. Shules passes me
about it for last drive. Maybe you'll have better look
with this, if not burn it, We leave together, silent,
awareer of eyes that may or may not exist, watching
from behind a ca face frosted glass for three full nights.
I listened to Lena's recorder, flipping a tape back again
and again. Each time the in section comes out a
little differently. The sound of uneasy for steps, the brief
trembling side of the PA system, the static rising until
her voice gets through. I don't want to count down.
Not my name, not this time. Sometimes, impossibly, I hear
my own name threaded him behind her is a ghost
resonance of lapping the moment of her erasure. Sometimes her
voice is joined by others, snatches of all train routines,
coded greetings, ledger murmurs, flickering more faintly. The company's defense
is whole. I get one note on institutional letterhead and signed.
Your inquiries are unwelcome. No further comment will be forthcoming.
All records for the period in question have been appropriately oka.
All perdinent staff are rotated, unreachable. I find myself guarding
the apartment as if it's a station under a siege,
ritallistically checking the lock, repositioning the batted book on the
window sill, glancing at my own reflection for signs of erasure.
When I interview a neighbor about a routine building repair,
his eyes flick over me with the question he can't
voice something off the other night, cass He offers, I
never heard you come home, though your lights were on.
The sensation of being both present and absent, a ghost
haunting your own life grows almost unbearable. Jose's next message
is a voice note leaving town a wild casp can't sleep,
keep hearing names in the static if I haven't called
in a month, don't come looking. There's a silence, then
a truncated sign off. I replay compulsively until after a
system update, the file as flagged as corrupted and inaccessible.
Within days, I noticed the book's margin changing again. Words
appeared in vanish, sometimes of written mid sentence. Once in
the grainy dawnlight, I spot my own full name in
the words sweet four O four confirmed, not yet processed.
I closed the book and stack beneath the others. Desperation flares.
I place anonymous calls to the oversight board, rail investigators,
anyone with the power to press all lines dead end.
My own file with the Press agency is marked in active.
My online presence got as potisan linked articles, truncated biography
raised down to on verify freelance researcher, my friendship, shrink,
colleagues offering apologies, or drifting away silently, as if a
cord had been cut. I dream of the train repeatedly.
The dream is always recursive. The events were shuffled boarding
at night, the hush in the corridor, the summoning of names,
the repetition of ritual. Sometimes I try to subvert its
step off at an earlier stop, inter seed in the counting,
but the outcome re beats. Some nights, the sweet opens
and Lena O Milo greets me with solemn eyes, each
of us holding a ledger and a cup of untutched tea.
Late in the following month, Newsburg's barely a footnote. A
rail employ one of the old conductors who managed the
suite is reported missing, his personal effects ranged as if
curated for awder, shoes by the bed, cup of tea
cooling dog eared paperback at the head of the berth.
The rush was perpetuate, regardless of exposure or witness. I
checked my mail again, and certain what I expect to find.
There's a new envelope bulky, this time containing a paperback
so worn it practically flakes in my palm. This one
is full to cover to cover, with annotations in my
own pen and scripts and colors of incayone dated sequentially
into the future. My hand shake as I realized some
of the entrant recount events that haven't happened, signature as
I do not recall making but can't and I are mine.
I sit book, balanced on my knees and stare at
the margin, entries one after another, leaping through souls and
accounted for a knight's and equally tallied over the next hours,
all evidence of my inquiries. The lulks, the flash drive,
even the company's cold replies flicker and are gone. Flying
through the windows are the sands of the city's trains,
grinding through darkness, doors slamming his ears close and reopen.
They say obsession makes you blind, that digging too deep
is dangerous. The more I try to solve the counts,
the more I find myself inscribed page by page as
witness and participant alike. I leave my own account and
finish margin notes, trailing away. The ledger expects accounts to continue.
Outside the world seems ordinary, its rhythms intact, But in
the hush before dawn, tinny pier voice and coils in
the static of a neighbor's radio sweet four O four,
prepared to disembark, and seeing my reflection in the darkened window,
I realize I'm never certain whether I'm still on board
or if I ever left it. All the ledger I
know now is endless, its accounts, fluid and self predicting.
I closed the book, feeling its pulse beneath my hand,
and for a moment I almost answer when the name
is called, but I don't. Instead, I reach from my
recorder and start again. This is Cassmoorland. If anyone's listening,
there is something you need to know about the night train,
something about the balance, about the names, about how the
world edits itself around certain kinds of memory. The line
in the margin continues to fill in my hand or another's,
accounting for what the world would rather forget. And when
the following evening there is a knock at my door,
just three clear wraps measured like wheels, finding the track.
I wait, hush, clutching the book, understanding that some rituals
complete themselves whether or not you open the door. I wait,
listening to the slow promise of the rails vanishing into
the night, and in that pause between calls, suspect, I
have always lived between runs, that the ledge's margin has
been my home longer than any ground could hold me outside.
Another train passes in the distance, its horn blurring time
and names alike, and my own shadow leans in, accounted
but not yet claimed. And that is the end. Thank
you for listening, and I will see you in the
next one.