The Late Bus (Night Fall ™) Read online

  THE

  LATE BUS

  R I C K J A S P E R

  Text copyright © 2011 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

  Darby Creek

  A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  241 First Avenue North

  Minneapolis, MN 55401 U.S.A.

  Website address: www.lernerbooks.com

  Cover photographs © Michelle McCarron/Photonica/Getty Images (bus);

  © iStockphoto.com/appletat (silhouette).

  Main body text set in Memento Regular 12/16.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Jasper, Rick, 1948–

  The late bus / by Rick Jasper.

  p. cm. — (Night fall)

  Summary: Bridgewater High junior Lamar Green begins having strange visions of demonic figures preparing to attack the late bus, a route recently taken over by the mysterious, disfigured Emmet Rumble.

  ISBN 978–0–7613–7745–0 (lib. bdg. : alk. paper)

  [1. Demonology—Fiction. 2. Bus drivers—Fiction. 3. Disfigured persons— Fiction. 4. High schools—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction. 6. Horror stories.]

  I. Title.

  PZ7.J32Lat 2011

  [Fic]—dc22 2011000962

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1—BP—7/15/11

  eISBN: 978-0-7613-7953-9 (pdf)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-2956-7 (ePub)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-2955-0 (mobi)

  For Annie, always my

  first reader

  Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there

  wondering, fearing,

  Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared

  to dream before

  —Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

  1

  I was almost seventeen, but it was my first funeral. Notso and I were all dressed up, standing in a crowd in the entryway of the West Bridgewater Baptist Church. Notso nudged me and rolled his eyes to the right. Coach Tyree stood there in a suit and tie, wearing a black armband and shaking hands with people like he knew everyone. We’d never seen him in his Sunday best before. I guess he and Miss Robin went to the same church.

  “Are we supposed to sit down?” I whispered to Notso. His grandmother died last spring, so I figured he knew the drill.

  “Not yet,” he whispered back and steered me into a line in the center aisle of the church. “When you get up there,” he said, “just watch what everyone else does. I’ll be right behind you.”

  By the time I was halfway up the aisle, I could see the casket with Miss Robin in it. A big woman. “A big woman with a big heart” is what people have been saying since she died, and I guess that’s right. The kids on the Bridgewater High late bus, the regulars, always looked forward to seeing her. In fact, a lot of us attended this funeral, including the three I hung out with the most: Barry “Notso” Bright, who seemed to have detention more often than not; Nikki Presley, a reporter for the school paper; and Nigel Bronski, star of the BH chess team.

  Miss Robin was the only bus driver who learned everyone’s name. “Lamar, honey!” she’d say, grinning at me as I got on. “How was your day, sugar?” And if you wanted to tell her, she’d listen.

  She passed away all of a sudden. On Christmas Eve. We were all been on break, but the school e-mailed everyone with the funeral information. No details about what happened, though.

  And now I was about to look at a dead body for the first time. The lady in front of me walked up to the casket, looked in for a minute, bowed her head. Then she kissed her fingers, touched the body on the cheek, and moved on.

  Miss Robin was wearing a white dress and a lot of makeup, and her hands were folded on her stomach. The casket was practically buried in flowers, and their smell was making me dizzy. Miss Robin looked like she was asleep. Trying to think of some words to say, I lowered my head.

  Miss Robin’s eyes snapped open. She looked around with a where-am-I? expression, then she saw me.

  “Lamar! How you doin’, baby?”

  I was thinking that maybe I should be the one asking that question, but my throat was too dry. I couldn’t say anything.

  “That poor man! Lamar, you’ve got to help that man!”

  My face must have shown how clueless I was.

  “You’ll know who he is, sugar. Just help him, promise?”

  I heard myself stuttering, “M-m-miss Robin? Aren’t you . . .?”

  “Oh, I’m fine, honey. But that man needs you bad. Just . . .”

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Notso. “You OK, Lamar?” he whispered. I just nodded. When I looked down again, Miss Robin was asleep.

  We sat pretty far back in the church. It was December, but the heat was amped and the place was crowded. Women were fanning themselves with the programs they got when they came in. When everyone was settled, Coach Tyree ushered some people to the front, where little velvet Reserved signs hung on the pews. They were Miss Robin’s family, I guessed: a white-haired, very old lady in a wheelchair; a big man and woman who looked just like Miss Robin; and a lot of little kids.

  It was a funeral, right? So I was expecting sad music, but the choir was all wound up. The piano pounded out “Glory! Hallelujah!,” and people started rocking out. Some of them even got out into the aisle and danced. After the music came the preacher. He said nice things about Miss Robin—including that she was a big woman with a big heart. Every time he said a new thing, people shouted, “Amen!” And, in this moment, I noticed that I missed her, so I joined in here and there, even though I got funny looks from Notso.

  At the end they sung some more, then they closed the casket. Six men in suits carried it out, followed by the family and a little girl, about nine, with long blonde hair and a brace on her leg. She limped along until she got to where we were. Then she turned for a second, stopped, and looked me right in the eye before she passed by.

