The Empty Station

It was the summer I turned seventeen, the summer after my father’s funeral, and I’d started driving at night just to feel something other than the cold knot in my chest. My mother thought I was out with friends; in truth, I was tracing the empty highways that looped around our town, watching the streetlights blur into orange smears. I’d grown up with the rituals of the Church—the incense, the Latin chants, the stained glass—but after Dad died, I stopped going. What was the point of a God who let a man like him die of a heart attack at forty-two? I was furious, and I carried that anger like a shield.

Then there was Marcus. Marcus was the kind of friend you kept at arm’s length because he was too intense, too fascinated with the macabre. He’d lost his older brother two years ago to a drug overdose, and since then he’d become obsessed with the idea that the dead didn’t really leave. He would talk about ‘thin places’ and ‘lingering energies’ with a conviction that made my skin crawl, but he was the only person who didn’t flinch when I said I hated God. So when he texted me that night, telling me to come over, I didn’t hesitate. Anything to escape the silent house and my mother’s tear-stained face.

His place was a rundown farmhouse on the outskirts of town, set back from the road behind a grove of dying oaks. The basement was his sanctuary: black walls covered in posters of bands I’d never heard of, a ratty couch, a TV that flickered with static if you so much as breathed on it. We were deep into a game of some obscure RPG when Marcus paused, setting his controller down. ‘You ever wonder what happens after?’ he asked, his voice low.

I shrugged, not wanting to engage. ‘I don’t know. Nothing, probably.’

‘That’s what my brother thought. But I’ve been doing research.’ He pulled out a worn journal from under the couch, pages covered in his cramped handwriting. ‘There’s a place near the old railway station—abandoned since the 80s. People say there’s a portal there. A place where the veil is so thin you can communicate with the dead.’

I laughed, a hollow sound. ‘You’re joking.’

‘Come on, I dare you. If you really think there’s nothing after, prove it.’ He held up a camera—a cheap digital one—and his eyes gleamed. ‘We go there, we try to reach your dad. If nothing happens, you win. I’ll never bring it up again.’

The words hung in the air. My father’s face flashed in my mind—his laugh, the way he’d ruffle my hair. The anger surged. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’

The station was a skeletal relic: a wooden platform long eaten by weeds, a rusted sign that read ‘Falter Creek’, and a small waiting room with shattered windows. The moon was full, casting silver light over the tracks that led into a tunnel of overgrown trees. Marcus set up his camera on a tripod, pointing it at the platform. ‘We’ll ask questions,’ he said. ‘You first.’

I felt foolish, but I stepped forward. ‘Dad,’ I called, my voice echoing off the walls. ‘If you’re there, show me a sign. Anything.’

Silence. Just the wind rustling the leaves. Marcus gestured to the camera. ‘Let’s wait. I’ll play back the footage.’

We sat on the cold concrete, huddled against the wind. Minutes passed. I was about to call it a night when Marcus grabbed my arm. ‘Look,’ he whispered, pointing at the platform’s edge. A figure stood there—a tall man in a long coat, his face obscured. My heart hammered. ‘Dad?’ I said, stepping forward.

The man didn’t move. But then he spoke, and his voice was not my father’s. It was a chorus of whispers, layered and wrong. ‘You called… we came…’ And with that, the figure began to walk toward us, its steps leaving no sound.

Marcus was shaking, his camera clicking. ‘Run!’ he yelled, but my legs were frozen. The figure stopped a few feet away, and for a moment, its face flickered—my father’s face, eyes hollow and black. ‘Why did you leave me?’ I whispered. The figure tilted its head, and a grin spread across its lips, too wide. ‘We’re all here now,’ it said, and then the world went dark.

I woke up on the platform alone. Marcus was gone. The camera lay on the ground, its screen cracked. I stumbled to my car and drove home in a daze. I never saw Marcus again—his mother said he’d run away. But sometimes, late at night, I get a call from his number, and when I pick up, there’s only static and a whisper that sounds like my father, saying, ‘Come back. We’re waiting.’

I haven’t stepped foot in a church since. But I’ve also stopped driving at night. Because I know, now, that my father isn’t at peace. He is there, in that empty station, wearing a smile that isn’t his. And he is waiting for me to return.