"Sorry. Coming through." Ethan Greaves hugged his bag tight to his chest. One earbud was stuffed in his ear, the other dangling against his shirt as the train jostled. The wire ran down to a battered MP3 Player in his pocket, a relic from another era. He had dug it out of a storage locker before leaving, half expecting it to be dead. To his surprise, it still charged and still played. The audio was thin, with a constant hiss, but it was perfect for killing time on a trip like this. He checked his ticket, pushed through the crowded aisle, and finally found his seat. Window side. Exactly what he wanted, so he could watch the scenery slide past. That was the whole point of choosing a train to cap off his graduation trip. Phone off. No messages, no noise. Just a spur-of-the-moment journey and a little quiet. In the aisle seat sat a girl. Pretty, in a clean, understated way. Bright eyes. Bare face. A slightly retro flax-colored dress that showed a slim stretch of calf, full at the back of the leg, and a pair of spotless white sneakers. Her hair was tied into two old-fashioned braids that made her look a little rustic. Then Ethan looked at her delicate features again and decided it suited her. He could forgive the braids. The girl lifted her head and glanced at him. Something flickered through her gaze, gone in an instant. She still smiled and drew her legs in. She was slight, and Ethan squeezed past without too much trouble. "Thanks," he murmured. She did not answer. Expression flat, she continued flipping through a vertical, thread-bound book. The cover read: Dream Pool Essays. The pages were yellowed with age. Ethan pulled out a bottle of water, twisted the cap, and drank nearly half in a few quick gulps. He set it on the fold-down tray, then shoved his bag into the narrow gap by his feet. The carriage buzzed with noise, layered with dialects from all over. Behind him, a middle-aged couple bickered over petty life stuff, the kind of argument that never really ended. "You shouldn't have gotten on." The voice came out of nowhere, cool and distant. Ethan paused and turned toward the girl with braids. "What?" Her slender fingers kept turning pages as if she had not spoken at all. For a moment, Ethan wondered if he had misheard. When she offered no reply, he frowned and let it go. He faced the window again. The train rolled forward, chugging along with a steady clatter. He closed his eyes, meaning to rest. Bang. Ethan snapped his eyes open. Cold spread across his thigh. The bottle on the tray had tipped over, soaking a dark patch into his pants. "Young man, I'm so sorry!" An old woman sat across from him, her face weathered, age spots scattered over dark cheeks. She held a little girl, six or seven at most, bundled in a red coat trimmed with white fuzz at the cuffs. The child clutched a battered thermos, shrinking into her grandmother's arms. "Big brother, I'm sorry..." the girl whispered. "I kicked the table by accident..." Ethan smiled and shook his head. He pulled a pack of tissues from his pocket and dabbed at the spill. "It's fine." The girl blinked up at him with watery eyes, lips pressed together. The old woman kept apologizing, but Ethan had already wiped his pants as dry as he could. He rummaged in his bag, found a lollipop, and held it out to the little girl with the tiny horn-like pigtails. "Here. Have some candy." "Huh?" Her eyes lit up as she stared at the lollipop, curious. "Oh, that's too kind..." The old woman smiled, wrinkles bunching like old bark. Ethan pressed the lollipop into the child's hand anyway and gave her forehead a light pat. The girl shoved it straight into her mouth, teeth crunching down on the plastic wrapper. Then she spat, "Ptoo, ptoo, ptoo," making a disgusted little face. Her big eyes filled with confusion. Ethan blinked, incredulous. "Not like that." He took it back, peeled off the wrapper, and handed it to her again. She accepted it carefully this time. She looked at the pink candy, gave it a cautious lick, and her eyes squeezed into happy crescents. "So sweet!" The old woman chuckled and stroked her hair, doting. "Say thank you to big brother." "Thank you, big brother!" The girl sucked on it happily, teeth clicking against the candy. Ethan found it strange. Were there really kids who had never eaten a lollipop before? "Big brother, what's that in your ear?" The girl pointed at his headphones. "It plays music. Want to listen?" Ethan gently placed one earbud in her ear. "Ah!" She jumped like she had been bitten, eyes wide with fear. She shook her head hard and looked to the old woman, panicked. "Grandma! There are little people talking inside my head!" Ethan stared, thrown off. This kid really was something. She acted like she had never seen candy, and an MP3 Player scared her half to death. He was about to explain when she suddenly stuffed the earbud back in herself. "Hee-hee! This is so fun!" Ethan laughed under his breath. That was what kids were like. Pure. Simple. Honest. He glanced at the girl with braids beside him. She sat there with the same cold indifference as before, and Ethan gave up on trying to