Sandip Chakraborty
1
The tram bell chimed faintly, its echo vanishing into the hushed expanse of Esplanade. Midnight in Kolkata had its own kind of silence—a silence alive with the creak of tram rails, the hiss of distant buses, and the occasional bark of stray dogs. Arup Chatterjee, in his worn khaki uniform, stood at his post with the familiarity of a man who had repeated this routine for thirty years. His eyes scanned the tram’s interior, dimly lit by yellow bulbs that flickered as though uncertain of their duty. There, in the corner seat, as always, sat the passenger. Hat pulled low, face indistinct, posture unnervingly straight. Arup could not recall ever seeing the man step on or off. He was simply there, as though part of the tram itself. Some nights Arup tried to convince himself the man was just another insomniac office worker or a late-night wanderer—but deep down, he felt a chill each time their eyes nearly met.
The tram rattled down the empty Chowringhee Road, past shuttered shops and lampposts stretching long shadows across the tracks. The city at night felt like a photograph faded at the edges, and within it, the tram seemed to glide through layers of time. Arup’s hand rested on the ticket puncher, though he never approached that particular passenger anymore. He remembered the first time, months ago, when he had walked up to collect fare. The man’s pale hand had reached into his coat pocket, withdrawn a ticket already stamped, and handed it silently. Arup had taken it, unsettled by how the paper felt oddly dry and brittle, as if touched by years rather than moments. Since then, he had avoided the ritual, letting the figure sit unchallenged. But his unease gnawed at him every ride—the way the man never shifted, never blinked for long stretches, never reacted to the bumps and sways of the tramcar.
Arup’s thoughts wandered to his father, who had also worked the tramlines back in the 1940s. He used to tell stories of passengers who vanished into thin air, of shadows that lingered at stops long after the trams had gone. At the time, Arup had laughed them off as the exaggerations of an old man. Now, with every midnight journey, he found himself believing. The city outside grew quieter still as the tram neared the end of the line. Normally, passengers stirred, gathering belongings, preparing to step off into the night. But in that corner seat, the lone figure remained unmoving, as if waiting for a destination that no longer existed. Arup forced his gaze away, staring instead at the rails glistening under the weak glow of the tram’s headlamp. Yet the feeling persisted—tonight, as on every night, he was not just ferrying steel and wood through the city, but carrying something far older, something that refused to leave. And though he told himself he would forget by dawn, Arup knew with certainty that the last ride to Esplanade was not just his burden to bear, but a secret the city itself was unwilling to let go.
2
The storm had broken over Kolkata with sudden violence, rain lashing against shuttered windows and swelling the streets with glistening water. The tram groaned along the slick tracks, its headlights scattering pale circles across the drenched road. Inside, the air was damp and heavy, the windows fogged with condensation. Arup Chatterjee tugged his cap lower, sighing at the late hour, when the sound of hurried footsteps approached from the rain-soaked street. The doors clanged open, and a young woman stepped in—drenched to the bone, clutching a backpack that dripped onto the tram floor. She shook her hair free of droplets and looked around the empty carriage with bright, curious eyes. Arup immediately recognized her type: young, restless, brimming with questions about the world. She gave him a quick, polite nod and chose a seat a few rows away, taking out a small sketchbook and pencil. He noticed how her gaze drifted toward that corner, where the silent passenger sat as always, untouched by the storm, his dark coat perfectly dry.
Riya Sen’s heart beat faster as she studied him. There was something magnetic about the man’s stillness, a quiet gravity that seemed to pull her attention. Most passengers, she thought, would have averted their eyes, but she leaned forward slightly, pencil scratching across paper as she began to sketch his outline—the angle of his bowler hat, the rigid posture, the way his face was half-claimed by shadow. Each stroke only sharpened her unease, yet also her fascination. When she finally lifted her eyes from the page, her breath caught—the passenger was staring back at her, directly, his eyes dark and unreadable. She froze, the pencil slipping from her fingers and rolling onto the floor. The tram jolted over a curve, but he did not move, his gaze never wavering. The silence between them thickened until the clatter of the wheels felt like a heartbeat. She quickly glanced away, cheeks warm despite the damp chill in the air, and tried to convince herself it was nothing more than a trick of coincidence. But when she looked again, his stare had not shifted.
