Light was fading

Chapter Twelve

"THEY tasted a bit funny." I thought. "What with them and the cold and the mist. Wait. There wasn't any mist. That was part of the dream."

I turned and looked at the scene ahead. The normality of the moonlight and shadows gave me comfort.

I saw something ahead. It appeared suddenly at the edge of the headlights' beam. I cupped my hands to the window again. It was a car, a white car.

"My car is white", I thought absently.

The man standing at the rear of the car appeared to be raising something out of the boot. He had something in his hands, but I could not see what it was.

The moonlight was quickly fading. The scene started to go black. The glass was going black! I felt something trickle down my forehead. The light bulbs exploded!

Minutes later I sat with blood oozing down my cheek gazing blankly at mist that was thickly back swirling about the boarding platform. The light shining down from the upper deck ghostly lighted the vapour.

I was too far back, slummed in the dark for the ghostly light to touch me. Hidden in the dark like a fugitive, bleeding and haunted by insanity, or hallucination. Had I damaged my brain when I fell?

Could I really hear again the muffled thuds and grunts coming from the deck above?

I did not want to move, but anything was better than sitting in the dark plagued by thoughts of my own sanity. I eased myself to my feet. Glass crunched under me as I walked unsteadily to the stairs.

I reached the platform, stopped and listened. I thought that I could hear moaning, but it was like trying to hear through a wall. Whatever was going on upstairs I knew for certain that I did not want to be part of it. All I wanted to do was get off the bus.

I did not care anymore, even if I had to sleep in the fields. That would be better than the fate which awaited me if I climbed those stairs, of that I, was certain. But how could I get off?

At the speed the bus was now travelling if I jumped I would be killed. My head ached. If I stood on the platform I could wait my chance, and then if the bus slowed I could jump. I heard a sharp movement behind me.

I turned and looked into the darkness. The drivers monkey face loomed towards me. It floated bodiless, like a devil mask. I was about to yell when the mask crumbled into motes. I blinked and rubbed my eyes.

The mask was gone.

Exhaustion must have caused the illusion. I scrambled onto a bench seat to rest for a moment. The sounds from above stopped. The drone of the engine seemed far away and silence hung in the air like a noose. I thought about the car and the man I had seen.

"Had the car been mine? If it had been mine, then the bus must be going around in circles. Who was the man? A thief? An opportunist? Someone who just happened to have been driving by?

I had not seen another car? What could he steal? There was nothing of value in the car. The book. He was welcome to that. If we were going in circles that meant that we had to come to the bend again. The bus would have to slow. Perhaps I could jump off there?"

The thought gave me a little consolation. "But how would I know when we were at the bend? The mist was too thick to see".

I looked at the mist surging past the platform. It reminded me of the clouds below an aeroplane, when all one could see was cloud, no earth, as if the earth did not exist.

A wave of nausea passed over me. I knew that I must do something; anything was better than the helplessness that numbed me.