Three nights later, Jonathan disappeared.
He had made a will. The farm was mine, for my lifetime, and our children’s after I was gone. The farm I now leave to you, Margaret, my dearest daughter.
He also left me a letter. “Do not try to find me,” he wrote. “I love you. I am sorry.”
But we searched. Of course we searched. We found nothing.
A week after his brother’s disappearance, Caleb came to me. “I know where Jon is,” he said.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “But the smiling man isn’t real. Jon just made him up. He was frightened and he felt guilty and made him up.” But even as I said it, I didn’t believe it, and Caleb knew I didn’t.
“The smiling man pulled me out of the river,” said Caleb. “I can’t remember anything else from that night. But I remember his hands on mine, and mine were blue.” Caleb paused. “Jonathan’s not gone, you know. At night, I can hear his footsteps.” Caleb swallowed. “I can go to him. I can go to where he is. So Jon won’t be alone.”
I shouldn’t have said it. My dear Margaret, I shouldn’t have. But I did. “Go to him, then, madman,” I spat. “If you think you can. Don’t come back. It is your fault he is gone.”
Caleb wasn’t angry. He stood silent a moment. Then he bent and whispered in my ear, “Until the mist becomes rain.”
Then he was gone.
I never saw Caleb or Jonathan again.
Something changed in the quality of the noise on the bus. Ollie looked up from her book, frowning. The shouting had dropped, and even the monotonous urging from Mr. Easton tosit down, please, and be quietseemed different—distracted, puzzled.
Ollie looked out the window, peering around Brian.
A heavy fog had descended on the road, the black tops of trees poking up like drowning fingers. The left side of the road was forest. On the right, the cornfields stretchedout, guarded by scowling scarecrows. The mist was so dense that it threw the headlights back into their eyes. The bus was rolling along at a crawl. Ollie’s hands tightened involuntarily on her book.
There were mutters all around, nervous giggling.
“So weird.”
“Look at that fog.”
“I have to pee.”
The bus was crawling slower and slower. The mist thickened. Ollie didn’t recognize where they were; she didn’t even know how long they’d been driving. She stared out the window.When the mist rises...
But the year wasn’t turning. Also, her book was just a story.
They drifted to a halt. The bus coughed and died.
For a moment, total silence.
Then a burst of noise.
“I think the bus broke down!”
“I want to go home!”
“We’re lost!” yelled Mike Campbell, even though that was stupid. How could they be lost?
Ollie was still staring out the window. The yellow autumn trees had turned black and spindly, as though winter had come in the last three minutes. The broad, smooth country road had become an old, cracked ribbon, running away and vanishing into the trees, still lapped in mist.Where were they?
Slowly, the bus driver stood up. The shouting died away. The driver turned around. He seemed to have gotten both taller and wider. “Well,” said the driver, surveying them, “best get moving. At nightfall they’ll come for the rest of you.”
Then he smiled, tongue flicking red against his teeth.
12
