Speaker 1: The sound of my boots echoed endlessly along the empty concrete,
each step punctuate in the hush that closed around the
rural station. In the folds of the night, the platform
seemed to stretch on forever, slick with the rhyme of
untouched frost. I clutched my took close to my body
as canvas corners biting into my glove fingers. The digital
clock above my head shuddered with an erratic electric que
twelve three am its digits pulse in the time in
an even cold blue light. My breath fogged the air
before my face. Each exhaled quick and visible no va.
As a warning, I drew my scarf tighter, feeling its
crouch beneath my chain, and tried not to dwell on
the dread that grew with every passing heart beat. Most nights,
the stition was deserted by ten. The only movement then
a final taxi, crawling through the car park before vanishing
into the blacken countryside. Now, at this unlikely ire, there
was only me, the wild hush, and the rest assense
that to night was the age of something inexhaustion forred
through with a peculiar anticipation like a car and huming
inside my bones. I fumbled with my phone, thumb pricking
at the glass for comfort, and brought up the train twndtable.
The battery I come flickered too low. The apstewin table
was simple, our service at eleven thirty five, no mention
of anything past minute. I stepped towards the battered paper
sheet pinned inside the shelter's glass case. The numbers were large,
smudged and on in the half light twelve five City
Express request stop only. The listing felt like a private joke,
a trick of the tired eyes. I blinked and checked again,
then ran a finger tip along the silvery condensation. Somewhere
out beyond the trees, A deep, low vibration began, harridly, noise,
more sensation than sound, a pressure that seemed to swell
beneath my skin. I straightened, the tracks trembled, and then,
as if conjured by the thickening mist, a train glided
into view from the direction of the old granary, along
and impossibly dark, its windows like sheets of smoke glass,
reflecting nothing but the fog lad at night. I waited
for the shriek of brakes with a rumble of wheels,
but there was only silence, broken by the hush, the
frequency of it making the fillings in my teeth ache.
The train kept coming, slow, dill, liberate, totally silent. I
raised my phone, desperate for proof, the screen trembling with
my heart beat. I pressed the camera button just as
the leading carriage drew level with me. Only the lend
recorded so much dart as obliterating, smeared and empty, no shape,
no features, just streakedvoid. Further down the platform, out of
my peripheral vision, I caught the shape of another commuter, older,
heavy coat, white hair glints under the shelter light. He
didn't flinch, didn't back away, just stood braced against as
he rails, his gaze glued to the passing silver blur.
He looked like someone awaiting judgment. The trains lived past,
not slowing, its face subtly expressionless, a procession of black
carriages lost in their own shadows. A cold wind trailed
in its wake, scraping the platform with sheets of old leaves.
The overhead bulbs flickered, dimmed, then steaded again as the
tail of the train vanished without ever breaking, without even
a hint of its passing, besides that sensation in the
bones and the shake in my hands. I tried to
say something, anything, but my voice vanished in the night.
The platform lapsed into stillness. I scanned the print attendible
one more time, incredulous twelve flush on there, plain as daylight.
I darted a glance at my app at the garish,
a yielding line at the end of the regular schedule,
the phantom ire. Drawing a breath, I ushed down the
platform toward the other commuter. The stone skittered under my boots.
He did not raise his eyes as I approached. It,
did not acknowledge me, except with a slight stir, as
if he were surfacing from deep water. In a raw silence,
he finally muttered, not to me, not to himself, but
to something hanging between us. Best not try to board it.
His words hung dreadful and final in the air, as
if spoken from behind the glass. I felt them settled
deep somewhere near my heart, and I understood instinctively that
whatever passed here at night was not for passengers, not
for the waking, not for the living or the lost.
I stood alongside him in that pool of cold blue light,
the last echoes of the ghost train still vibrating in
my skin. I knew something had shifted around me, something
that would not go back to how it was before.
If he'd asked me before that night, before the twelve
fave came more than a rumor, I'd have told you
I was unremarkable. My life up to that point followed
routines with the precision of a clock, early all arms,
lucorm showers, the awkward search for matching tights, and washed
out lamplate. My name is Sourimiller. I'm a junior administrator
with a regional health charity, the Lost, in a dwindling
office of problem solvers, stafford and grand chasers. Every morning
I'd haul myself from the squad brickhouse I rend in
the far side of the village and stomp through checkered
fogg to catch the seven thirty two into the city.
