Neve Emek: Room 102 - Part 4 of ?

4

My fingers were sticky with sweat as I dragged the suitcase from the carousel.

The doll was no longer with me. I didn’t leave it behind on purpose, though. No, nothing like that. But things… just got out of control. The last thing I wanted was to leave a kid with that… doll. You know? Why would I? Something about it put me on high alert, and although it was impossible for it to—I don’t even know what I’m talking about anymore. But something told me not to leave that thing with the kid. In the end, I ended up doing just that.

I was reaching for my backpack in the overhead compartment when I noticed belatedly that the woman and the kid who had sat beside me were gone. The seats were empty. Clean. Like they were never really there. Naturally, I searched for them as I walked down the aisle and between travellers, catching glimpses of countless hurried faces. Still, I couldn’t find them. I scanned the departing passengers several times in the terminal, too. But my desperate search yielded nothing. They were nowhere in sight. Just gone.

And so I gave up and directed my focus on a much more pressing matter.

I’d never set foot in Tel Aviv before. The signage was unfamiliar, and the announcements were in a language I did not speak or understand. I must’ve gone in circles for several minutes trying to figure out where I was supposed to go, when I finally stumbled upon an information desk. Behind it, a woman sat hunched forwards. Her eyes were fixed on a computer screen, but she glanced up briefly as I crept closer. I must’ve looked quite out of place and awkward by the way a flicker of irritation passed through her wide-set eyes behind the thick, granny glasses.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Do you think you can help me? There’s this place I need to get to. It’s called, uh, Neve Emek.”

The clerk lifted again. “Neve… Emek?”

“Yes,” I said. “How do I—”

She cut me off. “You have family there?”

I hesitated. The tone of her voice told me I couldn’t tell the truth, not the whole truth, that is. So I lied. I had an American passport, and there was no way this woman could discern me from an Israeli. “Yes,” I said finally, hoping the explanation sounded plausible enough. “Got some… uh… inheritance issues I need to take care of so… yeah.”

Her eyes narrowed, just a fraction, as if she was gauging whether I was telling the truth or lying. Why was she even asking me these questions? Was it routine here to do so?

“Well, there’s no train going there,” she said. “But you can take a train to Haifa, then a bus or taxi once there. Terminal 3. Next train leaves in twenty minutes. Better hurry.”

“Right, uh, thanks.”

Even as I followed the signs to the underground train station and took the escalators down, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the questions the clerk asked me were not routine. The mention of Neve Emek had changed something in the way that woman looked and talked to me. I was certain. But there was no time to dwell on these things. I had to catch up to the train.

I never felt as out of place as I did standing on the steps and slowly descending to the platform below. It was like entering a time capsule, of which I felt like an impostor among a sea of uncanny faces that seemed to distort under the lights, especially this deep below the ground with nothing but artificial lights to guide me.

Trains arrived and departed in a fast sequence as I stepped onto the platform and lowered my suitcase to the ground, feeling the wheels settle heavily. I shifted my weight from foot to foot as I waited, listening to the clatter of arrivals and the din of passengers moving through the station. I hardly waited five or so minutes before my train arrived, the doors sliding open with a hiss, and I stepped inside.

The carriage was nearly full; I moved along the carriage, searching for an empty seat, but found none. Settling instead somewhere near the exit doors, I placed my suitcase at my feet and pressed my palms against its cool surface, letting the rhythmic sway of the train breathe with me. Outside, the platform and city lights blurred into streaks, buildings and streets sliding past like a scene from a fast-moving film, carrying me further from the airport and deeper into the unfamiliar night. The carriage itself was quiet, with the occasional clack of wheels against track the only thing that pierced through the prevailing silence.

And yet, I felt it again, that subtle uneasiness that had gripped me at the terminal. Like I was being watched, though no one looked at me. I shook my head, trying to shake off these harrowing thoughts that led nowhere. I was tired. Drained. I told myself I had to be. But it was easier said than done. So, I steered my thoughts in another direction.

The only way for me to reach Neve Emek was either by taking the bus or a taxi in Haifa. But even though I looked the place up on the map on my phone, I couldn’t find the village. I even tried its old name, hoping for some trace, but that too returned nothing. It occurred to me then that the village must be one of those old Palestinian settlements sieged by illegal settlers, rumoured to have been set on fire, and the few that survived were forcefully displaced.

I recalled a news segment about it happening far more often than what was shown in the news, but was later ‘debunked’ as being propaganda with no truth to it. And for whatever reason, all records of those villages got removed from every archive in existence all over the world. I guess the government at the time wanted to cover up for what the extremists were doing as part of their plan for a ‘greater Israel’ – and, perhaps, to a certain extent, even protect those whom they supported in secret. Therefore, my only means to find the village, I realised now, depended entirely on the Israelis' knowledge of its existence.

The train slowed, pulling me out of my mind. Overhead signs flickered in Hebrew and English. Haifa, next stop. I gathered my suitcase and moved closer to the doors. As I was doing that, however, I saw that kid again. The one who sat beside me on the aeroplane. Beaming wide.

I froze.

The doors opened. Hissing.

Someone pushed me out of the way and out onto the platform. Even then, I could not move of my own accord, like I had lost all control over my extremities. Only when the doors closed could I move, like the weight over me had lifted the moment every chance of me stepping back into the train was out of the way.

My legs almost gave way under me as I tried to wrap my head around what had just happened. But it made no sense. No sense whatsoever! Was I really seeing things? What was wrong with me? Trying to dispel the disorientation, I shook my head repeatedly, but the questions clung and disturbed me, nonetheless. Something was wrong – very, very wrong. But what? Just… what? Things like this never happened to me. Ever.

