I was completely focused, entirely cut off from the outside world. Things had finally reached the point I'd been waiting for in the film I'd been watching for a full hour, and I was at the height of my concentration. The detective, who had been tracking down the culprit for the past hour, was now very close to catching and exposing him, and I was incredibly curious. He was about to open the door, walk in, and discover the culprit's identity. I was moments away from finding out whether my suspect was right.

When we look at something, we also see what's to our left and right, albeit vaguely. While watching the television directly in front of us, we can perceive the fan a meter to its right swiveling from side to side. Other objects and movements become blurrier as they move farther away from the center of our field of vision. Everyone knows this and is usually aware of it. Even if your grandfather, sitting to your right at dinner, isn't looking at you, he'll notice if you secretly flip off your brother sitting across from you.

At that moment, the world was nothing more than a rectangle to me. My field of vision had no depth. Ten eagles could have been flying around the room, and I wouldn't have noticed them unless they passed in front of the screen. I had to find out who the culprit was.

Even if you bring your eyes into sharp focus, your ears can't do the same and remain even more open to the outside world than your eyes. When you listen to a song you love, your ears become fully absorbed in it, and your eyes join in, too. You drift away, and your field of vision narrows. But your ears can't join your eyes in doing the same.

“Albert, shut your laptop,” I heard a whisper just as the detective was about to open the door.

At first, I thought it had come from the film. There was no character named Albert in it, and the laptop had very little to do with the plot, but still, I didn't want to take my eyes off the screen before the detective opened that door. However, I'd started thinking by then. A new thought had formed in my mind, and it had weakened my focus. I would enjoy finding out who the culprit was a little less.

I paused the film. I was still looking at the screen, but my field of vision had widened and become rounded again.

I thought I saw a ripple on my right. A moving, blurry image, about a meter in size.

When I turned my head to look, there was nothing there. I looked back at the screen. I thought to myself that being this focused wasn't good either. It bothered me that I was experiencing a mental activity so intensely when the only reason for it was a film. Was finding out who the culprit was really that important? I never focused this intensely when writing my stories, working on a thesis I had to finish, or learning Spanish in the course I'd recently started. That was probably why I'd heard the whisper, too. It was a trick of my mind.

I turned back to the screen. My desire to find out had diminished. Reluctantly, I pressed play.

But then I saw that ripple again. A transparent, shapeless thing, moving randomly. Like a transparent fire, its movements resembled those of a burning flame. I pressed pause.

When I turned my head to the right, it wasn't there again.

A sense of unease had come over me. I stared at the spot where the blur had been. There was no movement at all. All the objects stood still, just as they were.

This time, I saw the same ripple on my left, right in front of the laptop on my lap. I sharply turned my eyes back to the screen. Nothing. The detective walking toward the door, the confident expression on his face. That was all.

I set the laptop aside. I threw off the blanket I'd pulled up to my chest, got out of bed, and sat down at my desk.

I picked up my Spanish dictionary and opened it to a random page to calm myself down a little. I read a few words. The ripple was above me. I looked up at the ceiling, and now it was on the left. I turned to the left, and it moved to the right. Its size changed every time. Sometimes it was a one-meter rectangle, sometimes a scattered circle ten centimeters in diameter, and sometimes a thick line stretching from the floor to the ceiling.

I left the room, and it was on my right, in the shape of a circle. I couldn't get rid of it. My palms were sweating. Now it was on my left. I kept turning my head from side to side, up and down. And I could never bring it into my vertical field of vision; it was always outside it.

I wiped my sweaty palms on my T-shirt. Now it was above me. I tried closing my eyes. But I couldn't. The moment I closed them, a sharp fear would immediately take hold of me, and I'd open them again before even two seconds had passed. My gaze had grown much faster now. Left, right, up, left, down, right, up. I was looking around like crazy. I was like a camera trying to bring an image into focus.

I finally ended up with a stiff neck after one wrong movement.

I could no longer turn my head to the left.

And the ripple was on my left.

I turned to the left with my whole body. It stayed on my left. I turned left once more. It slipped to my left again.

I had turned a full circle. Now it only appeared on my left. It seemed to have found my weak spot. Every time I turned, I instinctively turned my neck a little, too. You know what a stiff neck is like. It's quite painful and sudden. During the day, you forget that your neck is stiff, and if someone calls out to you from your left, you turn to look at them. You feel that sharp little ache.

