The last Passenger

I believe in ghosts. Not only that, but I can see them.

I have been seeing them all my life, though for many years, I lacked the courage to admit it…even to myself.

As a child, I assumed that everyone could see ghosts…like the old woman who sat on the garden wall outside our house, or the little girl who stood at the end of my bed, her hands folded neatly in front of her. It was only when I mentioned them to my mother and saw the expression which came over her face that I began to understand that there were things in this world which were not meant to be seen…or spoken about.

So, in time, I learned to keep quiet. It was easier that way. People can be remarkably tolerant of eccentricity…provided that it does not inconvenience them. But they have little patience for a man who claims to see the dead.

I also discovered that ghosts are harmless. They linger – you might say ‘haunt’ – in places which were once important to them, repeating small familiar gestures as if the world had stopped turning, as if Time itself was standing still, and that nobody had thought to tell them. A woman waiting at a bus stop where no bus has passed in thirty years. A man in a bowler hat walking through the park which was built over his grave. The toddler chasing a butterfly across the road.

They rarely speak, but their eyes…oh, their eyes betray something of the lives they once lived.

They all appear to share one belief…that they should not be dead or that they died long before their time.

I grew accustomed to them and learned not to stare.

I think that I was in my thirties when I began to see the man at the station.

The station had been closed for nearly forty years, the victim of dwindling passenger numbers as people found their motor cars to be more convenient and of dwindling freight traffic. The platform and rail track had slowly surrendered to Mother Nature’s weeds and brambles, the booking office had been boarded up and the iron railings were now rusted almost beyond recognition. Most of the villagers had long since forgotten it, except for the occasional old-timer who reminisced on taking the 07:40 to the City before it was abandoned.

I had worked there once, in the days when the railway still mattered and that was probably why I found myself drawn back to it. There was something comforting about the place, even in its decay. I knew every inch of it – the cracks in the paving stones, the warped wooden bench beneath the platform clock, the signal box with its vandalised windows and door hanging crookedly ajar on one hinge.

Sometimes, as I stood there, I had the oddest feeling that I had forgotten something…something important. My eyes would wander towards the signal box with its flaking cream paint, and I would find myself wondering if the lamp inside still worked, or whether the old levers were still there. It was a curious thing to remember, considering that I had not set foot inside the building for years.

Every evening shortly before nine o’clock, come rain or shine, I would walk down the old Station Approach and stand by the level crossing gates. I told myself that I went there for the fresh air, for the exercise, though the truth was that I had become accustomed to the silence. The countryside has a different quality after dark. Sounds travel strangely. A distant dog can seem to be barking just a few yards away, while the wind in the trees can resemble the murmur of people talking in another room.

It was on one late October evening I first noticed the passenger.

He stood beneath the old platform clock, a tall thin man in a dark overcoat and old-fashioned Trilby hat, holding a small leather suitcase at his side. He appeared to be in his fifties, maybe a bit older. There was nothing particularly frightening about him and I would probably not have given him a second glance had I passed him in the street.

But there was no train station in the village any more and no reason for anyone to be standing on that old platform at nine o’clock on a damp October evening.

I watched him for several minutes. He looked down the line towards the cutting then pulled out a pocket watch. You could sense him tutting as he raised his head and looked directly at me. Even at a distance, I could see the anxiety on his face.

He lifted his free hand and called across the darkness.

“Excuse me, sir. Do you happen to know if the train is late?”

“The train?” I called back. “I’m sorry, but there hasn’t been a train here for nigh on forty years.”

The man stared at me, and, for a moment, I thought that he hadn’t heard, so I repeated myself, raising my voice above the wind.

“Forty years, you say,” he said at last, as if trying out the words for himself. “No, no, that can’t be right.”

He took his watch from his waistcoat pocket again and examined it, turning it towards the faint light of the rising moon. I noticed then that his clothes were of a rather old-fashioned cut, though not so old-fashioned as to attract attention in a railway station fifty or so years ago. There was something almost painfully respectable about him, as if he had dressed for a special occasion and was anxious not to be late.

“I was told that the train would be here at nine-seventeen,” he called. The connection at Ruthford was delayed, but the guard assured me that I should be on time.”