From the front of the tram, Arup watched with growing alarm. He cleared his throat sharply and stepped closer to her, his voice low but firm. “Don’t look at him,” he said, eyes darting nervously toward the passenger. “And whatever you do, don’t speak.” Riya blinked at him, startled. “Why? Who is he?” she whispered back, half-intrigued, half-defiant. Arup shook his head, refusing to explain. He had learned long ago that words only invited more questions, and questions opened doors that should remain closed. Yet he could see the spark in her expression, the restless determination of someone who would not be dissuaded. As the storm raged outside, lightning briefly illuminated the tram, casting the passenger’s face in stark relief against the window. For a fleeting second, Riya thought she saw two faces flicker in the reflection—one stern and European, the other softer, Indian, both dissolving into shadow. Her pulse quickened. She knew then that this was no ordinary man, and far from being afraid, she felt herself being pulled deeper into the mystery, compelled to know who—or what—he truly was.
3
The next morning, with the storm’s memory still lingering in the city’s damp streets, Riya sat cross-legged on the cool floor of her grandmother’s old north Kolkata home. The walls, yellowed with age and heavy with framed photographs of ancestors long gone, seemed to breathe history itself. Mrinalini Devi, frail but sharp-eyed, sat in her wooden armchair, the ends of her white saree carefully folded across her lap. The smell of boiled milk and incense filled the air, grounding the room in its everyday rhythms, yet Riya’s mind was far from ordinary matters. She recounted the events of the night before—the almost-empty tram, the silent passenger, and the way his gaze had locked with hers like a thread stretching across time. Her grandmother listened quietly, her wrinkled fingers tightening around the edge of her chair. When Riya finished, Mrinalini let out a sigh that carried the weight of something she had kept hidden too long.
“You should not have boarded the last tram,” her grandmother murmured, her voice low and grave. “Esplanade has always been haunted by more than shadows. In my youth, during the Quit India Movement, the city was alive with fear and whispers. People disappeared, not just into prisons but into the night itself. There were men who fought bravely, carrying secrets under their coats and passing messages along those very tramlines. But there were also men who betrayed them, selling their comrades to the British for a pouch of coins or a false promise of safety. Some say the betrayed never reached their destinations. Some say the betrayers were cursed never to arrive. And when people spoke of these vanishings, they always spoke in hushed voices, as if the trams themselves were listening.” Her gaze fixed sharply on her granddaughter. “What you saw is not a man—it is history that refuses to rest. And history can be dangerous, Riya.”
Riya absorbed the words with a mixture of awe and determination. She could almost see the past her grandmother described: men in loose khadi kurtas, clutching satchels of leaflets, their eyes darting for signs of spies; British officers in crisp uniforms watching from the corners of Chowringhee; the clanging of tram bells masking hurried whispers of conspiracy. The images fascinated her more than they frightened her. While her grandmother’s warning rang clear, it only stoked her curiosity further. She felt as though she had brushed against the edge of a forgotten chapter, one that had been waiting decades for someone to reopen it. “But isn’t it important to know the truth?” she asked softly. Mrinalini shook her head, a shadow passing across her face. “Some truths burn more than they illuminate. Promise me, child, you will not ride that tram again.” Riya gave a small nod, but inside, she knew she could not resist. The tram, the silent passenger, the strange flicker of faces in the lightning—they were no longer just shadows to her. They were a summons, and she felt history itself calling her name.
4
The tram rocked gently as it glided past the dimly lit stretches of central Kolkata, its metal wheels singing against the old rails. That night, the carriage was emptier than usual, the storm clouds overhead muting the city’s noise into a distant murmur. Riya boarded with a sense of resolve, her wet umbrella tucked under one arm, her sketchbook pressed firmly to her chest. The moment she stepped inside, she felt the familiar weight of his presence—there, in the far corner, exactly where he always sat. The man in the bowler hat, unmoving, as though he had been waiting for her arrival. For a long moment, she stood frozen, then walked with deliberate steps down the aisle and chose the seat directly across from him. Arup Chatterjee, from his conductor’s post, stiffened visibly. His voice rose in a half-whispered protest: “Miss, not there. Sit anywhere else, but not there.” But Riya ignored him. Her curiosity was stronger than her fear, and tonight she wanted answers.
