Gilded Graves

The 00:00 Express

The Platform of Shadows:

The Sholoashahar Railway Station in Chattogram is usually a chaotic hub of students, shouting vendors, and the heavy smell of diesel. But at 11:45 PM, the station was a skeleton of its daytime self. Abir, a final-year student at Chittagong University, was exhausted. He had spent the day at a friend's house in the city, losing track of time while finishing a project.

The last official shuttle had long since departed. Abir was about to call a ride-sharing service when he heard it—a distant, mournful whistle that sounded more like a howl than a machine.

A train was approaching. It was an old-model engine, its green paint faded to a sickly olive, pulling three wooden-slatted carriages. It moved with a ghostly silence, its wheels barely squeaking against the rails.

"Is this a special shuttle for the night shift?" Abir wondered.

As the train pulled into the platform, a thick, cold fog rolled out from under the carriages. Abir stepped inside the middle compartment. The interior was lit by dim, flickering yellow bulbs that cast long, jittering shadows. The air inside didn't smell like the usual shuttle—there was no smell of sweat or dry peanuts. Instead, it smelled of wet earth and burnt rubber.

Abir sat down on a wooden bench. He noticed a few other passengers scattered throughout the compartment. To his left, an old man in a pristine, starched white panjabi sat clutching a leather briefcase. Further down, a group of students were huddled together, dressed in bell-bottom trousers and patterned shirts—styles that hadn't been popular in Bangladesh since the late 1980s.

"Excuse me, does this train go to the University station?" Abir asked the old man.

The man didn't turn his head. His skin looked like parchment, and his eyes were fixed on the darkness outside the window. "This train goes where the sun never rises," he whispered, his voice sounding like two stones grinding together.

The train jolted forward. Abir looked out the window. Usually, the trip from Sholoashahar to CU passed through familiar sights—the outskirts of the city, the dark silhouettes of hills. But tonight, the window showed nothing but a swirling, charcoal-grey void. There were no city lights, no distant houses.

He checked his phone. The screen showed 00:00. He waited for a minute, but the clock didn't change. The seconds weren't ticking. He checked his watch; the second hand was vibrating in place, unable to move forward.

The train accelerated. The clatter of the tracks became a rhythmic chant: Stay-with-us. Stay-with-us. Stay-with-us.

Abir stood up, his heart racing. "I need to get off. This isn't right."

He ran toward the door between the carriages, but as he reached for the handle, he saw a newspaper lying on an empty seat. The date on the masthead read: July 14, 1992. The headline, printed in bold, terrifying black letters, read: TRAGEDY AT THE BEND: MIDNIGHT SHUTTLE DERAILS, NO SURVIVORS.

The Passengers of the Past:

Abir’s breath came in short, jagged gasps. He looked back at the passengers. They were no longer just "odd." Under the flickering yellow light, their forms were becoming unstable. The group of students in the back were laughing, but their laughter was a looping sound file—the same three-second giggle repeated over and over. One of them turned his head, and for a second, Abir saw a jagged crack running down the boy's forehead, revealing a hollow, dark interior.

"You're not supposed to be here yet," a voice said from behind him.

Abir spun around. It was a young woman, perhaps his own age, wearing a simple cotton salwar kameez. Unlike the others, her eyes held a spark of genuine fear.

"My name is Maya," she said, her voice trembling. "I was a student here. In 1992. I was going home for the weekend."

"What is this place?" Abir asked, his hands shaking. "Why is the train not stopping?"

"The loop," Maya explained. "The accident happened at exactly 12:15 AM. The train derailed into the ravine near the university gates. Because the pain was so sudden and the lives so young, the moment froze. We are trapped in the final fifteen minutes of our lives, forever."

Abir looked at his phone again. It still read 00:00.

"Then why am I here?"

"The loop is hungry," Maya whispered. "Every few decades, when the moon is thin and the mist is high, the 00:00 Express reaches into the living world to find a new passenger. If you are still on this train when the clock strikes 12:15, the derailment will happen again. But this time, you will be among the bodies in the ravine."

Abir ran to the window and tried to smash it with his elbow, but the glass felt like solid steel. He ran to the exit door and pulled the emergency brake. The lever came off in his hand, rusted and useless.

"The train doesn't listen to the living," Maya said. "You have to find the Conductor. He is the only one who holds the 'Ticket to the Outside.' But he is in the engine room, and to get there, you have to walk through the Carriage of Regrets."

Suddenly, the lights flickered and went out. The carriage filled with a sudden, freezing wind. When the lights came back on, the old man in the white panjabi was standing in the aisle, blocking Abir’s path. His briefcase was open, and out of it poured a black, oily smoke that smelled of old blood.

"Ticket, please," the old man growled. His face began to melt, the skin dripping off his skull like hot wax. "Show me your reason for living, or give me your soul for the journey."

The Carriage of Regrets:

The old man lunged at Abir, his fingers turning into long, needle-like shards of bone. Abir dodged, stumbling over the wooden benches. He realized that the passengers weren't just victims; they were the guardians of the loop. They were so lonely in their eternal death that they wanted company at any cost.

"Run!" Maya shouted.

Abir burst through the door into the next carriage. This was the "Carriage of Regrets." It didn't look like a train car. The walls were lined with thousands of photographs, all of them showing moments from Abir’s own life. He saw himself as a child, his graduation, his parents smiling at a dinner table.

The voices in this carriage were deafening. They weren't screaming; they were whispering every mistake he had ever made.

"You didn't call your mother yesterday..."

"You lied to your professor..."

"You're a failure, Abir. Why go back to a life of struggle when you can sleep here forever?"

