The woman murmurs something, lowers her gaze and shakes her head. A message has passed between the pair, the import of which eludes Tony. For a moment he thinks she is defeated.
And then she laughs.
The man backs away, looking far more terrified than he should at the sound. Tony sympathises; he feels it too, a primal fear chilling his bowels, as if he has suddenly come face to face with a snarling tiger. The woman moves with preternatural speed to close the gap between her and the man. Gentle as a lover, she places her hands on either side of his head and leans in to kiss him on the lips. Again Tony gets the impression of smoke, swirling from the corners of the woman’s mouth and obscuring his vision.
Although the man’s mouth is still covered by hers, he screams. It is like
(nailsonblackboardrabbitinatrap)
nothing Tony has ever heard before. Years later, Tony will almost convince himself that it was a hallucination, a mere trick of the light exacerbated by fatigue. But right here, right now, he sees the man turn inside out. Skin splits. Bones splinter. Muscles contract wetly. Brain and heart and lungs and intestines hover untethered in mid-air.
Then the illusion is over. The man is whole and unmarked. The woman releases him and steps back. For a couple of heartbeats, his eyes stare blankly over her shoulder. His mouth lolls open. Then he collapses to the ground, his crumpled form somehow diminished by more than just his state of unconsciousness.
The woman strolls back towards the cab. She licks her lips, her tongue quick and furtive.
Then she begins to lick her fingertips clean.
By the time she resumes her seat, Tony is gibbering.
“Is he dead? He’s… you… I saw… the scream… he must be… should we call someone? He’s dead, isn’t he? Isn’t he?”
The woman shrugs. She examines her fingernails and touches the tip of her tongue to one tiny remaining speck of red. Apparently satisfied, she slides her hands back into her gloves.
“Yes. No. Depends what you mean by ‘dead’.” She swivels in her seat toward him, her knees pressed primly together and all-but-touching his trembling hand on the gear stick.
“You have been a good servant, Tony. Faithful. Honest. Obedient. I like that. And you have served me in two capacities, both as my driver and by bearing witness of my judgment. You shall have your reward.” She leans forward and presses her lips to his cheek. The gesture is strangely ritualistic.
The kiss of death… Tony is instantly awash. He sobs and trembles like a nightmare-stricken child. Snot bubbles from both nostrils. He loses control of his bladder, and the acrid aroma of urine fills the cab.
“Oh, look,” the woman says, pointing at the meter, “time’s up.”
It can’t be, the still rational part of his mind insists, we haven’t been out nearly long enough, but when he looks, it is just in time to see the meter click over. Two hundred dollars exactly.
She smiles. Kisses her fingertips and waggles them at Tony. Steps out of the cab and melts away into the dark.
After That Fare, as he thinks of it, things are different for Tony. Belligerent customers suddenly turn meek and deferential within the confines of the cab. Nobody tries to mug him or to do a runner. One young tough, on discovering his wallet empty at the end of the ride, bursts into tears and offers him his watch, his cell phone, the virginity of his sister, anything, only please don’t, please don’t…
Don’t what? Turn you inside out?
The fear in the young man’s eyes sickens Tony, and he waves him away, sending him stumbling for the safety of home.
His dreams are haunted by the memory of what he saw, or thought he saw. Sometimes he is merely the observer, sometimes the victim, sometimes the perpetrator. The only way to stop it, he reasons, is to return to the scene. But it is several months before he finds the courage to do so, and even then, he can only face it in the middle of the day. In the light it is a different place, mundane and harmless. It is deserted save for two council workers in fluoro vests who lean against their truck and share a cigarette. Tony is faintly surprised not to find the man still lying where he fell.
The feeling of her kiss on his cheek never completely departs. It’s a slight, localised sensation, like someone is perpetually blowing on his face through a straw. Some days he even thinks he can see the outline of her lips on his skin.
That’s the reason, he thinks, tapping his reflection in the mirror. He scrubs uselessly at the mark until his face is rubbed raw.
Faithful. Honest. Obedient. That’s my reward.
Tracie McBride is a New Zealander who lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband and three children. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in over 80 print and electronic publications, including Horror Library Vols 4 and 5, Dead Red Heart, Phobophobia and Horror for Good. Her debut collection Ghosts Can Bleedcontains much of the work that earned her a Sir Julius Vogel Award in 2008. She helps to wrangle slush for Dark Moon Digest and is the vice president of Dark Continents Publishing. She welcomes visitors to her blog.
Story illustration Galen Dara.
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Bus Stop
by Jerod Brennen
“C’MON, MOM. PLEASE?”
Michael slouched at the kitchen table, hunched over his Pop Tart. He ignored the crumbs and goo that fell on the table. His attention was focused on the woman at the opposite end of the table, the one pecking away at her keyboard, frowning at a checkbook that refused to cooperate.
His mom replied without looking up.
“You’re riding the bus, Michael.”
“But-“
“Shhh.”
Michael wanted to tell her about the jerks who snicker when he boards the bus each morning. He wanted to tell her that no matter where he sits, the jerks always change seats so they’re sitting in front of him, or beside him, or worst of all, behind him. He wanted to tell her about the language they use, the way they talk to each other, the way they talk to him.