The train was my boundary, my transition from peace to pressure.
Each weekday, the same cast gathered on the platform, Tom
with his bowted briefcase, Lucy always bouncing extra textbooks for
her morning commute to the university. Raj the night nurse
who somehow smile even on the Red eye run. Friendships
were casual, straining at the edges of routine. We grumbled
about delays, charity laden flasks, compared strategies for fixing the
village's only high street. The station itself didn't look like much,
a low brick shelter streaked with graffiti older than my
adult life, guarded by Missus Wiggins, the world's friendliest forenoses
to ticket clerk. She wore cardigans in frifle shades and
commented on every headline, every haircut, every bracing frost. After dark,
though the place changed should develop our hoardings pressed at
its back, but fields and scoutl trees still hemmed in
human traffic, replaced by shadows and owls. Some nights, the
fog gate up everything outside of the platform sliver of light,
and I'd either the humped line of the decommissioned tracks
as they vanished behind the old granary, wondering what cargo
they might have once carried, or what stories they still had.
Village life was gentle, if a bit more eaten. Pubs
flutted along its walls, building with old laughter and new debt.
My job filled my days with paperwork, rounds of emails,
constant he always a careful budgeting the hope we stretch
every pound. The charity's office was small, pulsating with the
scent of highlighter and ancient carpet. Sometimes after the last train,
had stay late to catch up, typing in isolation, as
the city's traffic faded, the building creaked, and the sky
turn bruised. I tried to keep boundaries between my responsibilities
and my rests, with mixed results. Evening yogre, grainy Netflix.
These were the fragments of mere time, shoehorned between endless
to jews and the intrusive chime of my phone. Sometimes
admissed the last safe train, sometimes late on the platform,
had since without reason that someone or something kept watch
from the waist high fog that splayed over the fields.
I told myself it was rural paranoia, but the chill
always found its way into my bones. There were small
rumors to trickle down tails of a man from the
next village who vanished after missing his train last year.
Supposedly he moved in with a long lost cousin. The
explanation was always impossibly vague. The story re surfaced whenever
the knights drew in, whenever someone was very late of
the platform light's flicker. I often threatened, mostly to myself,
that I'd get my cartsorder, that I wouldn't have to
rely on the ratic choreography of rural train schedules. But
weeks bled into months, and the cars had immobilized, its
engine silent, gathering dust and the odd wayward cat. Relying
on the train was an act of faith, one that
felt perfectly reasonable until the night faith was met with
something colder, older, and far less forgiving, live spun on,
marked by forged routines and familiar faces. I told myself,
as I stood in new silence after the ghost train
had vanished, that surely there was a rational explanation, some
air in the schedule, a quirk of sleeplessness. But an
uncanny shiver crawled along my skin, a warning that wouldn't
be sued by daylight. I as I trudged home under
bruce clouds that seemed to press low to the road,
a dozen details of daily life clanned at the edges
of my mind. Work assignments, the must of a forgotten
laundry load, Miss s Wiggan's chronic warnings about cold snaps
and misconnections, but beneath it all. My thoughts returned again
and again to the silent train, in the shape it
left in the night air, and that voice from the platform,
best not try to board it. I had never felt
more out of routine, never more certain that what counted
as normal for me and for the slumbering countryside was
about to be undone. The following morning, I carried my
fatigue like a badge, ragged under my skin, my mind
snagging our memory as the village blinked awake. I double
checked the National Rail app No. Twelve five, No extra services,
not a whisper in any update. My search extended to
obscure transport forms, to the faded corners of rail enthusiast's
message boards. Nothing. The app was final, perfectly bland. My
hands kept searching for evidence of what I had seen,
desperately seeking order in pixels and timetables. At work, I
found Lucy leaning against the break room counter, pouring over
her phone as she dunked a biscuit into too strong tea.
I told her what happened to that I'd seen something
in the platform, a train that didn't exist on any
digital schedule, a ghost of a train sliding past in
the night, she burst out, laughing a high onward sound.
