Shit! Malinda tapped her card and passed through the gate just in time to watch the train close its doors. Her frustration boiled over as she watched it pull away, slowly at first as if to taunt her for missing it yet again. Fuck the T, she thought to herself, but it did nothing to give back the power she felt she’d lost.
These moments, she knew, were among the risks she took not having a car. Before moving to Boston, everyone back home had warned her not to bother with a car in the city. "The T will take you anywhere you need to go," they said. Most of the time, Malinda would agree, but at such a late hour and with at least a twenty minute wait before the next train, she would have given anything for a car of her own.
Oh well, Malinda thought after taking a moment to calm herself. Maybe it's not all bad. After all, since moving to the city, she had begun to appreciate long rides, and even longer waits. They gave her time to reflect, reset, and listen to her favorite songs. Now, as she stood on the platform, she fished through her bag for her earbuds. When she found them at last, she shoved one end into her phone and the other two into her ears. Gloria Estefan's dulcet tones greeted her warmly and, seeing that she was alone on the platform, Malinda allowed herself to dance. She enjoyed three or four songs this way, sinking deeper and deeper into the music with each measure.
It was only during the final fading notes of the last song that a different sound rose to her ears.
"Miss?" came a voice from behind her. It was uncommonly deep, enough so that Malinda couldn't help but be startled. She spun around to face the platform gates, in front of which she still stood, and what she found there startled her afresh.
Behind one of the gates stood a man. He was as unusually tall as his voice was deep. Malinda would have guessed he was seven feet tall, or close to it. He seemed completely bald, save for a few hairs that looked like he'd meticulously combed them into place. His eyes unsettled her the most at first, managing at once to be both wide and lifeless. Two holes below a subtle protuberance served as the man's nose, and a pair of thin, colorless lips curled upward into a smile. His skin seemed almost ashen in color, and was made to look all the more pale contrasted with his proper black suit. Taking him in, Malinda shuddered. Had he not been moving ever so slightly, she might have guessed he was a standing corpse.
But that's ridiculous, she scolded herself. Symphony Hall is nearby. That's probably where he came from. Soothed by this deduction, she smiled back at the man. Those music types are always weird, she added for her own amusement.
"I'm sorry to bother you, miss," said the man in a slow and metered cadence. "I seem to have forgotten my pass. Could you step a little closer and let me onto the platform?"
Malinda's uneasiness began to creep back in. She knew how easy it would be for her to open the gate and let the man pass through. All she had to do was activate the motion detector from her own side, but it was this that she couldn't quite bring herself to do. The man's appearance repelled her. The idea of getting close to him made her skin crawl. Standing several feet away and well out of grabbing distance, she already felt too close for her own comfort.
The sound of the train echoing through the nearby tunnel interrupted her thoughts.
"Please, miss," said the man without any detectable change in his tone or expression. "The train is coming. Won't you help me?"
As Malinda weighed her options, the train pulled in behind her. She heard its doors open. If she was going to help the man, it was now or never.
"I'm sorry," she said, the first words she had spoken to him. She simply couldn't do it. Her guilt and embarrassment were immediate, but neither overtook her relief as she bounded onto the train, leaving the strange man stranded behind the gate. The doors closed a moment later, and as the train pulled out of the station, Malinda watched the man through the window. It unnerved her even more to see that his expression hadn't changed in the slightest. His lips still smiled and his eyes remained focused on her until he was out of sight.
A shiver ran down Malinda's spine. She had met some interesting characters in the city, but none had affected her quite so much as that man. As the train chugged along, she began to feel worse and worse about leaving him. To soothe herself, she imagined him climbing the stairs back to up to the sidewalk and hailing a cab which would take him to whatever fancy apartment building in Back Bay he called home. That was where creepy music guys lived, wasn't it?
Malinda continued to build on the story she'd created about this man when the train slowed to a stop in the next station. She was imagining what kind of drink he'd pour himself for a nightcap when she heard the doors open and a pair of feet shuffle toward her. Her thoughts had just begun to speculate on his love life when she felt a body slide into the seat next to hers. Instinctively, Malinda turned to inspect her new neighbor.
The blood froze in her veins. A cold sweat broke out all over her body. There, closer than ever, was the corpse man, smiling that same sickening smile and fixating on her with those same horrible eyes.
Malinda screamed and leaped from her seat, shocking the other late night passengers awake. She bolted for the doors and squeezed through just before they could close on her. Outside the train, she kept running, caring little about where she ended up as long as it was far away from that man. Fuck this, she said to herself, I'm buying a car!
As the train moved on without Malinda, the other riders looked at each other, murmuring softly in confusion. It wasn't uncommon at this hour to share a train car with someone who was a little off-center, but to see a young lady screaming and running like that was new, even for the oldest local among them. What could have spooked her so, they all wondered. As far as any of them could tell, no one new had entered their car at the last stop.