So I stopped trying to catch it. It stayed on my left, rippling. Sometimes it stretched out, sometimes it shrank, and sometimes it disappeared quickly and reappeared. I moved my pupils as far to the left as I could. Yes, now it had moved to the right, because my field of vision on the left had been reduced to zero.

Now only my pupils were moving. But the image was even closer. And it was getting closer and closer.

Finally, while I was looking straight ahead, I saw it. It hadn't gone away. It's impossible to describe its shape.

“I'm x56 c 66 bmf 8 bmd 8 g 9 kdr 8 889 klkw 999 c 3 d 3 v 3 m 3 g 3 o 3 12345. Thank you for playing with me. By the way, the killer is Michael,” said a voice from very far away, heavily echoing and robotic, sounding a little like a creaking door.

Without knowing why, I tried to catch it with my hand. It was an arm's length away. I'd acted impulsively out of excitement. And it vanished instantly.

The quick, deep breath I drew through my nose passed through my nose hairs and rubbed against my completely dried-out nasopharynx, producing a sound that was a mixture of a faint snore and a low-pitched whistle. I held the breath in my lungs for a while, then slowly exhaled.

I went back into my room, sat down in the armchair, and for some reason, burst into tears. It was like a catharsis. I couldn't remember ever crying this intensely before. Or maybe I was simply crying out of fear, but I wasn't sure that fear could trigger such an intense crying response.

I wiped my eyes, and just as I was about to get up to wash my face, the ripple began speaking from the ceiling, right next to the lamp. It had watched me cry the whole time. Strange.

“If you want to play with me again, all you have to do is look in the mirror and say my name three times, and don't worry, your memory will be erased by tomorrow evening. You'll only remember my name. You'll try to figure out what the hell it was, whether it was your old Wi-Fi password or something. Anyway, Albert, I'm out of here. Take care. It was nice meeting you.”

“I’ve got the file in my hand now, Nate,”  Oakes shouted into the phone.  “Where’d you get the kid that delivered it anyway?  I doubt he’s old enough to borrow his dad’s Gillette.”

“He’s older than he looks.  Focus, W.H.O.!  Tell me what you see.”

Oakes flipped open the heavy cardstock folder.  It was 14-gauge and the make of the dividers looked like law enforcement to him.  He shook his head at his own pedantry, that old foil.  Nathan didn’t want the make and model of the folder.  The bus was on tonight’s agenda.  He took a few seconds to skim the face sheet, locking it into memory

State Police Impound Inspection Sheet (summary)

Vehicle: 2018 MCI J4500 Commercial Coach (Greyhound / Regional Charter).
Tires: Goodyear Metro Miler G652 RTB..

Courier, 12-point.  How original… blah, blah, blah…

State Medical Examiner CT Scan / Autopsy Notes

Here we go…

Subject 03: REDACTED (C-F-24) Cause of death: Sudden cardiac arrest.
Preliminary Observations: Scan reveals complete absence of the left femur, spleen, and lower left lung. No surgical scarring, entry wounds, or internal hemorrhaging present. Surrounding muscle tissue ends at smooth, geometrically flat borders.

Interesting…

Subject 06: REDACTED (H-M-39)

Same name, must be related.  Ba-dum-ching!  Thank you… I’m here all week…

Stable Condition: Quarantined (Ward 4)
Preliminary Observations: Patient conscious, highly disoriented. Scans indicate the complete absence of three rib bones and 40% of the liver volume. The patient displays no external incisions and claims to feel "a cold draft inside their chest."

A live one, good for him…

“You still there, W.H.O.?”  Nathan said, pulling him out of it.

“First base.  Yeah, Nate.”  He sighed and heard the crackle of distortion in the ear piece.  “You on a cell?  We’ve talked about that.”

“Jesus!  Is it real?”

“Yeah, too damn real.  Send the car,”  he hung up and stood there, by the payphone, waiting for his ride.  Fifty-three years old and still doing field work.  She’d always told him he’d never quit and he’d always argued with her.  Just like his busy mind, Oakes never knew when to shut up.”

“That’s right, Mabel.”  He smiled at the dark sky above him.  “You told me so.”

---

It was almost 10:00 pm when the car dropped him off outside the impound.  Oakes shouldered his leather satchel—a 1908 Wolfsky Mabel had paid for—and stepped out onto the curb.  As the Chrysler pulled away a young man in a store-bought suit came running up to him.  He had a look of urgency on his face that probably remained there in his sleep.

“Mr. Oakes?”  he asked.

