Enter, Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

wheels.
Gravel
?
We’re supposed to be on a highway
. Jordan pressed his
face against the window. Beyond the thick fog, there was nothing but
blackness. He saw no other cars, no gas stations, and no highway lights of
any kind. It was as though the outside world had simply been swallowed
up. The rows of seats ahead of him were tombstone-shaped in the gloom.
He shook his head, trying to shake off the thick, gauzy haze left by the
painkillers and the whiskey.
    Something’s not right here. Something’s not right at all.
    Jordan stood up and was assailed by an unfamiliar odour that made
his stomach clench. For a moment, he was sure he was going to puke.
It reminded him of iodine and rust, or the rotten smell of sulphur, or
stagnant pond water, or shit, or some foul combination of all four.
    He stepped out into the aisle of the bus and felt his way along the
rows in the darkness. The smell grew thicker as he advanced. The bus
was unbearably hot, as though the driver had turned up the heat as high
as he could. Again, his head throbbed and he felt his stomach contract in
protest against the thick smell in the air.
    How can the driver not smell this? It’s disgusting! How can he keep
driving and not wonder if anyone is sick back here? For that matter, how could
any of the other passengers stand it?
    Jordan took another step up the aisle and slipped in a slick patch
on the floor. The forward motion of his foot and his own weight carried
him backwards. He lost his balance and fell, landing on his tailbone and
elbows. Bolts of sharp pain shot up his arms and spine. Wincing, he rose
to his feet and flicked the switch above the nearest empty seat. In the
watery halo of lamp light, Jordan held his hands out in front of him and
stared. His first thought was that perhaps he’d cut himself when he fell.
Then he looked at the legs of his jeans. They were smeared and wet, and
as red as his hands. Jordan knew what the smell was. He was covered in
blood—not his blood, someone else’s. Someone very close by. He stifled
the scream that threatened to erupt from his throat, and turned on the
light above the seat in front of him.
    Then, Jordan did scream. There was no way
not
to.
    He was looking at the body of a woman with her throat torn out.
The blood from her wounds—there seemed to be at least two, apart from
her torn throat, including a deep gash in the top of her skull from which
a thick paste of brain, bone fragments, and hair, was leaking like red
oatmeal. It had all but obliterated her face. Her left ear looked as if it had
been half-bitten off and lay raggedly against the side of her skull. Jordan
looked at the seat next to the woman’s body. Amidst the rags—no, not
rags, a little girl’s fluffy pink coat marbled with great whorls of crimson—
Jordan was just able to make out a tiny red hand and a dangling green
rubber boot.
    Up ahead, at the front of the bus, the slumped shape behind the
wheel drove erratically forward, apparently oblivious to Jordan’s screams.
In the driver’s window, thick tentacles of fog beckoned and recoiled in
the yellow headlights. Jordan thought he could make out clumps of trees
crowding in on either side of the road. They were definitely not on a
highway. Jordan had spent his entire—if brief—life in the country and
he recognized a country road when he saw it, even at five a.m. in a blind
terror at the scene of some sort of gruesome bloodbath through which
he’d apparently slept like the dead in a haze of painkillers and whiskey.
But he was awake now—completely, horribly awake. Either that, or his
nightmare had somehow followed him out of his dream and into real life.
    He screamed, “Stop! Stop the bus! Stop the bus! She’s dead!
Somebody killed a lady!”
    Calmly, the driver turned the wheel of the bus and pulled over to
the side of the highway. There appeared to be no haste, no urgency in the
sequence of movements.
    Still not right,
Jordan’s