Diary of Ghoul Gig Worker: Part IV
The day you call Stephanie is the day the weather decides to go bad. It sometimes happens—rolling in like a storm front on a random afternoon. They reported them on the weather channel and if it was really bad, sirens would go off. There weren’t any sirens that day.
You rest your head against the bus window. Another day, another part-time-nothing. This one was normal: an afternoon job in landscaping that your grandma recommended. You just needed to get to Davenport just 30 minutes away. An arrangement that turned out to be your grandmother’s second best friend needed help gardening. You know it was getting bad when your grandma was setting up pity-gigs for you.
You didn’t mind gardening though, liked it, really—you liked most things that kept your hands busy and mind snapped into focus. Hell, you even enjoyed Miss Patty and her endless stream of chatter. Like many only-children raised by a grandparent, you tend to get along better with older people more than your own generation.
The commute though, the commute was going to suck the soul of your toes. The drive to Davenport was thirty minutes, but the bus ride? The bus ride was your whole life. Bumpy hours spent in a sardine box of strange smells. There were good buses, great buses, in your city, but this one wasn’t one of them. A gunked-up metal tin box on wheels with no AC.
The bus is half-full that day and you’re still covered in a thin layer of sweat and soil. You surreptitiously pick dirt out from under your fingernails. Every time you wore gardening gloves they felt so in-the-way that you opted to plunge your hands into the ground instead. A 20-something young woman in a college jersey throws repeated looks your way. Ugh.
It’s noisy. There are two separate mothers at the front of the bus hushing their kids. One has a burbling fresh-looking baby with a pink bow attached to her wisps of hair. The other one wrangled two toddlers situated around her in different wiggling formations. One toddler kept moving to the window and the other was trying to grab a fly out of the air with his chubby fists. A day laborer still in a bright yellow vest sat behind them. Another young man, a college student you think, murmurs to himself a row back. The young woman with mousy hair and the jersey sat across from you—probably also a uni student. Finally, an entire group of chattering teens sat in the very back. You are ignoring their loud game called “WOULD” that apparently involved shouting out the word “WOULD” while giggling at someone’s phone repeatedly.
Your head plunks against the glass and knew it was going to be a long hour. The road from Davenport was mostly country and you pass through every version of weather. Bits of stray rain and wind, sheets of sunshine, and even a quick stint of hail that clattered against the metal roof. The inside of the bus remained a clammy muggy box where you sweat and sighed and waited.
The city appeared in the far distance right as a dense fog rolled in. You were technically only thirty minutes from the ocean so this sometimes happened. The older window-toddler draws doodles in the condensation.
The baby begins to cry. You keep eyes to the wisps of misty countryside. A sharp sniffle comes from your right, and you glance over. The girl across from you is crying. You frown at her, and she frowns even harder at you. Big fat tears roll down her cheeks.
“What in the hell?” someone mutters to themselves before the bus goes over a large bump and everyone jostles.
A teardrop hits the knees of your pants. You touch your face, and you’re crying too, large fistfuls of tears. You jerk to your feet. The faces of the passengers are wet. The sunshine outside appears to flicker and the fog has gathered into something physical, immense, shifting. A chill hits you over the head like a hammer and you sit back down in your seat.
The bus driver gets a single sentence out, “we’ve seemed to have hit a spectral migration . . . stay seated.”
Dead quiet seeps through the space in response and then, after a long moment, a wave of muttering. A chorus of voices rises.
The girl across from you seems to speak to herself, “What do you mean, it’s only September, the migration isn’t for months. . .”
“Don’t tell me we’re going to be late.” The day laborer gives a resigned groan.
“I don’t see anything outside,” one of the teens says. “There can’t be anything.”
A singular voice rises above the rest: “HUSH!”
The young man you had mistaken for a college student rises and you recognize a priest's gold insignia around his throat—from one of the harvest gods, you think. The young priest puts a finger to his lips. A hush descends and you look outside. The fog is dense, lightless, a monotonous wall of grey. You cock your head to the side. There are no faces or shimmering bodies outside. It doesn’t seem like a ghost migration to you, but you watch all the same.