“Winfred Hollis Oakes.  And you’re Mr. Timms?”  Oakes extended his hand and the young man shook it firmly but quickly.  “There, now we’ve met and we can get on with it.  You showing me in?”

“Yes, sir, it’s right over dere, inside the fence.”

“Watch that,”  he said with what he hoped was a friendly smile  “Your Yooper’s showing.  Dere for there is a dead giveaway.”

The young man actually blushed and Oakes liked him better for it.  Timms gestured at the gate and said, “Yeah, it still slips out from time to time.”

“No worries.  It took me years to work past my Yiddish.”

Timms led Oakes across the worn pavement of the service road to the office of the impound lot.  They let themselves inside and passed through it quickly, exiting through a door labeled with a faded vinyl sign that said YARD ACCESS - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.  

Oakes took a deep breath as they walked onto the impound lot.  He smelled diesel, burnt motor oil, and a faint whiff of ozone.  There was something else too, and he didn’t figure out what it was until he saw the bus.

There was a tinge of sulfur, loam, and petrichor that drifted through the bouquet.  It was familiar to him, and he associated it with vertisols, particularly the black gumbo clay found in parts of east Texas.  He recalled the sheet he had read earlier.  It had been a cross-country run from Miami to Seattle.  If he was remembering right, their standard regional course didn’t run through Texas.  He’d check the logs to be sure.

“You’ve got maybe twenty minutes,”  Timms said when they got to the door.  “I don’t know if Mr. Grilling told you that, but it’s all the time the governor could guarantee.  There’s a team on their way from the airport now.”

“Well, let’s not waste any of it.  I want to look at the tires first.”  

Oakes ignored the young man’s puzzled look and went around the bus.  He slipped on a pair of black nitrile gloves as he walked.  When he got to the first tire he reached into his pocket for an empty vial and the antique curette he always carried.  It had been his great-grandfather’s tool, a piece of antique silver from Tiffany & Co., with a thick ebony handle and a small scoop on the end.  He used it to collect the residue from each tire in several different vials.  He also took scrapings from the undercarriage.  Oakes’ movements were fast and sure; it took him less than three minutes to finish.

He stopped when he got to the front of the bus and took a few snapshots of the deep claw marks that had ripped through the metal on the driver’s side.  His Leica was almost out of film though, so he made sure to get the bus number in the last shot.  Memory would have to do from there.  The last thing he did was check the radiator.  The front of it was covered in a strange, crystalline material with a floral scent.  He scraped a flake of it into a vial and returned to the door.

He nodded at Timms and the young man produced a small square key that he used to unlock the door.  It folded open with a pneumatic burst and Oakes wasted no time climbing up into the cabin.  

He immediately knew that something was off by the temperature and the soft barometric pressure on his ears, nose, and eyes.  It was twenty degrees cooler inside the bus and the air was filled with the scent of ozone and iron.  Oakes spoke aloud as he checked the logbook, more for himself than Timms.

“That iron in the air, it reminds me.  It was that same mineral that inspired Eric Wickman to found the company that later became Greyhound.”  He noted the mileage listed in the log at their last stop in Atlanta and compared it to the odometer.  It was the same on the ELD.  There was a four-hundred-and-twelve-mile difference that wasn’t accounted for.  And they were only twenty miles away from there, still in Fulton County.  He made some notes as he looked through the passenger tickets.

“That was in 1914.  Wickman started out carrying workers to and fro in the Mesabi Iron Range.  I bring it up because of the smell.  There’s no mention of an electrical fire in the report and I don’t see any big puddles of blood anywhere.  Do you think Wickman’s ghost is trying to take the company back to its roots?”  Oakes smiled at Timms, trying to ease the discomfort on the young man’s face.  He could see that it wasn’t working.  “I’m kidding, of course, but it is curious.”

“Yeah,”  Timms replied from a hundred miles away.  “Curious.”

“Hey!”  Oakes snapped his fingers in front of Timms’ droopy eyes.  “You good in there?  Need to take some air?”

Timms shuddered and shook his head.  He took several deep breaths.  “The air… nevermind, I’m good.  Ready to walk the aisle.”

“I already had a bride.  I don’t think I need another.”  He pointed at the hatch for the MDVR, the buses’ little black box.  “Governer going to be able to get us the footage?  I’d like to get what’s on EDR and the Engine Control Mod too, if he can.”

“He said full access,”  Timms said, he was more awake now that he had something to do.  “I don’t have the key and I don’t think we have the time right now, but he’s watching this whole thing closely.  He said that you and Mr. Grilling will be copied on everything.”

