She places her bag by her side as she sinks onto the station bench, glancing quickly around before opening her book. The train is due in five minutes but there are not many people around. They’re spread out along the platform, perhaps ten or so, each of them alone. Closest is the guy standing by the wall on her right, absorbed in his paper, oblivious to her presence.

She sighs and settles into her novel. Someone slides onto the bench beside her and she looks up with surprise, she hasn’t heard anyone. There’s a young man sitting there, who glances at her as she looks up. Wow, is the first thought in her head. Good looking, but maybe a little raggedy. He smiles and she forgets the ragged part. She smiles and puts her head back in her book, but she can still feel him looking at her.

In the midst of wondering if he’s getting on her train or not she hears a yell, though distant, it slices into her distractedness.

“Hey!” The yell is closer and she looks up. “You…!” The sentence isn’t finished as bone connects with bone with a surprising crack, and she sees to her left the guy with the paper go down. A second man falls on top of him; a dangerously ugly look contorting his features, as he continues to punch into the man’s head. She feels her mouth drop open as she watches them, barely a metre away. There aren’t any words being thrown back and forth, instead there’s a grunting on both parts, and something like a groaning. When the guy on top pulls out a knife her heart drops to her feet and her body freezes in horror.

Someone is speaking beside her but she can’t hear them, and then suddenly someone has her by the arm and is trying to pull her up. The knife is so close to her she can’t remove her eyes from the silvery gleam as it shimmers in the air.

Just as she thinks the knife is going to connect and she’s going to pass out the guy on the ground lets out a yell and throws his attacker. She tries to get out of the way and realises suddenly that the good-looking boy beside her has hold of her arm and is trying to stand in front of her. But he’s too late to help her. The guy with the knife careens into both of them with a force she can hardly believe, and her next thought is that she’s falling. The next image before her eyes the dirty gleam of metal tracks and then blackness.

Opening her eyes she sees a creased brow, knitted eyebrows, and worried brown eyes. Her intended saviour is bending over her. A sharp pain slices through her skull and her eyes roll back in her head. “No, no. Come back.” She feels him shaking her and her eyes snap back open. He smiles. She tries to smile.

She realises suddenly that she is vibrating, and looks around in confusion. He realises at the same time and turns abruptly. The train is coming. Before the truth can even hit her he has her in his arms and is hoisting her onto the platform. All pain forgotten she scrambles into the arms of the people waiting there, of which there is now an alarming number. But barely safe she swings around to make sure he’s following her. She sees the train coming and all the breath leaves her body. Never before has she realised how fast trains move, and never have they looked as deadly as they do in that split second.

But there he is, before her, still tangled in the arms of the people who dragged him to safety, looking precisely how she feels. The train glides into the station indifferently, choking the air with burnt electricity. He turns to her, his eyes wide, and without hesitation she throws her arms around him, gripping him violently to her. She thinks she hears him laugh with surprise, but his arms circle her and he hugs her back.

When she finally pulls away he’s smiling. She tries to smile but imagines it looks pretty shaky and unconvincing. “I’m Justin.” His bright smile makes her blush as he holds out his hand.

She tries to smile again, and thinks perhaps she has partly succeeded. “Lucy.” She takes his hand. She’s thinking what an extraordinary story this is going to make when quite suddenly his face begins to fade before her eyes. She shakes her head, trying to clear the fog, but he continues to disappear and the fog seeps in all around her. Is she blacking out again?

A sharp movement to her right startles her and she turns in confusion. There’s the guy with the newspaper, leaning against the wall. She blinks and looks again. He’s standing there as though nothing has happened. She looks up and down the platform. Everyone is standing precisely where they were before. There is no confusion, no crowd of people, no train, and she’s sitting back on the bench. The reality drops dully on her. She dreamed the entire drama.

The guy with the paper doesn’t have a scratch on him, has never been attacked at all, but he’s watching her. Her eyes adjust to focus on him and she sees that he’s actually looking behind her. Justin. She spins around as her heart leaps in her throat and almost laughs joyfully aloud as she sees him sitting there with his perfect smile.

But there’s something wrong, she thinks. She understands it all too late as he stands abruptly and lunges toward her. There’s no kindness in his eyes anymore. He grabs her bag and bolts, followed by his friend with the newspaper.

© Sara Skinner 2008

“There’s one!” Sam’s hand shoots out as she spots the rest area on the side of the road. A smile of relief washes over her face. “Finally.”

Her sister rolls her eyes. “What did you expect? We’re in the middle of nowhere. I told you to go before we left that last town.” Blaine indicates and pulls the car off the road. They drive in beneath a cover of old trees, facing a dilapidated block of toilets. Blaine flicks off the ignition. The music cuts off abruptly, plunging them into a sharp silence.

Hush falls across the roadside stop. The trees are still, no traffic passes. No birds. “Geez,” Sam mutters, looking around. “This place is like death.”

Blaine shrugs impatiently. “Just hurry up.”

Sam scrambles out of the car, rolling her eyes and biting back a reply. The heat leaps up at her, dry and stifling, and she shades her eyes against the glare as she jogs across the cracked earth. She looks around. It is too still, too quiet.

A loaded four-wheel drive passes on the road, splitting the stillness with a roar of horsepower. Sam’s heart skips a beat. She shakes her head, and laughs to herself.

Rounding the corner she peers gingerly into the ladies dingy toilets. She eyes the cubicles, all dark, cobwebbed, and dirty. Sam cringes. It’s like every other roadside public toilet, creepy and disgusting. She looks back in the direction of their car, contemplating whether to ask her sister to come with her, and then changes her mind. Too many movies, she thinks. I’ve seen too many movies.

