The bus swerved perilously near the shoulder of the road. Nothing lay beyond it but blackness drenched in rain.
By then the bus was in pandemonium. The passengers were either clinging like leeches to their seats or rolling all over the floors, everyone yelling and shrieking as the bus bumped down the road at break neck speed. The white Buick persistently knocked against the bus again and again. Jim was tossed violently against his seat, but he wasn’t screaming like the others. He’d finally realized where he’d seen the Buick before. It’d been his parent’s car many, many years ago. Not one like it but the exact same car.
He shoved his way up to the front of the bus and shouted into the driver’s ear, “Stop the bus! Stop it right now!” He grabbed the man’s fat shoulders and shook them. The movement of the bus threw him to the floor but he pulled himself up. “Stop! It’s me they want!”
“Listen, buddy. I’d damn well like to stop this bus, but they’re too damn close. They’d ram us for sure right into the river down there.” The driver’s fat face was beaded with sweat, his shirt stained with dark, wet patches. His beefy arms fought with the wheel. “I’m not stoppin’. Not on your life, buddy! If I stop now, we’ll go over the edge for sure! Get down!”
“I know who they are…what they want. Stop the bus and let me off and no one else will get hurt, please!” Jim pleaded, but it was no use. The man was attached to the wheel, acting only by raw instinct. He was being chased, so he ran. The bus was picking up speed.
Peering out the window, Jim couldn’t see how the driver was still on the road. He couldn’t see a damn thing. It was a miracle the driver could.
“I can’t stop!” the driver hissed, his eyes locked on the road. Jim was forcefully propelled to the door as the driver spun the wheel hard to avoid the car, suddenly in their path.
Jim had hit his head hard and wasn’t surprised when he put his hand up to the side of his face and it came away with blood on it. The sound of screeching brakes and the wails of panic stricken people rose into a cacophony that peaked as the bus narrowly missed the edge of the road and a thirty-foot drop.
Desperate, Jim got up and, grabbing the wheel, slammed his foot over the driver’s on the brake. They fought for a few wild, dizzying seconds then the bus zigzagged with a sickening crash into an embankment on the other side of the road. People were tossed against the windows and thrown to the floor in heaps. The silence was deafening. Smoke engulfed the bus. Jim had been dumped on the floor again and knocked out cold.
When he came to, he had no idea how long he’d been out. It could have been minutes or hours. The only hint was it was still dark. He woke to an eerie silence and propped himself up on an elbow to survey the damage. So far he was the only one moving. “Damn,” he moaned, staring around at the indistinct forms littering the bus like corpses. The driver was slumped over the wheel, unconscious.
What had happened to the car?
Jim didn’t know what drew him, but he crawled over to the open door and fell outside into the wet grass. He took a deep breath of fresh air and tried to stop his head from spinning. How many were dead in there? It was his fault.
“I can’t take it anymore,” he whispered, looking up into the bus’s blank windows. There was blood all over him and burying his face in his hands, he cried, “I give up!” He yelled into the woods. “Anything you want!” He released a long sigh of defeat. “You win!” There was a great hush as he spoke. Something stirred in the wind. The darkness was silent. Jim didn’t move.
“Jimmy?” The voice, a child’s voice, startled him and he looked up.
“Jimmy, what’s the matter?” A gentle, caring voice.
It took Jim a minute to understand. “Charlie?” His eyes grew wide. It was Charlie, as he’d looked so many years ago as a small child, standing patiently above him in the dawn’s twilight. He was smiling at him and clutching his mangy old cat, the one he’d slammed the door on by accident, and lopped off part of its tail. The one he used to torment to no end.
Jim’s mouth went dry. But Charlie was dead! Charlie was…
“Oh, it’s me,” the ghost child chuckled, petting his cat and looking amused.
“Charlie! My God! Where did you come from?” You’re dead, he thought but didn’t say. Instead he groaned, “What do you want?”
He was quivering. Did this mean he was dead, too? Jim jerked his head around and saw the smoking hulk of the bus behind him.