Ghosts can’t normally hear you, but the bus remains quiet all the same. You want to sneak to the front of the bus and ask the driver if she’s driven through anything like this before, but a stillness overtakes you. Condensation drips down the sides of the windows. A few droplets begin to drag in circles—like someone is pressing from the other side.
You reach, slowly, into your pocket and take out a boxy cellphone. You’d been keeping it on you as of late, but it had remained quiet since the Grim incident. Keeping it palmed in your hand, you inch to your feet toward the front. Most everyone has their noses pressed to the glass, but one of the mothers grabs your elbow as you pass. She has a hard grip and very motherly aura as she looks you over—it’s almost flattering. Your grandmother is good to you, but not maternal.
You look back at her and she points back to your seat. You slowly shake your head and then make the signifier for just one moment. She lets you go, but mostly because her very fresh, doughy baby was whimpering again. The bow was about to fall off.
You clear your throat so the driver knows you’re there and doesn’t scream when she glances back. Surprisingly, the driver has an almost bored expression—she might not be the type to scream when she sees a ghoul. You hide your dirt-encrusted hands behind your back and lean over to whisper.
“I’m not sure this is a spectral migration, ma’am,” you say under your breath as quietly as possible. “I haven’t seen a single ghost.” You aren’t going to mention the moving droplets just yet.
As if on cue, the outline of a hand presses against the corner of the window. You jump and the driver, once more impressively, doesn’t so much as flinch. You notice, though, a single teardrop making its way down her face.
“I might agree with you,” she practically mouths the words, barely a whisper, and you both look outside to what you can only describe as a structure. The structure, a pointed black house, moves on legs of spindly poles as if striding through water.
Ah. Yes. You think. This isn’t the road. This isn’t the outskirts of Devonshire or the countryside. This isn’t the ghosts moving with the seasons. A door has opened, usually always by accident, and you’ve driven as easily as you please into the Otherlands.
You hunch over on the steps of the bus and make a phone call.
The news that you’ve left your own plane of existence spreads through the bus in a trickle. No ghosts. No home. Just the Others. Everyone continues to whisper in the aftermath.
“None of you,” the priest has a thick accent so it sounds like “noon of yoo.” He gestures. “Are leaving this bus.”
The day laborer grumbles, hands shoved deep into his pockets, “fairy country. Had to be fairy country.”
You pressed the cellphone harder to your ear, it had rung-out twice already and you’re bouncing your leg.
“Someone is out there,” the oldest toddler’s high-pitched voice rises over the others. “Do you see it, mama?”
“Yes, yes, darling.” The other, frazzled mother covered the older toddlers eyes with one hand. “They won’t hurt us. We just can’t let them in.”
The little girl turned away from the window, which was at least something. “Why not?”
The priest shot a finger in the air. “They’re demons.”
“They’re fae.”
You roll your eyes and squeeze your phone. Pick-up, pick-up, pick-up, you think as the call rings. How many other people could be calling her right now? Though, you suppose you don’t know your handler that well.
“We need to get out.” One of the teens is breathing hard, chest rising and falling in hummingbird-fast puffs. “We came from back there.” He points behind them. “We need to go back there.”
The adults in the room exchange a look. “Otherlands don’t necessarily work like that, hun,” the mother with the infant says.
“How are we going to get out then?”
The arguing begins. Offerings. Negotiations. Driving as fast and hard as you can. The college student’s eyes sweep the entire room.
“We should start asking ourselves why this happened. Fae don’t mess with you unless you’ve messed with them first.” The space seems to hold its breath at that.
The laborer throws his hands up. “I don’t mess with the fae.”
“Well, me neither!” the college student adds.
“If anyone did invoke them,” the mother pointedly was not looking at the group of four teens, “such as for fun or on a dare . . . we might be able to help if they told us how they did it.”
“We didn’t do it! What about her?” One of the terrible teens pointed at me and this day could only get worse.
“Just because she’s a ghoul?” one of the other, maybe less-terrible, teens broke in.
You want to crawl under something and instead call Stephanie for the fourth time, turning your back to the group in turn. She picks up on the second ring.
“What is it?” she grouches, and maybe she’d been asleep.
“Hurry,” I say in a rush, “we’ve driven into an Underhill.”
