The Haunted Traveler December 2017 Edition

“Are you going to haunt me?” I asked.
“I have more important things to do.” I recalled that it was I who had first declared
I wanted to break up with her.
“Then why are you on this train?”
“I need to . . . resolve a few things I still have left to do.”
With that, she pulled open the exit door and I recoiled, both from the noise and out
of an instinct of self-preservation.
“What are you doing?” I yelled as I grabbed a safety handle.
“You seem so comfortable now, it isn’t good,” she said.
“I just did what a normal man would have done,” I yelled.
“I don’t know why that should matter to you—or to anyone.”
The train went into a curve and as I held tighter, she leapt from the door into the blur
of marsh grass that lines the Connecticut shore. I leaned out a little to see, but my native
caution held me back. She was gone—whatever “she” had been—just as she had been
right in front of me a moment before.
I heard someone yell from within the car where I’d been sitting, and the train lurched
to a halt, throwing me up against the metal door. The conductor came running up—I
could see him through the glass doors—and the look on his face was that of a man
forced to do his duty, distressed to think of the complications that had entered his life
to break his dull routine.
“What happened?” he said.
“That woman—she jumped from the train.”
“Were there any witnesses?”
“No one was here but me.”
“Did you know her?”
I hesitated, too much for my own good. How was I to explain that the soul of a
woman who’d been my lover had occupied the body of another, found me on a train
that carried me and my wife, disturbed the peace I’d found late in life, all, apparently, to
prove a point?
“She resembled a woman I used to know,” I said, and there was the uncertainty of the
liar in my voice, audible even to myself. “I struck up a conversation with her.”
“Here? Between the cars?” the conductor said. I could feel the train moving now;
apparently they weren’t going to try and find Marci, or at least the corpse she had
commandeered. I knew there was another train right behind us.
“Well, yes. We didn’t want to disturb others.”
“Let me see your ticket,” he said. “Who’s the woman you’re travelling with?”
“That’s my wife.” He looked at me with suspicion, then took a walkie-talkie from his
belt.
“I’m going to need police at the Mystic station,” he said into the mouthpiece. “There’s
a guy on board who they’re gonna wanna talk to.”
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