Was he dead, and didn’t know it yet?
“Oh, Jimmy, are you hurt?” The small ghost reached out its pale hand towards him as if to comfort, but Jim recoiled in fright.
“Don’t touch me,” Jim cried. He stood up unsteadily and propped himself against the trunk of a nearby tree. His eyes never left Charlie. “Am I dead, too?” There was cold sweat beaded on his face. “I don’t feel dead.” He ran his hands over his arms and down his body. The blood had dried on his face and hands, he wasn’t bleeding anymore, so it must mean something. He felt shaken, bruised and sore, but not dead.
Charlie was laughing at him and Jim gaped in amazement at the remnant.
He’d seen a lot of terrible things in his life, had been aware of existences most people would never experience in their lifetimes, but this took the cake.
He’d never thought he’d see Charlie again. Not in this lifetime…not in any.
“You want me to tell you if you’re dead or not?” Charlie chortled again.
Jim put up his hand as if to ward off evil. “No, I don’t want to know.”
“What do you think?” Charlie was floating a few feet above the wet earth stroking his stiff cat in long, gentle strokes and it made Jim’s teeth itch to watch him.
“I don’t really know.” He eyed him suspiciously sideways. “I don’t feel dead.” He mulled over the notion he might be in the Twilight Zone this time for real. No, it wasn’t likely, he felt too normal. “You’re not real.” He glared down at Charlie. “I’m hallucinating this whole thing.”
Charlie shook his head and slowly floated away.
Jim closed his eyes and prayed when he opened them again, Charlie would be gone. It didn’t work. “This isn’t happening.”
“Stubborn.” Charlie giggled. “You’re a silly goose, Jimmy. Like always.” The child had stopped at a distance and was grinning at Jim from behind a tree.
“Go away,” Jim moaned, as he slid down to the ground at the base of the tree and hid his head in his hands.
“I can’t go away. I came here to help you, Jimmy. I wasn’t very nice to you when I was alive, so I owe you something. You and Sarah were my favorites and now she needs us. I can help.” The eerie voice was sincere but Jim sensed fear, too. What could a ghost be afraid of?
Jim looked at the phantom differently as his mind deliberated. “How can you help me?”
“I can help you save Sarah and her son. I like Jeremy. He’s funny.”
“How can you help me save them?” Jim licked his fevered lips. He was so thirsty.
“I know what to do to keep them from having to die.”
The ghost shook its head pitifully.
“How?” Jim felt the beginning of panic and remembered the promise he’d made on the bus. He’d let no more die if his death would appease their tormentor.
He’d already conceded the game and forfeited his survival.
“I know how to trick the thing in the woods. I know how to fool it.” Charlie’s pasty-white face screwed up in ugly hate, hate which had fermented and aged in a damp grave. “Silly Jimmy, you know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”
Muffling a sigh, he nodded his head at Charlie.
There was a strange yearning gleam in Charlie’s eyes Jim had never seen when the child had been alive. Compassion. Empathy. The apparition reached out for him again and this time Jim didn’t recoil. The touch was solid and to
ok him by surprise, but it was so cold. They smiled knowingly at each other, Jim thinking he still couldn’t believe he was standing there talking to a ghost. He expected to blink and find Charlie gone.
“I’m really here,” Charlie said, hurt.
“I’m beginning to believe it.”
“You want to see something?” Charlie said excitedly, taking Jim’s hand and tugged him along.
Jim’s heart cringed at his touch.
“What?” He’d been looking beyond the child and was drawn on by what he saw. “It can’t be. We’re at least an hour away from Suncrest.” Yet even as he said it he knew what he’d meant to say was they were years away from what he was seeing now, not miles.
There before him amidst the trees and the lengthening shadows was something out of his past—his old house as it had looked twenty years ago. It was as if he’d been transported back into time and he was home, his real childhood home, again. It was unbelievable.
“Nothing’s changed. It’s as if I’d never grown up,” Jim whispered in total bewilderment. He heard Charlie laugh softly beside him.
