Narrator: Andrew C. | Oxfordshire, England
There was a pedestrian crossing on my route to work. I used it early, before the station café opened. On cold mornings I could hear a man whistling somewhere beyond the tracks.
Always the same few notes. Not a tune I knew. I assumed it was somebody walking a dog on the other path.
One morning I opened the gate and the whistling stopped halfway through a note. A voice beside my left ear said, “Wait.”
I stepped back. A train passed fast enough that the movement pulled at my coat. I’d looked both ways. I am certain I had looked. Whether I hadn’t seen it, hadn’t heard it, or had simply misjudged the distance, I couldn’t tell you.
There was nobody beside me. On the far side stood a man in a dark waistcoat, holding one hand up. He was looking towards the rear of the train. When I looked that way too, he disappeared behind the last carriage. Once it passed, he wasn’t there.
I was grateful. I still am, for that morning. But after that the whistling began following me.
I heard it from the empty back seat of my car. From a stairwell at work. Once, from inside my coat hanging behind the kitchen door. My wife heard that one. She went to get my phone, thinking it was ringing in a pocket. Both pockets were empty.
I tried saying thank you out loud. Felt foolish, did it anyway. The whistling stopped for about a week.
It returned the day I started taking the bus instead of using the crossing. Not loud or angry. Just those unfinished notes, from the seat behind me. I’m no longer sure I was the only one who came home from the railway that morning.
