Superstition

52

The rain had lightened by the time she reached the road and started walking toward the station. Each time she heard a car approaching she slipped into the trees and hid in case it was the police, but she knew she was going to have to risk hitching a ride sooner or later. Eventually she heard a truck coming up behind her. She turned, blinded by its massive lights, and raised a thumb. It shuddered to a halt with a hiss of air brakes.

She ignored as far as she could all the driver's standard conversational gambits, saying only that her car had broken down and she had to catch a train. He offered to let her use his phone to call a garage, but she said she'd already taken care of that. He looked at her doubtfully, bedraggled and exhausted as she was, but something about her discouraged him from asking further questions.

When they approached the station she asked him to stop about a hundred yards short. He did so, merely nodding his acknowledgment of her thanks as she climbed down from the cab, then leaning over to pull the door shut. He was glad to be rid of her. She was a good-looking woman, and for a moment when he'd seen her in the road back there he'd thought he might get lucky. But something about her had given him the shivers. She felt like bad luck-not, he told himself, that he was a superstitious man.

She approached the station carefully, hugging the fence on the far side of the road where it turned and doubled back on itself and into a narrow, quiet road on a slight hill. Standing there, she could observe the station forecourt without being seen herself.

Her caution was rewarded when she saw the police car parked right outside the main entrance. These cops were neither subtle nor particularly smart; at least she had that much going for her. Her only worry was that they'd stay there indefinitely and she'd never be able to get on a train. But after a couple of minutes they came out, gave a perfunctory check around the forecourt, then drove off.

She started to cross the road, but stopped as a thought occurred to her. There was every chance that the cops would have given her description to whoever was in the ticket office and told them to look out for her. Luckily she had a return ticket in her pocket and so didn't need to show her face at the window. Also she knew there was a way onto the platform that only the local commuters were aware of-a gate at the far end that was supposedly for freight and heavy goods, but which was a godsend for anyone cutting it too tight and arriving just as their train was about to pull out. She headed for it and waited in the shadows until her train arrived.

Minutes later she was settled in a window seat watching the night rush by outside, and wondering if the wraithlike creature staring back at her could really be her own reflection.