Murders in Progress by Eldon Cene

Does this fellow know something?

The Muffin Lady’s Secret

(Episode 49)

            “Look at this,” Nancy nodded, when Sheriff Leland and Veterinarian Merlin stepped into the room.  “Here it is, in the Charleston Gazette, October 23^rd, 1986”:

 

Girls Civics Club Bus Goes Missing for 6 Hours

 

A school bus carrying eight girls to the School Government and Civics Symposium went missing for 6 hours yesterday, school authorities have reported.  The girls were from the communities of Pinch and Elkview, West Virginia.  The twelve mile trip, which should have taken about one hour, took seven hours instead.  Neither the driver nor any of the students on the bus had any explanation, saying that they believed it had been just a normal drive.  They were a little puzzled they said, when they arrived in Charleston around sundown and glanced at their watches.  But otherwise, they could recount nothing unusual as having occurred, nor did they feel any ill effects except “having missed lunch, apparently”.

 

Authorities meanwhile are interrogating the driver, checking the bus odometer and asking local residents to call if they could report having seen this bus anytime between the hours of 11am and 6pm yesterday.

 

“Did you happen to be on that bus?”  Sheriff Leland asked Ramey, who happened to be in the nature of Nancy Loomis then.

Ms. Loomis read the article one more time, then placed Ramey’s palms to his head and sat down.

“Was Clarisse Clemens on that bus?”  Leland asked.

“I don’t know.  We got on.  We had never met with the other girls, so we sat with our own friends.  And then, after we arrived in Charleston, it was so weird, my parents came and got me and we drove home.”

“About two weeks later, I started having dreams,” Ms. Loomis continued.  The Muffin Lady pressed Ramey’s fingertips to his forehead.  “About nothing I’d ever seen, and being in other peoples’ bodies…”  She glanced at Ramey’s hands, and looked in her pocket mirror at Ramey’s face.  “Oh my God,” she said.

“You never told a soul about all this?”  Ruth asked in disbelief.

“About my dreams?” The Muffin Lady laughed harshly.

Leland shook his head.

Then Ramey spoke.  “Where’d she go?”  He asked.

“Who?”  Ruth asked.

“That business woman.  The Muffin Lady.”  Ramey glanced around as if she had been in the room standing right beside him.

Ruth’s glasses slipped off her nose.

Photo taken from Google Images

Tags: abduction, Charleston, Elkview West Virginia, missing hours, murders, Pinch, schoolbus, serial ficiton, unexplained phenomena, West Virginia