“This is where she was found,” Alice said as her husband stopped at the railway crossing.
In the mist, the traffic light above the lowered bar seemed to stare at them with a bloodshot eye. It was a winter’s day like any other. The train out of sight, the deserted road on the outskirts of town, and the two of them forced to wait in their cars a few feet from the tracks.
“Huh?” muttered John without even turning around. He kept his eyes glued to the road ahead of him, not paying the slightest attention to her, as had been the case for months. They had been married for three years, but to her it felt like a hundred. They had become one of those couples trapped in routine, in the same gestures, in the banal phrases of a normal life. Though John never said so openly, Alice knew he found her boring and predictable. Every morning they woke in bed, distant and silent. They showered, had a quick cup of coffee and got into the car to drive into town. To save petrol, he often drove her all the way to the office. Other times, when John worked the night shift at the hospital, she would take the same train that would soon be passing there. She worked as an interior decorator; John aspired to be head of cardiology within two years.
Even that day, they sat next to each other with the feeling that they were two strangers who had met by chance while hitchhiking.
“Don’t you remember? I made you read that article two weeks ago. The girl they found murdered on the tracks,” Alice continued. She had not said the word ‘body’ because every time she thought of it, her stomach clenched.
When she had seen the picture in the local paper, she had felt suffocated. She was only 18. Blonde hair, blue eyes, a sweet, innocent smile.
Alice had dreamed about her every night. She had imagined her lying on those rails, blood disfiguring her face, her eyes now closed and her lips parted in a futile attempt to scream.
She had read and reread the article dozens of times until she knew it almost by heart. Millicent Andrews had been brutally beaten, strangled and dumped in this secluded corner on the outskirts of town, where no prying eyes could have disturbed her killer.
Alice looked around. She had to admit that she had never paid attention before, but this was indeed the ideal place for a murder. It would have been impossible to notice anything from the few houses clustered behind the trees that bordered the road.
She had read and reread the article dozens of times until she knew it almost by heart. Millicent Andrews had been brutally beaten, strangled and dumped in this secluded corner on the outskirts of town, where no prying eyes could have disturbed her killer.
Alice looked around. She had to admit that she had never paid attention before, but this was indeed the ideal place for a murder. It would have been impossible to notice anything from the few houses clustered behind the trees that bordered the road.
“I guess the train is late again today. I told you we should have changed routes,” her husband complained irritably, ignoring her speech as usual.
“This was always the quickest and shortest way,” she replied calmly.
“Damn fog, I can’t see a thing! Do you think the train is coming?” he continued his insulting litany, craning his neck to peer over the windscreen. It was a kind of torture to have to listen to him.
Alice put her fingers on the door handle.
Get out of here before it’s too late. A small voice in her head screamed at her to flee, to squeeze through the trees on either side of the road and disappear into thin air. But by now the wheels of her destiny had been set in motion and there was no turning back.
At that moment, the roar of an engine that seemed to be revving exploded in the silence.
“What the hell is that idiot doing?” blurted John as he looked in the rear-view mirror at the big black jeep that had appeared from the bottom of the road. Alice’s eyes widened but she had no time to turn around.
The jeep hit them head on. She let go, offering no resistance. The recoil made her jerk back and forth like a lifeless doll. She felt the pain of the seatbelt digging into her collarbone. Amid the metallic crash of the metal sheets, John stifled a choked exclamation.
After a few moments the silence returned. An almost surreal silence, broken by her husband’s heavy breathing.
Alice felt a dull pain in her neck but tried to ignore it. The blow had been hard, but neither of them seemed seriously injured.
“Don’t move, I’ll take care of this idiot,” John ordered, his voice distorted with anger. He opened the door in a fit of rage, and when he got out of the car, he started berating the stranger who had hit them.