Maybe it's some signal testing sorrow, too many laid shifts,
too much caffeine. She tried to make it light, teasing,
but her eyes lingered on mine, curious. Still, I couldn't
let it drop. The next night, the fog again seeping
into every hollow, I bundled up and returned to the station.
This time I came prepared, a batter portable recorder, brought
from a drawer, with old birthday cards and a tangle
of headphones. I held it tight, fingers numbed and steady,
watching the seconds tick forward on the faded screen behind
the ticket glass. Again, the twelve five sat there, and
princes mudged almost orely. Its type is suftly one, he
compared to the other neat rose. The night deepened, their
thickening with mist. The station was empty of them before,
hollowed by darkness and absence. Missus Wiggins's window was shuttered
only a stray metal newspaper, its headline replaced by an
unreadable blur rustled on the bench. Estates smeared and ne
u useless. The rumble began just before twelve inaudible barely,
a feeling picked up through the soles of my boots.
Then the train again, flowing out of the night. This
time I hit the record button, voice clicking dryly as
I whispered my observations to whatever future audience would listen.
The train did not pause or hesitate, it whispered by,
and when it had vanished, the platform felt empty than before.
I heard home adournal, entingling up my spine. Curious, I
replayed the recording. At first, only static, the hollow hiss
of wind, the crunch of my shifting feet, Then beneath that,
the faintest clian, a rhythm of metal against metal, and
in the spaces something altogether unaccountable, scraps of what could
be broken voices, like a sentence bath from inside a barrel,
far away, pleading to be heard. I shivered and shut
it off. Next day, I approached Tom on the morning platform,
desperation leaking through my words. He paused, the lines of
the edges of his eyes deepening. When I described the
twelve five, he went sheet white, lips draw and tigh.
I seen that basted before, he said, softly, glancing around,
as if making sure no one else would hear. Not
for a good few years, mind, but always a twelve
five never stops my brother's friend, even when she was
waiting for it. Once she never came home. He said
nothing more, but I'd seen the truth catch on his tongue.
This was a mystery, old of the mi insomnia, older
than the faded paint on the platform bench. The pattern
was real, anne whether out of fear or habit, everyone
seemed to not, just enough not to ask any more questions.
It started with a note book assembled by the faint
life of my desk lamp, scrolled with dates, observations, names,
and questions that unraveled with each sleepless night. Each evening,
though a sloshingly cormed tea, I'd pot myself at the station.
My head quarters was a patch of splendid bench beneath
the flickering lamp. My only companions a rumpled notebook, my
audio recorder, and the stubborn midwinter fog. Between train arrivals,
I pieced together interviews. Tom was the steady's presence, sure
now about the twelve five, but more willing to recount
what he once knew. He told me about an error
when certain lines were allowed to disappear mpomnesire, as he
put it. He spoke sadly of Evel and his brother's friend,
a gentle soul who took the late train, only to
never return. They called it a runaway. But she never
left her things, not her letters, not even her keys.
Some of us grew up thinking that if he waited
too long, the trains would start to wait back. I
found Road's shouldering a backpack in the morning drizzle. When
I asked about the ghost train, he shook his head.
He'd never seen the thing himself, but had noticed more
absences than any one could explain. People come and go, sure,
but sometimes it's odd. Yeah, Alan with the boots never
said good bye. It just stopped showing of that lad
from Nightingale clothes. We chat about late trains than the
next week gone. Missus Wiggins, ever, the guardian of routine,
shifted uncomfortably when I pressed her. Don't trouble yourself with
that timetable deer. It's been like that as long as
I can remember. Best, just ignore what doesn't concern you.
Train's time some history. Better to miss a train than
catch the wrong one. Her gaze went distant, and I
wondered how much she witnessed from her box, and how
much she chose to forget. After a week, the questions
outgrew the platform. I spent hours at the local library
devoiring years of brittle kneesprint, tracing the lineage of our
train lines to astonishingly scant public record. In the nineteen fifties,
I found there was a branch that curved through these woods,
serving a town called Brackley, and it had not shown
on any current map. The service was cut abruptly following
a tragedy to a now demolished crossing. Official reports spoke
in riddles, unforeseen circumstances, unrecoverable loss. Group photographs in the
archaves were half faded, faces washed away by time. Even
the librarian couldn't place bracly and to funny at my
grannys to tell stories, But I never found it myself.
