The Bus to Hell
by Jason Bickerstaff

“How did you die, bud?”

Ricky turned his head to face the man who’d spoken. Given the nasally whine of the man’s voice, he’d expected some thin geek; instead he got a hulk with a wild beard and a flat bald head. On the man’s neck were tattooed two names inside a love heart. Probably a pair of kids, Ricky figured. He wanted to ask if the mark was a memory aid, but he enjoyed the shape of his nose too much to risk knuckle surgery.

“Sorry?” His head swam. Had he just woken from a deep slumber? And if so, where the hell had he fallen asleep?

“How’d you buy it? How’d you die? Suicide? Accident? Don’t be shy - there’s no secrets here. You … Ah, here’s the bus.”

Bus? Ah, he saw it.

The first thing he noticed was that the bus traversed no road, but rather a vast nothingness, a void so empty and black that Ricky wondered if he was in deep space. Indeed, the vehicle moved through this void as silently and smoothly as any spacecraft. But it was no spacecraft; it really did look like an old bus.

As it neared, Ricky’s mind gave up trying to fathom where he was and why he couldn’t remember anything before this very minute; instead his concentration locked onto the bus’s destination - which was cheaply printed in neat capitals on a wooden board above the windscreen - and he felt a chill explore his spine.

“HELL.”

- 2 -

The bald man, who’d introduced himself as Sam, was talking to him, but Ricky wasn’t listening. His mind was numb, as if having received a mild electric current across it. He was dead, Sam had explained. This “void” was the anteroom - for want of a better word - between the living world and the afterlife, the place where the many thousands of people who died every week were grouped ready for segregation and then delivery into the next stages of existence. So great were the numbers, and so widespread, that Death’s ushers practiced a massive and complex routine to successfully process everyone through the doors of the City of Hell in time for the next week’s load.

“Yep, Hell’s just a city,” Sam said as he led Ricky to the back of the bus. Not deep in the Earth in a physical sense, because you can’t get there if you’re alive, couldn’t just drill down, or anything like that. But it is down there, existing on another dimension or plane or whatever you want to call it.”

Rick was hardly listening, his mind still numb, throbbing like his heart, each pulsation forcing up the same truth, and it was one that he didn’t want to accept. He was dead! Dead? Howwhenwhy-

“One bus a week for each city,” Sam was saying. “Thousands of stops scattered all over the Earth, below access portals, which just happen to be churches. Dunno why. Did the powers that be make us subconsciously build our churches over these portals, or did the essence of what a house of God represents somehow change the texture of the physical dimension and allow access to the next world? Beats me. But it’s darn weird, that much I do know.” He spoke fluently and sensibly, as if he’d had time to compose his theories on this matter.

“A week?” Ricky said. His mind was tumbling out of control with questions, questions, questions…

“Oh yes,” Sam continued. “I must have just missed last week’s bus, ‘cos I was the first here. I didn’t know what the hell - no pun intended - was going on. Thought I was dreaming.. Next man through was a priest, though, that chap there near the front. Polishing the sounding board in his pulpit, whatever a sounding board is, when he slipped and fell and broke his neck. Right in church. Ironic, eh? He didn’t have far to go to get here, then.” Sam giggled at his own joke. “Yep, so, anyway, the priest explained it all to me. Buses that take the dead to Hell - wow. Bible didn’t mention that one. Must be a new thing, regularly updated. Back in Jesus’ time, must have been a horse and carriage that took the dead. Ha! The priest didn’t mention what he’d done to warrant a place in hell, though.” He shrugged. “So, what did you do to deserve this?”

And that was the problem. While Ricky could fully accept that there was an afterlife, because no human wishes to believe that death of the physical body means an end to existence, he had always been ready to accept that what lay in store for the dead might be beyond human imagining, which would explain why there were so many theories abound. Pearly Gates and white tunnels - were these images no less fanciful and naive than the ancient theory of a flat earth around which the sun and the other planets orbited? But the one thing he hadn’t ever contemplated was that his soul might be fated for his current destination.

He had always lived a good life; what had he ever done to deserve to go to Hell?

- 3 -

“Kiddie toucher!” Sam shouted, shocking Ricky out of his numbing trance. “Get the hell off before we throw you out!”

A chorus of boos had hit the air. Ricky saw the direction of the vocal assault as he felt the bus slowing. Given that the bus was cruising across a non-physical jet-black wilderness, the ride wasn’t exactly smooth, and the vehicle shuddered now as its unseen driver changed down noisily through the gears.

A man who had his jumper pulled up to shield his face was standing at the doors, ready to disembark. Ricky was puzzled. Then he saw the bus stop.

It was rather like the kind of train station you’d find at some tiny town. A small building with a single platform seemingly hovering in mid-void and a sign on a post that said: “PAEDOPHILES.” When the bus ground to a halt and the doors were flung open, the man waiting to disembark leaped out and landed with a resounding clack on the wooden platform. Immediately, the door to the small building creaked open; beyond lay a darkness deeper than the void, although to Ricky that seemed impossible, and scary as hell. The bus started to pull off. As it passed the man outside, everyone turned to leer and cuss at him. He didn’t see his audience, however: his every sense was fixed on that open door and the fate that awaited him inside.