“Good enough for me, let’s keep moving.”

Oakes led the way, letting his eyes sweep back and forth in front of him.  There was plenty of garbage throughout the cabin.  Food wrappers and torn notebook pages.  Oakes picked up one of them, noting the blue Wide-Ruled lines and the jagged margin where it had been yanked from a spiral spine. He read the writing on it.

y’re all around us, and they watch us while we slee
e others don’t see them, but I do.  So did Jamie.
as such a sweet kid.  His poor mother, two childr
I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sound of his scr

He tucked it into his pocket when something caught Timms’ eyes.  Oakes turned to see what had caught his interest.

“Never heard of those,” the young man said as he picked up a bag of chips from the cupholder in 4B.  “You?”

The bag had a white band across the top with Doritos spelled out over yellow and orange squares.  The bottom half was red and said Salsa Rio.  “They’re from before your time.  Late eighties.  Look, ninety-nine cents.  You’ve got yourself a collector’s item.”

“I think I’ll pass,”  Timms said, and dropped them back down beside the open can of tropical vibe Celsius.  Oakes nodded his approval and continued down the aisle.  A few seats later he saw another strange treasure.  He picked up the frayed paperback and showed it to Timms. 

“Stephen King.  Well everybody’s heard of him.  He’s wrote tons of books.”

“Not this one,”  Oakes said, tapping the title with a gloved finger.   It said The Canibals.  “He started it but never finished, at least not here.”

“Here?  You’re saying—”

“Yep.”  He dropped the thick book into the pocket of his coat ignoring Timms when he visibly squirmed.  “For research purposes.”

“I just don’t think you shou—”  The radio crackled to life and Timms jumped, losing his train of thought.  A scratchy recording of an old song began to play throughout the cabin.  It had an instant chilling effect that even Oakes couldn’t ignore.  He had heard it before, but something about the singer’s playful voice and the spooky theme behind it heightened the sense of dread he had felt since entering the bus.  Curiosity had allowed him to ignore it before, but the enchanting music broke that spell for him.

“What the hell?”  Timms moaned.  He grabbed Oakes’ arm.  

“Anita O’Day,” Oakes replied quietly.  “That’s Gene Krupa’s band behind her.  1941.”

They were both silent as the song played.  Timms out of fear, Oakes out of mourning.  He had heard the song a thousand times before.  She had loved it and that was enough to make anything sound sweet.

No!  He couldn’t let the ghost of their life together distract from the present.  Oakes looked around, and as he moved his head he felt resistance in the air around him like he was moving through water.  He raised his hand and found himself enamored with the contrails of light it left behind as it floated through the air.  A three-second delay. Or was it four? The math wouldn't stick.

He was here for something?  He’d been sent.

The young man (Tom?) crouched next to him.  He was crying with all the artlessness of a six-year-old.  A long runnel of snot had run down to his lip from his left nostril.  He looked up at Oakes as if the word hope had never existed.

Think, goddamit!

His mind was a cloud within a bank of fog.  There were shapes there but he couldn’t identify them.  Old horrors also crept within the mist.  The things he’d seen that his memory, his curse, refused to let dim.  He held on to her—he’d lose his own name before he forgot Mabel’s.  And thinking of her brought it back.  Her silly gift he swore would never work.  She had just smiled at him like he was the best and biggest fool God ever made.

Oakes was her fool, and he never got tired of proving her right.

He reached down and stripped the sole off one shoe and then the other.  Under them were the original bottoms, modified to her exact specifications.  As the brass runes she had stitched into the leather made contact with the floor of the bus, the power of the emgrim brought his mind back to him. The light trails vanished and the air thinned, rushing back into his lungs like a cold draft. 

“Come on, kid.  We’ve gotta get you out of here.”  

Oakes tried to pull him up, but Timms fought him with the dead weight of pure terror, wrapping his arms around his knees.  He stuck his thumb in his mouth, and his eyes were wide and empty.  Oakes feared that too much damage had already been done.  Still, he wasn’t leaving him behind.

He reached down and grabbed hold of the younger man’s shoulders and began to walk backwards, dragging him towards the front of the bus.  His heart protested every step he took, and he had never been more grateful for thiazide and ACE inhibitors.  Without them, they would both be goners.

Something crashed in front of them, and Oakes looked up in time to see the last four rows of seats tip into the aisle as it crumbled away.  The whine of bending metal screeched through his mind like a frozen blade.  He watched as the back section of the bus folded out, widening as something massive began to slither up from below.  A tarry hand the size of a large dog gripped the edge of the metal floor as another one just like it grabbed hold of the nearest set of seats.  Oakes heard the metal sizzle and pop as the sludge melted into it.

