The third level

'The Third Level' is a story by Jack Finney. Its narrator, Charley, is a thirty-one-year-old man living in New York. The presidents of the New York Central and the New York, New Haven and Hartford railroads will swear that Grand Central Station has only two levels. But Charley says there are three, because he has been on the third.

He went to see his friend Sam, a psychiatrist, about it. Sam said it was a 'waking-dream wish fulfilment': the modern world is full of insecurity, fear, war and worry, and Charley simply wants to escape. Charley's wife, Louisa, says his stamp collecting is a temporary refuge from reality too.

Here is what happened. One night Charley was going home late from his office. In a hurry, he took the subway entrance into Grand Central, and soon he was lost. The station is always growing, like a tree pushing out new roots, and he walked down a corridor, then a flight of stairs, and came out on a strange third level.

It was smaller and old-fashioned: fewer ticket windows, wooden floors, dim, flickering open-flame gaslights, brass spittoons on the floor, a big brass-pendulum clock. A man pulled a gold watch from his waistcoat pocket. The people wore old-style clothes: derby hats, sideburns and fancy moustaches, and a woman passed in a dress with puffed leg-of-mutton sleeves. Every detail tells Charley he has stepped into the nineteenth century. A newspaper, 'The World', carried news about President Cleveland, and its date was June 11, 1894.

Charley decided to buy two tickets to Galesburg, Illinois, a wonderful, peaceful town of his childhood, where summer evenings were long and people sat out on their lawns. He would take Louisa there.

But when he pushed his money across, the clerk looked at it and said, 'That ain't money, mister.' He thought Charley was trying to cheat him. Charley's modern banknotes were different from the money of 1894. Afraid of being caught, he left quickly.