Chapter 31 of 31·5 min read·The remainder of the night, ending at first light
The Outgoing Pouch
The coach ran without headlights. I knew because the road markings came and went beneath the windows, pale strips rising out of the dark and slipping under us, while the lamps above the driver stayed dead. The engine made a low, steady vibration through the floor. I counted its strongest pulses without meaning to: four, then three, with a space between. I stopped when I noticed I was doing it.
Declan sat across from me with his hands clasped between his knees. Rachel had taken the seat beside me. Neither of them slept. There was no timetable in the coach, no driver, and no sign that anyone had opened the doors since we left Cill Rua.
“Could we get off?” Declan asked.
I looked at the handle beside him. “We could try.”
“That’s a yes, then.”
“It’s an observation.”
Rachel leaned over and tested the door. The handle turned. The latch gave a small click, but the door stayed sealed against the frame. She tried the emergency release. It pulled free of its bracket and came away in her hand.
She set it on the seat. “That’s useful.”
Declan let out a short laugh. It didn’t last. “If this thing’s carrying my name, maybe I should get off when it stops. Let it take me and leave the two of you out of it.”
I watched the red letters of the destination blind reflected in the glass. WEST PARISH. “It’s already taking you. You’re here.”
“Then you can go on without me.”
I wanted to tell him that was impossible. I didn’t know that. I wanted to tell him I wouldn’t leave him. That sounded easier than it was.
“I don’t want you to be the reason it gets to the next place,” I said. “But I’m not going to decide you should stay behind so I can feel useful.”
He looked down at his hands. “Good. Because I’d have had to argue with you.”
The coach slowed. Somewhere beneath the floor, a relay clicked twice. We passed a sign for West Parish, then another sign for the same place a few minutes later. The distance between them should have been impossible. The second sign stood beside a low stone wall and a parish office with one lit window.
The coach stopped at the kerb.
A canvas dispatch pouch rested on the front step, just inside the open door. It was tied shut with string and tagged CILL RUA—WEST PARISH. No one had put it there while we were watching. A square of paper protruded from the flap.
Rachel reached it first. She turned the tag over. “This is their outgoing pouch.”
“You saw it at the halt?”
Next
Mark and the others are heading for Lough Aven County Infirmary, where the route may reach a public switchboard before they can warn anyone.
“I saw one like it behind Maeve’s counter.” She took out the paper. “This is ours.”
It was the warning we’d written at Cill Rua, folded once and marked with the blunt crease Rachel had made against the counter. Under our words, someone had added a line in blue ink: DID NOT ANSWER. IT RANG AGAIN AFTER I UNPLUGGED IT.
Maeve’s handwriting. She had got it into the pouch. Or something had carried it there for her.
I read the note twice. The words were simple and careful. The pressure of the pen had bitten through the paper where she’d written RANG AGAIN.
“She didn’t answer,” Rachel said. “That matters.”
“It matters to her,” I said. “We don’t know what it did to the route.”
Declan took the note from me and held it by the edges. “She did what we asked.”
The coach doors opened. Outside, the parish office’s lit window went dark.
We crossed the short stretch of road together. There was no telephone booth, no waiting vehicle, no sign of a clerk. The door to the office stood unlocked. Inside, a desk lamp lit a ledger, a telephone, and a man in shirtsleeves who had not looked up from the page in front of him.
“Eamon Leddin?” I asked.
He lifted his eyes. “Yes.”
The telephone rang.
Eamon’s hand stopped above the ledger. He did not reach for the receiver.
I put Maeve’s note on the desk between us. “This came from Cill Rua. Don’t answer it.”
He read the first lines, then the note underneath. The telephone rang again. Eamon kept his gaze on the paper.
“Did she send this?” he asked.
“She left it at the halt,” Rachel said. “She refused to answer.”
“Good.” He set the note beside the open ledger, carefully, as though he was aligning a receipt. “I’d rather know she made that choice.”
His composure gave way on the last word. It wasn’t much. His lower lip tightened, and he pressed his thumb hard into the desk’s worn edge until the color left it. Then he reached for a pencil and wrote Maeve’s note into the margin beside the incoming entry.
The telephone rang a third time. Its bell had a dry, mechanical rattle. I could hear the metal striker hitting the cup, though the instrument had no visible connection to the wall. A cable ran from the desk to an old junction box. Eamon followed my gaze.
“I cut that line yesterday,” he said.
“Did it stop?”
“No.” He glanced at the ledger. “I was hoping it would be a clerical error.”
The page listed MARK ALDER—RECEIVED. Below it, DECLAN SLOANE—TRANSFERRED. The final column continued beyond the crease in the paper. Eamon turned the ledger toward us. A new line had appeared beneath the others, written in a hand that matched the rest of the book.
CILL RUA WARNING—RECEIVED.
The words had been entered after Maeve’s note was written. The route had carried the warning here. It had also filed it.
Rachel touched the corner of the page. “At least he saw it before he picked up.”
Eamon shook his head once, though he didn’t look at her. “I wasn’t going to answer.”
The telephone stopped ringing. For a moment the room held only the desk lamp’s faint electrical buzz and the coach’s engine idling outside. Then the machine on Eamon’s desk—a small county dispatch printer—woke with a click.
A strip of paper fed out.
Eamon didn’t move. I took it from the slot. The ticket carried a destination in block capitals: Lough Aven County Infirmary. Beneath that, in smaller type, was a departure time of 05:10. The coach outside gave a short pneumatic hiss, as if it had been waiting for someone to read it aloud.
“Is that a normal service?” I asked.
“No.” Eamon looked from the ticket to the ledger. “There’s a public road there. The infirmary has its own switchboard.”
Rachel took the ticket from me. “Then we get there first.”
Eamon closed the ledger. His hand remained on its cover. “You can’t stop this by tearing out a page.”
“I know,” I said.
I had thought the note would be the thing we carried forward: a warning that had reached a person in time to make a choice. Instead, the route had received it too. Maeve’s refusal was recorded alongside the names it had already taken, a small human act converted into another entry it could keep.
Eamon opened a desk drawer and pulled out a road map. He marked the infirmary with a pencil, then folded the map along its old creases. “The coach will take you there. I’ll come as far as the county road.”
“You don’t have to,” Rachel said.
“I know.” He slid Maeve’s note into his shirt pocket. “I’m not answering that telephone.”
Outside, dawn had begun to thin the sky above the rooftops. The coach door remained open. Declan stepped down first, then waited for us beside the wheel. I held the dispatch ticket in my hand. The paper was still warm from the printer.
Behind us, the telephone rang once more. Eamon didn’t turn around. We got on the coach, and the doors closed after him.