My notebook thickened with cross hatched questions. It was not
just one lost train, but a sequence names, dates, disappearances
that created a pattern. They clustered in odd numbered years,
always during weeks of thick fog. Sometimes those who vanished
had broadcast their plans to catch her late train, or
mention seeing something strange at a platform. The time line
fit too neatly to be a coincidence. Pushing harder, I
emailed the train company. The response, when it came, was
automated and called, we have no scheduled service at twelve
five a m at U station. Please ensure your information
is accurate before contacting support. Doors closing, or perhaps doors
never truly open. The lateness snawed at my nerves. I
dreamed of train slippy soundlessly through oceanic mists, saw faces
pressed to dark glass. Desk work started to suffer. I
caught myself typing platform numbers instead of data. Some nights
after fruitless stakeouts, i'd see new graffiti under the eve.
If you see a tea, don't wait. The warning was
fresh in block capitals, the pain so bright it seemed
to glow. I was certain it hadn't been their only
days before my breaker arrived in the slow drag of
another sleepless night, tab after it tab opened on my laptop,
paper notes frazzling at the corners. A potted disappearance did
against meteorological records. The pattern was clear as a time table.
Every incident clustered on nights when the FOD was thickest
the moon erased. Every disappearance corresponded with an unexplained server
outage at the station, a silence in the data, always
at twelve five, the evidence crew documentation left by the
missing single punch tickets, phone messages that cut off mid
sentence photos of the station at midnight, attached to unlivered texts,
always circling that liminal space around the twelve five, always
skirting the question what happened between the platform and the
ghost train silent passage. I shared my findings quietly with
Tom and Lucy. Tom listened grimly, Lucy, for once, had
nothing to laugh at. From both, I felt a sense
of warning, a silent barrier of reluctance to step too
close to the edge. But curiosity held me fast, insistent
as the push of a train's momentum. If this was
a patent, then some one must know why. Someone must
remember how the line truly ended, and what remained to
be cleaned by those midnight rails. On a sun this afternoon,
standing numbly at the far end of the decommissioned tracks,
I dialed a number i'd found penciled into the margin
of an ancient library ledger. Mister Fincher chancewered as voice
ragged as awesom leaves. One of the last old rail
women still living near the edge of the woods. He
met me in his kitchen. It's a newly embuckled and
count as crowded with chip tins over mugs of tar
black tea, steam winding like secrets. He traced the memory
of the Vanish branch line as if repairing a toall map,
bracly and hem use. That place had a spirit, miners,
shop keepers all out here. When the accident happened, well,
it warn't just the line, the village itself went in
a way, he spoke quietly of the week's After the disaster,
railwaymen ordered to remove record brust plaques and signposts scrub
from existence. Maps were ridden overnight. Some families relocated, some
just drifted official paperwork vanish, and no one ever spoke
of compensation. It was easier, you see, to let it
all slip into the fog. His hands soir caled the mug,
But there was always a whisper. Every few years a
train would run just as he saw no light in
the windows. No conductor called, as if the tracks themselves
weren't allowed to rest, He paused, clearing his throat. We
get complaints, questions from the odd late worker, but the
higher ups they told us to ignore it, told us
we'd keep our pensions if we never asked. Did anyone
ever try to bore? Asked? He met my gaze, gray
eye sparkling. No one I knew lasted long enough to
tell oppressed? Was their purpose to it? Less to Frencher,
hesitated than nodded towards the window. Were the old tracks
culled into trees? Some reckon it comes to collect those
who need to go or are chosen somehow. Others think
it's the past refusing to be buried. His voice lowered,
could be for all I know, it's safer for us
not to know, safer for history not to surface. I
understood then, how official and gluck folded into something colder,
not accident, but act to let times whind scab over
with silence rather than address what festered underneath. I left
his word settling in me like oldsot, wondering really who
the ghost train came for? Did it seek the lost,
the curious, or simply those it had marked by accident
of being at the wrong place and time Returning home
I lingered on anew darker thought. Maybe the train was
not a haunting or a merely a ghost repeating its
old route for eternity. Maybe it was a mechanism of erasure,
assistant to make certain stories. Certain people simply vanish without
a wreckor not. Every ghost clanks its chains, some were
timed hibbels, printed ones never to be replaced, And in
that moment the mystery shifted from what does the train appear?
