by P. W. Child
“Aye, I’ll let you know by tomorrow,” she nodded cordially, smiling, to his surprise.
“Good! Good,” he muttered as he gathered his blazer and held it taut to get through the flailing gate. Nina let the car idle while she waited for him to get to the front door, as courtesy dictated. He looked at something quite acutely, away from the house he was visiting. Even as he progressed, the preacher faced something past the boundary of the residence, as if his attention was utterly engaged by it. As the lace curtain of one of the front windows twitched, Father Harper held up his hand to the occupant, gesturing for them to wait a moment.
He turned and fiddled about in his pockets, pretending to have misplaced something in Nina's car. A lady opened the front door of the house, while the preacher cried back to her, “Be there in just a moment, Kim!”
“What the hell?” Nina asked to herself as he opened the door, looking befuddled.
“What did you lose, Father?” she asked as he leaned in.
Under his breath he replied sincerely, “I don't want to alarm you, my dear child, but…just take heed.”
“Of what?” she frowned.
He sighed laboriously. “I could be wrong and I hope to God I am, but I think you’re being watched. Nina, I think someone might be following you.”
Chapter 4 – Miss Earle's Bus Ride
Joanne hated these mornings. Much as she adored the children she educated, having to leave her classroom made her feel like a hermit crab after a vicious current. She felt exposed and homesick for the comforts of that which she loved. This was precisely why she’d become a teacher. As far as she was concerned, staying in one solitary class room suited her just fine.
Just adorning her wooden throne in the front of the class, speaking her wisdom and being appeased by young peasants with sacrifices of flash drives and cheap bead bracelets was just dandy. And no, in junior high there were no such gifts as apples on her desk. First off, those were reserved for primary school teachers – a lesser species – and secondly, the only apple she was interested in was one she used to surf the Net with at night.
“Miss Earle?” a shrill voice called from her door while she arranged her desk neatly in the empty classroom.
“Tell them I'm sick,” she mumbled without looking at her skinny colleague and friend, Miss Parsons from down the hallway. The gaunt woman with the messy ponytail entered, pursing her lips playfully as she moved towards her reclusive friend.
“How can you not enjoy road trips? I think it's great to get out of this correctional facility for a while, don't you?” she nudged Joanne. “What's keeping you here?”
Joanne looked up irritably. “The food is great and the warden promised me a conjugal.”
Pamela Parsons couldn’t help but chuckle. “You can’t stall forever. All the kids are on the bus already and the clock is ticking closer to ten, babe. Let's go! Come! Get some fresh air.”
“Fresh air? Arctic acne, you mean?” Joanne moaned with a heavy sigh. “Here. Take my bag and make yourself useful. I can’t count on you to fill in for me, lie for me, or feed me, so you can be my porter.”
She flung the large sports bag at Miss Parsons, nearly knocking the hyperactive anorexic off her feet in the process. Reluctantly she left the sanctuary of her throne room, glancing back with every other stride to make sure it had been left in order. She imagined how quiet and lifeless it was going to be for the next few days and she longed to be right there, immersed in that quiet peace instead of sitting on a bus full of noisy children on her way to some godforsaken patch in north-eastern Canada.
“Jo! Pronto!” Pam urged, virtually pulling the door against Joanne to shut her out of the classroom. “Now lock it and let's go. Please don't be one of those people everyone always has to wait for. There is no such thing as fashionably late, you know, just fucking tardy and that’s it.”
“Okay, alright, I'm coming!” Joanne pouted, shoving Miss Parsons away to lock the orange door in the short hallway that led out onto the south side lawn. The sun was bland above them, hardly warming anything. Here in Newfoundland it had been reduced to an impotent ornament in the sky, a mere bulb of light shining bleakly until the long darkness would eat it up again. As the two teachers hurried over the green mound of the lawn towards the gate, Joanne Earle glanced up at the sky with a wince and sighed, “A whole long weekend wasted in the middle of nowhere. Oh joy.”
