A man waits at a lonely train station. He looks at his knees.

The tunnel gapes a giant black hole to his right. Empty, full of ghosts. The rat colonies coexist with the ghouls, perhaps because they cannot see them.

When the trains rush by, the air scatters these creatures, and they grumble, and you can hear them but for the screaming as the train shrieks past. Sometimes they peer in through the windows, and you think it’s a ghostly image from an old poster, but it really is Old Man Riley from 1923 who broke his leg fixing the power lines and never made it back out to fresh air.

The station is empty tonight. A light sizzles and crackles by the escape stairs. The ‘Way Out’ sign is flickering, and the man glances furtively at it. The digital time board above his head states in its calm and technical way that the next train is on time, due in 3 minutes. He hears the familiar rushing sound through the tunnel, and cranes his neck to see what he can see. A gust of forceful wind blows his tie and lifts his hair off his forehead, and he settles back on his bench, looks at his knees again.

Nothing comes out of the tunnel. Yet he carries on looking furtively at his knees, as though avoiding eye contact. Often he shifts, moves his feet backwards, leans sideways, glances up, terrified, before looking down again. Studiously. Intently. His knees telling him the time. His knees carrying the secrets of the world.

When the train does pull into the station, he heaves a sigh of relief. Gets up, and enters through the open carriage doors. Then the train pulls away, and his terrified face peers out of the window at the ghost throngs on the empty platform.