Midnight at the Lost-and-Found

Midnight at the Lost-and-Found

By Hasnain Shah

The train station wasn’t on any map.

It appeared only at midnight — quiet and half-lit, as though it had been plucked from some forgotten dream and placed delicately between one day and the next.

No trains ever arrived, yet the platform was always occupied. Rows of dusty suitcases and weathered boxes stood neatly in line, each tagged with a name written in faded ink. Above the benches, a flickering sign read:

THE LOST-AND-FOUND — CLAIM WHAT’S YOURS, IF YOU DARE.

Nobody ever said who ran the place. Some whispered it was Death’s waiting room. Others claimed it was Hope’s.

On the night Mira stumbled upon it, she wasn’t looking for anything at all.

She had been walking — or maybe running — through the city, unable to sleep, haunted by the same hollow thought that had followed her for years: What if I had stayed?

The streetlights dimmed the farther she went, until suddenly, there it was — the station. A single iron gate, slightly ajar, and the faint hum of an unseen train engine that didn’t seem to move but pulsed softly, like a heartbeat.

Inside, the air smelled faintly of rain and dust. The benches were empty except for a man in a conductor’s cap, reading a newspaper with no words.

Mira hesitated.

“Is this… open?” she asked.

He looked up, eyes pale and distant. “Always open, Miss. What have you lost?”

She almost laughed. Everything, she thought, but she said, “I’m not sure.”

The man smiled. “Then the station will decide for you.”

He gestured to the rows of suitcases. Mira walked among them, her footsteps echoing in the stillness. Each tag bore a name — hundreds of them — and something else written beneath: First Love, The Day Before It Happened, The Sound of Her Voice, Courage, Sleep.

Some had been left unclaimed for centuries.

She stopped before a small wooden box with her own name etched on the tag. Her hands trembled as she lifted it. The box was warm.

“Careful,” the conductor warned. “What’s found here can’t be unfound.”

Mira ignored him. She opened the box.

Inside was a tiny glass marble — cloudy and shimmering faintly, like a frozen tear. The moment she touched it, the air changed. She was no longer in the station.

She was twelve again, standing in her brother’s hospital room. The air was sharp with disinfectant and fear. He was asleep, his hand limp in hers. On the bedside table sat a marble jar, half empty. He had loved collecting them. He used to say each marble held a wish, and that one day he’d trade them all for a healthy heart.

Mira had promised to keep them safe when he was gone. But she had lost the jar during one of their moves. Or maybe she had thrown it away. She couldn’t remember anymore.

She gasped, stumbling backward as the vision faded. The marble glowed in her palm, and for the first time in years, she felt the weight of her own guilt — heavy, hot, and alive.

The conductor’s voice drifted through the echoing space.

“Sometimes, what we lose is meant to stay lost.”

Mira closed her hand around the marble. “I don’t want to forget him.”

“Memory isn’t forgetting,” he said gently. “It’s knowing what to let go of.”

Around them, the other boxes began to hum, whispering in dozens of voices — laughter, weeping, fragments of music and thunder. The station seemed to breathe, alive with the ache of everything anyone had ever lost.

Mira knelt, set the marble back inside the box, and closed it.

As soon as she did, the hum quieted. The air softened. A faint warmth touched her cheek — like sunlight filtered through clouds. For the first time, she didn’t feel haunted. She felt… whole.

She turned to the conductor. “What happens to the things people don’t claim?”

He folded his newspaper. “They stay here, waiting. Sometimes forever. Sometimes until someone else needs them.”

“Do people ever find something they didn’t lose?”

He smiled, the kind of smile that carried a hundred secrets. “All the time.”

Mira glanced around once more. A woman in a red coat was cradling a small music box; an old man wept over a photograph that seemed to move. A child laughed softly as she held a balloon that glowed from within.

The midnight train sighed — a sound halfway between arrival and departure.

Mira stepped toward the gate.

“Will I ever find this place again?” she asked.

The conductor tipped his cap. “Only if you lose something worth finding.”

Outside, the city was just a city again — ordinary, unremarkable, awake. She looked back once, but the station was gone, replaced by an alley glimmering with puddles.

She stood there for a long time, breathing. Her hand still felt warm where the marble had been, as though her brother’s heartbeat had passed through it.

When the first light of dawn touched the horizon, Mira smiled and began to walk home.

And somewhere, far beneath the city, the Lost-and-Found waited for midnight to strike again.