Chapter 2: The M Train Wail

Chapter 2: The M Train Wail

Sofia slammed the closet door shut, the cheap wood shuddering in its frame. The sound echoed in the sudden, ringing silence of the apartment. Her heart was a trapped bird beating against her ribs.

Old building, she told herself, the words a frantic, silent mantra. It’s the pipes. It’s the wind. It’s the cheap whiskey making you hear things.

She stood there for a long time, back pressed against the opposite wall, eyes locked on the closet as if expecting it to lunge at her. The money on her bed, once a symbol of her desperate victory, now felt like an offering left at a cursed altar. The silence didn't feel empty anymore; it felt watchful. Waiting.

Sleep was impossible. Every creak of the floorboards, every groan from the ancient radiator, sent a fresh spike of adrenaline through her system. She spent the night huddled in her worn armchair, a half-empty bottle of whiskey her only companion, watching the first grey hints of dawn bleed through the grimy window.

The high of the money had soured, leaving behind a familiar, acrid residue of self-loathing and a gnawing physical need. The thousand dollars wouldn't last. It never did. The eviction notice on her laptop screen still blinked its hateful red rhythm. Rent was only the first monster at the door. Her addiction was the one that lived inside.

Just as the sun rose, casting long, distorted shadows across her cluttered floor, her laptop chimed. A new email. Her stomach twisted into a knot of dread and desperate hope.

She forced her trembling legs to carry her to the desk. The subject line read: My sister, Eliza.

Sofia clicked it open. It was from a man named Mark. His sister had jumped in front of a downtown M train two days ago. She’d been struggling with depression for years, he wrote. But she was a fighter. He couldn't reconcile the woman he knew with the final, violent act. He just wanted to believe she hadn’t been scared at the end. He wanted a note that gave her a peace he couldn’t imagine for her.

The M train. The one whose rumble she could feel through the floor of her apartment at all hours.

The closet creak seemed to whisper in her memory. A warning. This was a dark road, and the first step had already shaken the ground beneath her feet. She should delete the email, smash the laptop, and run.

But the tremor in her hands was back, worse than ever. The craving was a physical pain, a screaming emptiness that only money could fill. Fear was a luxury she couldn't afford. Denial was her currency.

She typed a reply, her price higher this time. The money hit her account in under five minutes.

With the transaction confirmed, a cold resolve settled over her. She was a professional, after all. This was a job. She poured the last of the whiskey into her mug and began to write.

This time was harder. Brandon’s quiet despair was a familiar landscape. Eliza’s final moments were a canvas of screeching steel and public horror. Sofia closed her eyes, forcing herself to the edge of that platform. She imagined the roar of the train, the hot wind, the split-second of terrifying decision.

Then she wrote the opposite.

Mark, the letter began, in Eliza’s imagined voice. Don’t be sad. For the first time in so long, I felt quiet. When the wind came, it didn’t feel like a train. It felt like it was lifting me up. I wasn’t falling. I was flying. I’m free.

It was a saccharine, beautiful lie. A comforting poison. She polished the prose until it shone, a perfect counterfeit of peace. She attached the file, her finger hovering over the send button. The image of the scarlet cave flashed in her mind—her father’s final, silent truth. She was building monuments of lies on top of graves.

She clicked send.

The payment arrived instantly. The digital confirmation felt hollow. The apartment suddenly felt smaller, the walls closing in. The watchful silence was pressing on her ears. She had to get out.

She grabbed her worn leather jacket and the wad of cash from the Brandon commission. The sun had set hours ago, plunging the city into its electric twilight. Her dealer was across town, a short, necessary journey on the M train. The irony was a bitter pill, but she swallowed it down. She needed the fix more than she feared the coincidence.

The subway station was a cathedral of urban grime, the air thick with the smell of damp concrete, ozone, and desperation. The platform was mostly deserted, just a few other ghosts of the city waiting under the flickering fluorescent lights. The tiled walls were covered in a mosaic of graffiti and filth.

Sofia stood near the edge, hugging herself against a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. The distant rumble began, a low vibration in the soles of her feet that grew into a roar in her bones. The sound of Eliza’s death. The sound of her latest lie.

As the train’s headlights cut through the tunnel’s darkness, she noticed him.

He was standing twenty feet away, near a steel support pillar. A tall man in a heavy, brown raincoat, the collar turned up high and a deep hood shadowing his face. He was unnaturally still, a statue amidst the subtle motion of the station. She hadn't seen him arrive. He was just… there.

A prickle of unease ran down her spine. There was something wrong about his stillness, something predatory. She looked away, focusing on the approaching train, telling herself she was just strung out and paranoid.

The train thundered into the station, a whirlwind of noise and hot, displaced air that whipped her hair across her face. The doors hissed open. Sofia took a step forward.

The man in the raincoat moved, a blur of brown fabric, and was suddenly in her path, blocking her way to the open doors.

“Hey, buddy, move it,” she snapped, her voice sharper than she intended.

He didn't respond. He didn't even seem to breathe. She tried to step around him, but he mirrored her movement, a silent, impassable wall. Annoyance curdled into fear. She could feel a strange cold radiating from him, a damp, grave-like chill.

“What the hell is your problem?” she demanded, pushing at his chest.

It was like pushing against a brick wall. He didn't budge. He slowly, deliberately, tilted his head down.

Sofia looked up into the cavern of his hood, expecting to see a face.

There was no face.

Where his features should have been, there was only a swirling, deep red void. A wet, gaping wound, identical to the memory seared into her brain. The scarlet cave. But this one was alive. It pulsed with a sickening, liquid motion, and as she watched in frozen horror, a chunk of gore dripped from the abyss, spattering silently on the grimy platform.

A scream died in her throat, strangled by pure terror. This wasn't a man. This was her father’s death, wearing a coat.

Before she could react, his arm shot out. His hand, covered in a stained leather glove, clamped around her bicep. The grip was impossibly strong, cold as death. He leaned in, and a sound came from the depths of that crimson horror—not a voice, but a low, wet wail, like wind howling through a wound.

Then he shoved her. Hard.

Sofia stumbled backward, her feet tangling. Her head cracked against the steel support pillar. Stars exploded behind her eyes. She collapsed onto the filthy concrete, the breath knocked from her lungs.

The warning bells chimed. The train doors hissed shut. With a lurch and a screech of metal on metal, the M train pulled away from the station, its yellow windows sliding past her dazed eyes.

When the last car disappeared into the tunnel, plunging the platform back into its humming, fluorescent quiet, he was gone.

Sofia lay there, gasping for air, a sharp, throbbing pain radiating from the back of her head and her arm. She shakily pushed herself up, her entire body trembling. Was she insane? A hallucination? A waking nightmare brought on by stress and withdrawal?

Then she looked at her arm, at the spot where he had grabbed her.

Through the thin fabric of her jacket, the distinct, angry red outlines of four fingers were already beginning to bloom into a dark, ugly bruise. The pain was real. The terror was real.

The ghost from her closet had followed her out. And it could touch her.