Vol. 2a - BETWEEN STATIONS #2: False Platform
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)
Aiden is lost within the hidden spaces of his house after an ancient presence fails to take hold in his rural town.
Read the first episode of BETWEEN STATIONS HERE
False Platform
Aiden came out of the narrow opening headfirst and stopped short, afraid he’d fall.
It was only a small step. The floor beneath him was real wood, not concrete, and it creaked softly when he shifted his weight. The sound was soft and familiar enough to make his chest ache.
The space was low and slanted, like an attic. The ceiling dipped down on both sides and the beams were exposed, thick and old, their surfaces rough with splinters and dust. Cobwebs sagged between them and a single bulb hung from a wire near the center of the room, glowing dimly but steady. Aiden let his shoulders drop.
The air smelled like dust and old paper and something faintly sweet underneath, like dried leaves. It was the kind of smell that meant nothing had happened here in a long time. There were boxes stacked along one wall, their labels faded to blankness, and a wooden chair sat crooked in the corner. He didn’t sit there. He sat on the floor with his knees pulled up, breathing hard, waiting for something bad to happen. Nothing did.
Aiden swallowed and hugged himself. He didn’t feel safe, being here, but he felt… comforted, like the space knew how big he was and had made room for him on purpose. The bulb cast soft shadows that didn’t stretch too far. The farthest corner stayed visible.
This isn’t so bad,” he whispered, though his voice shook.
The opening he’d come through was still there behind him, a thin vertical slit spilling the same pale light as before. It didn’t feel urgent. It didn’t pull at him. For a moment, Aiden thought about staying a while. The floor looked solid. The dust looked undisturbed. The bulb had probably been hanging there forever without falling. His legs started to settle. They yearned to stretch out. He stopped himself. His mom’s voice came back to him again. Sometimes trains want to stop where they shouldn’t. That’s how they get stuck.
Aiden pressed his fingers into his palms until they hurt. “I’ll just look around,” he told the room. “Then I’ll go.”
He crawled forward and stood up carefully, brushing his hands on his jeans. At the far end of the attic space, past the chair and the floating dust, there was another opening. It was wider than the one that brought him here but not as bright, not as welcoming. Beyond it, the wood changed color. Darker. Rougher. The beams were closer together and the dust piled thicker. Aiden stood very still and looked back over his shoulder. The attic light behind him hadn’t changed. It waited with quiet patience, and he knew, without knowing why, that the attic didn’t lead anywhere else. The thought scared him more than the dark opening did. Aiden took a breath and stepped forward.
The wood floor gave way to boards that didn’t quite meet, then to something that felt more like an abandoned shed than a room. The air cooled. The smell shifted from dust to earth. The beams were still wood, but they were older here, their surfaces cracked and soft in places. His fingers brushed something crumbly, and he pulled his hand back quickly. The light behind him faded, though he hadn’t gone far. He yearned for the warm glow of the attic but he didn’t turn around again.
The passage sloped downward and the wood slowly disappeared, replaced by stone and brick, mortared unevenly. Water dripped somewhere out of sight with an echo that carried too long, and Aiden’s heart started to beat faster. That was when he noticed the quiet wasn’t right anymore. It wasn’t damp like before. It wasn’t empty. It felt… attentive. He slowed, his steps careful now, each one chosen. The space ahead of him narrowed again, forcing his shoulders in. The walls were close enough that he could feel their cold through his shirt.
Beyond the walls, in a close yet indecipherable direction, something shifted its weight. He heard it as a groan and felt it as a rumble. Aiden froze. The sound was too big for the attic he’d left behind. The choice came to him all at once.
He could go back. The light was still there. He was sure of it. He could sit under the bulb and wait for someone to come. Someone always came eventually, right? But the thought of turning around made his chest tighten. There was no door that way, no path home. Only a room that held you in stillness.
Aiden swallowed and took another step forward. The space ahead of him darkened. Behind him, the sound followed. It began clicking... Click. Click. Click. And then the uneven rolling came again, like an oblong boulder going fast then slow, fast then slow.
The hallway he was in now was taller than the last one. The ceiling arched up and away, disappearing into shadow. The walls were closer together at the bottom and flared outward near the top, and they looked to be made of the same weathered wood as old planks left in a farmer’s yard for three seasons. The floor was a marble of cracked and uneven concrete.
