It was early in the evening when Yew awoke in the back of the tram, her face against the window and the glass fogged by her breath. She had been sitting in the back row on the way back from lectures, and the gentle swaying of the carriage had conspired with her noise-cancelling earphones to lull her to sleep before her stop. She wiped the blur from her eyes, then from the window, and blearily squinted out. All she could see was a brick wall and a terrifying ghost. No, wait, that was her reflection - her makeup was just all smeared. She looked down at the knuckles she'd just rubbed her eyes with, winced, and sighed.
She sat up a little straighter and looked around. The tram was an old model; first brought into service in the '80s, last upholstered in the early '00s, the boldly colourful new-millennium patterns faded by the years to the pastel shades of pleasant memories. Nobody else was on board. She shuffled along the seats and leant over to peek around the divider. No conductor.
After a moment's reflection, it struck her that her earphones were silent, and the playlist she had been listening to was not short. She cast around for her bag, briefly panicked that someone had stolen it while she was asleep, found it tucked safely beneath her seat in the corner, and pulled out her phone. 20:41, 8%, 11 notifications, no signal.
She pressed her thumbprint into the home key and swiped open the notification tray. She had been pinged three times in the history club group chat and had missed a text from her mother. Annoyingly, even though the notifications had arrived, the Chord app wouldn't let her read the messages, simply opening to a blank blue page and a "no signal" pop-up. Same for the worksheet email she had received. Fortunately, the Weavr alert included the exact amount of likes she'd got while asleep, or at least, before she lost signal. It was 47.
8% ticked down to 7%, and Yew put the phone to sleep and stowed it back in her bag. She took out her earphones and stashed them alongside the phone, then shuffled out of the seat-row and to her feet. Her limbs were stiff, and she blinked hard as she stretched, swung her bag over her shoulder, then started down the aisle.
Out of the opposite windows, all she could see was a concrete pillar and, behind it, another switched-off tram. She couldn't see where the light was coming from, but its bleached hue and occasional flicker indicated failing fluorescent panels in the ceiling somewhere. She rattled the folding door to no avail. Her stomach was starting to sink.
The conductor's seat was sequestered away behind a glass partition with a small gap for the exchange of cash and tickets. She spent a few moments sticking her arm through to try and reach the door button, but it was futile - even if she could reach it, the tram was switched off, anyway. She withdrew her arm and shook the twinge from her shoulder, then banged on the windshield a few times. "Hello??"
No answer came. She glanced back down the aisle, towards the seat where she'd woken up. The conductor must have thought nobody was aboard when he disembarked - from here, she would have been short enough to be hidden by the seat in front. Then she glanced up, blinked, and hurried back down to the rear seats.
She hopped up onto the seat and reached for the latch on the rear window. It wasn't locked - it didn't even have a lock, unless you counted the build-up of rust, which only held up for a moment before giving way with a metallic squeak. After striking the glass a few times to pop it free, she pushed the window as far open as it would go, which was about thirty-five degrees. It would have to do.
She took off her bag and shoved it through the window, lowering it as far as she could before letting go of the strap. Then, she clambered up herself and squeezed through the gap, clinging to the window frame for a moment before slipping and crashing to the floor with an echoing yelp. She picked herself up with a groan and a brief, accusatory glare at the back of the tram. Then she stood, patting her skirt a few times in a futile attempt to remove the fresh smear of concrete grime.
Yew had never given much thought to where the trams went at night - to be fair, it was far more relevant to her where they went in the daytime - but that unasked question had now been answered in the least helpful possible way: "here". The trams slept in rows along rusty railbeds, under a flat concrete roof supported by the occasional bulky pillar. Along one wall was a raised platform and a series of warehouse shelves stacked with heavy-looking components, wheels and gearboxes and such, while along the opposite wall, the rails each disappeared off into inky tunnels.
Somewhere, she now perceived, there was a PA system. The sound was tinny and quiet, perhaps drifting in from a different part of the depot; the concrete acoustics carried it far, but rendered it glassy and indistinct. It was playing music. A lone cello and horn sang in company, beautiful, but bittersweet. It was quite unlike the music Yew usually streamed to her phone, and entirely unlike any music she had ever heard from a PA. There was no clear reason why it was playing for an audience of empty trams.
