by Michael Rowe
Fleur shook her head. She smiled blankly and said, “No, he’s not like that. I just made him jealous. He’s never like that. He’d never hit me.”
Half an hour later at the bus depot, Jordan asked the ticket vendor when the first bus for Lake Hepburn was leaving. He told Jordan there was a Greyhound departing for Sault Ste. Marie at midnight with a stop in Lake Hepburn just after 5:00 a.m.
At some point between the apartment and the bus depot, it occurred to Jordan that he had very likely committed a crime by beating Don as badly as he had. A crime that Don could report to the police, one that could land Jordan in jail. And if he was in jail, he could kiss off any chance of saving his mother from his bastard father. He looked around the station guiltily, half-expecting to see police officers coming through the doors, pointing at him and drawing their guns.
“Anything before that?”
The ticket vendor looked up and raised his eyebrows when he saw Jordan’s bruises. “Not a fan of our great city, I see. Okie-dokie, just a minute.” He checked the schedule again. “Well, lookie here. There’s a Northern Star bus leaving in an hour. Ticket’s almost half the price.” He leaned closer to Jordan. “It’s sort of an old bus, kid. Not real comfortable. If you wait for the Greyhound, you’ll have a smoother ride. You look like you could use it.”
Jordan said, “I’ll take the Northern ticket, please.”
The vendor sighed. “Round trip or one way?”
“One way, please,” Jordan said. He paid for the ticket and went to wait on one of the benches near the platform.
CHAPTER THREE
Jordan boarded the bus at six p.m., making his way to the back where, as fate would have it, he met the vampire, who was sitting in the opposite row of seats.
He smiled sympathetically at Jordan and said, “I hope you made the other guy look worse, at least?”
Jordan turned his head. “Excuse me?”
“Your face. It looks like you were in a fight.” Jordan thought the man might be in his late thirties, certainly no older than forty. He was darkhaired and clean-shaven, but his face had a thick five o’clock shadow. “Was it over a girl?”
“Yeah, it was a bad fight,” Jordan said. “And it was over a girl. And the other guy did look worse. A lot worse.”
“My name’s Richard,” the man said, extending his hand across the aisle. “Richard Weal. My friends call me Rich.”
“Hi, I’m Jordan.” He shook Weal’s hand warily. He wasn’t used to talking to strangers, but since the ride was going to be a long one, he figured it was better to be friendly than not, if only to ensure a peaceful trip.
Weal smiled. “Where’re you headed?”
“Lake Hepburn,” Jordan said. “Just before Sault Ste. Marie.” He shrugged off his jacket and put it on the seat next to him. Feeling obligated, he asked. “How about you? Going far?”
“A town called Parr’s Landing,” Weal said. “It’s been a long ride for me. I’ve been riding this bus since Ottawa. That’s five hours already. I can’t feel where my back ends and this seat begins.”
“Never heard of it,” Jordan said. He shrugged. “I mean Parr’s Landing, not Ottawa. You have family there, in Parr’s Landing?”
“It’s near Marathon.” Weal smiled again, revealing a mouthful of yellowish teeth that looked like they hadn’t been brushed in days. “On Lake Superior. In the bush. In the middle of nowhere, truth to be told.” Weal laughed, an abrupt high giggling screech of hilarity entirely out of sync with the rest of his delivery. “I used to live there a long time ago. I’m an archaeologist. I’m doing a PhD at the University of Ottawa on the history of the Jesuit settlements in northern Ontario during the seventeenth century. Or rather, I was. I took a bit of a sabbatical, for health reasons. But I’m going back to complete some of my research.” He patted his hockey bag. Jordan saw that his nails were filthy, the cuticles crusted with what looked like dried mustard and ketchup.
“So . . . you got family there?” Jordan repeated, more out of politeness than anything else. He’d not finished high school by the time he escaped his family tumult in Lake Hepburn and he had no idea what a PhD was. He was having a hard time following the conversation. He wondered if he’d taken more of a hit than he’d thought when he landed on the floor. His head was beginning to pulse in earnest. “I mean, in Parr’s Landing.”
