It was a Wednesday evening the first time I saw her. I was rushing to catch the 6.13 train home, smartphone pressed against me, my husband's voice nattering filling my head. I sprinted down the escalator (the best you can sprint with about 3 million people standing in your way, anyhow) and there she was. An oasis of calm.
A woman that small should have been bowled off her feet by the people jostling around her. She was nowhere near reaching my shoulder, and I'm not tall by anyone's standards. Add to that her hunched frame and the fact that she must have been one of the original witnesses to Moses coming down from the mountain, one tablet in each hand, and it just made the whole tableau even weirder. Here's this tiny, snowy-haired woman, in a crowded train station, and there was a good three or four feet of empty air between her and the people around her. It was like this giant glass bubble protected her from us, the common folk.
But what was even weirder was how no-one else seemed to even notice that she was there. People on their phones, them I understand, and couples and groups chatting away, sure. But there were plenty of people who were just walking. In a hurry, but not distracted. That didn't stop their eyes from just gliding away from her. It was like she was a one-woman social engagement repellant. If they could figure out how to bottle whatever it is that's letting her do that and sell a watered-down version, they'd probably make millions off of pissed off peak-hour commuters alone.
But, there I was. And there was Roger, still talking about the people he'd seen and the things he'd done today. Damned if I would miss that train and miss seeing my honey for dinner for this. It was probably some weird flash mob thing, I thought to myself as I slipped into a train carriage, moments before the door shut. I probably just missed seeing a bunch of adults, too old to make a fool of themselves and too young to care, dancing around to whatever it is people are listening to these days. And then a couple of weeks later, when I'd almost forgotten about the whole thing, I saw her again.
It became a sort of a game. Sometimes the mysterious Bertha--I called her that because of the wide berth people gave her; Roger was not amused--was at my station. Some days she turned up at a different one, or at a different time, like when Roger and I went to catch a show and saw her at the other end of the city well after the afternoon rush had ended. She even showed up on weekends. And I started keeping track of when I saw her.
I know, I know. Roger said it was mad, too. But I couldn't help it. I was there so often, and so was she. It wouldn't have been hard to miss her in a crowd, but for that gap that everyone left her. She never seemed to do anything, either. Her face was a mass of wrinkles that made it difficult to see whether her eyes were even open, but somehow I was always certain that she was standing guard, somehow. And then one day, as I moved with the crowd, I noticed something I'd never noticed before. Her face was turning in tune with the motion around her.
She was watching me.
It was like that the next day. And the next day. And the next day. It was, in fact, the most days I'd ever seen her in one place at one time in a row. Never any other sort of activity or expression or hell, even a muscle twitch or something. Just her face, moving like one of those motion-activated cameras, tracking me around the area just outside the station's main entrance. Honestly, it was creeping me out. I was considering filing some sort of police report, but what could I say? "Yes, officers, this woman no-one else seems to be able to see or touch has been staring at me. No, she's not touching me or anything else. She's staring at me. I think. I actually can't even really see her eyes." Nah. They would think I was nuts. Anyway, after a few days in a row she just up and vanished. I mean figuratively, but, well, with this woman, how could you tell? It wasn't like I had the time or the inclination to follow her around all day.
Just when I thought I'd never see her again, there she was. Same station. Same time. It was even a Wednesday night. God help me, I don't know why, but I just knew. If I didn't follow her right then, I would never, ever, ever know the deal with Bertha. So when her wrinkled little face turned towards mine, before I could even really think about it, I nodded.
Her eyes opened. For the first time, I was staring into the filmy whiteness of eyes that had long ceased to see, but somehow still sensed me. She turned (her whole body this time, not any weird Exorcist shit) and walked away, beckoning me with a finger so crooked with arthritis or whatever it is old people get that make their fingers seem like gnarled little sticks. Also for the first time, I saw her melt into the crowd. The bubble had collapsed almost as soon as I took notice of her.
"Wait!" I yelped without thinking, surging ahead and trying desperately to keep that tiny, frail figure in my line of sight. I pushed through the entrance barriers, possibly fare-evading on the way, and caught sight of the top of her head bobbling slowly down an escalator sporting a barrier marked PLATFORM CLOSED. I barely had enough time to think about why a platform in a city train station would be closed in the middle of the week, in the middle of the afternoon rush before I leapt over the barrier and bounded down the steps.
"I need to talk to you!"
I got onto the empty platform, devoid of all workers, passengers, anyone. Anyone except a white-capped, hunched figure, standing just on the edge of the yellow line, and then taking a tiny, almost delicate step down onto the tracks.
I don't know what I was thinking. I don't think I was thinking. I hopped down, taking only a moment to register my sheer fucking irresponsibility, and hotfooted it towards her. Fifteen feet away. Ten. Five. I stretched my fingers out towards her back. Just as I touched her back, I heard a horn blare, and I was lifted clean off my feet and flung back with a tremendous force, hitting the walls of the station on my way to the ground. And that's the story of how I accidentally caught the 6.17 train to Belgrave.
The doctors say I was lucky to survive. Most people who are hit by trains are killed more or less instantly, they said. Somehow, I must have been standing off-centre on the tracks or something, because instead of hitting me and then dragging me further, I actually flew off the tracks and onto the platform. So I only broke most of my bones and severely damaged most of my internal organs. Good times.
When I explained my story to the first doctor to see me after I woke up, he looked worried, and I think he immediately called for a psych eval, because the next doctor I saw after that asked me a lot of questions about my feelings, and whether I'd ever been suicidal, and such. I said no, of course. Things couldn't have been happier with Roger at home. But I just had to know the deal with Bertha.
You can probably guess they didn't find any evidence of her. Just video footage and eyewitness accounts of me yelling, then running, then shoving a lot of people out of my way to the platform. The video glitches around the stairway, but clears up just in time to see me hurl myself down onto the tracks, and the... aftermath of that decision. There were a lot of questions from the police, of course, and I had to speak to a great many counsellors and therapists and psychiatrists and other people who meant well but would have done better just believing me. I even had a hard time convincing Roger, who had always apparently thought it was all in my head anyway. Just too weird, he says, to imagine anyone leaving that big a space in that small and packed a train station, without someone noticing. I know what I saw, though. And after all that?
I'm never catching the train again.