Sure, I had not been sober for ages, and the possibility of me seeing things that weren’t there was more than just a possibility, but… I don’t even know what to say, how to explain all of this madness. It was like a curse had fallen over me, wrapping around me like a thick fog I could not see or shake off. Perhaps it was this very moment, as I not only noticed but felt something wasn’t as it was supposed to, that I should’ve returned and not look back – even if the curiosity would’ve eaten my heart out for the remainder of my life.

But I didn’t. I chose to ignore it and move on.

Not a single vehicle waited as I approached the taxi stand, which made the entire place seem almost unreal under the harsh glare of the lampposts, painting long and sharp shadows across the cracked pavement. The air was too still, the usual sound of idling engines and conversation absent, leaving a silence so deep it gave me the heebie-jeebies, though I was a grown-ass man. Every time I looked over my shoulder, however, the distant terminal and the darkened streets beyond it felt intensified in this desolate place devoid of souls.

I paused and forced my shoulders to relax. My hand drifted towards the letter, my eyes tracing the name ‘Neve Emek’ over and over again as if repeating it aloud would give an answer, some hint of direction. But that didn’t happen.

Then, finally, a taxi rolled slowly into view, headlights cutting through the pooling shadows. A man stepped out, clad in a worn leather jacket. He leaned against the car, bringing a cigarette to his lips. The faint glow flickered, casting sharp angles across his face as he inhaled, and the thin trail of smoke curled into the night. Even from a distance, I could see that heavy, acrid scent clinging to him.

When he noticed me, the chauffeur exhaled a long plume of smoke, and his hooded eyes met mine for a second as he took another draw from the cigarette. It wasn’t hostility I saw there, but caution, as if he were assessing the purpose for me being here at this very hour, at this very place. I guess he could tell I wasn’t a local by the way I was acting like a fish out of water and was thus on high alert.

“What do you want?”

“I, uh…” I cleared my throat. “I need to get to Neve Emek. You know the place?”

He squinted at me through the smoke. “That’s far. You got money?”

“Yeah. Money’s not a problem,” I said, trying to sound confident.

For a long moment, he didn’t say anything, the faint orange glow of the cigarette tip trembling between his fingers. Then, with a sharp flick of his wrist, the cigarette clattered to the asphalt and he ground it under his heel, muttering something in Hebrew I couldn’t catch, before adding:

“Get in.”

The taxi scraped along the uneven asphalt as we pulled away from the train station, the streetlights flickering past in a blur of motion. The landscape itself opened into acres of olive groves and low hills stretching towards the horizon as the day drew to a close and night settled, albeit too slowly. I frowned as the unfamiliar world passed me by in a haze and the city gradually disappeared, replaced by narrow roads winding through scrub and dust.

We’d been driving ten minutes without a word when he finally spoke.

“Neve Emek,” he said. “Not many people go there. Especially at night.”

“I guess I like quiet places,” I said, watching the fields slip past the window, unbothered and not as vigilant as I should be in the backseat of a stranger’s vehicle in the middle of the bloody night.

He made a sound, something between a laugh and a snort. “Quiet, yeah. Too quiet, maybe.” He tapped the steering wheel with his fingers. “You got family there or something?”

This was what the clerk also asked. Family… I mean, it wasn’t entirely a lie. I did once have a family in that village, only now they were either displaced or buried in that burial ground I was supposed to inherit.

“Something like that.”

He looked at me in the mirror again, his eyes lingering a little longer this time. “You don’t sound local.”

“I’m not.”

“American?”

The words slipped me before I could hinder them. “No.”

“Sounds American to me. Where you from?”

I hesitated, well aware that I just fucked up pretty badly. Why did I even say that? I wasn’t supposed to let anybody, especially a local, aware of my real identity. But there was no way I could tell the man my real roots. That’d be too risky in this situation, if not foolish.

“My family used to live near Neve Emek. A long time ago.”

The driver didn’t respond right away. He just stared at the road. His expression was unreadable; I couldn’t tell whether he believed my lie or was simply occupied with another thought. That is, up until he suddenly locked eyes with me through the rear-view mirror and said something so chilling that my heart skipped several beats.

“Ah. You mean before ’48. ”I couldn’t even get a word in before he quietly added, not taking his eyes off me for even a second. “You’re one of those families, then.”

I said nothing. Couldn’t. The words got stuck in my throat.

 “You know, they rebuilt that place from nothing,” he said. “Ashes and stones. Took years.”

“I heard,” I said. “My grandfather used to talk about it. Said he could still smell the olive trees burning, even from the hills.”

The driver’s hands tightened on the wheel. “Olive trees,” he repeated. “Funny thing to remember.”

“They… were his,” I said.

The road narrowed in the windshield, and the fields gave way to clusters of dilapidated huts marked by fire and soot, before the taxi once again pulled up at the edge of a rough, uneven dirt track. It was at this moment that I shifted my gaze away from the windshield, just in time to see the driver’s eyes flicking away from mine in the rear-view mirror. My eyes narrowed, but not for long. Instead, I lurched forwards abruptly, and the vehicle came to a stop.

“What’s going on?” I said, looking out into the empty landscape cloaked in darkness, trying to make sense of what was happening and calming myself down.

“Neve Emek,” the chauffeur said. “Get out.”

“Neve—what?” I repeated, confusion mounting, as I took a gander at the window, where some distant lights did indeed reveal to me that there was a village up ahead. But the distance was too great. I’d have to walk on foot for at least half an hour. So, naturally, I opened my mouth to protest, to insist he drive me closer to the village, but something in the way he rested his hand on the wheel stopped me. What the fuck was this guy’s deal, even?

