Trolley of Leaves, Part One:
You are Davin Willson, an esteemed photojournalist
Your life seems perfect and idyllic as you and your family work on this line, but slowly, you start to notice some discrepancies.
--The first thing you notice, as you carefully measure the entire length of the trolley car, is that it is a quarter of an inch *longer* on the inside than the outside. This discrepancy continues even after repeated remeasurements.
--There's no trolley cabin 4. There are clear markings to enter 4 on trolley cabins 3 and 5, but the entire cabin of 4 appears to be missing.
--When you climb to the roof of the engine room, you notice three large gashes on the top. They look like a claw mark. This is impossible, you think. Anything that large would crash right through the cabin. Besides, no known animal has claws that large, right?
--Your middle child, who has a generally cheerful, happy-go-lucky demeanor and is a bit chubby but certainly not obese, cries a lot. He wants to lose weight, he says. He starts dieting. You console him that it's okay. You're worried that he's developing an eating disorder.
--Your trolley has a cabin 4 now. It looks just like the other cabins. You swear, you have never seen the cabin 4 before.
-- You were walking to town with your children. Your middle child sees a bridge and bursts into tears. He refuses to go on the bridge. He looks at you fearfully. The other two children looks at him with sad eyes. They are not surprised, empathetic, or even annoyed. They're just...resigned
--Your youngest child comes back home one day for dinner. She was covered in mud and had some bruises. You and your wife asked where she was. "The trolley", she said. She finishes her dinner and doesn't say anything else, no matter how much you pry.
--Even after your anorexic child only eats a meal a day, and no meat or starches, he only grows fatter. Your children refuse to tell you what's going on.
--The locals say that the trolley is haunted. You don't believe them, but thought that would make an interesting investigative journalism project. You start gathering rumors.
-- It turns out that your children likes playing in cabin 4. You don't understand. It seems like a normal cabin to you.
--You enter cabin 4 again. You walk down it. And walk down it. And walk down it. The cabin doesn't seem to end. You get your brother to help. The two of you used a stopwatch and recorded that at a brisk pace, from the front of cabin 4 (the end of cabin 3) to the beginning of cabin 5, it takes five and a half minutes to traverse cabin 4. You exit. Cabin 4 looks perfectly normal from the outside.
--Jim, the local baker, says that back when the town had a thriving mining business, five rail workers were crushed by the trolley. He thinks their ghosts still haunt the trolley still.
--You decide to repair the gashes on the roof of the engine room. You climb up. The gashes are not there anymore.
(UNFINISHED)