“Dante had it all wrong,” Sam said, giving the man the bird out the back window. “He said Hell had nine levels. Actually it has hundreds, each for a different sin. And wow, if Hell’s anything like prison, then I’m glad I’m just a lowly bank robber and not a crazy kiddie-fiddler.” He looked at Ricky again, playfully punched him on the arm to break the latter’s reverie. “So, pal, what was your sin and how’d you die?”

Ricky’s brain started whirring. Good questions, both of them.

- 4 -

Death must be like getting drunk, Ricky thought, because he had trouble remembering events directly prior to it, just like when he woke the morning after a heavy beer session. He could clearly recall going out on his motorbike to give his wife some space, some time to think, because they’d argued. He had taken the bike through the nearby Blue Bell Woods, which offered a winding footpath that his off-road vehicle would be well suited to, and which would accord him the peace and quiet that he needed in order to think. It had been raining and he would get dirty, but that fact, he recalled, hadn’t set him back.

He remembered riding into the woods. He had turned off Parker Street and guided the bike carefully though an old hole in the chain-link fence (a hole fashioned years earlier by, Rumour HQ claimed, a milk float piloted by a sleeping man. After that he had just snatches of what happened. When he tried to remember, he was rewarded only with a mild headache.

He had crashed! It suddenly came to him now, as the bus pulled up at another stop and disgorged four MURDERERS. He remembered clearly a fragment of that event: his bike’s front wheel skidding on a rotting carcass of a fox that nobody had cleared off the footpath. The bike and he skidding off the path, through the mud and towards a steep embankment. And there his memories took a commercial break, to return with his awakening in a bus queue in a black void, dead.

- 5 -

“This is my stop,” Sam said, getting to his feet. Ricky looked out the window, across the black void. The floating bus stop, no different from any of the previous ones, was signposted as THEFT, which he figured must including bank robbery if Sam was getting off.

“What do I do?”

Sam grinned down at him. “You get off, like everyone else. What was your sin?”

“That’s the thing - I don’t know! I always thought I -“

“Was a good guy, right?” Sam laughed. “Yep, I guess these bus drivers get loads of that - people looking all shocked because they thought they should be at Heaven’s door instead of down here with all the scum.” Now he turned serious. “Listen, pal, they don’t make mistakes. If you’re here, it’s because you sinned, big time. And you’d better comb that memory of yours real good. Because if you get off at the wrong stop, or if you’re still on this bus when it reaches the terminus, it’ll be counted as cheating destiny. And that, my friend, is the biggest sin of all. For that, you’ll get the penthouse suite here in Hell and you’ll share it with Satan himself. And believe me, you don’t want that!” He looked up as the bus shuddered to an ungainly halt at the stop. Six or seven people rose to leave. One started crying, pure fear having overcome her. The others moved mechanically, like robots on a pre-programmed course, emotions notwithstanding. Their faces had become the physical depiction of the despair in their hearts.

One of these, Ricky saw, was a man he recognised. Peter Pains, the local town tramp who’d succumbed to the perils of drinking alcohol on cold nights. His death had been four days ago. Four days he’d been here, waiting in that queue, Ricky realised. Waiting to see who would join him; waiting for his eternal fate.

Sam stuck out his hand, and Ricky took it. “Think hard, and take care. And you know, perhaps Hell ain’t so strict and they’ll allow us all to mingle in a few millennia. Might see you at the party.” He grinned; he was taking all this surprisingly well, Ricky figured. “Until then, enjoy eternal damnation.”

And with that, Sam was gone. Off the bus, though the small building and into that deeper darkness. Into his portion of Hell. The bus moved on, relentlessly. Ricky’s feelings of hopelessness deepened.

- 6 -

The bus travelled through the endless void and Ricky soon lost track of time. The only reference he could use to determine speed and time was the ceaseless procession of bus stops, which might have been the same one on a looped route if not for the changing names: ARSON, TREASON, SUICIDE (another man he recognised had alighted here: an ugly sod who’d been in the papers once for a previous attempt at ending his life, which had of course failed. Second time lucky, it seemed), RAPE, DECEPTION, ADULTERY -

Ricky perked up as he saw the ADULTERY sign approaching through the seamless black world.

“Adultery,” Ricky said, his soul punctured. He was ridden with guilt suddenly, but more than that, a feeling of shock. Adultery, a crime worthy of eternal damnation? With the relaxed social ways of the last few decades, Hell was going to become one very crowded place before long.

The fling with the woman from work hadn’t been planned, but then, most of the time affairs never were. If he was forced to explain why he had started cheating on his wife, Ricky would have been up against it to provide any answer other than that he had been horny, too horny for the appetite of one woman. It had had nothing to do with stress at home - his relationship with his wife, Alison, had been as strong as it ever was. Just pure sexual greed, then! Unforgivable? Maybe. But worth an eternity in Hell? No way.

The bus had stopped. People were getting up to disembark. Only a third of the original cargo remained seated, suggesting that this bus was nearing its terminus.

Terminus! Pun intended or what!

