The train passed, cutting through the dense fog like a knife cuts through flesh. Its old rusty body groaned against the pressure of its weight and its speed. And outside, the world seemed a blur – silhouettes of trees and empty fields seen now and then when the mist gave way.
In one of the dimly lit carriages sat famous detective Elliot Shelby. He was one with the silence outside, and his fingers rested lightly against his cup of coffee. Other than him, there were only 6 other passengers aboard, so the midnight train was nearly empty. And even Shelby wouldn’t have boarded it at such an odd time if it were not for a note he found slipped under his apartment door a couple hours earlier.
“Take the midnight train to Blackridge,” it said. “The girl is still alive, and one of them knows where.”
The note had neither a name nor an address, just these words in a rough, frantic handwriting that told him that the writer was either struck by urgency or terror.
The girl in question? June Henshaw, the journalist who had vanished about two weeks ago while investigating something no one wanted uncovered. Not surprisingly to Shelby, the police were clueless, and there were no suspects nor any leads. All that was found was her car abandoned at a nearby station.
Even though Shelby was not a man easily rattled, something about this case did gnaw at him. And now, in this midnight train rattling through blinding fog, he had a feeling he was being watched. So, he carefully drifted his eyes over the other passengers, observing as each sat stiffly, totally unaware of the fact that they were being closely monitored.
The air felt odd; something was definitely not right.
The Passengers
Shelby observed the passengers: right across him sat an elderly man with deep, sunken eyes. The man gripped a briefcase intensely, and his lips moved as if he were talking to himself.
Two rows behind him was a woman in a navy blue dress. She tapped her fingers against the armrest in a rhythm: index, middle, ring, pause, repeat. And he noticed that her eyes would dart to the train doors every few minutes; it appeared to him that she was counting the stops.
Next was a man in a ragged overcoat sipping whiskey. He was sitting by the far window and had an empty, disturbing stare. The man’s face was lined with the shadows of war.
“A soldier,” Shelby took a note.
Then, there was a well-dressed couple sitting close together. The woman’s hands trembled even though she kept them folded in her lap, and the man clutched a shiny silver pocket watch. His clutch was tight, similar to that of the old man gripping his briefcase.
And finally, the conductor: a rough-built man with a sharp jawline but the same hollow eyes as the rest. And he moved through the aisle in a somewhat mechanical way, brushing the seatbacks with his gloves as he walked past. Nothing about it seemed natural.
Shelby took out a cigar, but he didn’t light it. Instead, he watched, listened, and eventually, realized…
The train never stopped. And to add to the creepiness, he saw no station names passing by the windows, no signs, no platforms, and no signals, just the deep, dark, strange fog outside.
The Briefcase
“Ah, long journey ahead,” Shelby leaned forward in his seat and broke the deafening silence.
The elderly man flinched, but the conductor was unbothered.
For a moment, he let the silence persist, and then, as his eyes flicked to the old man’s briefcase, he broke the silence: “What’s in there?”
The old man clutched it tighter, “Nothing that concerns you.”
The detective exhaled slowly, “Then it mustn’t concern you if I told you June Henshaw was still alive.”
The man’s breath got caught in his throat. And that was exactly what Shelby was looking for. It was the tell. But before the old man could answer him, the train lurched violently; he was nearly knocked from his seat. The lights flickered a few times before settling into a constant dim glow.
And then, from the next carriage, a terrible choking sound filled the silence.
After that came a scream.
The Dead Conductor
Shelby was already on his feet, pushing through the door into the next car, where he saw the conductor lay sprawled on the floor. His throat was torn open in an unsettling, gaping wound. Blood was seeping between the floorboards, staining the once squeaky-clean aisle.
But it wasn’t the wound that caught Shelby off guard. He was used to seeing such sights. It was the eyes: they were wide open, not with fear but with recognition. It was as if the conductor had seen something he had expected to see, as if he knew what, or who, was coming for him.
As for the other passengers, they stood frozen in the doorway, staring at the whole scene, horrified.
The woman in blue clasped a shaking hand over her mouth; the old man just clutched to his briefcase more tightly as if holding on to it for his life; the soldier’s fingers twitched near his pocket, where a blade might have been hidden; and the couple stood still though the woman’s face had gone deadly pale.
One of them had done this.
But Shelby hadn’t heard any footsteps or noise. In fact, nobody had even moved.
So, how did the conductor die? It was one of the rare events that shook even a detective of his stature.
Something Else on the Train
A chill crept up Shelby’s spine. He ran through the aisle, scanning every nook and cranny, the ceiling, the corners, even the shadows of the seats, but he found nothing, not a single clue. Meanwhile, the fog outside thickened, and it now pressed against the windows as if it were something alive trying to seep in through the margins and cracks in the glass.
And the train kept rumbling ahead, but where was it going? Blackridge should have been the next stop, but it wasn’t. Instead, the land outside had become an endless, unbroken void. His heart pounded. Something was wrong. This wasn’t just a train anymore.
The Horror Unfolds
Just as he sat down to think, the lights flickered again. And then – a whisper, a deep, low one.
And it came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
Shelby held his breath and turned to the others. They had all heard it, too.
The old man now pressed himself against his seat, muttering something to himself. The woman in the navy blue dress was shaking. And the pocket watch man stared at his reflection in the window – only… it wasn’t his reflection. “It” was watching him.
Shelby took a slow step forward just as the man in the window reached up and pressed a single bloody handprint against the glass.
Then, the lights died completely – pitch black and deadly silence.
The Truth of the Train
Darkness swallowed the carriage: the air turned frigid and misty like the weather outside.
Shelby could hear something moving, slithering between the seats.
First, it was a scrape; then, a whisper. And then…
A voice. It came from right behind him.
“You shouldn’t have boarded this train, detective.”
He felt a breath against his left ear.
He spun, with his gun drawn, but there was nothing to shoot there.
The train lurched again, sending the passengers sprawling. This time, the old man’s briefcase burst open on impact, scattering photographs across the floor.
Photos of June, June Henshaw.
But they weren’t normal photos, no. There were photos of her sitting right here, on this train.
The same seat, same expression.
Only… in the last photo… her eyes were gone.
The Final Stop
The lights suddenly flickered back on, but the train had changed. The windows had become a black void, and the seats were no longer empty. Pale, hollow-eyed passengers sat in them, all staring straight ahead.
Frozen in death.
And among them, June.
The young journalist turned her head slowly, weeping black through her empty sockets: “We never left, Detective.”
The train screamed; its metallic structure twisted, and the walls started to close in on them.
Shelby staggered backward as the fog poured in through the windows and filled his lungs, pulling him under.
And then,
Silence. Again.
The midnight train to Blackridge was never found; it had vanished without a trace, along with its seven passengers.
But sometimes, on foggy nights, if you listen carefully to the tracks, you can still hear it passing.
A ghost train.
Forever carrying the lost.
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