The last train out of Marrow Creek left at 11:47, and Elias was already on it when he realized the station clock had stopped. He sat alone in the third car, the one with the cracked window that whistled when the wind hit it right. Outside, the platform lights slid backward and vanished. The conductor never came. Elias checked his ticket twice—Marrow Creek to the end of the line—and folded it into his coat pocket beside the key he had found that morning on the kitchen table. No note. Just the key, brass and warm, as if someone had been holding it. The train climbed. The trees thinned into rock, then the rock thinned into nothing he could name. At some point the lights inside the car dimmed to the color of old paper. Elias pressed his forehead to the glass. Far below, or maybe beside him, he saw the creek itself, black and narrow, threading between houses he almost recognized. One of them still had the porch light on. He stood. The aisle was longer than it had been. Doors that should have led to other cars opened onto rooms: a kitchen with the tap running, a bedroom with the quilt half-folded, a hallway where his own coat hung on a hook he had meant to fix. He did not go into them. The key in his pocket had begun to tick, soft and regular, like a second hand. At the front of the train the door was unlocked. Beyond it there was no engine, only a narrow metal walkway and the night. Elias stepped out. The wind smelled like rain on hot stone. The key fit a latch he had not noticed, set into the railing. When he turned it, the walkway extended—one plank, then another—out over the dark. He walked until the train was a small light behind him. Ahead, someone was waiting at the end of the planks, coat collar up, face turned toward the creek. Elias knew the set of the shoulders. He had seen them every morning in the mirror for forty years. The figure did not turn around. “You’re late,” it said.