“Sorry, I don’t know how it happened… The brakes weren’t working…”
Alice stared into the rear-view mirror. The stranger had got out of the Jeep and was standing in front of the damaged bonnet, looking surprised. He was no older than twenty-five. He was blond, blue-eyed and much less rugged than her husband. Theoretically, John could have easily knocked him out with one punch. Since he had started going to the gym again, he looked as fit as he had in his college days. Looking at each other, the two men looked almost the same age.
“I say if we call the police, your alcohol test will be way over the limit,” John threatened.
Alice decided it was time to intervene. With aching bones, she gathered all her strength and got out of the car too. She approached her husband and placed a hand on his shoulder in one of those gentle gestures she had not made for a long time.
“Please, John, can’t you see that the boy is sober? After all, we are well and the damage is not so terrible.”
As she spoke, Alice had the impression that another woman’s words were coming out of her throat. The boy stared at her with his blue eyes and smiled gratefully. John arched his eyebrows and squinted his eyelids to study the boy’s face more closely, to see if he was lying.
“Have we met somewhere before?” he asked, confused.
“I don’t think so.”
“Yet you look familiar,” he insisted. “Let me see some ID and let’s get this over with. The insurance will take care of the rest.”
The boy nodded and half-slipped into the Jeep, reaching for the dashboard to retrieve the documents. When he emerged from the passenger compartment, he had a gun in his right hand.
“What the hell?” John exclaimed in surprise.
“I think your wife will be needing this,” he said icily.
John turned to Alice and looked puzzled. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t see.
“You remember the girl you killed, don’t you?” the boy cried.
“Millicent…” John whispered, staring petrified into the boy’s blue eyes.
“Well, I see you have your memory back. And do you remember when my sister blackmailed you? It was the only way she could get you to leave your wife. I know it wasn’t a good move, but she didn’t deserve to die for it. There was only one thing you didn’t know. Millicent had knocked on your door a month before she died. Good thing your wife is an intelligent woman. She didn’t believe her at first, but when she saw the picture in the paper of the girl found dead on the tracks, she knew going to the police wasn’t the right thing to do.”
The words seemed to echo in the silence, as if the boy had fired a shot into the air.
John shifted his eyes to Alice. She stared at him unblinkingly. Millicent Andrews had turned up at their house one night while he was working the night shift at the hospital. Ringing the doorbell, she spoke a single sentence through the still closed knocker.
“Your husband will be leaving you soon.”
Alice knew it was true. She felt it inside, just as she had always felt that John was cheating on her with other women. But even then she had chosen to close her eyes. She had been weak. She remembered the day she had gone to Millicent’s funeral. That day had also been foggy. As she had listened to Gabriel Andrews speak of his sister with a lump in his throat, a voice had found its way into her. John must have asked her for one last meeting and lost control. She knew he had killed her.
When he had stood alone in front of the flower-covered coffin, she had approached him without hesitation.
“I know who killed your sister,” she had whispered.
Gabriel had turned sharply, looking at her from head to toe as if she were a ghost rising from the mists of horror.
“I will accompany you to the police,” Gabriel had replied.
“No, I don’t think that’s the right sentence,” Alice had decided.
So, they had arranged everything in detail. That morning, Gabriel had followed them for a short distance, and when they had stopped as usual at the level crossing, he had rear-ended them at the only time and place where no one would see them.
Alice held her breath. Gabriel handed her the gun. She gripped the butt of the weapon that would finally set her free. In the distance she could hear the clatter of the oncoming train. The fog was a milky veil that enveloped her like a shroud of death.
Alice fired once. John fell to the ground, his face contorted in a grimace of excruciating pain. He slumped to the floor with one hand on his chest, as if to stop the blood soaking his shirt.
Then he looked at his wife one last time. She smiled at him. The plan had worked perfectly. After all, her husband always told her how boringly predictable he was. He knew that she had certainly taken him by surprise this time.
[Image Credit : Photo by Jordan Steranka on Unsplash]
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Viviana De Cecco
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- The Railway Crossing - December 10, 2025
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