Chapter 2

Then I saw Uncle Tim reach under one of the seats and pull out an old box.

It was made of woven wicker, darkened with age and worn smooth around the edges. It looked like something that had been passed down through the family for decades.

I was wondering what was inside when he opened the box and pulled out two plain white candles.

They weren’t ordinary candles, either.

They looked like the kind people used at funerals or graveside services.

My grandmother had always said you shouldn’t keep funeral candles around unless you had a reason. They were supposed to bring bad luck.

Yet Uncle Tim was carrying them around on the bus.

Judging by the size of the box, he had plenty more.

That made me even more uneasy.

Why would a city bus driver carry stuff like this around?

Unless...

Unless he kept it specifically for situations like this.

Then Uncle Tim took out three sticks of incense.

I didn’t dare ask what he was doing. I just watched as he walked to the front of the bus.

He motioned for me to shut everything down.

I turned off the lights and killed the engine.

We were way out in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t a single house or building in sight.

As soon as the lights went out, everything disappeared into darkness.

Rain pounded against the windows while the wind howled around the bus. The sound made the whole thing even creepier.

Uncle Tim crouched outside with his back to me.

He muttered a few words under his breath, but I couldn’t make them out over the storm.

Then he pulled out a lighter and tried to light the candles.

I stared through the windshield.

There was no way those things were going to stay lit in weather like this.

But they did.

Two tiny flames appeared in the darkness.

They flickered wildly in the wind, faint and eerie, like something out of an old ghost story.

They should have gone out immediately.

Instead, they started burning brighter.

Uncle Tim set the three sticks of incense behind the candles in a straight row, then climbed back onto the bus.

Once he was inside, some of the tension seemed to leave his face.

He even lit a cigarette, completely ignoring the no-smoking rule.

“You spend enough nights driving empty roads, sooner or later you’re going to run into something you can’t explain,” he said. “The trick is not to mess with it. You leave it alone, and hopefully it leaves you alone.”

He nodded toward the candles outside.

“That’s what those are for.”

I stared at him, not quite sure what to say.

I had never believed in ghosts.

As far as I was concerned, haunted roads, restless spirits, and things hiding in the dark belonged in campfire stories.

But watching those candles burn steadily in the middle of a downpour made me question that pretty fast.

Maybe all those crazy stories old people told weren’t completely made up.

“We’ll give it another minute,” Uncle Tim said. “If nothing changes, we’re good. Then we’ll head back, get some sleep, and forget about finishing the route tonight.”

He tossed me a cigarette.

I copied him, lit it, and took a drag.

The smoke hit the back of my throat so hard that my eyes immediately started watering.

I bent over coughing.

Uncle Tim burst out laughing.

For the first time all night, it felt like the worst was finally behind us.

Then his laughter stopped.

Just like that.

A second later, I heard him suck in a sharp breath.

I looked toward the front of the bus.

The flames on both candles had turned green.

My stomach dropped.

Then I noticed the incense.

Two of the sticks had burned almost all the way down.

The third had barely burned at all.

Uncle Tim went completely still.

“Ryan,” he said quietly, “I don’t think we’re getting home tonight.”

I knew the old superstition.

My grandmother used to talk about things like that when I was a kid.

If three sticks of incense burned unevenly, with two disappearing fast while the third stayed almost untouched, it meant whatever you were trying to appease hadn’t accepted your offering.

It meant you were in trouble.

I had always thought it was nonsense.

Now I was staring right at it.

For a moment, my mind went completely blank.

Then something hit me.

Uncle Tim had lit the incense less than thirty seconds ago.

Thirty seconds.

There was no possible way two sticks could have burned down that much.

“Uncle Tim, what do we do? Are we going to die?”

“Shut up!” he snapped. “Don’t say that out loud.”

His voice was harsh, but I could see his hand shaking.

That scared me more than anything else.

Whatever was happening, Uncle Tim was afraid too.

I was young, and there was still a lot I didn’t know about the world.

But I knew my uncle.

He wouldn’t lie to me about something like this.

He motioned for me to get out of the driver’s seat and took my place.

Then he pulled an access card from his pocket and tapped it against the control panel.

A computerized voice came through the speakers.

“Authorization confirmed. Speed limiter disabled. Please operate the vehicle with caution.”

Uncle Tim had special clearance from the transit company.

He was a military veteran, and whenever something went wrong that regular drivers weren’t trained to handle, the company called him in. Because of that, they had issued him an override card that could disable the bus’s speed limiter.

I swear I had never ridden in anything that fast in my life.

Especially not a city bus.

The second the automated message ended, Uncle Tim floored it.

The bus shot forward so hard that I was thrown back against my seat.

It was a full-size city bus, but Uncle Tim handled it like a sports car.

He swung it around in one smooth turn, straightened the wheel, and slammed his foot down on the gas.

The speedometer climbed past sixty miles an hour within seconds.

“Uncle Tim, slow down! I’m getting sick!”

“Then be sick!” he shouted. “Better sick than dead!”

There was something vicious in his voice.

But somehow, I had the disturbing feeling that those words weren’t really meant for me.