As soon as I stepped out, the taxi swung back onto the empty road behind me and disappeared out of sight. Great. Now what? To think I’d have to walk to the village in this suffocating darkness did little to soothe me. On the contrary. I didn’t know this place, didn’t know the people, or what awaited me once I set foot there. Not to mention it was bitterly cold – so darn cold!

The narrow, single-lane road was darker than I’d wanted, twisting between low hills and uprooted olive groves that were no more; even the shadows were deep enough to swallow a person whole. But these things were hardly what set a shiver down my spine. From here, this distance, I could feel the silence, the way the world held its breath in eerie anticipation as the wind bit at my face repeatedly. Relentlessly.

And I was alone.

All alone in this forsaken place with nowhere else to go but forwards.

Neve Emek: Room 102 - Part 3 of ?

3

I wheeled the suitcase across the linoleum floor, which drowned beneath the constant buzz of announcements reverberating from the ceiling. None of it mattered, though. Not to me, at least. They were simply noise in the background, the din of a world in constant transit.

At the check-in counter, the line pressed forwards, albeit unevenly, each traveller inching closer to the desk. By the time it was my turn, however, I had already gone through each motion several times in my head out of habit. Used to have severe anxiety as a youth, so thinking about what to do, what to say, and how to do all this put my mind at ease. And that was exactly what I did even now, with the passport in my hand and the things I was to say fully memorised. Even so, the clerk barely looked at me. Not even as I placed the suitcase onto the belt and the weight caused blinking on the digital screen. What happened instead was that the clerk, a young woman in formal attire, said something under her breath. It happened so quickly that I barely registered that she was saying something.

What was taking so long, anyway?

I let my gaze wander at that point. Not sure why. Maybe it was the feeling of something watching me or the constant background noise of announcements, but… I don’t know how to explain all this. Maybe it was my unsound mind playing tricks or just intuition, if you will. All I knew was that I felt something that shouldn’t be there. Not really. But as I looked across the terminal, people of all walks of life came into my line of sight. Some sat in rows of benches, chatting with fellow travellers, while others stood with cups of coffee in their hands, relaxing, or entire families walking briskly to catch their plane. I scanned the place without thinking much. Why would I? That is, until I turned my head in the opposite direction.

They were staring at me. All of them.

Dozens of eyes turned towards me without warning, blank and empty like a shell without soul, like a room full of mannequins. Motionless. As if the entire airport had stopped breathing… to watch me. But not just watch me, to keep an eye on me. I think. Even now, in the comfort of my own skin, I’m not sure how to describe this feeling that rose in my gut. Only, I… feared. There was nothing but darkness in those eyes that fixed on me, no reflection, no blinking, no recognition. Only. Vast. Darkness. Like they were all dead inside or pretty darn good actors trying to mess with my senses. Maybe it was both.  

When I blinked unwittingly, the world resumed. Those hollow eyes that followed me were no more. Like it was all in my head. It had to be. So, why did I doubt myself? I could swear those people looked at me, that they followed me with hostile eyes. Yet… it all happened so abruptly, so fast, that I couldn’t wrap my head around what was happening until the moment passed and—

“Here,” the clerk said, sliding the boarding pass across the counter.

Right. I almost forgot.

I murmured a brief thank you, albeit still shaken, took the ticket and got out of the line.

The terminal spanned ahead in a blur, with people passing by with hurried steps on either side, signs pointing in every direction. I drifted towards the escalators, which was the only way I could describe it without sounding completely mad. Like a ghost or something, not quite myself. Not yet. Each step was weighed down by a heavy burden, harrowing thoughts that got nowhere the more I thought things over. Was I slowly losing my sanity?

On the second floor, the overhead lights washed everything in a pale glow. One even flickered for a few seconds as I passed by, then stopped completely. Not that I put too much thought into these strange occurrences. I had no reason to at the time. Had I known half of what I knew as I was putting all these thoughts into paper, I might have figured out something wasn’t as it seemed. But I didn’t know.

The air here seemed thinner, clearer. Even the chatter of the numerous travellers trying to check in dimmed, replaced by the low rhythm of conveyor belts and the sound of trays being stacked in the distance. But as I started for the security checkpoint up ahead, I understood the reason behind this arcane stillness that did not last as long as I wished it would. In jagged lines stood several stanchions, guiding travellers like they were all cattle.

I joined the queue and watched as the people ahead slipped off their shoes, belts, and electronics, piling them into grey plastic bins. When my turn finally came, I did the same without thinking, shedding little pieces of myself. The detector did not find anything unusual, but that detail did not stop the security from thoroughly searching me, like I were posing a security threat by my mere existence. What I didn’t know was that things were about to get worse. At the police control, that is.

The officer turned the pages slowly as I slid over my passport, far too slowly in my humble opinion, the way someone leafed through a diary instead of a document. His eyes traced every line, every crease, every ink mark as though it might tell him something that would allow him to deny my entrance. Then, finally, he looked up. But the way he looked at me, judging, told me he didn’t like what he was seeing.  

“Where are you travelling?”

“Israel, sir.”

He raised his brow. “And what is the purpose of your visit?”

“A legal matter,” I said. “Is… there a problem?”

The officer looked dead in my eyes as I asked this, as if he weighed the options in his head before choosing to remain silent and extending his hand to return the passport. I barely nudged the passport when he shot out his hand and wrapped it around my arm, pulling me close so that no one else could hear him. No one but me. I’d never felt this scared in my adult life. Never heard words of warning of this scale before. Like I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to.

“Be careful or you’ll face the same fate…”

Then he let go as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

I was so out of it, honestly, that it didn’t even occur to me to ask what this was about or why he was telling me this. Or what he meant by ‘you’ll face the same fate’. The same fate as who, exactly? I wished I could go back in time and ask him how he knew… Then again, things had started spiralling out of control the day I received that letter from the solicitor. Even if I did ask him back then, I might not have understood it. Not really. Not all of it.

