Vol. 2a - BETWEEN STATIONS #1: Through Route
A STATION DARK public broadcast
Welcome to the signal.
Vol. 2a - BETWEEN STATIONS # 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Vol. 2b - THE LONG STAY # 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
Vol. 1 - STATION DARK # 1 (of 18)
Previously, on the STATION DARK finale: An ancient presence’s hold on a rural town is thwarted, but not before a young boy is lost within the hidden spaces of his house.
Read the STATION DARK finale HERE
Go back to where it all began with STATION DARK #1, a serial fiction in the surreal Midwest, HERE
Through Route
Aiden didn’t know how long he’d been there when he realized something was wrong.
He wasn’t in his room, which smelled like model glue and old laundry and dusty toys. He wasn’t in the hallway that usually clung to the scent of whatever meal was last cooked downstairs. He wasn’t even in the basement, which always smelled like old paint and pennies and made his mom say don’t touch anything down here, okay? This place didn’t smell like anything. That was the first thing that made his throat tighten.
The second thing that unsettled his skin was how quiet it was. It didn’t feel like bedtime quiet, which was warm and comforting and easily his favorite kind of quiet, even if his brother refused to accept bedtime. It definitely wasn’t snow quiet, either. This didn’t have the prick in the air or the indescribable tingle that came with it, like the sugar atop a Christmas cookie that put texture on the tongue. This kind of quiet felt damp. It made his ears feel stuffed, like when water remains in them after you’ve been swimming. Aiden pressed his hands over his ears, then pulled them away again, half-expecting the block to clear and sound to rush back in.
The sound didn’t come.
The space around him was narrow, with gray walls that somehow looked done but unfinished, like the builder had ideas for trim and molding but never came back to it. A light bulb hung from the ceiling, but it was off. The floor was cold, even through his socks, and when he shifted his weight, the sound of it didn’t quite match the movement.
Aiden swallowed.
“Mom?” he said.
His voice went forward and then sort of… fell apart. An echo came back to him thin and stretched, like someone else had spoken the words days before and he was just now hearing the memory of them. He hugged his arms around himself and felt his eyes sting.
Don’t cry. Crying made things worse. Crying made your head feel hot and floaty, and right now he needed his head to stay where it was.
He closed his eyes.
At first, it didn’t help. The dark behind his eyelids felt too much like the dark around him, somehow smothering and claustrophobic. But then, because he was trying very hard not to cry, a new thing slipped in.
His train table.
It was a memory struggling to find purchase, and he didn’t see the whole thing at first. Just the green engine. Its name was Oliver. Or maybe Oliver was the blue one. He mixed them up sometimes, but his mom never minded.
“That’s okay,” she’d said once, smiling as she handed him the little paintbrush. She’d been painting polka dots on a rail car. “Sometimes trains don’t tell you their names right away.”
Aiden pictured Oliver sitting on the track, not moving. Safe. Waiting. He imagined the tiny yellow stripe on its side and the way the wheels looked when you turned them with your finger.
“Green is a calm color,” his mom had said. “That one probably likes mornings.”
Aiden took a shaky breath. When he opened his eyes again, the space was still there. Still narrow. Still wrong. But it felt…a little farther away. He had room to breathe.
He took a step forward.
The floor didn’t move. The walls didn’t rush at him. Nothing grabbed him. It was just a hallway. He took another step. Then another, moving slowly, the way he did when he pushed the trains by hand instead of using the controller. If you went too fast, they tipped. Mom said they didn’t like being rushed.
The hallway slanted down just a little. Not enough to see it, but enough to feel it in your toes. It made his stomach feel funny.
At the bottom, the hallway opened into a bigger space. The room was wider, but the ceiling dipped low on one side, like it was tired. The walls leaned in at angles that didn’t quite match. On one of them, there were faint lines under the paint, like stripes bleeding through. Aiden stopped at the edge of the room and hugged himself again.
“I don’t want to be here,” he whispered.
Aiden’s eyes drifted to the floor. He imagined the train tracks there, curving gently around the edges, making a loop. His mom always liked loops.
“Loops are good,” she’d said. “They always bring you home again.”
He sat down cross-legged on the cold concrete and closed his eyes one more time. He walked back through his memory, picturing the table exactly the way it looked in the afternoon sun, with dust motes floating and his mom leaning against the door frame with her coffee, asking serious questions about very serious trains.
“So when’s this one’s birthday?”
Aiden smiled despite himself.
