The Ghost Train

Chapter 8: Sarah's Stop

Sarah had barely made it back to the passenger car when she felt it—a peculiar sensation unlike anything she'd experienced before. The steady rhythm of the train began to slow, the clacking of wheels growing more deliberate, more measured. But it wasn't this change in tempo that made her grip the nearest handrail until her knuckles whitened.

It was the pull.

Not the artificial sense of belonging she'd felt at the luminescent station, with the old man, but something deeper, more primal. A tether connected to her very core, drawing her toward the doors with the inexorable force of gravity. Her feet moved of their own accord.

"It appears we've arrived at your stop, Ms. Mathews," Calloway said, appearing beside her as if from nowhere. His expression was unreadable, but she detected something in his eyes—was it concern? Anticipation? "I confess, I've been curious what the Infinity Line would choose for you."

"I don't want to get off," Sarah said through gritted teeth, fighting the pull with every ounce of willpower. "I'm investigating this train, not surrendering to it."

Calloway's smile was thin. "I'm afraid that's not how it works. When your station calls, resistance is..." he paused, considering, "inadvisable."

The train slowed to a complete stop. Outside the opaque windows, Sarah could barely see the dense white fog pressing against the glass. The doors slid open with a soft pneumatic hiss.

The pull became overwhelming—not just physical but emotional, a desperate yearning that made her eyes well with tears. She stumbled forward, passing through the doors and into the mist before she could stop herself.

The fog swirled around her, thick and disorienting almost seemingly making it hard to breathe. Sarah reached out blindly, her fingertips brushing against something solid—a wooden railing. As she grasped it, the mist began to recede, revealing a sight that stole her breath away.

A porch. Her porch. The blue-painted steps leading up to the white farmhouse where she had grown up in rural Vermont. The swing her father had hung from thick chains. The clay pots her mother had filled with geraniums every spring.

Everything exactly as it had been twenty years ago.

"This isn't real," Sarah whispered, even as the sensory details overwhelmed her defenses. "This can't be real," she whispered again in confusion. The familiar creak of the floorboard beneath her left foot. The scent of her mother's herb garden nearby. The distant sound of wind chimes her sister Ellie had made in art class.

Ellie.

The realization hit her like a physical blow. Today was that day. June 12, 2004. The day ten-year-old Ellie Mathews had disappeared while walking home from a friend's house, never to be found.

The day that had set Sarah, only fourteen then, on the path to forensic science and investigative journalism, determined to prevent other families from suffering the same unanswered questions that had destroyed hers.

The screen door banged open, and Sarah's heart seized at the sight of her mother—twenty years younger, her face unlined by years of grief, her hair not yet streaked with gray.

"Sarah, honey, have you seen your sister? She should have been home an hour ago." The worried tone was achingly familiar. The beginning of a nightmare that would never end.

Sarah's mouth opened, but no sound emerged. This wasn't her mother—couldn't be her mother. This was some creation of the train, a phantasm designed to...

To what? To torture her? To tempt her?

Or to give her a second chance.

The thought surfaced unbidden. She knew what was happening right now. Ellie was taking the shortcut through Marsden Woods, where someone was waiting. Where someone would take her, leaving behind only a single sneaker and endless questions.

If Sarah ran now—right now—she could intercept her sister. Change everything.

"Mom," she finally managed, her voice strangled. "I think Ellie might have gone through the woods. I'm going to go look for her."

Her mother—or this perfect simulation of her mother—nodded gratefully. "Thank you, honey. I'm getting worried."

Sarah turned and sprinted down the steps, muscle memory guiding her toward the path that led to Marsden Woods. Everything was exactly as she remembered: Mrs. Peterson's garden gnomes lined up watching her pass; the Henderson's golden retriever barking from behind its fence; the crooked street sign at the corner that the snowplow had bent last winter.

The forest entrance appeared ahead, a well-worn dirt path disappearing between tall pines. Sarah's pace quickened, her heart hammering against her ribs.

"Ellie!" she called as she plunged into the dappled shadows. "ELLIE!"

She ran faster than she ever had, following the twisting path that she had walked hundreds of times as a child. The spot where Ellie's sneaker had been found was just ahead, near the old lightning-struck oak.

