Eerie, Indiana fanfiction: 4:57pm
Once, the bench had been painted a utilitarian dark green, but time and the elements had worn away most of the colour and now only a few sad flakes clung to the rusting frame. Still, the arms and legs were elegant curls of metal, and the seat back was decorated in ornate loops and swirls shaped like stylised flower petals. It was the sort of bench that belonged under a rose bower in the garden of a little old lady, after the jagged edges had been safely sanded off and the whole thing was given a new coat in some appropriately pastel hue. Certainly, it should not be chained and padlocked to a lopsided sign advertising a bus stop for a route that had been long abandoned.
As far as Mary C. Carter knew, Route 16, 6 and 61 had moved to the other side of Eerie once the new housing developments began springing up, around the time her aunt was divorcing Husband #3 and forging a new relationship with the man who would eventually be Husband #4. Yet the bench remained, a faded schedule declaring, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that the next bus would be departing at 5.15pm.
She laid a thick dog blanket over the broken slats of the seat (she’d picked it up cheap when the Canine Arrest Team mysteriously disbanded overnight, and the Eerie City Council had sold everything left behind in an attempt to recoup some of the outstanding rent) pulled out a small paper bag containing a fresh custard tart from Grandma’s Kitchen, and sat down to wait. It was 4.57pm.
She was stiff from sitting so long, and she stretched her long legs out in front of her, examining her heavy-duty work boots. They were scarred with ectoplasm burns and coated in mud. She should clean them soon. The bus was taking forever. She should have brought something to read. It was 4.57pm.
A chill breeze picked up, and Mary C. Carter shivered inside her thick woollen coat. The sky had begun to get dark, and the air smelled like rain. The custard tart was a distant memory, and her stomach growled. It felt as if she had already been waiting for a long, long time. It was 4.57pm.
The stars were out and a thin layer of frost had formed on the exposed metal of the bench. Mary C. Carter blew on her chilled fingertips and tucked them under her armpits in an attempt to keep warm. Across the street, she could see her reflection in the darkened window of Everything Corn. Her nose was running from the cold and she wiped it on her sleeve, grateful that nobody was around this late to catch her doing so. It was 4.57pm.
The sky was paling and lights were beginning to appear in the windows of distant houses. A fleet of trucks from the Eerie Dairy drove past her, on their way to deliver milk and stuff to a succession of dew-damp doorstops. It was 4.57pm.
“Aah,” said Mary C. Carter.
“I see,” said Mary C. Carter.
A bright yellow school bus passed by where she sat. It was full of small children in bright-coloured winter-wear, headed for Eerie Elementary. As it passed, she saw her reflection flicker across it’s finger-smudged windows, and she saw the thing that sat invisibly on the bench beside her.
“Sweet corn!” whispered Mary C. Carter. The thing next to her was shrivelled and pink and shiny, like old scar tissue over a childhood injury, where the skin has stretched and split and healed again as the child grows. The thing’s reflection fixed it’s blind gaze on her and Mary C. Carter, who believed in ghosts but not in God, felt her soul quail. She was cold all over, and not simply from having sat out all night in the middle of an Indiana winter. Her stomach roiled, and she thought the custard tart might make an unwelcome reappearance.
Her lips were numb and her tongue was suddenly too big for her mouth. Her voice shook and her words were slurred, but she curled her burning icy fingers into fists, dug her fingernails into her sweaty palms and managed to choke out the words:
“Your bus isn’t coming.”
No words, but a sensation of rage buffeted her with a force more solid than anything the wind had managed.
“They discontinued the line.”
Loose strands of her hair whipped away from her flushed and sticky face, blown back by pressure that failed to disturb the dead leaves that had fallen on and around her. How long had she sat her, she wondered, to have accumulated so much detritus, and how still had she been that they had lain on her lap and her bowed head and her hunched shoulders for all that time?
“Nobody is coming,” she stuttered, her teeth beginning to chatter. “Nobody will sit with you. Nobody will wait with you. They’ll pull up the sign and melt the bench for scrap and without a tether to this world, you will fade.”
The cold intensified and the metal under her groaned as it contracted. There was a high-pitched pinging noise as one of the support struts snapped under the pressure, and Mary C. Carter felt herself unceremoniously dumped to the pavement. She scooted backwards on her hands and knees, feeling the skin of her palms tear and her blood smear the cracked asphalt.
The sound of a car horn snapped her head around. A milk truck had skewed to a stop a few inches away from her. She stumbled to her feet and took off running down the street. In the distance, the minute hand of Eerie Presbytarian's creaked and shuddered it's way to a new position.
It was 4.58pm.
The Andrea/Marisea Series
Marys by froodle, in which Mary C. Carter takes on her new role
The Microwave by froodle, in which Andrea Fantucci returns to Eerie after a considerable absense
The Eldritch Abomination in the Room by froodle, in which the microwave is most definitely not discussed
Twelve Sleeps! by froodle, in which Andrea does not enjoy Christmas shopping
Invitiation by froodle, in which Mary C. Carter makes use of Marshall's well-honed delivery boy skills
Awakening by froodle, in which Marisea must confront an unhappy spectre at an unreasonable hour