Shades of Blood #7: The Bus To Hell

by Peter Ackers

6

  The bus travelled through the endless void and Ricky soon lost track of time. The only reference he could use to determine speed and time was the ceaseless procession of bus stops, which might have been the same one on a looped route if not for the changing names: ARSON, TREASON, SUICIDE (another man he recognised had alighted here: an ugly sod who'd been in the papers once for a previous attempt at ending his life, which had of course failed. Second time lucky, it seemed), RAPE, DECEPTION, ADULTERY -

  Ricky perked up as he saw the ADULTERY sign approaching through the seamless black world.

  "Adultery," Ricky said, his soul punctured. He was ridden with guilt suddenly, but more than that, a feeling of shock. Adultery, a crime worthy of eternal damnation? With the relaxed social ways of the last few decades, Hell was going to become one very crowded place before long.

  The fling with the woman from work hadn't been planned, but then, most of the time affairs never were. If he was forced to explain why he had started cheating on his wife, Ricky would have been up against it to provide any answer other than that he had been horny, too horny for the appetite of one woman. It had had nothing to do with stress at home - his relationship with his wife, Alison, had been as strong as it ever was. Just pure sexual greed, then! Unforgivable? Maybe. But worth an eternity in Hell? No way.

  The bus had stopped. People were getting up to disembark. Only a third of the original cargo remained seated, suggesting that this bus was nearing its terminus.

  Terminus! Pun intended or what!

  Terminus. End of the line. Ricky suddenly remembered what Sam had told him. Cheating destiny. What could that possibly mean? Avoiding Fate? Changing what was in store for you? Was that even possible? In the Biblical sense of Hell, certainly not, but then all of this didn't reek like a scene from the Bible. This was reality Hell, a lithe machine dedicated to processing the dead into their afterlives, and with such a massive project, wouldn't it be simpler and more efficient if all grandiose was stripped away? After all, this was Hell, where comfort and appearance were of nil importance. A bus trip through Hell with specific stops for specific sins seemed like pretty good logistics. Was it really too silly to assume that cheating destiny could be as simple as hiding under the back seat of a bus, like a little kid trying to avoid paying a fare?

  The bus moved on a few moments later, its load of adulterers delivered and already on their way to eternal punishment. From his position under the back seat, Ricky smiled. Part of that smile was due to the reawakened sense of sneakiness he'd enjoyed as a child. And the other part was his growing sense of apprehension and intrigue, because what happened from here on in was of his own doing, not actions written in the Book of Fate. He was penning a new chapter.

  7

  He sang songs in his mind to pass the time. The bus stopped many more times. After each stop, the amount of chatter in the bus decreased. Soon, there was just one fellow speaking to a silent second. The speaker was an old man who expounded upon the great thrills he'd experienced as a soldier shooting Nazis in France in 1942, and how he thought it wasn't fair that a man fighting for King and country could be sentenced to eternal damnation just because he'd ended the lives of a few evil invaders. But he wasn't regretful, he kept proclaiming. "If I sees those bastards down there in Hell, I'm gonna shoot 'em all again!" Then the bus stopped again, the old man bid the other farewell and got off, and again the bus was on its way.

  Ricky looked along the floor of the rolling bus, but couldn't see any feet. Empty. The old man must have been talking to the driver.

  Next stop, the terminus, Ricky realised.

  8

  When the bus next stopped, the engine died and Ricky tensed. This was it. He knew what came next, because every kid had hidden on the back of a bus at some point. The driver would come strolling down the aisle, throwing cursory glances around to make sure no one was secreted anywhere. And Ricky would either be caught or missed, simple as. Or perhaps he was caught already, with the driver knowing he was back here because Death's ushers hadn't crossed him off the list yet.

  He heard the door of the driver's cabin open and then footsteps, loud and heavy and coming closer. He was tempted to peer out, wanted to see this agent of Satan's. Cheesy as the bus ride idea was, he didn't think it stretched to drivers attired in uniforms that said "Hell Line" on them.

