A group of misfits, pensioners and delinquents all stood shoulder to shoulder at an overcrowded bus-stop in the West of Scotland. In the distance the bell of a lonely town spire chimed seven times. A few sorry souls, resigned to the slow passage of time, glanced up at the large clock-face with misery gleaming in their eyes.
The bus was approaching an hour late and all the hopes and dreams were being syphoned out of each prospective traveller. Some still held their tickets in their hands, optimistic that the bus would arrive shortly. Others however had settled in for a night of waiting and had pulled books and phones out of their pockets. One man had even summoned a camp chair and an anorak and looked regretful that he hadn’t brought his tent as well.
In hindsight it would have been better if the bus never showed at all. So much horror would have been avoided if it did.
The rain had turned to sleet and within the bus shelter a battle was being fought over what limited seating was available. An old man with a missing ear was particularly furious, having lost his seat to a young ginger boy. He used his stick to viciously strike at the youth’s ankles, who after a tirade of abuse, stumbled backwards in defeat.
Solemn smokers stood at the edges of the shelter, oblivious to the fray it contained. They held their cigarettes with the reverence of a minister holding a bible and protected the fragile fire that gleamed at the tip with shivering hands. I was neither a smoker, a pensioner nor a delinquent. I was an onlooker to the chaos and an unwilling eavesdropper to the cacophony of disenfranchised youth and enraged elderly. I was young, impressionable and I couldn’t have imagined then, the horror that awaited me.
I considered the bus shelter for a small moment. I saw it almost in slow motion. The idle tap of a walking stick against concrete. The small flicker of lighter flame held against the plastic bus shelter by a hooded teen and the slow drip of newly-runny plastic, turning black at the edges.
It was beautiful, in an odd sort of way.
I noted the small twinkle in the eye of a homeless vagrant as he watched the moon sink beneath the clouds in the reflection of a puddle. A little old woman, with rags for clothes, tied the shoe laces of a friend who had ladders in her tights as they spoke in a language lost to time. Older Scots maybe. A few bored souls glanced to the road where, not a tumbleweed, but an empty Mcdonalds bag was carried as if weightless by the endless cascades of wind and gale. Was this all there was to life? Couldn’t the idiots in silicon valley invent something better than this?
The homeless vagrant nudged me gently. He smelt like a mix of wet cardboard and damp dog. His greying beard was matted into a large lump and he carried what must have been everything he owned in a faded orange rucksack that hung limp from his rounded shoulders. “Sometimes it feels like I’ve been waiting for a bus my whole life.” He said pensively. I knew the feeling too well. “It’ll come. They always do in the end.”
But too late, always too late. A car slowed at the bus stop and two-drunken men hung out the window and catcalled at a young red-head with long legs and jittering knees. She scowled and clutched her bag tighter to her body. Then it came out of nowhere, like the second coming of Christ, it emmerged from the dark, it’s headlights tearing through the misty darkness. The fabled king of the roads: the X22.
Whatever remained of the battle in the bus shelter spilled out onto the streets. Young boys pushed to the front of the queue. A man in work-boots and a high vis stood back to let all the ladies in front of him in an act of chivalry I did not think occurred anymore. A middle-aged woman to her right stubbed out her cigarette on the wet tarmac with a dissatisfied grunt. I slipped my backpack from my shoulders and pulled my crumpled ticket out from my pocket.
“If I don’t get the priority seat, I’ll cut you in half. Don’t think I won’t. I’ve fought in a war!” The old man hissed in the direction of the ginger lad who recoiled in fright.
“I swear these buses get worse everyday. I’m going to give this bus driver an earful, you just wait and see.” A middle-aged woman jipped to her teenage son, who looked mortified.
“I was there first! Oi!” A young man was nudged to the side by a portly woman with half her hair shaved off. He nearly went flying off the curb.
I kept to the back of the queue and let the chaos unfold without me. Everyone was swiftly packed into the bus like sardines into a tin. I straightened out my ticket and held it under the card reader. There was only one seat on the bus left and many had opted to stand instead of taking it. I however had been on my feet all day for work and was desperate for a seat. I sat down next to the homeless vagrant who happily moved his orange rucksack aside for me.
