Why do passengers checking in for Flight 13 never appear on any manifest? What's written on the boarding passes that the gate agents refuse to look at directly? Why do the baggage carousels turn even when no flights have arrived, and whose luggage circles endlessly through the empty terminal? Why do the security scanners show shapes that don't match the passengers passing through? Why do the departure boards display gates that don't exist, and whose footsteps echo across the check-in counters after the last flight has been called? Why do the airport staff avoid certain check-in desks, leaving them unmanned even during peak hours?
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“It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, ‘As pretty as an airport.’”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
Elena had been working the night shift at the airport check-in counter for six months before she noticed the pattern. Passengers checking in for Flight 13 always requested window seats, but they never actually boarded. They’d receive their boarding passes, promise to be at the gate on time, then simply… disappear. The supervisor, Mr. Chen, would just mark them as no-shows and say they’d missed their flight. But Elena had seen their faces—the way their eyes would glaze over when they looked at the gate number, how they’d stare at the terminal windows as if they’d forgotten their own reflections.
It was the passenger manifest that first made her suspicious. Every morning before dawn, Mr. Chen would erase entries from the system—names that had been entered in handwriting that didn’t match any passenger she’d seen. The screens would show signs of being updated, but when she tried to read them, the text would blur and shift. Sometimes she’d catch glimpses of names that made her skin crawl, names that seemed to be written in languages that shouldn’t exist.
The terminal itself seemed to change during the night shift. The concourses would stretch longer than they should, the gate numbers would sometimes rearrange themselves, and Elena would hear footsteps echoing from empty corridors. The escalators would start moving even when no one had pressed the button, their steps ascending to reveal nothing but the same empty hallway she’d just walked past.
The terminal windows were the worst. During quiet nights, when the check-in lobby was empty except for her, Elena would catch her reflection doing things she hadn’t done—turning away when she was facing forward, pointing at gates she hadn’t noticed, sometimes just staring back at her with eyes that weren’t quite her own. The other staff laughed it off as fatigue, but Elena saw the way baggage handlers refused to approach certain check-in desks, how they’d leave luggage tags outside the counters and hurry away.
The night everything changed, a couple checked in for Flight 13. They seemed normal enough—tired travelers looking for an early morning departure. But when Elena handed them their boarding passes, the woman’s hand brushed hers, and for a moment, Elena felt something cold and wrong, like touching something that had been dead for a very long time. The couple smiled, thanked her, and headed toward the security checkpoint.
By three in the morning, Elena heard screaming from Gate 13. She called the gate agent’s phone, but no one answered. When she walked down the concourse to check, the terminal had changed. The hallway stretched impossibly long, and Gate 13 seemed to be in a different position than it should have been. Other gates along the concourse were open, revealing boarding areas that shouldn’t exist—spaces with angles that defied the building’s architecture, windows that looked out onto skies that couldn’t be real.
The couple never boarded. Mr. Chen simply marked them as no-shows and told Elena not to worry about Flight 13 anymore. But Elena knew something was wrong. The windows in the check-in lobby now showed her a version of herself that looked tired, older, as if years had passed in a single night. When she tried to leave her shift, she found herself back at the check-in counter, her hand already reaching for the passenger manifest.
She tried to quit the next day, but Mr. Chen just smiled and handed her a new uniform. “You’re part of the terminal now,” he said, his voice low and final. “The check-in lobby and the gates are all that exist here. You work the night shift, or the night shift works on you.”
Elena returned that night because she had no choice. The airport was waiting, and whatever checked passengers in for Flight 13 had been waiting for her all along. The exit to the parking lot seemed further away each night, and she knew that soon, she’d forget there was anything beyond the terminal windows and the impossible gates that led nowhere.
