The Late Bus (Night Fall ™)

by Richard Reece

  whats up?

  It wasn’t a minute before he was back to me.

  whats up yourself? kinda la8 4 u.

  cant sleep.

  Darcy? lol

  ha. I wish. bad dream.

  bout?

  our bus driver.

  scary dude! thx for reminding me.

  That’s when I figured out what had bothered me about Rumble.

  tty 2morrow?

  yeah. I still owe detention from before Xmas.

  HAHA. OK, Im gonna try 2 sleep again. ttyl!

  Sweet dreams. lol

  When dead people talk to me, I’m not usually all that scared. They can’t really do anything but talk. Of course, sometimes that makes them mad, and they’ll swear and cry and stomp around. But it’s like a little kid’s tantrum; it can’t hurt me. The only scary thing about dead people is just that—they’re dead. And I can feel that. It’s not exactly a look or a smell. They just give off this vibe.

  And that was the vibe I got from Rumble. Which was impossible, because he could do things; he could actually drive a bus. But everything else about him seemed dead.

  5

  The weirdness on the bus started slowly. The first week was quiet. At the end of the ride, I’d sit up front and say hi to Rumble, and he’d nod. He never acted like he wanted to talk, so I respected that. When he got to my stop, he’d always say the same thing in that wheezy voice: “Here you go, Lamar.”

  One thing did happen, though. We were about five minutes from my stop. Rumble was looking out at the road—kind of nervous, as usual—and two deer jumped out in front of us. It was dark and we were in the woods, so, pretty ordinary. But Rumble freaked out. He slammed on the brakes, even though the deer were pretty far ahead of us. Then he just sat there, sweating and breathing fast, staring into the woods like he expected a whole herd to surround us any minute.

  Then he put his head in his hands, rubbed his forehead and his eyes, and sighed. Finally he started again, but for the next mile he drove really slow, looking back and forth into the woods on both sides. He even checked the rearview mirror over and over. When he dropped me off he didn’t say anything.

  The second week we made the school paper, thanks to Nikki:

  Activity Bus Students Report

  Strange Happenings

  Last Monday, students on the 4:30 Activity Bus found their quiet ride interrupted by a series of unexplained noises.

  “It was creepy,” said Alice Herring, a sophomore and member of the girls’ basketball team. She was headed home after practice when the bus began to make noises that sounded “like a big animal growling, like a lion. At first I thought there was something the matter with the motor, but it got louder and louder.” When asked how the driver reacted, Herring said, “He drove faster, like he was trying to get away from it.”

  Not all students on the bus, including the reporter of this story, heard noises. Students who did hear them agreed that they lasted about three minutes before ending abruptly. And strangely, while several students reported noises, none of their reports agreed on what the sounds were.

  Ahmed Bell, a freshman Math Club member, said he heard “swearing and cursing. I thought it was someone on the bus, but everyone was looking around at everyone else, like ‘What was that?’” Bell quoted what he heard, but the Beacon cannot print it.

  Nigel Bronski, a junior on the chess team, agreed that there was a disturbance. Bronski described high-pitched, earsplitting screams, “like you’d hear in a fake haunted house. I wasn’t scared, but it gave me a headache.”

  Haunting was mentioned by more than one student on the bus. The former driver, Helen Robin, died over winter break. The current driver had no comment. Coastal Transportation, the bus company serving BHS, did not return calls about the incident. Principal Weston said he had been informed about the incidents. “Whatever happened,” he said, “and we are not sure anything happened, we’re grateful that no one was harmed. Bridgewater High School values the safety and security of its students above all things.”

  I was on the bus that night and I didn’t hear anything. I saw plenty, though. At first, some kids started to hold their ears and look around all wild. I thought the bus was filling with smoke. A gray haze seemed to thicken and settle on all of us. But then it began breaking up like a puzzle. The individual, smoky pieces took the shapes of shadowy, faceless people. For maybe a minute, while kids were holding their ears and freaking out, these creatures floated around the bus, as if they were exploring. Then they all seemed to get the same message, like a pack of wolves catching a scent, and they darted to the front of the bus and hovered around Rumble.

