CHAMBERS STREET STOP

A FOTO-ROMAN

Story for a Photographic Novel

NIGHT 1

DOWNTOWN MANHATTAN, NIGHT, 1 am. A solitary MAN on his way home from work descends into the Chambers Street subway stop.

An all but deserted platform, one or two commuters waiting, staring at the tracks, enclosed in their own worlds.

The uptown '2' train pulls in. He boards, slumping with fatigue onto the seat. A handful of other riders, some dozing, no one meeting their fellows' gaze. The train is held at the station. While it waits, the downtown train glides to a stop. The man glances out the window, into the window of the car opposite him.

Beyond the glass is a WOMAN, her face downturned, absorbed in a book perhaps. Idly he surveys the fall of her hair. Maybe it's his stare that makes her look over. Their eyes meet. Time stops. Her gaze transfixes him. It seems to bore into somewhere behind his eyes.

The doors of his car close and his train lurches forward. Leaving behind that indelible face.

HIS APARTMENT. He opens the door. Throws down his jacket. He lives alone.

NIGHT 2

DIGITAL EDITING SUITE, THE FOLLOWING NIGHT. He works cutting film, five till late.

CHAMBERS STREET STOP. Waiting for his train. He looks at his watch: 1 AM. The downtown train arrives first. His eyes settle on the window that slides to a stop directly opposite him.

Standing, arm raised, grasping the bar - is the same woman. Facing slightly away. He stares hard, willing her to turn and notice him. Turn... Turn... See him.

The train starts forward And then she turns, catching sight of him. And gracing him with a fleeting smile before she is whisked away, on downtown.

He smiles. What an odd coincidence, seeing her again on the opposite train. And she smiled at him!

NIGHT 3

EDITING SUITE, NEXT NIGHT. He notices the digital time change on the toolbar - 1 AM. Her face fades in on the editing screen, briefly replacing the film still.

The image changes back to the film still... He shakes off the daydream. Back to work. And then he bolts from the suite... Races back in, grabs a digital camera, and races back out.

CHAMBERS STREET STOP. He arrives at a run, pushing through the turnstile. Looks at the clock. 1:10. He looks up the tracks for the downtown train. Instead it's the uptown train that arrives first. He doesn't board. The doors close. It departs.

To reveal the downtown train has arrived. He eagerly scans the windows across the tracks. He doesn't see her. He moves up the platform, looking into the next car. Not in the first window. Nor the second. Or third. He hurries past the fourth.... and stops. There she is, sitting on the far side of the train, head down, staring at the floor.

He shouts. Louder.

She looks up. Stands. Moves to the near window. She gives a small wave. He raises the camera and snaps. She laughs, even as her train takes her away, downtown.

He checks the photo in the camera's display screen. There she is, hand raised...

He stares in shock. Instead of a friendly wave, it's a gesture of entreaty. In place of that beautiful, placid face - is a mouth open as if screaming, in a rictus of utter terror.

CUT TO - The same image of her terror. REVEAL - he's staring at the enlarged image, uploaded onto his computer screen IN HIS APARTMENT. This can't be what she looked like at the moment he took her photo.

NIGHT 4

CHAMBERS STREET STOP, NEXT NIGHT. Again he waits on the uptown side. A downtown train comes. He scours the windows - no sign of her. It goes. His uptown train arrives. He lets it go.

LATER - another downtown train. He lopes along the entire platform, looking into all the windows. She's not to be seen. The train goes.

Some moments later another uptown train pulls to a stop. Reluctantly he boards, flopping onto the seat in disappointment. The train doors stay open. He looks up, lights approaching. Another downtown train pulls in across from him, rolling to a stop.

Directly across from him, mere feet away, separated only by their panes of glass - she sits, looking out, her eyes finding him, as if she were looking for him too. She smiles.

Impetuously he jumps to his feet, holding his finger up: Wait. He motions he's coming around, shouts "Wait. Wait!"

In a trice he's out the door, racing for the stairs, bounding up two steps at a time, across to the other side, bouncing down the stairs and onto the downtown platform. He slips onto the train. The doors close behind him and off he goes.

He moves down the empty car, out the door between cars, into the next car, her car.

Three passengers. None of them her.

All odd somehow. Their faces blank, staring at the floor, not acknowledging his presence.

Puzzled - she can't have gotten off the train! - he moves to the next car. She's not there. He goes all the way to the last car. No sign of her. At the far end are THREE GUYS, dark figures, their faces obscured in the shadows of their hoodies, pulled low over their foreheads. They look his way. Something creepy about them, menacing.

They move toward him. He retreats back into the previous car. They keep coming after him. He keeps going, to the next car. The moment the train pulls into the next he springs out. They don't follow. The train doors close. He sees the three dark hooded figures looking at him out the window as the train continues on down the tracks.

NIGHT 5

CHAMBERS STREET STOP, NEXT NIGHT. He goes through the turnstile. Stops. Between the Uptown stairs. And the Downtown stairs. As if led by an outside force he chooses the downtown stairs.

He waits on the downtown platform, a vague anxiety tugging at the fringe of his thoughts. When a train pulls in he immediately boards - to find her hurrying toward him from the far end of the car, as if she'd been expecting him.

Reaching him, she glances back down the car, pulls him close, and whispers into his ear. "They're after me."

Confused, he looks around: who's after her? As if in answer, the door slides back at the far end of the car and the THREE HOODED FIGURES come in.

She's frightened. "I don't know what they want from me."

He pulls her off the train.

STREETS, NIGHT. He walks with her, calming her.

