The Train that Waited in the Fog
Seven strangers awaken at a nameless station shrouded in fog, each carrying a grief they cannot escape. When an impossible train arrives, its warmth offers comfort and release. But as the journey continues, memories begin to soften, names grow distant, and the passengers realise the train is not taking their lives. It is taking the reasons they might ever want to return.
Inside the train, warmth becomes its own kind of danger. The longer the passengers remain aboard, the more the world they left behind begins to lose its hold on them. Memories soften, familiar faces become difficult to recall, and even the grief they carried onto the train starts to feel strangely distant. What first seems like relief gradually reveals itself as something far more disturbing. The train is not healing them. It is quietly removing everything that might give them a reason to leave.
As the journey continues through the endless fog, each passenger must hold on to whatever still connects them to the life they came from. A box, a letter, a bag, a memory, even the weight of grief itself can become an anchor. Because when the doors finally open, leaving will require more than simply stepping onto the platform. They must still remember that there is something beyond the fog worth returning to.
The thought came sharply. He was not finished with this yet.
The thought arrived with an urgency the carriage immediately began working against, softening its edges, offering the alternative interpretation that the quieting of the grief was relief, something natural, something he had boarded this train to find.
He pressed his palm flat against the lid of the box and held it there, reaching for the name. The name attached to the box. The name the box carried for him. It was further away than it had been an hour ago. Not gone. But further. Receding at the same pace as the train’s work.
Another thought followed.
It was taking it.
It was taking everything that connected him to the world he had come from, doing it slowly enough that none of the losses felt like loss and all of them felt like rest.
He pressed harder against the lid of the box. The pressure travelled through his palm and into his arm. Another thought came with it. The box still carried part of the name for him. If he kept hold of that, he had not lost it completely.
He held the weight.
Audible Reviews from the UK and US
What Listeners Are Saying
Something new from author Fedor Alphenaar, Before Your Nightmares. His previous body of work, Before Your Dreams, are collections of stories that help you sleep, tales were narratives were secondary to mood and tone. This follows that successful formula, with tone and mood being paramount. Here the mood is unsettling, something is wrong and the feeling grows throughout the short story. Narrator Peter McGiffen's sonorous tones are well suited to this story of unnerving liminal spaces and growing unsettling atmosphere.
PJM ★★★★★
Seven strangers stand enveloped in dense fog at a quiet train station, driven to board a train without knowing where it’s heading or why. As a eerie numbness settles over them, boarding brings a subtle relief—grief and sadness dull, memories blur, and once-familiar faces distort. Fedor Alphenaar crafts a hauntingly atmospheric tale, brought to life perfectly by narrator Peter McGiffen, whose deep, resonant voice captures every unsettling detail of the mist and mystery.
Audiobook Girly Book Reviews ★★★★
This short story was so descriptive that you could feel the fog. It kept you on edge the entire time. Never quite sure where it was going or why but you wanted to find out.I fully recommend a listen.
Gawin ★★★★★
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