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Slightly late for Halloween, but I thought I do a bit of an expansion of my little 100 word drabble The Wanderer. I'm still in a bit of a ghostly mood.
Title: Cainsford Fourteen Miles
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Original Work (Suitcase Wanderers universe)
Characters/Pairings: Sandra, Anna, Ephraim, the White Lady. Anna & Ephraim
Summary: The Cainsford Fourteen, the last stretch of road into Cainsford, has been haunted for years. Everyone who drives the 19A, the night route into town, knows that good and well. This time, though, Sandra has a passenger aboard who might be able to help
Wordcount: 6035
Warnings/Notes: Ghosts, haunted roads, white ladies, skeletons, bodies, violence, protection, closure, moving on, moving forward, hopeful ending
Claimer: This one's mine
Title: Cainsford Fourteen Miles
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Original Work (Suitcase Wanderers universe)
Characters/Pairings: Sandra, Anna, Ephraim, the White Lady. Anna & Ephraim
Summary: The Cainsford Fourteen, the last stretch of road into Cainsford, has been haunted for years. Everyone who drives the 19A, the night route into town, knows that good and well. This time, though, Sandra has a passenger aboard who might be able to help
Wordcount: 6035
Warnings/Notes: Ghosts, haunted roads, white ladies, skeletons, bodies, violence, protection, closure, moving on, moving forward, hopeful ending
Claimer: This one's mine
Cainsford Fourteen Miles
The signpost loomed out of the dark and the drizzle as the bus crested the hill, glowing bright for a second as the headlights bounced off it. Sandra, in the driver's seat, grimaced faintly at it. She knew what it said without ever having to read it. Everyone who drove Route 19A, the night route from Heraway to Cainsford, knew what this particular signpost said.
Cainsford 14 miles. The signpost on the road to hell.
"It's all downhill from here," she muttered, tapping her fingers nervously on the wheel. They all said it. Everyone on 19A said the words as they passed the sign. It'd been a joke once, way back ten or fifteen years. Before the black spots, and the accidents, and the rumours. All downhill to Cainsford. Now it was a ritual, a girding of the loins. You said the words so that Fate would know you knew where you were going, so he'd know you respected it, so he'd be nice enough to get you through it in one piece.
The bus company didn't like it. Never had. They called it rampant superstition, spreading hysteria around the drivers lounge and putting the willies up newbies. The 19A rotation didn't give two shits. The words were a talisman. None of them would risk not saying them. Not here, not this stretch of road, and sure as hell not at night.
There were bad things on the road to Cainsford. The words were the least of the superstitions, and they were about the only ones that actually helped.
Sandra set her jaw, and reached up to switch off the radio. Not everybody did that. Some of 'em wouldn't dream of it. The Cainsford Fourteen was bad enough without adding grim silence on top of it, and some of the customers, particularly the local ones who knew enough to be nervous on the stretch themselves, had complained about her for it. Sandra needed it off, though. It made things feel unreal to her, the contrast between the road and whatever cheerful bullshit was coming in over the airwaves. Silence was better. It made her pay attention. It kept everything grounded. She needed that on the Fourteen.
She did send a glance at the interior mirror, though. Checking her one lonesome passenger this evening, making sure the sudden silence hadn't disturbed her too much. It didn't seem to have. Sandra wasn't surprised, really. The young woman wasn't local. She was on a long haul from over east somewhere, lugging that seriously ancient suitcase along beside her. She didn't know enough to be worried about the Fourteen. That was fine by Sandra. The less the customers knew, the less fuss they tended to make about it. That was only ever to the good.
She put her eyes back on the road. The Fourteen swayed around the place a lot, weaving down the valley wall through the trees. The weather was shit tonight as well. The drizzle made everything slick and dangerous, and it didn't do all that much to help visibility either. Sandra'd slowed instinctively as soon as they'd passed the sign. It was another thing the company complained about, the way they all lost time coming into Cainsford. Again, the rotation hadn't given a rat's ass. The company wouldn't have that problem if they just set back the timetable to accommodate it like they'd been told to. Two accidents and about four almosts on, they were going slow or they weren't going at all.
Sometimes, Sandra honestly wondered why the company didn't just scrap the route and have done. Surely they were getting to that point by now? Nobody local took 19A if they could help it, and they didn't usually get enough long-haulers through to justify it. Hell, she only had one on tonight, and that was far from unusual. Most everybody heading to Cainsford either took the 18 during the day, or took the 12 over to Rochester if they were travelling by night and switched to the McKinley Special to come in on the other side of town, away from the Fourteen. Even if the company head didn't want to bow to 'rampant superstition', sooner or later he'd have to bow to economic necessity. They couldn't afford to keep running an empty route much longer.
Sandra was praying for the day. She had the seniority to transfer over to another route when it happened, and if worst came to worst McKinley's was often hiring these days. Anything to get off this goddamned stretch of road in the small hours of the goddamned morning. She'd been lucky so far. For two and half years, she'd been lucky. That had to run out some day ...
"Excuse me, ma'am? Do you think we could pull over?"
Sandra nearly jumped out of her skin, the bus shuddering a little bit before she pulled it back again. She didn't scream, or curse, though that last was a damned near thing. Passenger. Only the passenger. Shit. The woman had come up the bus to the seat behind the driver's, her voice low and apologetic as she interrupted Sandra's train of thought. Jesus, lady. Not on the Fourteen. Damn it, don't do that on the Fourteen.
"Can you hold it a little longer, Miss?" she asked, a little raggedly. Bad form, to be showing these kinds of nerves to a customer, but tonight was not a good night. Sandra just had that feeling. She couldn't help it. "This is a bad stretch, and we're nearly to Cainsford. Just a few more minutes, okay?"
There was a little pause, and then the young woman leaned forward into Sandra's peripheral vision, her expression grim. "No," she said quietly. "I don't think we can hold it. I'm sorry ma'am. You need to pull over now."
Sandra nearly did, just out of pure nerves. She was rattled enough tonight that she might have pulled over anyway. She was already going slow enough for a grandma on a Sunday as it was. Just stopping, pulling over to breathe for a bit, wasn't that bad of a thought--
Something flickered in the interior mirror. She only just caught it, looked over out of habit just to check. It took a second to make sense of it, and then Sandra screamed, high and thin, and slammed on the brakes without a thought. It was a bad plan. The drizzle had slicked everything over and they were heading downhill. The bus slewed out to one side before they made it to a stop, but they hadn't been on the bad bad part. They had a bit of a straight, and no traffic, and they made to a safe settle without harm. Sandra only barely noticed. Her eyes were locked on the mirror, and the figure it showed standing in the aisle behind her one, lone passenger this evening.
"No," she whispered, while the pale shape of a man looked sadly down at her. "No. It's not supposed to happen this way. You're not supposed to be inside. It doesn't happen this way. You're not here. Why are you here?"
"... Ah," said the young woman behind her, watching Sandra thoughtfully and ignoring the ghost standing at her shoulder. "Well, that answers one question, at least. You know this road is haunted, then?"