“Oh shut up,” Pam said. “You're going to love the woodlands. The natural beauty is breathtaking up there and at night…”
“I don't even want to hear about the night,” Joanne pouted. “Good God, couldn't Harold arrange this little trip over the summer, at least? We’re going to freeze up there!”
“Freeze?” Pam said incredulously as she motioned to the bus driver to start the engine. “Jo, we’re staying at a camp with cabins, fireplaces, and a mess hall. Nobody is going to freeze to death. They even have a communications tower with access to,” she sucked in a heavy breath with over-dramatic pause, “…the outside world! Can you believe that?”
“Your sarcasm sucks,” Joanne replied wryly. “So we won't be sleeping outside, but hey, at least we’ll be snugly accommodated at Camp Crystal Lake.”
“Oh, for fuck's sake,” Pam groaned. “Just get on the goddamn bus.”
When Joanne boarded the already occupied bus she received a jovial applause from the handful of tenth graders, forcing her to smile, something she dreaded for Pam to see and shoot that I-told-you-so-face.
“Come on, Miss Earle! We have a lot of ground to cover!” shouted the burly Nathan Hughes, one of her more robust students who could have been a prize quarterback had he not been so disinterested in sports altogether.
“You already cover a lot of ground, fat ass!” one of his classmates exclaimed, bearing the reprimand of Miss Parsons almost immediately.
“Sit right here,” Pam told Joanne, pointing to the two front seats that had been reserved for the two of them. “I'll take the other seat.”
“Listen, are we the only two chaperons? What if something happens up there? You know, what if something happens that we need a more…male…person for?” Joanne asked Pam in a loud whisper to manage speaking over the rowdy lot on the bus.
“Oh, don't worry. We have Mr. Spence coming with us,” Pam replied as the bus pulled away, evoking a roaring cheer from the high school students.
“The new guy?” Joanne asked. Pam nodded cheerfully with the cacophony of the group drowning out any possible discussion about the new teacher and ex-Olympic swimmer, Jacques Spence.
The din did not bother the two women much. They knew from experience that, as soon as the excitement had dwindled and the road side scenery became monotonous, all the kids would be on their phones anyway. Soon they would become quiet, wasted young zombies in the thrall of boredom thanks to the over-stimulation of media they’d been raised in.
Pam found it sad, really, that potentially brilliant minds were going to waste on selfies, duck-faces, and ignorance most of the time. However, there were a few among them who gave her some hope. Those who bothered to evolve, those who bothered to punctuate and indulge in the more thoughtful subjects of the education system; they were strangely somewhat immune to the snares of modern intellectual regression and entertainment enslavement.
“So where is The Rock?” Joanne asked, taking a hearty chunk of oatmeal cookie into her mouth. Since she’d first laid eyes on the male Physical Education teacher she’d nicknamed him thus because of his dark resemblance to the celebrity. Of course, he was not half as big, but his face was almost a dead ringer.
“He’s driving behind the bus in his Land Rover. Says if something happens to the bus there will be another vehicle to go and look for help,” Pam explained. Her response seemed to please Joanne, surprisingly, because usually she would have a thousand counter questions.
Joanne was a history teacher, but after school each Wednesday she accepted the duties of tennis coach. This was why she’d been asked by the principal t
o accompany Miss Parsons, the gym teacher and Mr. Spence, the swimming coach on the trip. Although it was not a sports camp in name, the principal wanted the young people to experience the fresh air fitness of mountain hiking without feeling like they needed to excel in sports. In fact, it was just a reason to use Education Board funding in a proactive and beneficial manner.
As the journey progressed, Joanne had to admit to herself that it was not altogether nightmarish. As a matter of fact, the kids were behaving most of the time and the scenery that paced by her window was quite beautiful. She would never admit this to Pam and make her right again, but Joanne was enjoying being out of the confinement of the cube she taught history in all day. It felt good to see other places for a change. Her hands clutched her cookie tin as she watched the road gradually abduct them from the comforts of civilization and farther into the unknown.
