The Last Car by Emily Sowell
Ali was on her way home from her sister’s birthday party when her world cracked apart.
She hadn’t really wanted to go out on a weekday, but it was Sarah’s birthday. You have to go out on your sister’s birthday, even if it’s on a Thursday and even if it’s really cold outside.
So it was that Ali found herself at a very late hour collapsing onto a metal bench on the subway platform and gratefully taking her weight off her feet. The nude heels had looked so cute in the thrift shop that she’d gone ahead and bought them even though they were a half-size too small. An evening of walking first to Sarah’s new favorite restaurant, then to a series of increasingly-dive bars, had given Ali second thoughts about this choice.
The red LED clock above the platform said that the last train of the night would be arriving in seven minutes. She’d made it in time, despite her heels.
Ali glanced around and saw only two drunk young men with their arms wrapped around each other standing farther down the platform. Good for them, she thought.
She closed her eyes. It was just before two o’clock in the morning; she had to be at work in six-and-a-half hours.
Eyes still shut, she rummaged in her bag for her little bottle of ibuprofen. A headache was already creeping into her brain even though she was still kind of buzzed. One of Sarah’s friends had insisted on birthday shots. At least Ali had thought to buy a bottle of water for later.
Sarah had wanted Ali to spend the night at her apartment; but some of her other friends were staying over too, and the party was probably still going strong.
She twisted open the ibuprofen bottle and realized it was empty. Great.
Ali looked up at the clock: five minutes to go. The young men were shouting with laughter at some private joke.
She stared out at the empty space above the subway tracks. At least tomorrow was Friday. She’d planned to do some painting after work, but now she was going to be too tired. Saturday, then. After a week of trudging along as an administrative assistant at a particularly faceless law firm, Ali always needed to set aside some time to paint. She thought of Sarah’s friends, laughing in the yellow light of one of the bars, and how that image would look in oils.
The LED clock told her that the last train would arrive in three minutes. Ali stretched and rolled out her ankles one last time, then rose from her seat.
As she did, the lights went out.
Ali gasped. It was pitch black down here, and without the distraction of light, the cold slammed onto her body. She heard one of the young men cry out.
Then the lights were back. She glanced around, disoriented. Everything looked the same. The couple was laughing in relief.
“The hell was that?” the taller man asked her, smiling.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. But it’s not helping my headache.” Ali caught herself. “God, I sound old. I’m sorry.”
The other man laughed. “You’re good. Need an aspirin?”
“Oh, for real? Do you have some?”
“Sure.” He rummaged in his backpack and pulled out a sheaf of two-to-a-pack aspirin. “Never leave home without them.”
“You’re my hero,” she said, taking them with a grin. He smiled back.
Ali swallowed the pills and saluted the young men with her water bottle. She already felt better, even before the aspirin kicked in.
The air was still so frigid, though. And there was a smell that she hadn’t noticed before; something stale and heavy.
Ali discreetly moved just a little closer to the couple as they resumed chatting with each other. It was stupid, the brief blackout had probably just been a power surge; but she didn’t want to be alone, and the guys were nice.
She glanced at her phone. Even if there had been a signal down here, what was she going to do, wake up one of her parents to say that the lights in the subway had flickered? Ask them to come pick her up at two in the morning because the briefest of blackouts had scared her? Sarah was certainly in no state to drive.
The stale smell was filling her nostrils. Ali glanced over her shoulder involuntarily. She saw nothing out of the ordinary, but hugged her arms across her chest regardless.
At last, when there was one minute remaining on the red LED clock, the whooshing sound of the train came from the dark tunnel to her right. As it did, freezing air tickled the hairs at the back of her neck, which she suddenly realized was very exposed.
Then Ali felt herself sinking back onto the bench with a crawling horror, because there was another sound audible under the wind from the tunnel. It was metallic, crunching, like something being ripped open.
And it was coming closer, moving towards her with the sound of the train.
We need to go, she thought frantically. We need to go.
But she was unable to move. She felt colder than she’d ever been.
As Ali sat petrified, the train pulled up to the platform. There were more passengers inside than she’d expected; she had underestimated how many people spent their nights running the cogs of the city.
This ordinary thought, and the presence of other people, soothed her. Through the train windows, Ali saw a man in a maintenance jumpsuit dozing with his head lolled back, a pair of college-aged women wearing black who were probably restaurant servers, and a red-eyed man in a business suit. I’ll be safe inside, she thought, which scared her again.
The doors to the subway car whooshed open. The drunk young couple stumbled inside, laughing. They sat down together in a tangled heap.
One of the servers was grabbing her things to leave the train. They looked a bit like Sarah and her friends, Ali thought, that brightness of the very young.
Ali stood up, wincing as her heels bit into her feet, and stepped forward.
She was less than a pace away from the open subway doors when the power went off again.
The blackness was complete. The cold came back even fiercer, biting into her bones and bare skin and lancing into her lungs. Ali could not move, could not react, in the sudden void. She could hear only the blood in her ears.
Finally the lights came back on. Ali lunged forward towards the safety of the subway car, desperate to reach its light and warmth.
But as she did, her ill-fitting heel turned, and she collapsed onto the platform. The young server who was exiting the car stopped short, unable to get past her.
It was in that moment that the doors slammed shut in front of Ali, and the train began to move.
“No, no!” she cried, scrambling to her feet as the last train of the night pulled away without her.
But the train didn’t stop. It simply groaned as the car before her, carrying the laughing young couple and the late-night workers, pulled forward.
The server’s long braids were streaming behind her as she pounded in vain on the subway doors. Ali made eye contact with her for a heartbeat as the train moved away into the darkness.
Then Ali was alone on the platform.
The second subway car passed, then the third, picking up speed. There were a few passengers in each car, all half-asleep, all utterly unaware of Ali standing there, buffeted by the freezing air, watching them leave her–
And then she saw the last car, which was empty.
No. Almost empty.
In the terrible flash as it passed her, Ali saw that the last car contained a single figure. It was as black as a deep cave, and bone-skinny, and horribly tall.
It was standing in the corner unmoving.
Its legs were wrong.
Its arms were wrong; too long; disjointed.
And, visible despite its bowed head, were its bestial, sharp, glistening teeth.
As Ali watched helplessly, unaware that she was screaming, the skeletal figure raised its head and began to walk forward into the other subway cars.
—
Emily Sowell is a practicing attorney who lives and works in a small city in Florida. This is her first published work of fiction.
