The Ghost Train

Chapter 7: The Conductor's Cabin

Sarah's phone died shortly after the train departed the luminescent station. She pocketed it with reluctance, then retrieved her notebook and pen—old-fashioned tools for documenting an impossible journey.

"You won't find answers in the passenger cars," Calloway had warned when she'd told him her intentions. His eyes had narrowed, somewhere between concern and calculation. "The Infinity Line doesn't reveal its secrets easily."

But Sarah was nothing if not persistent. While the other passengers peered strenuously through windows at impossible landscapes, she made her way toward the front of the train. Journalism was about asking questions, following leads. And the most obvious question remained unanswered: who—or what—was driving this supernatural train?

The first few cars were relatively normal—the dining car with its perpetually fresh tea service, a sleeping car with curtained bunks, a parlor car with velvet-upholstered chairs. All empty now, save for the occasional flicker of movement at the edge of her vision.

But the further forward she moved, the stranger the train became.

She pulled open the door to what should have been another passenger car and froze in disbelief. Before her stretched an impossible sight: an ocean inside the train car, extending far beyond what the physical dimensions should allow. Gentle waves lapped against a narrow path that ran along what would have been the aisle. The ceiling had transformed into an open sky, cloudy and tinged with the pink of approaching sunset.

"This can't be real," Sarah whispered, jotting notes frantically. Yet when she cautiously knelt and touched the water, it was wet and smelled of salt.

She followed the path, which occasionally disappeared beneath shallow waves only to reemerge. Small silver fish darted beneath the surface, and in the far distance—impossible distance given the train's size—she thought she saw something larger breach and dive again.

The door at the far end was partially submerged. Sarah waded the last few steps, water soaking her jeans to the knees, and pushed through.

The next car contained no water at all. Instead, she found herself in a dense forest. Ancient trees with trunks wider than automobiles stretched upward beyond sight. Dappled sunlight filtered through a canopy that should have been constrained by the train's roof but instead seemed to extend into infinity. A path of mossy stones wound between the massive trees.

"The inside of a standard train car is approximately 10 feet wide," Sarah narrated to herself as she wrote. "This forest extends at least several hundred feet in each direction, yet exists within the confines of the Infinity Line."

The air here smelled of damp earth and pine. Somewhere unseen, birds called to one another. As she walked the stone path, she noticed carved symbols on the tree trunks—ancient writing, mathematical equations, astronomical charts, all etched into living wood.

The next car contained a desert under a night sky ablaze with unfamiliar constellations. After that, a field of strange crystalline structures that hummed when she passed. Then a car filled with thousands of floating books whose pages turned by invisible hands.

How long had she walked, Sarah couldn't say. Time seemed as distorted as space. Her watch had stopped at midnight—the moment she had boarded.

Finally, after what might have been hours or mere minutes, she reached a door different from the others. Unlike the ornate wood-paneled entrances between previous cars, this was a simple steel door with a small, clouded window. Above it hung a tarnished plaque reading "Conductor."

Sarah's heart raced. She had found it—the control center of the impossible train. With trembling fingers, she turned the handle and pushed the door open.

The conductor's cabin was not what she had expected.

No control panels. No steering mechanisms. No sign of any technology that might guide a train—supernatural or otherwise—along its tracks.

Instead, the small room was entirely lined with mirrors. Floor, ceiling, walls—all reflected her image back at her infinitely. But these were not ordinary reflections.

In one, she saw herself in the same clothes but with subtle differences—hair longer, a scar above her eyebrow that she didn't possess. That reflection moved independently, examining the mirrored room with curiosity rather than shock.

In another, she wore formal attire from the 1940's, her hair styled in victory rolls, a press badge clipped to her lapel. This Sarah wrote in a small notebook much like her own.

A third reflection showed her in futuristic clothing made of material that seemed to shift color with movement. This version had a cybernetic implant visible at her temple.

