Angela woke up sometime in the night to the sound of a drunkard yodeling out a melody. It was too dark to see anything around her, and she was cold, even with the two blankets she had found in the storage compartment. Her eyes felt so heavy, she could barely keep them open. She slipped back into her sleep, the feeling of exhaustion taking over her again.
What could have been anywhere from a couple of minutes to an hour later, she woke to the sound of yells, shouts, and screams. Her eyes felt fogged by sleep, but she could see there were flickering lights outside the bus's windows. They looked like the flickering of a candle light. She sat up and tried to stand on weary legs, almost falling as soon as she stood, but kept her balance. Walking to the front of the bus, she could hear a pounding coming from outside of the door. When she got there she saw an older man in a heavy, gray winter coat banging on the outside, a torch in one hand. “Help!” he yelled to her. “Please, please, help me! They're going to kill us all! Open the door! Please!” His voice was coarse – strained – like he had been yelling all through the night. More people were behind him running to the left, almost everyone with a torch in hand. Calling for someone to help them. Old and young men, women, and children, all in thick coats and sweaters, yelling and screaming for help.
She was tempted to open the door, but at the same time she was not sure if she should. Who was that man out there in the first place? Another stranger out in the dark. What if he tried something on her? What if he tried to kill her? For the bus or for whatever might be on it. What was everyone running from? Why were they screaming, and screaming so terribly that it even scared her? She saw the face of some thing. Its skin falling away from its face in some areas, such as its cheek, the muscles now showing. The teeth were sharp and gray. There was barely any hair on its head. She had only seen it for a split second, but registered everything about it. It had jumped at that old man and knocked him to the hard, cement ground. She could hear the horrid screams of that old man, hear his flesh tear away. She guessed it was from his neck, his last screams being gargled, but she couldn't see clearly through the grime and dirt of the door's windows.
Curiosity was too strong against her gut feelings and fear, to keep her feet planted where they were. She took a few steps down and placed her face sideways against the door's window, looking to the right. All she saw was more people running towards her and then off to nowhere again. It was a gray darkness to the right, with only the light of a bonfire near the brick wall of a building to show the incomers that were with and without torches. The people who did have torches were seen only as soon as they passed the bonfire, something she found curious. No light from the bonfire went into the alleyway, it was pure darkness there. How do they just appear out of the darkness after passing that? What are they running from? What was that thing? She looked down to where the old man had been jumped on, but he was not there. She looked back up to watch for the strange creatures and running people, but when she did, there was no one else coming. The sidewalk had mysteriously gone empty. Everyone was gone. Vanished. Curiosity took an even stronger hold of her. She went back up into the bus to pull on the lever and open the door. She took a deep breath to try and calm herself, then walked down those few, mile long steps.
Looking to the right and then the left, the sidewalk was still empty. Everyone was still gone. It was even colder outside the bus than it was inside and lighter now on the right, but still a foggy gray. To the left, it was also lighter than before, also a foggy gray. Maybe the sun was beginning to rise? She looked to the bonfire, but that was now gone. Turning around to look at the bus, she saw that the bus was also gone. What in the world...? A large sounding BANG vibrated through the streets, coming from the left. She looked there, but still it was only foggy, gray, and completely empty of people. She started her walk in that direction.
Every part of the street was bare and empty of people or any life. No rats running about or that old cat chasing them, no bugs scuttling along the dirty and grimy ground, no sound or sight of birds. Nothing. It was a lonely street, but the possibility of someone or something being beyond the fog, the cause of the big bang sound was there and she wanted to find out who or what it was. The shops she was passing still had dusty windows and cobwebs, some of the figurines being partially broken, missing a head or an arm or just a slightly cracked, blank face. It was a little scary to her, it felt like she could be walking in a horror movie, but she stayed as calm and collected as she could in the situation. At long last she reached the end of the street, and both ways were bare, both ways just as empty as the street she just walked down, and just as foggy. She couldn't decide which street she should go down so she just went with her gut and turned right.
BANG. Another bang had vibrated through the street, but from the other direction, so she turned around. BANG. Another bang but from behind her, the way she was originally planning to go. She turned her head that way. BANG. Another from behind her, from the street she was just on. BANG... BANG... BANG. Her feet felt the vibrations. BANG. Her head began to ache. What is going on? I don't understand. None of this makes any sense to me. What is going – BANG.
Angela woke up with a jolt, quickly sitting up where she lay in the seat. Her head swam at the rushed movement. BANG. Someone or something had hit the side of the bus. Oh, god, could it be that creature? She was still dazed from her dream and couldn't tell if she was asleep or awake anymore. Throwing off the blanket covers, she rushed to the other side of the bus and looked out the window. There was a young child leaning against the building across from her, throwing a small, dirty, and partially ragged ball at the bus, letting it bounce back, catching it, and then throwing it again. BANG. It was the sound she kept hearing in her dream.
She began to calm down and her heart slowed, now she knew what the sound was and it wasn't one of those scary, gray creatures coming to get her; however, the thought of that creature she saw in her dream, or nightmare, still scared her.It wasn't until she thought about it again that she realized that dream was the first nightmare she recalled ever having before. Never had she had one. She was always one of those people who had the happiest dreams with bright blue skies and warm waters, butterflies flying all around, or wonderful adventures taken place in lands never seen before, lands whose colors didn't make sense in the real world.Where were those purple grasses? Those lovely, light-filled fairies? What happened to seeing her mom and dad holding hands on swings with her? What about all those happy memories she made with Trista?
Trista... How many times was she going to keep coming back to Angela's mind? I haven't seen her for years... I haven't played with her – pretended to play with her for years. Why does she keep coming back to mind lately? Angela had another thought, that maybe it was her current situation and troubles that conjured up the memory of Trista. Maybe she needed something else that was happy to focus on. But then why the nightmare? It was just a stressful time at the moment, that was all, that was all she would let herself believe. What more was there to believe it could be? She was not a psychologist.
Angela saw the metal money box was still where she had left it before, sitting in the seat the water bottle guard had used to sit in. She walked over to it, grabbed it, and sat down on the floor, pondering what she should do to try and open it. Did the guard say the driver had the key or the other guard had the key? Was he lying? She wasn't sure she would be able to open the box, since all her other past attempts had ultimately failed and there was no way she would be able to find the key when the dead guard and the driver were out in the middle of no where. Both probably dead by now. It wasn't worth going that far to get a key either. She had the feeling to look at the key ignition and noticed something: there was another couple keys along with the ignition key. Maybe one of those was the key for the box. Why she had not thought to look there before, she didn't know, but she felt foolish for not doing so earlier. And so it must have been the driver who had the key?
She got up, grabbed the key out of the ignition, and tried out one of the other keys on the box. It didn't open. It was the smallest key, probably used for one of the compartments in the bus. She tried the next key and the box opened. Inside there was a nest of bills, ranging from ones to a twenty, and also a single fifty. She dumped all the money out and loose change clanged on the floor.
