The night I missed my stop, I didn’t think it would matter. The subway runs all night in this city, a vein that never closes, and I figured I’d just ride one extra stop and turn back. But there wasn’t an “extra” stop that night. There was one that shouldn’t exist.

It began at 1:12 a.m., on the eastbound Line 3. My phone had died halfway through a podcast, and the car was empty except for a woman asleep two seats away and a man humming under his breath. The hum was tuneless—like a dial tone that forgot its job. I closed my eyes. The train slowed. The digital display flickered:  

**Next station: ELLENDALE.**

There’s no Ellendale on Line 3.

At first I thought I’d misread. But the woman next to me stirred, glanced up, and frowned. The man stopped humming. A hollow, patient sound filled the tunnel—like wind, but wetter. The train braked with a squeal that was more animal than metal.

The doors opened to silence.

The sign outside was ancient enamel, edges rusted, letters hand-painted:  

**ELLENDALE STATION**  

**Exit → Street Level**

A fine gray dust hung in the air, drifting like the ghosts of commuters. I stepped out before logic could remind me I had no reason to. My shoes sank into grit that once had been tile. The overhead lights pulsed weakly, buzzing the way flies do around fruit.

“Excuse me,” I said, turning to the conductor’s window. But the cab was empty.

The woman who’d been asleep remained in her seat, staring straight ahead. The man who’d been humming stood in the doorway, undecided. I lifted my phone instinctively—still dead. The walls of the station curved inward, like a throat that didn’t want to swallow. Advertisements clung to them, all outdated: *“Vote 1998,”* *“New VHS Releases,”* *“Now Playing: Titanic.”*

I should’ve gone back inside the train, but the air smelled faintly of rain and old metal, and I heard something—a faint echo of footsteps, far down the platform.

“Hello?” I called. “Is there another exit?”

The echo stopped.

Then, from somewhere near the far staircase, came the hiss of a loudspeaker waking up. The PA system coughed static, followed by a woman’s voice: **“Transfer available… Line 13… northbound…”**

There is no Line 13.

The voice repeated, a little slower each time, as if sinking underwater.  

**“Transfer… available…”**

When I turned, the train doors had closed. The headlights receded, shrinking into the tunnel’s dark throat. Then—nothing. I was alone with the dust and that smell of forgotten rain.

I started toward the staircase. Every few steps, the fluorescent lights overhead buzzed and dimmed, as if deciding whether to acknowledge me. Halfway up, the hum returned—not from the man on the train, but from somewhere above, a low, resonant vibration that made my teeth hurt. The steps ended at a rusted turnstile and a wooden door marked **“Street Level – Do Not Exit.”**

It wasn’t locked.

Beyond it was not a street, not really—more like an abandoned mezzanine drowned in fog. Ticket machines coated in grime. A newspaper box whose glass had frosted over from the inside. When I wiped it with my sleeve, I saw the headline frozen beneath: **“COMMUTERS TRAPPED IN SUBWAY COLLAPSE – TWELVE MISSING.”**  

The date: October 17, 1989.

Behind me, something clanged down the stairs.

I ran back toward the platform. The noise followed—slow, metallic, deliberate. When I looked over my shoulder, a figure stood halfway down the staircase. It was wearing a conductor’s cap. Its eyes reflected the faint light like wet glass. In one hand it held a signal lantern that glowed a muted orange, like a dying coal.

“You shouldn’t be here,” it said. The voice was hollow, echoing inside the station walls as though they were speaking too. “Next train comes in five minutes.”

I froze. “I—I missed my stop.”

The figure tilted its head. “Everyone here did.”

It stepped closer. The lantern light revealed a badge on its chest, but the name was blurred by rust. Where the skin met the collar, it wasn’t skin—just gray ash, compressed into shape.

“I can walk back through the tunnel,” I said.

“No,” the voice said. “Trains go both ways. People don’t.”

The hum returned, now louder, vibrating through the rails. The lights above flickered in rhythm, a heartbeat of electricity.

“Five minutes,” the conductor whispered, fading like an echo.

Then the platform began to shake.

A headlight bloomed in the tunnel, too bright for the fragile bulbs to survive. They shattered one by one, raining glass. I pressed myself against the wall as a train thundered in—its cars gray, its windows opaque, its brakes screaming like metal in pain. When it stopped, the doors opened in perfect synchrony. The interior was empty. No lights. Only that faint smell of dust and something sweet, like burning paper.

From the darkness within, a voice identical to the announcement system whispered, **“All aboard.”**

I ran. I didn’t think. I just sprinted down the platform toward the opposite end, where another staircase led down—down, impossibly, deeper than any subway should. I don’t know how long I descended. The hum faded. The air thinned. And then I was outside.

That’s the impossible part: the staircase emptied directly onto a quiet street. My GPS blinked back to life, showing me three miles from home, in a neighborhood that didn’t exist on any map. The skyline looked almost right but slightly rearranged, as if someone had rebuilt the city from memory and missed a few details. The lamps were too tall. The cars too old. And every storefront had its windows covered in newspaper dated 1989.

A clock tower struck 1:12 again.

When I turned back, the stairwell was gone. Just a smooth brick wall where the entrance had been.

I walked until dawn. Eventually, the streets became familiar again, like I’d slipped between sheets of reality and found the right one by accident. The first working train I boarded the next morning had no record of an Ellendale Station between stops. I asked a transit worker about it. He laughed.

“There used to be one,” he said. “Long time ago. Collapsed in ’89. They sealed it off. You can still see the tile if you look out between Porter and Eastgate, but no platform left.”

“Anyone die?” I asked.

“Twelve. Never found them all.”

He paused, eyeing me. “Why?”

“No reason,” I said, but my shoes were still coated in gray dust that wouldn’t wash off.

Since then, I’ve tried to find Ellendale again. I’ve stayed on trains past their last stops, ignored the map, waited for the digital display to flicker. Sometimes I think I hear the hum in the tunnel, that low vibration just before the lights stutter. Once, I saw the word flash for half a second—**ELLENDALE**—before changing to **MAINTENANCE ZONE**.

When I told a friend in Transit Control, he shrugged. “Ghost code. Happens. Old lines get weird data.”

But he leaned closer, lowered his voice. “You know the weird part? Every time that name shows up in the system, a train loses signal for exactly five minutes. Always five.”

That was two months ago. Last night, the display blinked again on my way home. I felt the train slow. My reflection in the window was pale and waiting.

**Next station: ELLENDALE.**

The passengers around me didn’t seem to notice. The hum returned, a familiar heartbeat.

I stood up.

This time, I think I’ll see where the train goes after it leaves.