The creature began to pull itself up out of the pit.  First a smooth, slimy shoulder appeared and then its misshapen head came into view.  It had no eyes and a snout for a nose, and sharp curved teeth circled the inside of its cavernous mouth.  The great beast sniffed the air and roared.

Oakes finally remembered how to move.  He tugged at Timms and cursed loudly as he walked backwards towards the front.  Their progress was slow, but they were moving.  The biggest problem was the thing in the back of the bus was advancing even quicker.  Still, they had a head start and that wasn’t nothing.

A loud shriek snapped his eyes back up and he saw another creature come sailing out of the pit.  This was smaller, maybe the size of a cat.  It stood on two oversized legs like a grasshopper.  When it leapt at them he knew they were doomed.

It came down on the seat beside them and Oakes saw that it didn’t have any arms.  Its toothy, bulbous head was attached to its body by a long thin neck.  When it drew back and shot its head forward with its whip-like neck, he acted on pure instinct.  He dropped Timms and kicked at it, connecting squarely with the bottom of his right foot.  He felt a sudden, concentrated flash of heat snap through the leather sole.

The thing hissed and pulled away, revealing a large burnt area across the front of its face.  Oakes capitalized on its fear and moved in, kicking and stomping until it was reduced to a puddle of sizzling mush on the cabin floor.  The massive creature roared again and as he turned towards it, he saw long spiny tentacles erupt from its mouth and slap down to the floor.  Timms shrieked when one of them landed on him.
 
Oakes ran over and stomped at the tentacle, but he just missed it as it withdrew towards the beast, dragging Timms along with it.  He grabbed him by the arms before he could be pulled away.  

“What the—please, don’t let go.  I can’t die here.”

He lacked the breath to answer Timms.  His heart thumped inside his chest like a bird caught in a jar.  Oakes braced himself on the seat beside him and pulled with all his might.

As he jerked the kid’s arms the tentacle gripping his leg did too.  Timms let out the loudest scream Oakes had ever heard as his leg—already deeply burned from the creature’s touch—pulled free and was dragged across the floor into its eager mouth.  Oakes ripped off his coat and pressed it into the flood that was pouring from Timm's leg.  He knew it didn’t matter, that the kid was dead already, but he couldn’t stop himself from trying.

“Ma… Momma.  Tell her I dinn—”  He was gone.
  
Oakes didn’t have time to mourn him, though.  A second later another tentacle landed on Timms’ body with a sickening splat.  When it immediately began to slide him away, Oakes let go of him because there was nothing he could do to stop it.  He was still holding his blood-soaked jacket and he flung it defiantly at the terrible thing.  He began to back away from it again, only pausing to snatch up his satchel as he walked by.

He was three seats away from the exit when a pair of leapers sprang up from below.  The first of them leapt towards him.  Oakes was drained and he didn’t know if he had another fight in him.  He got ready to dodge it if he could and was about to dive away when the sound of gunfire erupted behind him.

The leaper in front of him was thrown back by a hail of bullets.  Oakes looked over his shoulder to see three men in full tactical gear.  They each had their assault rifles up and they released short synchronized bursts at the creatures on the bus.  The man closest to Oakes lowered his weapon and waved him forward.

“Get out of here, man.”

Oakes had never had to be told anything twice.  He walked past the man and climbed down the steps.  Outside, there were three others, two men with guns and a woman in a hazmat suit.  

“Winfred,”  she acknowledged.

“Megan,”  he shot right back.  Oakes shook his head, so furious he couldn’t think of the right thing to say.  Eventually he said the only thing he could think of that mattered.  “They killed Timms.  He was a good man.”

“Well he shouldn’t have taken you inside,”  she said dismissively, and then she pivoted.  “Jesus, Oakes.  Was the story really worth the risk?  I would have given you something.”

“Yeah, you’re a real giver.  Gonna give this whole mess a nice big cover-up.  Right, Meg?”  

Oakes walked past her and she didn’t try to stop him.  He went over to the curb and waited for his ride to appear.  Thirty minutes before, he thought he knew what he was fighting for.  Letting the world know was supposed to be worth the risk.  Everything after that made him unsure about all of it.  He thought maybe he should consider Mabel’s advice again.  A desk might not be so terrible.  He could let the new generation get all of the glory while he edited their words.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to prove her wrong.  Just this once.   

END