Michael Rowe - Enter, Night

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?

Another wave of slaughterhouse stink rose from the woman’s body and Jordan vomited. Then, smelling his own puke, he vomited again.

When he stopped retching and stood up, he saw Richard Weal standing there beside the steering wheel. In his left hand, he held a pickaxe. The blade of the axe was clotted with clumps of flesh and hair. In the right hand, he held a red-spattered butcher’s knife with an eight inch blade. To Jordan, he looked like a monster out of a horror movie. The entire bottom half of his face was caked with blood. The front of his shirt and army surplus jacket were soaked with it and shone wetly under the dim overhead lights of the driver’s cabin.

As Jordan’s terrified mind shook off the last remaining shred of torpor and his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he saw the bus driver’s mutilated body crumpled at Weal’s feet. Half his skull was missing and his throat had been torn out.

“The blood is the life,” Weal said thickly, licking his lips. He waved the pickaxe idly in Jordan’s general direction. “I told you, I brought my tools. He tells me how,” Weal said reverently. “He speaks to me. They told me, in that… place, to take the pills. But when I did, I couldn’t hear him anymore. He showed me how to do this. He sends dreams into my brain. He wants me to find him so I can live forever. I’ll be like him. I’ll be able to fly.”

“You’re crazy,” Jordan whispered. “You’re fucking crazy.”

Weal smiled, his teeth red. “No, no, I’m not crazy. He wants me to wake him. He wants me to find him where he sleeps and wake him. He loves me.” Weal cocked his head like a dog listening for a supersonic whistle. “He’s speaking right now. I can’t believe you can’t hear it. He says I should kill you, because if I let you live, you’ll tell everyone about him. About us.”

Weal wiped the knife on his pants and began swinging it lazily in front of him like a pendulum. Jordan heard the hiss as it cut the air. Weal took a step towards him, still swinging. Jordan jumped back, slipping again on the gore-slick floor. Weal took a compensatory step forward as though he were leading in some ghastly tango.

“No, I won’t tell! I swear! Please, please, let me go! Please! I have to get home.” Weal swung the knife in wider arcs and feinting half-jabs at Jordan. He grinned, advancing. Jordan backed up farther. “My mom needs me! My dad’s hurting her. Please, if you kill me, she won’t have anyone to protect her. Please, don’t. Oh God. I’m begging you.”

“The blood is the life,” Weal whispered. “And I’m going to live forever.”

He struck hard with the knife, slashing Jordan across the chest. The blade shredded Jordan’s shirt, and bit deep into flesh and muscle. He screamed as the blood rose from the wound. Jordan clutched his chest and backed away. Weal kept advancing, driving Jordan backward, slashing with each step, cutting Jordan’s hands when he tried to ward off the swinging blade, slashing his neck and face when Jordan’s bleeding hands were elsewhere.