Instead, I snatched the passport and slipped through the police control without a word. Moving blindly at first, unable to think straight still, my feet carried me faster than my thoughts, weaving through the maze of corridors and signs, past travellers in haste and the constant hum of wheels on the floors.

It wasn’t until I spotted the gates on the overhead screens that I slowed and drew a shaky, deep breath. What had just happened to me? And why had the other passengers not said anything? The guy was literally—a breath. On my neck. So fleeting. Gasping, I turned around. My chest rose and fell in an uneven rhythm, the frantic beat like a drum in my ears. What was that? I knew I… heard something. Like a whisper. Or maybe just… breathing.

Fuck! What was the matter with me? It was nothing. There was nothing behind me. Nothing at all. Nothing could explain what just happened.

The departure lounge opened up before me as I finally gathered enough courage to keep advancing. Windows showed the runways outside and made the entire place much brighter at once. Even the aeroplanes, with their wide wings, seemed like birds ready to release into the air from where I stood.

The whole lounge was riddled with benches along the walls, occupied by people slouched under the harsh light, the majority staring at their phones. Overhead, monitors showed several flight numbers and destinations, some delayed and blinking red. I sat down on one of the vacant benches and pulled out a battered paperback from my backpack, and tried to read despite the noises around me since the boarding was not due for another ninety minutes. But the words blurred together, turning into nonsense no matter how many times I tried to focus. With all those people around me and the constant bellow of children running amok like they owned the place, it would be a miracle to understand even a single sentence of what I was reading. Trying to read, that is.

Things didn’t get any better by the fact that time dragged more slowly here. At least that was how it felt. For a while. I could swear an hour had passed already, maybe more. But the clock above the gate disagreed with me, it seemed. But that was hardly the strangest part of all of this. The world outside had shifted, and the sky dimmed. I wasn’t an astrologist or a scientist, but I knew that the sun wasn’t supposed to give way to night until an hour later in this part of the world. So, what exactly was this ominous feeling swelling in my gut and taking over every inch of my being?

Restless, I put the book away and approached the airport staff in a neon vest to ask whether I had found the wrong gate, or whether my plane had been delayed. But before I could reach him, something tapped against my feet in the milling crowd, and I lost sight of the man.

A porcelain doll.

Its face was unnaturally pale, lips painted dark like crimson. With its glossy, black eyes, it stared up at me—no, it looked through me. Like it had a soul equal to mine. Its neatly arranged hair draped down its shoulders, tied sleekly with a white ribbon. The design was unmistakably vintage, one of those Japanese dolls that had once been all the rage in the 90s.

Turning it in my hands, the porcelain was cold and heavier than it looked. I checked the crevices for a tag, a name – anything that might help me find its owner, thinking maybe someone had lost it and tucked a number inside. That was when a curl of hair brushed against my arm, warm to the touch. It wasn’t made of plastic or whatever it was supposed to be made of. Was it real or—I frowned, almost losing my grip of it. For the briefest of seconds, its lips moved. A tiny shift, almost invisible. As though it had read my mind and mocked me with a crooked grin. Like it were a person, not an inanimate thing.

“Final call for boarding, Gate 14. Final call.”

The announcement pulled me back into reality. Hard. It was my gate.

I shoved the doll into my backpack and started jogging, then broke into a full sprint as I saw the gate attendants glance at their watches. Fumbling in my pocket for a short while, catching my breath, I handed over the passport for inspection, and then tried to calm my racing heart before a final nod from the lead attendant signalled I could proceed.

I lunged through the sliding doors and onto the jet bridge, which was unusually narrow for some reason and vacant now that every other passenger beside me had already passed through. I wasn’t claustrophobic by any means, never had been, but something about the feeling of being trapped got hold of me and disturbed my senses. It felt like the bloody walls were closing in, suffocating me. Thankfully, it didn’t last for too long.

At the cabin door, the stewards greeted me with wide smiles as they welcomed me aboard.

“Sorry,” I said, feeling apologetic for causing the delay, even though I had technically not been late. Only, time seemed to have… shifted. Somehow. Unnaturally. How? I don’t know. I just knew.

 As I was walking down the aisle, head dropped low, still trying to wrap my head around this whole thing, it hit me that the shadows moved erratically, pivoting in my direction as I passed by. Like the passengers were all turning their heads towards me. Not in the casual, fleeting way strangers glance at someone passing, but with some kind of intensity, as though I had entered a place uninvited. When I looked up, however, the shadows returned to normal. No one was looking at me. No one…

I hurried to my seat near the emergency exit, beside the wings. The woman already seated there pulled her daughter close as she noticed me, probably out of habit. Apologetically, I took off my jacket and was about to place my backpack on the overhead compartment, when I noticed the girl staring at something with curious eyes. The doll. It poked out of the backpack I had failed to zip in my haste to reach the plane.

She shifted her gaze to mine as she saw me hesitate, so I pulled it free. I mean, the doll wasn’t even mine to begin with. Neither did I have any use for it. Better it stay with someone who wants it, right?

“Ma’am? Uhm, do you mind if I… gave this to your daughter?” I said, probing carefully not to sound like a darn predator. “I found it at the airport and I thought… that maybe…”

The child’s mother, who had been occupied with her phone at the time, now flickered between me and the doll, as if she wasn’t quite sure what to tell me, before giving the ‘go ahead’ sign.

The girl’s face lit up as I handed it over. “Here, take it.”

Believe me when I say the kid didn’t once let go of the doll, not even once. She kept playing with it, turning to show me now and then that she had a blast and was grateful. It reminded me of my daughter and our bond, of all the memories we shared back when life wasn’t this cruel and miserable. Then I caught myself smiling subtly. But not for too long. It moved. Or rather, its head tilted. The doll’s head. Looking at me, trying to. Seeing that, my smile faded, and something twisted in my gut. Feeling unsettled, I was about to ask the girl to give the doll back when the intercom buzzed without warning.

