Author’s Note: Once again, this is just as edited as previous installments because a great deal of the subway is backtracking and running and silliness for the sake of puzzles and it doesn’t exactly translate well into a fic. Also I kinda wrote myself into a mess up here--apparently SH3 takes place in 1997, and in a previous chapter I have it in 2000. Sorry about that. I'll go back and fix my mistake :3

Chapter XI -- Fear of Fours

I’d used this subway lots of times before, happier times, times much more different than my current situation. Its close range to the mall, and the nearby station three blocks down from our high school, made it easy for Katy and me to ditch class and head out to shop or just wander around when we could have been in Calculus or American History. Plus the St. Renata College train pretty much guaranteed the constant flow of people our age to talk to, bum cigarettes from, or pickpocket (if we were broke enough and they were clueless enough). Katy had a sister in St. Renata, and her boyfriend Tom had spent a few semesters there, studying Journalism I think, so I’d see her off when she went to visit either one of them. I never tagged along even if she invited me--third wheels are no fun, even if you’re just the third wheel to sisters.

The Bergen Street line on Platform 3 ran from my town to the mall, usually about a half hour’s trip if there weren‘t any technical delays or some suicidal weirdo that backed us up. Not too unbearable, but I wanted to be home now. I could feel a tantrum building up inside me, I even had the foot stomp and a pout prepared, but it was useless. Just suck it up and keep going.

The concourse area was deserted when I got there, and dark--a little too dark, really… Sure it was nearing midnight so it wasn’t exactly rush hour, but that usually meant St. Renata kids would be here, waiting for the last train home. Or even your typical subway bum preparing to hunker down on a bench for the night. There wasn’t any of that, though--there wasn’t anyone but myself. It’s not that I didn’t notice this, or that I didn’t think it was weird at the time, I just didn’t really notice it, I didn’t let it sink into my head and process the thought that all this nothing should indicate that nothing would go the way I wanted it to. I was too focused on going home. Maybe I was getting too used to the weirdness. I even turned my flashlight on and didn’t think anything of it. It was a conditional response to the dark.

Things didn’t start to bother me until I walked past the payphones--one of them, I’m not sure which one, gave a loud, single brrrrrrring! as I approached. I screamed a little bit, and did this sort of flail only a total spaz would do, something I’d never admit to anyone and yet I openly admit here, and somehow in my panic I managed to turn and stare at the line of phones. They didn’t move--of course they wouldn’t move--and they didn’t make another sound. I stood there for what must've been ten minutes just to make sure of that.

I knew I didn’t make it up. I know. I’d heard it--I could almost still hear the noise echoing in the wide, open space of the terminal void of any other sound or feature but myself. I could hear it echoing inside my head, the trill on loop over and over until it became this whining drone, like a drill, like a siren. It made me dizzy, so I backed off and found a bench to sit on. My fingers were shaking when I pried them off the gun before setting it down on the bench next to me, and I pressed my hand into my face. My skin was clammy with sweat, my lips trembling. I was a wreck, all over a damn phone.

As I tried to calm down I watched the beam of light from my flashlight bob up and down on the unusually clean floor of the concourse, its illumination shuddering with my breath and every move. My brain sort of drifted off for a few seconds as I kept watching it, my eyes losing focus. I was tired, so tired... guess the adrenaline could only last for so long before my body nose-dived and spiraled into its usual weak state.

My bones popped as I stretched my arms over my head, and as I twisted from side to side on my waist I noticed a newspaper thrown on top of one of the ticket dispensers near the turnstyles. That was reassurring, proof that someone had been around recently. Out of habit more than interest, I snatched it up and noticed an article that was curiously bent, as if someone had folded the top corner of it for later reading or particular interest. It wasn't a very long article--some small little space-waster between the really interesting stuff and maybe a horoscope or the weather report. It was about this station...

Fatal Accident at Hazel Street. At about 11PM on the 4th, a man waiting on the platform at the Hazel Street station fell onto the tracks and was decapitated by the arriving St. Renata College-bound train.

"Gross," I mumbled, pulling a face. I kept reading.

The victim died instantly. While police have not yet determined whether the death was an accident or suicide, witnesses report that the victim did not look inebriated and seemed to jump off the platform deliberately. The victim's identity is still unknown. He was approximately 40 years old, 5 feet 10 inches tall, and was wearing a black jacket.

It went on for another sentence asking for anyone with any clues to come forward, including a number where the police could be reached (it also assured callers that any information would remain anonymous at their choice).

Weird, I thought. I didn't hear about this. It wasn't like it was anything new or really exciting--people and trains don't mix very well, especially if the guy really did jump and crazy people just don't mix well with anything--but it was still sensational enough for the local news to report. Even the biddies in our apartment would've gossiped about it, maybe made a stink about how it must have something to do with the gap between the platform and the trains themselves. They were always trying to blame their own stupidity on something else's design flaw, as if they couldn't see it was their own. I shut the newspaper and was about to tuck it aside when an article on the bottom of the front page caught my eye.

Audrey Hepburn Succumbs to Cancer the headline said, followed by a tinier Hollywood Mourns A Classic Favorite.

