The Midnight Train

A name is usually the first thing we learn about a person. The woman told me her name was Mara, and I believed her. Somewhere in my memory, I knew her as someone else. Watching her as coal-black eyes bore into mine and long brown hair that hung around her beautiful face like a picture frame; I knew her.

           “Mara.” Repeating her name, I tried to shake the cold pit in my stomach. “I’m Kira.”

           Mara smiled knowingly. A too-perfect, brilliant white smile that should have alarmed me. Instead, I smiled softly in return, feeling any warning bells fade away unnaturally. Side by side, we made our way along a cracked and worn sidewalk, the sleeping city lit up starkly against the darkness of the sky. Come to think of it, I wasn’t quite sure why I’d stopped. It was another late night, cramming in the office, rushing to make the last train home. Next thing I knew, I’d been talking to Mara.

           “Come,” Mara whispered, her cloud of breath dispersing in the cold. “You have a train to catch.”

           Dazed, I trailed her down the deserted street towards the train station. Distant thoughts struggled to be heard from somewhere deep in my subconscious. Surely, I had already missed my train. Who was this woman? Even as the thoughts fought to take shape, they melted away in her presence.

           Mara led me through two rusting, graffitied doors of the train station. Propped open wide for boarding visitors; the place was seemingly abandoned for the night. Commercial light illuminated empty platforms, bathing the cracked and dusty concrete in harsh yellow. The silence seemed a physical thing, almost thick enough to reach out and touch, broken only by echoing footsteps. Another thought started; was that only one set of footsteps? Yet again, the thought slipped through my fingers like tendrils of smoke when she motioned for me to board the furthest platform. A lone train waited, the last one of the night.

           “Come aboard.” The mysterious woman stood aside, motioning me to enter first. The dilapidated exterior smelled of must and metal, the walls dented, scratched, and even rusted in places. This train had taken a beating. Against reason and common sense, I did not hesitate to board.

           Inside, the train was much the same as any other. Seats lined a central aisle, two to each side. The striped fabric was faded and torn; the carpet beneath my feet bore the wear of years of footfalls. Weak lights overhead cast deep shadows across the carriage, some flickering, at the end of burnout. Strangest of all, were the people. Despite the late hour, the train was fully occupied. As I cast my gaze around the car, I spied men and women, both young and old, worn and fresh, black and white. Not one turned to watch me pass. Staring ahead, backs straight and eyes wide, unblinking in the darkness. A wave of unease washed over me, but retreated just as fast, a tide pulling from the shore.

           An empty seat beckoned to me by the window—the only one remaining. Not until I sat, did I realize Mara had not boarded behind me. I felt my gaze dragged from the window, my back straightened, and my eyes pulled forward. Minutes ticked by without movement or thought. Or was it hours? No thoughts entered my mind. No desire to move tugged at my limbs. Lost in a sea of nothing, I sat there, with no anchor.

           After a time, the train began to move, jolting me back to my senses. Something was dreadfully wrong here, but I could not grasp what it was. Wrenching hard to free my neck from its rigid straightforward position, I was free to move it as I liked. The movement felt not unlike twisting the cap from a jar for the first time. There was something wrong about that.

           Surveying the rail car around me, I noted bodies swaying in time with the movement of the train, locked in the trance that still clawed for my mind. Where was Mara? The woman’s face filled my vision, familiar and foreign all at once. Familiarity I couldn’t quite pinpoint tugged at the back of my mind. Despite clinging hard to the memory, it slipped through my grip like a tendril of smoke. Peering out the window, I could make out only black.

Where was this train going?

           Interrupting my question, an image crashed through my mind. A train cut through the night, picking up speed as it rocketed closer and closer to the end of the tracks. Abruptly flying off the precipice, tumbling, spinning, falling. Smashing onto the rocks below, the sound deafening—

           The scene was real, appearing in recurring nightmares I’d had since I was a child. But with any dream, the moment I awoke, it faded. Outside, I suddenly made out the outline of cliffs. A prediction of my own death, repeated over and over in my subconscious for years. Mara was in those dreams, always there. Except she wasn’t Mara. She was…

           Shooting to my feet, I shook the people around me desperately. “Wake up!” I screamed, but they did not hear me. The cliffs were getting closer. My heart rose to my throat, and I ran. But there was nowhere to go. I barrelled down the aisle, screaming at nothing and no one. What was Mara’s true name? I was going to die. We were all going to fall to our end. The cliffs were here. I closed my eyes, ready.

A painful knot formed in my throat as my pounding heart rose in my chest. The word rattled from my lungs, barely audible. “Death…”

“Yes,” came the cold reply at my back. Turning slowly, my eyes fell upon the “woman”. No longer feigning humanity, Death simply floated on feet that were not feet. Exhaling cold, white smoke breath that was not breath.

The train did not slow as I turned back around, body trembling with cold fear. Death slipped up beside me and slipped her hand that was not a hand into mine.