  I felt a chill, and I whispered to Notso, “What was that about?”

  “What?” he said.

  2

  The church had a little graveyard where they buried Miss Robin. They lowered the casket into the ground, and people took turns grabbing handfuls of dirt and dropping them into the grave. It was cold, and everyone’s breath was steaming. I dropped some dirt and Notso did too, and I was thinking it was all over when Miss Robin herself and the little blonde girl headed toward the casket. They both threw some earth, then looked over at me like they knew I could see them and no one else could. I couldn’t see their breath. The cold made my eyes water, and I wiped them with my hand. When I looked again, Miss Robin and the girl were gone.

  I was shivering a little by the time the burial was over. I was trying to forget what I saw. I was just a little bit freaked out, maybe a little emotional. Like I said, it was my first funeral.

  “Now the good part,” Notso said. We followed everyone into the church basement. I don’t remember ever seeing more food in one place before: a couple of big hams, dozens of casseroles and salads and cakes and pies, coolers of soda, and a big bowl of pink punch. There was a table in one corner where the family was sitting, and people lined up to sympathize with them. I recognized more than a dozen Bridgewater High kids and a couple of teachers.

  I got in line. When I got to the family I shook hands with everyone and said, “I’m Lamar. Miss Robin was our bus driver.”
/>   The big man who looked like her suddenly started to pay attention. “Lamar Green?” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, and he took me to one side.

  “I’m Bill,” he said, “Helen’s brother. She lived with me and my wife and kids. She thought a lot of you, Lamar. She said you were a fine young man.”

  I was not sure what to say, so I asked, “What happened to her? I mean, how did she die?”

  “She always had a bad heart,” Bill said. “Even when she was a little girl we worried about losing her. She worked real hard Christmas Eve. Cooking and playing with the nieces and nephews, you know. Right after the kids went to bed she said she wasn’t feeling too good.” Bill’s voice broke a little. “She said she was gonna lay down. An hour later we couldn’t wake her.”

  I said I was sorry, even though it felt lame. Then Bill looked me in the eye. “Did Robin ever say anything to you about dreams?”

  “No, sir. We talked a lot; my stop is the last one. But she never mentioned dreams.” In fact, I thought with a little guilt, she never talked about herself at all. Our conversations were always about me.

  Bill shook his head. “The last couple of weeks she was having these dreams. Said she couldn’t remember much but screaming and fire. Then she’d wake up crying.”

  I couldn’t imagine Miss Robin crying. “She always seemed really happy,” I said.

  “Well, she loved her work,” Bill said. Then, “Thanks for coming, young man.” He shook my hand again.

  Before long I was sitting with Notso, and Bronski and Nikki were there, too. The three of us guys had piled our plates high. We all talked with our mouths full while Nikki picked at a salad.

  “Why didn’t you guys just bring a trough?” she said.

  “Then we’d have to share,” Bronski replied.

  I asked no one in particular, “What do you think they’ll do about the bus?” The late bus is for kids with after-school activities. It leaves at 4:30 and takes about an hour to get to the end of its route, out where I live. It’s great, since a lot of kids don’t have their own cars or parents who are free to pick them up. But we’ve heard lots of talk about the school cutting costs; the late bus is a luxury, blah blah blah.

  “Well, it’s already in the budget,” Nikki said. Since she was a reporter for the BHS Beacon, she knew something about everything that went on in the school. “So they’ll probably just get a new driver.”

  We were quiet for a minute. I could feel our sadness over losing Miss Robin.

  Bronski finally broke the silence, “You know, it’s not going to be the same without her. Even on bad days, I’d hear, ‘Hey, Bronski,’ and, I don’t know, it was like OK—bad day over.”

  This was too sentimental for Notso. “C’mon,” he said, “it’s just a new bus driver. What’s the worst that can happen?”

  3

  The stuff that happened at the funeral wasn’t completely new to me. Now and then, for as long as I can remember, I’ve seen things that other people don’t. My dad says my mom—she died when I was a baby—was the same way.

  I was, like, seven before I understood that some of the people I saw were dead. The first one I remember looked a lot like Dad, except he was younger and wore a soldier’s uniform and had only one leg. When I told Dad his eyes got wide for a minute, then kind of sad.

  “Well, Lamar,” he said, “I guess you’re seeing my older brother, Cletus. Got killed in Iraq a couple months after you were born.”

  At first I thought everyone could see dead people, but I learned that wasn’t true. And I’ve figured out that it’s usually a good idea not to talk about the things I see. Dad calls my visions a burden.

  “Everyone is born with a burden and a gift,” he says. “You’ve got to learn to live with the burden and use the gift.” My gift, I guess, is that I’m good at sports.

  Classes at Bridgewater High started again about a week after the funeral. At 4:15 on the first day back, the usual bunch of us were gathered in the foyer, waiting for the late bus: Notso, Nikki, Bronski, and me, Lamar Green, “jock in tights.” I should explain the tag. My thing is sports. I lettered in football in the fall and baseball last spring. But most of the juniors at our school want to go to college, so we’re running all over the place trying to do what our counselor Mr. Sprague calls “building our resume.”