To what would happen if someone dared to board. In
the weeks that followed, my investigation sharpened in my days
consumed by pattern. By pinning down the ghostly machinery behind
each twelve five appearance, I mapped everything foggy nights that
thickened the platform into a half world, the precise conditions
under which the space Wichare train barreled through. My research
narrowed spotlighting, a handful of technical impossibilities, and a sense
of conspiracy hiding in plain sight. The old paper tentables
were the constant at twelve five, printed in hot's margin,
as if a careful hand mint sabotage but never erase digitally.
That service never existed, Ahaps National Rail, even the backets
at the library list did nothing cast eleven thirty five,
Yet a printed sheets replaced harpassitively by Missus Wiggins or
her predecessor, always bore the tell tale entry in marginally
different faun and dying. Unstated curiosity pushed me to requisition
the station's Sissy TV records. Every time Fox belthakes Porridge
and the twelve five drew near the camras failed recording, corrupted,
signal lost, even the yarc has blacked out. I had
a friend and I look at a copy. He shook
his head, said it looked like intentional data deletion, not
hardware failure. It was not just my eye. Systems too
were haunted. If the recordings could be trusted, the trains
passing triggered a low tremor, brief and traceable, as if
the world breathed out. I re listened to my audio logs,
this time playing them backwards. Dartic that filled the intervals
between freight noises and the screech of stone, held the
beats of rhythm beneath that. What I swore were names
low and metallic braccli End Harrow's Way, Pinebridge stops on
the vanished branch places no timetable now listed. I began
to map a timeline each year, a small clutch of disappearances.
Everyone tucked into gaps with a twelve five or an phone.
Records tangled or vanished, properties quickly sold. Lockers at the
station emptied over a single night, when I inquired about
survivors from braccli end all war unreachable had moved on,
left no forwarding address. Tracking them felt like chasing shadows
across a half burned ledger. The technical impossibility struck me most.
The old junction, miles from the mainline required manual shifting
to let a train run through. The signals for the
points were always left and neutral, allegedly and touched since
the seventies. Yet some maintenance records dated A nervous pencil
hinted at unknown visits, oil changes, tracks gently cleaned of debris,
but no name, no ticket, never a listed job. If
I squint at it from a certain angle, a kind
of rural hush, a collective complicity, it made a grotesque sense.
Nothing in the world wanted this route to exist, and
yet it did, remained every few years, by whatever force insisted,
whatever bureaucy hoped ignorance would suffice. I became sure now
the twelve five was more than an oversight. It was
a mechanism to erase, or a collective scab pressed down
lest the wound beneath reopen history, I thought, is not
always buried. Sometimes it runs in secrets, striving to collect
its debts. I decided one bit of night, choked and
fog dense enough to throw back my own light, that
the time for observation was over. Maybe it was fatigue, obsession,
or the quiet terror of being the only one who
would ever know the story entire. I texted Lucy, asking
her to join me. Her reply took minutes, hestined, but
she showed. We stood side by side at the empty platform,
shivering beneath the chill. As the digital clock rolled twelve four.
There was a blanket hush, more oppressive than any silence
I'd known. Every fence of pose, every shed blurred to
a colorless smear. The signal lights twinked to black, as
if in morning. Lucie looked at me, grip whitening on
her phone, sorre if anything happens, and she began, but
her words stuttered away as a strange metallic com began
to pulse through the rails. The fog thickened, swirling in columns.