The tram rattled forward, sparks flickering briefly along the electric lines, and the air grew heavy with silence. Then, without turning his head, the passenger spoke. The words came in clipped, archaic English, each syllable carrying a rasp as though scraped from old stone: “What year… is it?” The sound chilled her to the bone. It was a question so ordinary, yet in that voice, it felt like a demand from beyond time. Riya’s throat tightened, but she forced herself to respond. “It’s… it’s 2025.” For the first time, the passenger shifted slightly, tilting his head as if weighing her answer. His pale lips curved into something that was not quite a smile. “So… it has been long.” His accent was strange—neither fully British nor fully Indian, something caught between. Riya could feel Arup’s eyes boring into her, his panic rising. He clutched the metal pole beside him, his knuckles white. “Don’t answer him,” Arup urged, his voice trembling. “Please, miss, you don’t know what you’ve started.” But Riya leaned forward, her pulse hammering, determined to push further. “Who are you?” she asked softly. The man’s gaze flicked to hers, sharp and unsettling. “I am… unfinished.”
That night, sleep did not come easily. When it did, it brought with it a dream so vivid that Riya woke in sweat-soaked sheets. She saw herself on the tram, only the carriage no longer rattled through Chowringhee but through a landscape warped and bloodied. The tracks beneath had turned crimson, slick with something warm and thick, stretching endlessly into the dark. Around her, faceless passengers sat motionless, their clothes stained, their silence unbearable. The mysterious passenger stood now at the center aisle, his bowler hat casting no shadow, his walking stick dripping with blood that pooled across the tram floor. “Unfinished,” he whispered again, and the rails screamed like tortured metal as the tram sped forward into nothingness. Riya woke gasping, clutching her sketchbook by instinct. Flipping it open, she found a drawing she did not remember making: a tram splitting in two, one half bright and new, the other half drenched in red. The line between them blurred, just as the line between past and present was beginning to blur in her own life.
5
The following afternoon, with the memory of her dream still burning in her mind, Riya made her way through the labyrinthine lanes of Lake Gardens to a modest two-storied house where retired Inspector Ashok Roy lived. The neighborhood was quiet, a stark contrast to the storm of questions spinning in her head. She had learned about Roy from her grandmother, who remembered him as a young officer once obsessed with “strange disappearances” on the tramlines. Now in his mid-sixties, he was known more for his silence than his stories. When Riya rang the bell, a tall, broad-shouldered man with silvered hair and thick spectacles opened the door. His eyes, clouded but still sharp, narrowed at her. “I don’t entertain students or reporters anymore,” he muttered. But when she mentioned the last tram to Esplanade, something flickered in his gaze—a guarded recognition, quickly smothered by suspicion. Reluctantly, he let her inside, motioning her toward a cluttered room where the smell of old paper lingered like dust in the air.
At first, Roy resisted her questions, brushing them off as youthful curiosity. “The tramlines are full of stories,” he said, his voice gruff. “Most are exaggerated, some are invented, and a few are better left alone.” But Riya persisted, her words tumbling out with quiet intensity—her encounter with the passenger, her grandmother’s warnings, the dream that refused to leave her. The inspector grew restless, pacing the room, until finally he stopped by a wooden cupboard, its handles rusted with age. After a long silence, he pulled open a drawer and withdrew a thin, brown file whose edges were crumbling. He laid it on the table between them with a heaviness that seemed to carry decades of hesitation. The file bore the faded stamp of 1943, its title barely legible: Esplanade Tramway – Disappearance Case. As Riya opened it, her breath caught. Inside were yellowed reports, witness statements scrawled in fountain pen, and a grainy black-and-white photograph of a man in a suit, his features half-blurred by time. “He vanished,” Roy said quietly. “One moment he was seen on the tram, the next—gone. No one saw him disembark. No trace was ever found.”
Riya scanned the notes hungrily, her historian’s mind piecing together the fragments. The reports hinted at more than a simple disappearance. One officer had written of “a suspected underground cell using tramlines to move coded messages.” Another scribbled line mentioned betrayal within the group. Some names were blacked out, others lost to age, but the implications were clear: the missing man had not just been a passenger—he had been tied to a network of revolutionaries. “Why was it never solved?” Riya asked, her voice trembling. Roy’s lips tightened into a thin line. “Because it wasn’t meant to be,” he said. “Too many powerful men wanted the matter buried. Some cases, child, are closed for a reason.” His eyes bored into hers, heavy with warning. “Do not dig further. You are young—you still have a life ahead of you. Leave the dead to their silence.” But Riya felt the opposite. The file in her hands was not just paper; it was a key. And once a key is found, the door it belongs to demands to be opened.
