The Vanishing Train Station

Mara Voss almost didn't get off the train. She was tired, her phone was dead, and the carriage was warm in a way that made her eyelids heavy. The window beside her had fogged over, and on the glass someone, long ago, had drawn a small house with a finger and then half rubbed it out. She had ridden this line for three years, and she had never noticed that little house before, and somehow it bothered her now.

She lived two stops further down the line, in a grey town with a supermarket, a launderette, and not much else. She rode this train every evening after work, and in three years she had learned the whole route by heart: every station with its cracked benches, its flickering lights, the exact order they came in. She could have named them in her sleep. So when the voice on the speaker announced the next stop, she knew at once that something was wrong, because the voice said a name she had never heard before.

"Hollowmere," it said. "This stop is Hollowmere."