I remembered that. It wasn't all over the news or anything, but my dad had mentioned it. He'd been a fan of her films when he was younger, and though he didn't tell me much about it I kind of got the hint that the movie Roman Holiday had meant something special to him and mom. He didn't talk about it much, but he did invite me to join on a marathon of her films a few days after she passed away. I have to admit, I hadn't paid much attention to it--I was thirteen andthe deaths of actresses who were popular before I was even born wasn't very high on my list of concerns (and it still isn't). That wasn't really the issue here.

The issue was that it was four years ago. This newspaper was four years old.

Yep. Checking the date, it said exactly that--January 20th, 1993.

What this paper was doing here I had no idea--there's no reason for it to have stayed in circulation and I can't really imagine why someone would hold onto it, much less decide to chuck it in a train station of all places. It belonged in a recycling bin, really, but most people were probably too lazy for that. There was something about the date that bothered me--I mean, why wait over a week to report on some guy's death? Maybe it was a reprint--maybe they were still looking for information about who the guy was and thought they'd benefit by repeating themselves. It couldn't have taken them that long to hear the news.

The other problem was the number four. I hated that number, the way some superstitious people avoid the number thirteen or a triple 6. I wasn't really superstitious, at least not about most things that people would typically be, but this number just bothered me. Katy had told me that in some Asian country the number four was the same word used for the word "death"--some people went so far as to avoid putting a fourth floor in hospitals, which is a little extreme I guess. It still sorta creeped me out that the two words could meean two totally different things--it didn't help that the combination of this being four years old and happening on the fourth--with the guy being forty-years-old to boot--basically added up to a death trifecta.

But I was getting a little ahead of myself. I was also acting really stupid. Four's just a number, it's just a stupid paper, and for all I know it's probably a prank some loser with a really good printer made up. I stuffed it into the trash on my way to the turnstyles--the shudder and the click was loud, horrible, like that damn phone. The other side of the concourse was just as empty and dark as the first part. I'd have to hurry up if I wanted to make it home in time. If the trains were even still running...

It was even darker on the platform. Either Hazel Street station didn't pay their bill or something was on the fritz. I didn't try to think of the alternatives--not when the number four could freak me out so badly. There was no way that could happen again... I walked up towards the yellow paint on the metal grate just before the platform ended and took a good look down either side of the tunnel. Nothing was coming--nothing was leaving either. There wasn't anyone else even waiting. Had I missed it? Shouldn't this place be locked up if it was after closing time?

Since when did subways even close? Isn't there like, some unspoken rule that means they have to be kept open or something?

I sighed--and froze.

I could hear someone else breathing, shuddering, soft rasps like he or she (it had to be a he, only guys are that creepy) was excited, their breath coming fast and sudden. Every inch of my skin crawled with disgust, as if his breath was on me, as if I could feel it moving over my neck and down the back of my shirt. I couldn't move, I wanted to be sick, to keel over and scream or puke or just curl up and away from whatever it was that was moving behind me, breathing on me. I started to pitch forward--

The train howl was blasting in my ear before I was even aware of what it was. The crackle of the rails on the track as the train roared into the station, and the oncoming slipstream of wind knocked me not forwards, where I'd be just as dead as the guy in that outdated article, but backwards. I couldn't hear the breathing anymore, I couldn't even hear my own breathing or the scream I surely made at the sudden noise and train's appearance. Everything was moving too fast, it was like a movie, or someone else's life, a return to the nightmare I couldn't escape no matter how awake I thought I was.

The concrete platform was cold beneath my hands and legs--suddenly I regretted being in a skirt--and I held my head, pressing against the throbbing ache building on the left side above my eye. The train shuddered to a halt, and I could hear a door hissing open but it didn't sound close by. Just my luck, I'd have to schlep to find it. A quick check behind me showed that nothing was there, not a creeper, not even a trash can or a sleeping hobo, but that didn't exactly make me feel any better. I didn't like to think that I'd imagined a noise like that--the power of my imagination was proving just as helpful as my skirt.

At least the trains were still running. That was on my side, if nothing else.

Of course the last door of the train had to be the one that opened. Figures, I thought as I walked down the platform along the length of the train, peeking inside at every window I passed. No one was on board but the lights were all on--that was comforting. Maybe they'd all caught a previous ride and I was the only poor sap stuck at the end of the line. I tried to think of a good excuse to give any conductor if they harassed me about not having a ticket--maybe I could beg off that I'd been mugged or something. But there didn't seem to be any conductors on board, either.

I was barely inside the train before the doors slid shut, clicking solidly behind me. Stupidly, really it was stupid of me to do, I turned around and beat my hands against the door frantically, in a panic--it was all so sudden, all of it, my brain wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders--but it didn't do any good. Why should it? The train lurched once before it gathered steam, pulling out slowly out of the station. I stared dully as the car I was in passed the last part of the platform, the one I'd been standing on when the train first arrived, and though I couldn't be sure I thought I saw something standing on the edge near the yellow hazard paint, something that looked like a tall man in a black coat. Blinking was enough to make him disappear, but the image stayed with me, painted on the back of my eyes, lingering like the fear that spread in the pit of my stomach. Would I even make it home?