 I liked working with the dead, until last night. My shift began, as it always did, at 11pm when I arrived at the station and walked along to the platform where the train was waiting. The driver's cabin at the front of the train is self-contained. There's an access hatch for loading goods in the front carriage, which is also the way I entered and exited. First, I did a walkthrough of the carriages to check the cleaners had been thorough. The smell of detergent lingered throughout the four carriages and all the surfaces looked to have been wiped down, so that was fine. It usually was. Last week, on the Monday, had been an exception. I'd found a cigarette butt lying on the floor. I'd picked it up, wiped carefully around where it had been with a tissue, and filed the report with my supervisor. I'd placed the offending item in an envelope and attached it with a paper clip. My supervisor works nine to five and never seems to lock his office door, so I left the report on his desk. If there had been consequences, if a reprimand had been issued about the cigarette butt, no one had told me. I finished my walkthrough by checking the emergency exit, which is at the end of the rear carriage. It was locked as it should be. This done, I returned to the front carriage. The interior of the carriages are empty, apart from fluorescent strips fixed into their ceilings to light the way. I exited via the access hatch and went to greet the loaders. It was quiet in the station. The last commuter train for the day had departed 30 minutes ago. A cross-country express passed through at 20 past midnight. Most people didn't know about the night train I worked on. We simply got on with what we did at a time when we were quietly out of sight. The coffins are brought to the station by road, then placed on trolleys. I counted 24 coffins as they were loaded out of the train over the course of the next 40 minutes. This tallied with a note the loading crew presented. So I signed off the consignment, the coffins, and those they carried were in my care now. They came from the city's public hospitals. They were individuals who had slipped off the grid. The homeless, drug addicts, crime victims, some who taken their own lives, all reduced to John or Jane Doe's with no family or friends prepared or able to give them a decent burial. So the city authorities stepped in. I've always been a civic-minded person and took pride in the role I played in this. It wasn't a job I'd planned for. I'd been a conductor on one of the commuter trains for 20 years. One day, it had been a Saturday early evening. A young man was mouth and off to me. I thought he'd been trying to impress the woman he was traveling with. I could smell from his breath that he'd been drinking. He kept on cussing me, the obscenity spiraling, until I cuffed him across the face. Just once, not that hard. They wanted to fire me, but I dug my heels in. Then they offered me a job as guard on the night train to the cemetery. I said yes. I did my second walkthrough of the shift. The coffins were placed out on the carriage floors, where they would remain until they were unloaded at the cemetery. This is a sprawling, actually pretty interesting place on the northern outskirts of the city. I went there once in the daytime, not long after I started my new job. I always meant to research its history. I'd never gotten round to it though. A familiar hum filled the carriages. The driver had arrived and was starting up the engine. I moved back through to the front carriage and took my place on a flip down seat. The journey would take about 90 minutes. Apart from the rattling of the carriage wheels on the tracks, it is quiet. Quiet enough to hear what sounds like sighing, coming from inside the coffins. The first time I heard this, on my first ever shift, I was badly spooked. When I reasoned out, it was simply gases being expelled from the bodies. All part of the natural process and nothing to be worried about. About 30 minutes into the journey, I did another walkthrough, just to double check everything was okay. It was, apart from one of the coffin lids in the rear carriage, was slightly open. The lids are not hinged, but stuck on. It's a matter of economics that the coffins are of poor quality, made of thin sections of wood, and on this occasion, the rattling progress of the train must have shook the lid loose. I slid it closed and went on my way. With 15 minutes to go to our arrival at the cemetery, I decided to make sure the lid had not worked its way open again. I walked through the carriages until I reached the rear one and came to a sudden halt. Cold fear ran through me. The coffin lid was lying a skew on the floor. The body inside the coffin was sitting up. Its eyes were closed, its lips were pursed, its mottled skin was gray and waxy in the fluorescent light. It had a green hospital robe on. It was. It had been. A man. I could make out a tattoo on the body's neck, four inked letters. Jane. Had that been his wife, or his lover, I wondered, and fear became sorrow as I thought of a life lost. I have no medical training, but I considered that this could once again be something to do with gases that are produced post-mortem. Or was it muscles constricting? Yes, that made sense. It was horrific and heartbreaking, but that was all it was. I steeled myself. I couldn't relieve the body like this. What would the crew who unloaded the coffins at the graveyard think of me if they saw it? Sometimes it felt like my pride was the only thing I had left in this life, and it was pride that made me step up to the body. I placed my hands on the green hospital robe and pressed. There was resistance. Like the body was locked solid. I pressed harder and was able to slowly lower the body back down into a lying position. Then I retrieved the lid, put it back on top of the coffin. I was thinking how to now properly secure it when the train drew to a halt. My mind was so addled that it took me a moment to realize that this was because we'd arrived at the cemetery. Trying to compose myself, I walked back to the front carriage. I needed to open up for the unloaders. After sliding open the access hatch, I stepped out of the train. I wanted to breathe in the fresh night air. Behind me, I heard the crew bustling around. I watched as they began to transfer coffins onto trolleys to be transported to the chapel of rest. They would be buried as they always were. Engraves marked with simple wooden crosses at first light. I was still in a daze and I didn't hear the first time when one of the offloading crew had said something to me. I said sorry and asked them to repeat it. I heard, mistake, there's been a mistake. They explained that when they reached the rear carriage and lifted one of the coffins, they realized from its weight that it was empty. They'd slid open the lid to double check and, yes, there'd been nothing there. That can't be, I thought, and was desperately trying to work out what could have happened, but the crew wanted me to sign off the note, which now had handwritten on it that one of the coffins had not been offloaded because there was no body inside. The crew wanted to get on with taking the coffins they did have to the chapel of rest and the driver was leaning out of the window and signaling at me to get going. I climbed back into the front carriage, closed the access hatch, and took my place on the flip down seat. I felt numb, nauseous. The train set off. I was alone in the carriages, just me and the empty coffin in the rear carriage. There was a rational reason for this, I tried to tell myself. There was nothing else, or else the offloading crew would have seen it. I knew I should go through the carriages to look for myself, perhaps try the emergency exit. Check, it was still locked. I couldn't. I sat, paralyzed with fear. My mind was racing. The carriage wheels were rattling, and there was a new sound of something scraping along the floor, like feet. Being dragged. Was it getting louder? Was it coming towards me? I closed my eyes and prayed and waited. The rest of the journey passed in this way. As the train juttered to a halt, I opened my eyes. My legs felt so weak I could barely stand, but I managed to make it off the train. I stood on the platform. It was still hours before dawn, and the station was deserted. I stood there, and I wept. I didn't file a report. Instead, I left a handwritten letter of resignation on my supervisor's desk. I didn't give any reasons why I'd resigned. Some things cannot be explained.