When One Door Closes

In his dreams he was always running, running from unseen entities that nipped at his heels, or running towards a home he could never reach. Always exhausted, utterly drained, but unable to stop. His pounding feet were a constant soundtrack to his slumber. He could feel it thump in his skull as he slowly came to consciousness, heavy beats replaced by the rhythmic ka-clack of train tracks. It rattled his bones, and pulsed in time with a throbbing headache at his temples. As he stood on numb legs he found himself alone in a train car, poised at a window seat near what seemed like the back of the cart.

Rubbing the stiffness from his neck, he searched the rows of cushioned seats for any signs of life, only to find the space completely spotless. Windows bare and devoid of smudges; carpeted floor crisp without a speck of debris; seats pristine as if they’d never been sat in. The world outside was a blur, passing far too fast for him to focus on any details. Ed could guess they were in the countryside based on the blend of blues and greens, but it was little comfort since he didn’t remember boarding a train in the first place. 

Sagging into the nearest seat, he pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. With a whisper of bourbon on his breath he could recall a night spent drinking, a high tab and a shambling walk through downtown. He couldn’t recall if he’d made it home or not.

“How did I even find a train,” Ed wondered aloud. “Where was I trying to go?”

He only let himself linger a moment longer before rocking out of his seat and onto his feet. Straightening his shirt, he glanced to either end of the cart and walked in the direction the seats faced. “Front’s gotta be this way,” he guessed, “someone has to know where I’m going.”

When he passed through the door he found himself surrounded by the same immaculate train car, same navy blue seats, same carpeted gangway. The rows were still unoccupied, yet at the end of the lane he spotted a lone man stepping through the next door.

“Hey, excuse me, can you tell me where we –”

The door closed behind Ed as he stepped beyond the threshold, and in turn the man ahead of him disappeared into the next car. He jogged to the door to follow him, hoping to catch up, but by the time he opened the next door the same thing happened – the man continued without a word.

“You know I might start to think you’re doing this on purpose,” he shouted, hands cupped around his mouth.

Taking a moment to survey the newest train car he found there were still no signs of other passengers, however this one was comparatively more worn. Ragged fringe stuck out of the carpet like tendrils reaching for the heavens. The seats fared no better, with large tears revealing the stuffing within and blackened gum stains dotting their frames. Past the oily, smudged handprints along the windows, he could see the world pass faster. Ed decided to move on before the sight of it could disorient him.

He was greeted with an entirely different layout, built more like a subway with benches lining the walls and vertical poles to serve as handholds. Sparse trash littered the tiled floor, but otherwise there were no other signs of people. There was no sign of the stranger either, only a shut door at the other end of the aisle. Before Ed could move forward, a voice called out behind him. 

“Hold the door, hold the door!”

A carefully placed foot propped it open for a woman to rush through. As the door slid shut he caught a glimpse of someone at the far end of the car behind them. When he opened the door again to get a second look, there was nothing. Just an empty car.

The person beside him grabbed his arm, meeting his confused gaze with wild eyes. “My god, this train is so long. Please tell me we’re near the front!” She only allowed a short beat of silence before adding, “you have no idea either, do you?”

“Not a clue, no.”

“Christ.” She hung her head. “I must have run through 12 cars already, how much further is it?”

“Well how long are trains supposed to be?”

“Do I look like I know how long a train is?” 

He glanced over her clothes. Fairly business casual, a light blue button up and black pants, hair tied up in what was now a messy bun. There was a paper name tag over her heart that read ‘Hello, my name is CASEY.’

“I mean, you look like the type that would ride a train. No offense.”

She glared at him, then turned to march onwards, fists balled at her sides as she distanced herself. He started to follow after her, through the next car and into the one after. The stranger he’d been chasing before was back, passing through the door ahead of them. This time, however, there was someone else with him.

“Hey wait!” Casey called, but the door had already shut. “Geez.”

“Yeah, I dunno what’s up with that guy,” he said, “he wouldn’t answer me either.”

“I wonder why,” she deadpanned.

Mouth twitching into a frown, he took a breath to quell any frustration. “I’m Ed, by the way. Nice to meet you too. Any idea where we’re headed?”

“Casey, hi. And obviously it’s going to–” she stopped in her tracks, brows furrowed as she stared at the floor. “It’s going… to…”

“... you don’t know either.”

She turned to him in a panic. “Where did you come from? Were you anywhere near the job fair on Dunn? We should be heading toward Oakhill.”

“I don’t even remember getting on this train.” Ed threw his hands up in the air. “I don’t even live near a train!”