She sounded so casual about it. Blasé. Sandra dragged her eyes away from the mirror, turning in her seat to look at ... at them. The ghost didn't vanish in the process. He stayed right there, as visible in real life as in the mirror, though a little bit more see-through. He nodded carefully to her, and reached forward to rest his hand gently on her passenger's shoulder. The young woman glanced up at him with a smile. Sandra stared at the pair of them in horror.
"What?" she said helplessly. "Who ... What? Who are you? What are you ...?"
"Not the one who hurts you," the woman said quietly, looking away from her ghost to meet Sandra's eyes calmly. She had a very calm face in general, Sandra thought distantly. It looked young, but mature. Her thick black hair was feathered slightly with grey at one temple. A trick of genetics, Sandra had thought when she came aboard. Now, looking at the ghost, she thought maybe not. "He's my ghost, not yours. He isn't going to hurt you. We just wanted you to pull over."
Sandra shook her head. She kept shaking it, for more than minute. It didn't make sense. She didn't want it to make sense. It didn't happen this way. It had never happened to her before, and it wasn't supposed to happen this way. She'd been so lucky. It wasn't supposed to happen like this.
"... Why?" she managed at last. "Why do we need ...?"
It wasn't the woman who answered her. It was the ghost. He came forward to stand more fully beside his partner, his expression grim and his hand still firm at her shoulder, and reached out with the other hand to point forward through the windshield. He didn't say anything. Sandra didn't even know if he could. The gesture was so ominous and insistent that she followed it anyway.
She didn't scream this time. Maybe a small whine, thin and ragged out of her, but she didn't scream. She'd been expecting this sight. She'd been waiting for it for two and a half years. It was the one everyone on the 19A was always waiting for.
The white figure stood in the middle of the road, just barely visible through the mist and the rain. It was a ways off, beyond the beams of the headlights. If it hadn't been glowing faintly, she'd never have seen it. But you didn't. That was the point. You never saw this figure until the headlights hit her out of the blue, and you had to swerve violently around her. She waited ... Sandra felt her stomach sink. The straight. They were on the short straight, just above the hard right. The first of the Fourteen's bad spots. They'd stopped just above the first of the Lady's waiting places.
She looked away from the Lady. It hurt something in her chest to do it, an old fear wound tight over years that didn't want to let go, but she managed it. The ghost, the other ghost, looked down at her, a sad little smile on his face. The young woman beside him reached forward and rested a careful hand on Sandra's arm in sympathy.
"We felt her coming," she told Sandra quietly. "Ephraim did. He doesn't normally show himself. We didn't mean to frighten you. We just had to make you stop before the bend. We could feel her lurking there."
Sandra blinked at her, before glancing back at the Lady compulsively. Some part of her had to keep track of her. The Lady was the reason ... Two 'accidents' in ten years. Just on the 19A, not counting anyone else. Mike had mostly stayed on the road, coming out of it with only shock and a few minor injuries among his passengers. Amos had ploughed into a ditch below the third bad spot. Sliced his head open, nearly lost an eye. One of his passengers had died. He said she'd followed him. All the way from this spot. She chased him down until he went off the road. The Lady didn't like the 19A. They didn't know why, but she didn't. She came after them particularly. The high ups could call it superstition all they damn well pleased, but the rotation knew. That's why they said the words at the top of the hill. That's why they warned the newbies and the company be damned. The Lady came for them. The Lady liked to scare them, to hunt them down, and when their luck ran out, the Lady liked to push them off the road.
"We're going to deal with it," the young woman told her. Reminding Sandra of her presence, drawing her panicked eyes back off that white, distant figure. Her face was still calm when Sandra looked at her. It was thoughtful and composed, and there was no sign of fear in it. Caution, maybe. Wariness. She wasn't stupid, at least. But she wasn't afraid either, and that calmed something in Sandra. That gave her a touch of something not too far from hope.
"Can you?" she asked baldly. She looked back down the road as she said it, keeping the Lady determinedly in sight. "People only get through once they've seen her if she decides to let them. She doesn't like us. What can you do if she doesn't like us?"
The hand on her arm moved with the woman's shrug. "I don't know yet," she said quietly, looking up at her ... her companion. "We'll have a better idea when we've heard what she has to say. That's our problem, though. You just ... You stay here, okay? Turn on the hazard lights and wait for us to come back, all right?"
Sandra snapped around to stare at her again. "Come back?" she asked. "You're going out there? Are you nuts? There's a ---"
She cut off, blinking sheepishly. She'd meant to say, there's a ghost out there. There's a dead lady waiting to hurt people. But, well. There was a ghost in here too, wasn't there? She looked up at him, wild-eyed and confused, and he smiled gently down at her in turn. He took his hand from his partner's shoulder to pat gently at hers, and Sandra closed her eyes at the sensation of it, the chill tingles that ran down her spine. One ghost, two ghosts. What did it matter if they both wanted to go out in the rain? At least they wouldn't be in here. At least they wouldn't be with her.
"Can you hold this for us?" said a voice at her ear, and when Sandra opened her eyes again the young woman was smiling a little lopsidedly at her in tired understanding. She was holding up ...
The suitcase. The ancient, violently battered old thing that she'd refused to keep down in the luggage compartment. Sandra stared at it some. It looked even older now that she was seeing it up close. Something her granddad might have had, an ancient leather thing with brass corners, held closed by a pair of tough-looking belts strapped around it. There was a label on it, faded almost to illegibility. It was the kind of thing that wouldn't have looked out of place in a film about the Depression. Which ...
Sandra looked at the ghost. Ephraim, the woman had called him. A lean, careworn sort of a man, with eyes that she thought would have been pale even if he hadn't been see-through and colourless and dead. It was the suit she looked at, though. It was more than just the suitcase that had made her think of the Depression. There was a reason her mind had gone straight to that.
"It will not harm you," the ghost said quietly. Sandra blinked desperately. Apparently he could speak. "It is mine, yes, but it will not harm you. It may protect you. We do not like touching each other's things. If things go wrong, I think she will be less eager to approach you if you have it to hand."
"Just please give it back afterwards?" The young woman smiled at her. "We need it, and in one piece. It's very important that we get it back. Okay?"
Sandra blinked, and nodded at her on autopilot. "Sure," she said distantly. "I'll give it back. No problem."
"Thank you," said the ghost, with a certain dignified gentility. He nodded to her, and then held at out a hand to the woman at his side. "We should go, Anna. I do not think our White Lady will be patient much longer. It is rude to keep a lady waiting, after all."
The woman, Anna, took a deep breath first. That was oddly comforting to Sandra. As calm as she appeared, the girl wasn't quite as fearless as all that. Sandra didn't want her to be terrified, she wanted to keep hoping there was some way out of this, but it was nice to know that even someone who travelled casually with ghosts still needed to steady her nerves when faced with a bad one. It was ... it was nice not to be the only one scared.
"... Right," said Anna, and reached up to wrap one hand around her necklace. Sandra had noticed it vaguely before. It had a little opaque vial on the end of it. Anna wrapped her hand around that now and gave it a quick squeeze as if for luck. "Let's go, Ephraim. And please, don't say 'ladies first'."
