The coach left the parish office behind us with the telephone still ringing. I watched the building shrink through the rear window until the lane turned and hid it. The destination blind above the windscreen was blank. No one spoke for several minutes.
Then Declan said, “If it writes me down again, I want to see it.”
Rachel sat opposite him, the folded sheet she had written at Cluain Riach held between both hands. “You saw it.”
“I saw one line. I want to know what it’s doing with the line.”
I had been listening to the coach. Its engine had a steady low vibration, but beneath that sat a repeating pulse: four, three, a pause. It was faint enough to mistake for road noise if I hadn’t spent so long measuring it. The coach’s speaker was silent.
“Where’s it taking us?” Rachel asked.
The blind began to turn. The slats showed a name, one letter at a time: CILL RUA.
The coach changed gear.
A road sign passed on our left, its face turned away from the lane. I saw the back of it, gray metal on two rusted posts. There were no houses or lights. The coach took a narrow road beside a railway line, though I couldn’t remember seeing tracks on the map.
Declan leaned toward the window. “That’s not a bus road.”
“It seems to disagree,” I said.
The coach slowed beside a small station. One platform, one low building, a glass shelter with a bench inside. A hand-painted board read CILL RUA HALT. A single lamp burned over the door. The coach stopped with its front wheels just short of the platform edge.
Its door opened.
Rachel looked at me. “We don’t have to get off.”
I knew that. I also knew the driverless coach could wait here until the rest of the world became less useful than following it. I stood and took the sheet from her hand. We had names written there, the date, and the places the route had carried us. No status. No columns.
“Together,” I said.
Declan got off first. “I’ve heard that one.”
The halt smelled of wet iron and coal dust. A woman in a dark green cardigan stood behind the station window, sorting slips of paper into a metal tray. She glanced up as we crossed the platform.
“Last service went through hours ago,” she said when we entered. Her voice was brisk, but her eyes kept moving to the coach outside. “You’re not stranded, are you?”
“Not exactly,” Rachel said.
Next
The coach is carrying Mark, Rachel, and Declan toward West Parish, while Maeve remains at the halt with their warning and the route has already reached her telephone.
The woman set down the slips. “That usually means yes.”
“Is the telephone working?” I asked.
She pointed to a black instrument on the wall. “It rings. Nobody uses it much.”
A ledger lay open on the counter beside a timetable. The pages were ruled in the same columns as the parish book. The newest entry had not been written in ink. Its letters pressed up through the paper from beneath.
ALDER, MARK — CLUAIN RIACH — RECEIVED.
Below it, another line had begun: SLOANE, DECLAN. The destination field was blank.
Declan came up behind me. “So this is what it meant by transferred.”
The attendant had heard him. She looked from the ledger to us. “Who wrote that?”
“No one you can ask,” I said.
“I can ask you.”
“Mark,” Rachel said, laying our sheet beside the ledger. “That’s his name. Declan’s here too. We came on that coach.”
The attendant read the sheet, then the ledger. Her mouth tightened at RECEIVED. “I didn’t put that in.”
“No,” I said. “But it knows you’re here.”
A short bell rang somewhere in the building. The attendant turned toward the back room. “That’s the platform circuit. It sticks when it rains.”
The bell rang again, four times, then three.
I followed the sound to a panel behind the counter. The casing held an old amplifier and a pair of terminal strips, their labels faded. A microphone sat on the desk beneath the public-address horn. I pulled the lead from the amplifier input. The bell stopped.
The attendant watched me. “You’re a railway man?”
“Sound engineer.”
“Then you know how to put it back.”
“Usually.”
I switched off the amplifier. The horn above the platform gave a dry click. For a moment the station seemed to have settled into ordinary quiet: rain tapping the window, the coach engine idling outside, paper shifting in the attendant’s tray.
Then the telephone rang.
She didn’t move. Neither did I.
A second ring. The sound was too loud for the little instrument. Its bell had a bright metallic edge that carried through the room and stopped the attendant’s hand above the tray.
Rachel reached for the receiver. “Don’t.”
“I wasn’t going to answer it.” She drew her hand back. “I was going to take it off the wall.”
The ring came again. I lifted the telephone from its cradle and set it on the floor. It rang there, bell vibrating against the boards.
The attendant flinched at the fourth ring. I didn’t blame her. The rhythm had found the room’s hard surfaces and was filling them. I reached for the wire where it entered the instrument, pinched it between two fingers, and pulled.
The bell stopped.
The receiver spoke.
My voice came from the earpiece on the floor, a clean recording with the same close, dry sound I used when checking a microphone. “I came to record the songs before they were lost.”
I couldn’t make myself pick it up. I knew the line. I had said something like it when I first came to Black Hallow, before I understood that a purpose could be carried as easily as a name. Hearing it here, in my own voice, made the room tilt—not physically, but enough that I put a hand on the counter.
Rachel said, “Mark.”
“I know.”
The voice continued after the sentence, though the earpiece had no power and the amplifier was off. A soft hiss covered the words. Under it, the four-three pattern began again.
The attendant reached for the telephone cord. I caught her wrist.
She stared at my hand. I let go at once.
“Sorry,” I said.
She rubbed the spot where I’d touched her. “That’s all right.” She was pale now. “What did it say?”
“Nothing you need to answer.”
The route shifted. The receiver clicked, and the voice came again, quieter. “Druim—” It broke off beneath the pattern. Then, after a pause: “West Parish.”
Rachel unfolded the sheet on the counter and pressed it flat with her palm. “Write that down.”
The attendant took a pencil. “Druim what?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “West Parish, definitely.”
She wrote both phrases on the back of our sheet. Her handwriting was small and steady. I was still looking at the telephone. The cloth-covered cord had fallen into a loop beside the receiver, though I had pulled it free at the wall.
“Who are you?” I asked her.
“Maeve Kearney. I’m the night attendant.” She put the pencil down. “And I’m not answering that thing.”
A train passed somewhere beyond the station, or a sound like one did: wheels crossing joints in an even rhythm, growing louder without approaching. The platform lamp flickered. When the sound faded, the coach outside had shut its door.
The blind displayed WEST PARISH.
Declan looked at the open ledger. “It’s using my name to get here.”
“And mine to make the entry,” I said.
“You didn’t make it.”
“I was here. It’s close enough for the book.”
He looked as if he wanted to argue, but the words did not come. Rachel laid her hand over the two names on the page. For a second she held them there, covering the route’s neat columns with the rough graphite of her own record.
Maeve folded our sheet once, keeping her notes inside. “I’ll leave this in the drawer. If someone comes through in the morning, they’ll see it.”
“Don’t leave the telephone connected,” I said.
“I won’t.”
I knew it wouldn’t matter for long. I had unplugged one route and heard it speak from the other end anyway. Still, Maeve carried the instrument into the back room. The bell did not sound again while she was gone.
Rachel held the door for us. Declan stepped onto the platform, then waited until I joined them. The coach engine idled beyond the window. There was no driver in the cab.
We got aboard. As the door folded shut, I looked back at Maeve through the station glass. She stood with one hand on the counter and the other near the drawer where she had put our names. She didn’t wave.
The coach pulled away from the halt. The destination blind stayed on WEST PARISH, and beneath it, the speaker clicked once.