Sarah burst into the small clearing and skidded to a halt.

There, just ahead, was twelve-year-old Ellie—alive, whole, her blonde pigtails bouncing as she walked, her purple backpack slung over one shoulder.

And approaching from the other direction, a figure Sarah didn't recognize—a man in a dark jacket, his face obscured.

"ELLIE, RUN!" Sarah screamed, lunging forward.

Her sister turned, confusion blooming on her freckled face. "Sarah? What are you—"

"Get away from her!" Sarah shouted at the man, placing herself between the stranger and her sister. "Ellie, go home now! Take the main road!"

The man backed away a step, startled by Sarah's sudden appearance.

"Sarah, what's wrong?" Ellie asked, her voice small and frightened.

Sarah knelt, gripping her sister's shoulders, drinking in the sight of her face—the face that had been preserved only in increasingly faded photographs for the past twenty years. "Listen to me. Go straight home. Don't talk to anyone. Tell Mom to call the police." She glared over her shoulder at the man, who had retreated further into the shadows.

Ellie nodded uncertainly and began backing away. "Okay... Are you coming?"

"In a minute. GO!"

Her sister turned and ran back the way she had come. The man had vanished between the trees. Sarah stood in the clearing, trembling violently, tears streaming unchecked down her face.

Had she done it? Changed the past? Saved her sister?

A twig snapped behind her. Sarah spun to find Calloway watching her from the edge of the clearing.

"It feels real, doesn't it?" he said quietly. "The train is remarkably thorough in its creations."

"Creations," Sarah repeated, the word like ashes in her mouth. "None of this is real."

"That depends entirely on your definition of 'real,' Ms. Mathews." Calloway approached, hands clasped behind his back. "The emotions you're feeling—those are certainly real. The choice you're being offered is real enough."

Something clicked in Sarah's mind—the ledger in the conductor's cabin, her name written decades before her birth. "The train knew," she whispered. "It knew I would be here, knew what moment it would show me. That's why my name was in the ledger from 1972."

Calloway's expression changed subtly, intrigue flickering across his features. "You've seen the ledger. You know that there are many outcomes to be played out her. Very few passengers locate the conductor's cabin, and even fewer understand what they've seen."

"The reflections—all those versions of me—they were all facing this same choice, weren't they?" Sarah asked, the pieces falling into place. "Every Sarah Mathews across every reality has a version of this moment. A chance to save Ellie."

"Not precisely," Calloway said carefully. "The train connects realities, bridges possibilities. Those reflections were Sarah's who made different choices at crucial moments. Some never lost their sister. Some lost her in different ways. Some found her again."

"And in how many of those realities does Sarah Mathews board this train?" she demanded.

"All of them," Calloway answered simply. "The train is a constant across realities. What changes is what each Sarah witnesses, what each Sarah chooses."

Sarah felt dizzy with the implications. "The ledger called me 'Witness.' What am I supposed to witness?"

"Yourself," Calloway said. "Your capacity for choice even when faced with your deepest desire. Some Sarah's stay, embracing the fantasy. Others return to the train, accepting reality with all its imperfections. Each choice creates a new branch of possibility, a new reality—all recorded in the ledger across time and space."

"That's why my name appeared in the ledger from 1972," Sarah realized. "A different Sarah, from a different timeline, faced this choice in that year."

"And in 1894, and in 2051, and in countless other moments," Calloway confirmed. "The Infinity Line exists outside conventional time. What matters is not when you board, but what you choose when faced with your stop."

"What choice?" Sarah demanded, though somewhere deep inside, she already knew.

"To stay. To rewrite your personal history." Calloway gestured around them. "This timeline can continue. Your sister will return home safely today. You'll grow up together in a household untouched by tragedy. Your parents' marriage won't collapse under the weight of grief and guilt. You'll pursue whatever dreams you had before that day changed everything."

Sarah closed her eyes, feeling the forest around her—the warmth of protruding sunlight, the scent of pine needles, the distant calls of birds. It felt so real. So possible.

"It's a fantasy," she whispered, more to herself than to Calloway. "A beautiful, impossible fantasy."