  6

  That was all. In just a few seconds the shadows merged and vanished. Then everyone started talking about the noise.

  A few kids quit taking the bus. A couple even quit their after-school activities because they couldn’t find a different ride home. At the same time, right after Nikki’s story came out, a few thrill-seekers stayed late on purpose so they could ride what some were calling the “ghost bus.” (And we, of course, were being called the “ghost bus-ers.”) They got bored, though. Nothing happened the rest of the week, unless you count the basketball game on Friday.

  After-school groups don’t usually meet on Fridays. Most students have other plans. And, during football and basketball seasons, there’s usually a game that night. For away games, like the one that night against Cod Harbor, the activity bus usually joins a half dozen others to transport students to the game.

  Sometime during the game that week, all four tires on Rumble’s bus were slashed. Like the other drivers, Rumble had been hanging out in the parking lot, having a smoke. None of them saw anyone near the buses. After the game, kids found empty seats on the buses still available. As we drove away, I saw Rumble waiting for the tow truck, his cap pulled down low and his shoulders slumped. He seemed to be standing in the shadows. But as I looked closer, I saw that the shadows were alive, swirling slowly around him.

  On Monday morning Principal Weston came over the PA with some words about vandalism. The school would pursue criminal charges if any BHS students were involved, he said. Bus service to the games would be canceled if this happened again, and so on.

  The late bus showed up that afternoon with new tires. When we got on I said, “Hi, Mr. Rumble.” I’d started doing that, whether he was going to talk to me or not. This time he actually looked at me for a minute, like he was searching my face for something. Then he turned away again.

  We’d only been on the road for about five minutes when I started to see that gray smoke in the bus. No one else seemed to notice, but suddenly a girl in the back screamed. I’ll let Nikki take the story from here:

  Rodent Rage? Mice Attack Activity Bus

  Screams filled the BHS Activity Bus Monday night as mice ran wild among the passengers. For almost five minutes, squealing rodents hopped from seat to seat, burrowing into backpacks and pant legs and leaping at students’ faces. Some students stood in the aisles, slapping at the mice and screaming for driver Emmett Rumble to stop the bus. Others opened the windows in hopes of encouraging the critters to leave.

  “I had two mice in my hair!” sophomore Jenny Black said. “I tried shaking them out, but they were all over the bus. It was disgusting!”

  Freshman Juan Arellano tried shooing the pests out the windows. But he reported that more mice came in the windows when he opened them.

  Rumble seemed not to notice the commotion at first, but he finally pulled the bus to the side of the road and opened the door, at which point all the mice— some said hundreds—rushed outside and disappeared.

  There were no injuries in the incident, although two students experienced allergy symptoms and another suffered a brief panic attack. The bus completed its route that night without any further disturbance. Principal Weston said the school would investigate. “It seems a little fantastic,” he said. “Sometimes things can get blown out of proportion. But we will learn the facts. At Bridgewa
ter High School, student welfare is always our biggest concern.”

  That’s pretty much how it was. When the smoke came, the mice came. When the mice left, so did the smoke. As the ride wound down that evening, I sat up front by the driver as usual.

  “That thing with the mice was pretty freaky, Mr. Rumble.”

  He nodded, but kept watching the road ahead.

  “Seems like this bus is having some pretty bad luck lately.”

  He didn’t say anything. We rode on through the night, darkness outside and awkward silence on the bus. It seemed like longer than usual before I could see our mailbox in the bus headlights. When we stopped Rumble said, “Here you go, Lamar,” and I got down. I was turning up the gravel road when I heard his voice again, though, through the open door.

  “Lamar.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “It’s not the bus.”

  The door shut and he drove off. I suddenly felt cold, and it wasn’t just the weather.

