Platform Thirteen

The last train on the Rivermag Line is 23:48. It runs express, straight through, and does not stop at several of the smaller stations along the way. What the night-study students wait for is the 00:20 extra service, which runs later on Fridays and public holidays. The last cell of the timetable ends at 00:20, and below it the table jumps to the 05:30 first train the following morning. For the 7 hours in between, the official documents give three characters: not in service.

But on some nights, after the last train has gone, the platform lights flicker once more—not the way a failing tube flickers, more as though someone had slapped the back of the light panel—and the announcement says the next train is arriving. On the display, the cells that should hold the service name, the train number and the stopping pattern are all empty. Only three characters are left: Terminal.

The train comes in slowly. The rails give off none of the usual high-frequency metal noise; the whole carriage sounds as though someone had turned the volume knob down very low. The lights inside run yellow, close to the color temperature of a 1980s incandescent bulb. After the scrolling display finishes with "No eating or drinking, keep quiet," it stops on a cell holding a single dash—the cell that should carry the name of the next station. Outside the windows there are no tunnel lights, only rows and rows of small paper lanterns, each with a slip of paper pasted to it, the edges worn to fuzz, and in the middle of every slip the same character: 過.

As the train passes the third station a run of sounds goes off—one small gong, half a second later a wooden fish, half a second after that a bell: three sounds, two intervals. After that the announcements stop naming stations, until the final stop: "Platform Thirteen. Please mind the gap."

Platform Thirteen exists on no route. The tiles are white with a cast of cyan in them, the color of old toothpaste, and the platform lights hang 1 centimeter lower than usual. The station sign is black on white; the ink of the two characters for "thirteen" is a little heavier than the character before them, as though someone had just filled them in. Anyone who gets off and looks back finds the sign already gone from the wall. The old people of Qingcheng have a saying: that train in the middle of the night runs for the ones who never left.