“He doesn’t know yet,” he’d said. “But probably October. Because he likes orange.”
The tight feeling in his chest loosened just a little.
That was when he heard the sound. It was a soft clicking, faint and distant, followed by something like uneven rolling, like a bowling pin going down a slope. Aiden’s head snapped up. The sound came from behind the far wall, and it was getting louder.
Aiden shook his head. No. I don’t want this… His heart started to beat too fast. He stood up quickly, then froze, afraid the movement might make it worse. The sound grew to something just short of a thunder, then stopped all at once, like it was pressed against the wall and listening.
Aiden turned around and saw the hallway behind him. It was longer than before. Halfway down the hall, something new had appeared. It was an opening on the left. A door, fully open, with carpet at its entry that looked soft, with warm brown and gold colors, like the shag carpet in his den that Dad wanted to rip out for something modern but Mom liked the cozy feel of the room. The sight here made Aiden’s legs ache. It looked like a promise of rest. Safety.
Aiden took one step toward it without meaning to. The sound behind him clicked again. Rolled again.
He stopped.
He remembered standing beside his mom, the trains around them, her tapping the table lightly with her finger.
“Sometimes,” she’d said, “trains want to stop where they shouldn’t. That’s how they get stuck. You have to keep them moving to keep them safe.”
Aiden pulled his foot back.
“I’ll come back later,” he told the beckoning open door, even though he knew it couldn’t hear him.
He walked past the opening, not daring to look into the room within it, and kept going straight. The hallway squeezed in tighter as he walked. The walls were close enough now that he could almost feel them breathing, expanding and contracting, raising and deflating. The clicking and rolling followed him now, always just far enough back that he couldn’t see it.
Aiden didn’t run. He walked with tears slipping down his face, not daring to make a sound. He imagined Oliver the engine on the track again, and his mom’s voice counting softly while they lined up the cars just right. When he finally reached the end of the hallway, there was another door.
It was plain. Too plain. And when he touched it, the wood felt warm. Aiden jerked his hand back and wiped it against his shirt. He shook his head, trembling.
The clicking shifted. Rotated. It moved above him, then in front of him, hovering just behind the door.
Aiden backed away. Don’t make noise. He went back the way he’d come in hurried steps, straight and steady, even though his chest hurt and his eyes were blurry. The carpeted opening was still there when he passed it. He still didn’t look within.
Back again at the other end of the hallway, in the crooked room, something had changed. On the wall, someone had drawn with chalk. He saw curved lines that looked like tracks, but they didn’t connect right. The turns were too sharp. The loop didn’t close.
Aiden stared at it. “That’s not how it goes,” he whispered. He closed his eyes and pictured his mom erasing it with her sleeve, laughing softly. “Try again,” she’d say. “We can always try again.”
Aiden opened his eyes. The chalk lines were still there, but beside them, something else had appeared. It wasn’t a door, exactly. A narrow opening had formed along the far wall, like a place where two pieces didn’t quite meet. A soft light spilled through it that wasn’t bright or warm, but it was steady. It didn’t hum. It didn’t whisper. It didn’t feel like it was watching him.
Aiden stood very still. He waited for the clicking and rolling to come back. It didn’t. He took one careful step toward the opening. The room didn’t tighten and the walls didn’t lean in. The light stayed the same, too. It wasn’t trying to trick him.
From where he stood, he could see through the gap. He saw wood, maybe. Or tile. A shape that could have been a doorway in a house that wasn’t this one. He thought he smelled something faint, like old paper or dust, or maybe the quiet smell of somewhere that hadn’t been used in a long time.
Aiden’s chest loosened just a little. “A good fit,” he said softly, the way his mom did when a train finally lined up right. He wiped his face with his sleeve, took a breath, and took another step. The opening widened enough to let him through.
Behind him, the crooked room stayed where it was, the dark within it threatening to take him away piece by piece. The chalk drawing had already begun to blur at its edges as if it had never been meant to last. Ahead of him, the light waited, and for the first time since he’d gotten lost, Aiden felt something he hadn’t expected to feel at all. Not safe… but not trapped. He had permission to keep going. As long as he kept moving, the dark couldn’t take everything at once.
*** End Transmission***
Read BETWEEN STATIONS #2, “False Platform”, HERE
Go back to where it all began with STATION DARK #1, a serial fiction in the surreal Midwest, HERE
Okay, wait, do you also have a podcast of these?! I'd totally listen! 💜