  7

  “What’s going on, Lamar?” Principal Weston leaned across his desk and frowned. I’d been called to his office via the PA first thing that morning.

  “Sir?”

  “On the activity bus. Who brought the mouse?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “This hysteria is causing Bridgewater High a lot of problems, and it’s only going to get worse if we don’t get to the bottom of these pranks.”

  “Pranks?”

  “Lamar, you’re supposed to be some kind of leader on the late bus. So what’s going on? After the so-called rodent attack, we found no sign whatsoever of mice. No hair, no droppings—you know you can’t have mice without droppings—so this whole story seems kind of bogus.

  “We—the administration—think this mouse incident is a hoax,” he went on. “We think that someone brought a mouse on the bus and everyone freaked out. Did you see all the mice?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, frankly, Lamar, I think you may have been caught up in the moment, all the screaming, just like everyone else.”

  Weston drew himself up. He was talking to me, but it felt like he was actually talking to a big audience.

  “Lamar, Bridgewater High School has just about had it with these activity-bus incidents. It’s only a matter of time before we’re looking at lawsuits. It starts with a panic attack here, an allergic reaction there, and pretty soon everyone’s jumping on the gravy train, trying to see how rich they can get off of our own Bridgewater High.”

  Suddenly he slammed his fist down on his desk. “It is not going to happen, Lamar! Not on my watch! I think you know what’s going on. I can’t make you tell me. But I can say this: if it keeps going on, the activity bus is finished. And maybe you and a few of your pranking friends are finished, too. Do you hear what I’m saying?!”

  Has this happened to you? Somebody lays all this stuff on you all at once, so much stuff you can’t even sort it out. And then they say, “Do you hear me?” And you want to say, “Yeah, I heard you, but this is so messed up I don’t know what to say!” So you just say, “Yes.”

  8

  Lunch found me sitting as usual with Notso, Bronski, and Nikki. I filled them in on my one-way chat with Weston. Bronski looked thoughtful. “So,” he said, “what is going on with the bus?”

  “Obvious, genius,” Notso answered. “It’s cursed. Haunted. Paranormalized.”

  “Paranormalized?” Bronski raised one eyebrow.

  “The late bus,” Notso intoned in a fake-spooky voice, “is a gateway to the supernatural.”

  “‘Supernatural’ is simply what people call things they haven’t figured out yet,” Bronski said.

  Nikki weighed in, “Look, we know the mice thing wasn’t a prank. The tire slashing . . .” She shrugged. “I voted for ‘cursed.’”

  “But why?” I asked. “We never had any trouble when Miss Robin was the driver.”

  “Why?” Notso said, “is the wrong question. The right question is: what can we do about it?”

  Everyone was quiet. Finally Nikki said, “OK, this is going to sound weird, but when my family moved to Bridgewater, the first day we’re in our house, one of the neighbors comes over and tells us the place is cursed.”

  “Wow!” Notso said. “And then it had you in it!”

  “Cool it, Notso,” I said, and turned to Nikki. “So was it?”

  “The first week we’d hear noises at night. Nothing terrifying. And we all started noticing that sometimes stuff wouldn’t be where we left it. Like the pillows on the sofa would be on the kitchen floor. Finally my Aunt Kate—she’s a teacher at St. Philomena’s—said we should get the house blessed.”

  Bronski rolled his eyes.

  “Did you?” I asked.

  “Yep. Aunt Kate brought a priest she knew, and he sprinkled the walls all over the house with holy water and said some prayers.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “And the noises stopped. No more traveling furniture.”

  We all looked at each other. Finally Bronski said, “I don’t expect it could hurt.”

  “Have a priest bless the bus? At a public school?” Notso howled with laughter. “I’m sure Weston would love to see that on the evening news!”

  “Look,” I said, “Thursday and Friday are half days for teacher meetings. The bus will be sitting in the lot at the bus company. That’s just across town, close to St. Phil’s.”

