The Last Train to Willow Creek

The last passenger train to Willow Creek left the city at 9:40 on a rainy Thursday, and it carried exactly one traveler. Conductor Dalia Ross punched the ticket twice out of habit, though no one else would ever need to see it. After forty-one years on the line, she was giving the carriages a final inspection.

A story for the long dark

The passenger was a young man with a battered cello case and a coat too thin for the weather. He said he was going to Willow Creek because his grandmother had lived there, and because nobody would be able to go after tonight. Dalia poured him tea from her flask and sat across the aisle.

"I will tell you why we never missed a stop," she said. "In my first winter, the signalman fell ill and a blizzard buried the track. Every station along the line lit a lantern in the window so the engineer could count them off in the dark. Eleven villages, eleven lanterns. We crawled through at walking pace, and not one of those lights went out."

The young man listened as the carriage swayed. Outside, small windows glowed past in the rain, each one a farmhouse or a crossing keeper's hut. He noticed that nearly every one of them held a lamp.

"They are still doing it," Dalia said. "Nobody asked them to. After the blizzard it simply became the custom. When the last train runs, they light the windows one more time."

At Willow Creek, the platform was full. Neighbors held umbrellas and thermoses and a brass band played something slow and warm. The young man stepped down with his cello and, because he did not know what else to do, he sat on a bench and played.

Dalia leaned from the cab and listened until the final note faded. Then she blew the whistle once, long and low, and the train rolled out into the dark for the last time, every window along the line still glowing.