Chapter 40: What Was Left Behind, VI
Back home I found a note.
It wasn't signed.
It was folded once and left beneath the journal on my desk. A simple slip of paper, the kind used for classroom memos or grocery lists. The ink had bled slightly from the cold air seeping through the windows. The edges were worn, as if someone had carried it for some time before placing it there.
The handwriting was neat. Blocky. Familiar in a way I couldn't place.
"Come to the old station. Where the bell never rings."
The phrasing caught me more than the message. It didn't feel urgent. It felt inevitable. Like the words had always been waiting for me to read them. Like the had been written long before I arrived.
I read it once, twice, and again. Only that it was there, and once I'd read it, I couldn't stop thinking about it. It didn't feel like a suggestion. It felt like a summons.
Like something I had already agreed to.
***
I arrived just after dusk.
The old station was farther east than I had ever been—past the river, past the warehouse rows and rusted tram lines that hadn't seen service since the war scare. The city thinned there. Roads broke into gravel, and fog pooled low between the buildings.