Heading in the direction of Churchill Falls, the bus hummed incessantly for hours; before long practically everyone was asleep. It would be another three hours of driving before they would reach their first destination, close to Goose Bay. There they would spend the night before going on to the camp. Joanne couldn’t join the others in a good bus nap for reasons she could not explain. After all, she wasn’t agoraphobic or anything. Yet for some reason the wide expanse of alien terrain kept her vigilant. She’d always been that way – intuitive – but always about the wrong things. Tapping the back of her pen against her lips rhythmically had a hypnotic effect on her and she slowly sank into another world of thought, abandoning the trappings of reality even while wide awake.
The passing shrubs, hills, and power lines pulsed along with her pen, but she didn’t feel at all sleepy. All she felt was a veil of emotion that came from nowhere in particular, a sense of warning about their destination. Joanne had often learned that these feelings led to nothing prevalent to her own circumstances, but it always manifested in the fate of others – strangers. That was a small consolation. Still, she hated this sense of apprehension she harbored which grew stronger and more urgent with every mile they traveled.
“Hey, Miss Earle, would you like some apple crumble?” Lisa, one of her students, asked from the seat behind her in a considerate whisper. The girl's offer gently alleviated Joanne's growing concerns for the outcome of the trip by distracting her from her lonely vigil.
She turned to face Lisa and her reply bore raw truth. “Oh my God, that smells divine, Lisa! I would love a piece. Thank you.”
“Sure. I made it myself, straight from my great grandmother's recipe book. Handwritten and all, so it was kind of an ode to her to make a pan of these,” the girl with the nerdy glasses explained.
Other than her poor choice of eye wear, Lisa was a drop-dead gorgeous young lady who could give any Polish supermodel a good run. With some toil she managed to load a slice onto the lid of the lunch tin she was storing it in and passed it over the seat to Joanne, who eagerly received it. Only halfway through her first bite of the delicious confectionery, Joanne had to swallow quickly to deal with the barrage of questions from the teenager about the trip, about Joanne's brand of cell phone, what music she enjoyed, and why she was still single.
Vexed that she could not consume the delicious pastry with the slow veneration it deserved, Joanne finally cut Lisa short. “Listen, love, I didn’t arrange this trip and, quite honestly, I’m enjoying this little bit of peace while everyone is knocked out.”
“I get it. Sorry, ma'am,” Lisa apologized, instantly making Joanne feel terribly guilty for her tone. She hadn’t been outwardly rude, but just the fact that she’d basically told the friendly teen to shut up felt a bit harsh. “It’s okay, really, Miss Earle. No worries. I was just making conversation to stay awake.”
“Why would you want to stay awake? This is one boring bus ride,” Joanne smiled, grateful for the chance to make up for her snappy comment.
Lisa looked a bit embarrassed, reluctant to answer at first. “I don't know how to say this, but I’ve been having bad dreams and if I sleep on the bus I might wake up screaming.”
“I have nightmares often too, love,” Joanne comforted her, as Lisa rested her arms on the back of her teacher's seat to prop her chin on. She sighed hopelessly and her eyes examined Joanne's keenly.
“But mine come true.”
Chapter 5 – Nothing Remains Buried
The second day on the bus was about all Joanne could take of the joys of a road trip. Although the kids were no burden and the noise levels remained relatively low throughout most of it, she was getting tired of sitting on her plump ass, waiting for adventure.
“Where is The Rock today? He didn't eat with us last night. All I saw of him was his Landy parked in front of the motel. But no sign of him…”
“He told the bus driver that he was going to skip dinner with us and get an early night because he wasn't feeling well,” Pam gossiped quietly. “I bet he wanted to get some quality time in with some cable porn, right?” She chuckled and winked, rousing Joanne's mean sense of humor that she so willingly flaunted when certain individuals peeved her.
“A bit of alone time is good for everyone every now and again,” Joanne jested with glee. When the two childish thirty-odd-year-old spinsters were done having a laugh at Jacques Spence’s expense, Joanne asked, “But we haven't seen him driving behind the bus since about two hours ago.”
