The Last Train Home
A woman takes the last train home after a late shift. At every station, the same man is waiting on the platform. The problem is, he never gets on.
URBAN HORROR
I missed my usual train because the coffee machine at work broke ten minutes before the end of my shift.
I worked at a small hotel near the city centre, and I was supposed to finish at eleven. Instead, I spent almost an hour cleaning water from behind the reception desk, calling the manager and waiting for someone from maintenance to arrive. By the time I finally left the hotel, it was almost midnight.
I reached the station at 12:07. The last train was due in three minutes, and the platform was almost empty. A young couple stood near the stairs, an older woman sat on a bench with two shopping bags beside her, and a man in a dark grey coat stood alone at the far end of the platform.
I noticed him because he was standing very close to the edge. He looked about fifty, tall and thin, with his head lowered as he stared at the tracks.
The train arrived before I thought much more about him. I got into the second carriage and found a seat beside the window. There were only about twelve people on the whole train, and everyone looked tired.
As we pulled away, I looked back at the platform. The man in the grey coat was still standing there. He had not even tried to board.
My stop was nine stations away, so I put in my earphones and started reading on my phone. Four minutes later, the train slowed as we approached the next station.
I happened to look through the window.
The man in the grey coat was standing on the platform.
At first, I assumed I was mistaken. The train had travelled several kilometres since the previous station. There was no possible way he could have arrived before us.
Still, the coat looked the same. So did his thin face and wet dark hair.
More importantly, he was looking directly at me.
The doors opened, but he did not get on. He simply watched me until the train began moving again.
I tried to convince myself that they were two different men. A grey coat was hardly unusual, and perhaps my tired mind was creating a connection that did not exist.
At the third station, I was already watching the platform before we stopped.
He was there again.
This time he stood directly outside my window.
I could see his face clearly. His skin was pale, and rainwater ran from his hair onto the shoulders of his coat. There was something deeply sad about his expression.
The doors opened. He could easily have stepped inside, but he remained on the platform.
Nobody else seemed interested in him. A man across from me was asleep. Two teenage girls were watching something on one of their phones, and a woman near the doors was typing a message.
At the fourth station, the man was waiting beside the door of my carriage.
When the doors opened between us, he lifted his hand and pointed directly at me.
My stomach tightened.
I stood and moved to the other end of the carriage. As the train pulled away, I decided that I would get off at the next station and call a taxi. I did not care how expensive it was.
The train entered a tunnel, and my phone lost its signal.
A few minutes later, we reached the next station. I walked toward the doors, ready to leave.
The man was already waiting outside.
This time, he was smiling.
I stopped.
The doors opened, but instead of pointing at me, he slowly moved his finger downward.
I followed his hand with my eyes and looked through the narrow gap between the train and the platform.
There was a woman's black shoe lying on the tracks.
It looked exactly like the shoes I was wearing.
The warning sound began and the doors closed again.
I stayed on the train.
As we left the station, the man's smile disappeared. For the first time, he looked angry.
I tried calling my sister, but my phone still had no signal. I tried the emergency number and got nothing. Then I walked toward the door connecting our carriage to the next one, but it would not open.
“Don't get off.”
The voice came from behind me.
It was the older woman I had seen at the first station. She was sitting three rows away with her shopping bags on the floor beside her.
I asked if she could see the man too.
She nodded. “I saw him twenty-two years ago.”
I sat opposite her and asked what she meant.
“When I was young, I worked nights just like you,” she said. “One evening I took this train home. That man appeared at every station. He kept pointing at me, and eventually I became so frightened that I got off.”
“What happened after that?”
“Two stations later, the train crashed. Seven people died.”
I stared at her. “Then he saved you.”
For a moment, the woman said nothing. She looked toward the dark window instead.
“Yes,” she finally replied. “At least, that is what I always believed.”
The train began slowing again.
The man in the grey coat was standing on the next platform.
But this time, he was not looking at me.
He was looking at the older woman.
Her face went white.
The train stopped and the doors opened. The man pointed at her.
“No,” she whispered.
For the first time, I heard him speak.
“You already had your turn.”
His voice was calm.
The woman began to cry. She moved away from the door and shook her head again and again.
I asked her what he meant.
“He didn't save me,” she said quietly. “I was supposed to be on that train. I was supposed to die with the others.”
Before I could ask anything else, the lights inside the carriage went out.
Everything remained dark for only a second.
When the lights came back on, every other passenger had disappeared.
The sleeping man was gone. The teenagers were gone. The woman who had been using her phone was gone.
Only the older woman and I remained.
The man on the platform pointed at me and then pointed toward the station exit.
This time, I understood.
He was telling me to leave the train.
I stood immediately, but the older woman grabbed my arm.
“Please don't leave me here.”
“Come with me,” I said.
She looked at the man outside and slowly released my arm.
“He won't let me.”
The warning sound began. The doors were about to close.
I stepped onto the platform.
The older woman remained inside.
The doors closed between us, and she pressed both hands against the glass as the train began moving toward the tunnel.
The man stood beside me and watched it disappear.
“What is going to happen?” I asked.
“Go upstairs,” he said.
A few seconds later, a terrible sound came from inside the tunnel.
Metal screamed against metal. Then there was a deep crash that shook the floor beneath my feet.
The station lights went out.
When the emergency lights came on, the man in the grey coat was gone.
I ran upstairs and called the emergency services. Police, firefighters and ambulances arrived within minutes.
The last train had derailed inside the tunnel.
Seven people died.
One of them was an elderly woman named Margaret Ellis.
I recognised her photograph on the news the following morning.
That was also when I learned the truth about the man in the grey coat.
Margaret had survived another crash on the same railway line twenty-two years earlier. Seven people had died that night as well. An old newspaper article said Margaret had left the train two stations before the crash because a strange man on the platform had frightened her.
The article included photographs of the people who died.
I recognised the man immediately.
His name was Thomas Reed. He was fifty-one years old and worked for the railway.
At first, I thought Thomas had simply been another passenger who died in the crash.
I was wrong.
According to the article, Thomas had discovered damage to the track shortly before the train arrived. He ran along the platform trying to stop it, but the driver never saw him. Thomas then entered the tunnel in a final attempt to warn the driver.
He died there with the others.
That explained why he appeared at the stations.
It explained why he pointed at people.
And it explained why he had appeared to Margaret twenty-two years later.
Thomas had never been trying to frighten anyone.
He had been trying to get people off the train.
Margaret had escaped death once because she listened to him. That night, for reasons I will never understand, she was not allowed to escape it a second time.
I never took the last train again.
I still use the same railway line during the day, though, and sometimes my train passes through that station after sunset.
I have seen Thomas twice since that night.
He always stands close to the edge of the platform in the same dark grey coat.
The first time I saw him again, I almost panicked.
Then I noticed that he wasn't looking at me.
He was pointing at someone in the carriage behind mine.
At the next station, that passenger got off.
So did I.
I wasn't going to make the mistake of ignoring Thomas Reed.
Not after I finally understood what he was trying to do.