“Cabin crew, prepare for take-off.”

The stewards started moving down the aisle, reminding passengers to stay seated and fasten their seatbelts. A few passengers were still standing, adjusting carry-ons or stretching their legs before the final roll. The stewards guided them gently back to their seats, as professionally as they were trained to.

A few minutes later, seatbelts clicked shut across the cabin, and the plane took off. Lights out. No other sound present but that of the engines spurting to life and picking up. Faster. The world slipping away, becoming nothing but a speck in the sky…

My eyes drifted to the doll unbeknownst to myself, like in a trace or a bad dream of which there was no escape. My eyes narrowed as I took in the sight before me, trying to make sense of it. Huh? Its mouth. It was wider now, like it was smiling. Grinning? Or perhaps… laughing?

Then it faded.

The smile.

When I took my eyes off it, the girl was staring at me. Inside her sockets were no eyes, only empty holes overflowed with crimson blood. I flinched, tried to stand up, but the seatbelt tethered me back in place.

A hand fell on my shoulder.

I flinched.

“Sir, please remain seated.”

I blinked, wheezing. My eyes settled on the girl again, but she wasn’t looking at me anymore. Just playing with that… thing.

“Sir? Is everything okay?”

The child and her mother now turned to face me, like they were expecting a reply too. Or perhaps gauging my response, assessing how far gone I was, what kind of answer I would give.

“…Yeah. I’m… I’m fine, thank you. I just—” I wetted my lips, feeling my throat become dry. “—something to drink.” I faced the stewardess now, white as a sheet, completely out of it. “Please.”

Neve Emek: Room 102 - Part 2 of ?

 2

The pitter-patter of rain obscured the view through the windshield, distorting and blurring the lines of reality. I didn’t focus on the downpour or the way the wind swept through the serene neighbourhood I couldn’t even afford if I worked a lifetime. It wasn’t like I didn’t try my best to provide for my ex-wife and daughter – I was simply not enough. I guess she wanted to live another life, one where she never had to worry about finances. Even so, I knew that the guy she lived with was not whom she truly loved.

Alena and I met by chance. She was an exchange student on a visit to her friend, with whom I happened to be on good terms since we lived in the same student apartment. One night, that mutual friend called me over after getting a scare with a stalker who had followed the two of them at the bar they went to. I caught the guy as he was trying to break in and made sure he did not return. It was only when this friend invited me over for a cup of coffee as a thank you that Alena and I first met and, eventually, fell in love.

I had seen my fair share of beautiful women by then. But she wasn’t human; she was another species. Or at least, that’s what I thought. Maybe it was the fact that she was a metalhead that made me think she was. I don’t know. All I knew was that she too felt the same way.

When she finished her course and had to leave, I confessed, and we kept a long-distance relationship for a few years. I proposed to her when she came over at our fourth anniversary and spent the night imagining what our wedding would be like, what our kids would look like, and what kind of beautiful life we would have as a family.

Perhaps it was those memories we shared that ensured me that one day she would return to me. I know, wishful thinking on my part. But what was the alternative? That I lose all hope and just… fade away? Once I secured the ownership of the property, I would be able to sell it and use the money to get my life back. I couldn’t stop thinking this whole inheritance thing was sent from Allah as a way to help me get back on track. Maybe I was just getting ahead of myself, who knows, but I couldn’t help but feel this way.

When the door swung open, Alena stepped out into the light spilling from the porch. Her arms were folded over her chest. She didn’t walk, she marched towards the car. For a moment, I thought she’d be over the moon to see me, tell me she missed me. Instead, she wanted me gone. Not just from her house but from her life entirely. Imagine that.

I had never seen her like this before, so cold and indifferent. It was as if the woman I had loved, the woman I once believed I knew better than anyone, had been stripped away and replaced by a stranger. How could someone change so much? Was this hardness always there, buried somewhere beneath the surface, and had I been too blind to notice her true colours? The thought unsettled me more than her stern expression – more than I wanted to admit.

I thumbed the switch and lowered the window, hoping to explain why I had come. But she didn’t give me the chance. Her words cut through the silence before I could even open my mouth. She hated me. Why? We had been in love once, so how come all there was left between us was this profound hatred instead? I guess the saying about the line between love and hatred being thin was true after all. Only, why had I failed to see this until now?

“What are you doing here? Go.”

“Just listen—”

“No. My husband will be back any second! Leave.”

“Your husband… right. I know. I just need to say one thing.”

“We don’t have anything left to say. It’s over! I’ve moved on. I’m happy here, Sami. Why do you keep turning up? Don’t I deserve peace? Doesn’t our daughter?”

“You think I didn’t try?” The words felt bitter. I felt bitter. How could she accuse me of not providing for her, of not making her happy? “I bent over backwards, gave everything I had to you – to our daughter! I loved you, Alena! I still do. Can you say the same about him? Does he even love you? Do you love him?”

“This isn’t about love, and you know that.”

“No. It’s about money, isn’t it? Always hungry for more. Like—”

She snapped. “Don’t you dare.”

“—a fucking whore!”

“Get out of here! Don’t ever come back!” she shouted. “Do you hear me?”

But I didn’t leave. Neither did I respond to her pleas. I just stared blankly at her, trying to find the right words to say sorry. I didn’t mean to say those things to her. I loved her. So, why did I say those horrible things to her? I just—

At the end of the driveway, twin beams of light pierced through the dark, growing larger as a car rolled to a stop. The engine stopped, and out stepped the man she’d chosen over me. He wore a tailored suit that looked more at home in a glass tower than here. This was the first time I had ever seen him in person. I already knew enough about him, though. He was a director of operations at some corporation, born with money, living with arrogance. People said he had a taste for other women, too, and a mouth that dripped with contempt whenever he spoke about them like the crude bastard he was.