HIS APARTMENT, NIGHT. He takes her home, makes her tea. She spends the night. He gives her his bed. As he turns to go, she catches his hand. He spends the night by her side. She cries out in her sleep - a nightmare. He reaches to reassure her. She clutches onto him. Holds tight. The cling turns into an embrace.

They make love..

CUT TO: JUST BEFORE DAWN. He wakes to see her slipping out the door. "Wait!" He leaps for the door, out into the hall. He stops in surprise, looking right, left. How could she already be gone?

NIGHT 6

CHAMBERS STREET, NEXT NIGHT, 8 PM. Stepping out of a deli with a coffee, he heads back toward the editing suite on a wind-blown night. He slows to drop the cup in the trash. A gust of wind blows aside an old poster. A face catches his eye before the tattered poster flops back into place.

He pushes the poster aside - to reveal a torn flier, and a face. Or half a face. The tear runs across the nose, leaving the mouth and but one eye.

Her eye. Her face.

Only one side of the text remains. A name: "Eurydice Jo/" The rest is missing. Beneath it: "Missi'/ "May 9/" "Reward for informat--/" "Please call 212-6/"

He pulls down what remains of the flier, gazing at it in wonder.

CUT TO: MAIN READING ROOM, NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, THAT EVENING. The last readers gather their books and papers before closing time. Find him at a computer screen, scrolling for info.

On computer screen: news stories from the papers for April 18th. He searches till he finds a story on a horrible attack reported from the previous night.

"YOUNG WOMAN VICTIM OF SUBWAY ATTACK" Words leap out at him: "Manhattan resident fell victim..." "... downtown 2 train..." "...three unknown assailants..." "...from the moving train..." "...to her death."

He sits back in disbelief. It can't be her. It's not the same woman It's somebody else.

He scrolls farther down - a photo comes into view on screen, of the victim, "Eurie Giannopolis."

Her picture.

He stares stupidly at the screen. Horror prickles at the back of his neck.

EDITING SUITE, LATE THAT SAME NIGHT. He studies the editing screen. On it is her NEWSPAPER PHOTO. As he stares... the photo seems to move. He sits back, startled. She's smiling at him. No, he imagined it. The photo is as it was.

And then it moves again, her mouth opening, as if speaking to him, in silent entreaty.

Spooked, doubting his senses, he shuts down the screen and gets out of there.

CHAMBERS STREET STOP, NIGHT. Again he hesitates between the Uptown and Downtown stairs. This time he shakes off the call of the downtown platform and descends to wait for his own train.

The first train to arrive is a downtown '2'. He turns away, refusing to cede it even a glance. He won't indulge this madness. He waits for the train to leave.

Then he hears the scream. He spins. There she is, flashing in and out of the windows of the car opposite. Running. Fleeing.

CRASH IN on a window. Her face in the glass, her palms pressed against the glass. He can see her mouth forming the words. "Help me! HELP ME!"

In the end window, three figures hurry past, in pursuit.

With a grimace of fear, she's gone from her window, rushing on from the car.

Without thinking, he's up the stairs and down the other side. He leaps for the nearest doors, just getting his arm in as they close. They reopen. He jumps in. The train pulls away.

DOWNTOWN '2' TRAIN, MOVING. He hurries into the next car, and the next. There are the same three guys in their hoodies. Chasing her. She disappears through the far door, her pursuers hard after her.

Racing to catch up, he flings open the door, in between cars, throws back the next door, is into the next car. He chases them down and into the next.

They're all but upon her as she gets out the next door. Sprinting past empty seats, he tears open the door, out of the lighted car, into the darkness between cars--

--The three hooded figures have her against the safety chains between the jostling cars as the train hurtles down the subway tunnel.

He seizes the first one, throwing him back against the door. He pries the second aside.

The third has her against the edge, bending her back over the chains, the tunnel sides rushing past.

He hauls him off her, pulling her off the chains, pushing her back into the safety of the car, following with her-- until a dark arm reaches through to seize him, dragging him back between cars. The three figures beset him, shoving him against the chains, pressing his back against the steel links.

Farther over he goes, back arched across the swaying barrier, his head closer and closer to the fleeting tunnel walls.

In desperation he claws at his assailants, catching the nearest one in the face, clutching at the black hoodie. It slips from his assailant's head.

He freezes. What leers at him is nothing human. Or nothing humanly living. A ghastly head, eyes cold with death.

In that frozen moment, that half second of hesitation, he lays himself open. Snatching his legs they upend him. Over he goes, screaming, tumbling from the train.

The train hurtles away.

NIGHT 7

CHAMBERS STREET STOP, NEXT NIGHT. Commuters wait on the uptown platform. Many reading the newspaper.

The uptown train arrives. REVEAL: The woman waiting for the train. She boards.

UPTOWN '2' TRAIN, NIGHT. She sits. She glances at a page of the next passenger's newspaper. A bold headline screams: "RIDER THROWN TO DEATH FROM MOVING TRAIN"

Across the track, the downtown train pulls in. She glances idly out the window, into the windows of the car opposite.

In the downtown window, a man looks up. The man. Their eyes meet. He stares at her, galvanized.

CHANGE POV - on the woman, his POV, from the downtown train: She smiles.

 

She's on his train. He's on her train. Headed downtown.

He pounds against his window, pleading with her: "Help me!"

The uptown train starts off. She slips away, her smile disappearing from view.

From the uptown platform, the last car of the train slides by... to REVEAL the downtown train: his face, staring terrified from the window.

 

And the other faces in the car around him, pale, ghastly - the faces of ghosts, doomed to ride the ghost train.

It pulls away...

ON THE DOWNTOWN TRACK the train recedes, the '2' in the red circle growing ever smaller in the darkening tunnel.

Until it fades from view, leaving nothing but blackness.

THE END