He wanted to tell her so much.
“$27.50 for lunch? What’s he eating?”
She was talking to herself, but Michael knew who she was talking about. Since Dad got his new job, he wasn’t home as much as he used to be. Now he was “on the road” a lot. Dad would never admit it, but Michael knew that Dad was unhappy at his old job. He would walk in the door at the end of a long day, wearing a pretend smile that Michael’s little brother and even littler sister never seemed to notice.
But Michael noticed.
Michael wanted to tell his mom about that, too, but not now. She might hear the words, but she wouldn’t hear what was behind the words, not when she was busy refereeing a fight between their budget and their bank account.
Michael glanced up at the wall clock. 6:55 AM.
“Better get moving, buddy.” She was still heads down, lost in her numbers.
“Fine.”
Michael crammed the rest of the Pop Tart in his mouth and washed it down with the last of his milk. He stood, tossed the empty cup in the sink, and snagged his backpack from its resting place on the floor.
“Ahem.” His mom, soft but insistent, tapped on her cheek with her ink pen.
Michael trudged back to the table, bent down, and gave her a peck on the cheek. She finally looked up at him, tousled his sandy blonde curls, and smiled.
“Love you, buddy.” Her words were honest, sincere.
“Love you too, Mom.” His reply had the tone of a pre-teen up way too early on a Thursday morning, but he meant them just the same.
Michael’s mom returned to her balancing act. Michael returned to his backpack.
Without another word, Michael left the house, closing the door behind him.
Michael stood at the end of his driveway, frowning at the empty sidewalk in the pre-dawn darkness. He pulled his hoodie tight in an attempt to warm himself against the drizzly October morning.
His house sat at the entrance to their neighborhood, right there on the corner, but for some stupid reaso
n he had to walk all the way down to where the sidewalk started to curve to wait for the bus. Why didn’t the bus driver just stop in front of his house on the way out of the neighborhood and pick Michael up? That would have made so much more sense.
Truth be told, though, Michael didn’t mind waiting with the other kids at the bus stop. None of those kids were jerks. The quiet girl with the red hair who never said anything would sometimes sneak him a shy smile. Michael would occasionally discuss music with the Indian boy who carried a violin case, although Michael was too embarrassed to tell the boy that he could never remember his name. They were both strings players, though, and that was enough.
Michael didn’t even mind his bus driver, a craggy old guy with a patchy beard who sometimes muttered to himself in Russian. Sure, the bus driver’s face was set in a permanent scowl, but he had to spend even more time on the bus with the jerks than Michael did. That would put a scowl on anyone’s face. The bus driver scowled a little less when he picked up Michael and his bus stop friends, and Michael took that as a good sign.
No matter how many nice thoughts ran through Michael’s mind each morning, one thought overruled them all: the thought of the long walk to the bus stop.
Michael had been up and down that sidewalk hundreds, maybe thousands of times. He’d lived in the same house his entire life, and the sidewalk had always been the same. He knew every crack, every uneven discolored square. It was the same sidewalk in the dark as it was in the light.
That’s what he told himself, anyway.
Standing at the edge of his driveway, up before the sun, Michael thought the sidewalk felt… different. The daytime sounds of cars and kids and dogs were replaced with an unsettling quiet, like the entire world had decided to hit the snooze button and sleep in just a bit longer. Even the trees felt wrong. Michael never paid much attention to them during the daytime, but now they seemed too close to the sidewalk. In this light, the branches looked like skeletal arms just waiting to grab the next kid who dared to walk beneath them.
Michael might be able to tell his mom about the jerks someday. Maybe he’d even be able to tell her about Dad’s pretend smile, but he would never, NEVER be able to tell her that the number one reason he didn’t want to ride the bus was because he was scared of the walk to the bus stop.
Scared.
Michael considered looking over his shoulder. He imagined that he would see his mom standing in the front window, watching him. She would be nursing a cup of coffee, keeping an eye on him to make sure nothing bad happened. In his mind, he saw her open the door, heard her call out, “Come on, Michael. Hop in the car. Today, I’m driving you to school.”
But he didn’t look back. Ever. Something inside told him that if he looked back and she wasn’t there, that would give the bad things permission to happen. It was the thought of her watching after him that kept him safe, so he hiked his backpack over his shoulder, took a deep breath, and started walking.
Michael kept his eyes down as he walked. As long as he didn’t look up at the trees, they wouldn’t try to grab him. They would let him pass by untouched. So he stared at his feet instead, listening to the birds.
That is, until the birds stopped singing.
Michael stopped mid-step. He cocked his head to one side, listening intently, but the morning air was entirely void of birdsong. When his ears adjusted, searching for other sounds, he realized that the car sounds had vanished as well. That didn’t make any sense. Cars were always driving up and down the road outside of his neighborhood, even at this hour.
No birds. No cars. Nothing except for a low, hollow wind.
Michael’s heart started beating faster. He was overcome by a sudden urge to throw down his backpack and run screaming all the way back to his house. He wanted… no, he NEEDED to fill the air with some sound, any sound, until he was safe inside his house.
