After the First Death Read Online Free PDF

coffin. God, what a thought. But then she always dramatized situations. Anyway, the boy disturbed her, not the man. The man had seemed reasonable, rational, unlike the boy, who had something of an animal about him, like a dog straining at a leash.
    The van took a sudden turn to the left. Old Vineyard Road. She was puzzled—there was nothing out that way. She had lived in Hallowell all her life and knew the place like she knew her own face in the mirror—even the small pimple that appeared near her nose each time her period arrived—and she tried to envision where the van was leading her and the bus. To Brook’s End? That old pavilion where they’d had dances years ago during the Big Band era her parents always talked about? Nothing else out there. Anything could happen out there in the woods like that. She gripped the wheel hard to keep from trembling. Stop dramatizing, she told herself again. Think of the poor kids. She glanced in therear-view mirror. The kids were subdued, not restless or jabbering as usual. She saw one child apparently dozing, her chin resting on her thin chest. Another child’s mouth hung open, his jaw slack and loose. She knew instantly that the children had been drugged, that the candy the older man had given out was evidently doped up. As she darted glances from the van ahead to the rear-view mirror, she saw a boy begin to fall lazily, almost in slow motion, out of his seat, into the aisle. She cried out. The older man had also seen the child begin to fall and hurried to him, catching him before he hit the floor. He picked up the little boy, cradling him in his arms. Instead of restoring the child to the seat, the man himself sat down, holding the boy against his own chest, rubbing his hand across the boy’s forehead paternally. Yet the man was obviously a monster, taking over a bus like this, feeding the kids some kind of drug.
    “Keep your eyes on the road,” the boy told her. His words were precise, each word pronounced perfectly. Too perfectly. He had a slight accent, an echo of something ancient in his voice, and it was obvious that English was not his native language. She glanced at him quickly, defiantly, to show that she would not always leap to obey his orders. His hair was black, small tight curls fitting his head like a helmet. His skin was dark but with a kind of copper hue as if burned by the sun too long. He could be anything. From anywhere.
    Now she had to concentrate on the driving because the road was unpaved, rough and narrow. Trees formed arches through which the vehicles passed. The sunshine was blotted out occasionally and they were enveloped in sudden shadows. The bus lurched as it encountered a dip in the road, and the boy was thrown slightly against her. She felt his body against her shoulder only for a moment, but it caused her toshudder. She looked into the mirror. The small pimple had appeared, near her right nostril. Damn it. She hadn’t noticed the pimple this morning when she washed her face, and her period was two weeks away. The migraine ate like acid into her forehead. Would her period come ahead of time while she was here on the bus? She felt like crying, the way she had when she was a little girl and crying solved things, brought rescue.
    “Where are we going?” she asked, fleeing her thoughts.
    “Just continue to drive,” the boy said. “We are almost there.”
    She sent her mind ahead of the bus and the van, pondering the possible destination. At the same time, the van began a steep climb and she felt the resistance of the bus to the ascent. She shifted into second, summoning all her strength for the movement. This was an old bus, without automatic shifting, and the gear mechanism balked at changes, the gears grinding in protest, like old bones being disturbed.
    Her mind flashed ahead again. At the top of the hill the road continued its twisting way in the woods. The road crossed a railroad track no longer in use. She remembered that there was an old