Enter, Night Read Online Free PDF

passengers on the northern routes, Jim
realized, and he wondered how long Northern Star would be able to hold
out. His retirement wouldn’t come a moment too soon.
    Jim turned the bus west on Highway 17 and repeated the name
of the coming towns like a mantra: Whitefish, Spanish, Serpent River,
Thessalon, Garden River, Lake Hepburn, Sault Ste. Marie.
    It would be hours yet before dawn. It was going to be a long fucking
night.
    At 4:15 a.m., Jim Marks pulled the bus over to the side of the road to
investigate what he feared might be a flat tire on the right side. He took
his parka down from the overhead compartment, put it on, and stepped
outside.
    Overhead, the full moon shone down like a headlight. The thought
came to him—as it happened, one of the last thoughts he would ever
have—that he’d never seen a night this bright and clear up north. The
radius of the moon’s light aureole was such that while the larger sky was
as blackest black, the area around the moon itself was indigo blue.
    He shone his flashlight along the undercarriage of the bus. The tires
were all intact and none were damaged. He shrugged. Whatever he had
heard and felt, at least it wasn’t a flat. He’d include the incident in his
report and the mechanics could check it out when they pulled into Sault
Ste. Marie. He checked his watch. They’d only lost fifteen minutes. He
stepped back onto the bus and looked down the aisle. The passengers
seemed to have slept through the stop, which, given that most bus
passengers on long routes were light sleepers, was itself a miracle.
    Jim settled himself into his seat. He fastened his seat belt and
started the engine.
    In his peripheral vision, he caught an abrupt flurry of motion in the
rearview mirror and looked up.
    The man in the army surplus jacket from the back of the bus wasn’t
asleep at all. He was wide awake. He was running along the aisle of the
bus with spider like agility, past the sleeping teenager, past the woman
and her little girl, towards the driver’s seat.
    Jim opened his mouth to tell the man to go back to his seat and
sit down, but nothing came out. Then, suddenly, the man was directly
behind Jim and drawing back his arm. In his hand, he held something
long that gleamed in the overhead light of the cabin. The last thing Jim
Marks saw was a flash of silver in the gloom as the man’s arm came down
viciously in a wide arc.
    Jim threw his arms up to protect his face, but it was too late. There
was a short, blinding sheet of white-hot pain and sharp pressure as the
chisel end of the archaeological rock hammer split open his skull, but his
conscious mind barely had time to register it as pain. He was dead before
he hit the floor.
    Jordan was jolted awake as the bus swerved on the highway. For a
moment he didn’t know where he was. He’d been dreaming that he was
caught in a thunderstorm, or an earthquake. There had been the sound
of thunder and of a woman singing some sort of high-pitched, screaming
lament. It had been a harsh, unpleasant sound—one that, even asleep,
had filled Jordan with dread.
    He blinked and looked around him. Then he felt his face begin to
throb, and he remembered that he was on a bus.
    Jordan looked down at his watch. It was five a.m. His mouth was
parched. He half-stood in his seat and looked around. The darkness
inside the bus was complete except for the green glow coming from the
dashboard. Squinting, he could make out the shape of the bus driver
hunched over the steering wheel, but nothing else. He tried to remember
what time they’d left Toronto—six? Six-thirty? It was now five in the
morning. They weren’t due to reach Lake Hepburn till after six. And had
the bus been full? He tried to remember—half full? A quarter full? He
switched on the overhead light above his seat. The weak bulb illuminated
nothing besides his seat and the seat next to his.
    The bus was moving very slowly and he heard gravel under the