The Lost Property Office, Part 1: A Suitcase With My Name
intermediatemystery204 words
Part 1 of 5. At 2 a.m., a young man working nights at a station's lost property office receives an old suitcase with his own name on the label.
The suitcase arrived at the Lost Property Office at Northgate Station at 2 a.m., and it had my name on it.
I had worked the night shift there for six months by then, so I had seen most things: umbrellas, a wedding dress, once a live tortoise. But I had never seen a label like this one. In careful, old-fashioned handwriting, it said: 'Theo Marsh. Please keep until collected.'
I am Theo Marsh. I had not lost a suitcase.
The cleaner who found it said someone had left it on Platform 9, under the big clock. By the time she noticed it, the last train had already gone and the platform was empty.
Rules are rules, so I opened it to list the contents. Someone had packed everything very neatly: a camera, three rolls of film, a wool scarf and a bundle of black-and-white photographs of the station. The photos were old. The trains in them had disappeared long before I was born.
The last photo showed a young man standing under the same clock on Platform 9. He had my face. Exactly my face, down to the small scar above the eyebrow.
On the back, someone had written a date: 14 March 1979.