Chapter 4: The Collector on the Train

Chapter 4: The Collector on the Train

Leo ran.

He didn't know where he was going. He didn't care. He burst from the heavy doors of St. Jude's, gulping down the grimy city air as if it were the purest oxygen. The silver rosary was a knot of cold, sharp metal clenched in his fist, its crucifix digging into his palm. It was a useless talisman, but it was real, something to hold onto as reality dissolved around him.

The city, once a familiar backdrop to his mundane life, had become a hostile landscape. Every puddle on the cracked pavement seemed to stare up at him like a black, unblinking eye. He flinched away from a burst fire hydrant spraying a joyous arc of water across the street, the sound of the gushing liquid a terrifying echo of the priest’s last, gurgling laugh. The faces in the crowd were a blur, but in his peripheral vision, they all seemed to be watching him, their expressions passive and unknowing.

His apartment was compromised. The church was a slaughterhouse. There was no sanctuary. There was only flight. His frantic, animal brain offered up a single, desperate idea: distance. He needed to put miles, hundreds of them, between himself and that place. Between himself and that spreading puddle of unholy water.

He found himself swept along by the current of pedestrians, his path dictated by blind instinct until he saw the imposing grey architecture of the central train station. It was a place of departures, of escape. Perfect.

Inside, the station was a chaotic symphony of rolling luggage, garbled announcements, and the mingled scents of diesel fumes and cheap coffee. The anonymity was a relief. Here, he was just another face in the river of humanity, another person running from something. He stumbled to the ticket counter, his eyes darting around the hall, half-expecting to see a trail of wet footprints materializing on the polished floor.

“A ticket,” he gasped to the bored-looking clerk.

The woman chewed her gum slowly. “To where?”

“Anywhere,” Leo said, his voice a ragged whisper. “The next train. The one leaving soonest. I don’t care where it goes.”

He threw a wad of cash onto the counter, not waiting for the change. The clerk, with a roll of her eyes, slid a ticket under the glass. ‘Northbound Local. Track 7. Boarding Now.’

Leo snatched the ticket and ran.

Track 7 was a rush of hissing steam and the screech of metal on metal. He scrambled aboard the train car just as the automated warning chimed, the doors sliding shut behind him with a pneumatic sigh that felt like a cell door locking. For the first time in hours, he felt a fractional, microscopic easing of the tension in his chest. He was moving. He was escaping.

He collapsed into a window seat, the worn fabric of the chair rough against his back. The train gave a lurch and began to pull away from the station, the grim cityscape sliding past the rain-streaked glass. He watched the buildings thin out, replaced by suburbs, then by fields and skeletal trees veiled in mist. Each click-clack of the wheels on the track was a beat in a mantra of escape. Further away. Further away. Further away.

He was alive. He was sane. He had witnessed the impossible, but he was getting away from it. He could disappear. Start a new life in some forgotten town where no one knew his name. A place without old churches and cursed wells.

He let his head fall back against the headrest, closing his eyes for just a second. The image of Father Renwick’s body, bent into that horrific, prayerful arch, flashed behind his eyelids. He saw the man dissolve, the dark water spreading. The Drowned Mark. The words made his stomach clench.

It was the feeling of being watched that made him open his eyes.

Across the aisle, a woman was staring at him.

She sat perfectly still, a worn, canvas shopping bag resting on her lap. At a glance, she was unremarkable—a thin woman in a simple, floral-print dress that seemed out of season for the damp, cold day. But as Leo’s tired eyes focused, the details began to assemble themselves into a portrait of profound wrongness.

Her neck was just a little too long, holding her head at an angle a swan might envy but a human could never achieve. Her shoulders were set too high, angled up toward her ears in a way that suggested the bones beneath were not quite right. A smile was plastered on her face. It was a wide, beaming, toothy smile, but it didn't touch her eyes. Her eyes, a pale and washed-out gray, were fixed on him, and they did not blink. Not once.

Leo’s blood ran cold. He tried to look away, to dismiss her as just another one of the city’s strange inhabitants, but he couldn't break her gaze. It was a magnetic, knowing stare, filled with a kind of placid, detached amusement. The train swayed, and her arm, resting on the seat beside her, bent at the elbow. The movement was fluid, but wrong. The angle was too acute, like a twig bent just shy of its snapping point.

He was looking at a puppet, a marionette assembled by someone who had only ever read a description of a human being.

His gaze, frantic and desperate, dropped from her unnerving face to the bag on her lap. It was a cheap bag, the kind you get for free at a street fair. It was slightly damp at the bottom, a dark ring of moisture staining the beige canvas. And from the top, peeking out from behind a wilted head of lettuce, was a handle. A plastic handle of vibrant, startling blue.

Leo felt the air leave his lungs in a silent, painful rush.

It was the toothbrush.

Not one like it. The toothbrush. He knew it with a certainty that defied all logic. It was the same shade of impossible blue, the same cheap design. A single, perfect drop of water clung to its plastic neck, glistening under the train car’s fluorescent lights, refusing to fall.

He looked back at her face. The smile hadn't wavered. It was a smile that said, I was waiting for you. It said, Did you really think you could run?

The train rattled on, hurtling through the darkening countryside. But it was no longer a vessel of escape. It was a cage. A sterile, metal trap, and he was locked inside with the thing that had come to collect him. The click-clack of the wheels now sounded like a ticking clock, counting down the last seconds of his life. And the woman across the aisle just sat there, smiling her too-wide smile, with his damnation peeking out of her shopping bag.