The shape came bigger than ever, its shadder pouring out
from behind the granary carriages so long their ends disappeared
into mist. The train was both real and unreal. No
noise from its passage, no shape, but in the mirror,
its windows beckoned like Poli's stone inside the barest movement,
as though dozens of figures huddled just out of sight. Then,
unlike every other night, the train shuddered to halt, aligning
its lend flawlessly with the platform's edge. The doors tarnished
old histe, opening with the exhaustion of something ancient. Cold
wind roared out, slicing the night into For a moment,
Lucie's hand caught mine in an iron lock, but I
felt already pulled, as if an undertow had wrapped around
my soul. Light snapped on inside the furthest carriage. The
conductor stepped out to press capshined. His face was gray,
not from age, but from the absence of anything living, expressionless,
he thrust out a small tan ticket toward me, punched
with my name, shop and precise. The moment was infinite,
unbreakable horror, on the edge of comprehension. Lucy's voice sliced through,
desperate and unsteady sorrow. Don't get on please. Her grip
yanked my arm back as I teetered, caught between command
and compulsion. Within the carriage, gazes from shadow of windows
found mine. I recognized faces, Evelin from Tom's story, her
eyes deep with loss, the elderly commuter from the first night,
staring mournfully. Even spectral echoes of villagers grouped in twos
and threes, lips moving with no sound. My own reflection
flickered in one panagostamung ghosts. I tore myself back, lungs
I see, skinned down. As the conductors gazed board into me,
his arm never wavered, the ticket trembling as if with decuse.
I willed myself to turn Lizzie's cry in the press
of reality wrapped round me, guiding me away. The door
snatch shut with a shudder that rattled every nervionne The
train heaved out of the station and disappeared into the fog,
dragging the past with it. The mists seemed to thin instantly,
the world reasserted. The platform's lights flicker, then steadied, a
return to the mundane, save for the taste of coal
purpose left in the air. We bolted, stumbling over the curb.
Our phones, now glitching, refused to capture any image, but
for one a poet in Lucie's gallery blowed beyond sense,
bearing the faint impression of my face framed in the
darkness of a train window. No conversation needed. We knew
we had nearly boord a time's own calamity. Two days
became a week, then a fortnight. I couldn't hide how
rattled I felt, the perpetual hum in my veins. The
sleep besides that widened every unexpected footstep on the pavement
At work, I was put on leaf for a well being,
my performance sinking along with my appetite. Lucy checked in
messaging from time to time, carefully orbiting the subject, never
naming the thing we had nearly witnessed whole. When we
did meet her, glances skirted the station, and her words
never touched. On midnight trains, the rhythm of the station
changed as well. Missus Wiggins, my last link to the
before times, retired abruptly, The shelter left unguided and newclik.
Arriving with no inclination for conversation, I noticed the early
signs of raisure. The old paper time table vanish, replaced
over night with the sleek impersonal touch green, showing no
services after eleven thirty five. It was as if the
station was gently written, moving the past out of sight,
making daylight ignorance easy. My search for confirmation nerved quickly.
Requests for information from the council or the train company
brought only stumbling privacy concerns and no records to disclose.
The group of regulars in the platform seen to quietly
share new routines, WhatsApp warnings to avoid the station at midnight,
store steadily standing off all edges until there was nothing
left to catch. The strange graffiti was painted out the
warning a place by fresh coat, the color of nothing.
The branch line behind the granary so long ignore was
finally fenced off. Metal post hammered, hazard tape went tight
and signed reading no trespassing works commencing. Even my devices
betrayed me, files deleted themselves, Recordings returned to static or
with a kind of sinister approach in my own voice
cut off mid sentence. Sometimes when I loaded an old photo.
My reflection, seen trapped behind the glass, looked parted, as
though lorning to be led out. I understood, in the
thickest way one can understand, and unspoken threat, that my
curiosity had come at a price. History, I learned, removed
to heal. Sometimes it expunged, so its wounds can infect
the present. All I could do was listen for the
shift in the midnight air, keep my curiosity dampant, and
tried to couil the till that wandered the house. Every
time the wind rowers and the rails began to sing
so faintly no one else seemed to notice. It happened
late one Thursday, as rainpact at the dark glass of
my front window. The posse had come and gone. On
the one door mat lay an envelope plane and marked
dusted with the faintest traces of soot. Inside, I found
the single folded sheet of firstly printed time table for
our station. My fingers prickled as I ran them down
the columns. Everything seemed as it should, But there at
the very bottom, so small it almost eluded sight, was
a line in lighter print twill five braccoli and request up.