“Finally huh?” He chuckled to me. “I told you it’d come. They always do.”
The bus spurred on and I leant my cheek against the cold window and watched the little raindrops accumulate on the glass pain. I made myself dizzy watching the cars whiz by, and felt a pang of terror wash over me as I realised I’d forgotten to take the trash out before I closed up, a duty my manager had stressed needed done.
“There used to be a pub there. The Grey Chicken. It was a lovely little place, shame it got burnt down.” The homeless vagrant pointed to a small derelict pile of bricks and charred wood. He spoke oddly, as if he wasn’t used to the sensation of speaking. “I used to live just around the corner. Magnolia Boulevard, with my wife, Lucy. She died of covid a while back.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” I murmured. I’d found that loners on buses had an odd way of spilling their life’s stories. I didn’t mind. It was strange to me, how a soul could go so long without human connection on a planet of seven billion.
“What’s your name?” I asked, feeling that it was an appropriate question to begin with as the bus chuffed on tiredly.
“Alph. It’s Alph.” He replied with a wide smile on his face. “Ain’t nobody asked me that in a while you know? Don’t got no use for a name really, no one calls on me you see. That’s old age for you. Everyone you knew, dead or gone off to rot in some old folk’s home, zoo’s I call them, and before you know it you’re the only bugger left on the bus.”
“I’m Sibby. Well, my full name is Sybilline, my mother likes to make things difficult for me, I shorten it, much easier that way.” I said playfully. He shrugged his shoulders.
“Sibylline is a beautiful name.” He said carefully, in a voice edged with kind authority. “Be thankful you have a mother that cared to give you a name in the first place.”
The bus shook violently as it emerged from a particularly cavernous pot-hole. I felt the sway of it taking a sharp corner and held onto the pole to retain my waning balance. Alph did the same.
One of the old ladies from the bus stop, taken unawares, nearly slipped from her seat but managed to steady herself at the very last moment. Out of the window I could see the bleak colourless buildings of a derelict council estate.
Blackburn was a particularly dreary little town with a high street that consisted of a rundown convenience store, a chip shop with a flickering sign that read “ish and hips” and an oddly suave hairdresser’s I had gone to once to have my hair dyed scarlet.
“Long journey this.” Alph said. “Used to be shorter. They added a few stops up Linebacker Avenue, lots of new houses out that way you know.”
The bus took a sharp U-turn and a few disgruntled grunts reverberated through the cab of the bus. It seemed to me the bus driver had gone the wrong way, despite Alph’s insistence of new stops, but before he could be questioned, the bus took another turn, and before anyone could grab the pole to steady themselves, something quite strange had happened.
The driver slammed on the breaks and a sharp blinding light made me cover my eyes with my forearm. Then the lights went out and everything was black. I felt weightless. The constant pressure of gravity had been relieved from me, and I was floating.
I grabbed a pole and hung on, noticing that the other occupants of the bus were doing the same. The old man with the missing ear was stuck to the ceiling with nothing to hold him to the floor. He hovered, weightless and bewildered. I thought we’d crashed, or gone over the side of a ditch, but the weightlessness persisted and the blackness did not diminish.T
he ginger boy from before reached out and pulled the old man over to his pole, which they shared with an uncertain kinship. Some people were shaking, others were screaming, but not Alph. He was strangely still.
“Not again.” He said, with dread etched into his voice. He grimaced. “Keep hold of that pole girl, you’re going to come crashing down, right about..”
Every part of the bus shook and the chassis made a noise that sounded like a bus’ death cry. Then there was a thud and more screaming, and I was on the floor. I scrambled to my feet. My knees jittered against eachother. Everywhere from my fingertips to the tips of my toes were numb.
“Now.” Alph finished his sentence, pulling himself up to his feet. He looked straight at me, with tears gleaming in his eye.”Stay calm, alright… stay calm. You’ll be okay, I’ll make sure of that.”
He placed a strange emphasis on you’ll. Perhaps he knew, even then.
