THE MIDNIGHT BUS
Old Mrs. Twining was telling a story about imported marmalade for the third time that evening when Martha glanced at her watch.
"O my goodness!" she exclaimed, "I really must be off! If I don't hurry, I'll miss the last bus!"
Assuring her elderly hostess that she had had a most enjoyable evening, she wriggled into her coat, scurried into the vestibule and was soon off the veranda steps and down the garden walk.
Mrs. Twining was an old dear—but shewastedious at times, Martha thought as she swung open the gate and stepped onto the sidewalk. Goodness! Here it was almost midnight and Mrs. Twining was going on about marmalade for the third time! Lucky she'd looked at her watch.
She had rushed out in such a hurry, she was well down the walk before she noticed the fog. Rising from the nearby river, it was thickening in the empty streets. The lights looked dim and faraway; the whole suburb seemed muffled and silent.
Shivering a little, Martha reached the bus stop and sat down on the cold bench. Glancing along the street, she saw that it was quite empty. The river fog was swirling in rapidly and now even the trunks of trees were becoming blurred and half-shadowy.
It was too bad, Martha thought, that people had to become old. Old and lonely and hungry for talk. Leading such dreary, uneventful lives that a little thing like imported marmalade assumed vast importance.
She hadn't been out to see old Mrs. Twining for over a year and the poor dear would have kept on talking till morning if Martha hadn't broken away to catch the midnight bus back to town.
Martha sighed, drawing her coat a little closer. Shedidwish the bus would hurry along. The bench began to feel like a carved slab of ice and the fog was getting so thick she could scarcely see across the street.
It was just after twelve by her watch when she saw a faint light flicker through the fog. It was a very feeble light and it approached with maddening deliberation. It appeared to just creep along, as if the driver of the vehicle were groping his way down a totally unfamiliar route.
When the bus stopped in front of the bench, she saw that one of its headlights was quite dead. And the other did not look very bright.
As she stepped up into the bus and dropped her coin, she intended telling the driver about the single headlight. But she didn't. The driver thrust a ticket at her without turning his head and for some reason which she didn't at the moment grasp, her impulse to speak vanished.
She walked back to the middle of the bus and sat down. The bus rolled forward again. Glancing out, she could see nothing but fog. It pressed against the windows like a white wall; it even seemed to be seeping into the bus. The seat felt as cold as the bench back at the curb stop.
For some reason she kept looking at the driver. Perhaps because there wasn't much else to look at. About all she could see of him was his back. He sat slumped in the seat, hunched over the wheel, looking to neither left nor right, his total attention focussed on the fog-blurred ribbon of road immediately ahead.
Martha wished there were some other passengers on the bus. The driver was no company at all and the smothering fog outside made everything seem so desolate. The interior of the bus itself looked dingy and soiled, as if it hadn't been swept out or polished for months on end.
Frowning toward the window, Martha realized that she would never be able to tell when they were approaching her destination, Barley Street. The fog had become an impenetrable blanket, swirling close on all sides.
"Driver," Martha called out, "will you please stop at Barley Street?"
He didn't answer, didn't turn, didn't so much as nod his head. He stared forward into the fog and Martha imagined that he hadn't even heard her.
But of course he must have. It was simply that the fog made driving hazardous and his entire attention was concentrated on the street ahead.
Trying to stifle her irritation, Martha leaned her head back against the seat and attempted to relax. But the top of the seat was hard and cold and she soon sat up straight again.
She suddenly realized that she was shivering. What a bore! She must be catching cold! But the busdidseem frigid. She could scarcely keep her teeth from chattering.
And now a new vexation caught her attention. In spite of the almost opaque wall of fog, the bus driver was steadily increasing the speed of his vehicle. The bus careened along at a constantly accelerated rate, bumping and lurching and swaying from side to side.
Martha felt a funny little knot of fear and apprehension begin to tighten in her breast. For a block or two she held tight to her seat, stifling an urge to shout at the driver, but finally she could stand it no longer.
"Driver," she called out in a strained voice which didn't sound at all like her own, "you're going much too fast! Won't you please slow down?"
As if in response, and without paying her any other heed, the driver managed a new and positively fearful burst of speed. The bus thundered ahead until the fog seemed to be going by in white streamers of light.
Fighting back rising hysteria, Martha stood up. "Driver! Please! We'll be killed!"
For the first time the driver turned. In the poor light, his face under the visor of his driver's cap looked as blurred and white as the fog outside.
"We're late on the run! We'll never make it!"
He turned back to the wheel. Martha felt deadly fear coil up within her. The man was either drunk or mad and she sensed at once that any further attempt to reason with him would be futile.
Clutching the seat handles, she began stumbling toward the front of the bus. At least she would be near the door, she decided, when—if—something happened.
Once a sudden lurch of the bus almost threw her off her feet. Clutching the back of a seat, she regained her balance and staggered ahead.