I stared at heart thumping, trying to decipher its purpose,
a joke from a fellow commuter, a warning or summons.
That night, unable to sleep, I moved to my bedroom window,
up beyond the hedges. The fields were lost to fog,
luminous in a blue spell of street lamp light. From
somewhere in that endless night, a whistle echoed, thin and placeable,
both far and near. The lights of a disentrained shimmered
silver and unreal, cutting their paths straight through mister memory.
For a long moment, my reflection caught in the glass, lonely, uncertain.
Behind me, Just for a second, the outline of the
conductor appeared cap gleaming, face washed in midlight. I blinked gone.
Only the night returned, the world innocuous, unimpressed. But the
dread remained, a certainty, threading itself through the quiet of
my thoughts. When the twelve five comes again, it might
not be content to pass on by. And sometimes, in
the deep hours before dawn, I glimpsed my own face
in every window, waiting patiently for whichever tree might open
its doors. There's a particular loneliness that comes from knowing
something you are not meant to understand a vacancy that
grows like lichen, spreading quietly over every surface in the
rooms of your life. I tried to busy myself in
the weeks that follow scrub for garden corners of my flat,
hummed to the radio, brave the village high street for
groceries I didn't need. In conversations I barely remembered once
I'd made them. Still I couldn't quite upa suppulse of
the spectral timetable the way the twelve far pressed at
the back of my mind. Nights grew steadily shorter and colder.
My dreams lost all texture but fog and as corridors,
the metallic taste of wind, the hiss of pneumatic doors
that never quite opened or shut. The question of the
envelope nengcked endlessly. Who knew my address? My investigation it
would go to such lengths? And why some evenings I
found myself hunted to the little table, compulsively reading the
timetable in every light, trying to see if the letters
would fade or fleck away, mo morph into something mun
dane if I just looked hard enough. But each time
there it sat twelve five bruptly and request up like
a dare. One night, Lucy messaged you, still seeing things.
Her words were spare, but the concern was genuine, brimming
just beneath the surface. Yes, I replied, though I'm not
sure any more if I'm seeing them or if they
are just waiting for me to see her answer. Come
by the pub, usual faces, bit of distraction. The Rose
and Chrome was busy and as usual over lightweight. Old
man at the bar pretending interest in a football match,
teenager secretly scrolling phones under tables. Tom was there, hunched
over a pink glass jackets louched on the next still
like a shield. Lucy met my eyes and jerked her
chin at the seat beside her. She's not sleeping, Lucy announced,
in the blunt style of someone hoping to make things
better by naming them. At lard. Tom looked at me.
Cracks are whirry deep in his face. The midnight train
doesn't give up easy, Sarah, he murmured. Grew up the
stores of folks being followed home. Sometimes just knowing about
it is enough. His gaze drifted to the bar mirror,
as if looking for proof in the gleam behind the optics.
I forced myself to sip at my ale. I got
a timetable, old school paper looked official, sureed the twelve five.
I don't know who's trying to get my attention or
trying to warn you off, Tom said, not quite meeting
my eyes. Lucy picked at her coaster. Maybe the twelve
five isn't just about vanishing. Maybe it's about memory, keeping
the heart alive, so no one forgets. If that's true,
they'd want you to remember or to go. The conversation
drifted but quietly under the pub noise, under Lucy's force sloightness.
In Tom's silences, there was a low dread threading its
way through every word. Afterwards, walking home, the village held
altered familiar outline smudge has a seeming further apart. The
pass caught in a more insistent hush. I paused at
the gates to the station, considering the darkest beyond the
new fence. My curiosity burn again. What if I just
try crossed the line? Waited at the sealed off platform,
demanded an answer from the night and whatever stayed that
impossible train. The next day, the urge built until it
overwhelmed my caution there would be no more questions, no
more observations. From a safe distance. If the twelve five
wanted my attention, I would go to meet it. I
packed a fresh notebook, charged my recorder, dressed in every layer,
I owned the armor of the restless, and set out
at half eleven, leaving a note for Lucie under my
front door, intense loop and script. If I don't come back,
it's not for lack of trying. If you hear the train,
stay inside. The station was more relic than ever, of
fenced and freshly padlocked hazard take. Catching in the wind
with a hiss, I found the old style behind the
sets Wiggins Hut known to every board deenage in Fox,
and slipped down the muddy track to the platform. The
new shutter was lit, polished, impersonal, but the air still
tasted of secrets and frost. I sat my recorder on
the bench, notebook open, the digital is splay blinked its
last train eleven thirty five already departed. Midnight came and went.