The ghost smiled faintly at her, and made a point to be the first to drift through the still-closed bus doors. Sandra startled a little at it, and remembered herself enough to open them for Anna. She also belatedly switched on the hazards while she was at it. And then ... then she just watched them. She clutched the battered suitcase in her lap, and watched the pair of them walk along the length of the headlights towards the white figure in the darkness beyond them.
The White Lady watched them too. She didn't move. Sometimes she did. Sometimes she ran at you out of the dark. She didn't do that now. Sandra couldn't see her that clearly, not out beyond the lights and with the misty drizzle that was still coming down, but the Lady did not move, not towards them and not away from them. Anna stopped not too far from her, with Ephraim ahead of her and slightly in front of her, and the Lady ... didn't move. She waited until they began to talk.
They made a surreal picture, Sandra thought, biting one nail while she watched them. Three figures standing in the road, two of them pale and dead and the third so calm beside them, talking to each other on the edge of a headlight's glow. It didn't happen like this. Nothing happened like this. Not even on the Cainsford Fourteen.
She didn't know how long it took before something started to change down there. It could have been minutes. It could have been hours. She was distantly conscious that her timetable was shot to hell, even by Cainsford standards. She'd be hearing about that when she finally made the depot. Sandra almost laughed when she recognised the thought. She wasn't sure if it said more about her terror or her training that she was even thinking about that right now. How ingrained did a thing have to be that you'd be worried about it with two ghosts outside your door? But maybe she should call ahead. Tell them she'd had a minor breakdown on the Fourteen. Hah!
Oh, but that would be cruel. There was only one sort of breakdown up here. She'd have the Cainsford emergency services up around them within the hour, and right now they did not need that. Sandra knew barely anything about Anna and Ephraim, but she didn't think they'd want the cops knocking around suddenly. And the Lady ... the Lady definitely wouldn't like it. The Lady would possibly violently not like it. No. No, Sandra thought. Things hadn't exploded yet. Let's not mess them up.
The Lady moved just as she thought it. It was almost as if she'd heard the thought, heard the futile prayer of it. The White Lady reared up, suddenly so much bigger and brighter than either Anna or Ephraim, and snarled up at Sandra with a face that was now a mask of fury. Anna yelled something, staggering to one side as the Lady seemed to fling her out of the way, and then all Sandra could see was a white flash in the headlights as the Lady dove for her head-on.
She screamed, knocking her knee against the underside of the wheel as she flung herself back away from the thing. She threw her arms up instinctively, shoving the suitcase up between her and the windshield. Something hit it, almost hit her, but even as she felt it Sandra knew it wasn't right. It hadn't happened right. There'd been no smash, no thunder of glass and rain as the windshield came in. It had been ... it had been something else. Something cold and icy that hit and lodged in her chest, and hurt.
Then it stopped. All at once, all of a sudden, the frozen thing let go of her chest, and Sandra let the suitcase slide down until she could see it. Them.
Ephraim stood in front of her. Flew, hovered. Something. He was just inside the front of the bus, standing through the steering wheel, as transparent as the glass of the windshield. The Lady was beyond him, back out in the rain. She was howling silently, a sound Sandra could almost but not quite hear, her face twisted with pure fury. Her fists were raised, thrashing and struggling in the air, and Ephraim's hands were locked viciously around her wrists. Sandra couldn't see his expression, if he even had one, she wasn't used to translating something so distorted and seen through the back of its owner's head, but every line of the ghost's posture spoke of rigid, vicious anger. The White Lady thrashed and roared in his hands, and Ephraim bore down against her with icy temper.
And beyond him, beyond them both, Anna stood drenched and determined in the headlights, her mouth moving as she said something too strange and garbled for Sandra to make out. Something long, anyway, and angry too. Something that seemed to leech the fight out of the Lady the more it went on. Though that might have been Ephraim. Something about the way the Lady's arms tried to bow away from his grip made Sandra think that it was not at all a pleasant hold.
Then, as suddenly as the attack on Sandra had ceased, the fight went out of the Lady altogether. She went small all of a sudden, and less tangible than even Ephraim, the strange light she'd always had fading away while she crumpled towards the road. Ephraim followed her, drifting smoothly forward out of the windshield and onto the ground. Anna stepped back to allow it, and Sandra, after a wild moment of waiting for her heart to come down out of her mouth, got up out of her seat to peer towards them down the front of the bus. She took the suitcase with her, her knuckles white around the handle. She wasn't sure she was able to let go of it at this point.
She needn't have worried, though. The Lady was ... the Lady was kneeling in a heap on the asphalt, her arms still held in Ephraim's hands, but more gently now. He was lowering them even as Sandra made it to the windshield to watch. He let the Lady take them back, let her tuck them in against her chest, and rested his hands carefully on her shoulders instead. She looked ... she looked different, suddenly. The Lady had always been just a white blur, or a monstrous face at the windshield. She looked almost human now. Almost ... almost familiar.
Sandra's breath hitched as the Lady looked up at her. Not almost familiar. Not almost at all. She did know that face. She'd seen it, nine, ten years back. No, more than that. She'd only barely been starting then, only a few months on the job. Way back at the start of the Cainsford Fourteen. It wasn't counted as one of the accidents. It'd been before that all started. Leo had left after it. He'd quit not two weeks later. It was ... Damn. What was her name? What the hell was her name?
Cassie. Cassie Fields. Leo hadn't hit her, as such. She'd been walking up the lower end of the Fourteen, trying to hitchhike out of Cainsford. It'd been a bad night, much like this one, light rain and mist and horrible visibility. The bus had clipped her at the bad bend, more buffeted her away than struck her, but she'd slipped and gone over the safety rail. It wasn't a high drop, not just there, only a few feet, but she'd landed wrong and broken her neck. Leo hadn't even seen her. It was only when the cops had found her a few days later that he'd figured out what must have happened. It had broken him.
It had, apparently, pissed Cassie Fields right the hell off. The White Lady hated the 19A. Ten years now, she'd been coming for them. Shit. Shit. Why had none of them ever figured out why?
Sandra walked slowly down the steps. She felt herself doing it, felt it happening, but it was nearly distant enough that she didn't know why. She stepped out into the rain and around the front of the bus, still holding the suitcase absently in her hand. They looked at her. All three of them. They stared at her in some consternation.
"... He left," she heard herself say, looking down at what was left of Cassie Fields. He'd been a friend of hers, Leo. Sort of. He'd shown her the ropes, anyway. She'd been hit bad when he left. It seemed so distant now. "After he hit you. He didn't know. Not until later. He left the minute he figured it out. He's not here anymore. He hasn't driven with us for more than ten years."
Ephraim straightened slowly. Carefully. A wary, alarmed expression crept over Anna's now slightly-bruised face. Sandra shook her head. She wasn't paying much attention to them. She had eyes only for Cassie. For the White Lady. The ghost stood up, or became vertical again, and drifted slowly towards her. Sandra didn't flinch. It wasn't even bravery. She just wasn't feeling enough right now to flinch. She was hollow right the way through.
"We didn't know it was you," she said, as the White Lady came close enough to touch. She thought, vaguely, about raising the suitcase again, but couldn't quite manage it. Cassie didn't touch her, anyway. Only stared, from half a foot away, as Sandra struggled to explain. "Most of us ... I was new then. I'm one of the oldest now. It wasn't ... It's been ten years. Didn't you know that?"