Terminus. End of the line. Ricky suddenly remembered what Sam had told him. Cheating destiny. What could that possibly mean? Avoiding Fate? Changing what was in store for you? Was that even possible? In the Biblical sense of Hell, certainly not, but then all of this didn’t reek like a scene from the Bible. This was reality Hell, a lithe machine dedicated to processing the dead into their afterlives, and with such a massive project, wouldn’t it be simpler and more efficient if all grandiose was stripped away? After all, this was Hell, where comfort and appearance were of nil importance. A bus trip through Hell with specific stops for specific sins seemed like pretty good logistics. Was it really too silly to assume that cheating destiny could be as simple as hiding under the back seat of a bus, like a little kid trying to avoid paying a fare?

The bus moved on a few moments later, its load of adulterers delivered and already on their way to eternal punishment. From his position under the back seat, Ricky smiled. Part of that smile was due to the reawakened sense of sneakiness he’d enjoyed as a child. And the other part was his growing sense of apprehension and intrigue, because what happened from here on in was of his own doing, not actions written in the Book of Fate. He was penning a new chapter.

- 7 -

He sang songs in his mind to pass the time. The bus stopped many more times. After each stop, the amount of chatter in the bus decreased. Soon, there was just one fellow speaking to a silent second. The speaker was an old man who expounded upon the great thrills he’d experienced as a soldier shooting Nazis in France in 1942, and how he thought it wasn’t fair that a man fighting for King and country could be sentenced to eternal damnation just because he’d ended the lives of a few evil invaders. But he wasn’t regretful, he kept proclaiming. “If I sees those bastards down there in Hell, I’m gonna shoot ‘em all again!” Then the bus stopped again, the old man bid the other farewell and got off, and again the bus was on its way.

Ricky looked along the floor of the rolling bus, but couldn’t see any feet. Empty. The old man must have been talking to the driver.

Next stop, the terminus, Ricky realised.

- 8 -

When the bus next stopped, the engine died and Ricky tensed. This was it. He knew what came next, because every kid had hidden on the back of a bus at some point. The driver would come strolling down the aisle, throwing cursory glances around to make sure no one was secreted anywhere. And Ricky would either be caught or missed, simple as. Or perhaps he was caught already, with the driver knowing he was back here because Death’s ushers hadn’t crossed him off the list yet.

He heard the door of the driver’s cabin open and then footsteps, loud and heavy and coming closer. He was tempted to peer out, wanted to see this agent of Satan’s. Cheesy as the bus ride idea was, he didn’t think it stretched to drivers attired in uniforms that said “Hell Line” on them.

Thump, thump! Ricky tensed, knowing that if he was caught his punishment wouldn’t just be a clip round the ear and a booting out the door. There was a “penthouse suite” and a meeting with Satan himself for those who attempted to cheat Destiny.

The feet he saw coming up the aisle were covered by a long robe of some kind. It was brilliant white, and under the glare of the bright lights in the roof of the bus, the robe appeared almost invisible. The thing that wore this garment could have been a human or a rhino on its hind legs - it was impossible to tell. This made Ricky even more eager to stick out his head and see. See what kind of creatures inhabited this netherworld.

The robe stopped moving, then began moving again back down the aisle, without turning. Eyes in both sides of the head? Did the thing have a head? The urge to look was barely beaten back by the thought of the horrible torments that would be his if he did.

The robed thing exited the bus and was gone. All was silent.

Ricky decided he would wait a few minutes, until after the driver had clocked off or gone for a cuppa or whatever it did here, and then he would make a break for it.

It? What was it? Where exactly was he, and what exactly was he planning to do? He figured he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

- 9 -

Ricky didn’t dare step off the bus, at first. There was no stop here, just blackness, all-consuming emptiness, and it made him feel almost like an astronaut on a space walk. He got on his knees at the open door and put out his hand, feeling for substance that wasn’t there. He even felt under the left front wheel, thinking that perhaps the bus was perched on invisible pillars that reached up from the ground, many miles below. Nothing. His hand swept under the wheel without contact of any kind. Not even the movement of air.

Panic introduced itself. What could he do? Was he stuck here for a week, until the driver returned to once again take his vehicle along the same route, picking up and dropping off his new batch of sinners? If that were so, then Ricky couldn’t cheat his destiny, because soon he’d either get caught, or he’d become bored or hungry and would relent, choosing to disembark at the ADULTERY stop and accept his fate. He couldn’t hide forever!

He threw back his head, ready to roar and cry, and that was when he sensed light somewhere in this anaesthetizing blackness. Taking hold of the doorframe, he leaned back, out into the void, and then he saw it.

It was above the bus, hanging there as everything else in this place just hung. A perfect circle of white about three feet in diameter, like a giant luminous disc.

Before he could stop to think, Ricky had hauled himself onto the roof of the bus, breaking the wing mirror with his foot in his haste. The glowing disc looked like a thin line from this angle, for it hung just seven feet above the pitted metal roof of the bus. As he approached, the line widened, until once more it was a disc and Ricky was stood directly beneath it, staring up without squinting, despite knowing that its brilliance should have forced him to close his eyes or at least shield them.

Was this a portal into the world he’d left behind? He wondered. Or a passageway to the penthouse suite Sam had mentioned? Or was it just a fancy doorway into some kind of staff room, where he’d find the driver with his feet up and a newspaper in his hand, whittling away the time until his next shift?