6
The city began to feel different to Riya in the days that followed. The tramlines, which she once regarded as relics of Kolkata’s colonial past, now seemed alive, humming with secrets just beneath their steel. Each evening, she found herself drawn back to Esplanade, as though pulled by an unseen thread. And each time, the passenger was there—unchanged, unmoving, the bowler hat shadowing his face. Yet Riya noticed something strange: his reflection in the glass did not always match the figure seated before her. Sometimes, when the tram passed a shop window or the rain-slicked sheen of a street, his reflection shifted—a younger man with sharp European features, lips curled in disdain. Other times, the reflection revealed an Indian face, solemn, weary, the eyes brimming with a sorrow deeper than words. Riya blinked each time, her heart hammering, but when she looked back at the figure directly, he was the same as always: a silent, immovable presence. It was as if the glass alone betrayed the truth—that he was both oppressor and victim, traitor and betrayed, two lives folded into one ghostly passenger.
The sight tormented her until, one late night on the tram, she confronted Arup about it. The conductor, who had always kept his distance, seemed to shrink under her questions, his voice breaking with unease. “You think you’re the first to see him?” he said, eyes darting nervously toward the passenger. “My father… he worked these same routes before independence. He told me once about a man—sitting exactly there—who never got off. Said he saw him night after night, in ’43, when the city was burning with protests and blood. The British were jailing people, torturing them, and yet that man… he stayed. No one spoke to him, no one dared. But my father swore he saw his face change. Sometimes a sahib, sometimes a Bengali. As if he couldn’t decide which mask was his.” Arup shivered, his hands tightening on the fare box. “When I took this job, I thought it was just an old story. But the first night I saw him, I knew—it wasn’t just a tale. He’s been here ever since. Waiting. Haunting. Watching.”
Riya sat in silence, the truth pressing heavily against her chest. Eight decades—that was how long the passenger had been riding, trapped between identities, between times. The thought unsettled her yet also deepened her fascination. She began to wonder whether his presence was punishment or penance. Was he the betrayer, cursed to carry his shame forever? Or the betrayed, doomed to relive the moment of his vanishing until someone uncovered the truth? The tram rocked gently beneath her, its wooden frame creaking with age, and she realized that she no longer felt like a mere passenger. She was part of the story now, caught between two eras just as he was. As the tram glided past the colonial facades of Chowringhee, their shadows stretching long against the neon glow of modern billboards, Riya felt as if the past and present were bleeding together, and the city itself had become a stage where unfinished history demanded to be heard.
7
Riya’s search for answers took her deep into the city’s forgotten corners—dusty archives, moth-eaten newspapers, and the whispered memories of old men who had lived long enough to remember the chaos of 1943. Each clue layered itself upon the last until a story began to take shape, jagged and incomplete, but undeniable in its weight. She discovered mentions of a revolutionary cell that operated out of College Street, men and women who carried messages coded in poetry and hidden in tram tickets. Their leader, a man of sharp intellect and fiery conviction, had devised a dangerous disguise—he would dress as a British officer to pass through checkpoints unnoticed, smuggling intelligence along the tram routes that crisscrossed the colonial city. The disguise worked for weeks, perhaps months, until one night when everything collapsed. Witness accounts hinted at betrayal within the group. The British had swooped down in a coordinated raid, arresting half the cell. But the leader, the man in disguise, was never seen again. The last report placed him on the Esplanade tram, vanishing before it reached its final stop.
The revelation weighed heavily on Riya as she pieced together the fragments. If the passenger was indeed this revolutionary, then he was not merely a ghost but a reminder of a betrayal that had cracked through the heart of the movement. Yet the details remained blurred, as though history itself resisted being fully known. Some documents implied that the betrayer had also used the same disguise, donning a British uniform to win trust before selling out his comrades. Was it possible, then, that the ghost was not one man but two—one betrayed, one betrayer, their fates entwined in such a way that memory could no longer separate them? The flickering reflections Riya had witnessed—the British face, the Indian face—seemed to confirm this duality. What if the tram carried not a single passenger, but a fractured truth, doomed to circle the city endlessly until someone uncovered which face was the real one?
