Midnight Train
The station clock struck twelve with a dull metallic echo that seemed louder than it should have been. John stepped onto the platform just as the midnight train hissed to a stop, its doors opening like a reluctant mouth. It was the last train of the night—the kind people boarded only when they had nowhere else to be.
He hesitated before getting on.
The platform was empty. No announcements. No footsteps. Just the hum of the train and the faint flicker of fluorescent lights overhead. John checked his phone. No signal. He slipped it back into his coat and boarded.
The doors closed behind him with finality.
Inside, the train was spotless but unnervingly still. Rows of empty seats stretched through the compartment, their fabric dark and worn, as if they had absorbed decades of quiet waiting. The lights buzzed softly above him. John chose a seat near the window, setting his bag down beside him.
The train began to move.
At first, the silence was merely uncomfortable. Then it became heavy—pressing against his ears until he could hear his own breathing. He tried to distract himself by watching the darkness outside, but the windows reflected more than they revealed. His own face stared back at him, pale and tense.
That was when he heard it.
A whisper.
So faint he almost dismissed it as imagination.
He froze, listening.
The whisper came again—closer this time. It wasn’t a single voice, but many, overlapping, murmuring just beyond understanding. Words brushed against his mind without fully forming.
John stood slowly.
“Hello?” he called, his voice sounding too loud.
No answer.
The whispers drifted toward the next compartment.
Against every instinct screaming at him to stay put, John followed.
The second compartment looked the same—empty seats, buzzing lights—but something was wrong. The air felt thicker, colder. As he stepped inside, he noticed writing on the seat closest to the door.
Scratched into the fabric with something sharp were the words:
I never arrived.
John’s stomach tightened.
More writing covered the walls now, faint at first, then unmistakable. Messages in different handwriting styles—some neat, some frantic, some barely legible.
Missed my stop.
Still waiting.
He said this was the way home.
The whispers grew louder, shaping themselves into fragments of stories. He heard laughter cut short, sobs swallowed by distance, voices calling names no one answered.
John moved from seat to seat, reading.
Each message told a story of someone who had boarded a train late at night—running from something, chasing something, trusting the wrong promise. None of them mentioned getting off.
His pulse pounded in his ears.
“This isn’t real,” he whispered.
The train lurched slightly, as if responding.
In the next compartment, the writing was fresh—dark, as though newly made. The whispers here were clearer.
Don’t sit down.
Time stops once you do.
We didn’t know.
John’s breath came fast now. He backed away, nearly tripping over something on the floor.
A notebook.
He picked it up with shaking hands. Inside were journal entries, dates crossing out and restarting, days blending into one another.
The train doesn’t stop anymore.
I think it did once. I’m not sure.
People fade if they stay quiet too long.
A final line was written larger, harder, as if carved in panic:
If you’re reading this, don’t listen to them.
The whispers surged all at once, filling the compartment with pleading urgency.
Stay.
Sit.
You’re tired.
There’s nowhere else to go.
John clamped his hands over his ears and ran.
He reached the final compartment, heart racing, lungs burning. This one was different. The lights flickered, and the windows showed not darkness, but blurred images—faces, places, stations that felt familiar and wrong at the same time.
And on the wall, written in unmistakably familiar handwriting, was a message that made his blood run cold.
John boarded at midnight.
He staggered back.
“No,” he said aloud. “No, I didn’t—”
Another line appeared beneath it, slowly, as if being written by an unseen hand.
John is listening.
The whispers fell silent.
The train slowed.
Relief surged through him. He rushed to the door as the train screeched to a halt. The doors opened onto a platform shrouded in fog. No signs. No lights. Just an endless stretch of concrete disappearing into white nothingness.
John stepped forward.
Behind him, a final message formed on the wall of the train:
Another journey remembered.
The doors closed.
And the midnight train pulled away—empty once again.
