encounters · 2 min read ·
Line Zero
Last tram 03:33. Do not ride in the last car.
Murrow's trams stop at midnight. Everybody knows this. The timetables say so, the drivers' union says so, and the power to the overhead wires is cut at 00:15 by a man in a booth on Gasworks Street who has done it every night for thirty-one years.
So when you hear a tram bell at three in the morning, standing at a stop on Quay Road that was paved over in 1988, the first thing you feel is not fear. It is the specific embarrassment of having misread a timetable.
The tram comes out of the rain with every window lit. It is an old model — wooden benches, brass rails, a route board of white letters on black cloth that rolls round with a clatter. The board reads 0. Below it, the destination: HARBOUR TERMINUS. The harbour terminus was demolished in 1989.
There is no driver. The doors fold open anyway.
Inside it is warm and smells of wet wool. A handful of passengers sit with their faces turned to the windows: a man in a fisherman's jersey, two nurses in capes, a boy holding a school satchel, an old woman with a birdcage covered by a cloth. None of them reflect in the glass. The wires overhead carry no power. The tram moves smoothly anyway.
A conductor's notice is screwed to the bulkhead, its enamel chipped:
PASSENGERS ARE REMINDED
· This service runs 03:00–03:33 only
· Tickets are not required. You have already paid
· Please do not ride in the last car
· Alight at your stop
You do not know which stop is yours. That is what frightens you, finally — not the dead wires or the passengers who do not reflect, but the certainty that everyone else in the car knows exactly where they are getting off.
The tram passes stations you half recognise from old postcards. Customs House. The Rope Walk. Saint Agathe's Steps, where it slows, and the nurses rise together and step out into the rain without opening umbrellas. Through the rear window, beyond the connecting door, you can see the last car. Its lights are dimmer. More people are in it than there should be room for.
Someone tugs your sleeve. A small girl in a yellow raincoat, a brass key on a string around her neck.
"Not this one," she says. "Yours is the next one."
The bell rings. The doors fold open on a stop you know: your own street, your own lamp post, 03:33 on your watch.
When you turn to thank her, the tram is gone, and the rain falls straight through the place where the wires used to be.