The old brick house was alive with lights and noises, the familiar noises a loving happy family had made twenty years ago. In the coming dawn, shadows moved across the windows. The smell of morning bacon lingered on the air. There were people in there beginning their day, going to school and to work. He could hear children quarreling and laughing upstairs just like it had been back then. The memories were so poignant, he could barely stand to face them.
Jim stood there uneasy, but fascinated. This was the way it had been—once. This was where all the love had been. This was where they’d been happy. He wanted to walk into that house and never come out.
Could be he’d find the peace he’d been seeking for so long.
Charlie seemed to read his mind. “It’s home, Jimmy. You’re home.” The ghost was smiling at him, yet when Jim looked into those empty orbs he felt a chill in his bones.
Charlie belonged in his grave. With the rest of them.
It brought him back to reality. He gazed longingly at the house. This belonged to the past. It was over. All of them were dead.
He could look but not touch. He could long but not have.
“I’m in hell is where I am,” Jim murmured.
Children were tumbling out of the house now, scrubbed and dressed for school. They skipped past him so close he marveled they couldn’t see him, but he could almost reach out and touch them. John, Leslie and a very young Sarah, had their school books tucked under their arms and soon they were out of sight. Jim wanted to follow them so badly, he’d do anything, so he wouldn’t lose them. He desperately wanted to belong, to be a carefree, innocent child again.
“Is it so bad, Jimmy, coming home?” Charlie crooned, his voice mesmerizing in its seductiveness.
“No,” Jim muttered. Then why, he wondered, did he feel so cold? His head was numb and his thoughts were muddled. The pungent scent of fresh roses was over powering. It was so sweet, it made his head swim. He watched in suppressed horror as the past swirled around him. He kept thinking: This is real. This is not a dream.
Time sped by at super speed in this dead world. Suddenly darkness arrived, as if it was a giant curtain, and stole away the light.
He saw two children climb stealthily out of one of the forbidden upstairs windows and scoot to the edge of the roof. They shimmied down the old tree like monkeys and escaped into the fields. He could hear their giggles for a long time. It was Sarah and himself. Children again. With bated breath, he waited for the lone, frightened boy to come slinking back, escaping from something evil in the woods he’d known all along was there.
Jim watched in shame as the cowardly child snuck into the dark house, leaving his sister out there alone and defenseless. A scream rose on the night wind and a terrified small girl came rocketing back, breathing heavily, and collapsed on the porch in the shadows. He heard her crying. Heard the voice she’d heard on this fateful night and his blood went cold. Jim understood everything. He could block it no longer.
He remembered.
Jim turned to Charlie, who’d been patiently waiting for the memory. Their eyes met and Jim was crying. It’d been a long hard road and he was relieved the burden wasn’t his alone anymore. “So, the car back there,” he queried softly “It was Mother and Father, wasn’t it? It was really them?”
Charlie bobbed his head. “Yes, but they weren’t trying to hurt you, Jimmy. They weren’t trying to hurt anybody. They loved you a lot.” The eyes mirrored a hint of the old jealousy and then it was gone. They were empty once more. “They only wanted you to stop. I had to see you, you know. We’ve got to help Sarah and Jeremy, you see. I promised,” Charlie said gravely.
Jim was confused. “But they wrecked the bus, they might have hurt innocent people.” He stared at the still smoking bus. “They could all be dead, I don’t know. Why did they have to do that?”
Charlie shrugged. “Go back, you’ll see, no one’s really hurt.”
Jim prayed no one was.
“It was a trick to get you here so I could show you this. So you’d remember,” Charlie clarified. “You have to return anyway. You have to warn Sarah. You know what to do, now, don’t you?”
“I do.” Then he asked, “Will I ever see our parents again?”
Charlie lowered his eyes. “They’re here with all of us. They’ll be here when you come back. I don’t see them very often, but you will.”
His voice sounded sad and Jim again wondered how much he could trust Charlie. He’d never been trustworthy in life. It was a gamble Jim had to take. As bad as the odds were, he had no other options. In the final maze, he’d hit a dead end.