Before he could choose one, the now wide-awake inquisitive-child part of Ricky’s mind had already acted. Ricky jumped, arms above his head like a man diving. There was a little heat as he passed through the circle of light, then pure whiteness that didn’t sting his eyes yet was blinding in a way he couldn’t explain, and then the darkness was back. But this time there were lighter and darker patches of black, which quickly became recognisable as furniture and shadows cast by that furniture. It took a few seconds for his eyes to register what he was seeing and for his brain to process these electrical signals, but finally Ricky grinned as relief washed over him.

He was inside a church, a good old-fashioned Earth church.

- 10 -

He looked around and wondered what he was meant to do. He thought his presence here was significant. Atonement. That was how one cheated destiny. This was the very same church where he and Alison had married six years earlier; he figured that this fact would play a part in his atonement. But again, how?

He looked up into the triforium and out a high window and saw the night sky and the moon. Late; the church was locked down.

He strolled down the centre aisle, enjoying his new surroundings, yet still puzzled. Then he glanced between two pews and saw a sweet wrapper lying on the floor. Perhaps he was meant to do all a man could ever do: his best. He moved between the pews to retrieve the wrapper and bin it - good deed of the day, and all that. As he bent to grasp the piece of litter, he put a hand on the back of a pew for balance.

And fell through it.

He sat up and shivered, finding most of his upper body enveloped in the wood of the pew. He panicked and shuffled back. As his head passed through the backrest of the pew in the next row, darkness washed over his eyes and he let out a moan. He scrambled out like a man escaping a pit of snakes. He got to his feet and drew in sharp, deep breaths, refusing to believe what his mind was telling him. Ghostghostghostghostghostghostghostghost it was screaming at him.

Ghost! You died, remember? Bike accident. You went to Hell and cheated Destiny and now you’re back, but you are back as a GHOST!

- 11 -

Ricky collapsed to his knees on the hard floor, not feeling its coldness. He stared down and despite his growing alarm and depression managed to wonder how he was able to touch the ground. Shouldn’t he be falling through the Earth as the planet was drawn in orbit around a sun whose gravitational pull didn’t affect his non-physical body?

Or perhaps the spiritual world existed atop the real world, like two photographs superimposed, and the floor he trod was flush with the real world’s floor.

Or maybe the rules of the spiritual world were far more technical than either of these two definitions and he wasn’t even nearly qualified to judge them.

He thought of his wife, Alison. Oh God, what must she be going through? How was she coping? Had there been a funeral yet? Had they even found his body yet? He hadn’t been dead very long!

Once again panic was Ricky’s bedfellow. His wife, his body! He charged down the aisle, heading for the exit, hoping to God (ha ha) that this church wasn’t going to turn out to be some kind of prison for him, with walls he couldn’t penetrate. He hoped that he had truly cheated destiny and was now a free soul, able to travel and do as he wished. If so, he knew exactly what he was going to do.

Instinctively, he put his hands up to shield his face as the door raced at him. The heavy wooden barrier loomed over him and he held his breath.

Suddenly a moment of darkness as his eyes passed through the wood. Then he was outside; he stumbled with the shock and halted.

He was in the rain, which he didn’t physically feel. He stared out over his home town, which appeared like another vast black void except this one had a myriad lights twinkling. And this one he knew.

- 12 -

Over the sounds of traffic carving through the puddles on the main road away to the left, beyond the high perimeter wall, and above the sounds of rain pattering the slick cobblestone path he stood on, Ricky heard crying.

He followed the sound and was led around the back of the church, into the graveyard. This was his local church and most likely the place where his body would be interred once they’d actually discovered it. He wondered what it would be like to attend, to see people crying over him.

In the dense darkness of the graveyard, where the only illumination came from the stars, the ghost that knelt before a headstone glowed like a beacon.

Ricky found that he was not scared, not even intrigued or puzzled. Been there, done that, as the saying went. He simply strolled over to talk to the ghost.

She was a child of about eight, dressed in a nightshirt, which made Ricky think she had died in her sleep.

“Hello,” he said.

She looked up. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, dripping onto her nightshirt. “Who are you?”

“Nobody special,” Ricky said. “Not any more. Why are you here?”

“Visiting my grave. I do so every week.”

He nodded. This was a strange conversation for a couple of ghosts in a graveyard. “Why are you crying?”

She looked at the headstone again, tried to touch it. He saw her fingers poking through it. “I want to see me!”

Puzzled, Ricky moved so he was in front of the headstone and was able to see what transfixed her. Somewhere nearby, they heard a car engine, and light splashed across them, then both sound and illumination were gone as quickly as they had arrived.

The headstone was black with the engraved letters painted white. Lucy Smarte, 12/06/1993 - 2/01/2002. She had died just over six weeks ago, he calculated. Missed forever, forgotten never, it said beneath.

As he watched, she again tried to touch the headstone. There was a metal plaque with a flip-up lid, and it was this she tried to pry open, to expose what was probably a photograph beneath. Again her fingers went through it. More tears was the result.

Behind them, voices. People. People were coming into the church grounds. Instinctively, Ricky ducked behind the headstone. The little girl, Lucy, took his hand. He was surprised to find her grip was warm, very warm.

“Don’t worry, they can’t see us very well,” she reassured him. “That’s just in the films. Just dogs can sense us. If you ever heard a dog barking all night long, that’s why.”

The voices were closer now. Four people, two of them with the low tones of males. Dressed in dark clothing. The taller of the two males had jet black hair with four glinting CDs in it, the hair pulled through the centre holes to create four waxed spires. Kids these days, Ricky thought.