If they could waiting. Then the pressure, first in my bones,
then rising through my skin. The trembling in the rails
starred it softly, like a heartbeat, booming through earth from
the fog. The train emerged stronger, sharper, as if it
gained detail each time it crossed the barrier from never
was dena windows smoked but glowing with pale yellow light.
For the first time, there was music, something warplink stringed,
mournful leaking from within. It stopped, the doors yawned open.
The same conductor mobile on the step, holding out that
tan ticket. This time I took a single step forward.
The air still, even the fog, seemed to pause, as
if the entire world leaned in to see whether I
would tit the balance one way or the other. My
hand clothes on the ticket, my name was printed in
that exact trembling type. I felt. I don't know how
else to describe it as a feature. Nerve ending in
my body blinked awake, and behind my eyes a second
vision swam the station as it was a century ago.
Or People thronged in long coats and hats, laughed to
mixing with expectation. The ghosts of what should have been
a memory that was mine pressed itself into my bones.
The conductor held my gaze ies hollow, his unfinished rooms.
Request stop. He entombed. I wavered. In that moment, a
sound shouted the quiet. My recorder, forgotten on the bench,
picked up a new voice. Lucy's crackling drew my phone.
The message somehow activated. Her voice raw Sarah, don't you
said not to wait? Don't get on please. I looked
from the ticket to the carriage. Across the threshold. I
saw the faces to evelin allan a dozen more lips
moving as pleading, each of them, both beckoning and warning.
Even the elderly man from my first encounter, Pale Moth,
sat in a sorrowful line, request stop, a choice mine
With trembling fingers. I pressed the ticket back into the
conductor's palm. No, I managed, voice shaking, not to night.
He paused, then crumpled the ticket in his hand, face
never changing. The door slid shut. The train with its
impossible cargo, glided away, vanishing into the fog swallow points.
The music falters broke, then was gone. I stayed there
for a long time, the miscrawling back in, filling the
spaces the train had left. My knees finally gave out,
and I slumped onto the bench, hot thundering. Only once
in the silence after did I realize my recorder was
still rolling in somewhere in the playback. Underneath it all
was a faint voice, a sliver of my own, layered
with a dozen others. They never want a witness, only
a passenger. Astrous, fasterus gasterisk. I left the station as
dawn colored the fields. The road home was empty, as
if the world had agreed to give me rest. But
no footsteps, no foxes, just burkele, stubborn and thin. I
texted Lucy, still here, not going anywhere. By the next week,
the fence at the station was made, permanent, palings painted black,
access points sealed strangers and hive. His fists tore up
the line behind the grandery. On the timetable, the twelve
five vanish, as if the scrap of paper had been
another trick of exhaustion. There were no further letters. I waited,
but nothing came for me, Not in the mail box,
not in the midnight fog, spring unfolded, the village shogged
on new routines at the edge of sleep. Sometimes I
I heard a whistle rise with the wind, or saw
a flicker in an old reflection. I never set foot
on the platform after sundown, but in the crackle of
all radios in the silence, wrapped tight into each royal dusk.
I sometimes caught the echo of the twelve five, still
running somewhere, just out of sight, always collecting, always choosing.
I keep the notebook, the recordings, the evidence. If you're
hearing this, if or following my story late at night,
notebook in hand, wondering how the world can bear so
many secrets, I only ask this, trust the warnings. Listen
to your fear, when the timetable changes, when the midnitrain
calls your name, remember it isn't waiting for the living.
It never was. And if Sunday you find yourself alone
at a silent platform near the edge of sleep, and
a trainer rise for nobody but you, there is only
one question that matters, the one I left and answered
at the edge of the fog. Will you board or
will you bear witness? Choose well,