“Never mind them,” the phantom commented. “I’m going to help you and Sarah—not them! We haven’t much time. Please!”
Charlie took Jim’s hand and led him to the smashed bus. Everyone was reviving inside and Jim sighed with relief. Charlie had been right; everyone was okay and griping up a storm.
“As you said, they’re alive.” But when Jim turned to thank the ghost, there was nothing there. He was alone.
Jim knew Charlie had done what he’d been told not to do. He’d helped them and redeemed himself. He looked down the road and saw the ghost peeking out from behind a tree, smiling sadly, fading. He silently mouthed a goodbye and vanished.
The sun was coming up in a ball of fire. The night had passed.
Jim stumbled to the bus.
Bus doors flew open in front of him. “Mister, you getting on or not?”
The driver’s burly face was impatient. The man wasn’t hurt. It was a miracle.
“Well, are you coming, or not?” The bus driver reiterated as Jim continued to hesitate and not move. “If you are, you’d better get your butt on this bus, pronto. I’m getting the hell out of here. No little dent’s gonna stop me from keeping my schedule, you better believe it.”
Jim reentered the bus and the driver closed the door, rammed the vehicle in reverse, and with a loud crunching sound disengaged it from the tree where it had lodged. It was a wonder the bus could still run.
As Jim made his way to his seat he noticed the other passengers seemed strangely unaffected by the whole event. They’d pulled themselves together amazingly fast and behaved as if nothing had happened. So odd.
Jim was still reeling from what had happened and didn’t pick up on much. He was so tired. Everyone seemed fine and he was relieved to see it; he refused to question the reasons behind it. He dropped into his seat, checking to see if his guitar and suitcase were still under it. They were. Resting his aching head against the window pane, he closed his eyes and fought to keep his stomach where it belonged. He felt sick.
God, Charlie and the house.
He didn’t notice how the remainder of the trip went or how quiet everyone wa
s, or that the bus driver never once said another word to anyone.
He had to get home to Sarah, to warn her not to let Jeremy out of her sight, not even for a moment and not for any reason. Jim found he couldn’t keep his eyes open. He kept floating off into a restless sleep where Charlie and the others were waiting for him. He didn’t want to rejoin the real world, but he knew he had to. He had to help Sarah and Jeremy.
He slept and, half-awake, felt the driver shake him when it was time to get off. Someone handed him his suitcase and his guitar and helped him down the steps into the sunlight. The warmth drew him from his lethargy.
“Hey, wait a minute!” He squinted into the strong light and tried to figure out where he was and what he was doing there. He was in a daze. “What about the accident?” Jim hollered as the bus drove out of sight. “What about the reports and things…” His voice trailed off. What about the police?
He was abandoned standing alone at the side of the road. Not far from Sarah’s house. He got his bearings and strode off. Plodding along the road, lugging his stuff, he had to prompt himself to put one foot in front of another. He was so drowsy and felt so nauseated, he could hardly walk. Had he been hurt in the accident after all and hadn’t realized it? Maybe he should go to an emergency room? Nah. He was okay.
His mind kept revisiting the bus and the accident. Something wasn’t right. But for some reason it didn’t bother him.
The whole episode had been darn peculiar. Maybe when he got to Sarah’s he’d talk to Ben about it. Yes, it was what he’d do. If no one else was going to report the accident, he would have to, to be an upstanding citizen.
Jim kept trudging along. He felt strange but it didn’t matter.
He was almost there. Almost home.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Ben had left Sarah’s house late at night with disturbed emotions over what he’d learned.
Call it a sixth sense for trouble or simply a veteran cop’s intuition, he didn’t like the way things were shaping up. The fact she’d let Jeremy out of her sight so soon after the last murder, left him incredulous. Not to mention her ex-husband showing up unannounced as he had. According to Sarah, it was completely out of character. It didn’t sit right. Why did he choose to show up now of all times? Sarah had explained it to him and he’d let her believe everything was all right. She had enough on her mind without his concerns dumped on her shoulders, too.
Evil Stalks the Night Page 30
