This happened a while ago. I’m not entirely sure why I’m choosing to talk about it now, though. Well… I kinda do. I’ll explain later.
I have a bad habit of dozing off on the train. I don’t blame it entirely on myself. My place of employment necessitates that I work long, hard and obscure hours. More often than not, I find myself taking the very last train home, at around 2AM. My stop is at the end of the line, so my whole trip takes me around 35 minutes, and of course I’m tired as hell by the end of it.
Also… sometimes I get drunk. It happens.
It’s not like I want to fall asleep. I could get pickpocketed. Or worse. It is what it is. Nobody’s perfect. But it usually isn’t a problem. Like I said, my stop's at the end of the line, so the driver would always wake me up when he came by to do his inspection of the cars.
This has become such a routine that I know each and every one of the night-time drivers by face. There’s only three though. Not much of a feat.
One of them is a quiet, gruff-looking gentlemen in his mid-fifties. One was even older, a South Asian man appearing to be in his sixties at least. The last guy was younger, possibly mid-twenties. This guy always had extremely messy hair.
This roster of drivers had remained the same for the past 3-4 years. All super nice guys, mind you. I had no reason to complain.
I knew these people and I was comfortable with them. I expected to see them.
So you could imagine my shock when I woke up to see an unfamiliar face staring down at me one night. I’d been out drinking, and was about 2 or 3 beers away from throwing up my insides. Safe to say, I was not in the most alert state. It was still a jarring sight nonetheless.
This guy must have stared at me for ten seconds straight without saying a word. His appearance certainly didn’t help either.
I’m not one to judge looks, but this dude was beyond freaky. Have you ever seen Lost Highway? Remember that phone call scene with the mystery man?
Well that’s roughly what he resembled. A bit younger though.
His face was nearly ghost-pale and his eyes were wide and beady. His smile was unsettling at best and insanity-inducing at worst.
On top of that… there was a hole in his neck. A fucking hole. I could see straight through it.
“You’ve reached the end of the line.” He said. His voice was normal enough (especially given his throat?), but his tone sounded like the one a child would make when he knew about something that his friends didn’t.
“Uh… sh… yeah. Sorry. Guess I dozed off again…”
It took all the strength I had not to focus on his neck-hole. Especially if the other option I had was to look into his eyes.
He stopped leering at me and stood straight. He must have been about six-foot-six, or two meters tall. Also… strangely muscular for his height. An intimidating presence, to say the least. He stood still for a moment, trapping me in place. I was expecting him to say something, after all.
But he didn’t. Instead, he just took off.
After taking a second to adjust to the weirdness, I got off and began walking to the doors. I’d never been more ready to go home at that point.
But… the door didn’t open. I pressed the button, but nothing happened.
“What the hell…” I muttered, concern starting to rise in my chest. It hadn’t even been fifteen seconds since the driver got off.
It didn’t take long for me to start shoulder-checking the door. And then I started yelling.
There were only two things on my mind at that point:
“This door better open the fuck up,” and “This train better not start fucking moving.”
It was my lucky day. None of those things happened.
“Hello? Driver?” I yelled, as the train departed. “What the fuck? I’m still here!”
Unfortunately, I was in one of the middle cars, so he couldn’t hear me.
One of my co-workers - Alan had been on the train with me before I passed out. I also knew for a fact that he also got off at the end of the line. But I was alone. He was nowhere to be seen.
I continued slamming on the doors and pressing the emergency stop button, but one thing was quickly becoming certain.
This thing wasn’t stopping.
I sat down, resigned to my sudden fate. What the hell’s going on? I thought to myself. The situation was truly bizarre. The driver would have had to sprint to the cab, prevent the doors from opening, and then drive off. This was all with the knowledge that some guy might still be on the train.
What the fuck was his problem?
Truth be told, I had no idea where trains went “after hours”. I just hoped that it wouldn’t be too far. After all, my city wasn’t huge, and the tracks had to end at some point. I looked out the windows, but it was mostly dark. A few buildings still had lights on, but not many. Not surprising in the dead of night.
I tried calling Alan, but he wouldn’t pick up. I cursed again.
Fifteen minutes passed and I was starting to lose it. What the hell is shit? I thought. We were approaching the edge of the city. I was 99% certain that the tracks did not extend this far.
It felt like I was having a fever dream. My hands were shaking and I was on the brink of hyperventilating.
To combat that, I closed my eyes and started taking deep breaths.
