Dark Screams: Volume Two Read Online Free PDF Page A

was Flight 1137, from Saint Louis by way of Nashville. The DELAYED indicator flashed next to 7:55 P.M. on the arrivals screen, and lingered long enough to nudge several waiting family members to the ticket counter at scattered intervals to request an explanation. A single monitor reported status updates for the small airport’s half-dozen active flights, and Michelle assured them this public screen was usually current. Still, she dutifully checked her computer for nonexistent updates, then shook her head a few key clicks later. Close to eight-fifty, ARRIVING flashed into the status column on the public screen, followed a few minutes later by AT GATE 16. Then not.
    “How could it be blank?” The tentative worry of the young woman’s previous visits had steered into anger. She was out of breath after her third trip from baggage claim, and her stomach—probably seventh month or so—heaved with each agitated wheeze. “The plane has to be somewhere, doesn’t it?”
    “Let me check again for you.”
    As she waited for her computer to respond, Michelle smiled at the young boy standing beside his pregnant mother. The boy seemed distant, more puzzled about his mother’s anger than about the whereabouts of his father’s airplane.
Poor kid.
Probably just tired.
    The info page for Flight 1137 flashed a new message in the status box.
    “What? What’s it say?” The woman leaned closer, her stomach pressing against the front of the ticket counter.
    Michelle realized her face must have registered some slight surprise, and she corrected with a more neutral expression. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing. Just that they’ll be making an announcement soon.”
    “What’s that mean?”
    Michelle shrugged. “It says ‘Announcement forthcoming.’ I don’t know anything more than that.”
    The woman stared back at her, mouth slightly open. Michelle found it hard to return her stare and glanced instead at the child. His eyes blinked a few times, exactly in sync with the flashing message in the status box.
    Michelle had quoted the information precisely as it appeared on the screen, and it was true she didn’t have further explanation. Except the simple fact that she’d never seen this kind of vague entry in a flight’s status column. That, and the chilling awareness that an airline would never flash a status code like Crashed, or Missing, or All Passengers Presumed Dead.
    The woman turned, and she put her hand on her son’s right shoulder, then let him guide her away from the counter. Michelle noticed the woman’s long, straight hair, which hung almost to the middle of her back. She remembered the time she’d been pregnant herself, briefly, and her scalp had been strangely sensitive, her hair so unbearably heavy that she’d cut most of it off with a pair of scissors. But she’d lost the baby in the first trimester, and was sad about her hair, too, for a while. So far along in the pregnancy: How could this woman stand it?
    Her supervisor approached from the opposite end of the ticketing stations. Wade had heavy brown sideburns and glasses so tiny that he practically had to squint through them. He looked, simultaneously, like a twenty-year-old trying to be stylish, and a fifty-year-old trying even harder. Either direction, he was an awkward boss, uneasy with his authority. Yesterday, when he stumbled and stammered through the bad news about the airline’s bankruptcy filing, people understood him only because the story had already been reported in the morning’s newspaper. Michelle guessed Wade had known sooner, by at least a few days, and hadn’t summoned the nerve to tell them.
    He was even more flustered now than yesterday. “There’s going to be an announcement. Flight 1137, uh, over the loudspeaker in a few minutes. We’re gathering—you know, all the people here to meet the flight—gathering them in the courtesy office downstairs. Outside the baggage claim area, where most of them are already waiting.”
    “What