When she returned to the tram that night, her eyes studied the passenger with new understanding. His stillness no longer seemed passive but heavy with unspoken accusation. She imagined the weight of unfinished justice pressing against him, keeping him bound to the iron tracks. Arup, watching her from across the carriage, shook his head in warning, but Riya leaned forward, her voice trembling yet steady. “Were you betrayed—or did you betray them?” she whispered. For the first time, the passenger’s head turned fully, his eyes glinting with a sorrow so profound it made her breath catch. The silence that followed was unbearable, filled with the rattling hum of the tram and the echo of the city’s long-forgotten wounds. In that moment, Riya understood that perhaps he was both—betrayer and betrayed, victim and culprit, trapped in an endless ride because history itself could not decide where to place him. And until someone did, the tram would keep moving, carrying its ghostly reminder through the midnight streets of Esplanade.
8
The night was unusually still when Riya made her decision. She arrived at the Esplanade terminus just before midnight, her resolve sharper than the fear gnawing at her stomach. The tram stood waiting under the weak glow of the streetlamps, its windows reflecting the rain-washed streets like portals into another time. She stepped aboard, her heart hammering, and took her place opposite the passenger. Tonight, she vowed, she would not flinch, not look away, not escape before the ride ended. Arup’s worried eyes followed her as he punched her ticket, his lips pressed tight against words he no longer bothered to speak. The tram lurched forward, its old wheels shrieking against the rails, and almost at once, Riya felt the weight of time shift. The city outside seemed to slow, as though frozen in sepia stillness, the neon lights bleeding into the night air like smeared paint. The air inside the tram grew colder, thick with something that clung to her skin like mist.
For the first time, the passenger stirred before she spoke. His hand tightened on the walking stick, his head tilting just slightly, and when his voice emerged, it was broken and fractured, like shards of glass scraping against each other. “Blood… betrayal… scream.” The words came in fragments, but each struck with the weight of memory too heavy to bear. Riya leaned closer, her notebook forgotten on her lap, her breath unsteady. “Tell me,” she pleaded, “What happened that night?” His gaze fixed on her, and the world around them seemed to blur. In the window’s reflection, she saw not her own face but scenes unraveling—men in khadi rushing through tram doors, a British officer standing among them, then the sudden flash of betrayal in narrowed eyes. The tramcar filled with shouts, the sound of boots pounding, and then—silence broken by a single, terrible scream. Riya gripped the wooden seat as the visions washed over her. The smell of gunpowder filled the air, and when she blinked, she saw faint stains spreading across the tram floor as though the wood itself remembered the blood.
Arup’s panicked voice tried to cut through the air. “Miss, don’t listen! You’ll be caught in it too!” But Riya could not pull back. The walls between past and present were crumbling, folding into each other until she could no longer tell where she sat. The tram rattled down Chowringhee, yet the windows no longer showed neon lights or shuttered shops. Instead, the city outside had dissolved into the Kolkata of 1943—gas lamps flickering, soldiers patrolling, protestors shouting in distant alleys. She realized then that the passenger was not simply recounting; he was reliving, dragging her into the night of his death. The scream echoed again, ringing in her ears until it felt like her own. And in that scream, she heard not just fear but a demand—for justice, for truth, for acknowledgment of a betrayal buried too long. As the tram thundered forward into the midnight fog, Riya understood that she was no longer just a witness. She had stepped into the trap of memory, and there would be no leaving until the story itself was complete.
9
The tram screeched to its usual halt at Esplanade, but instead of the hiss of brakes and the groan of weary machinery, an unnatural silence fell. Riya looked out the window, expecting the familiar junction of flickering neon signs, shuttered shops, and the emptiness of midnight streets. But the world outside had shifted. The buildings were older, colonial facades looming tall under the dim glow of gas lamps. The air itself felt heavier, thick with coal smoke and the distant clatter of horse hooves. A shiver crawled down her spine as she stepped onto the platform, her breath catching—this was not the Esplanade she knew. The city had dissolved into another era, pulling her into the heart of 1943. She glanced back at the tram; the passenger remained seated, his eyes fixed on her as though daring her to step forward. And though her every instinct screamed to run, she felt history’s grip tighten around her ankles, dragging her deeper into the unfinished story.