“What? Me,” you recognize the whine in your voice a second too late. “I mean, a bus full of people on the way from a place called Devonshire. Bus 301, like only a little ways from the city and now there are Others out there.” And they were drawing pictures in the condensation. Stephanie allows for a listening kind of silence.
“Hmm,” she says, and you want to throttle her just enough to get the throttling out.
“Hmm?”
“On it,” she says, and then hangs up.
“What?” you say, but again, she’d already hung up. “How?” A barn owl lands on the hood of the bus, jostling the entire vehicle. The people on the bus turn to look at the hood of the roof as one.
You swallow thickly. “Ma’am?” you say to the bus driver like she’s your elementary teacher and maybe she could do something. The owl is man-sized and, upon further inspection, is not an owl at all. You swallow against a growl building in the back of your throat. A ghoul’s natural fight response is sometimes called the Feral Response instead, but you don’t have time for words.
The owl’s eyes blink sideways and two skinny arms stick out from under the wings.
“Oh, that’s all?” the oldest toddler says aloud, her sweet high voice seeming to echo. “Well, I don’t like mine very much. I’d rather be Delilah or a Penelope, not—” her mother slaps a hand over the little girl’s mouth and thank the Harvest Lord or whoever that the little girl hadn’t gotten to the point.
You back away from the front window. “Ma’am?” you say again, just for good measure. Maybe you can’t drive out of the Otherlands altogether, but maybe you could drive away from the man-sized fae creature. The driver’s mouth hangs open and her eyes are half lidded, empty. She doesn’t say anything in return and you take another step back.
“AREN’T YOU A PRIEST?” the college student wails. “DO SOMETHING.”
The priest falls to his knees and begins a prayer of protection. Both wheat and barley are invoked. You tune it out, instead whispering to the nearest person, the day laborer.
“We just need to stay calm. I’ve called someone to come get us,” I say, mostly for the need to tell someone.
“You called someone?” He says loudly, then, his eyes narrow. “There isn’t any single under a fucking fairy hill.”
“Unless, unless,” one of the teens, the very stretched out tall one that you begin to refer to as Evil Teen, begins. “No single unless you are one.”
“My fucking lord,” you say back.
“We saw you, we saw you make a call and then that thing shows up.” The college student gestures to the bird eyeing you from outside.
“Sure,” you say with false bravado. “Fucking sure, I’ve got fairy satelights or owl wifi or something out here.” Though, it was a good question. How did Stephanie have a phone that could reach Outerlands? It was also a question you couldn’t answer reasonably without a very tedious story about your work history.
One of the mothers, the one you have dubbed “frazzled mother,” puckers her mouth. “Who did you call for help?” She glances at the window. “How soon will they be here?”
The priest lifts his face, coming out of his prayer to wheat and so forth. “Perhaps we should back away. Make a plan for our lord’s intervention.”
Finally, a reasonable statement.
The Evil Teens eyes narrow. “Not with her.”
“Look, you can see my phone if you like for like, any fairy shit. It’s not even mine just an . . . an heirloom?”
A handprint presses to the window behind her and I swallow against a rumbling growl in my throat. The college student stands. “What was that? The noise you just made.”
“Uh.” The infant lets out a baleful cry and the toddler jumps to her feet at the same moment.
“Yeah, yeah, I hear you,” the toddler says.
It was only by the grace of the day laborers' reflexes that the little girl didn’t bolt out the bus door. He catches her around the middle and pulls her off her feet. “Oh, no you don’t. None of us are going out there.”
The infant lets out a second piercing shriek and her bow falls to the floor. The frazzled mother lets out a cry. “Cyrus! No.” Both children wiggle like they are possessed by caught fish, but the younger toddler seems to contort himself nearly in half and makes a break for the door. The dimpling of his chubby knees are the last thing you see in a flash of white.
“Shit!” you say, look to the others, and then repeat yourself. “Shit.”
You are, you already know, faster than all of them, and you are out the door before one of the people can accuse you of witchcraft next. As your feet leave the bus, a shard of light opens at the same time. You don’t have time to be saved though, you have a child trying to become a changeling on your hands. The air is nightmare-wet outside, like a soggy hand to the face, and smells of salt and roses.
