Miss the Bus

I was never allowed to miss the morning bus when I was going to school. By that I mean that it was not an option. I was one in a family of five, and we all had to be out of the house by 6:15 a.m. We managed this trick for almost sixteen years. It was regimented and understood. No rides were available, no grandparents to help out; only parents with full-time jobs and no patience for sluggish teens with bleary eyes. There was no implication of violence or threats. It was just not an option.

Learning about life in this manner and not having a choice is a strange way to be brought up. It was something that separated me from my peers. My parents couldn’t have cared less about my grades or where I was on Friday night, but they made damn sure I was on that bus every morning. I don’t know if it was the minimum they could do or something else entirely. I didn’t think about why it was so important at the time, but I understand more now. I am sure there are some psychological ramifications for this rigid expectation, but navel-gazing won’t help at this point.

I remember I missed the bus home a few times. I remember the dread of carrying that little bookbag and the sweaty pits of some striped Lacoste shirt. I remember trying to stop fat tears that rolled down chubby molten cheeks as I wandered around an empty parking lot. Volunteer teacher aides attempted to console me while asking for vital information I didn’t have. Eventually, I found my way home. The reaction was one of expectation — like, “yeah, we figured you’d be back. There is cold cheesy mac in the fridge.” Where else would I have gone? The 80s were strange for latchkey kids. There was so much focus on stranger danger and milk cartons. I was told not to get into vans or go with people I didn’t know. We had a password for safety that we never used; it was “Scooby-do.” Ghostbusters would have been too obvious.

By the time I was fourteen, the Lacoste shirt and burning cheeks were gone. All of it had been replaced by black, head-to-toe, all from the army-navy store or the garment district. My hair was also black, dyed from some box with an Asian woman on it, purchased at the pharmacy down the road. A devil’s lock, combat boots, and a scowl for all to witness. I built a shield to keep those teachers’ aides away. I put up a barricade of black to keep those kids away. The only color I allowed on my personage was a yellow Sony Sport Walkman. I would spend hours crafting mixtapes, the darker the better, not just ferocious but dark. Goth before Hot Topic, punk before Green Day. Anything strange or angry; always seeking more subversive—always more outside the mainstream.

At fourteen, I loved missing the bus home because it meant I got to walk several miles. It took me a little over an hour, but I enjoyed the solitude and the music. I loved that I didn’t have to perform for anyone. I didn’t need to pretend to do homework or engage in anything tragically faux social. I never tried to walk home, but when it happened, I was glad. This sort of accidental respite would come to a stop for good one December afternoon. I experienced something so odd and frightening that I made sure to never walk home again. I never ran, which I think saved me from something. I don’t know what exactly, but never running was a wise choice.

My final class every day in 7th grade was a study hall. I could have used the time to do homework or study, but I never did. I would plug in my Walkman and put my head down for the final hour of school. Well, on this day, I fell asleep. No one woke me. I was a ghost in that school. I was a problem no one wanted to deal with. The other kids stayed away, and the teachers had given up. They just left me to sleep. Alone.

So, two hours after the final bell, I woke up. The only people left in the school were two unfamiliar janitors. They were different from the usual custodians who cleaned up during the day. These two men were younger and leaner; they weren’t wearing uniforms, and they were not pushing buckets or trash cans. They were swearing and buffing the floors; they kicked lockers hard. They laughed loudly and without fear of reprisal. I watched and listened. I waited for a chance to dash toward the main foyer of the building. I heard the buzzing buffer turn a corner, and I quickly slipped by. I tried not to make any noise, but combat boots on tile flooring is always tough. I didn’t want them to hear me. This fear was more about strangers than any punishment from the school. I had done nothing wrong, but loud young men are always unpredictable. I felt vulnerable, and that remaining unseen was a wise move. As the main door shut behind me, I could hear laughter and loud crash echoed.

The entrance to the school was somehow below ground, although it probably wasn’t, but they built it to feel that way. I have found out it is called a brutalist proscenium. It served as a windbreak functionally, but from an aesthetic perspective, it made the building feel grander. There were spiraling stairs and a disconcerting geometric symmetry. When you left the front door, you had to walk up to ground level. It felt like walking up into an amphitheater. There were ten thick concrete steps. It was getting dark — the sun sets early in December in the northeast — and seeing the steps in twilight was new to me. It wasn’t quite a mausoleum, not City of the Living Dead, but the brick and concrete in shadow gave everything a kind of dead industrial glow. Electric spotlights overhead clicked on right as I reached the top step. I heard more laughter echoing below.

Despite all this, I wasn’t crushed or even disturbed. I had nowhere to be. I was happy to walk home with Bratmobile’s Pottymouth blasting through my yellow headphones. Life was easy. The stakes were low, I thought. I was mildly aware that walking over a mile in the cold evening while wearing all black was a bit of a risk and a bit uncomfortable; I was young and bulletproof in my mind. If I even thought about it at all, the thought was brief and angry. As soon as I stepped off school grounds, I was swallowed by a corridor of evergreens and birch; they were lined up on both sides of the two-lane road, sprawling nearly all the way home, breaking only for the golf course. The sheer number of trees, the pink-orange dusk, and the sight of my breath curling in the air conjured a kind of dark magic—I drifted through it, brooding and proud, reveling in my nastiness.

