Enter, Night (4 page)

“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, 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 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.