I sat on the deck for an hour, shivering despite the heat, staring at the dry book in my lap. I didn’t tell my dive partner what I’d seen; I just told him the visibility was too poor to continue. I hid the book in my gear bag, feeling like I had stolen something from a place that didn’t exist.
For weeks, I couldn’t sleep, the image of that paper cup burned into my retinas. I searched every archive for “J.H.I.L.” and found nothing—no company, no shipwreck, no record of tracks laid in the Atlantic. It was as if the train had appeared specifically for me to find it.
I kept the book locked in my desk drawer, a physical proof that I hadn’t suffered a nitrogen hallucination. But the more I looked at it, the more I felt a strange sense of being watched from the shadows of my own home. Then, the first message arrived on my computer, from an untraceable address.
The email contained only five words, but they chilled me more than the deep ocean ever could: “Did you take the book?” I didn’t reply, I didn’t track the IP, I simply deleted it and hoped the nightmare would end there. It didn’t.
Every night since, I’ve heard the faint, rhythmic sound of a train whistle blowing in the distance. It doesn’t matter if I’m in the city or the countryside; the sound finds me. It’s the sound of a passenger who missed their stop and is coming back to claim what was lost.
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