“Ruthford?” I queried. “There hasn’t been a connection at Ruthford since they closed the branch line.”

He looked at me with growing alarm.

“But my wife is expecting me.”

Something in the way he said it made me pause. Not fear exactly and not grief, but the bewilderment of a man who has discovered that the world has quietly rearranged itself while he was looking the other way.

“How long have you been waiting?” I asked.

He glanced at the clock.

“Not long…maybe twenty minutes or so. I should have telegraphed, of course, but I thought that it would be quicker to make the connection.” He hesitated. “Do you think that they might have changed the timetable?”

I might have smiled at that suggestion, had I not felt a sudden chill which had nothing to do with the weather.

I had encountered dozens of ghosts over the years and had learned that they were not always aware of their condition. Some seemed to know perfectly well that they were dead, while others carried on with the small business of ‘living’, oblivious to the passage of time or to the fact that no-one else could see them. I had once watched a dead woman spend an entire afternoon searching for a glove she had lost in a shop which had been demolished before I was born.

There was something unusual about this man, though. He didn’t have that indistinct, faded appearance I had come to associate with the dead. His face was clear, his movements precise. If I hadn’t known better, I might have taken him for an ordinary traveller who had somehow time-warped into the wrong century.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you with the timetable,” I said, “but if you need to call home, there’s a telephone in the village you could use.”

He shook his head impatiently. “No need for that. My wife knows which train I’m on. She’ll be waiting at the other end.” He looked down the line again. “But she’ll be worried if I’m late.”

I wanted to ask him his name, but something held me back. Instead, I watched as he placed his suitcase on the bench and brushed a speck of dust from his sleeve.

Then he did something which made the hairs on the back of my neck rise.

He turned towards the signal box at the end of the platform and called out, quite naturally, “Signalman! Is everything all right down the line?”

There was no answer, of course. The signal box had been empty since the line was closed – its windows broken, its levers removed, and the track beyond the platform choked with weeds.

The man waited a moment, then frowned. “Odd,” he murmured, “He usually gives me a wave.”

I stepped closer to the gate. “Who are you waiting for?” I asked.

The man turned back to me, looking quite surprised by my question.

“The nine-seventeen, of course.”

“No, I mean your name.”

He seemed to consider this, then smiled, somewhat apologetically, as if caught forgetting his manners. “Edmund Vale,” he said. “I’m travelling home to see my wife. We have a little girl, you know. She’s six. It’s her birthday tomorrow.”

He picked up his suitcase again and stood bolt upright…listening.

Some distance away, beyond the cutting, a dog barked. The wind whispered through the weeds by the track. From somewhere in the distance, the faint chime of the village church clock struck the quarter hour.

But the passenger heard something else and his face brightened.

“There,” he said triumphantly. “I knew that it couldn’t be far off.”

I listened hard. At first, there was nothing unusual. Then, beneath the wind, I heard a low rumbling…so faint that I might easily have mistaken it for distant thunder.

The sound stirred something unpleasant in me, a feeling which I could not explain. For a moment, I thought that I heard another noise beneath the rumble, a sharp metallic crash followed by silence. I blinked and the impression was gone. I put it down to a clap of thunder.

The man stepped towards the platform edge.

I should have left then. I should have gone straight home, bolted the door and told myself that I had seen nothing unusual. Instead, I was rooted to the spot, watching the darkness beyond the station, as the rumbling grew louder and the dead man’s face filled with relief.

For the first time in forty years, I heard a train approaching the station.

The rumbling grew steadily louder. I could feel it now beneath my feet, a faint vibration in the earth, and from somewhere along the track came the unmistakable metallic clatter of wheels across the joints in the rails.

It was impossible, of course. The rails had been lifted years ago and the track bed beyond the station was little more than a shallow weed-infested trench.

Yet the sound was growing louder by the second.

Then a light appeared around the bend, small and yellow at first, wavering in the mist, growing steadily brighter until it illuminated the sides of the cutting, throwing long shadows across the platform. I could hear the hissing of the escaping steam, the heavy breathing of the engine and the rhythmic clank of machinery which belonged to another era.

