The Carriage of Broken Rails

It was the summer of 2012 when my mother and I found ourselves stranded on the platform of a small coastal junction, our nine suitcases forming a small fortress around us. The train that had brought us here had departed, and with it, the last of the evening’s bustle. The station, named after a forgotten saint, was now a cavern of echoes and half-lit bulbs. My mother, a woman of determined practicality, had gone in search of a porter, leaving me alone with our mountain of luggage and the creeping dread that settles when daylight abandons a place.

We were at the far end of the platform, our coach having been at the head of the train. The only other presence was a single, solitary train idling on the adjacent track, its destination board dimly reading ‘Vasco.’ It seemed abandoned, its windows dark, its doors sealed. The air was thick with the smell of diesel and salt, and the silence was so profound that I could hear my own heartbeat, a frantic drum against my ribs.

As the last light of the sun bled into the horizon, a strange compulsion seized my mind. Images began to flash unbidden: bodies tumbling between platforms, limbs twisted on the rails, the sickening crunch of metal on flesh. I tried to shake the thoughts, but they clung like cobwebs. My mother had taught me to pray in times of fear, so I began to whisper the prayers I knew, my lips moving silently, my eyes fixed on the Vasco train.

That’s when I noticed a subtle vibration underfoot. The train on track three was moving. It started so slowly that at first, I thought it was my imagination, a trick of the fading light. But then, with a hiss of brakes, it lurched forward, gaining momentum. And in that moment of motion, a man appeared from the shadows between two carriages. He was sprinting alongside the train, his coat flapping, his arm outstretched to grab a handrail. I saw his face briefly in the dim light—gaunt, hollow, with eyes that seemed to be pleading. He caught the rail, but his grip slipped, and his body twisted, and he fell, vanishing beneath the wheels with a sound that I have never been able to erase from my memory.

The train did not stop. It continued to crawl forward, as if indifferent. I stood frozen, my prayer dead on my lips. No one else was on the platform to witness it. There was no cry, no whistle, no alarm. Just the grinding of wheels and the silence that followed.

My mother returned moments later, breathless, a porter in tow. She did not see the look on my face. She did not see the spot on the rails where I was sure a dark stain was beginning to form. We loaded our luggage onto the porter’s trolley and left the station, but I couldn’t shake the image. In the taxi, I asked her, ‘Did you see anyone fall?’ She looked at me strangely. ‘There was no one on that train, beta. It’s an empty rake going to Vasco for maintenance.’

That night, in our hotel room, I could not sleep. The image of the man haunted me, his desperate face, his futile attempt to hold on. In my mind, I replayed the moment over and over, and I began to notice details I had missed: his clothes were not of this era—a buttoned vest, a pocket watch chain, a captain’s hat. And his face, now that I thought of it, was strangely familiar.

The next morning, I searched the internet, looking for any news of an accident at the station. Nothing. But as I scrolled through old railway records, I found a photograph from 1962. It was a train crew, standing proudly before a locomotive on the very same line. And there, in the front row, was the man from the platform. His name was Arjun, a young officer who had died in a derailment that year, trying to save his passengers. The accident had occurred exactly fifty years ago, to the day.

I have never returned to that station. But sometimes, in the quiet moments before sleep, I hear the sound of wheels on rails, and I see his face again, not pleading now, but peaceful, as if he found what he was looking for. And I wonder if he was trying to tell me something, or if I was just a vessel for a memory that would not rest. The carriage of broken rails, they call it now, a derelict that sits in a siding, never to be used again. But I know better. It is a vessel for the dead, and they still ride it, searching for a way out.