Alena rushed to meet him, clutching his arm as if to ground herself. At first, I thought she was pulling him back from me, shielding me from his glare. Then I saw the bruises beneath her sleeve, those dark smudges on her pale skin, and realised she wasn’t protecting me. Not at all. She was trying to keep him from lashing out at her. The sight hollowed me out and stirred something inside me that I knew not I had in me. Contempt. Disgust. Awe, even.

The Alena I remembered was fierce and stubborn, a woman who spoke at protests and wouldn’t let a single injustice slip past her without calling it what it was. Now she clung to this piece of shit like a fragile shadow about to break, shrinking without even trying to put up a fight. Not once in all our years together had I ever shouted at her, not once had I laid a hand on her, even in our worst arguments. And here she was, clinging to a man who did both. What a bloody irony this whole thing was…

She pleaded with me to leave with those pretty eyes, to not do something stupid and just leave. How could I, though, after seeing those bruises on her arms? At the same time, I knew that she would only be beaten should I try to confront the guy about it. In the end, she left me no choice. Though it was hard to turn a blind eye, I could do nothing but accept that this was the kind of life she had chosen for herself. But my daughter didn’t, and as soon as I claimed the inheritance, I would make sure she stayed with me. I guess this was why that letter arrived right when I was about to end things. Had I left this world too soon, what would’ve become of my daughter?

When I hit the road, I thought of calling the police for the briefest of seconds. But what was I going to say? Alena would never testify against that guy, and I didn’t know if he beat my daughter. All I knew was that those bruises meant nothing as long as Alena did not claim otherwise. Only I wished she’d ask for help, say she made a mistake and wanted me back in her life. But she didn’t. She’d rather be beaten up by a brute than get back together with me.

A smirk tugged at my lips as this thought crossed my mind. Fucking hell.

The road narrowed as did my thoughts in the gloom.

I did not consider myself a good person, but that did not mean I was a bad person, did it? Like all humans, I too had both good and bad days. Coming here, telling her I was to leave for Israel, was the last thread of hope I held onto. Why did I even assume she’d somehow listen and tell me not to go? I didn’t want to go. Not really. But if leaving everything behind and starting anew somewhere no one could find me, perhaps Israel would be the perfect place? But what would happen there, I had no way of knowing beforehand. All I could think of was the agony of losing both my wife and daughter, the feeling of not being wanted, the emptiness of being lost in this vast, bloody world.

Back in the apartment, the walls closed in around me like a crushing weight and suffocated me. The bills were piling, rent was overdue, and the landlord threatened to cut the electricity.

Hunched over the kitchen table, my daughter’s drawings pinned on the refrigerator arrested me. A family of three. Supposed to be happy. She drew it when she was three. Alena wanted to get rid of it, but I convinced her not to. Since when had this happy family of three fallen apart? The day I got injured at work and had to stay at home for three months? Or had it cracked years before, and the incident only acted as a catalyst? It was one of those things I wanted to ask Alena, but I never managed to. Couldn’t. I guess I feared what she would say.

Beyond the open balcony door, rain fell against the railings and chilled the inside. Drawn by the cool air, I crossed the room and leaned out into the wet night. The soft patter reminded me of something from the past, one I could not recall, especially this moment where the moon had yet to rise fully and twilight gave way to complete darkness. Like a lullaby, the steady murmur comforted my broken heart and soothed my soul – or whatever remained of it.

I patted my pocket for a cigarette, already imagining the first draw. Instead, my fingers caught the edge of the letter, which was still folded and worn. For a moment, I just stood still and did not move. My thoughts were all over the place, and the longer I thought things over, the more convinced I became.

The inheritance wasn’t just a curiosity now; it was survival, a chance to reclaim something – anything – before it was gone. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe I wasn’t thinking straight. But here, in the rain’s cold embrace, it was the only chance I had. At least, that was what I thought. Believed.

Besides, what was the worst that could happen? The atrocities against my people had ended a long time ago, and the homeland of my ancestors had been stolen. What beef would there be between me and the current population, who were not part of the illegal siege and the consequent displacement of the Palestinians that happened years before they were even born? None of us chose our parents or the country we ended up being part of, and so I had no right to condemn an entire population that neither took part nor supported the humiliation and murder of my people.

Still…

It all seemed too good to be true. I wished the solicitor would tell me more about how the property ended up as being my sole right to claim, especially since it felt like she lied or did not tell the whole truth during our brief phone call. You see, I looked up the bill she said was about to be passed in the Israeli parliament, but from what I could gather from the few English articles I found on the internet, the bill had been in circulation for over a decade. Something else had prompted the solicitor to find me. But what kept her from telling me? Moreover, where was my missing aunt, who was first in line to inherit the property?

These were only the tip of the questions that I told myself I had to ask the solicitor once I arrived in Israel. As someone with a good head on his shoulders once said, when something’s too good to be true, then it probably is. Something was off. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was or could be, only the pit of my stomach twisted, and my instinct screamed at me to be on high alert. And so I did.

By the time the sun rose, the decision was no longer a question. The ticket was booked, my passport lay ready on the counter, and the date of departure loomed closer with every tick of the clock. More than a journey, it felt like an escape – a chance to abandon everything that clung to me here: the wreckage of my marriage, the loneliness, the hollowness left by choices I couldn’t undo. I told myself I was leaving to start over, to breathe different air, to become a better version of myself – one not constrained by finances.