It’s fine. It’s alright,” I thought. “The driver’s just a fucking idiot. Maybe I’ll be compensated for this shitshow.*
Yeah.
Free transit for a year. That’s the least they could offer me.
After calming myself down, I opened my eyes back up.
It was still dark. I nearly screamed in frustration. I felt around me, confirming that I was definitely still on the train. But why were the lights off? It sounded like we were going through a tunnel but even tunnels had lights. None of them were pitch black all the way through.
Something else was bothering me as well. The vague sensation of a presence sitting right across from me. I sat utterly still for what felt like 5 minutes.
Eventually, the train lights came back on. It was still empty. Even my mind was starting to play tricks on me. I looked out the windows, but it was still black.
I took my phone out and dialed 911. It rang a few times before somebody picked up.
“Hello?” I said. “Hello?”
Nothing. Just breathing on the other end.
“Can you say something?” I screamed into the phone.
Somebody finally responded, but it was in a language I couldn’t recognize. Not just one I didn’t understand. I know what French sounds like even though I can’t speak it. I’d never heard this dialect before in my entire life. I could only describe it as serpent-like. The mere sound of it made my skin feel like something was slithering beneath it. I hung up and buried my face into my hands.
“This is not happening…” I muttered to myself. I repeated this, hoping that it would cause me to wake up. It didn’t really feel like a dream. Then again, we don’t really know what dreams feel like, do we?
Soon enough, the train came to a stop. I was glad, of course. But at the same time… I wasn’t exactly excited to find out where the hell I was.
I looked out the window. I think my heart nearly stopped. I didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to be looking at. It almost resembled a desert, but a post-apocalyptic one. Everything was grey, including the sky. There were gigantic trees scattered throughout, along with massive, vortex-like pits.
Large, hunched figures wearing baggy, black robes also dragged themselves across the sand. I couldn’t tell from so far but it almost looked like they had beaks coming out of their faces.
“We’ve arrived.”
I jumped at the sudden outburst. I turned around, seeing the driver standing at the door, smiling at me.
“Where the fuck am I?”
He angled his head and grinned even wider.
“You’ll want to get off before they get on,” he said. “The next station is not for you. You have one hour before your returning train arrives. Have fun exploring.”
He started to leave, but turned back before he did. “Also, don’t go out into the desert.”
This time, the door stayed open after he left. The place we’d arrived at looked more or less like a regular station, if not a bit outdated. It was also grey, just like the desert outside.
There were also people sitting on benches just outside the train. Well, I suppose they were people. They looked just like the driver. Pale, holes in throats, oddly tall and well-built.
One of them suddenly got up and began approaching the train. I remembered what the driver had told me and immediately got off.
From there, I ran the length of the train, finally spotting him in the driver’s cab. I pounded on his window, managing to catch his attention.
“Hey! What the hell is going on?” I asked him, through the glass.
I wasn’t sure if he didn’t hear me, or if he was just being a huge asshole, but he just grinned at me and waved. Seconds later, he started driving, leaving me in that godforsaken place.
At the very least, the station was now empty. I walked over and sat on one of the benches.
I took my phone out and tried checking the time. I say tried, because everything on my screen was now in gibberish, presumably the language that I’d heard earlier.
1 Hour. I just had to wait for one hour, and then I’d be back. Or I’d wake up. Hopefully the latter.
But before it’d even felt like 5 minutes, something wandered onto the platform. I didn’t look over at it. However, I was sure as hell this thing was looking at me.
From the corner of my eye, it appeared like one of those hunched figures that had been out in the desert. I saw it shift in place, before it started squawking like some kind of fucked up demon bird.
I left almost immediately as it did. So much for my plan of sitting still. I saw a set of stairs going up and headed towards it.
Once up, I found myself in what looked like a regular terminal. But just like the platform, it was a bit off. The architecture was hard to identify. Definitely unlike anything I’d ever seen before. It was almost retro and futurist at the same time, with large banners and monitors displaying strange symbols set up just about everywhere. It’s like they hired a doomsday cult to design the place.
The place was populated by more of those neck-hole people. Thankfully, they didn’t seem to acknowledge me. I decided to walk around for a while, hoping that the hunched thing would be gone once I headed back down.
Maybe a minute later, everybody stopped and directed death stares at me. Their expressions were so full of malice that I could feel my skin begin to crawl. I noticed that some of their eyes weren’t directed at me, but at the space behind me.
I slowly turned my head, seeing that the hunched creature had followed me up. I got a good look at it this time. I will probably never forget the sight of it.
