Chapter 3 The Last Ticket
“Cass gripped the armrest, her voice barely a whisper.
‘If the Midnight Tide catches us… It won’t just flood the tracks.
People have drowned in dry trains before.’”
The true cost of the past is the darkness it leaves behind, but sometimes, the dark is the only place things finally become clear.
Evan watched Cass as she finished describing the Legend of the Midnight Bell. She tried to hide her pride behind practical words, but her eyes betrayed her... bright, steady, luminous even in the jittery halo of the lantern between them.
She spoke of the old tale lightly, as if she didn’t quite believe in its magic.
But Evan felt the weight of it settle in the cramped train car like fog settling over the sea.
It wasn’t just folklore.
It was a belief system.
A compass.
A promise of something fated.
He wanted that.
Needed it, even.
Because after ten years chasing music across continents, he was coming home empty-handed... no album, no money, no song worthy of the life he’d burned for it.
“That’s some story,” Evan murmured, letting admiration slip into his tone. “I think I wish I believed in fate that much. Right now, it feels like my luck is… mostly bad. Getting stranded on this train. Coming home with nothing to show for ten years of work.”
Cass didn’t hesitate. She leaned in, as if pulled toward him by something she didn’t want to name. “You traveled. You saw the world. You played. You lived. That’s more than most of us who get stuck here.”
Evan felt it too, the quiet gravity between them and hated how easily it steadied him. Nothing had calmed him like this in years. Not music. Not movement. Just her.
The bitterness in her voice wasn’t aimed at him.
He heard the self-directed edge.
Evan shifted the silent guitar case with his foot, stickers peeling from cities he once thought would define him. “The stories are good,” he admitted. “But when I look at these...” he tapped the case “...I don’t see adventure. I see exhaustion. I’m supposed to be writing my ‘life song,’ the one that finally means something. But I can’t find the melody.”
He flipped open his notebook, its pages blank and bright as accusations.
Cass looked at the empty pages and saw herself... full of things she never said out loud. For a moment, she wanted to take the pencil from him and write something just so neither of them had to sit with the silence alone.
Cass’s gaze softened. She knew that kind of silence, the kind that came not from lack of ideas, but from fear of putting something real down.
“And you?” Evan asked, because he recognized his vulnerability too quickly in her eyes. “You live in the lighthouse. You guide ships. That’s the purpose. That’s… saving people.”
“It’s a duty,” Cass said. The word rang heavy, like metal. “My mother’s health hasn’t been stable for a year. Someone has to manage the generator, the rotation, and the timing. And that someone is me. It’s what I have to do.”
He studied her for a moment. “But is it what you want to do?”
The question landed like a gust of cold air in their warm, lantern-lit bubble. Cass’s gaze dropped to the camera bag at her feet... worn canvas, frayed straps, a quiet ache wrapped in fabric.
“I’m a photographer,” she whispered, as if saying it made the dream fragile again. “Or… I want to be.”
Evan didn’t look away. He held her gaze like he was afraid she might disappear if he blinked, like her answer mattered more than his own future.
Evan’s focus sharpened. “You are one. You either take pictures or you don’t. Do you?”
She nodded. “I had a chance, a major opportunity. A scholarship to London. A year of study. It would have changed everything.”
“And you didn’t take it.”
He didn’t accuse.
He merely recognized the shape of her hurt because it mirrored his own.
“I missed the deadline,” Cass said, though the lie clung to her voice like damp wool. She hadn’t missed it. She’d let it rot. She’d shredded the papers two weeks ago, listening to her mother cough through the night. “The storm was coming early. The light needed tending. It felt selfish to worry about a dream when reality was collapsing at home.”
Evan leaned back, but his gaze didn’t loosen. “Dreams don’t wait, Cass. They fade. And when you look back, you realize duty didn’t ask you to give them up, you just… traded them for guilt.”
Her irritation flared so fast she almost flinched at her own reaction. “It wasn’t a trade. It was what I had to do.”
“Was it?” His voice was too gentle, too understanding. “Or was it easier to sacrifice the thing that scared you the most?”
That hit her square in the chest. Too loud. Too true.
Before she could respond, the train jolted violently.
A metallic groan rolled under the floorboards, followed by the slap of cold water against the sealed windows.
Evan grabbed the armrest.
Cass steadied the lantern before it toppled.
“Is that fate disagreeing with me?” Evan asked, half-grinning despite the shock.
“That’s the tracks flooding,” Cass said, trying to disguise her panic. She checked her phone. 11:38 PM. “We’re running out of time. If we don’t clear the trestle before midnight…”
“We get wet?” Evan asked lightly.
“No.” Cass swallowed. Hard. “We get trapped.”
His smile vanished.
“What happens at midnight exactly?”
Cass looked toward the dark outside, where nothing existed but reflections of their fear. “The Midnight Tide comes in. The entire coastline rises. Fast. Violently.”
“And the train can’t outrun it?” Evan asked.
“Not in this weather. Not at this speed.”
Evan’s voice dropped. “Cass. How bad is ‘bad’?”
She didn’t answer at first. The silence stretched, trembling like a thin wire. Evan could see the truth forming in her throat long before she spoke it.
When she did, her voice was barely above a breath.
A confession dragged from the deepest corner of the town’s history.
“If the Midnight Tide catches the train,” she whispered, “people have drowned in carriages that stayed perfectly dry.”
Evan froze. “That’s not possible.”
“Tell that to the five who died in 1983. No water. No leaks. Just… gone.”
He stared at her. “Gone?”
She nodded once. “That’s the part the brochures don’t print.”
The train lurched again, harder this time. The lantern’s flame thrashed, shadows slicing across their faces like warnings.
Outside, a wave slammed the tracks with the force of a fist.
Evan reached toward her, not touching her, but close enough that she could feel the heat of his hand.
Cass’s breath caught. The space between them felt louder than the storm. She didn’t pull away and the realization scared her more than the tide.
“Cass,” he murmured, “what aren’t you telling me?”
She looked at him then, really looked.
As if the truth itself was rising with the tide.
“There’s something worse than the water,” she said. “Something that comes with the tide. Something my mother swore was real. Something my father...”
She stopped herself. The word hung between them like a ghost.
“Your father?” Evan pressed. “What happened to him?”
Cass shook her head, but her eyes betrayed her.
Fear. Memory. Pain.
Another violent jolt rocked the car, cutting off her words. The lantern nearly fell this time; Evan caught it with one hand, steadying it.
Cass’s voice shook.
“We have twenty minutes until midnight. And we’re not going to make it.”
Evan felt something cold ripple through him, darker than fear.
A feeling he hadn’t let himself face in years.
Fate.
Not the pretty kind.
The kind that comes for what you owe.
Outside, something howled against the metal frame of the train... wind, or water, or something else entirely.
Cass didn’t look away from him.
“We need to get to the front car,” she said. “Now.”
“And if we don’t?” He asked.
Her answer was barely a whisper.
“Then whatever took them… takes us too.”