The Pale Man Rises

CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

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As he stood at the threshold of the aisle, which divided the seats on the bus he could see all the faces of the remaining passengers. There were eight people besides the two who had so frightened him. They looked equally sad, as though they were sad for not only themselves, but sad for him also. Being a minister he could only imagine how the early Christians of Rome, tossed to the lions and other beasts, must have looked when room was made for another victim in their midst. It seemed they were cognizant of their eminent doom and their emphatic demeanor meant they regretted that he too was now one of their number.

So was the pale man who studied him from the rear of the bus the lion about to devour the lot of them as if an instrument of some Imperial command bent on their destruction? He looked fierce enough to do so. Slowly, reluctantly, he maneuvered himself down the aisle. He buoyed his courage and forced himself even further on moving to an empty seat on the right of the bus and at a position where he could, as it were, spy on the pale man and the soldier who seemed to be under the spell of this vacuous creature. Why he did this he did not know, but he felt he must. Perhaps he felt he was an instrument of God and must confront this pale man in his, dark clothing that looked to him as if he was the very essence of death.

At the seat he chose he halted and then he boldly looked at the men in the rear of the bus. And then he saw the third man. His hands were folded over the edge of the seat where the pale man sat. He rocked as he did and peered around the corner of the backrest like a bashful child.

The pale man noted his courage. The Indian soul of the man registered and the pale man realized what he was. He sniffed the air, and his nostrils flared as he caught the odor of Locklear's primitive blood. Behind his glasses he closed his eyes and reminisced of times long ago, long ago. The many, times in the past when he had taken one of these people. He curled his lips as he removed the glasses and showed the Indian his yellow eyes. Then he smiled an evil prophetic smile. And now like a menacing lover he puckered his lips and made a kissing gesture to the Indian man.

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Locklear glared at him defiantly. The pale man smiled again and then he raised his left arm and put it over the shoulders of the soldier as if he was a suitor. He then raised his right arm and intertwined the fingers of that hand with the fingers of the man who wore a filthy T-shirt and had a near mad face as he sat behind them like a wretched bodyguard. He looked like some pompous gay character displaying his lovers for all to see.

Locklear almost rushed him with a fury beyond description. He knew he should leave, he knew it and yet at the same time, felt compelled to remain. He placed his small suitcase in the luggage rack and slid into his own seat. He cut his eyes that way and waited for them for he was certain they would be coming. Why didn't he run? He was still terrified and yet he stayed as though he was one of God's own warriors and must do so.

It was impossible for him to relax. The bus door closed as the driver now seated himself and began to adjust various knobs and buttons on the vehicle's dash. Locklear noticed that he did not bother with the mirror, and he knew why. Isn't it funny, he thought, that a person will sometimes refuse to face danger when it is eminent as if somehow that will make it disappear. He equated it to whistling past the graveyard.

He on the other hand had a talisman to defy this evil. And he also knew that it might not succeed, God made no guarantees save but for the promise of salvation to one who had truly repented. God had laws, laws of physics and perhaps had even arranged those laws as to be irreversible if He wished, even to the point that He Himself could not alter them. A god that knows no limitations can make the nonsensical a reality. A mystery no doubt and certainly illogical which may seem a contradiction to such an ordered world. But after all isn't God the Eternal Mystery?