Weal smiled at that. “Blood family.” He covered his mouth with his hands and giggled again. “The best kind.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Never mind.” Weal held up a thick sheaf of papers bound with a heavy clip. “I’ve been re-reading the manuscript of this book I’m writing. I’ve been editing it. It’s going to come true soon.”
“It’s going to what?”
Weal leaned close enough to Jordan’s face for Jordan to smell his breath, which was quite foul. “I said, it’s going to be published soon.” His eyes narrowed. “Why, what did you think I said? Are you hard of hearing?”
Jordan pulled back, nauseated by the odour of Weal’s breath. “Sorry,” he said. “My head hurts pretty bad. You know, the fight.” He decided then to bring the conversation to a close. He wouldn’t have felt like talking, even to someone less unkempt and, frankly, weird. He wanted to sleep. He felt like shit and he wondered if maybe Don hadn’t actually managed to break his nose after all. He looked up the aisle, but all the free seats were in the back, where he already was. He couldn’t easily move without calling attention to his desire to distance himself from Weal and he had no desire to antagonize him, or otherwise engage his attention beyond what he still hoped was just small talk. “I think I’m going to close my eyes, Rich.” He yawned in an obvious way he hoped didn’t look too fake. “I’ll talk to you in a bit, OK? You can tell me more about your book.”
“Oh, of course, young sir,” Weal replied. He had removed the clip and was turning the pages. His nose was pressed so close it was almost touching the paper. “I do apologize for rambling a bit. It’s been a long day. I’m a bit knackered myself.” He smiled. “That said, I’ve got my book. And my tools.” He patted the hockey bag again. “Would you like me to wake you up when the driver stops in Sudbury for dinner? I imagine we’ll all be quite famished by then.”
“Sure,” Jordan lied. “Please do.” He leaned his bruised face against the cool glass of the bus window and closed his eyes. He promised himself that when the bus stopped in Sudbury, he was going to change his seat as unobtrusively as possible.
There was a crest on the first page the freak had waved at me , Jordan thought aimlessly. And it said University of Toronto. Not University of Ottawa. And then he chastised himself. Stupid thing of you to notice. Like you’d ever wind up in either of those places, you big dummy. What do you know about any of that shit?
His face hurt like hell. Then he remembered the painkillers he’d stolen from Don’s bathroom. He reached into his knapsack and took out two of the pills. He swallowed them dry, trying in vain to work up a mouthful of spit to ease their passage down his throat. He gagged at the acrid dry taste. He remembered the whiskey in his bag and took a long pull straight from the bottle. He shivered, his eyes watering. His face really hurt. He took another pill out of the bottle, considered it for a moment. He knew nothing at all about drugs, or what might constitute an overdose, and was flying blind. What the hell, he thought, and popped it in his mouth. He took another swig of the whiskey, and another. The amber liquid seared his throat, the heat travelling down through his body to his empty stomach, radiating outward towards his extremities, leaving him light-headed and warm.
The pills had an immediate effect. A slide show of mental images flickered across the screen of his mind—his mother, his father, Fleur, their lovemaking, and, of course, Richard Weal. Jordan’s lips and jaw felt numb, and he was utterly relaxed.
Outside, the city was consumed by the night and vanished entirely, leaving an eternity of highway stretching north as far as he could see. Only distant neon stars, rendered opalescent by the rain, bro
ke the blackness. Lulled by the motion of the bus beneath him, Jordan yielded to the barbiturate admixture of painkillers and whiskey coursing through his system. He closed his eyes again, and slept.
CHAPTER FOUR
The bus travelled a north-northwest route along the Trans Canada Highway towards Georgian Bay, exiting onto highway 69, continuing north around Georgian Bay towards Parry Sound. The rain stopped, giving way to thick fog that drifted in from the rolling farmlands on either side of the highway, which then gave way to tracks of young pine forest.
The moon, which had begun its ascent hours before in the rain, came out from behind the scudding black rain clouds, frosting the road on either side of the bus with silvery light.
In Barrie, a mother and her five-year-old daughter boarded, and in Parry Sound, four passengers who’d boarded in Toronto disembarked. But no one from Parry Sound boarded. After five hours, the bus pulled into Sudbury for a half-hour refuelling stop.