What I didn’t stop to consider was the other possibility: that I wasn’t running away at all but running headlong into something darker. Inevitable, even. My choices were no more than a performance of free will. Then again, how could I have known? I was just a human, made of skin and bones. Perhaps I should have listened to the alarms ringing inside my skull, the restless warnings that broke into my thoughts whenever I tried to convince myself I was doing the right thing. But I pressed on regardless, not despite those alarms, but, in a way, because of them. Madness, I know. But don’t we all have a loose screw? The alternative was death; no in between. I wanted to live. So, I chose the only option that would keep me alive for as long as possible.

I thought.

From Where the Tracks End - Part 3 of 3

Photo by NicoleLaurenPhotography on Unsplash

3

I didn’t once look behind me, not even as the darkness swallowed me. Every step I took sounded wrong, though… somehow. Not sure how to describe without sounding mad. To be honest, I couldn’t even tell if the tunnel was guiding us forwards or pushing us deeper against our will. But I never looked back, never. Had I done so, perhaps I would have noticed that there were no longer any beams of light coming towards us. But I didn’t. I just followed Brandon, or rather, I followed his footsteps. And for some strange reason, he wouldn’t stop running, not even as the entrance of the tunnel became a black hole behind us.

Only when I grew tired and slowed down did I notice how strange Brandon’s footsteps were. It was like someone kept running in place without moving, neither slow nor fast. I couldn’t even discern whether the footsteps were coming from somewhere in front of me or behind me.

“Dude,” I began, still trying to catch my breath from where I had hunched forwards. “I don’t think I—”

The tunnel breathed. That was the only way I could describe it. The air pulsed as though the stone walls themselves inhaled and exhaled like a living being, and my breathing fell out of sync with it, and for one dizzying moment, I wasn’t sure if I was the one gasping or if this forsaken place was. Somewhere ahead, faint at first, then came the rhythm of wheels on tracks, the sound of a train that couldn’t possibly be there. Then hymns, like children’s voices rising and overlapping until my ears rang and my senses became distorted.

Then I saw it.

A pair of legs. Skinny. There was no body attached to it… I think. All I knew was that I never took my eyes off the grassy railroad, not even once. Yet this person, or whatever it was, was not Brandon. I just knew it. Still, I could not raise my head or look up; instead, while still hunched forwards and holding my breath, I staggered backwards just enough for the distance between us to be in the ‘safe zone’.

And then I looked up. I wished I hadn’t. With bony hands outstretched, a malnourished kid lunged at me as soon as our eyes met, aiming for my neck. My legs went completely numb as I tried to flee and fell, crawling and crying on my fours like a bloody toddler, before stumbling back up and running with all I had towards what I thought was the exit. But then the footsteps slowed, and what remained was that strange sound of someone running in place, so I came to an abrupt stop and listened. The sound was growing louder, I could tell, but it wasn’t actually moving – more like it was running faster in place.

Then it stopped.

I covered my mouth on instinct, stifling the scream, trying not to reveal my whereabouts in the dark that kept growing darker and deeper by the second. But I was nowhere near the exit. I was sure now. Couldn’t even see it. Had I run in the wrong direction? Or was the darkness messing with my senses?

Drop.

I instinctively reached for my nose.

Drop-drop.

Something slimy had fallen, something that felt slightly grainy as I rubbed the liquid between my fingers. I couldn’t see what it was, only that it came from above me. Even the taste was odd against the tip of my tongue. It had a pungent kick to it, one that made me grimace as I tasted it. It wasn’t blood, though. This was something far worse.

I fetched my phone with shaking hands, unable to calm down as I found the flashlight icon on the screen. It worked this time. Before me was a sea of darkness that even the flashlight could not penetrate or illuminate. But it was better than pure darkness.

Drop.

I gulped hard. I wanted to direct the flashlight above me, knew I had to, but my hands wouldn’t listen. My whole body was crippled, and my senses were on high alert. Were I even breathing? Damn it!

What I did next even I have a hard time understanding. I guess my brain just couldn’t take it and completely shut down. I shit myself. I had never done that before, but as the urine got all over the place and soaked through my underwear, I did heave a breath of relief. It kind of anchored me to reality, you know? That I hadn’t completely lost it and that I was still alive, somehow…

That was when something brushed past my ankle. It felt cold and slick, but was gone before I could react. My flashlight jerked upwards still, catching absolutely nothing, but the air smelled, I don’t know… off? I had never encountered such a smell before, and whatever it was, it made me stiffen and hold my breath for a moment before once again relaxing my shoulders. I was safe. For now, of course. Stil…

The moment, however, did not last long. Not long enough, that is.

As I moved my head back, still catching my breath, a pair of bony arms suddenly lurched and held me in a chokehold, tackling me to the ground and scraping my throat and tearing at my skin. It came out of nowhere. I couldn’t even see who was trying to choke me because I lost my grip on the phone, and the flashlight just switched off on its own. But I had adjusted to the dark well enough to realise that the force trying to end me was not a child after all, but an adult man so malnourished he passed off as a boy.  

He had empty sockets where eyes should be, a long and thin beard, and hardly anything to cover his private parts. From his mouth dripped that foul-smelling saliva all over my face. At some point, I decided to fight back and punched the stranger repeatedly on his bald head until he let go, and then I started to run like I had never before. Not even once did I look behind me, dared not to, and after what felt like an eternity, I got out of the tunnel. Alone.

I figured, no, I hoped, that Brandon had made it out safely already – that he had to – and ran straight to the security and asked if they had seen Brandon. But instead of listening to me or asking why I looked like I had seen a ghost, they detained me and brought me to the police station. Even there, I tried to explain to the officers why I had trespassed and that they had to let me call Brandon and make sure he was okay, but they wouldn’t. Man, they didn’t even bother listening to me!

