In the distance, I could see the train. Hundreds of metres from the track. Buckled and broken, carriages torn in half and turned upside down. Some people screamed for help. Most didn’t.

How many people? I calmly wondered. Seventy, eighty on the bus perhaps? Hundreds on the train, surely.

A disaster. A tragedy.

I watched a while, but nothing much more happened.

And then it all just faded away. It was peaceful really.

I remember the sense of walls coming down. I remember colours like fireworks. A fitting of everything into place. Questions I’d never thought to ask being answered.

And then … And then …

Then there was you. With April and Danny. In the broken-down car.

And me. Confused. Disorientated. No idea who I was. Like I’d just woken from a dream and couldn’t remember a single detail.

Following you.

Every time you’ve been near this level crossing, I’ve had this odd sense of being home. Now I know why. Because all this time, that’s where I’ve been. Lying in the snow here. Broken. Alone. Dying.

The last throes of my consciousness, just minutes in the outside world, have felt like months to me. Months spent looking over your shoulder.

I’m still here, of course. In the snow. Death coming for me fast.

And now you’ve nearly caught up with me.

In your now, the number 83 bus will leave any moment, jam-packed with kids.

It’ll get stuck on the level crossing at Patten’s Island in about half an hour. And the coastal express, running behind time and fully subscribed, won’t see the bus till it’s too late.

Can you change something one last time? Can you stop this?

Not even I know the answer to that.

The Storm

Will leaves the school gates at a full sprint. As he turns on to the road, he slips in the snow. He goes over, skinning his knuckles on the kerb. There are piss-taking chants from the few kids still outside school as he scrabbles to right himself. Back on his feet, he veers from side to side like a speed-skater leaving the line.

The road rises to a brow, after which it’s less than a hundred metres to the bus stop. It’s a four-minute walk from the gates ordinarily. Will has it in sight in barely one. He stops at the crest of the hill.

He’s too late. The number 83 is already leaving. He’s just in time to watch it gingerly rounding the right-hander in the distance. Even from this far away he can see how overloaded it is, kids in neon sardined together in the back window.

‘Stop!’ Will yells. ‘Fucking stop!’ He knows there’s no way he’ll be heard, but it doesn’t stop him screaming it. ‘Someone stop that fucking bus! Please! Please!’