Laughing and swaying, obviously drunk, the four people moved past the pair of ghosts, not seeing them, and collapsed between two tombs, where they began pulling at each others’ clothing. Ricky cringed. He understood that some people were turned on by sex outdoors, but this!

He got to his feet. “Not for your eyes,” he told the little girl, and led her out of the graveyard.

- 13 -

They were sat on the grass beside a bench at the foot of the cobblestone driveway, watching the traffic oozing past. She still had hold of his hand, and he was glad. He was beginning to feel lonely, and didn’t want to think about the little girl’s situation. Six weeks a ghost. Six weeks alone. He was too curious, though.

“What have you been doing since . . .”

“I died?” she finished, unfazed. He supposed six weeks was long enough to accept your lot, even for a child who’d died and returned a ghost. “Not much. I watch my family. Sometimes it’s good to stay up late and to not be shouted at. Just sometimes.” Tears were threatening again.

“Sometimes it’s boring, though. We don’t sleep, we don’t get hungry, and I enjoyed both before I…” She hung her head.. “But we aren’t going to live forever,” she added, as if having read his mind.

“What do you mean?”

“You hid on the bus, didn’t you?” He was surprised she knew, but before he could ask, she answered. “We all did. It’s the only way. But the Conductor knows and he comes for us occasionally. If we stick together, we can always fight him off.”

Conductor? Buses had conductors, people who made sure that fares were correctly paid. He didn’t need to ask what she meant, for he could imagine. An agent of Hell who would seek him out and make sure he completed the bus journey that had been planned for him. That didn’t sound good.

“You said ‘we.’ What does that mean?”

“All of us. All the spirits. Everyone who has ever died in this town. We meet up nightly for protection from the Conductor. He has taken many of us back over the years.”

“Meet where?” He could imagine it was the town market square. Could imagine them standing there, hundreds of ghosts mingled with hundreds of night shoppers who passed through them obliviously.

“The old Baxter Mine. Lots of mineshafts, lots of places to hide. The Conductor finds it tricky down there. It is our safest place.” She looked at the sky. At the moon. “It is nearly time. He will come soon. Must go.”

She took his hand, but Ricky shrugged it off.

“What’s the matter? Oh, first night, silly me! Family to see? Hope you don’t have a dog, though. Will send him insane. Will you come later? To the mine? We have a good time, it is nice.”

Ricky nodded. Lucy kissed him quickly on the cheek and then got up and ran out the opened gates, as if she’d forgotten she didn’t need to use doorways. She glanced again into the sky and then was bolting across the wet road. Cars whizzed through her. Surprisingly, she cast a fuzzy reflection on the slick tarmac. Then she was gone.

That last look of hers into the sky. It made him think of the Conductor. He decided he didn’t want to be here another second.

- 14 -

Lucy had been right about the dogs, Ricky discovered. The Jacksons, his noisome neighbours, had once again put their dog out for the night. The houses on this side of the street had long, sloping gardens running up to them. Roswell’s cage was at the foot of the garden, so he could terrorise passers-by without being too off-putting to his owners. As Ricky stopped outside the closed gates of his own driveway, Roswell did indeed sense him and instantly entered rage-mode. He leaped and gnashed at the four-feet high wooden bars off his cage with its floor of straw, dirty blanket, chewy toy and overflowing litter tray. The dog had never liked Ricky in the first place, but he seemed now to want to tear his enemy’s throat out.

“Not gonna happen, mutt,” Ricky said.

His porch light came on; a silhouette appeared behind the frosted glass in the front door. Ricky tensed.

The woman who opened the door was a mess. Her eyes were black where her make-up had been smeared, her face red raw from ceaselessly wiping tears away. It was Alison.

She knew he was dead.

“Shut that fucking dog up!” she screamed into the deepening dusk.

He wanted to take her head into his hands and turn her to face him, tell her: “I’m lying in Blue Bell Woods. I crashed and died there. And now I’m dying inside, because I never got to say the thing I most wanted to say. Not that I love you, you know that already. But that I’m sorry. Sorry about that other woman.”

He replayed the scene in his mind, the last time he had seen her. The woman at work, with whom he’d had the affair, had told him she was leaving her husband, and that had freaked Ricky. He had ended it right there and then headed home, and kneeling before her in the living room, he had told Alison everything, stressing at the end that it was very over. But he hadn’t said sorry; he now wished only that he had. But it was too late now and she would never know his remorse: his bike crash had taken from her any relief that an apology might have offered.

He had hurt her with his affair, and then he had intensified that hurt with his death.

“I’m sorry,” he said, but of course nobody heard.

Ricky cried, and Alison cried, but each cried alone.

- 15 -

Leaving Alison alone again was the hardest thing he ever did, but it was important he do so, he knew. He went through the wall, out into the front garden. Sensing him, Roswell again started barking and growling into the night, gnashing at his wooden cage. Ricky wanted to kick its teeth in.

Instead, he went to find his own body.

He ran all the way. It was a five mile journey, but he did it in just a few minutes because he didn’t get tired, didn’t have to worry about obstacles. He just ran in a straight line and at top speed, through fences and buildings without a care, without even a glance or thought for the people he passed. At one point he even raced through a caravan inside which a couple was making love; it started their dog barking and that was the end of their passion, but Ricky just raced on.

