Michael Rowe - Enter, Night

“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, broke 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.

The bus travelleda 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 awakeas 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.