Walter Ferris
Railway telegraphist, Arkham Depot
- Age
- 44
- From
- New England
- Lives
- Water Row Tenements
- Now
- In Arkham
Before Arkham's business
Twenty-two years on the Boston & Maine key. Keeps the depot's clocks and the timetable in his head. Bachelor, lodger, pigeon-fancier.
Dry, exact, unsociable, secretly sentimental about trains. Writes the way he taps: short.
Afraid of
Tunnels · Messages from nobody
Believes
Everything runs to time. If it doesn't, someone is lying.
From the journal
Scraped mud off the platform with the flat shovel. Very grey out. Just the regular wind against the depot glass. Observed: narrow stairs climbing into the dark.
Tillinghast came by the depot with a question about 1893 timetables. Answered it. He apologised four times. Decent sort. It rained all day, as if on purpose.
7.10 from Boston on time. 9.40 to Kingsport four minutes late — Quimby's fault. Logged. Observed: dust sheets over the furniture. Heard: rain on the roof.
Checked the siding lanterns. Red glass cracked on the south post. Replaced. Rain. Naturally.
Rain. Pigeons won't home. Everyone at the depot talking. Worse than rain.