"... Ghosts do not have the same sense of time," Ephraim said quietly behind them. He wore an odd expression. Anna's was full of pity. "And she did not know the driver. She only knew the bus. The bus killed her. She's been trying to kill the bus. It never stays dead. It keeps coming back, just like her. She thought she was in hell."
... Yeah, Sandra thought. She could see why. She'd have thought much the same, maybe. The thing that had killed you, coming back over and over again, never staying dead. Sandra had an idea how that felt. So did most of the 19A.
Cainsford 14 miles. All downhill from here. Yeah, they had an idea.
She blinked a bit, feeling the hollow distance start to recede a little bit. Cassie was so close. Her dead face was right there, her eyes blank and cold and slightly confused as she looked at Sandra. This close, Sandra could see how her neck was wrong beneath it. The head sat loose on it. It was only upright for the same reasons Ephraim had been while hanging through a steering column. Gravity didn't work for ghosts. Broken necks didn't have to hold heads up.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly, trying to meet Cassie's eyes, trying to hold a dead stare. "Leo hit you. He didn't see you, and he didn't know until later. It broke him when he figured it out. He never came back to drive for us. We've been ... It's been a long time since then, Cassie. And if it helps any, you were sort of winning. The route's damn near empty these days. Company can't afford to keep it much longer. The buses are going to stop soon. I had bets on the end of the year. You've been ... It wouldn't have been much longer. We were all just trying to stay alive until the route stopped. You were on the way to winning."
The White Lady tilted her head. It slid horribly to one side of that broken neck. It didn't make a sound. It should have, it looked like it should have made some sort of horrible crackling noise, but it didn't. Sandra bit her lip, feeling her stomach lurch, and just tried to keep holding Cassie's gaze.
It ... It worked, too. Must have. Cassie Fields reached up, an odd, liquid motion of one hand, and touched the side of Sandra's face lightly. Sandra flinched, waiting for violence, and behind the White Lady both Anna and Ephraim flinched as well, but Cassie didn't hurt her. The touch seemed ... more of a thank you, almost. More of an acknowledgement, and something close to a farewell. Cassie nodded carefully, another sickness-inducing motion of her head, and faded back away from Sandra once more. She turned to the other two, offering Anna a little nod, and then she turned to Ephraim. Looked at him, and tilted her head in curious entreaty. Ephraim shook his head.
"I don't know," he said softly, glancing helplessly at Anna. "I've never ... I can't yet. I don't know what happens. I'm sorry."
Anna reached sideways, threaded her fingers gently through his transparent ones and squeezed them gently. Cassie watched that. She seemed to find it pleasing. She flickered forwards, touched her hand to Anna's face gently. The bruise. Cassie touched it lightly in apology. Then she smiled at Ephraim, with something close to pity, and just ...
Vanished. She disappeared, like a wisp of fog in a breeze, and there were only three of them standing in the rain and light of the headlights. It could have been anything, just a ghostly vanishing trick, but Sandra didn't think so. She didn't think any of them did.
Cassie Fields was gone. And, maybe, the White Lady and the Cainsford Fourteen had gone along with her.
Sandra didn't do anything for a second. She didn't even think, not really. She just stood there, feeling not so much hollow as emptied out, and looked at the place where the White Lady had been. The others left her to it. Maybe they needed to just stand a while themselves. Anna kept hold of her partner's hand. There was a part of Sandra that approved of that, for reasons she wasn't sure of just yet.
They had to move eventually, though. Timetable was shot to hell, but they weren't going to get any younger or any less dead standing around here. They were blocking the road, too. Time to head on to Cainsford. Time to bring the last of the Fourteen home.
Sandra was the last one back into the bus. As soon as the door hissed safely shut behind them, she handed the suitcase gingerly back to Anna. She couldn't resist giving it a little pat of thanks. Ephraim had caught up quick, but Sandra was pretty sure that suitcase was the reason that Cassie hadn't killed her before he'd had the chance. She was pretty grateful towards that battered bundle of leather for it. Anna smiled faintly as she took it back. She looked over at Ephraim as though she knew a secret, and Ephraim smiled crookedly back, his pale eyes crinkling quietly at the sides. Sandra let them at it. She couldn't begrudge them much of anything right now.
She did have a few questions though. Just while they made their careful way down the last stretch into Cainsford. She just had a couple of questions.
"Why can't you yet?" she asked Ephraim quietly. Her eyes were back on the road now, but she caught a glimpse of the glance they shared in the interior mirror. Ephraim gestured gently at Anna.
"He has to go home first," Anna answered for him, as quiet as Sandra had been. "That's where we're going. He asked me to get him home, so he can ... So he can get some rest."
She was clutching the suitcase as she said it. Sandra saw it in the mirror and the reflection off the windshield both. Anna pulled the suitcase fully up into her lap and hugged it close. In that second, Sandra had a horrible, terrible thought, and they both caught it on her face. Reflections were useful like that. They both saw her.
"Yes," said Ephraim, smiling crookedly. His hand was resting on Anna's shoulder. The top of the suitcase was nearly touching it. "The suitcase ... yes. You shouldn't worry. I'm only bones now. I died in ... it would have been '37. I rotted away a long time ago. You weren't holding anything nasty. Just some old bones wrapped in old shirts. It means we have to go the long way around, though. No planes. Anna tells me that a suitcase full of bones would not be a good thing to be caught with on a plane."
No, Sandra thought distantly. Probably not, no. A suitcase of bones would not be a good thing to be caught with anywhere.
She wasn't thinking about the other thing. She wasn't thinking about holding it, or patting it gently, or throwing it up between ... A body. She'd been hiding behind his bones. Ephraim had put himself literally body and soul between her and harm. That was ...
"Thank you," she said, around a throat that was suddenly full of tears. "You ... Both of you ... You didn't have to ..."
"It's okay," Anna interrupted her gently. She leaned forward enough to touch Sandra's arm lightly. "She needed rest too, and we weren't going to let anyone hurt you. We don't ... It doesn't seem right to just let these things happen. Not for us. Not given who we are and what we're doing. We did what we wanted to do. It's all right ... Um." She paused, and laughed a little in sudden embarrassment. "We never got your name, did we? All that, and I don't think we ever got your name."
Sandra blinked. She was ... That was right. She knew their names, but only incidentally. Anna had given her Ephraim's almost absently, and she only knew Anna's because Ephraim had called her by it. She had never ... They never exchanged introductions at any point. They'd saved her life, and she'd never even given them her name.
"It's Sandra," she said, laughing a little herself, giving a little glance back in the mirror to share it with them. "Sandy, if you're a friend. And you ... You're Anna and Ephraim, right?"
Anna grinned at her, while Ephraim offered a genteel little bow that almost distracted her enough to run them off the road. Which, no. Not after all that, no sir. Sandra grunted, and focused tighter on the road a bit. They didn't seem to mind much.
