Chapter Two, continued...

So if I wasn't in the church basement, where was I? And how had I come to be here, in the middle of Strauss' masterpiece?

As I looked around me, I noticed that I wasn't alone. The whole viola section (all two of them, not counting me) was here with me, along with, of all people, the mayor. I walked over to her and extended my hand. "May I assist you, ma'am?"

"Is that a viola case you're carrying?" she asked.

I looked. Somehow, my viola case had made the transition from the church basement to wherever, along with Drew, Kit, the mayor, and Drew's rock.

"Of course it is," I told her. "I'm a violist, after all." She fainted again.

So where were we anyhow? At first, the place seemed to be a formless void, mist tendrils creeping around us. But the mist slowly cleared away, leaving us in a cavernous hall. There was a Harvey's over to the right, open, but with no customers or even cashiers that I could see. To the front, a stairway led down into who knows where. To our left, a row of double doors, then going forward, a row of what had once been ticket counters, but which now advertised a foreign currency exchange, a lottery outlet, and GO Transit tickets. The actual ticket counters, beside Harvey‘s had seven out of seven wickets sporting “Closed“ signs, which wasn‘t too far out of the ordinary. What was unusual was the huge neon sign over the untended information desk, which showed departing trains. Every single train was shown as being “on time.“ Something was definitely not right here. As for the rest of the station, I didn't need to look to know that behind me, there was an archway leading to another large, cavernous hallway leading to what had once been the Skydome, but which now was defaced by ugly red and white graffiti proclaiming it to be the Roger‘s Centre. I knew this place well, very well indeed.

An old man with a long, sweeping white beard and really far-out clothes approached us. I mean really, really far out, even for Toronto, and even seeing him with the eyes of a musician. He had a little cap of some sort, purple with gold embroidery. He had long purple robes that matched the hat, and his beard was contained at the half-way point by a gold, braided cord with tassels on the ends. He peered at us from behind half-moon spectacles with bright blue eyes.

"Dumbledore!" Drew exclaimed happily.

"Yes, I believe that is my name," the elderly eccentric said with a smile. "You seem to be in need of some assistance."

"Pardon me, Professor," I said politely, determined not to let Drew take the leadership in this situation. "Just a few minutes ago, we were in a church basement, practicing for our concert tomorrow, and now we're here. Have you any idea how that might have happened?"

"Well," he said, stroking his beard. "It would seem to me that something has happened that might have killed you all."

"What?" we exclaimed in unison. I might point out with some pride that this was perhaps the first time in the history of the world that any viola section anywhere has done something so completely together.

"I did say might have killed you all," he continued. "But it seems that Whoever It Is has failed in his or her designs. You're not alive, yet not really dead, either."

"But how do we get back to the church where we're rehearsing?" I asked. "We have a concert to play, dead or alive!"

"Where do you think we are?" Professor Dumbledore asked us.

"Um, it looks like Union Station," I said, "except there's nobody but us here. Kind of creepy, if you ask me."

"And how would you get to the church from here?" he asked, as if speaking to small children.

Well, duh! Maybe he was. "Come on, everyone! Down to the subway, and back to the church!"

"I can't use the subway!" the mayor wailed. "I just can't! What if I'm seen! I have an image to protect, you know, as a waster of taxpayer's hard earned money!"

We three ignored her. Kit, who sat behind Drew and I and generally ignored us, took the mayor's hand and pulled her towards the stairs.

It was weird. McDonald's, Country Time Donuts, Dairy Queen -- all the usual shops and services were present, but there was no-one running them, no passengers, no security guards, no one at all in the station. Drew was momentarily distracted by the smells wafting from Cinnabon to the left, and Kit pointed out that the LCBO shop was untended and open, but I pulled them away. We had to get out of this creepy place pronto. I admitted to myself that I was truly scared.

I mean, it was and it wasn’t the Union Station I’d come to know. No beggars sat at the doorway, looking for some spare change. No vendor ran the hot dog cart in the alley between the train station and the subway station. No ticket collector stopped us at the toll booth. We just waltzed right in. Well, we had to jump the stiles, and the mayor lost one spike off of her high heeled shoes, but no one stopped us.

Worse than the lack of people was the cleanliness of the station. It wasn't that there was a lack of litter on the ground. The whole place was clean, sparkly clean from top to bottom. No calcified remains of spilled soft drinks, no encrusted mustard and ketchup on the hot dog cart, no hardened gum on the hand rails—even the cracks in the pavement weren't there. The place looked...

New. It looked new, instead of decades old, decades that had seen more people pass through here than any other train station in Canada. I began to wonder if there would actually be any train for us to take. Not that it mattered—Yonge and Bloor was a fair hike, but under the circumstances, I'd say a half hour walk was a small price to pay in order to get back to where we needed to be.

I needn't have worried. We'd waited less than a minute before the inrush of air told me that a train was coming. The rumble of the approaching train followed, and soon enough, the silver rocket screeched to a halt in the station. The doors opened and we piled in. The doors closed and we were off!

"Middle Earth," a pleasant female voice said over the intercom. "Next stop, Middle Earth!"

My fellow violists and I stared at one another, and slowly a grin blossomed on my face. "Yippee!" I shouted, dancing around like Grandpa Jones in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.