She takes a step inside, and waits for the darkness to recede. The sudden roar of a truck on the road makes her jump. God, she thinks, is that going to happen every time someone passes on the road? The roadside is just too quiet. Every passing traveller is an invasion on foreign soil. She places a hand on her pounding heart. Idiot.

She tries the light switch. Nothing.

She shrugs. The open door gives enough light. She peeks into each cubicle before locking herself in the cleaner one in the middle. She listens as another car passes outside. At least it is a busy road. She gives the graffiti a passing glance and starts to hum softly to herself.

The dim sunlight pouring into the bathroom suddenly flickers. It takes her a few moments to realise that someone has passed the open door and cut out the light. She freezes. Sam feels her heart begin to pound again. Where have they gone? She forces a smile. There must be another traveller stopped. She hasn’t heard a car though.

A step sounds on the cement and Sam feels all her muscles seize in tension. It’s close. Or is it nothing? She sits stiffly, ears straining, half scared and half amused with herself. She takes in the silence, realising that the road is now as quiet as the surrounding bush. Nothing is moving. A sudden sharp noise reaches her ears, the slightest of movements, loud as a whiplash in the still. It’s like something brushing against brick. Someone is in here with her.

Sam feels a scream rising in her throat and a rush of fear bolts through her body. In the next moment she hears a giggle, and her entire body slumps with relief. “My god.” Sam groans, breathless. Her sister’s giggle is becoming a loud snorting laugh. “I can’t believe you…I’ll kill you Blaine…I really mean it…”

Sam hears Blaine laughing all the way back to the car, and can’t help but smile with stupid relief. She’ll be mad later.

She reaches for the toilet paper and something catches her eye. She looks up at the graffiti scrawled across the wall beside her. What was it she’d seen? She scans the meaningless junk written all over the place. There it is! It’s the date.

6th January 2007.

She frowns. That’s toady’s date. She reads the words above it and her frown deepens. Today is the day you come with me... A shiver runs down her back. What are the chances, she muses uneasily.

All of a sudden the light disappears and the bathroom plummets into darkness. Sam jumps. Someone is blocking the doorway. She rolls her eyes. “It’s not funny anymore, Blaine.” The shadow doesn’t move. The uneasy feeling intensifies. “Blaine?”

Music starts up outside. The stereo in the car is blaring. Blaine is in the car. Sam frowns. What’s going on?

The light bulb above her abruptly splutters to life and light fills the bathroom again. Sam glances up at the dim bulb nervously. Now it works? Sam finds she doesn’t want to open the door. She peeks through the crack. She can see the dirty washbasin, and the smudged cracked mirror, but nothing else. No one. She realises with a start that the door is closed, that there is no one blocking the light at all. Who has shut the door? The light flicks off and darkness envelopes her again. “Blaine!” She shrieks. “This isn’t funny.”

Hysteria is creeping through her body. When the light starts flicking on and off rapidly Sam thinks she could scream. One of the toilet doors slams and Sam does scream. It isn’t her sister. Something feels so very wrong. She looks at the date on the wall and for a moment thinks that it is actually glowing. The letters blaze under the flickering light. All of her previous panic resurfaces and she opens her mouth to scream again.

Blaine looks up from her magazine, the stereo pumping in her ears. “What was that?” She mutters, snapping off the music. Silence. Where the hell is her sister? A truck roars past on the road and she flinches. It’s so quiet. Eerie. An unsettling feeling descends on her, creeping and crawling up her back. Something is missing. She pockets the keys and wanders back to the toilets. What is Sam doing?

She rounds the corner and sees that the door is closed. Had she done that? She pushes it open. “Sam?” She peers inside and flicks on the light. Nothing happens. The gloom remains. “Sam, come on. What the hell are you doing?” It’s so quiet.

Blaine sighs loudly and wanders inside. She knocks on the centre door and jumps when it swung open with a bang. Sam isn’t in there. She checks the other cubicles. Nothing. She moves back out into the sun, glancing around in bewilderment. She checks the men’s toilets. Nothing. Blaine stands in the clearing in confusion and rising fear. Sam is gone.

© Sara Skinner 2011

Once upon a time the sky reached down to earth and the spirits from heaven walked the same ground as the living once again. Mist fell and swept the mountains, enveloped slopes of colossal monsters in the night, and swished silently down to valley floors. This soft white curtain leached out into the world of man…

Ghostlike forms of history hide amongst the white dew drops, carried quietly and quickly along in the utmost of secrecy. In rapt excitement they seep into the world of sleep.

Darkness of night finds local tenants warm and tight in dreams, unaware and ignorant of spectres in the fog. As past returns to present on this white eventide, spirits enter homes, and in the dead of night people’s dreams of everyday become something of an otherworld instead.

Images inconceivable distort sleeper’s happy thoughts, and terrors rise in dreams as fears grasp unreality. What do they whisper in the ears of dreamers? Hope, love, prayer? No. They whisper only of the future, the impending truth.

They whisper of a world that man of earth has yet to see, yet to even chance imaginable. Future and fate are not pieces of conscious destined for the earthbound. But the dead like to help. The dead tell the earthbound secrets, whisper them into their dreams. But the knowledge never lingers. Messages through the abyss are difficult, shadows light the way between the worlds, and only rare glimpses are ever held.

Man misses this opportunity when he wakes and fragments of dark and unnatural places loiter at the edges of the conscious. Pushing away all aberrant thoughts of unreality man goes back to everyday.

But the dead return with the fog always. Trying again and again.

© Sara Skinner 2010