“I know,” Pam replied rather morosely. “Maybe he pulled over, or God forbid, something happened to his car. Shall I give him a buzz, you think?”
“Rather, just to make sure, I think,” Joanne affirmed.
“We’re here, people!” the bus driver exclaimed, stirring up a bustle of remarks and cheer from the teenagers. They all leaned over to the windows to see and started packing up their phones and snacks.
Happy Valley – Goose Bay was more than Joanne could have hoped for. While enduring the road there from Churchill Falls, she’d envisioned a rundown old ghost town with a few fishing bait shops and huts along a single main road where the locals sat on the stoop and stared. But she was in awe of what the small town really looked like when the bus finally halted to let them get their feet on a motionless floor.
Pam and Joanne stepped off the bus, taking in their surroundings with a sense of tranquility neither had expected. Pam rested her hand on Joanne's shoulder. “Look at that scenery!”
“I know, right?” Joanne smiled. “I hate to be wrong, as you know, but I’m elated to be wrong this time. Coming out here on this camp was worth it a million times over.”
“Then I will reserve my need to say I told you so,” Pam winked before she exclaimed to the dispersing and curious teenagers. “Guys, stick together please! Don't wander off too far. We’re just waiting for Mr. Spence and then we’ll carry on to the cabins.”
The two ladies marveled at the pretty little town, a tourist paradise they intended to enjoy over the weekend. Rightly so, too. As teachers responsible for the physical welfare of their students, they’d spent an enormous amount of extra time lecturing on good sports nutrition and volunteering for extramural activities and gymnasium instruction, even when they were not expected to. This field trip was the last on the list for the year, and the reason Pam had implored the principal to allocate funds for this particular area around Goose Bay.
Past the welcome sign at the entrance of the town there was an ocean of trees, tall and dark green, populating the rise and fall of the hills and meadows. The close vicinity to the coast gave it a spatial air that the group did not have in Labrador City inland. Eventually, after fifteen minutes that felt like a mere forty-five seconds, the banged up, dark blue Land Rover belonging to the ailing swimming coach showed up. He drove past the bus and the congregation of teens at a very slow speed, his window rolled down, and his swarthy, muscular arm dangling from it.
“Just follow me, guys!” he smiled, making sure to slow down even more so they had time to get into the bus before they lost sight of him.
“Get in! Get in!” Joanne cried, and all the stude
nts made their way to their seats in time to follow Mr. Spence's vehicle towards the scenic Lac Seul, where they would spend the next two days of the long weekend. Joanne was finally excited about it, but as they drove off into the beauteous wilderness she could not help but feel that same breath of dread she’d been suppressing even after young Lisa shared the same sentiment the night before.
The two vehicles roared down the meandering road and were swallowed up by the dark trees on their way to the lake where their cabins awaited. By now the engines were running hot and the gasoline was running low, but this didn’t trouble the group, as they were scheduled to go on a light hike as soon as they had moved their light luggage into their respective rooms. That was the part Joanne and Pam looked forward to the most. It would be good to get some leg stretching done after a two-day road trip to reach the Canadian gem huddled by the mysterious guard of giant firs and pines.
“Just be careful,” Mr. Spence reminded everyone after they’d arrived. “It’s bear hunting season.”
“It’s always bear hunting season, sir,” the rambunctious and comical Nathan exclaimed from the small group of students. “Bears hunt all year round. I don't think they got the e-mail that told them when the season ends.”
Joanne and Pam laughed at the boy's creative twist on a very serious announcement. His classmates giggled and shoved him around, but Mr. Spence paid no attention as he continued, “And none of you are allowed to venture off without the entire group. And I mean none of you.” His beady dark eyes peeked out from under his overdeveloped brow, leering straight at the two female teachers. “We all move, accompanied by at least four others at all times. There are hunters in the woods, wild animals are everywhere and trust me, none of you can outrun them!” Clasping his great hands together, he smiled at last, “Other than that, enjoy yourselves and relax this weekend. You have all earned it and I will be happy to take you guys out on the lake sometime tomorrow for some fishing or swimming, alright?”