That statement gave her pause. Casey held herself as she sat on one of the benches. “I… I was heading home. I was supposed to be heading home but it was taking longer than usual and I… don’t remember… I think I fell asleep? Did I miss my stop?”

Ed perked up, and scanned the walls for any signs or maps that might tell them their destination. Of course he wasn’t so lucky. What might have once been a map of routes and stations was now a few strands of torn paper dangling from a bent frame. The wall behind it might as well have been a scratching post with the number of thin claw marks scoring it. Beyond that, the world outside the windows blended into a muddled gray. 

“Sorry to say, but I don’t think either of us are getting home any time soon.” 

She followed his gaze with an audible gulp. “The uh… vandalism is getting out of hand, huh?”

“Hah, yeah…”

Casey, taking a deep breath, sprung to her feet. “Well we won’t get answers here! Let’s keep going, maybe those guys ahead of us know something.”

“And what if they don’t?”

“Then we’ll go to the front and find the conductor, I don’t know! Someone on this train will know how to help us.”

Ed hesitated to follow, but something urged him forward. When they passed into the next car, Casey continued forward while he hung back and held the door. The man ahead held their own door open while their companion walked ahead.

“Casey? Casey stop!”

She spun to face him. Over her shoulder, past the man who stood in the doorway, the furthest figure turned and locked eyes with Ed. It almost looked like Casey at a glance, but the longer he looked the more his skin crawled. It grinned at him with too many teeth, cheeks creased and wrinkled as if held open by strings. Its eyes, red rimmed and owlishly wide, stared unblinking as both it and Casey walked in his direction.

“What, did you remember something?” Casey asked.

Licking its teeth, it mouthed ‘There is no stopping.’

Ed stepped forward and let the door shut behind him; the door ahead shut as well, closing them off from the things ahead. When Casey touched his arm to get his attention she flinched.

“Jesus, you’re freezing!” She cradled her hand to her chest as she tried to rub warmth into her fingertips. “What the hell happened?”

His breath tumbled out of him in choked bursts. Slumped against the nearest pole, his sweaty palms wrung against the metal surface as he clung for dear life. Ed watched the door with trepidation, praying to any god that would listen – praying that they wouldn’t come back through.

“Th-the people ahead they – no, god, they’re not people they’re – I don’t even know what they are! But we can’t trust them.”

Casey crossed her arms over her chest. “If this is some kind of joke –”

“It’s not, I swear it’s not!”

Ed shot up and walked to the center of the car, pointing to the next door. “There’s a pattern! Every time I close a door, they close a door. Last time I held the door open, and they held it open. But you kept walking and so did one of them. When I called you to stop and, and you turned it…” He ran his fingers through his hair, then dragged his hand down his face. “It looked like you, Casey, like it was trying to be you and just… failed. Like something was trying to be a person and physically couldn’t. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

The train car went dark, lit only by brief flashes of orange light from outside. A tunnel, Ed surmised, and narrowed his eyes at the metallic groan echoing against the concrete. They waited with bated breath for the moment they emerged, as if the tunnel might collapse in on them if they dared to exhale. When the light found them once more Casey was a tint paler, and Ed had a thin sheen of sweat on his brow.

“What do you want to do?”  

He let the silence hang in the air for a moment before responding, “We could turn back?”

“And do what, twiddle our thumbs and wait to get dropped off in hell? I’ll pass on that, thanks. We’ll never get answers if we give up now, we have to move forward.”

“You want to follow those things?”

“I want to get to the front of this damn train!” Standing tall, she closed the gap between them with her palms splayed out. “Look, maybe you didn’t see things right. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that the doors close at the same time.”

“I know what I saw!” Ed marched forward, motioning for Casey to follow. He slid the door open but didn’t look ahead, electing instead to watch Casey’s reaction.

“There’s no one there Ed, it’s still shut!” She pointed past him, but his attention was elsewhere.

Over her shoulder, from the direction they’d come, a faceless figure taller than him in stature held the door open with its left arm. Despite being faceless it stared at him, stared through him. Behind it, the impression of Casey with the same horrible grin waved.

“Come through the door,” Ed whispered.

The blank canvas of his doppelganger's face morphed and bent as if something was pushing against the skin from within. Casey took a step back, but her double stepped closer at the same time.

“Casey, Casey please just walk, walk forward, don’t look back.”

“Ok, now I know you’re screwing with me.”

Her double beckoned them closer with a curl of the fingers. A poor impression of a smile carved itself into the tall man’s face as it, too, waved them over.

“CASEY GET OVER HERE!” Ed rushed forward and grabbed her wrist, pulling her through. Even when the door shut behind them he kept moving until they were closer to the other end. He sputtered out curses between unsteady breaths and muttered, “Oh god we’re dead. We’re gonna die here.” 

