The car rumbled to a stop in front of the small, leaning house, and for a moment Echo thought the engine might give up before her parents did.
"Here we are," her father said, forcing cheer into his voice.
Echo hugged her backpack to her chest. The air smelled different here cleaner, softer, with a faint sweetness, like the world had been washed overnight. The house looked like it had been standing forever: pale wood weathered by rain, windows lined with lace curtains, and flower pots that spilled green over the edges.
Grandma was waiting on the porch, smiling in that way she always did warm, but a little sad, like she knew something Echo didn't.
"Welcome, my dear," she whispered, kissing Echo's forehead. "Your parents won't be gone long."
That was the plan. A short stay. A week or two. Just until they sorted out "some things."
Echo dragged her suitcase up the creaking steps, the wooden boards groaning under her sneakers. Inside, the house smelled of rosemary and old paper. There were paintings of fields on the walls, a crooked grandfather clock that ticked too slowly, and a small locked box sitting on Grandma's dresser upstairs one Echo noticed immediately.
The first two days passed softly
Grandma made lentil soup (Echo's favorite) and showed her how to snip herbs from the garden. They sat on the porch at dusk, swatting mosquitoes and listening to cicadas hum in the trees.
But there was something strange about the way Grandma would pause when Echo asked about the past.
On the third morning, the world shifted.
Echo found her grandmother in the garden, watering her plants, when she suddenly gripped her chest and collapsed.
"Grandma!" Echo dropped to her knees, her voice cracking.
The neighbors came running, and then there were sirens, and then there was the sharp smell of antiseptic as they rushed Grandma into the hospital.
Echo sat by her bed that night, her hand tucked in Grandma's soft, cool one.
Grandma's eyelids fluttered, and she whispered, "Stay strong, child… there are things you'll have to see for yourself…"
Echo blinked, her throat tight. "What do you mean? What things?"
But Grandma didn't answer.
The next day, the doctors insisted Echo go home to rest.
The house felt wrong without Grandma in it. Too quiet, like someone had turned the volume of the world all the way down.
She wandered, because she couldn't sit still. She looked at the bookshelves, the kitchen drawers, the cupboard by the stairs. Her curiosity, that restless spark inside her, kept tugging at her feet.
Upstairs, her eyes found the locked box on the dresser again.
This time, she noticed the key tiny, rusted hidden behind a photo frame.
The lock clicked open.
Inside, wrapped in brittle paper, was a train ticket.
Its edges were frayed, its ink faded, but one word was still sharp!
EVERWELL
That night, Echo couldn't sleep. The air outside felt… different.
When she finally got up to peek through the window, she froze.
There, on the edge of the overgrown field behind the house, were train tracks.
Tracks that hadn't been there before.
And resting on those tracks was a train.
Old-fashioned, painted in peeling shades of blue and gold, its windows glowing faintly from within.
She swore she heard it then …faint, like someone whispering her name in the dark.
Echo… Echo… come see where you belong…
The train's door opened with a sigh.
Would she climb aboard?
Echo's heart thumped hard in her chest as she reached for her backpack, clutching the strange ticket in her hand
.
Whatever was waiting for her…whatever Grandma had meant …she was about to find out.