There is a train that runs only when you aren’t looking.
Its cars are lined with velvet the color of stale blood, and its windows flicker with the reflections of passengers who almost existed. It stops at Linden Interchange—a station that appears on no official maps, its platform always damp with a rain that fell forty years ago.
Elias Vey knows this train well.
He’s been trying to catch it for seven years.
The Other Passenger
The rules are simple:
- Never board the last car.
- If the ticket seller has no face, close your eyes until you hear three bells.
- Do not speak to the other version of yourself.
Elias has always obeyed these rules. Until tonight.
Tonight, he sees himself sitting across the aisle—older, wearier, missing two fingers on his left hand.
This other Elias smiles.
“You’re late,” he says.
And then the train plunges into the Tunnel of Forgotten Names.
The Truth About Linden Interchange
The station isn’t a place.
It’s a moment.
Specifically, the moment Elias’s life split in two:
- One version stayed behind to care for his dying mother.
- The other boarded a train and never looked back.
But choices like that don’t just happen. They leave wounds in the world, and Linden Interchange is the scar.
The other Elias leans closer.
“She’s still waiting, you know.”
He means their mother.
She’s been dead for six years.
And yet, in the station, she’s always waiting.
The Final Stop
The train slows. Outside the window, Elias sees his childhood home—not as it is now (rotted, sold), but as it was that afternoon, the curtains fluttering in a breeze that smells of lilacs and antiseptic.
The other Elias presses a ticket into his hand.
“You can get off here. Or you can keep going. But if you stay, you have to take my place.”
The ticket is one-way.
The destination is blank.