Jordan slept through Jim Marks’s announcement that all passengers could step out, stretch their legs, and get something to eat at the diner next to the terminal.
No one boarded after the break, Jim noted sourly. His mouth tasted like bad coffee and cigarettes and his back ached. He felt his jacket pocket for the Dexies he kept there. He hated using the amphetamines, mostly because of what they did to his stomach. Though at his last physical, Doc Abelard had warned him that the Dexies, in conjunction with his hours, the cigarettes, and the forty extra pounds he was carrying around his waist wasn’t doing his ticker any favours. Just as a last resort, Jim told himself. Don’t want to fall asleep and crash this old bitch before I get a chance to collect my pension.
He looked back. He counted five passengers in the back of the bus as he pulled out of the lot: an old lady sitting two rows behind him who had asked him three times already “just to be sure” that he was stopping in Whitefish; the teenage boy sleeping against the window halfway to the back who hadn’t gotten out at the Sudbury stop; the tired young mother with her little girl—Missy, he’d heard the woman call her back at the dinette; and the guy in the very back row reading a book. Come to think of it, Jim thought, that guy didn’t get off the bus in Sudbury to stretch his legs, either. One of them—the kid, he thought—was getting off in Lake Hepburn. The other guy had bought a ticket all the way to Sault Ste. Marie.
There were fewer and fewer passengers on the northern routes, Jim realized, and he wondered how long Northern Star would be able to hold out. His retirement wouldn’t come a moment too soon.
Jim turned the bus west on Highway 17 and repeated the name of the coming towns like a mantra: Whitefish, Spanish, Serpent River, Thessalon, Garden River, Lake Hepburn, Sault Ste. Marie.
It would be hours yet before dawn. It was going to be a long fucking night.
At 4:15 a.m., Jim Marks pulled the bus over to the side of the road to investigate what he feared might be a flat tire on the right side. He took his parka down from the overhead compartment, put it on, and stepped outside.
Overhead, the full moon shone down like a headlight. The thought came to him—as it happened, one of the last thoughts he would ever have—that he’d never seen a night this bright and clear up north. The radius of the moon’s light aureole was such that while the larger sky was as blackest black, the area around the moon itself was indigo blue.
He shone his flashlight along the undercarriage of the bus. The tires were all intact and none were damaged. He shrugged. Whatever he had heard and felt, at least it wasn’t a flat. He’d include the incident in his report and the mechanics could check it out when they pulled into Sault Ste. Marie. He checked his watch. They’d only lost fifteen minutes. He stepped back onto the bus and looked down the aisle. The passengers seemed to have slept through the stop, which, given that most bus passengers on long routes were light sleepers, was itself a miracle.
Jim settled himself into his seat. He fastened his seat belt and started the engine.
In his peripheral vision, he caught an abrupt flurry of motion in the rearview mirror and looked up.
The man in the army surplus jacket from the back of the bus wasn’t asleep at all. He was wide awake. He was running along the aisle of the bus with spider like agility, past the sleeping teenager, past the woman and her little girl, towards the driver’s seat.
Jim opened his mouth to tell the man to go back to his seat and sit down, but nothing came out. Then, suddenly, the man was directly behind Jim and drawing back his arm. In his hand, he held something long that gleamed in the overhead light of the cabin. The last thing Jim Marks saw was a flash of silver in the gloom as the man’s arm came down viciously in a wide arc.
Jim threw his arms up to protect his face, but it was too late. There was a short, blinding sheet of white-hot pain and sharp pressure as the chisel end of the archaeological rock hammer split open his skull, but his conscious mind barely had time to register it as pain. He was dead before he hit the floor.
Jordan was jolted awake as the bus swerved on the highway. For a moment he didn’t know where he was. He’d been dreaming that he was caught in a thunderstorm, or an earthquake. There had been the sound of thunder and of a woman singing some sort of high-pitched, screaming lament. It had been a harsh, unpleasant sound—one that, even asleep, had filled Jordan with dread.
