Chapter 1
The sun has surrendered, drowning behind the stark skyline far too early, and now the air plummets from chilly to fatal. The gritty puddles that dared to form during the brief attempt at daylight are transforming into treacherous little unmarked skating rinks. No wonder the train car is even more full than a regular evening.
"Excuse me." I step carefully around a woman's feet planted protectively over her hoard of dirty bags to claim the window seat beside her. I'll need the distraction of the view, however dark and bleak. As I fling myself down onto the wet plastic seat (I can only hope it’s only melted snow), I realize why so many people have elected to stand as opposed to sitting here; an eye watering smell of ammonia surrounds my seat mate. “Thanks," I fix a bright smile on before letting my tone drop down to something meek, hardly audible. I whisper through my teeth like a terrible ventriloquist. "I don't want to alarm you, but I'm being followed. Can I just chat with you for a minute?"
She ignores me, tapping an intricate pattern with her fingers along the bag she clutches closest; the only one that zips closed to protect her belongings. Tap-tap-tap. I watch her mouth move with silent words. Maybe they’ll be enough to make it seem as though we know each other and are here together; certainly not each vulnerable and alone.
There is another sound, another tapping, moving slowly down the center aisle. I sink low in my seat. I've never had one follow me onto the train before. The train has always been my safest place, neither here nor there, always full of people to immerse myself within. I was sloppy today. Too bold.
control my quaver.
She watches her fingers. I nod and emulate her, stare down at my own hands clutching my notebook. We are calm, we are unbothered.
I can see it though, out of the corner of my eye. It's two rows up, and I can’t not see it. The train hugs a curve and it gives a startled squawk, scrabbling talons on the salt encrusted floor. A wave of guilt crashes over me like a gust of wind out on the sidewalk. I've led this thing away from the only place it knows with my carelessness. I've only ever seen it at Hazel Crest station, and now, we're trundling away. I steal another glance as it's occupied, regaining its balance. Will it understand how to get back, or is this train car its new home, another place I'll have to avoid forever?
It has finally righted its huge, feathery body, and resumes its slow prowl down the aisle. It's most like an ostrich, I've decided. In my notebooks, I've always called it the “big bird”, which is silly, I know. I like calling them silly things, to take away a little of the terror. It looks so much larger in the confines of the car, so much more unnatural. Its impossibly long, impossibly thin neck curls and uncurls as it pushes its horrendous face right up to each passenger as it passes. It's testing them. Every single traveler is passing the test, completely oblivious. They continue gazing out the window, or at their phones. One man, intent on replying to an email, actually puts his hand up and pushes that horrible face away when it blocked his line of sight, like it is nothing more than a fly! I stare, open mouthed and utterly jealous, taking mental notes.
I turn away as it approaches. I hope it can’t hear how loud and fast my heart is attacking the inside of my chest, insisting I must run, I must fight, I must do something. I do nothing. Its head appears slowly at the edge of my eye, creeping closer, closer, only inches away. I pray it doesn’t recognize me. If it does, I’m well and truly doomed. As it slides between my face and the window, I try to see past it, to put my eyes in soft focus. It will know if I’m looking at it.
Its head is almost perfectly round, covered in dusty black feathers that stick up in odd ways like a duster used one too many times. Its eyes are tiny, sparkling black onyx chips. They don’t have any intelligence, like a dog’s or a cow’s does or even one of those cute jumping spiders. They’re dead eyes. I pretend that I’m looking at the street outside the window, but I can see its mouth. Where a beak would be if the monster were really anything like a bird at all, there is a shockingly red, shockingly human mouth. It is grinning at me now, I can see the glint of its perfect, toothpaste commercial white teeth.
Its head sways in front of me, taking in both sides of my face, and I hold perfectly still. Please just go, please, please, go. The head snakes back and away, and I exhale as softly as I can, not realizing I’ve been holding my breath. I’ve passed.
Tap, tap, tap. The big bird moves on down the aisle. I wipe the sweat from my forehead, thinking I’ll be able to just creep out behind it at the next stop and leave the thing to whatever destiny I might have accidentally brought to it.
It was my notebook that caused the whole debacle. I’d been on the train, minding my own business, and when we pulled into the station I’d been daydreaming, gazing out the window, much as I’d been pretending to do just now.
