At the station in New Shores, the autumn rain drew streaks on the platform tiles like notes that someone had scattered in a hurry. Above it all hung a defunct clock with cracked glass. It had stood for years at 19:03, as if the world had then ceased to be interested in its hands. The zero platform, fenced off by a rusty gate and yellow tape, was a place that was spoken of in whispers. It used to lead to the tracks, which were torn out long ago. All that remained were concrete sleepers and a sign on which someone had written in clumsy chalk writing: "No trespassing. Threat of rapture". Nadia was fourteen years old and had a penetrating way of looking, as if she saw sound first and shape second. She carried an old photographer's magnifying glass in her pocket, although for a long time everything had been done with a phone. Tymon, a year older, would disassemble things to see what was buzzing around in them and then put them together so they worked better. They both had one weakness: they couldn't move past something that didn't fit in with the rest. On this evening, what didn't fit was the watch. It was a silver pocket watch, engraved with "J.T." and the date 1912, given to Nadia by her great-grandfather Joseph, whom family stories referred to as a man who knew how to "fix time". The watch was usually silent like an extinguished lantern, but as soon as they approached the zero platform, the second hand vibrated and moved backwards. - Can you see it? - Tymon leaned in so close that the glass fogged up from his breath. - It's not a battery trick. He doesn't have a battery. - 'I know,' Nadia didn't take her eyes off the tiny teeth of the wheels that seemed to be spinning around. - Great-grandfather left a note. She took a thin checked notebook out of her rucksack, soaked in the smell of dust and old ink. On the first page, between drawings of mechanisms, was one sentence: 'If you are reading this, don't miss your train until yesterday'. Underneath, someone had added in pencil: "Window: 21:17 - platform 0". - "Train until yesterday." - Tymon rolled his eyes, but not very convincingly. - Romantic. Or dangerous. - Or both - Nadia smiled briefly. - In any case, a window. It was 9:12 p.m. The station was slowly emptying; the last buses were leaving the forecourt, and in the hall the echoes of footsteps sounded like the conversations of other, unseen people. Loudspeakers crackled above the platforms, from which a pleasant, weary "Attention, travellers" mingled with the scrabble. - 'The watchman goes around the area every quarter of an hour,' Tymon whispered, glancing towards the underground tunnel. - 'If he catches us, we'll have to explain why we're standing by a place that isn't there. - 'That's a funny explanation,' Nadia slid her watch behind the grating, almost to the very plinth where the traction pole once rested. - "Sir, we're waiting for a train that nobody can see." The hand of the second hand began to move back faster, until finally it twitched, as if it had lost its rhythm, and slowed down again. The leather strap of the watch grew hot in his hand. - Notepad,' Tymon reminded him. - 'Let me see the other one. They turned over a few pages. In addition to sketches of pendulums and notes on lubricants, there was a table: "21:17 - quiet. 21:18 - rustling. 21:19 - light. 21:20 - turn?". Someone, most likely Joseph, was trying to put in order something that doesn't like to be put in order. Nadia kept her finger on the heading "21:17". - This is today. And here. - I've secured the sound sensor on my phone - Tymon turned on the app and the screen went blank, leaving only a thin line of graph. - If there's something going on here, we'll see it before we hear it. - I dread to think how we'll hear it - Nadia moved her thumb over the engraving. - You know, his voice... - She was talking about the recording from the watch box. Great-grandfather Joseph, with a hoarse voice, as if speaking from the other side of the wall: "Don't turn around when the whistle sounds. Look straight ahead." - 'We've still got three minutes,' said Tymon, looking at the phone's digits, which had suddenly turned into dashes. - 'Or less, if that clock is right. They glanced at the station clock. The hands twitched. Nadia blinked as she would have sworn the shorter one had moved back a millimetre. The air near the ground thickened; it smelled of grease, although nothing had been greased here for a long time, and of wet coal that no one smoked anymore. The concrete sleepers, usually dull, seemed to have a thin, wet crust of light. - Have you got it? - Tymon lifted the phone. The graph line rippled. - 'I've got it,' Nadia said quietly, as if in a reading room. - 'And I think we have a visitor. First they heard something that might have been the echo of rain, if rain could hit metal. Then a clink, not like breaking glass, but like a spring tightening, as big as a viaduct. A voice from the speakers said: "Train...", fell silent, hung up, finished: "...please do not enter...", and fell silent again. - Do you hear that? - Tymon lowered his voice even further. - I hear everything - Nadia touched the gate. She twitched. - And I can feel my fingers pulling. In her jacket pockets, flakes of threads rose and fell, as if attracted by a charge. Nadia glanced at her watch. The second hand snuggled into the number 12 and then pulled the minute hand one stroke back. The world began to speak in a whisper. The cry of a lapwing from the dark roof unfolded into thin strands in the air. - 21:17 - read Tymon from the screen, which brightened for a moment and then dimmed again. - It was now. At that moment, the sky above the platform made a sound associated with the warming of a violin, only it was heavier, impossibly low. The darkness beneath the gate trembled and rolled up like a thin carpet, and the space just above the concrete began to crinkle. - 'Look straight,' Nadia reminded, though it was her voice that trembled. The wrinkle in the air widened to shoulder width and then to the width of the platform. For a second they saw something that looked like old tracks, sunken in light. They were sharp, as if they had just been polished. At the end of them flashed a lantern with a yellow flame, as if someone had blown it. A whistling sound came from the distance, from that strange distance where the sound hits first the skin and only then the ears. Tymon pushed back the gate in one movement and jumped onto the concrete, Nadia behind him. The ban was now more of a joke than a barrier. - 'One more step,' he said, but it sounded like he was speaking from a deep jar. At the front, where there should have been only air, a lump began to draw up. Not instantaneously - patiently. First a circle, steel, shiny, then a second circle, and a third. The glow moved over rivets and bolts, as if someone with a torch was inspecting the details. There was a hint of something familiar in the smell of coal, of childhood, of the cherry compote that always stood in the kitchen at her great-grandmother's house in jars with faded labels. The watch in Nadia's hand struck her skin with the rhythm of her own heart. The second hand jumped back a full minute. - He's about to... - Tymon wasn't finished. Because that 'soon' had arrived. Out of the fog, out of the crinkling space, emerged a locomotive, black and shiny, with a number painted on the side that for a moment was just a smudge: 1912. There was no track, yet the wheels rolled on something that, in their eyes, existed and didn't exist at the same time. Above the roof, a yellow flame flicked with a flag, as if ashamed of its own brilliance. Nadia held her breath, as breathing might spoil something. Amidst the steam, a face blurred for a moment. Not new and not old, one that remembered laughter and storms. The man in the cloak turned to them and raised his hand. - Can you see it? - whispered Tymon. - 'I see it,' replied Nadia, but there was sand in her throat. The carriage just behind the locomotive stopped exactly where the concrete of the platform ended in emptiness. From behind the glass flashed the silhouettes of passengers, hats, coats, some umbrellas under another rain. The door handle vibrated. A watchman's voice far down the tunnel said something into the radio and fell silent, as if switched off. And then, from that carriage, a voice that could not be here came through the fog like a curtain: - Nadio! Tymon! Someone swung the door open from the inside and a gloved hand slid into the space between 'now' and 'once'. For a fraction of a second, short as the blink of a lamp, uncertainty fluttered over the heated metal. - Are you getting on? - the question was asked, and the watch struck one last blow, like a hammer against an anvil, and the hands stood up together.