“We are not going to die,” Casey hissed. “We’re going to stop this damn train so you can get off and stop acting so crazy!”

Before he could get another word in she sprung for the door, peering through for only a second before turning back. She motioned to the next car with a broad sweep of her hand. “See? Nothing. The door is shut, there’s nothing… there’s… Ed?”

The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. “You see them.”

Casey nodded.

“What do I look like?”

“Does it matter?”

“It might.” He said, fighting the urge to turn around. “The other me didn’t have a face. Does it have one now?”

Squinting, she tried to study the figure from afar. “It’s like… when kids try to make a face with playdough, and they just… press the eyes and mouth in with their fingers. There’s just, hollows and shadows where the eyes and mouth should be.”

“... hey, keep looking, okay? I’m gonna try something.”

“This feels like a bad idea,” she whispered.

“Might be.” Ed took a few rapid breaths and turned on his heel. 

He faced down Casey’s copy, behind whom his alter now faced away from all of them. Shoulders squared, head held high, he willed himself to hold steady as he shouted a question.

“What do you want from us?”

His doppelganger twitched. Over the rapid clanking of the train and the ambient noise of the world zooming by, Ed and Casey heard a wet, grinding crunch. The body of Ed’s double twisted and squelched as it turned without turning, limbs and head warping to reorient themselves to face the bewildered pair. It reached up with both hands to snap its head into place, skin pulled taut at the neck.

It tilted its head as it focused on Ed. “A chance,” it breathed.

The door shut.

Ed fell to his knees. Casey was at his side in an instant, trying to pull him up, trying to drag him away, but he wouldn’t budge. Body shivering, teeth chattering, he huddled in on himself in a vain attempt to get warm. Nothing made it better.

“Ed come on, I know you’re freaked out but we need to go,” Casey pleaded, hands hovering over him. “If they come in here we’re screwed!”

He nodded frantically and tried to get his feet planted, but didn’t have the strength to stand. Overwhelming pressure weighed him down, as if the train was shrinking to cage him in. When he looked out the windows, between the blobs of blue and green that encompassed the outside, he saw eyes. Eyes of impossible shapes and colors. Eyes that all glared at him with want and scrutiny. They couldn’t stay there, that much he understood. With no other options he decided to crawl. It was slow and arduous to get to the door, and terrifying to pass through it, but once they were on the other side the pressure lifted; he could stand again. Ed heaved a sigh of relief.

“You ok?”

He gave a wobbly nod. “Not really but I will be… eventually. After a lot of therapy.”

“No kidding,” she chuckled weakly.

Ed wiped sweat from his brow and started toward the next door, but Casey stopped him. “Wait, what if they’re on the other side? They were ahead of us before, they could get ahead of us again.”

“I think…” he looked behind them. “I think they’re stuck. Like, they can’t get any closer to us than they already are. They only move when we move, so they can never catch up.”

“You’re sure that’s how that works?”

“Hell no, I just hope that theory is right… let’s not stick around to test it, yeah?”

“Yeah, let’s not.”

They carried on, passing through the next door with trepidation. They didn’t look back, only kept their eyes on the backs of their doppelgangers as they continued to traverse the train. The world still passed by at breakneck speeds, but when Ed looked outside the eyes no longer haunted him. The train cars continued to grow more worn the further they went, with upturned seats and dented walls, odd stains and musty smells both foreign and familiar.

After traversing too many cars to keep count, they came to one with a golden door at the other end. It was impossibly spotless compared to the rest of the car, and remained shut tight. They never saw their doppelgangers pass through it.

“Is that–”

“It has to be. Right?”

Casey smiled. “The color is promising.”

“I dunno, it’s giving me ‘golden gates of heaven’ sort of vibes.”

“I swear to god, if we’ve been dead all this time and this is some sort of purgatory…”

“Well,” Ed nudged her with his elbow. “You can take it up with god himself if it is.”

Hooking her arm with his, she sighed. “Let’s not keep him waiting, then.”

Side by side they opened the door. A blinding light shone, and as they stepped beyond the threshold the sight left them breathless. The track below stretched out into infinity. In their periphery they could see a rough boundary where the colors of the world they knew turned to dust, and beyond that there was nothing. Empty white, with only the train track marking where they’d come from. The wooden boards shrunk in the distance.

The wind was at their backs, whipping their hair into their faces.

They were at the back of the train.

“This… this can’t be right. We were moving forward, weren’t we?” Casey turned to Ed with tears in her eyes. “Weren’t we?”

He nodded absently, unable to believe it himself. “What… is this?” 

Behind them, a garbled voice called from the other end of the train car. “Our chance.”