"Anna and Ephraim, yes," the ghost said quietly, and seemed to find a particular sort of pleasure in it. He was looking at Anna, when Sandra risked another glance in the mirror. He was smiling down at her. But then, Sandra supposed, a woman who'd risk everything to carry your bones across the country and bring you home would certainly be a thing worth smiling at. Especially if ... if that was the only way to have peace. She thought of Cassie Fields, spending ten years in hell trying to kill a bus that wouldn't die. When had Ephraim said he'd died? 1937. More than sixty years. Sixty years in hell, before Anna had come along to offer him a way out.
Hell of a thing, Sandra thought. The lights of Cainsford were coming into view up ahead of them. Fourteen miles wasn't far at all, at least when it wasn't haunted. Yes indeed. Anna and Ephraim were one hell of a thing.
And thanks to them, it looked like things might finally be heading uphill.
The signpost loomed out of the dark and the drizzle as the bus crested the hill, glowing bright for a second as the headlights bounced off it. Sandra, in the driver's seat, grimaced faintly at it. She knew what it said without ever having to read it. Everyone who drove Route 19A, the night route from Heraway to Cainsford, knew what this particular signpost said.
Cainsford 14 miles. The signpost on the road to hell.
"It's all downhill from here," she muttered, tapping her fingers nervously on the wheel. They all said it. Everyone on 19A said the words as they passed the sign. It'd been a joke once, way back ten or fifteen years. Before the black spots, and the accidents, and the rumours. All downhill to Cainsford. Now it was a ritual, a girding of the loins. You said the words so that Fate would know you knew where you were going, so he'd know you respected it, so he'd be nice enough to get you through it in one piece.
The bus company didn't like it. Never had. They called it rampant superstition, spreading hysteria around the drivers lounge and putting the willies up newbies. The 19A rotation didn't give two shits. The words were a talisman. None of them would risk not saying them. Not here, not this stretch of road, and sure as hell not at night.
There were bad things on the road to Cainsford. The words were the least of the superstitions, and they were about the only ones that actually helped.
Sandra set her jaw, and reached up to switch off the radio. Not everybody did that. Some of 'em wouldn't dream of it. The Cainsford Fourteen was bad enough without adding grim silence on top of it, and some of the customers, particularly the local ones who knew enough to be nervous on the stretch themselves, had complained about her for it. Sandra needed it off, though. It made things feel unreal to her, the contrast between the road and whatever cheerful bullshit was coming in over the airwaves. Silence was better. It made her pay attention. It kept everything grounded. She needed that on the Fourteen.
She did send a glance at the interior mirror, though. Checking her one lonesome passenger this evening, making sure the sudden silence hadn't disturbed her too much. It didn't seem to have. Sandra wasn't surprised, really. The young woman wasn't local. She was on a long haul from over east somewhere, lugging that seriously ancient suitcase along beside her. She didn't know enough to be worried about the Fourteen. That was fine by Sandra. The less the customers knew, the less fuss they tended to make about it. That was only ever to the good.
She put her eyes back on the road. The Fourteen swayed around the place a lot, weaving down the valley wall through the trees. The weather was shit tonight as well. The drizzle made everything slick and dangerous, and it didn't do all that much to help visibility either. Sandra'd slowed instinctively as soon as they'd passed the sign. It was another thing the company complained about, the way they all lost time coming into Cainsford. Again, the rotation hadn't given a rat's ass. The company wouldn't have that problem if they just set back the timetable to accommodate it like they'd been told to. Two accidents and about four almosts on, they were going slow or they weren't going at all.
Sometimes, Sandra honestly wondered why the company didn't just scrap the route and have done. Surely they were getting to that point by now? Nobody local took 19A if they could help it, and they didn't usually get enough long-haulers through to justify it. Hell, she only had one on tonight, and that was far from unusual. Most everybody heading to Cainsford either took the 18 during the day, or took the 12 over to Rochester if they were travelling by night and switched to the McKinley Special to come in on the other side of town, away from the Fourteen. Even if the company head didn't want to bow to 'rampant superstition', sooner or later he'd have to bow to economic necessity. They couldn't afford to keep running an empty route much longer.
Sandra was praying for the day. She had the seniority to transfer over to another route when it happened, and if worst came to worst McKinley's was often hiring these days. Anything to get off this goddamned stretch of road in the small hours of the goddamned morning. She'd been lucky so far. For two and half years, she'd been lucky. That had to run out some day ...
"Excuse me, ma'am? Do you think we could pull over?"
Sandra nearly jumped out of her skin, the bus shuddering a little bit before she pulled it back again. She didn't scream, or curse, though that last was a damned near thing. Passenger. Only the passenger. Shit. The woman had come up the bus to the seat behind the driver's, her voice low and apologetic as she interrupted Sandra's train of thought. Jesus, lady. Not on the Fourteen. Damn it, don't do that on the Fourteen.
"Can you hold it a little longer, Miss?" she asked, a little raggedly. Bad form, to be showing these kinds of nerves to a customer, but tonight was not a good night. Sandra just had that feeling. She couldn't help it. "This is a bad stretch, and we're nearly to Cainsford. Just a few more minutes, okay?"
There was a little pause, and then the young woman leaned forward into Sandra's peripheral vision, her expression grim. "No," she said quietly. "I don't think we can hold it. I'm sorry ma'am. You need to pull over now."
Sandra nearly did, just out of pure nerves. She was rattled enough tonight that she might have pulled over anyway. She was already going slow enough for a grandma on a Sunday as it was. Just stopping, pulling over to breathe for a bit, wasn't that bad of a thought--
Something flickered in the interior mirror. She only just caught it, looked over out of habit just to check. It took a second to make sense of it, and then Sandra screamed, high and thin, and slammed on the brakes without a thought. It was a bad plan. The drizzle had slicked everything over and they were heading downhill. The bus slewed out to one side before they made it to a stop, but they hadn't been on the bad bad part. They had a bit of a straight, and no traffic, and they made to a safe settle without harm. Sandra only barely noticed. Her eyes were locked on the mirror, and the figure it showed standing in the aisle behind her one, lone passenger this evening.
"No," she whispered, while the pale shape of a man looked sadly down at her. "No. It's not supposed to happen this way. You're not supposed to be inside. It doesn't happen this way. You're not here. Why are you here?"
"... Ah," said the young woman behind her, watching Sandra thoughtfully and ignoring the ghost standing at her shoulder. "Well, that answers one question, at least. You know this road is haunted, then?"
She sounded so casual about it. Blasé. Sandra dragged her eyes away from the mirror, turning in her seat to look at ... at them. The ghost didn't vanish in the process. He stayed right there, as visible in real life as in the mirror, though a little bit more see-through. He nodded carefully to her, and reached forward to rest his hand gently on her passenger's shoulder. The young woman glanced up at him with a smile. Sandra stared at the pair of them in horror.
"What?" she said helplessly. "Who ... What? Who are you? What are you ...?"
"Not the one who hurts you," the woman said quietly, looking away from her ghost to meet Sandra's eyes calmly. She had a very calm face in general, Sandra thought distantly. It looked young, but mature. Her thick black hair was feathered slightly with grey at one temple. A trick of genetics, Sandra had thought when she came aboard. Now, looking at the ghost, she thought maybe not. "He's my ghost, not yours. He isn't going to hurt you. We just wanted you to pull over."