Behind him, he heard the clicking and rolling, clicking and rolling, then a tapping like thin nails against wood, as if checking for soft spots. Then a pause. Then another tap, closer. Another pause, and something exhaled. It sounded like air being pushed out of a bag.
Aiden’s stomach clenched.
The thing among the walls was big. He knew this without seeing it. The sound didn’t echo right, filling the space instead of bouncing around in it. What was it doing now? Probably listening.
The tapping resumed.
Aiden didn’t run. He walked the way his mom had taught him to move his trains by hand. Smooth movements, no jerks. No panic. The hallway narrowed ahead, sloping down into something that looked almost like a crawlspace. The ceiling dropped low enough that an adult wouldn’t fit. Maybe not even a big kid.
Behind him, the tapping stopped. There was a scraping sound. A low, irritated noise, like something testing the walls with its weight. The hallway behind him shuddered, dust drifting down from the ceiling. Aiden ducked and slid into the smaller passage, and the space pinched tight around him immediately. His shoulders brushed the walls. His knees scraped the floor. He could hear his own breathing now, loud in his ears.
Something struck the opening behind him, and the hallway groaned. A second blow came, hard enough to make the concrete tremble. Aiden squeezed his eyes shut and crawled faster, tears dripping down his cheeks. He didn’t scream. He bit his lip until it throbbed in pain.
The thing can’t fit, he told himself. It can’t fit.
The sounds behind him changed. No more slamming. No more scraping. No more clicking or rolling. Instead, there was a soft, almost thoughtful tap. Like teeth touching. Like fingers pressing. It was against the wall, listening.
The crawlspace ended abruptly, spilling Aiden into a large, square room as big as a den. The ceiling was high, the walls unfinished. A single pipe ran along one side, sweating faintly. There were three openings, one high, one low, one narrow enough that it looked more like a crack than a doorway. Aiden scrambled to his feet and froze.
The walls here were marked, but not by chalk. These lines were darker, scraped into the concrete itself by frustrated claws. Long, vertical scores, evenly spaced, marking where a beast waited or lost a trail. The narrow opening had the most scars, as if something repeatedly had tried to claw through.
Above him, something shifted. Aiden heard the sound of weight redistributing, of limbs finding new purchase. This was a space it could get to. The clicks and rolling resumed.
His heart started to race. He pressed his hands flat against his chest, trying to slow it down. He glanced the way he came, narrow and safe but trapped forever, and he looked to the narrow crack, violently defaced and looking like a thorny tear in the stone.
The thing above him made a sound that might have been amusement. A choppy grumble, like a pile of rocks trying to laugh. The ceiling bulged slightly, pressing down to listen for him.
Aiden didn’t think. He dropped to the floor and slid into the crack. The space compressed around him instantly, tighter than anything before. He had to turn his head sideways. His arms scraped painfully along the walls. For a terrifying second, he thought he was stuck. Behind him came a rip and a roar, as if the walls and ceiling were coming apart like fabric, then a frantic scraping that shook the whole tunnel. The sound was sudden and enormous, shaking dust loose in choking clouds. It was a sound of frustration, of denied hunger.
Aiden squeezed forward. The crack resisted, then gave way. He stumbled onto a different floor, wide planks of wood this time, worn smooth by feet from sometime long ago. The air was cooler here, moving gently, as if the space were breathing. Behind him, the opening sealed itself with a low, echoing knock, and Aiden lay still, waiting for the dark to rush him again. It didn’t.
The room stretched long in both directions. Its ceiling was high and ribbed with beams that vanished into shadow. Lanterns hung at even intervals, glowing softly, though none of them had flames. Benches lined the walls.
There were signs posted overhead with arrows, numbers, and words rubbed thin, but there no doors. The space resembled a train station, but there were no tracks. There was no way to tell where anything was supposed to arrive. Many clocks on the far wall all showed different times, but none of them moved.
At the center of the room sat a single freestanding door, painted the dull green of old train cars. It wasn’t set into anything. It simply stood there, upright and complete, as if the room had been built around it afterward.
Aiden stared at the door, his heartbeat finally slowing. The space felt calm. Orderly. And completely empty of people.
Like everything that was meant to pass through had already gone.
*** End Transmission ***
Read BETWEEN STATIONS #3, “Last Call”, HERE
Go back to where it all began with STATION DARK #1, a serial fiction in the surreal Midwest, HERE