But as the train lurched to a stop, a free paper dispenser sat outside my window, and that little innocuous box had triggered some kind of feeling. A memory, even.
Memories are difficult to come by for me these days, so I knew I had to act. I remembered storing a full notebook in that yellow dispenser. I had to know what long forgotten things might be written inside.
I hadn’t remembered that the platform belonged to one of my least favorite monsters until I had accidentally locked eyes with it. I should have turned around right then instead of doing what I’d done. I was cocky. I decided I could beat the beast across the platform, to the stand, and back to the doors before they shut, but I knew I’d have to run. I knew what would happen if I ran from the big bird. I’d tried it anyway.
I thought it would be fine as long as I could get back onto the train before it pulled away from the station. I never, ever, in a million years thought the bird would follow me into the car.
The earsplitting scream of a woman erupts in the quiet train car and I forget myself and gasp, putting my hands reflexively to my face, dropping my notebook to my lap. I’m certain it’s caught me, that it will be hovering directly over my head and grinning down at me with those perfect teeth and idiot eyes.
“Oh, God,” A man’s voice. There’s a scuffle and all the other passengers turn their heads back, so I think maybe I can get away with it, too. “What stop is this?” The man asks loudly, almost screaming really. He’s shaking
and sweating, gathering his laptop bag from near his feet. The big bird is standing before him in the aisle, grinning broadly. It screams its awful shriek again, testing.
As is the unspoken rule on public transportation, the other passengers deign to ignore the man’s question once they’ve decided there might be something wrong with him, and all start to turn away in their seats, embarrassed for looking back at all. I continue to watch. The man is trying just as hard as me to feign ignorance, but I saw that involuntary flinch when the bird let loose its call. He sees it. The train rolls to a stop, and he hurriedly stands.
He’s blond, young, and probably usually handsome in an, “I’m going to sell you something you don’t need” kind of way. His clothes are expensive and fashionable. He’s sweating profusely, and his pale skin is beat red. He’s not handsome right now, only terrified.
Others are standing, too, ready to either exit, or move to more coveted seats. I join them, scooping up my book, attempting to keep my expression as bland as oatmeal, but I feel like it’s probably as pale as oatmeal, as well. The bird faces off with the man, blocking the aisle. “Oh, God.” He whispers again.
It gives a few clucks and ruffles its feathers, then raises its horrible, huge wings. It can’t fly, I’m sure. It has to weigh a good three hundred pounds. But those wings are menacing enough. It turns its horrible head to an impossible angle, and the whole train car seems to hold its breath, suspended in the moment. It grins even wider, the red lips stretching twice the length a human mouth could,
and then it abruptly lets its entire neck fall slack. The head dangles obscenely upside down, swinging back and forth like a pendulum, cackling a beautiful woman’s most disdainful laugh.
The man opens his mouth in horror.
“Don’t scream,” I call. I know it’s futile, but I can’t abandon him without trying. “Don’t scream. Just walk past. Walk slowly. Look away.”
And then: a miracle. The man turns, mouth still open in a silent scream, and looks at me. His eyes meet my own, and he sees me. He sees me.
I place a hand to my throat, and my heart might stop beating for a moment. “Oh!” Is all I manage to utter. Hardly a word at all. I could say so many things, and be heard. I could say anything. Everything. He hears me. He sees me.
But the big bird lifts its wings higher and charges, dangling head flopping back and forth, banging along the seats, alternating between a laugh and a low cooing the whole way. The man screams then, despite my advice, and swings his laptop bag wildly at the thing, which instead thunks heavily upon the arm of his seat mate who has been waiting impatiently to get by. “Hey, man, what the fuck!”
The blond man runs without a word of apology, runs as fast as he can towards the slowly opening train doors. He actually leaps over a person bending down to retrieve their purse. The ungainly bird turns as quickly as it can and scrabbles after him, knocking people down with its outstretched wings as it goes.
“Wait!” I scream. I have to catch up with him. I have to. I look down beside me. “Excuse me.” I try to extricate myself from my
window seat and instead tangle my feet up in one of my seat mate’s grocery bags. I go down hard onto the grooved floor of the aisle, my forgotten notebook flying from my arms. Nobody says anything, nobody tries to help me up. “Shit!”