He blinked and looked around him. Then he felt his face begin to throb, and he remembered that he was on a bus.
Jordan looked down at his watch. It was five a.m. His mouth was parched. He half-stood in his seat and looked around. The darkness inside the bus was complete except for the green glow coming from the dashboard. Squinting, he could make out the shape of the bus driver hunched over the steering wheel, but nothing else. He tried to remember what time they’d left Toronto—six? Six-thirty? It was now five in the morning. They weren’t due to reach Lake Hepburn till after six. And had the bus been full? He tried to remember—half full? A quarter full? He switched on the overhead light above his seat. The weak bulb illuminated nothing besides his seat and the seat next to his.
The bus was moving very slowly and he heard gravel under the wheels. Gravel? We’re supposed to be on a highway. Jordan pressed his face against the window. Beyond the thick fog, there was nothing but blackness. He saw no other cars, no gas stations, and no highway lights of any kind. It was as though the outside world had simply been swallowed up. The rows of seats ahead of him were tombstone-shaped in the gloom. He shook his head, trying to shake off the thick, gauzy haze left by the painkillers and the whiskey.
Something’s not right here. Something’s not right at all.
Jordan stood up and was assailed by an unfamiliar odour that made his stomach clench. For a moment, he was sure he was going to puke. It reminded him of iodine and rust, or the rotten smell of sulphur, or stagnant pond water, or shit, or some foul combination of all four.
He stepped out into the aisle of the bus and felt his way along the rows in the darkness. The smell grew thicker as he advanced. The bus was unbearably hot, as though the driver had turned up the heat as high as he could. Again, his head throbbed and he felt his stomach contract in protest against the thick smell in the air.
How can the driver not smell this? It’s disgusting! How can he keep driving and not wonder if anyone is sick back here? For that matter, how could any of the other passengers stand it?
Jordan took another step up the aisle and slipped in a slick patch on the floor. The forward motion of his foot and his own weight carried him backwards. He lost his balance and fell, landing on his tailbone and elbows. Bolts of sharp pain shot up his arms and spine. Wincing, he rose to his feet and flicked the switch above the nearest empty seat. In the watery halo of lamp light, Jordan held his hands out in front of him and stared. His first thought was that perhaps he’d cut himself when he fell. Then he looked at the legs of his jeans. They were smeared and wet, and as red as his hands. Jordan knew what the smell was. He was covered in blood—not his blood, someone else’s. Someone very close
by. He stifled the scream that threatened to erupt from his throat, and turned on the light above the seat in front of him.
Then, Jordan did scream. There was no way not to.
He was looking at the body of a woman with her throat torn out. The blood from her wounds—there seemed to be at least two, apart from her torn throat, including a deep gash in the top of her skull from which a thick paste of brain, bone fragments, and hair, was leaking like red oatmeal. It had all but obliterated her face. Her left ear looked as if it had been half-bitten off and lay raggedly against the side of her skull. Jordan looked at the seat next to the woman’s body. Amidst the rags—no, not rags, a little girl’s fluffy pink coat marbled with great whorls of crimson— Jordan was just able to make out a tiny red hand and a dangling green rubber boot.
Up ahead, at the front of the bus, the slumped shape behind the wheel drove erratically forward, apparently oblivious to Jordan’s screams. In the driver’s window, thick tentacles of fog beckoned and recoiled in the yellow headlights. Jordan thought he could make out clumps of trees crowding in on either side of the road. They were definitely not on a highway. Jordan had spent his entire—if brief—life in the country and he recognized a country road when he saw it, even at five a.m. in a blind terror at the scene of some sort of gruesome bloodbath through which he’d apparently slept like the dead in a haze of painkillers and whiskey. But he was awake now—completely, horribly awake. Either that, or his nightmare had somehow followed him out of his dream and into real life.
He screamed, “Stop! Stop the bus! Stop the bus! She’s dead! Somebody killed a lady!”
Calmly, the driver turned the wheel of the bus and pulled over to the side of the highway. There appeared to be no haste, no urgency in the sequence of movements.
Still not right, Jordan’s mind gibbered. He shook his head frantically. Am I still asleep, or is this really happening?