  “Lamar,” Mr. Sprague told me, “sports are good, but you’re not the kind of elite athlete the colleges are going to come after with scholarships. And your grades, your SAT scores— they’re average. You need another dimension. Like arts or community service or student government.”

  I needed, in other words, to build my resume. And right after our last football game, this girl Darcy told me how: ballet. I laughed really hard at first. I’m no dancer.

  But she said, “You’re strong and coordinated and we need some guys, Lamar. Please?” All right, Darcy was also hot. Anyway, I decided to try it, and it turned out not to be so hard. I thought of it like a sport with music, and it kept me in shape.

  So there I was in the middle of winter in a letter jacket and tights, waiting for my ride home. When it pulled up we could see by the number it was the old, familiar bus. The driver was another story.

  He wore a winter jacket zipped up to his neck, yellow work gloves, and a Red Sox baseball cap with the brim pulled down. But I noticed that stuff later. What none of could take our eyes off—no, that’s wrong—what none of us could keep our eyes on was his face. It had almost no features, like a white mask with little holes for eyes and a bigger one for a mouth. His nose was a flat lump of scar tissue.

  As kids got on the bus, a couple of the girls put their hands to their mouths or made oh-mygod eyes at each other. Some of us said hi as we passed, but the driver just looked straight ahead until everyone was on. Then he started on his route.

  The whole late-bus route took about an hour one-way. I knew because my stop was last. This time of year it was getting dark by the time we left. Notso, Bronski, Nikki, and I didn’t say much. We just sort of looked at each other for a while and then got into our books or our phones or our music. Pretty much everyone else did the same. The bus was a lot quieter than I’d ever seen it.

  By the time the bus was mostly empty, I’d moved to the front. When the last kid got off, we were still about ten minutes from my stop, traveling a winding, hilly road through the woods.

  OK, Lamar, I thought. So his face is messed up. Is that a reason not to talk to him?

  “Hey,” I said finally, as friendly as I could. He didn’t pay any attention. In the light around the driver’s seat I could read a name tag on his jacket: Emmett Rumble.

  “You a Red Sox fan?”

  He still didn’t say anything.

  “My name’s Lamar. Lamar Green.”

  He nodded his head at that, but he kept his eyes on the road. It wasn’t like he was trying to be rude. It was more like he was watching the road for something, like he was expecting something. And the more I watched him, the more there was something familiar about him. I just couldn’t pin it down.

  It was obvious he wasn’t much of a talker, though, and for a minute I started to miss Miss Robin pretty strong. Then suddenly we were coming up on my stop. As the bus slowed down, Emmett Rumble finally spoke.

  “Here you go, Lamar.”

  His voice sounded like he had inhaled helium. It was high and tight, like a cartoon character’s. I mumbled thanks and got down, and the bus sped off into the night.

  4

  I live with my dad and our dog, Marcus, down a gravel path about a hundred yards from the main road at the edge of the woods. The truck factory where Dad works is about as far away from home as my school, but in the other direction. A lot of nights we get home around the same time. I look forward to that time, when we get to find out about each other’s days. And Dad seems to like it, too.

  That night I told him about Rumble.

  “Well, you did a good thing trying to talk with him, Lamar,” Dad said. “Face like
that, he’s prob’ly lonesome.”

  Since it was the first day after break, I didn’t have a lot of homework yet. So after we washed the dishes, Dad and I watched a basketball game on TV, then turned in. I couldn’t sleep, so I put on my iPod. Instead of music, though, I heard a familiar voice.

  “How’s it goin’, Lamar?”

  “Miss Robin?”

  “Of course it’s Miss Robin, honey. I ain’t leavin’ you all alone so fast.”

  “The new driver, Rumble? Is he the one you wanted me to help?”

  “That’s right. He’s been through a lot, and he’s got a lot to go through still. He’ll need you, you’ll see.”

  “Miss Robin, I didn’t know you had a bad heart.”

  “Well, tellin’ you about that wouldn’t have helped. It just would’ve made you worry.”

  “Who was the little girl with you at the funeral?”

  “My, you are full of questions tonight, Lamar. That’s Penny. You’ll find out more about her in good time.”

  “One more question?”

  “Shoot, sugar.”

  “What’s it like where you are?”

  But the next voice I heard was not Miss Robin’s. It was Rumble’s.

  “Here you go, Lamar.”

  “Here you go, Lamar.”

  And as he said, “Here you go, Lamar” for the third time, I heard other noises. Children screaming. Far away, a siren. And underneath it all, what sounded like a monkey house—an excited jabbering and squawking that got louder and louder until I yanked the earphones off.

  I was sweating and my heart was racing out of control. I looked at the clock. I wanted to talk to someone, just to feel like I was back on Earth, but it was really late. What the hell—I tried texting Notso.