“Bus driver’s I swear, have you crashed you blubbering fool? My son has broken a finger, I shall be submitting a complaint, now get us a replacement bus immediately!” A middle-aged woman was shouting as her teenage son rubbed his neck behind her with evidently unbroken fingers. Her short blonde hair was a mess and her eyebrow was coming out in a bruise. “I have places to be! This will not stand!”
“I didn’t crash, another bus? Jesus woman get some perspective, would you look out the window!” The bus driver exclaimed breathlessly. He had turned a funny shade or green. “We ain’t - god I can’t believe I’m saying this - we ain’t anywhere now.”
We aren’t anywhere.I couldn’t think of three more horrifying words.
I looked out the window, at the impossibly black expanse set out before us. There was nothing, not even the dimmest of flickers. It was still, cold and quiet. We weren’t in Blackburn anymore. I will admit the turn of phrase does not hold the same magic as it would have in Kansas.
“This doesn’t make any sense.” One of the smokers from the bus stop was shaking her head profusely, searching for answers that didn’t exist.
“Everyone, let’s just stay calm, take a deep breath, is anyone injured?” The man in the high vis jacket stood to his feet, with calming hands outstretched. I liked Billy, things might have been a lot worse without Billy. “Name’s Billy, any of you got names?”
“Jackie.” The smoker said, trying to catch her breath. She reached into her handbag and pulled out a packet of Lambert and Butler cigarettes. “Anyone mind?”
“Trish, and no - no I don’t mind - in fact can I-‘’ The woman who had been exuberantly shouting at the bus driver just moments ago was now pale and subdued, she reached out for a cigarette and when she recieved it, she held it as if she had never held a cigarette before in her life. Trish, for every one Billy there’s ten Trish’s, I know this as I work retail.
“I’m Sibbie and this is Alph.” I said pointing at my new friend and the chain continued. There was Neil, whom stunk distinctly of weed and I suspect was the hooded delinquent whom had vandalised the bus shelter. Bertie was the old man with the missing ear and his new young friend was Craig. There was Lena, whom I grew to quite like, she had a young baby whom she was desperate to get home to.
There was an ominous stillness when the introductions were finished. I wanted some noise just to make things feel less inhospitable, but I found that I didn’t have any words to offer. I looked at my phone and very briefly hoped to see some service, but there was none. We were cut off, stranded in our little bubble of black. It was strange in hindsight. An odd sort of kinship formed out of the terror. Unlikely hands were held and strange couples formed in the desperation of horror.
“It’s alright, lad, you just stick with me. I’ve fought in a war.” Bertie said to little Craig, who looked more like a child than he had when he had been at the bus-stop being swatted with Bertie’s stick. Craig clutched at his hand.
“Everyone stay calm, they won’t hurt you if you stay calm.” Alph said. He stared out of the window, almost as if he could see something we could not. He shivered and another bang shook the chassis.
“They… they… I swear, how would you know? How?” Trish snapped, she waved her stubby finger in Alph’s face. He neither recoiled nor diminished, he stood up tall.
“This has happened to me before.” He addressed a busload of people, all of whom looked at him with poorly-concealed scepticism. “It was a while ago. It’s - It’s hard to explain. There’s things out there in the black. I can see them and you’ll start to as well, if you’re in here long enough, you start to make shapes out in the black, but you need to get really thirsty and hungry first. Neil, if you’ve got any weed on you that will hasten the process.”
“And why would we want to see them, even if what you say isn’t just the hocus pocus of an addled vagrant?” Trish gritted her teeth.“
Because then we can negotiate.” He said. “They’re curious about us, they’ve only just found us, only just learnt how to reach out and… grab us. They want to learn, a bit like we might want to learn about ants. I’m telling ya the truth.”
“We don’t negotiate with ants.” Lena said sharply.
“Speak for yourself, I don’t wanna learn about ants.” Craig said.
“I mean there’s one way to find out if the old codger’s gone cooky?” Neil posited, pulling little baggies of weed from his pocket. The banging and thuds continued and the only hope for answers gleaned at the tip of an expertly rolled joint that was passed around the bus. The answers we found were not so much answers, so much as whole other questions.