I've always seen things most others haven't. Call it a "sixth sense" or whatever. I'd seen a few spirits at my old home in New Orleans, I'd seen them at the playground as a child, and I see them now as I travel.
I can always tell which ones are humans and which are spirits. The spirits seem to have a glowing blue or white aura around them, like a fog lifting from their skin. I saw a middle-aged man with cheery green eyes at my hotel a few nights ago. He smiled at me, likely because he knew someone was actually smiling back.
I've been traveling for about twelve hours now - minus staying the night at a hotel - and I am currently standing at a bus stop in Oklahoma. My boyfriend is staying in Seattle for work during the summer, so I thought I'd come and keep him company.
The thick, humid air is making my hair frizzy, and I can practically feel the purple bags under my eyes. I was relieved when I finally saw the white bus approaching the curb, and I grabbed my things and boarded.
The hefty, old bus driver smiled warmly at me as I handed him my change, and I found a seat a couple of rows from the back. Surprisingly, the bus wasn't terribly empty at three-thirty in the morning. There were few seats open, and I had guessed most of the people here were either leaving their graveyard shifts or going on vacation.
I made myself comfortable in the plush carpeted seat and looked out the window as the bus pulled away. The country music drifting out of the bus's speakers was becoming unbearable, even giving I came from the South.
So, instinctively I shoved a hand in my purse and dug around for my headphones. I cursed myself for having so many things crammed into my small bag, impatiently feeling around for the headphones. My fingers had just brushed them when the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Something was here.
The bus came to a halt, and the doors slid open. My eyes snapped forward to the end of the aisle, where an elderly woman in a dark shawl stood. She was handed the driver her change and slowly turned her head to me. She knew I knew.
Her eyes were dark and her skin gray, but the weirder thing was that she had no aura. This hadn't happened before. All spirits had auras. Most would think that she was just a brittle old lady, which I wanted to believe, but I just knew that something was off.
She practically glided down the aisle, stopping and sitting once she reached the very back row of seats. I felt her beady eyes staring daggers at the back of my head. I was in a cold sweat, feeling uneasiness that I hadn't felt before.
But what clicked in my mind, what really made me uneasy - the driver and even some of the people who had moved to let her by, had seen her. Was I going crazy? I could hear her shallow raspy breathing behind me, like a broken squeaky toy. After minutes of fear, I finally worked up the courage to turn around.
I was right, she was still staring at me. And her stare was even unwavering once I turned around. She looked straight at me, and a wrinkled smile slowly crept across her face. She looked at me as if she recognized me. The longer I stared back at her, the more I was starting to think I recognized her, too.
She raised a thin, gray eyebrow at me and tilted her head. She was waiting for it to click. And when it did, I thought surely that I would throw up. I had seen her, fifteen years ago when my brother died. He had drowned at the beach during one of our family vacations, and right before it happened, I saw her wading in the water behind him.
I remember thinking she looked like an eel, sneaky and brooding. But I was only four years old at the time, and I didn't know much about my sight yet, or why I was seeing this strange old woman.
She was now nodding her head at me as she read the recognition in my eyes. She winked at me once and slowly held up a bony finger to point at the front of the bus. No sooner had I averted my eyes then I heard the most ear-shattering, piercing scream I had heard in my life.
I whipped my head back to the old woman, only to find an empty seat. And that's about when the plane engine landed on the bus.
No screams were heard then. It happened too fast for anyone to react. The elderly lady watched with glowing red eyes as the flames engulfed the wreckage in front of her. Then she slowly wobbled down the sidewalk, towards where flight 319 would make its final landing.
