Passenger Eleven

What it looks like, and what it does

A coach interior at night: ten rows of seat backs, and at the very rear an eleventh place where no seat exists. The shape of a person in it is visible only in the window glass. A punched ticket on the luggage rack.

Boards at the third stop. Is visible only in reflection. Leaves last, at the terminus.

What is known

The Route 9 night coach runs from Aldermoor to the coast. Tickets are sold by row. There is no row eleven. On every run, a ticket is punched for it.

Passengers near the back describe someone sitting very upright, travelling a long way, patient. At the terminus the rear of the coach has been found warm and a ticket on the floor. The machines record the sale. The money is in the till.

What it can do

• Occupies a seat that does not exist
• Is counted by every machine that logs the journey and by no one who looks

Where it stops

• Cannot be seen directly, only in glass
• Does not board a coach in which every passenger is asleep

An encounter

Beaumont counted ten in the mirror and eleven on the manifest. She stopped the coach on the hard shoulder and walked the aisle with a torch. The back seat was warm. She wrote “headcount correct” on the log, and underneath, “apologies to whoever.”

Caroline Beaumont, driver, Route 9 night coach, rear window, 02:15, outbound

What is established, and what is only said

• established: Ticket machine logs record 1,106 sales for a row with no seat.
• rumor: That it is the same passenger every night and it has never reached where it is going.
• incomplete: Reflection photographs show a figure in six of nineteen attempts. The figure is facing different directions.

Still unresolved

The ticket's destination is printed as a town with no name. It is the same each time.

Where it has been recorded

• The Marches (reported) — The Route 9 night coach runs from the Marches to the coast.
• The Salt Coast (reported) — The coach's terminus is on the Salt Coast.

Connected entities

• The Quorum — Both are present only because someone has counted. One of them is counted in glass.
• Frame Four — Both are visible only in glass or emulsion, and both are counted by machines that nobody has asked to count them.