A locomotive emerged from the darkness, not like those old steam engines in museums and county fairs, polished and painted for the amusement of enthusiasts, but black, enormous and filthy, its brass fittings dulled by years of soot. Smoke billowed from its chimney, drifting across the platform in thick grey clouds. Behind it followed a line of dark crimson carriages, their windows glowing warmly in the night.

The train slowed as it approached the station.

I stood motionless, unable to decide whether to run or remain where I was.

The engine gave a long, mournful whistle, the sound echoing across the fields. Somewhere in the village, a dog began barking furiously.

Edmund Vale, meanwhile, appeared entirely satisfied. “There you are,” he said with the mild reproach of a man whose punctuality had been inconvenienced.

The locomotive drew to a halt with a great sigh of steam and squealing brakes. For a few moments, the platform disappeared behind a curtain of white vapour.

A door in the first carriage opened and a guard in dark uniform stepped down to the platform. He glanced towards Edmund and nodded. Edmund smiled in return, raised his hat and vanished into the carriage.

I wanted to shout to him not to board, but the words would not come.

Moments later, the guard climbed back on board and shut the door. With a shriek of the whistle, the engine gave a sudden jerk and the train began to move.

I watched it gather speed, its windows passing one by one before me. Through the glass I glimpsed figures seated in the compartments: a woman cradling a sleeping child, a soldier in uniform, an elderly couple sitting opposite one another, their hands folded in their laps. Without exception, all of them were staring directly at me.

The last carriage rumbled past, the red glow of its tail lamp dwindling into the mist.

The station seemed suddenly very quiet. Even the wind had dropped, but an icy shiver made me put my hands into my jacket pocket. My fingers touched a small, cold object. I took it out – a brass key, old and tarnished. I couldn’t remember ever having seen it before, let alone having put it into my pocket yet, as I turned it over in my hand, I felt an inexplicable certainty that I knew exactly what it was for.

I knew the weight of it. I knew the shape of its teeth. I knew that it belonged to a lock in a wooden door, and that door opened into a small room filled with levers, instruments and the smell of coal smoke from a small fire.

My mind was racing.

I looked towards the signal box, its door no longer hanging loose. A light, a small yellow light no brighter than a candle, shone inside.

On impulse, I started moving towards the door. It opened with a long protesting creak.

Inside, the room was warm, in total contrast to the bitterly cold night. Here, the air was close and heavy, carrying the smell of coal smoke and machine oil. A lamp with a green shade sat on the desk. The levers gleamed in their brass fittings. A timetable was pinned to the wall next to the telephone which was ringing.

I stood in the doorway, unable to move. I knew this room. I knew the desk, the lamp, the levers and the narrow window overlooking the track. I knew the little hook behind the door where a coat once hung.

I knew it all…and the telephone continued to ring.

I lifted the receiver and, for a moment there was only static. Then a man’s voice came through, thin and urgent.

“The nine-seventeen is on its way. Confirm points setting.”

I looked at the clock – Nine-sixteen – and my hand moved towards the distant lever…and that’s when I remembered.

The rain had been hammering against the window all evening. I was on my second shift of the day as my replacement had called in sick. Nearly fourteen hours I had been here without a break. My head was aching. I was tired, impatient to finish this long stint.

And that’s when I pulled the wrong lever.

I remembered the sudden change in the signal…the distant whistle…the terrible realisation that I had sent the train on to the wrong track.

I had tried to correct my mistake, but it was already too late.

Then the crash…a noise like the end of the world…and then deathly silence.

I remembered running out of the signal box. I remembered smoke, twisted metal and people crying for help. I remembered a man lying beside the track, his face pale in the lamplight.

Edmund Vale! He looked up at me and tried to speak. I knelt beside him, but there was nothing I could do.

His eyes closed for the last time. His wife would be waiting for her husband. His daughter would be waiting for her father. 

It was my fault! All my fault!

The cries of the other passengers filled my head. This was all my fault.

I tried to stand but my legs gave way. My breathing was difficult. My heart gave a painful thud. The cries diminished. The lights dimmed. I fell face-first to the ground.

I had died there in the middle of the carnage I had created.

For years…or for what had seemed like years…I had walked the village lanes, watched the seasons change, and returned every evening to the station.

A figure stood at the window of the signal box. He raised his arm as if to wave or acknowledge me.

And then I understood.

I am that man. I am that ghost.