You asked me to start from the beginning, so I'll start with the washing.
It was a Tuesday, I'm fairly sure, because bins go out Tuesdays on our road and I remember stepping over the box when I brought the basket in. I was folding my husband's shirts and kept doing the collars wrong, in instead of out, three times over, because I was listening for the bell instead of watching my hands. That's the honest answer to your first question. Yes, I was distracted before anything happened. I want that on the record, because I know how it sounds otherwise.
The crossing on Dunmore Road hasn't taken a train since they pulled the branch line up in the nineties. No track left past the Aldi car park now, just the gates, rusted open, and the old signal box the council uses to store gritting salt. But the bell still goes. Every night at 11:47. Not 11:46, not 11:48. My husband timed it on his phone for a week before he stopped mentioning it, because I asked him to stop. He also once tried to convince me it was a woodpecker. I don't know what he thought that would explain.
It started in March, or I noticed it started in March, which might not be the same thing. Our bedroom faces that way and the sound carries when the wind's off the fields. A double clang, then the barrier motor whining like it's dropping, except there's no barrier left to drop, just the posts. I looked it up. The council switchbox for that crossing was decommissioned in 2003. I have the email from their transport officer somewhere. I can give you the reference number if it helps.
For a long time I told myself it was mechanical. A fault in old wiring nobody pulled out, some circuit getting a trickle of power from somewhere and firing itself off out of habit, the way a fridge will click on in an empty house. I said this to myself walking Bramble past there in the evenings, and mostly I believed it. Bramble's our dog, a Staffie cross, fourteen now and mostly deaf. She never reacted to the bell. I used to find that comforting, actually. If it was really there, wouldn't a dog hear it before I did.
The night I want to tell you about was the eleventh of June.
I was up because I couldn't sleep, and I went to the window at 11:45 to watch for the bell instead of just hearing it, which I'd never done before. At 11:47 it rang, same as always, and the posts did their little useless dip, no barrier arm, just the stubs moving up and down like something practicing.
Then I saw a man standing between them.
He faced away from me, toward where the track would have been, in a coat too heavy for June. He didn't move while the bell rang. When it stopped, at 11:49, same as always, he turned his head. Not his body. Just his head, and further round than a neck goes.
I didn't see a face. I want to be clear about that, because you've asked me twice now and I'll say it a third time. I did not see a face. I saw the collar of his coat, folded in instead of out, exactly the way I'd been folding my husband's shirts an hour before, three times over, without noticing I was doing it.
"56105 at Bishton Level Crossing near Newport, south Wales" by Dai Lygad is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/.