Sandra shook her head. She kept shaking it, for more than minute. It didn't make sense. She didn't want it to make sense. It didn't happen this way. It had never happened to her before, and it wasn't supposed to happen this way. She'd been so lucky. It wasn't supposed to happen like this.
"... Why?" she managed at last. "Why do we need ...?"
It wasn't the woman who answered her. It was the ghost. He came forward to stand more fully beside his partner, his expression grim and his hand still firm at her shoulder, and reached out with the other hand to point forward through the windshield. He didn't say anything. Sandra didn't even know if he could. The gesture was so ominous and insistent that she followed it anyway.
She didn't scream this time. Maybe a small whine, thin and ragged out of her, but she didn't scream. She'd been expecting this sight. She'd been waiting for it for two and a half years. It was the one everyone on the 19A was always waiting for.
The white figure stood in the middle of the road, just barely visible through the mist and the rain. It was a ways off, beyond the beams of the headlights. If it hadn't been glowing faintly, she'd never have seen it. But you didn't. That was the point. You never saw this figure until the headlights hit her out of the blue, and you had to swerve violently around her. She waited ... Sandra felt her stomach sink. The straight. They were on the short straight, just above the hard right. The first of the Fourteen's bad spots. They'd stopped just above the first of the Lady's waiting places.
She looked away from the Lady. It hurt something in her chest to do it, an old fear wound tight over years that didn't want to let go, but she managed it. The ghost, the other ghost, looked down at her, a sad little smile on his face. The young woman beside him reached forward and rested a careful hand on Sandra's arm in sympathy.
"We felt her coming," she told Sandra quietly. "Ephraim did. He doesn't normally show himself. We didn't mean to frighten you. We just had to make you stop before the bend. We could feel her lurking there."
Sandra blinked at her, before glancing back at the Lady compulsively. Some part of her had to keep track of her. The Lady was the reason ... Two 'accidents' in ten years. Just on the 19A, not counting anyone else. Mike had mostly stayed on the road, coming out of it with only shock and a few minor injuries among his passengers. Amos had ploughed into a ditch below the third bad spot. Sliced his head open, nearly lost an eye. One of his passengers had died. He said she'd followed him. All the way from this spot. She chased him down until he went off the road. The Lady didn't like the 19A. They didn't know why, but she didn't. She came after them particularly. The high ups could call it superstition all they damn well pleased, but the rotation knew. That's why they said the words at the top of the hill. That's why they warned the newbies and the company be damned. The Lady came for them. The Lady liked to scare them, to hunt them down, and when their luck ran out, the Lady liked to push them off the road.
"We're going to deal with it," the young woman told her. Reminding Sandra of her presence, drawing her panicked eyes back off that white, distant figure. Her face was still calm when Sandra looked at her. It was thoughtful and composed, and there was no sign of fear in it. Caution, maybe. Wariness. She wasn't stupid, at least. But she wasn't afraid either, and that calmed something in Sandra. That gave her a touch of something not too far from hope.
"Can you?" she asked baldly. She looked back down the road as she said it, keeping the Lady determinedly in sight. "People only get through once they've seen her if she decides to let them. She doesn't like us. What can you do if she doesn't like us?"
The hand on her arm moved with the woman's shrug. "I don't know yet," she said quietly, looking up at her ... her companion. "We'll have a better idea when we've heard what she has to say. That's our problem, though. You just ... You stay here, okay? Turn on the hazard lights and wait for us to come back, all right?"
Sandra snapped around to stare at her again. "Come back?" she asked. "You're going out there? Are you nuts? There's a ---"
She cut off, blinking sheepishly. She'd meant to say, there's a ghost out there. There's a dead lady waiting to hurt people. But, well. There was a ghost in here too, wasn't there? She looked up at him, wild-eyed and confused, and he smiled gently down at her in turn. He took his hand from his partner's shoulder to pat gently at hers, and Sandra closed her eyes at the sensation of it, the chill tingles that ran down her spine. One ghost, two ghosts. What did it matter if they both wanted to go out in the rain? At least they wouldn't be in here. At least they wouldn't be with her.
"Can you hold this for us?" said a voice at her ear, and when Sandra opened her eyes again the young woman was smiling a little lopsidedly at her in tired understanding. She was holding up ...
The suitcase. The ancient, violently battered old thing that she'd refused to keep down in the luggage compartment. Sandra stared at it some. It looked even older now that she was seeing it up close. Something her granddad might have had, an ancient leather thing with brass corners, held closed by a pair of tough-looking belts strapped around it. There was a label on it, faded almost to illegibility. It was the kind of thing that wouldn't have looked out of place in a film about the Depression. Which ...
Sandra looked at the ghost. Ephraim, the woman had called him. A lean, careworn sort of a man, with eyes that she thought would have been pale even if he hadn't been see-through and colourless and dead. It was the suit she looked at, though. It was more than just the suitcase that had made her think of the Depression. There was a reason her mind had gone straight to that.
"It will not harm you," the ghost said quietly. Sandra blinked desperately. Apparently he could speak. "It is mine, yes, but it will not harm you. It may protect you. We do not like touching each other's things. If things go wrong, I think she will be less eager to approach you if you have it to hand."
"Just please give it back afterwards?" The young woman smiled at her. "We need it, and in one piece. It's very important that we get it back. Okay?"
Sandra blinked, and nodded at her on autopilot. "Sure," she said distantly. "I'll give it back. No problem."
"Thank you," said the ghost, with a certain dignified gentility. He nodded to her, and then held at out a hand to the woman at his side. "We should go, Anna. I do not think our White Lady will be patient much longer. It is rude to keep a lady waiting, after all."
The woman, Anna, took a deep breath first. That was oddly comforting to Sandra. As calm as she appeared, the girl wasn't quite as fearless as all that. Sandra didn't want her to be terrified, she wanted to keep hoping there was some way out of this, but it was nice to know that even someone who travelled casually with ghosts still needed to steady her nerves when faced with a bad one. It was ... it was nice not to be the only one scared.
"... Right," said Anna, and reached up to wrap one hand around her necklace. Sandra had noticed it vaguely before. It had a little opaque vial on the end of it. Anna wrapped her hand around that now and gave it a quick squeeze as if for luck. "Let's go, Ephraim. And please, don't say 'ladies first'."
The ghost smiled faintly at her, and made a point to be the first to drift through the still-closed bus doors. Sandra startled a little at it, and remembered herself enough to open them for Anna. She also belatedly switched on the hazards while she was at it. And then ... then she just watched them. She clutched the battered suitcase in her lap, and watched the pair of them walk along the length of the headlights towards the white figure in the darkness beyond them.
The White Lady watched them too. She didn't move. Sometimes she did. Sometimes she ran at you out of the dark. She didn't do that now. Sandra couldn't see her that clearly, not out beyond the lights and with the misty drizzle that was still coming down, but the Lady did not move, not towards them and not away from them. Anna stopped not too far from her, with Ephraim ahead of her and slightly in front of her, and the Lady ... didn't move. She waited until they began to talk.