She could no longer force back the panic which was welling within her. She felt—sheknew—that her life was in imminent and deadly danger.
And when she finally reached the front of the bus and stared ahead into the fog, it was impossible to retain any lingering doubts about the lethal jeopardy of her position.
The vehicle's single headlight had gone out. The bus was racing through the midnight fog in total darkness!
With a scream, Martha turned toward the driver. He sat with a fixed stare, grimly intent, entirely oblivious to everything except the white wall of fog looming up immediately ahead.
With the scream still on her lips, Martha whirled toward the door. It opened. Or perhaps it had been open. She was too terrified to know. But in any case there was the cold white fog streaming past outside.
She hesitated momentarily. It took courage to hurl yourself into that rushing white wall, never knowing exactly what lay beyond it, beneath it—within it.
But some sure instinct warned her that there was no choice. This fearful icy bus racing ahead into the foggy darkness without any lights could come to only one end.
With another wild scream she plunged through the open door into the streamers of fog.
For a second she was snatched through space in the wake of the midnight bus. Then she struck earth with a thud which seemed to loosen every bone in her body and went bouncing and rolling along the ground like a rag doll hurled aside by an angry child.
She came to rest against a hedge and lay motionless, the taste of wet moldy earth in her mouth. She was still lying there, wondering how many bones she had broken, when a rending crash sounded somewhere ahead in the foggy darkness. She heard the tinkle of falling splinters of glass and then there was silence. Sudden, terrifying silence.
The silence endured, pregnant and somehow horrifying, and she wanted to scream again, but her mouth was full of dirt and screaming was difficult.
A light appeared; someone shouted; and she managed a groan.
A face materialized out of the fog, a kindly, anxious face.
The man bent over her. He spoke soothingly for a moment; he straightened up and called into the fog. "It's a girl, Alica! She's hurt! Bring a blanket! Quickly!"
In less than a minute a sturdy woman appeared. The two of them, the man and the woman, slid the blanket under Martha and lifted her up.
In another minute she was carried out of the fog into a cozy lighted house and tenderly laid on a couch.
While the man telephoned for a doctor, the woman Alica asked Martha where she was hurt the most.
Martha wasn't sure. She hurt all over, but not in any special place.
The woman brought a wet cloth, a glass and a pitcher of water. After Martha had rinsed out her mouth, the woman gently washed her face.
The man came into the room. "The doctor's coming right over! Now don't you worry!"
Martha sat up and carefully moved her legs. They felt bruised but assuredly not broken. And she could move her arms without any concentrated pain.
The man nodded. "Good! No bones broken, by the looks. You were lucky, child. You struck the turf outside and not the hard cobbles!"
The woman peered at her intently. "What happened, dear—if you want to tell."
Martha suddenly remembered that splintering crash which had followed shortly after her frenzied leap from the speeding bus.
"Oh, that poor man!" she said. "Has anybody gone to help him?"
They both looked at her. "What man, dear?" the woman asked.
"The bus driver," Martha said. "That was such a horrible crash!"
They went on looking at her without saying anything. A queer uneasiness overcame her. "Didn't you—hear it?" she asked.
The man shook his head. "We heard you scream. But we didn't hear any—crash."
"But—there was," Martha explained frowning. "The bus I jumped out of didn't have any lights and it was speeding and—I heard it crash!"
They were looking at her strangely now. As if they didn't believe a word she was saying. As if, Martha thought, they were patiently hearing out the imaginary story of a feverish child.
"What bus did you jump out of?" the woman asked, laying a cool hand against Martha's forehead.
"The midnight bus," Martha replied. "I was visiting a friend on Coverton Street. I got the last bus—the midnight bus—just after twelve."
The woman smiled gently. "The last bus on Coverton Street runs through at eleven. The midnight bus was discontinued a year ago. Nobody used it much and then after the crash—"
"What crash?" interrupted Martha with an eerie feeling that she knew what the answer would be.
"A year ago," the woman explained, "the driver of the Coverton Street midnight bus ran off the road into a wall and was instantly killed. Luckily, no passengers were on the bus. It happened not far from here. There were no witnesses to the crash, but someone claimed later that the bus had been seen speeding along Coverton Street through the fog without any lights—"
Suddenly the woman turned pale. She stared at Martha. "And you were saying—your bus—no lights—"
Remembering the cold, grim interior of the bus, the white face of the driver and the one feeble headlight which had finally gone out, Martha felt an icy thrill of fear.
She saw her bag lying on the couch, and she pointed to it.
"My bus ticket," she told the woman, "is in there."
When the woman drew out the bus ticket and held it up to the light, her pale face seemed drained of every drop of blood.
She stared at her husband and then at Martha with round frightened eyes.
"I had forgotten," she said softly. "The date on your ticket reminds me. That crash was just a year ago tonight!"