  Thump, thump! Ricky tensed, knowing that if he was caught his punishment wouldn't just be a clip round the ear and a booting out the door. There was a "penthouse suite" and a meeting with Satan himself for those who attempted to cheat Destiny.

  The feet he saw coming up the aisle were covered by a long robe of some kind. It was brilliant white, and under the glare of the bright lights in the roof of the bus, the robe appeared almost invisible. The thing that wore this garment could have been a human or a rhino on its hind legs - it was impossible to tell. This made Ricky even more eager to stick out his head and see. See what kind of creatures inhabited this netherworld.

  The robe stopped moving, then began moving again back down the aisle, without turning. Eyes in both sides of the head? Did the thing have a head? The urge to look was barely beaten back by the thought of the horrible torments that would be his if he did.

  The robed thing exited the bus and was gone. All was silent.

  Ricky decided he would wait a few minutes, until after the driver had clocked off or gone for a cuppa or whatever it did here, and then he would make a break for it.

  It? What was it? Where exactly was he, and what exactly was he planning to do? He figured he'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

  9

  Ricky didn't dare step off the bus, at first. There was no stop here, just blackness, all-consuming emptiness, and it made him feel almost like an astronaut on a space walk. He got on his knees at the open door and put out his hand, feeling for substance that wasn't there. He even felt under the left front wheel, thinking that perhaps the bus was perched on invisible pillars that reached up from the ground, many miles below. Nothing. His hand swept under the wheel without contact of any kind. Not even the movement of air.

  Panic introduced itself. What could he do? Was he stuck here for a week, until the driver returned to once again take his vehicle along the same route, picking up and dropping off his new batch of sinners? If that were so, then Ricky couldn't cheat his destiny, because soon he'd either get caught, or he'd become bored or hungry and would relent, choosing to disembark at the ADULTERY stop and accept his fate. He couldn't hide forever!

  He threw back his head, ready to roar and cry, and that was when he sensed light somewhere in this anaesthetizing blackness. Taking hold of the doorframe, he leaned back, out into the void, and then he saw it.

  It was above the bus, hanging there as everything else in this place just hung. A perfect circle of white about three feet in diameter, like a giant luminous disc.

  Before he could stop to think, Ricky had hauled himself onto the roof of the bus, breaking the wing mirror with his foot in his haste. The glowing disc looked like a thin line from this angle, for it hung just seven feet above the pitted metal roof of the bus. As he approached, the line widened, until once more it was a disc and Ricky was stood directly beneath it, staring up without squinting, despite knowing that its brilliance should have forced him to close his eyes or at least shield them.

  Was this a portal into the world he'd left behind? He wondered. Or a passageway to the penthouse suite Sam had mentioned? Or was it just a fancy doorway into some kind of staff room, where he'd find the driver with his feet up and a newspaper in his hand, whittling away the time until his next shift?

  Before he could choose one, the now wide-awake inquisitive-child part of Ricky's mind had already acted. Ricky jumped, arms above his head like a man diving. There was a little heat as he passed through the circle of light, then pure whiteness that didn't sting his eyes yet was blinding in a way he couldn't explain, and then the darkness was back. But this time there were lighter and darker patches of black, which quick
ly became recognisable as furniture and shadows cast by that furniture. It took a few seconds for his eyes to register what he was seeing and for his brain to process these electrical signals, but finally Ricky grinned as relief washed over him.

  He was inside a church, a good old-fashioned Earth church.

  10

  He looked around and wondered what he was meant to do. He thought his presence here was significant. Atonement. That was how one cheated destiny. This was the very same church where he and Alison had married six years earlier; he figured that this fact would play a part in his atonement. But again, how?

  He looked up into the triforium and out a high window and saw the night sky and the moon. Late; the church was locked down.

  He strolled down the centre aisle, enjoying his new surroundings, yet still puzzled. Then he glanced between two pews and saw a sweet wrapper lying on the floor. Perhaps he was meant to do all a man could ever do: his best. He moved between the pews to retrieve the wrapper and bin it - good deed of the day, and all that. As he bent to grasp the piece of litter, he put a hand on the back of a pew for