Dozens—hundreds—of Sarah Mathews filled the mirrors, each from different times, different realities, different possibilities. Some appeared nearly identical to her; others she would barely have recognized as herself.

"Parallel versions," she whispered, understanding dawning. "The train doesn't just cross time and space—it crosses realities."

Some of the reflections noticed her and approached their side of the mirror, studying her with the same journalistic intensity she felt. Others were absorbed in their own investigations, unaware of her presence.

In the center of the room sat a single object: an ornate wooden pedestal supporting a massive leather-bound ledger. The book lay open, its pages yellowed with age, filled with handwritten entries.

Sarah approached cautiously. The book contained names—thousands upon thousands of names written in different hands, different inks. Each entry included a date and a cryptic notation she couldn't decipher.

She paged backward through the ledger, scanning the endless list of passengers. Some names she recognized from history books; others were completely unfamiliar. And then, about halfway through the book, her finger froze on an entry that made her blood run cold.

Sarah Anne Mathews, May 17, 1972. Status: In Transit.

The handwriting was elegant, precise—and most definitely not her own. The date was more than thirty years before she boarded the train. Before she was even born.

"That's not possible," she whispered. Yet there it was, her name—her full name, including the middle name she rarely used—recorded decades ago.

The mirrors around her seemed to pulse, the reflections of countless Sarah Mathews leaning in, watching her discovery with expressions ranging from shock to knowing resignation.

She flipped forward, scanning frantically through the pages, and found another entry:

Sarah Anne Mathews, November 3, 2024. Status: In Transit.

Today's date. Her boarding at Thornwood Station, recorded in the same handwriting as the 1972 entry.

"We've been watching you for a long time, Ms. Mathews."

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, reflected and amplified by the mirrored walls. Some of the Sarah's in the mirrors turned toward the sound; others continued their own investigations, unhearing.

"Who are you?" Sarah demanded, turning in a circle, trying to locate the source. "What is this train? Why is my name in this book from before I was born?"

No answer came, but the pages of the ledger began to turn on their own, faster and faster, revealing names upon names—passengers across centuries, perhaps millennia.

The final page contained only a single entry, the ink still glistening as if freshly written:

Sarah Anne Mathews, Destination: Unknown. Purpose: Witness.

Before she could process this, the door behind her slammed shut. When she spun around, she found not the exit but another mirror—this one showing not her reflection but Calloway, watching her with that same calculating expression.

"You shouldn't be here," his reflection said simply. "No one finds the conductor's cabin unless the train wants them to."

"What does that mean?" she demanded. "What am I witnessing?"

But the reflection of Calloway dissolved like smoke, replaced by her own bewildered face once more.

The ledger snapped shut with a sound like thunder. The mirrors began to vibrate, the countless versions of herself becoming distorted, stretching and compressing until they were unrecognizable. A high-pitched whine filled the room, building in intensity until Sarah had to cover her ears.

And then, suddenly, silence. Complete and absolute silence.

When she opened her eyes, she stood in an ordinary train corridor. Behind her, where the mirrored room had been, was a blank wall. No door. No indication that anything had ever existed there.

In her hand, she still clutched her notebook. On the page where she'd been documenting her journey through the impossible train cars, new words had appeared in handwriting not her own:

Some answers are not for you yet, Witness. Return to your seat. The next station approaches.

Sarah pressed her hand against the blank wall where the conductor's cabin had been, finding only a solid, cold, unyielding metal. Had she imagined it all?

But the evidence remained: the salt water still drying on her jeans, the faint scratch of a dead tree branch on her arm from the forest car, and these words in her notebook—written by a hand not her own.

Somewhere nearby, the train whistle sounded giving no indication from the direction it had came from. Another stop approached.

With no other option, Sarah turned and began what she thought was going to be the long walk back through the impossible cars, except the cars were normal cars this time through, her mind reeling with questions for which she had found no answers—only deeper mysteries.

Witness, the ledger had called her. But witness to what?