"Is it? The Infinity Line exists at the intersection of all realities, Ms. Mathews. For those who disembark at their destined stop, the new reality becomes their truth."

Sarah opened her eyes, fixing him with a hard stare. "And what's the price?"

Calloway's expression remained neutral. "Only that you never return to your original timeline. That existence continues without you, of course. Your colleagues will wonder what happened to the dedicated police analyst who disappeared while investigating a local legend. Eventually, you'll be forgotten, or remembered only as another mystery."

The full weight of understanding settled on her shoulders. The train wasn't offering salvation—it was offering escape. A beautiful evasion of the life she had built from the broken pieces of her family's tragedy.

"What happens if I stay?" she asked, needing to hear it articulated.

"You'll have no memory of the train, or your previous life. You'll simply be sixteen-year-old Sarah Mathews again, with her sister safely returned home, her future unwritten." Calloway studied her face. "Many passengers would consider this a mercy, not a price."

In the distance, Sarah could hear voices calling Ellie's name—her parents, realizing something had been wrong but now finding their youngest daughter safe. She could picture the scene: the tearful embrace, the relief, the family intact.

Her heart ached with a longing so profound it threatened to break her.

"The train will depart shortly," Calloway said softly. "If you wish to stay, simply remain here. If you wish to return..." He gestured toward a path that hadn't been there moments before.

Sarah looked down at her hands—the hands of a thirty-four-year-old woman who had built a life investigating truths others tried to hide. Hands that had sifted through evidence, written exposés, brought closure to families like her own.

Hands that belonged to a woman who had been forged in the crucible of her sister's disappearance.

Would that woman exist if Ellie had never disappeared? Would all the people she had helped find justice still have found it without her?

"I'm not the first Sarah to face this choice," she said slowly, understanding dawning. "And I won't be the last. That's what it means to be a 'Witness'—to see the moment of choice, to understand what's at stake, to make the decision knowing the full cost."

"The train offers possibility, Ms. Mathews. What you do with that possibility is the test—and the testimony."

"I can't," she whispered, the words tearing from her throat. "This isn't real, and I can't live in a fantasy, no matter how beautiful."

She turned away from the sounds of her family's reunion and began walking down the new path, each step feeling like she was tearing away a piece of her own heart.

Behind her, the forest began to fade, the edges of reality dissolving into mist once more. Ahead, she could see the silver gleam of the train through the gathering fog.

The doors were closing as she approached. Sarah lunged forward, throwing herself through the narrowing gap and collapsing onto the floor of the train car.

As the doors sealed shut behind her, she curled into herself, wracked with sobs that seemed to come from her very core. She had chosen reality over fantasy, truth over comfort. She had walked away from the only thing she had ever truly wanted.

A hand gently touched her shoulder. Sarah looked up through tear-blurred vision to see the young woman from the 1920's kneeling beside her, offering a handkerchief.

"You came back," the woman said simply. "Most don't, when they find their heart's desire."

Sarah accepted the handkerchief, wiping at her eyes. "Was it real? Could I really have changed what happened?"

"The train's gifts are real enough to those who accept them. But they're not free," the woman replied. Then, with unexpected insight, she added: "I recognized you, you know. From the conductor's cabin. I saw my reflection there too, once. We're all witnesses to our own choices, across all possibilities."

Sarah stared at her in shock. "You've seen the ledger? Your name is there too?"

The woman's smile was sad and knowing. "All passengers are recorded. All witnesses face their moment of truth." She straightened her 1920's dress. "I chose to return to the train. But every time we stop, I look for Hillsborough. One day, perhaps, I'll find it."

As the train began to move again, Sarah pulled herself into a seat and stared out the window at the receding fog. The station that had offered her heart's deepest wish—her sister's return—faded into nothingness.

She had made her choice. She had chosen the truth, with all its pain and imperfection, over a beautiful lie.

And now she understood what the ledger had meant by "Witness." Each Sarah across countless realities witnessed the same fundamental choice—and the cumulative weight of those decisions echoed across dimensions, recorded in a ledger that existed outside of time itself.

Her story was just one thread in a tapestry of infinite Sarah's, making their choices, living with the consequences, boarding and leaving the Meridian Line in an endless cycle of possibility.