What he didn’t want to do, though, was look stupid.
What if the bus drove by while he was running and screaming? What would the jerks say then? What would the kids at the bus stop say? He’d never be able to climb on the bus again without everyone laughing and pointing.
Another deep breath, another hike of the backpack, another step forward. Michael forced himself to keep walking, head down, until he reached the bus stop. His racing heart started to slow down, just a bit. When he was safe with the other kids, everything would be okay.
Michael arrived at his destination and raised his eyes to greet his friends. To his surprise, he was the first one there.
He was the only one there.
He looked up and down the sidewalk. Not a soul in sight. Where was the quiet girl? Where was the Indian boy? Where was anybody?
That urge to run away screaming was back. His heart started pounding against his ribs so hard that he was afraid it might burst from his rib cage and run screaming down the sidewalk without him.
Go, his mind whispered. Run home, no matter who sees you or what they might say tomorrow.
That’s when he saw the headlights of the school bus.
Too late, Michael thought. It’s too late.
As the bus drew closer, Michael glanced all around, suddenly very worried. His first thought was that his bus stop friends were going to miss their ride. The more he considered this thought, the more he realized he wasn’t really worried about his friends missing their ride to school.
He was worried that he was going to have to ride the bus without them.
The bus rolled to stop, the squeal of its brakes shattering the silence. The door opened with a familiar whoosh, and Michael looked up at his bus driver.
The bus driver didn’t look back. He just stared straight ahead, scowling his familiar scowl.
Michael glanced around one last time. The drizzle had become a mist, and it was heavy enough to block Michael’s view of his house from the bus stop. The only vehicle in sight was the school bus, the only person in sight the bus driver.
With one last calming breath, Michael climbed aboard.
He knew something was wrong as soon as his foot touched that first step, but his legs kept moving until he reached the top. His eyes found the same thing in every seat they settled on.
Emptiness.
Michael was the only passenger.
Michael hesitated when he noticed the smell. It reminded him of the time he and his dad had been hiking at his great grandma’s farm, the day they found the decaying corpse of a baby deer. Michael had a sudden, vivid memory of the maggots crawling across the deer’s skin, in its nose, out of its mouth.
Most of all, he remembered that smell.
Michael’s throat was suddenly dry. He tried to speak, but his voice came out as more of a croak. He forced himself to swallow before trying again.
“Excuse me, sir, but… where is everybody?”
The bus driver replied by closing the door and shifting the bus into gear. The bus lurched forward, and Michael lost his balance. Instead of repeating the question, Michael stumbled down the aisle and settled into one of the empty seats.
Michael stared out the window as the bus drifted by his house. He found himself hoping again to see his mother in the front window, holding her coffee, keeping an eye on her boy. He thought everything would be okay if he saw her waving to him, wishing him a good day at school.
The house his bus rolled by was anything but reassuring. All the lights were off, all the curtains closed. The house was dark and unwelcoming and deathly silent.
Death.
The word rattled around in Michael’s head. He turned his eyes away from the house, afraid of what he might see if he kept looking.
Michael’s dread deepened on the ride to school. Each time he dared to peek outside the window, he saw the same thing: more nothingness. Every street was empty, every business closed. Michael didn’t see any cars on the road, either. Not even a single pair of headlights squinting back at him through the dreary mist.
Without warning, the silence was broken by the bus driver. He started in wit
h his usual muttering, but even that was different this morning. This morning, he wasn’t mumbling in Russian. His words sounded broken, like they didn’t contain enough vowels. Michael dug into his backpack, pulling out his cell phone and a pair of headphones. He buried the headphones in his ears, thumbed his way to the music player app, and hit play.
A familiar melody greeted his ears, but Michael wasn’t paying attention. He didn’t really want to listen to music. He wanted to not listen to the bus driver grumbling in that guttural, unnatural language.
Outside, the mist parted to reveal Michael’s school.
On any other morning, a line of minivans would stretch from the drop-off zone to the edge of the road. At the entrance to the school, a crowd of kids would be gathered outside, waiting for the first bell to ring. At least one teacher, probably Mr. J, would be waving cars forward, keeping the assembly line process running smoothly.
But this wasn’t any other morning.
Michael’s bus drifted through an empty parking lot and rolled to a stop in front of what had to be an abandoned school building. Michael pressed his face against the bus window, straining to get a better look at this building that should have been his school but somehow wasn’t.
Darkness filled each and every window.
As Michael clicked stop on his music player app, he heard the bus door open. He removed the headphones from his ears and listened more closely.
Silence.
Michael frowned. The bus driver’s mumbling voice was unsettling, but its sudden absence was somehow worse. Michael leaned into the aisle and peered toward the front of the bus.
The bus driver had vanished.
Michael sat bolt upright. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead, cooled by the chill in the air. Slowly, Michael turned his head to peer out of his window again. He scanned the sidewalk for the bus driver, but his one companion in this worsening nightmare was nowhere to be found.
Michael climbed into the seat across the aisle and checked the parking lot, not that it mattered. The bus driver, like everyone else, was gone.
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2012 - Issues 10 through 20 Page 30
