The Last Train North

The carriage was nearly deserted when we left the city.

Maya sat near the window, forehead against the cold glass, watching the stations whiz by like the pages of a book she had read before. Streetlights blurred into each other in the rain. She didn’t know what she was searching for—only that she could not remain where she had been.

The man in the aisle opposite them had not budged since they departed the terminus. A hat covered his face. He appeared as if he had been waiting for this trip all his life.

There was a rhythm to the train, a heavy, swaying heartbeat that made her eyelids grow heavy. Every few miles, a conductor walked by, his shoes whispering against the floor.

She had not informed anybody of her departure.

She'd left the phone turned off, the purse light. The entire experience was that of sneaking out the back door of a populated celebration and not bothering to say goodbye.

The train had been going slower since midnight. The intercom stuttered but nobody spoke.

Outside the window, there was a station—a station of sorts. There was no signboard, no sign. There was only a slender, high platform, illuminated by a crooked lamp. The mist clung to the pane.

The train halted.

Everyone stayed stock-still.

The man in the hat stood up. He tipped his brim toward Maya, in quiet apology, and got down.

The doors remained open.

Everyone else had gone.

Minutes went by. The conductor never returned.

Ultimately, something in her chest—restlessness, curiosity, or perhaps the heft of the day—prompted her to stand. She got down from the train, onto the platform.

The fog devoured silence.

She expected to hear footsteps, the hum of the train, something. Instead, there was only silence so thick it pressed against her skin.

When she turned, the train was not in sight.

Not only removed from the platform. Erased, period.

She felt panic leap in her like cold water for a moment.

She had not imagined the train. She could still feel the sway in her knees.

But the tracks that had brought it here just ended short of the platform end, as if the rest of the world had been removed.

The voice belonged to the man in the hat.

He stood in the crooked lamplight, watching her. His face was white and crinkled, but his eyes gleamed.

"You got out of here," she said. It was all she could manage.

“You did too.”

"What station is this?" she inquired.

He looked up at the empty sky, as if the name might be written there.

“They don’t call it anything,” he said.

“Then. where are we?"

He smiled, but not unkindly. “Wherever it is that you believe you need to be.”

Maya wrapped her arms around herself. “I wanted to get out of there,” she said.

“Then you did.”

“But I thought the train was going north. I thought there’d be… somewhere to arrive.”

“Most people think that,” he said, and stepped closer. “Trains are good at making you believe in destinations. But some of them just take you out of one place so you can find another on your own.”

A breeze stirred through the fog, and with it the vaguest whiff of sea. She recalled the sea, the gulls, the long skyline she had not glimpsed in years.

As it died away, the silence descended again.

Palau

The man in the hat began to walk. Without quite meaning to, Maya followed behind.

The platform went farther than it should have—farther than any platform she had ever been on. Eventually, she realized that there were doors in the course of the path.

Some of them were simple wooden doors, with brass knobs. Others were cut out of black stone, or of glass that appeared to ripple when she gazed too intently.

There was a faint number scratched against each one.

"What's behind them?" she asked.

“Depends who opens them,” he said. “Some people make it back home. Some people never emerge again.”

“Which of the door types do you prefer?”

“The kind that opens when I need it to.”

The first door they passed was slightly ajar.

Coming from within was the smell of moist ground and greenery, as if a storm had passed through a garden.

The second door was closed, but she could hear a piano softly, someone playing both hands and heart.

At the third door, the man stopped.

“This is yours if you’re interested,” he said.

It was plain, made of pale wood, its number scrawled so faintly it was almost invisible.

"You got off the train," he said. "So you might as well make up your mind where you're going now."

Her hands trembled. She thought about turning back, but there was no train anymore.

She thought about asking him what would happen if she opened it.

But the truth was, she already knew: once she touched the handle, there was no undoing it.

"What's behind your door?" she inquired.

He tilted his head. “I've been through more than once. The problem is, people assume there's only ever the one option, but the platform continues indefinitely. Some days you simply keep going."

Maya stared at the door.

She considered the city she'd left behind: the job she loathed, the apartment that never became home, the streets that only knew her name when they wanted to remind her how small she was.

She considered all the unspoken things she had not said to anybody before going.

And then she thought about the silence here, how different it felt. It wasn’t empty. It was waiting. Her fingers contacted the handle. The handle was warm.

She glanced back at the man, but he had already started walking again, disappearing into the mist.

The platform stretched ahead, dotted with more doors, more possibilities.

She could turn and follow him.

She could stand there all day.

Or she could open the door. Her hand tightened. She felt the latch give. And then—