The First Tap

The night shift at Millhaven Station is usually silence and lamplight. But past midnight, on a line your charts list as decommissioned, the telegraph key begins to move.

The transmission is ragged — long gaps, corrupted rhythm — but the sender code is unmistakable: Station 7. Burned to the ground in 1863. Eight men dead. The message, when you finally decode it, reads: STILL HERE. STILL BURNING.

Your lamp flickers. The key goes quiet. Outside, the wind finds no purchase on a moonless sky.