He followed the path through the woods, seeking the spot where his life had ended. It was hard to see in the dark, made worse by the fact that the thick canopy of branches overhead snared most of the moonlight. However, Ricky soon stumbled upon the body of the dead fox, now splattered across the muddy path by his bike’s passage over it.

He was suddenly nervous. Although he had accepted his death with relative ease, he knew he might not so easily hold his nerve if he came face-to-face with his own mutilated body. How long had he been dead? Long enough for visible decomposition to have begun? Long enough for forest parasites to have set up home in his eyes and mouth?

The human curiosity for the ugly and obscene is hard battled against, however, and it was partly because of this that Ricky approached the edge of the embankment and peered down. Shadows stared back, impenetrable. He thought he could make out the shape of his bike, but knowing for certain would mean going down the slope. He had no fear of slipping in the rain, because he had no physical body, and it wasn’t as if he could die again anyway. No, it was the thought of stepping through something he shouldn’t, like his own head, that stayed his progress.

He looked up at the thick canopy of branches overhead. The blackness was broken in places, exposing the dark blue of the sky. The rain pattered down, its sound on the carpet of dead leaves too much like rumour-mongers’ chatter for comfort. Ricky could almost imagine that the ghosts of all the animals that had died here were watching him, seeing but unseen because of their own set of ghostly parameters. The raindrops passed through his upturned face, through his cheeks and his eyes; it was a strange non-physical sensation he could endure only for a few moments before turning away.

It was suddenly as if his night vision had increased, although given that he had no irises, that wasn’t possible. Except it had happened; he suddenly saw the ground much more clearly than before. He saw his mangled bike at the bottom of the embankment, tangled in a bush, covered in mud. But it was not the bike that had his attention, it was the torn, dirtied coat lying nearby. His coat.

- 16 -

Ricky paced between the kitchen and living room, nibbling on his ghostly fingernails, ignoring the wall that went back and forth through him. Alison was trying to watch the television, but she was shivering too much with fear and a host of other emotions. Her eyes were blank, almost as dead as his own.

Ricky sat in front of the TV, facing her. She stared right through him, almost right though the TV. What he wouldn’t have given to be able to speak to her, to touch her just this once, he could have itemised on a postage stamp. But at least the TV helped created the illusion that she was watching him, he could pretend that much at least; it was better than loneliness.

“What shall we watch later?” he asked. Outside, Roswell began wailing again. Was he answering? Ricky wondered. Or had his voice simply alerted the dog to his proximity. He stood and approached the window.

Roswell was out there alright, but he wasn’t barking at the house. Somehow he’d gotten out of his cage; he was at the far end of his garden, yelping out at the empty street.

It was quite dark now. Ricky could see nothing but black beyond a few dozen metres in each direction along the road. Consequently, a new fear rose within him. Dogs could sense ghosts; this dog hated them, and this dog was barking at something out there.

Ricky felt cold.

Now Roswell was leaping at the gate, his fury in overdrive, and his head was aimed left along the road. Ricky did not doubt that the animal was snarling at someone.

He saw a shape near a van parked across the road and a little way down. It moved behind the van before he could analyse it. He shivered.

Again the shape, this time moving! It darted out from behind the van and covered the distance between that vehicle and the one behind it in moments, and was gone. But the second vehicle was a motorbike: something far too small to conceal the bulk of the creature he’d been hoping it wasn’t.

Habitually, he rushed for the front door, only realising his error when he reached for the handle and gasped nothing but thin air. He passed through the useless barrier and rushed into the garden. Roswell sensed or heard him and turned, but only momentarily. Then the animal was barking at the thing behind the motorbike again.

As Ricky rushed down the neighbour’s garden, he saw feet and white clothing behind the bike, and he knew for sure.

“Hey, shit-head!” he shouted. The dog turned, saw him and came for him.

It was unnerving and still scary, despite knowing that he was in no danger. But Ricky steeled himself as Roswell thrashed about literally through his legs, trying to tear them into pieces. He wanted to kick the damn animal. Instead, he bent, put his face literally through the top of the dog’s head, and screamed as loud as he could. Whether it was the volume of his shout or some effect created by sound entering the head without using the ears, he didn’t know or care. But Roswell scampered away with his ears drooped and that suited Ricky just fine.

“You’re safe now,” he called across the street. “You were safe anyway.”

Lucy popped up from behind the bike like a Jack-in-the-box. She didn’t look convinced.

“I know that dog,” Ricky added. “He’ll go bully some cats for a while to cheer himself up.”

Lucy came across the road, quickly. “We should go.”

“How did you find me?”

“It is dark and the Conductor will be out soon. We all know the newest dead in this town. So does the Conductor. Let’s go.”

She took his hand and turned to head back the way she’d come. He halted her with his weight.

“No, I can’t. I live here. My…” The truth was sinking in. Lucy saw this and smiled.

“It will be safer with us,” she said at length. She was a smart girl and he didn’t want her to get harmed.

“I cannot leave, not yet. I need to know…” He decided not to finish.

Lucy sat on the kerb and tugged on his hand, urging him to sit with her.