Looking back now at this old age, although I’m not so sure, I remember that one of the guards muttered something under his breath as he cuffed me. At the time, I thought it was just an insult due to my ethnicity, but later I realised he said: ‘Another one.’ Another what? I never dared to ask. Maybe I should have.

In the end, I spent the night detained and had no access to my phone until later tomorrow evening when my dad picked me up. But Brandon’s phone was completely shut down, and it dawned on me right then that there was a high possibility that Brandon never made it out of the tunnel. But I… couldn’t go there again. I tried. Numerous times. Even brought some people I met through Reddit, but everyone chickened out once I told them the real reason we were there. One puked before we even reached the fence, and another said he saw a child running between the trees. And so, by the time we reached the tracks, I was alone again.

Family and friends started calling me obsessed, unstable, and even cursed, while people online I had never met in person, gave me all sorts of wicked nicknames, such as ‘The Railroad Maniac.’ Maniac… What was I, a monster? I only ever wanted to find Brandon, come to terms with what happened that night inside the tunnel. What was so bad about finding out the truth? My psychiatrist even said Brandon wasn’t real, that he only existed in my mind. Even the kids back in school pretended they didn’t know him. It was like that place had erased all traces of him, and I just… couldn’t understand.

All I could do was stare into that suffocating darkness and call his name. I did that for over sixty years, and had I not suffered from diabetes and lost one of my legs to the darn disease, I would’ve continued to look for him still.

Funny thing is, sometimes, when the morphine dulls the pain and the world goes quiet, I… hear him. Or at least I think I do. And then I wonder if he ever left at all, or if I’ve been listening to the wrong side of the darkness all these years. And maybe – God forgive me – Brandon was still waiting for me. In there. In that all-consuming darkness. Thinking I abandoned him.

There you go. Call me whatever names you want. I know I failed Brandon; that he was the last person I should ever fail, but sometimes fate chooses us, not the other way around. Had I not found the strength in me to fight back then, I might have been trapped in the tunnel like Brandon. Besides, it appeared to me now at this old age, that Brandon had been lost to me the moment he heard those footsteps I could not, not until I was deep into the darkness.

That was why I chose to do something I should’ve done much earlier. I was going to return to the tunnel one final time and look for Brandon. Inside. I owed him that much as his one and only friend – the only friend of his who still remembered him. You see, the remorse was getting to me and digging deeper under my skin for every year. I did not have much time left, either. My doctor told me my arteries were almost clogged and too stiff from years of battling with diabetes, so that an aneurysm forming was not a question of if, but when. So, I decided to leave this world on my own terms.

The government was busy waging war on foreign lands under the guise of ‘forced democracy a la Afghanistan-style’ and creating the Middle East’s very own “Riviera” on stolen land, to have enough budget for doing anything about that bloody railroad. It had already become a famous site for numerous creepypastas over the years and attracted a huge amount of tourists each year, so that the whole distance between the railroad to the tunnel itself was full of placards of information about the viral creepypastas that had used the location as inspiration, as well as some lesser-known historical facts about its origin and so on. The tourists had also left soda cans and sweet wrappers along the rails so that the litter sparkled like confetti under the sun. A tragedy packaged for Instagram, I guess.

I didn’t dare to go during the night for reasons I hope I do not have to explain here, but since I went there in the middle of the day during a weekday, nobody was around save for me. In the daytime, I finally understood how absolute the darkness had become that night some fifty years ago. For a moment, I even thought I saw Brandon waiting just inside the tunnel, grinning, his hand raised as though to wave me in. When I blinked, he was gone, and the tunnel stood empty before me.

The whole place was located in the middle of what I could only describe as some kind of deserted highlands, leading straight into a chain of mountains, of which the abandoned tunnel was meant to lead straight through. But given the enormity of it all, just taking the train through that tunnel would’ve taken several hours – in the dark. And that was when I finally understood what happened to Brandon. What really happened, that is. And it had less to do with the supernatural than with the sciences.

It occurred to me at the time that Brandon might have kept going straight forwards and eventually set off too deep into the tunnel to make it back out. Yes, I did see that malnourished figure in the tunnel, but what if he, too, was another lost person seeing hallucinations due to malnourishment? I remember reading a case once of a woman who had gone lost in a forest she used to visit every week, and when they found her, she was so malnourished and frostbitten that she had gone into a state of hallucinations, so that she thought the people trying to look for her in the forest were some kind of monsters she had to hide from. When she was finally found, she was in the last stage of delirium and passed away in the hospital a day after she was rescued due to multiple organ failures. Maybe something similar was the case even here?

But this realisation set off another train of thought. If I were right and Brandon truly had been wandering the tunnel and gotten lost, he must have died a long time ago, and his remains buried somewhere in that darkness. Starting from here and going to the very end to pick up what remained of him was a bad idea, not to mention there was a limit to how long I could walk without tiring with the crutches. Also, I wasn’t that young man anymore, but someone on the brink of death. And what about my daughter? Wouldn’t she miss me dearly should I venture into the tunnel and not make it out again?

In the end, I could not go through with it. But by coming here, I finally understood what must have happened to Brandon and that strange man who had tried to choke me. Only, why did it have to take such a long time to realise the truth? And what kind of bastards had let those poor children ride a train for several hours in the dark just because of their skin tone? Sometimes I wondered if people who believed in the social construction of races even had a functional brain, categorising people into white, yellow, brown, and black, and rainbow, like they had a recipe on how to create the perfect human based off on the colour of their skin, disregarding that even within a country, people were born with different skin tones and intelligence levels.

Did I ramble on again? Sorry. I’m just a person about to die, so why not sprinkle a few truths here and there and provoke people into using their brains for once and be humans, with all that it entails?