Cyrus, the toddler, makes it only a few steps before you swing him off his tiny feet. “How are you so dang fast?” you cry, and Cyrus wiggles like he’s possessed by that fish again. And maybe he is. A pair of enormous wings block out the light behind you and you feel the whisper of cool breath.
“Give him to me.” You hear the words inside of yourself while your ears, your actual ears, pick up an inhumane screech. Tears stream down your face and these can’t be regular fae. You grip the child like your life depends on it. “Or I’ll take him.”
You tuck Cyrus into you and roll to the side, you roll and let out the growing snarl from the back of your throat. The owl’s beak jabs forward and takes off a chunk of your shoulder. You hear the ripping sound more than you feel it, purposefully on your part, and dive under the long twiggy legs of the owl that are far, far too many. Dodging between the forest of legs, you run headlong into the bus.
The Frazzled mother stands in the bus’s doorway, arms open wide and cheeks flushed a reddish hue that looks nearly neon. “Cyrus, Cyrus, honey.” She leaps forward, looking ready to fight.
“Stop saying his name!” You fling the child into the mother’s arms all the same and crawl up the steps of the bus. A whoosh of air hits your back and you practically do a somersault away from the jab of the beak. You almost lost whatever ass you had and let out a low whoop. “HA!”
“Don’t play games.” The owl looms closer, delicately placing one of its many, many spindly black legs onto the bus as if testing it. “You are my guest here and my guests must be considerate.”
“Wrong.” You have never been more relieved to hear a singular voice in your life. You turn in place, mangled arm flopping at your side, and the shard of light you had seen before was a full blown blare of color—a tear to the other side. Stephanie stands holding what appears to be a shot gun, an actual shot gun in her arms.
You begin to laugh, which is the wrong move. The owl flaps its enormous wings. “The child,” it says. “Will be happy.”
“Wrong again.” Stephanie cocks the gun. Many of the other passengers appear to have fled through the portal and the frazzled mother shoots away from you both. Good. Only the bus driver and the priest are left.
The priest cocks his head to the side, face wet with tears. “He’s here.”
You crawl toward Stephanie’s dark leather boots. “We need to get the fuck out of here, I only have so much flesh to lose.”
“That’s not a normal fae,” Stephanie says conversationally, still pointing the gun. She addresses the creature, “where is the autumn lord? Why isn’t he stopping this?”
If an owl-thing could smile, it would be doing so now. “The autumn lord is no more and summer bleeds forever. Only,” he flaps his wings. “Our manners are left.”
Stephanie fires the shotgun and you grab the bus driver bodily with your good arm and heave her out of her seat. The second she leaves her spot, the driver begins to babble. “No, no, I don’t, I can’t, we haven’t got the time. We mustn’t.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Get her out of here.” Stephanie begins reloading her shotgun with what looks like purple powder that smells like curry.
You hustle the bus driver down the way and it’s only by an inch you miss the priest. He has stopped his prayers and cocked his head to the side.
“MY LORD,” the priest screams at the top of his lungs and throws himself forward. You aren’t fast enough.
“Stop!” You grab for him with my good arm but it’s too late. He flings himself past the mass of feathers that is the fae creature and out into the lightlight grey mist. The priest is gone before you begin crying again. The owl, again, begins to smile.
Stephanie steps between you and the smiling thing. “We’re getting out of here.”
“But—” I say, already forming a plan to pass the babbling bus driver over to her and go after him. Stephanie stomps near your good hand.
“Not the time.”
“Take her. I won’t even be a minute,” you say, knowing you’re probably lying. You push the woman over to Stephanie like she’s a sack of potatoes and try for a smile. “Don’t worry, I can survive things most people can’t dream of.”
“We don’t have time for your dreams and I can’t begin to explain what this means. You're not going anywhere.” She thrusts downward and unceremoniously crushes your toe with the butt of her gun.
“Ah!” You let out a feral snarl just in time for her to shove the bus driver through the portal and drag you from behind. You are still snarling at her, eyes fixed on the place where the priest disappeared, when the air pops. You blink. A number of people who used to be one a bus are milling about in the middle of a dusty country road. Your toe hurts. Your shoulder hurts. It’s sunny out.
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