She began to search for an exit, gingerly, for some reason cautious of interrupting the music with her footsteps. There was a short flight of concrete steps in one corner that led to a metal door, which was locked. On tiptoe, she could peep through its tiny window, but all that was beyond was a long, shadowy corridor. She took a brief look into the tram tunnels, but even if she trusted her phone battery to survive prolonged use of the flashlight, they were barred a few meters down by metal shutters.
Eventually, the music led her to a narrow hallway hidden behind one of the trams. It wound through the structure of whatever building they were in, passing between many locked metal doors, squeezing through the angular spaces between the larger rooms surrounding it. The ceiling was high, and almost hidden behind a tangle of silver-foil pipes, wires and dust-clogged HVAC ducts.
Beneath the sound of her own footsteps and the ever-present, ever-elsewhere song, she became aware of the sound of the building itself. Those wires and ducts were all part of a larger system of transformers and lights and air-conditioning units and plumbing and heating, each piece speaking in barely a whisper but together forming an endless hum, like a congregation at prayer, or the sound of rain on the cobblestones. Yew did not think any of this, at least, not in these words.
She turned a corner and stopped in her tracks. Ahead of her was a figure.
It was a gaunt silver-haired woman in a blue janitor's jumpsuit. Yew exhaled. The woman was stood halfway down the corridor, swaying gently on the spot, holding the tarnished handle of a mop to her chest. Her eyes were closed, and a sad sort of smile was washed across her face. As the distant cello rose to the crest of a particularly tragic arpeggio, she winced as if in pain, and clutched the mop closer to herself. Her smile did not fade.
Yew approached the janitor to within a few paces, to no reaction. She glanced around nervously for a moment. "Hello?"
The janitor's wrinkled eyes slowly opened, just a crack, and then widened. "My word," she said. "It's you."
There had been many responses Yew could have expected, but this was not one of them. She fought in vain to construct a sentence for several seconds. As she stood there, the janitor went on: "I almost thought you didn't exist." This only raised further questions.
"Um," she finally managed to stammer out, "wait, so, you know me?"
"Ooh, yes," answered the janitor, "I'd bet most everybody working on the trams knows you. I'd never seen you before today, though young Rob says he's seen you twice."
"Who's- is Rob a conductor, then?"
The janitor tilted her head a little. "Why, no. He's a janitor here, same as me."
Yew was clearly missing some fundamental information about the basic nature of this interaction. She almost felt compelled to apologise for her stupidity. Instead, she said, rather lamely, "But I, um, I've never been here before in my life."
This caused the old woman to laugh wryly. Yew felt the awkward guilt curdling to frustration in her stomach. "Look," she said, taking half a step closer, "Who do you think I am?"
The janitor gave her a look of surprise. "Well, you're Amelie Worth, aren't you?"
Yew shook her head pleadingly. A look of pity crossed the janitor's face. "Well, they say ghosts, they sometimes don't remember who they were in life," she said.
"Ghosts?"
"Mhm. You're... They say you were the first person to die on the tram network." Yew stared at her, mouth open. "Back in the 1800s, the late 1800s. Since then you've haunted the system at night. They call you the Railwraith."
"That's not me," Yew finally managed to insist after a few moments of distant horn.
The janitor looked away, sighing. "It must be so sad, not remembering who you were."
"No, no, no," begged Yew, "I do remember who I was. I'm Yew Lynnwood."
The break in the conversation overlapped, coincidentally, with a break between tracks in the music. The two of them stared at each other for several seconds. The building hummed.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. Yes!" Yew spoke quickly, as if failing to convince this old woman would get her stuck as the Railwraith forever. "I'm Yew Lynnwood, I'm not dead, I'm just lost-"
"Only the stories say you appear as a young lady," the janitor cut in, pointing at her to illustrate the similarities, "running makeup, white dress all besmirchéd with soot..."
Rewrite conversation from here - yew needs to lose the argument more decisively. this old lady needs to just absolutely steamroll her identity until she's also referring to herself as a ghost. that's funnier