I kick my feet loose from the bag and claw my way back up. There’s a clog of people at the door, attempting to enter and exit at the same time. People are still dusting themselves off in the aisles from their inexplicable tumbles to the ground, which I know are already sliding from their memories, replaced with mundanity. Both the man and the bird are already off the train. The chime gongs, announcing the door closing. “Wait!” I cry again. I have to get my notebook first. It’s all for nothing if I lose it. It’s under the feet of a woman with her nose buried in a book.
“Excuse me,” I beg her, and she ignores me completely. I growl in frustration and shove her legs, maybe harder than necessary, to reach my notebook. I snatch it up just as I feel the tell tale lurch of the train beginning to pull away. “No!”
I run to the door and jam my fingers between the rubber edges, willing it to pry open. It doesn’t budge. I peer desperately out the scratched plastic window, my forehead actually pressing against the greasy film like countless foreheads before mine. I can see the man sprinting down the steps away from the platform, sliding dangerously on the ice. The big bird hovers at the edge of the steps, pawing the ground with its huge feet. I hear its horrible shrieking even as the train gains speed and it’s completely lost to sight. I let my head bounce off the door a few times without much feeling. “He’s gone.” I tell everyone. No one cares.
still open, and the bags I’ve left carelessly strewn down the aisle remain there as well. The woman is still sitting, still clutching her backpack, still tap tap tapping her fingers. “Look, I’m so sorry about this,” I say to her, and start collecting her things, stuffing random items back into the grocery sacks. I set them down by her feet. “I’ll just sneak past you again.” I take my seat beside her.
My hands tremble around my old waterlogged composition notebook’s edges. I gather myself and turn, not to the front, but to the very last page. The very last entry.
May 16th, 1976
It’s been so, so long. I snap the book shut again, and instead pull out my much nicer, pristine book, barely two pages used. I have to commemorate what happened here before I go losing myself in the past. I flip to a new page.
December (I flip back a page to see the date on it. Usually, I’ll just sneak a glance at a fellow passenger’s cell phone screen, but my seat mate doesn’t seem to have one, or at least is too busy tapping to care to look at it) 10th, 2023. 58 years, four months, and four days:
A man saw me on the train today. This is no false alarm, he certainly looked straight at me, met my eyes. He was probably in his late twenties, blond, no facial hair. Slight build. Unfortunately, he also saw the big bird, who, as of this writing, is no longer at Hazel Crest station. It followed me onto the train, and followed the blond man off again one stop(?) down. I think it was only one stop, but might have been two.
I hesitate, trying to decide what to do with this information. Should I plan to go back? See if the man appears at the station or on the train again? I wish I was artistic, I would sketch his face so as not to lose it in my mind. I’d need to be able to pick him out of a crowd. It’s so difficult to keep faces apart. There are too many of them, beating at my brain like moths against a window. I’ll never remember, I know. I don’t even remember my name.
“What do you think I should do?” I ask the woman next to me. I close the notebook and turn to face her, and find she has fallen asleep. Her head rolls side to side as the train car rumbles, and comes to rest against my shoulder. I pat her finally still hand, and leave her there. It’s nice to be close to someone.
My own restless hands wander back to my notebook from 1976. I’ll just stay here until the end of the line; the woman seems like she needs the rest. We’ll rest together, and I’ll reminisce.
I’m thinking of leaving the city, my handwriting from the past whispers to me on the first page. I’m startled. I feel like the idea of leaving has never occurred to me before, even on the coldest and grimiest of winter days like today. This is my home; where would I possibly go? And why? There have to be other people like me, I read. I’m so tired of being alone in this, I have to go look for them.
I snort, softly. Oh, sweet past me, you have no idea what loneliness is. How long had it been when I’d written this? Eleven years?
Basically no time at all. But also, I am intrigued. It’s true, that I have never met another person like me. Or, at least, I don’t remember ever meeting someone. Not until this man today, that is. He saw the big bird, there’s no doubting that. Nobody besides me has ever taken any notice of it.
And he saw me. I haven’t locked eyes with another human being in over fifty eight years. Not since the night I died.