They sat in silence for a time. He watched the road and she watched him. He knew she was waiting for him to speak in his own time, and he loved her for that. Loved? He would have to love someone in this new world; loneliness would kill his ghostly form as quickly as that bike crash had -

Bike crash. His mind turned once more to his bike and what had happened.

“I couldn’t find my body,” he said. “I remembered, kind of, what happened. Some crash, bike crash. I found the bike, but my…the body…” He stopped. “Let’s walk. Walking’s peaceful and it helps me think.”

So they walked around the block, ignorant of anything but each other. Occasionally they sidestepped to avoid passing through vehicles or people, but otherwise they strolled as might two people in a barren desert.

The story told itself. It was a broken tale that fell rather than eased out. Lucy listened with a sincerity that teachers could only wish for from children so young. He knew then that he would go with this girl tonight; she would take him into the ghost haven she called Baxter Mine, and he would live his new life as they did: yearning for loved ones during the day and running from the enemy at night. And if that didn’t sound like much of a life, it didn’t matter: he was dead.

“Did you speak to her yet?”

He looked down at the girl. “Sorry?”

“You know? Same way as the dog. Put your head inside, that thing you did? Sometimes we can make them hear.”

“I want her to find my…me. Woods. But…”

“Clothing. That always works. Stimulates the mind. You have some clothing we can use?”

“We?” He couldn’t help a grin.

“You are my newest friend. We. Come on.”

She took his hand and led him home. He didn’t speak during the return journey. Thankfully, Roswell was nowhere to be seen.

He noticed that the living room was dark, while the bedroom light was on. He remembered that sometimes Alison enjoyed retiring early with a book.

Lucy used the front door rather than the wall, which might have been habit, or a mark of respect because it wasn’t her house. They climbed the stairs and stopped on the landing outside the door of the master bedroom. Lucy released his hand. He was meant to do something here, he knew; but what?

“Talk to her,” Lucy said as if reading his mind.

He felt daft, and that itself was daft.

“This won’t work. I might scare her.”

“Don’t be a child,” she said with a grin. She passed through the door and was gone. Ricky steeled himself and followed.

The moment he was inside the bedroom, Ricky froze with shock.

Standing over Alison’s bed - their marital bed - was something Ricky could barely describe, but he was sure of one thing: he was glad it was a ghost.

For some reason he’d expected the Conductor to be the creature that had driven the bus he escaped from. But Conductors didn’t drive buses, drivers did. Conductors made sure all the passengers paid their fares and completed their trips. And this new creature was here to do its job.

- 17 -

Like the driver of the bus, the Conductor wore a long robe or cope of a thin material that billowed at the bottom as if washed by a soft wind from underneath. The cope was armless; the appendages that protruded were thin but muscular and of such a dark skin tone they were not transparent like his own, but translucent, and when they moved they created a shimmering effect in the air, rather like a heat wave, that blurred Ricky’s view of whatever lay behind. It was almost dizzying to watch.

The head was covered by a tight hood rather like the sort worn by a falcon. The strings were knotted tightly beneath the chin, the tails hanging low over the creature’s shoulders. Lumps beneath the hood suggested the creature had a deformed skull. Maybe the hood kept the head from falling apart; maybe the beast was ashamed of its own features. The reason didn’t matter.

It turned its head and faced Ricky. It had eyes as black as jet. A large nose overshadowed a wide mouth whose teeth were small and flat, as if it had a mouthful of sugar-cubes. But the teeth didn’t matter; the Conductor didn’t eat those it was sent to retrieve. Consequently, the creature would have strengths in other areas.

Lucy was stood on the far side of the bed, staring right at the creature, frozen like a cat sensing danger. Between she and the Conductor was the double bed and Alison, laying but not sleeping, and not reading as he’d thought. There were dried tears on her cheeks. She was staring up at the ceiling, unaware of those who shared her room.

“Keep away!” Lucy screamed, but not at the Conductor. She was warning Ricky.

The Conductor took a step towards Ricky, then stopped. It turned for Lucy, who backed off. Somewhat comically, she backed through the wall at a point just beside the window, teetered like someone on a high ledge, and vanished as if swallowed by the brick barrier.

Ricky didn’t waste time wondering about this. The Conductor was distracted and Ricky wasn’t going to abandon this chance. He rushed the creature with a scream in his throat, a scream that became a grunt of pain as the beast swatted him aside with its bony brown arm.

He felt himself flying through the air, towards the outer wall. He closed his eyes instinctively in preparation for the impact, but there was no thud of a body hitting a wall.

Instead, the wall swallowed him as it had Lucy. All went black for a split second, then he was falling, watching the ground rush up at him. He landed hard in his own front garden, and felt tickling pain of a genus that he couldn’t describe.

He was on his feet in moments, obviously uninjured, except where the Conductor had hit him.

He looked at the house, at the bedroom window. He tried to digest the fact that he’d just been knocked through that wall!

As Ricky stared at the window, he saw the Conductor appear behind the glass, staring down at him. The beast stepped back until it was out of view.

“We should go, right now!” Lucy yelled. Ricky thought that was the best idea he’d heard in a long time.

He turned. Lucy yelled again. He tried to turn back, but was too late. The Conductor had literally jumped through the wall in pursuit. Ricky felt searing pain in his back as the beast landed on him. Down he went, face crushed hard, but again painlessly, into the soft earth. Strong fingers grabbed his hair, yanked up his head, pulling hard, threatening to break his neck - if that were even possible.