Quickly, I realized something was wrong. This wasn’t New York City, but even in a suburb of Boston, lots of cars drove by. The first six or seven cars that drove past me were flashing their high beams and honking their horns. I took off my headphones so I could hear cars coming. I trailed off to the side of the road into the trees, but still, almost every car honked and flashed lights at me. It wasn’t pitch black out, and reflective clothing for pedestrians wasn’t a thing yet. I couldn’t understand what was wrong. The sun continued to go down, and dark clouds started to bring light snow flurries. I tucked my hair under my black winter cap and kept walking. I kept moving forward. I paused at every car and stared at them as they drove by, no-selling the honks. I did not understand the problem. I checked behind me and looked to see if something was on my clothing or if I had left my fly down, but nothing.

A car on the other side of the road stopped, and a man yelled at me to get in. I was an ’80s kid, and I thought I was being kidnapped. I took my black tire iron out of my book bag and watched the man continue to yell something. I couldn’t hear what he said, and when I didn’t move, he sped away quickly, still yelling something…Something about the sky. I thought maybe we were going to get some nor’easter or something, an early blizzard. I picked up my pace, as I was starting to get concerned. I thought maybe the country was under attack, or some global catastrophe had happened while I was at school. The snow picked up, and the last edge of the sun dropped beneath the rim of this valley. I was approaching the golf course when I first heard it.

It was a hissing grumble, something like a balloon letting out air into a broken subwoofer, or a big rig flapping a flat tire on the sand of an emergency off-ramp. The sound tapped on my eardrum. It was more bodily than aural. There was an odor, too. It was geranium—sickly sweet. I know that now because I still smell it on some colognes; the smell still makes me break out in cold sweat. I looked behind me for the source of the noise, but there were just more trees and a creeping sunset. I clutched my tire iron so tight my hand was throbbing and falling asleep.

When I reached the golf course and the clearing, I saw it. It was about a hundred yards behind me and 20 feet up in the air. At first, it was the color of the sky.

Not transparent, but the color of the sky itself, orange and pink with blue and gray. It was a perfect circle at the beginning. I thought it was a halo cloud or some sort of strange light reflection, but when it caught my gaze, it flashed dark black and then bright white. It wanted me to see it. It wanted me to know it was real. I stood still, looking up at it, trying to wrap my head around this thing that stalked me home. Then, with a loud pop, it unfurled itself into a straight line and flashed black again. It fluttered like a windsock, its tail waving and twitching like a fly's legs. It swirled and feigned toward me, then retreated back again, like it wanted me to flinch.

I was weeping again, just like that kid in the Lacoste shirt. Fat tears rolled down burning cheeks. I was shaking and losing strength. I heard that rumbling hiss again, and the head of the beast flashed neon red. With this flash, I could see the mouth of this thing. It was a circular disc full of thick bumps or nodes. It looked like a hagfish or some parasitic eel. This wasn’t some ancient sea creature, though; it was several feet long and floating in the air. The geranium smell choked me. I screamed as loud and as deep as I could. I yelled for it to go away. It just flashed and twirled. It moved between light and dark shades. It moved between a circle and a line.

It wouldn’t approach or fully retreat. It stayed tethered to me as I walked backwards with my tire iron raised. I was another fifteen minutes from home. It was playing with me. It would inch closer and closer until I yelled, and only then would it pull back and hiss or cackle. No more cars passed, no witnesses, no one to help me. By the time I reached the old dump at the bottom of my street, the creature had backed way off, but it still stalked. The noises and colors were more deliberate now. Intentional, like it wanted me to know it was in control.

The night was almost fully black, and I would lose track of it in the waxing moonlight or behind some large brushy treetop.

I didn’t run or turn my back.

I just walked slowly, barking when needed and weeping fat tears.

As I approached my front door, it stopped pursuing. It seemed frustrated and began twirling around a streetlight at the edge of my property. It hissed loudly and warped. It flew higher than it had before and screeched loudly.

Then, like a snake or a missile, it made a downward strike at me.

I swung my iron tire but missed. By some grace so did it. I felt it brush past me. I felt something scrape or lick my face. I rushed inside and slammed the old iron door. My mother was watching TV in the living room. She looked over her shoulder at me. She said with zero affection, “You can’t wear all black and walk around at night! You sure are a stupid little girl! There is chicken surprise in the fridge.”

And that was it. I never said anything about it. I told my parents I had the flu and took a week off from school. I didn’t want to leave the house. After some time, I convinced myself that something else was wrong. Like I had been the issue. I don’t know how I did that. Maybe it was out of survival, a need to blame something, I guess.

I have pored through local folklore and cryptozoology texts, but I have never found anything. I thought maybe I was dosed with LSD or something, but I couldn’t have been, and LSD is different. It could have been schizophrenia, or maybe a passing psychosis. But it was all so vivid and specific. The colors, the smells, the sounds. And what about those cars that drove past me? Or the man who tried to save me? He knew a girl like me would be frightened by a stranger in a car like him. How did they all know what was happening? How were they so sure? They all know a secret.

There is a secret — a story no one has the balls to say out loud. I will leave it be. I know it was real. I know because I sat with that thing for hours that night.

After I got home, I looked out my window, and it came… It smashed itself against my old storm window. Its circular mouth latched to the thick glass pane. It vibrated and rumbled, shaking the glass. Eventually, it just stopped. It went limp and hung onto that pane with its suction cup mouth. It was exhausted or spent. It swayed in the light breeze of a winter flurry. It was gray and long, puffy and gross. I pulled my desk chair in front of the window. I stared at it all night.

By dawn, I must have dozed off; it was gone. But the circle of its mouth left a ring on the glass. I tried to clean it with all kinds of industrial cleaners and even tried to scratch it off with a razor blade, but the glass had melted or corroded. The ring is still on that window. I drove past my parents’ house a few months back, and it was still there.