What the Wicker Woman Dropped

In the caboose that afternoon, there were armpits everywhere. Someone's bottom was embracing my own, and a briefcase hung between my legs, invisible.

I looked out the back window to see a boy my age dressed as a train conductor. He had torn off his hat and was hurtling toward the front of the locomotive, his cheeks jolting with every frantic step. It wasn't so unusual, really. Perhaps he was supposed to be driving the train and it had fallen a few risky moments into tardiness.

But five others followed with equally vigorous speed, carrying the same unbridled panic in their mouths. I removed my headphones. An announcement calmly explained that something had fallen onto the tracks--a body or a cat, or someone's heart. A hushed suspension of fear and hope swallowed us sweetly.

Nothing was found, and we floated away from the station as routinely as a 5:03 train departing at 5:04 can. I gazed out the rear window as the station manager passed into view, squatting stout on the platform. He was gesturing professionally down to the tracks, pointing at the vacant black object which had fallen into the gap and set off the sensors. I pictured the man with the long hook trolling for the thing, and placing it back into the hands of the wicker woman who had dropped it.

We entered the sunlit overgrowth of the rails and they lengthened and crossed one another, glinting. I couldn't see anyone else's eyes, but I knew we were all alive. Imaginable horrors are always leagues more terrifying than reality.