They made a surreal picture, Sandra thought, biting one nail while she watched them. Three figures standing in the road, two of them pale and dead and the third so calm beside them, talking to each other on the edge of a headlight's glow. It didn't happen like this. Nothing happened like this. Not even on the Cainsford Fourteen.
She didn't know how long it took before something started to change down there. It could have been minutes. It could have been hours. She was distantly conscious that her timetable was shot to hell, even by Cainsford standards. She'd be hearing about that when she finally made the depot. Sandra almost laughed when she recognised the thought. She wasn't sure if it said more about her terror or her training that she was even thinking about that right now. How ingrained did a thing have to be that you'd be worried about it with two ghosts outside your door? But maybe she should call ahead. Tell them she'd had a minor breakdown on the Fourteen. Hah!
Oh, but that would be cruel. There was only one sort of breakdown up here. She'd have the Cainsford emergency services up around them within the hour, and right now they did not need that. Sandra knew barely anything about Anna and Ephraim, but she didn't think they'd want the cops knocking around suddenly. And the Lady ... the Lady definitely wouldn't like it. The Lady would possibly violently not like it. No. No, Sandra thought. Things hadn't exploded yet. Let's not mess them up.
The Lady moved just as she thought it. It was almost as if she'd heard the thought, heard the futile prayer of it. The White Lady reared up, suddenly so much bigger and brighter than either Anna or Ephraim, and snarled up at Sandra with a face that was now a mask of fury. Anna yelled something, staggering to one side as the Lady seemed to fling her out of the way, and then all Sandra could see was a white flash in the headlights as the Lady dove for her head-on.
She screamed, knocking her knee against the underside of the wheel as she flung herself back away from the thing. She threw her arms up instinctively, shoving the suitcase up between her and the windshield. Something hit it, almost hit her, but even as she felt it Sandra knew it wasn't right. It hadn't happened right. There'd been no smash, no thunder of glass and rain as the windshield came in. It had been ... it had been something else. Something cold and icy that hit and lodged in her chest, and hurt.
Then it stopped. All at once, all of a sudden, the frozen thing let go of her chest, and Sandra let the suitcase slide down until she could see it. Them.
Ephraim stood in front of her. Flew, hovered. Something. He was just inside the front of the bus, standing through the steering wheel, as transparent as the glass of the windshield. The Lady was beyond him, back out in the rain. She was howling silently, a sound Sandra could almost but not quite hear, her face twisted with pure fury. Her fists were raised, thrashing and struggling in the air, and Ephraim's hands were locked viciously around her wrists. Sandra couldn't see his expression, if he even had one, she wasn't used to translating something so distorted and seen through the back of its owner's head, but every line of the ghost's posture spoke of rigid, vicious anger. The White Lady thrashed and roared in his hands, and Ephraim bore down against her with icy temper.
And beyond him, beyond them both, Anna stood drenched and determined in the headlights, her mouth moving as she said something too strange and garbled for Sandra to make out. Something long, anyway, and angry too. Something that seemed to leech the fight out of the Lady the more it went on. Though that might have been Ephraim. Something about the way the Lady's arms tried to bow away from his grip made Sandra think that it was not at all a pleasant hold.
Then, as suddenly as the attack on Sandra had ceased, the fight went out of the Lady altogether. She went small all of a sudden, and less tangible than even Ephraim, the strange light she'd always had fading away while she crumpled towards the road. Ephraim followed her, drifting smoothly forward out of the windshield and onto the ground. Anna stepped back to allow it, and Sandra, after a wild moment of waiting for her heart to come down out of her mouth, got up out of her seat to peer towards them down the front of the bus. She took the suitcase with her, her knuckles white around the handle. She wasn't sure she was able to let go of it at this point.
She needn't have worried, though. The Lady was ... the Lady was kneeling in a heap on the asphalt, her arms still held in Ephraim's hands, but more gently now. He was lowering them even as Sandra made it to the windshield to watch. He let the Lady take them back, let her tuck them in against her chest, and rested his hands carefully on her shoulders instead. She looked ... she looked different, suddenly. The Lady had always been just a white blur, or a monstrous face at the windshield. She looked almost human now. Almost ... almost familiar.
Sandra's breath hitched as the Lady looked up at her. Not almost familiar. Not almost at all. She did know that face. She'd seen it, nine, ten years back. No, more than that. She'd only barely been starting then, only a few months on the job. Way back at the start of the Cainsford Fourteen. It wasn't counted as one of the accidents. It'd been before that all started. Leo had left after it. He'd quit not two weeks later. It was ... Damn. What was her name? What the hell was her name?
Cassie. Cassie Fields. Leo hadn't hit her, as such. She'd been walking up the lower end of the Fourteen, trying to hitchhike out of Cainsford. It'd been a bad night, much like this one, light rain and mist and horrible visibility. The bus had clipped her at the bad bend, more buffeted her away than struck her, but she'd slipped and gone over the safety rail. It wasn't a high drop, not just there, only a few feet, but she'd landed wrong and broken her neck. Leo hadn't even seen her. It was only when the cops had found her a few days later that he'd figured out what must have happened. It had broken him.
It had, apparently, pissed Cassie Fields right the hell off. The White Lady hated the 19A. Ten years now, she'd been coming for them. Shit. Shit. Why had none of them ever figured out why?
Sandra walked slowly down the steps. She felt herself doing it, felt it happening, but it was nearly distant enough that she didn't know why. She stepped out into the rain and around the front of the bus, still holding the suitcase absently in her hand. They looked at her. All three of them. They stared at her in some consternation.
"... He left," she heard herself say, looking down at what was left of Cassie Fields. He'd been a friend of hers, Leo. Sort of. He'd shown her the ropes, anyway. She'd been hit bad when he left. It seemed so distant now. "After he hit you. He didn't know. Not until later. He left the minute he figured it out. He's not here anymore. He hasn't driven with us for more than ten years."
Ephraim straightened slowly. Carefully. A wary, alarmed expression crept over Anna's now slightly-bruised face. Sandra shook her head. She wasn't paying much attention to them. She had eyes only for Cassie. For the White Lady. The ghost stood up, or became vertical again, and drifted slowly towards her. Sandra didn't flinch. It wasn't even bravery. She just wasn't feeling enough right now to flinch. She was hollow right the way through.
"We didn't know it was you," she said, as the White Lady came close enough to touch. She thought, vaguely, about raising the suitcase again, but couldn't quite manage it. Cassie didn't touch her, anyway. Only stared, from half a foot away, as Sandra struggled to explain. "Most of us ... I was new then. I'm one of the oldest now. It wasn't ... It's been ten years. Didn't you know that?"
"... Ghosts do not have the same sense of time," Ephraim said quietly behind them. He wore an odd expression. Anna's was full of pity. "And she did not know the driver. She only knew the bus. The bus killed her. She's been trying to kill the bus. It never stays dead. It keeps coming back, just like her. She thought she was in hell."
... Yeah, Sandra thought. She could see why. She'd have thought much the same, maybe. The thing that had killed you, coming back over and over again, never staying dead. Sandra had an idea how that felt. So did most of the 19A.
Cainsford 14 miles. All downhill from here. Yeah, they had an idea.