  I looked at Nikki, who was probably already thinking of the story she would write.

  “I’ll ask Aunt Kate,” she said.

  Three hours later I was in the dance room, doing an exercise called a rond de jambe. You support yourself on the bar and move your legs in a circle, front to back, back to front, to loosen up your hips. If you’ve never been in a dance room, it has bright lights and a special kind of mat on the floor. Horizontal bars hang along the wall for stretching and working on certain steps and positions. Three of the walls are covered with mirrors.

  That day there were about a dozen of us dancers there, including Miss Kallas, our advisor. She’s almost sixty, but she can do anything she asks us to do, and better. Someone said she had a real dance career in New York before she settled in Bridgewater. She told us we should learn to “feel” the positions first, then watch ourselves in the mirror. So I’d start by closing my eyes and, when I had the right feel, I’d look to check out my form. If there was anything out of place I’d adjust it, then close my eyes again and try to let my body remember how it felt.

  That’s what I was doing when I looked in the mirror and saw Miss Robin. She was holding the little blonde girl by the hand, and she looked serious.

  “Hey, Lamar, how are you, honey?”

  “OK. What about you?”

  “Lamar, some stuff is gonna happen.”

  “The bus?”

  “Yeah, that. Oh, this is Penny. Say hi to Lamar, baby.” The girl nodded. “But somethin’ else, Lamar. It’s about your daddy.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He’s not well. He needs to rest. Will you talk to him about that?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And the bus driver? You talked to him?”

  “I tried, Miss Robin, but he’s scared or something.”

  “Keep trying, Lamar. He needs you. Tell him Penny says thank you.”

  “What for, ma’am, he . . .”

  “Lamar!” Miss Kallas’s voice came from across the room. In the mirror there was just me. The other dancers were all lined up in front of her. “Having visions, Lamar?” she asked as I got into line.

  When we were getting ready to leave, who should come up to me but Darcy. “Was Miss Kallas right, Lamar?” she teased. “Were you seeing visions?”

  “Nothing like the one I’m looking at right now,” I said, smiling back. Darcy blushed, and I gave myself a mental high five. Sometimes I’m so cool I should be on TV. In fact, I was going to be on TV that very night.

  Somebody had called one of the local TV stations about the late bus. When I joined
my friends in the foyer, we could see the van with the dish on top parked outside. In front of the school office, someone was shooting video. A woman reporter who looked about my age was talking to Weston. He didn’t look happy. Two guys in suits stood next to him. Later on I would learn that they were the owner of Coastal Transportation and a lawyer.

  The bus pulled up right on time. As we tried to board, another reporter circulated through the group. A cameraman trailed behind her. Suddenly her hand was on my shoulder.

  “Do you ride the activity bus, young man?”

  I said yes, and she motioned to the camera guy to come in close.

  “And your name?”

  “Lamar Green.”

  “What year are you in school, Lamar?”

  “Junior.”

  “In the last week there have been reports about strange happenings on the activity bus. Have you seen any of those?”

  I thought about Weston’s threats that morning. “Well, ma’am, I thought so. But some people don’t agree.”

  “Lamar, do you think this bus is haunted?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Right about then Coach Tyree came out. He went to the bus and stood by the door as we got on.

  “Students only,” he said to the reporter when she and her camera friend tried to board.

  “I need to interview the driver,” she said. Coach shook his head.

  “There’s a schedule to keep, ma’am. You can talk to the owner of the bus company if you like. He’s right inside the school.”

  9

  When the doors finally closed and the bus started on its way, everyone was buzzing about the attention. I asked Nikki who she thought might have called the TV station. She looked shrewd. “I have no idea,” she said, “but I heard the family of one of the kids who got allergic last week is suing the school district for a million.”

  Notso grabbed his throat with both hands. “I can’t breathe!” he croaked. “Pay me!” Even Bronski smiled.