The air in the carriage became thick and heavy, like walking through molasses. Abir felt his legs getting tired. The temptation to just sit down and give up was overwhelming. He saw an empty seat with his name engraved on it. It looked so comfortable.

"Don't listen!" Maya’s voice echoed from the previous car. "If you sit down, you become a memory!"

Abir bit his lip until he tasted blood. The sharp pain cleared his head. "I'm not finished yet!" he yelled at the walls.

He charged through the Carriage of Regrets, the photographs tearing and flying around him like angry birds. As he reached the far door, the train let out another long, mournful whistle. The floor began to tilt at an impossible angle.

The derailment was starting.

He jumped through the final door and found himself on the narrow platform leading to the engine room. Below him, the tracks were glowing with a ghostly blue fire. He could see the university gates in the distance, but they were twisted and distorted, like a reflection in a broken mirror.

Standing on the platform was the Conductor. He was a massive figure in a tattered blue uniform, his face hidden by a peaked cap. He held a heavy iron lantern that glowed with a sickly green flame.

"The time is 12:14," the Conductor said, his voice a deep thrum that shook the entire train. "The bridge is broken. The ravine is waiting. Why should I let you go, boy?"

"Because I have a future!" Abir shouted over the roaring wind. "My life isn't a loop!"

"A future is just a promise," the Conductor laughed. "I need a trade. To let one soul out, I must keep another one in. Who do you offer in your place?"

The Final Trade:

Abir looked back through the glass door. Maya was standing there, her form becoming transparent. She was smiling, but it was a smile of pure sadness. She had been trapped in this fifteen-minute nightmare for over thirty years.

"Take me," Maya’s voice appeared in Abir’s mind. "I’m already a ghost, Abir. I’ve lived this crash a million times. If I stay behind the engine door and hold the lever, the 'Gate' will stay open for three seconds. You have to jump toward the light."

"I can't leave you like this!" Abir cried.

"You're not leaving me," she whispered. "You're taking my story back to the world. Tell them I was here. Tell them we all were."

The Conductor stepped aside, his lantern flickering wildly. "The choice is made. The girl for the boy. The memory for the life."

Maya pushed past Abir and entered the engine room. She grabbed the red-hot iron lever that controlled the train's metaphysical heart. As she pulled it, the front of the train began to glow with a blinding white light. The darkness of the grey void was ripped apart, revealing a glimpse of the real Sholoashahar station—the rain-slicked platform, the modern streetlights, the sound of a distant rickshaw bell.

"JUMP!" Maya screamed. Her skin was beginning to flake away into light.

Abir hesitated for a fraction of a second. He saw the old man, the students, and the Conductor all reaching for him, their faces merging into a single, terrifying wall of shadow.

The clock on his phone finally moved. 12:15.

The train tilted violently. The sound of screeching metal filled the air as the engine began to leave the tracks. Abir lunged forward, diving into the white light.

He felt a sensation of falling—not into a ravine, but through layers of cold water. His vision exploded into a thousand sparks.

He hit something hard.

Abir opened his eyes. He was lying on the cold concrete of Sholoashahar station. The rain was falling softly on his face. He looked at his phone. It was 12:16 AM.

The station was empty. There was no green train, no fog, no ancient passengers.

He stood up, his body aching. He looked at the tracks. There was nothing there. But as he turned to leave, he noticed something lying on the platform.

It was a small, dusty student ID card. He picked it up. The plastic was yellowed and cracked. The name on the card was Maya Sultana, Department of Sociology, 1992.

Abir gripped the card tightly. He looked back at the empty tracks. The loop had been broken for him, but for a hundred others, the 00:00 Express was still screaming into the night.

The Echo of the Rail:

Abir returned to the university the next day, but he was a changed man. He couldn't sit in a classroom without hearing the faint clatter of ghostly tracks. He spent weeks in the university library, digging through the archives.

Finally, he found it. A small clipping from an old newspaper, buried in a pile of microfilms.

"A tragic accident occurred last night at 12:15 AM near the University gate. The midnight shuttle derailed due to a faulty switch. Among the victims was Maya Sultana, a bright student of Sociology. Witnesses say she was seen trying to help others get out of the carriage until the very end."

Abir went to the site of the crash—a deep, overgrown ravine near the entrance of the campus. He stood on the edge and looked down. In the tangled vines and rusted metal of old railway debris, he saw a single, wild white flower blooming.

He placed Maya’s ID card on a small stone and whispered, "I told them. You're not forgotten."

As he turned to walk away, a cold breeze swept through the ravine. For a split second, Abir heard a sound—not a scream, but a soft, musical laugh.

He felt a sudden urge to check his phone.

The time was 12:15 PM.

But as he looked at the screen, a notification popped up from his photo gallery. It was a "Memory" from the night before.

He opened the photo. It was a selfie he didn't remember taking at the station. In the photo, Abir was standing on the platform, looking tired. But in the background, inside the window of a train that shouldn't have been there, was a girl in a cotton salwar kameez. She was waving at the camera.

And on his own shoulder, in the photo, was a hand—a pale, slightly grey hand that looked like it was made of ink.

Abir looked at his own shoulder in the real world. There was no hand. But when he looked at his reflection in the phone screen, his eyes were no longer brown. They were a flickering, high-contrast grey.

He realized then that the Conductor had been honest. To let one soul out, he had to keep a piece of another one in.

Abir walked back toward the campus, his footsteps sounding a little too rhythmic, a little too mechanical. He was alive, yes. But every night at midnight, he would wake up drenched in sweat, smelling of wet earth and burnt rubber.

The loop hadn't ended. It had simply found a new way to travel. Abir was the new 00:00 Express, and as he walked through the crowded halls of the university, he found himself looking at his fellow students, wondering which one of them would be his next passenger.

The End

Akifa,

The Author.