She blinked a bit, feeling the hollow distance start to recede a little bit. Cassie was so close. Her dead face was right there, her eyes blank and cold and slightly confused as she looked at Sandra. This close, Sandra could see how her neck was wrong beneath it. The head sat loose on it. It was only upright for the same reasons Ephraim had been while hanging through a steering column. Gravity didn't work for ghosts. Broken necks didn't have to hold heads up.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly, trying to meet Cassie's eyes, trying to hold a dead stare. "Leo hit you. He didn't see you, and he didn't know until later. It broke him when he figured it out. He never came back to drive for us. We've been ... It's been a long time since then, Cassie. And if it helps any, you were sort of winning. The route's damn near empty these days. Company can't afford to keep it much longer. The buses are going to stop soon. I had bets on the end of the year. You've been ... It wouldn't have been much longer. We were all just trying to stay alive until the route stopped. You were on the way to winning."
The White Lady tilted her head. It slid horribly to one side of that broken neck. It didn't make a sound. It should have, it looked like it should have made some sort of horrible crackling noise, but it didn't. Sandra bit her lip, feeling her stomach lurch, and just tried to keep holding Cassie's gaze.
It ... It worked, too. Must have. Cassie Fields reached up, an odd, liquid motion of one hand, and touched the side of Sandra's face lightly. Sandra flinched, waiting for violence, and behind the White Lady both Anna and Ephraim flinched as well, but Cassie didn't hurt her. The touch seemed ... more of a thank you, almost. More of an acknowledgement, and something close to a farewell. Cassie nodded carefully, another sickness-inducing motion of her head, and faded back away from Sandra once more. She turned to the other two, offering Anna a little nod, and then she turned to Ephraim. Looked at him, and tilted her head in curious entreaty. Ephraim shook his head.
"I don't know," he said softly, glancing helplessly at Anna. "I've never ... I can't yet. I don't know what happens. I'm sorry."
Anna reached sideways, threaded her fingers gently through his transparent ones and squeezed them gently. Cassie watched that. She seemed to find it pleasing. She flickered forwards, touched her hand to Anna's face gently. The bruise. Cassie touched it lightly in apology. Then she smiled at Ephraim, with something close to pity, and just ...
Vanished. She disappeared, like a wisp of fog in a breeze, and there were only three of them standing in the rain and light of the headlights. It could have been anything, just a ghostly vanishing trick, but Sandra didn't think so. She didn't think any of them did.
Cassie Fields was gone. And, maybe, the White Lady and the Cainsford Fourteen had gone along with her.
Sandra didn't do anything for a second. She didn't even think, not really. She just stood there, feeling not so much hollow as emptied out, and looked at the place where the White Lady had been. The others left her to it. Maybe they needed to just stand a while themselves. Anna kept hold of her partner's hand. There was a part of Sandra that approved of that, for reasons she wasn't sure of just yet.
They had to move eventually, though. Timetable was shot to hell, but they weren't going to get any younger or any less dead standing around here. They were blocking the road, too. Time to head on to Cainsford. Time to bring the last of the Fourteen home.
Sandra was the last one back into the bus. As soon as the door hissed safely shut behind them, she handed the suitcase gingerly back to Anna. She couldn't resist giving it a little pat of thanks. Ephraim had caught up quick, but Sandra was pretty sure that suitcase was the reason that Cassie hadn't killed her before he'd had the chance. She was pretty grateful towards that battered bundle of leather for it. Anna smiled faintly as she took it back. She looked over at Ephraim as though she knew a secret, and Ephraim smiled crookedly back, his pale eyes crinkling quietly at the sides. Sandra let them at it. She couldn't begrudge them much of anything right now.
She did have a few questions though. Just while they made their careful way down the last stretch into Cainsford. She just had a couple of questions.
"Why can't you yet?" she asked Ephraim quietly. Her eyes were back on the road now, but she caught a glimpse of the glance they shared in the interior mirror. Ephraim gestured gently at Anna.
"He has to go home first," Anna answered for him, as quiet as Sandra had been. "That's where we're going. He asked me to get him home, so he can ... So he can get some rest."
She was clutching the suitcase as she said it. Sandra saw it in the mirror and the reflection off the windshield both. Anna pulled the suitcase fully up into her lap and hugged it close. In that second, Sandra had a horrible, terrible thought, and they both caught it on her face. Reflections were useful like that. They both saw her.
"Yes," said Ephraim, smiling crookedly. His hand was resting on Anna's shoulder. The top of the suitcase was nearly touching it. "The suitcase ... yes. You shouldn't worry. I'm only bones now. I died in ... it would have been '37. I rotted away a long time ago. You weren't holding anything nasty. Just some old bones wrapped in old shirts. It means we have to go the long way around, though. No planes. Anna tells me that a suitcase full of bones would not be a good thing to be caught with on a plane."
No, Sandra thought distantly. Probably not, no. A suitcase of bones would not be a good thing to be caught with anywhere.
She wasn't thinking about the other thing. She wasn't thinking about holding it, or patting it gently, or throwing it up between ... A body. She'd been hiding behind his bones. Ephraim had put himself literally body and soul between her and harm. That was ...
"Thank you," she said, around a throat that was suddenly full of tears. "You ... Both of you ... You didn't have to ..."
"It's okay," Anna interrupted her gently. She leaned forward enough to touch Sandra's arm lightly. "She needed rest too, and we weren't going to let anyone hurt you. We don't ... It doesn't seem right to just let these things happen. Not for us. Not given who we are and what we're doing. We did what we wanted to do. It's all right ... Um." She paused, and laughed a little in sudden embarrassment. "We never got your name, did we? All that, and I don't think we ever got your name."
Sandra blinked. She was ... That was right. She knew their names, but only incidentally. Anna had given her Ephraim's almost absently, and she only knew Anna's because Ephraim had called her by it. She had never ... They never exchanged introductions at any point. They'd saved her life, and she'd never even given them her name.
"It's Sandra," she said, laughing a little herself, giving a little glance back in the mirror to share it with them. "Sandy, if you're a friend. And you ... You're Anna and Ephraim, right?"
Anna grinned at her, while Ephraim offered a genteel little bow that almost distracted her enough to run them off the road. Which, no. Not after all that, no sir. Sandra grunted, and focused tighter on the road a bit. They didn't seem to mind much.
"Anna and Ephraim, yes," the ghost said quietly, and seemed to find a particular sort of pleasure in it. He was looking at Anna, when Sandra risked another glance in the mirror. He was smiling down at her. But then, Sandra supposed, a woman who'd risk everything to carry your bones across the country and bring you home would certainly be a thing worth smiling at. Especially if ... if that was the only way to have peace. She thought of Cassie Fields, spending ten years in hell trying to kill a bus that wouldn't die. When had Ephraim said he'd died? 1937. More than sixty years. Sixty years in hell, before Anna had come along to offer him a way out.
Hell of a thing, Sandra thought. The lights of Cainsford were coming into view up ahead of them. Fourteen miles wasn't far at all, at least when it wasn't haunted. Yes indeed. Anna and Ephraim were one hell of a thing.
And thanks to them, it looked like things might finally be heading uphill.
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