Free I Married A Dead Man by Cornell Woolrich Page A

already, and Hastings's comin' right after it. Ain't never change since I been on this railroad."
                    She closed the door, and swung around, and leaned her whole back against it, as if trying to keep out some catastrophic intrusion.
     
                                    " Too late to go back,
                                    Too late to go back --"
     
                    "I can still ride straight through, I can ride past without getting off," she thought She ran to the windows and peered out ahead, at an acute angle, as if the oncoming sight of it in itself would resolve her difficulty in some way.
                    Nothing yet. It was coming on very gradually. A house, all by itself. Then another house, still all by itself. Then a third. They were beginning to come thicker now.
                    "Ride straight through, don't get off at all. They can't make you. Nobody can. Do this one last thing that's all there's time for now."
                    She ran back to the door and hurriedly turned the little fingerlatch under the knob, locking it on the inside.
                    The houses were coming in more profusion, but they were coming slower too. They didn't sail any more, they dawdled. A schoolbuilding drifted by; you could tell what it was even from afar. Spotless, modern, brand-new looking, its concrete functionalism gleaming spic-and-span in the sun; copiously glassed. She could even make out small swings in motion, in the playground beside it. She glanced aside at the small blanketed bundle on the seat That would be the kind of school she'd want--
                    She didn't speak, but her own voice was loud in her ears. "Help me, somebody; I don't know what to do!"
                    The wheels were dying, as though they'd run out of lubrication. Or like a phonograph record that runs down.
     
                                    " Cli-ck, cla-ck,
                                    Cli-i-ck, cla-a-a-ck ."
     
                    Each revolution seemed about to be the last.
                    Suddenly a long shed started up, just outside the windows, running along parallel to them, and then a white sign suspended from it started to go by, letter by letter in reverse.
     
                                                    "D-L-E-I-"
     
                    It got to the F and it stuck. It wouldn't budge. She all but screamed. The train had stopped.
                    A knock sounded right behind her back, the vibration of it seeming to go through her chest.
                    "Caulfield, ma'm."
                    Then someone tried the knob.
                    "Help you with yo' things?"
                    Her clenched fist tightened around the seventeen cents, until the knuckles showed white and livid with the pressure.
                    She ran to the seat and picked up the blue blanket and what it held.
                    There were people out there, just on the other side of the window. Their heads were low, but she could see them, and they could see her. There was a woman looking right at her.
                    Their eyes met, their eyes locked, held fast. She couldn't turn her head away, she couldn't withdraw deeper into the compartment. It was as though those eyes riveted her where she stood.
                    The woman pointed to her. She called out in jubilation, for the benefit of someone else, unseen. "There she is! I've found her! Here, this car up here!"
                    She raised her hand and she waved. She waved to the little somnolent, blinking head