make conversation. Behind him, the couple's bickering escalated into a real fight. They still tried to keep their voices down, probably because they were on a train, but the tension kept rising. Ethan did not find it too annoying. If anything, it was oddly interesting. This was part of traveling, after all. The warmth and mess of ordinary life could soothe even a tired heart. A man in a Gray Jacket dropped into the seat beside the old woman and child. The old woman glanced at him and nudged a woven plastic sack closer to her feet. He looked to be in his forties, temples gone white, face carved by hardship. The hand he rested on the tray table was rough, the kind of hand that did hard labor for a living. After a while, the old woman struck up a conversation with Ethan. "Young man, where are you from?" "Star City." Ethan did not feel particularly guarded. "Oh my, that's far!" Ethan smiled. "Star City? I've been there!" the man in jacket cut in, grinning. "Years ago, I went with a buddy. Ran into some trouble. My friend even died there." Ethan's smile faltered. He stared, surprised. The man was the talkative type. He latched onto Ethan and chatted about Star City's geography and culture, showing off just a little. Ethan had met plenty of people like that and took it in stride. The old woman chimed in now and then. Only the girl with braids stayed silent, as cold as ever. Meanwhile, the couple behind them grew louder and louder until it turned into full-on screaming. Nobody stepped in to stop it. Family fights were impossible to judge from the outside. Ethan thought about it and kept his mouth shut. "Ethan, come up front and have a cigarette with me," the man in jacket said suddenly, standing. Ethan waved him off. "I don't smoke." "Oh... not smoking is good." The man in jacket pulled out a pack and walked away. Ethan caught a glimpse of the packaging and froze. That pack... Wasn't that Stellar Union Cigarettes, the brand that had stopped production more than a decade ago? He did not smoke, but when he was little, he often ran errands to buy cigarettes for his uncle. His uncle's favorite had been Stellar Union Cigarettes. When they discontinued it, his uncle had sighed about it for ages. Ethan remembered it clearly. "Didn't think I'd ever see that brand again," he thought, wondering how the man had kept it. Or whether some back-alley workshop was secretly making them. Ethan picked up the bottle on the tray. Even after the spill, there was still a little left. He tilted his head back and gulped it down. Right then, a roar exploded from behind him. "Fuck! You bitch! You fucking bitch!" It was the couple. The argument had turned into pure abuse. Ethan twisted around. The man had gone red in the face, eyes blazing with rage. He had produced a cleaver from somewhere and brought it down on the woman's head with savage force. The blade lodged in bone. Blood sprayed across the window, painting the glass in a wide, wet fan. Red seeped and crawled down the pane. The man yanked his arm, tore the cleaver free, raised it again, and chopped down. Again. Again. "You bitch! I'll kill you! You should die!" He howled, roaring like a madman. Chunks of bone and flesh, clotted with strands of hair, dropped away. The woman's face was drenched in blood, yet she wore a twisted, gleeful grin. "You worthless piece of shit! Kill me, then! Worthless! Hahahaha!" A chill slid down Ethan's spine. For a moment, it felt like his breathing stopped. The old woman holding the child stood up and started cursing. "Animal! Shameless animal! You should all die! Die!" She clamped the girl tight against her chest. With her other hand, she began slamming down on the little girl's head over and over. Ethan's mind went blank. The girl's eyeball popped free. Sticky fluid stretched in strings. A nerve still tethered the eye to the socket, swaying like the loose earbud Ethan had not put in his ear when he boarded. The little girl laughed, sharp and delighted, clapping her hands. "Fun! Fun! Hee-hee..." At last. The girl with braids turned toward him. She was smiling, but her eyes were ice. "Handsome," she asked softly, "do you still remember... how you got on this train?" Ethan's heart seized. He turned to her, staring at that teasing smile, and a wave of dizziness hit him. Yeah... How had he gotten on? The memories before this moment blurred, as if someone had smeared them with a wet hand. He pinched his temples, trying to hold on as images flashed and broke apart. "I... I got dumped, so I went on a graduation trip to clear my head..." He forced himself to remember. "Then I was in Sea City, walking along the tracks, taking photos..." "I found a train that had been scrapped twenty years ago. Weeds had grown into the cars. I climbed inside, leaned back in a seat, planning to spend the night there... and go home tomorrow..." All at once, the world fell silent. Ethan looked around. Every single "person" stared at him with strange eyes. Their faces wore the same vicious, mocking smile. "Oh... looks like he figured it out," someone whispered. Boom. Ethan's scalp prickled as if it might split open.