Photo A.M. Moscoso

I’ve been on a few train rides that have not been what you would call normal commutes.

I’ve been a passenger on two different trains  where people crossing the tracks at the wrong time were hit and killed.

I was on another train that was behind a train that hit someone who was hit on the tracks and in case that little voice in your ear is asking, yes I did see the remains.

However, unlike my fellow train commuters and the ghouls who came running from the street to beat the bushes looking for body parts,  I did not take pictures and I did not point in glee to the body parts scattered along side the tracks.

Some people are really screwed up, you know?

Yesterday though, yesterday was a different kettle of fish altogether.

Photo A.M. Moscoso

I was on my phone looking for pictures to upload to my blog ( this one in fact ) of headstones I had taken at a cemetery when I was out in Wisconsin visiting my son and his family. I’m not sure why, but I looked at the time on my phone and I saw that we were 10 minutes behind schedule and we had not moved an inch.

The AC was on, the lights were on the engine was running. We just weren’t moving.

Weird, right?

Well it was.

Finally 20 minutes after we were scheduled to leave the train started to move- but the train didn’t exactly roar to life. It sort of crawled along- in the wrong direction.

Instead of going south we started to go north and at first people were laughing about making a run for Canada when we slowly backed into a creepy dark tunnel and we stopped.

This creepy dark tunnel is a well traveled tunnel.

Trains bomb through it all of the time ( I work next to the tracks and even though I don’t exactly hear the trains anymore, because after 20 odd years you just don’t pay attention to them )  I see them fly by the window all day long.

And then from the seat behind me I heard a man ask the people around him,  ” So we’re in the wrong place at the wrong time and we are in a tunnel. Do you think anyone knows we are here? ”

” Sure they do. ” someone told him. ” You can’t exactly lose a train. ”

Somebody was not exactly up on his Stephen King or X-Files stories, were they?

Some people eyed their phones, some people eyed the emergency exits ( ahem ) and then the train lurched and we crawled out of the tunnel and down the tracks that the Northbound commuter train uses.

For the next five minutes- until we crossed over to the tracks we were supposed to be on- were the quietest five minutes  I’ve had on the train since the mornings I rode in the car alone just before Covid-19  shut Seattle down.

I woke up earlier then usual this morning. Before I opened my eyes I heard that man’s voice saying to me in the darkness, with that touch of fear in his voice

” Do you think that anyone knows we are here? ”

***THIS MORNING I HEARD THAT THERE WAS A SIGNAL ERROR AND BECAUSE THE ERROR OCCURRED WHEN THERE WAS AN INCOMING TRAIN WE HAD TO MOVE OUT OF THE WAY TO MAKE ROOM FOR IT***