It’s bizarre to think that I would be over eighty years old if I were still alive right now. I wonder what it would be like. I wonder what it would have been like. I try to envision myself as an old lady, fat and happy, feet up and knuckles sore from crocheting. I’d have a little dog and a silly husband. I’d crochet them matching sweaters and they’d both wear them happily because they’d love me. I don’t know how to crochet, or knit. I should learn, right? I’ve got the time, of course. I should learn.
Back to the mystery man. He’s not dead (that impatient man yelled at him, nobody’s ever yelled at me) and he maybe didn’t realize that I am. He sees dead people. He might see them all the time and not even realize it, just casually walk past them on the street, not knowing he could be the only human contact they have known in countless years if only he would say hello to them. I could be walking past people every day that see me and don’t think twice about me, having no idea. On the flip side, I could be walking past others like me every day without even realizing. If ghosts aren’t transparent or bloodied or otherwise visibly dead, how on earth can I expect to know the difference? Both me and them saying nothing, assuming the other wouldn’t acknowledge them. What can I do?
purposefully, determinedly ignored by everyone. I ignore them too, sometimes. When I’m in a rush, maybe I don’t even say hello. One time (alright, many times), I stole a whole cash register from a department store and handed out cash to everyone I could find with a hat or a cup sitting in front of them. It’s a delightful time. None of them saw me, of course, but I’m sure they must have noticed the money, later. If I learned to crochet, I could make scarves and hats and gloves for people and just slip them in their sleeping bags and shopping carts. I should do that. Learn to crochet. I write it down in a margin.
I’m thinking of leaving the city, I’d said. Would it be easier out there, maybe, to make a connection with people? Here, on this very train, I watched dozens of people ignore a very living man asking a simple question. I’m positive that I’m the only person who has spoken to the woman currently sleeping on my shoulder for the entirety of her train ride, and she can’t even hear me. In the city, dismissiveness, callousness, minding your own business, it’s the way things work.
Maybe out there, in one of those little towns I read about where everyone says, “Hello!” when you walk down the street, maybe it would be easier. The train is already hurtling down the line towards the last stop in fits and starts. I’m already on my way, and I didn’t even realize it. I feel a pang of loss for the blond man who I’m sure I’ll never see again, but he’s a person of the past, now. I’m leaving home.
August Waters: Alright, folks, welcome back to my channel. Y’all having a sinister Saturday? Tonight’s the night you’ve all been waiting for; we’re finally spending the night in Emerald House, supposedly the most haunted house this side of this Mississippi. We’ll see about that! We’ve got Johnny boy here handling the cameras, Miss Amethyst on lighting, and as always, yours truly will be manning the “special” equipment: my eyeballs. Are we finally going to snag some actual proof tonight, or is it a bust? Stayed tuned to find out.
I see CatofNineD1cks has commented asking if I’ve tried therapy...again. Yes, Cat. I’ve been to therapy, I go twice a month and Dan the Therapy man thinks my channel is a healthy outlet, so suck it. For anyone new to the channel or whatever, let me give you a little background:
When I was three years old I was waving and talking to people at the supermarket check out lane, you know, kid shit, when this man I waved at absolutely lost it on me. He ran over, started shaking me and screaming in my face, asking me over and over if I could see him. He was absolutely bonkers, man, crying and shit, like sobbing. Anyway, I’m a kid and I’m obviously terrified so I start screaming for my mom to help me. She comes over and picks me up and puts me in the cart, but the dude doesn’t leave me alone. He’s still right there and grabbing my hands and staring right into my eyes and asking me if I’m god. That would all be a wildly traumatic experience, but that’s not the worst part: My mom didn’t see him. Nobody saw this fucker except little toddler me.
The dude got right in the car with us and came back to our house with us and I’m like, ballistic, in the back seat because I’m so scared, right? My mom is pretty freaked out because I’m telling her there’s a man in the car with
us and she thinks her precious baby boy has lost his last marble. She calls my dad home from work and they end up taking me to the emergency room, because what the fuck else are you supposed to do, right?
The man comes with and he’s kind of calmed down too and he starts telling me all this crazy shit. He says he’s dead but he didn’t leave and everyone has just been ignoring him and I’m the first person who has ever seen him. ...
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