I was right. It had a beak. A large one. Its face nearly resembled some kind of alien bird-human hybrid.
I stood still and began silently praying. Not sure for what exactly.
Almost in unison, the “people” opened their mouths to an unnervingly wide degree and began screaming. If this was a nightmare, this would’ve been the moment I woke up.
But I didn’t. The people began boxing me in, still screaming like damn banshees. I would take a step forward, and the crowd would move with me. The creature was also hot on my trail the entire time.
Eventually, I just started running. I tried breaking through the crowd a few times, but I would just get pushed in another direction. After some time of this, I was pinballed out of the terminal entirely. These bastards had directed me into the desert, along with the hunched creature.
Once I was out, they stopped screaming and shut the terminal door behind them.
The creature began squawking again before lurching at me. I could do nothing but run as it chased me. Soon enough, every single creature in the vicinity was also on my ass. It was like a nightmare-ish chain reaction.
There were numerous times where I nearly ran into one of those swirling pits. There was definitely something dwelling inside them. I could hear it. The sickening, slithering sounds of something large within.
There was no end in sight, and it was obvious that I couldn’t run forever. The creatures started getting closer, and I could see them up close. Their beaks were wide open, with long, spiky tongues hanging out of them. The sight of it pushed me to continue running.
But I wasn’t superhuman. My lungs gave out before my legs did. But right before that… I could see a figure walking towards me. Not one of those hunched things. It was somebody familiar. But I passed out before I could find out.
When I woke up, I was back on a train. I reeked of sweat and my joints ached, but I was nevertheless happy to be alive.
But… what the hell happened? I thought.
“I told you not to go into the desert.”
I looked over, seeing the driver once again standing by the door.
“I didn’t really have a choice. What the fuck’s wrong with this place?” I said.
The driver raised an eyebrow at me.
“I thought you would have come better prepared. That’s usually the case.”
“Better prepared?” I asked, taken aback by the statement. “What the hell are you talking about? I never planned on being here. Whatever the goddamn hell this place is.”
This time, he was the one that looked confused.
“Is that so? Well, I doubt that you found this place on accident. Maybe something else is going on. Once you’re back in your world, I advise you to be careful. This is a dangerous game to play. Well, I better get going.”
“Wait,” I said. “Why’d you save me?”
“It is strange,” he responded. “I usually wouldn’t bother with it. But… you were different. Not cocky like the others. It was a breath of fresh air and I appreciated it.”
He walked off the train, leaving me with about a million questions. I didn’t bother chasing after him. At that point, I didn’t have the will or energy for it. I just sat tight.
Soon enough, the train started moving.
Just like they had on the way there, the lights went out again. But it wasn’t a problem. Soon enough, the train arrived at the end of the line. The actual end of the line. I checked my phone. It was in English now, displaying 2:15 AM. I couldn’t understand how such little time had passed, but then again… I didn’t understand a lot of things from that night.
When I went into work the following Monday, I was still in a state of relative shock. I didn’t want to believe what had happened, but it certainly wasn’t a fucking dream. Maybe my drink got spiked at the bar or something. Talk about a delayed reaction.
But deep down, I knew that any kind of reasoning I could conjure up was just a cope. It was an inexplicable event. I just had to accept that, and never fall asleep on the train again.
I saw Alan at lunch that day. I was tempted to say something about what had happened, but opted not to. I didn’t want be that “crazy” guy at work, after all.
“Totally sorry for dipping on Saturday man,” he said to me. “I had to get off at an earlier stop. My sister lives downtown and she was having some kind of emergency. Like jeez, right?”
He chuckled. I just nodded.
“So anyways,” he continued. “Anything interesting happen on the train?”
I didn’t like his tone with that question. It was almost as if he already knew the answer, and just wanted to hear me say it. Also, if I’d been asleep, then why the hell would he not have woken me up before he left?
Something wasn’t right.
“Nothing noteworthy, no. You know how boring this city is.”
His smile slowly faded. “Oh. Okay.”
“Why do you ask?”
He shook his head. “No reason. Just glad you made it home safe.”
That conversation shouldn’t have been anything substantial. But given the circumstances… it made me wonder.
I’ve been working from home for a few weeks now, so I haven’t seen him since. But he sent me a text last night.
“Hey man, let’s go out once this is all over. Go crazy haha. You down?”
I put my phone down and thought about what the driver had told me.
… I doubt that you found this place on accident.
I’m starting to think that I didn’t.
---
Credits
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