He heard barking and growling. Roswell, back for another round. He watched it race towards him, teeth bared. It bore down on him with lightning speed, so fast that he had no time to think. He simply closed his eyes and waited for this rather unpleasant day to end.

Roswell leaped. He sailed through the air, through Ricky’s head. Ricky felt another sharp tug on his hair and assumed this was it, the end. But then the fingers that held him loosened and he fell flat on his face. He turned his head slowly, not daring a sudden movement, unsure of what was happening.

Roswell and the Conductor were fighting like strays, the dog growling, the beast it fought snarling in a similar way. Ricky wondered why the dog was able to touch the Conductor but not himself, or Lucy.

Lucy was by his side suddenly, urging him up, saying they had to leave, get somewhere safe, and quickly. She was full of good ideas, he decided.

Roswell yelped and then he was running, running away just as fast as he could. And now the Conductor was again boring into Ricky with those evil black eyes. But it did not move towards him. Its breathing became ragged, its sneer angrier. But still it did not advance.

Sensing something behind him, Ricky fought the urge to turn, fearing a trick. Now the beast was staring past him, at something behind, but still he didn’t turn.

“Oh my God,” Lucy said. Ricky couldn’t contain himself: he slowly twisted his head to the left and looked back.

Flowing slowly down his street, emerging from the darkness like a mist, were people. Dozens and dozens, maybe hundreds. Some were dressed in modern clothing while others were attired in fashions from older times. They filed slowly, like a marching band minus the instruments. A car came at them, headlights cutting through the dark. But they did not move aside. The car momentarily splashed light across the vanguard and Ricky saw tight, scared faces, and haunted eyes. Then the car passed through them and was gone and the gloom shrouded them again, but Ricky had seen enough to know who these people were. Ghosts. The ghost of every person who’d died in this town; people from multiple decades and centuries. These were the people who lived their nights in Baxter Mine to avoid the Conductor. For some reason they had ventured out, headed here, here where their Nemesis lurked in wait for he who had most recently escaped it.

Lucy took his hand and they ran for the garden gate, through it, out into the road, into the throng that had gathered before his garden. The Conductor didn’t know what to do: it was used to hunting lone prey, not taking on an army of the dead.

Ricky stared at these people in disbelief. So many! All dead! There were enough people here for a council, a government, even a society of sorts. Suddenly death didn’t seem so final to him.

A man in clothing befitting the 1970s stepped up. He was bearded, middle-aged, and mean-looking.

“Lucy,” this man said. “I hope you know what you are doing.”

Lucy tugged on Ricky’s hand. “I’m sorry I ran out, but he’s sad, Mr. Hamilton. Lonely and sad. He should join us.”

“There might not be an ‘us’ for much longer, if this goes wrong.”

He meant the Conductor. But the beast was still in place, probably still weighing up its chances of winning this battle. Everybody stood fast, waiting. Nobody wanted to turn away lest that inspire confidence in their enemy.

They waited.

The Conductor yelled something at them. A meaningless roar or a word in its own tongue, nobody knew. Then it turned and fled. A cheer went up.

Mr Hamilton silenced them. “That thing’ll be back tomorrow night, and the night after. So let’s thank our lucky stars for tonight and go home.” He fixed Ricky with a stare. “You too, newcomer. Unless you have business here first?”

“He does,” said Lucy. She grinned. “But we’ll wait.”

“Oh, will we?” Hamilton said, but he was grinning too.

Lucy looked up at Ricky. “Go talk to her.”

Ricky took a breath. He was more nervous than ever.

- 18 -

She wasn’t in the bedroom when he returned. The bathroom door was ajar, the light on. He considered waiting until she had finished her business in there, but decided that the longer he waited, the more chance there was he’d back out of this. It was now or never.

“I’m sorry,” he heard her say. “So sorry.” She was crying. He figured she was on her mobile phone. Intrigued, he passed through the door and into the room.

She was sat on the floor, her back against the side of the bath, crying. But she was not on the phone: her hands cradled her face.

Ricky’s eyes went to the bath; his legs went weak and he had to kneel to avoid falling.

It all came back to him now. Why his coat had been discarded in the woods: he’d left it there after falling off his bike, the very bike that he’d ridden back afterwards and which was parked round back - he hadn’t realised his error until now.

He had told Alison about his affair, and after their argument he’d gone for a ride to clear his head. Upon his return, Alison had prepared a bath and fixed him a mug of hot chocolate. She had said she would try to forgive him, and he had said he would be a better husband in the future. But he hadn’t said “Sorry,” and he would eternally regret that.

It had been no trick: she had definitely meant what she’d said. But at some point while he was bathing, she had snapped. Maybe it had happened as she walked in the bathroom: a momentary loss of temper that had forced her hand into action, swinging the mug of chocolate into the side of his head.

Ricky couldn’t take his eyes off his own body. It lay there in water diluted pink by the blood that had oozed from his gashed head. But the blow hadn’t killed him. Unconscious, he had slipped underwater and drowned.

Ricky felt himself leaning forward, but he seemed unable to control his actions. He put his mouth close to his wife’s ear, then closer, so lips and ear were merged. Then he spoke, softly: one word that summed up everything and yet nothing, that meant nothing yet meant everything.

“Sorry.”