The square was alive with shadows of men moving in hurried clusters, their faces sharp with resolve, their whispers sharp as blades. She recognized them from descriptions in old documents—revolutionaries, disguised as clerks, laborers, students. At the center of the gathering stood a man in a British officer’s uniform. But Riya knew better. This was no colonial officer—it was the revolutionary leader, the one who had worn the disguise to smuggle intelligence. His voice carried urgency, instructing his comrades, warning them of imminent danger. And then, with a suddenness that cut the air, another figure emerged from the crowd. Riya felt her chest tighten as she saw the flickering duality of his face—the same she had glimpsed in the tram’s reflections. For a heartbeat he was Indian, eyes darting with fear; then, in another blink, he was unmistakably British, his lips curling in betrayal. She realized then the cruel truth: the betrayer and the betrayed were bound together in this single moment, their roles tangled, their fates inseparable. It was not just one man who haunted the tram but the memory of betrayal itself, wearing both masks.
The chaos unfolded swiftly, like a nightmare unspooling before her eyes. Soldiers stormed into the square, their boots pounding against the cobblestones, rifles raised. Shouts erupted, torches flared, and within seconds the air was filled with the sound of gunfire and the terrified cries of men cornered. The revolutionary leader turned, his eyes wide with disbelief as he realized who among them had betrayed him. And then came the scream—the same blood-curdling cry that had haunted the tram for decades—echoing through the square as he fell. Riya’s body shook with the force of it, her heart pounding as though it would burst. She wanted to intervene, to shout, to stop the moment from playing out, but her voice caught in her throat. She was no more than a witness, trapped in history’s relentless replay. Around her, the scene dissolved into smoke and blood, the outlines of the city blurring until all that remained was the tram waiting in the shadows, the passenger still seated in his corner. His eyes locked with hers, and for the first time, she understood the curse. Until someone bore witness to the betrayal, the past would keep looping endlessly, chaining him to the midnight tram at Esplanade.
10
The tram rattled through the empty streets, its wheels shrieking like a lament for the dead. Riya sat frozen, the midnight city around her dissolving once more into blurred fragments of the past. The passenger shifted, his form flickering like a candle caught in a draft—sometimes the stern face of a British officer, sometimes the sharp-eyed revolutionary, sometimes the hollow stare of a broken man. His voice, when it came, was no longer fragmented but heavy with unbearable sorrow. “I was both,” he confessed, his words echoing through the tram’s hollow body. “The spy and the savior. The betrayer and the betrayed.” Riya felt the weight of his torment pressing on her chest. She saw it then, the impossible choice that had doomed him: to gain intelligence, he had played at being loyal to both sides, betraying fragments of truth and fragments of lies, until the night came when his deception shattered everything. The revolutionaries were captured, the British lost their informant, and he—caught between masks—was condemned to ride forever, his guilt looping with every turn of the tram wheels.
The tram screeched to a halt at Esplanade as the first light of dawn pierced the fog. But instead of empty streets, Riya heard the echoes of the fallen—shouts, gunfire, and that final scream threading through the air like a curse. The passenger rose at last, his form towering, his outline collapsing inward as if history itself was pulling him apart. “Every night I ride,” he whispered, “because I could never choose who I truly was.” His eyes burned into hers, and Riya felt a chill sweep through her body as though some part of her was being measured, weighed by the weight of his story. Outside, the gas lamps flickered and faded, replaced by the first sunlit reflections of glass towers and hoardings. Time was catching up, dragging her back to her own era. With a thunderous groan, the tram dissolved into mist, its form vanishing into the brightness of morning. For a long heartbeat, there was nothing but silence—the city awake again, unaware of the haunting that had ridden its veins for eight decades.
When Riya was found the next morning, she was sitting alone on a bench at Esplanade, her clothes damp with dew. In her arms was her sketchbook, pages filled with restless drawings made in the dark—a hundred faces blurred by memory, the stern gaze of the officer, the fiery eyes of the revolutionary, the hollow look of the betrayer. But as she turned the pages with trembling fingers, she froze. Among the sketches of men long dead was a new one, one she did not remember drawing. It was her own face, pale and wide-eyed, seated among the tram’s passengers, staring back at her as though she, too, had been claimed by the midnight ride. For the first time, the thought struck her like a cold blade: maybe witnessing was not enough. Maybe, in becoming part of the story, she had joined the endless journey. And as the city bustled awake around her, Riya kept staring at the page, unable to look away from the terrible certainty that one night soon, when the tram bell tolled again, her place among its riders would be waiting.
End
