Tilford Till and the Highway Haunting
Flash Fiction - Supernatural
NOTE: All flash fiction and stories based on writing exercises/prompts posted to the Talebones homepage are free for everyone to read!
If you like this little story, and you want to see more like it, please let me know with a like, comment, share, or restack!
And for more fiction fun of various shapes and sizes, subscribe for free!
The fourteen-seater Ferris Transit shuttle bus sat waiting under the furtive, flickering glow of the amber floodlights in the parking lot of the Port Salish Park-And-Ride, idling quietly. There wouldn’t be any passengers, and Tilford knew it. It was 2:30 in the morning.
Tilford looked up from his newspaper one more time, scanning the parking lot for any sign of movement. But it was empty and quiet.
Carefully, as usual, Tilford Till folded away his newspaper. He took off his reading glasses, massaging the bridge of his nose, and then slipped them into their case in the glovebox.
“Okie dokie,” he said, to no one.
Then he threw the groaning shuttle bus into gear and drove carefully out of the parking lot, maneuvering the empty streets and easing onto Seavend Highway.
The shuttle bus ran daily up and down from the bustling town center of Port Salish up to the sleepy little seaside village of Seavend, back and forth, carrying the usual clientele of retirees and teens and families and tourists. But at night, the passengers stopped. Everyone was asleep, and the dark two-lane highway up to Seavend—a long stretch of pastures, old houses, and acres of wooded nothingness—took on a decidedly bereft feel, empty.
Tilford whistled The Tennessee Waltz in the driver’s seat as he turned on the high beams, always at the same curve in the dark road. He started to think distantly about home and bed. It felt a million miles away. Tilford yawned.
As usual, at the small cemetery just outside of town, Tilford eased the bus to a stop and turned off the engine to let the night noises in. The cemetery gates were closed and locked, two solar-powered lights in the bushes on either side illuminating the sign.
Tilford paused, said aloud, “Miss you every day, Jeanie-girl.”
His mind fluttered backward, as it had done more and more lately. Back to the war, back to her letters, her questions hidden between the careful handwriting.
When are you coming home? Will we be married, then?
He never gave her a solid answer, because he wasn’t sure if he would be marching home. He couldn’t bear to disappoint her.
But he survived. He came home. And she got her wish.
Even so, he was never really sure if he was ever good enough to her. Almost forty years they were together, and he struggled to know whether he had loved her well. Her passing had ended the conversation. He had never been good at talking, anyway.
Tilford switched his whistle to I’ll Be With You In Apple Blossom Time, because it had been Jeanie’s favorite. The night was peaceful, velvety summer-dark, but there was a cool breeze off the nearby sea nosing its way inland, searching for something. Always searching.
As Tilford sat in the shuttle, he was suddenly aware of a creeping sense of dread that he could feel rather than see. The cemetery was quiet, the sleepers all asleep in their soil, and yet something was wrong. There was a tension in the trees on either side of the two-lane highway, a hushed waiting.
Tilford turned on the shuttle’s croaking engine and the high beams guttered to life, revealing a figure sitting at the cemetery bus stop only feet away from the shuttle.
Tilford startled, bit back a curse. He was certain no one had been sitting there when he arrived at the cemetery.
He flicked the headlights, an invitation. The figure rose, turned to face the bus.
It was a young man in a white t-shirt and khaki shorts, somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty or so years old. He approached the shuttle, and Tilford—acting on habit more than really thinking—opened the door.
“You heading up to Seavend?” he asked, unable to keep the nervous creak out of his voice.
The young man nodded. His eyes were wide as he stared at Tilford, and his expression was impossible to describe. Confused, perhaps. Lost.
“Don’t usually get passengers this late,” Tilford said, trying to make small talk as the young man took a seat. “Been driving this rig for twenty years and you’re probably the first one to ever get on at—” he checked the clock on the dashboard, “—good Lord, 3am.”
But the young man just watched Tilford wordlessly.
Tilford closed the door and the shuttle crunched back onto the highway. He was driving a little quicker than normal, but he could feel his heart rate going up.
In his twenty years of driving this shuttle Tilford had gotten away with not talking much, because talking took a lot out of him. He preferred to listen. He was good at that. But tonight, the silence felt threatening. Talk felt like a lifeline.
“So,” he said, “what’s your name, son?”
The young man replied, “Sam.”
“Sam, it’s nice to meet you. You, uh, live around here?”
“Not far from here,” Sam said. “I’m going home, now.”
“Well, then, glad I could be of help,” Tilford replied. The shuttle had dim running lights along the windows, and in their glow Tilford could catch glimpses of the young man’s face. His gaze was on Tilford, brows furrowed, somewhat bewildered. It occurred to Tilford for the first time that the kid could be on drugs. But Tilford didn’t know enough about stuff like that.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” Tilford said, aware that this might not be the best idea, but he felt he needed to ask, “what were you doing all the way out here at this time of night?”
Sam’s gaze broke for the first time, and he looked out the window at the pre-dawn darkness whizzing by. They might as well have been floating in space, the two last men in the universe.
“Waiting for you,” the young man said, finally.
A chill ran down Tilford’s spine. “Oh?” he said. “And why’s that?”
“Because I’ve heard a lot about you, and I wanted to see you for myself.”
Tilford cleared his throat. “Well, I’m flattered, Sam. But I still think that sounds a little strange.”
Sam nodded. “I know. This whole thing is strange. Very strange.”
“So what do you know about me, hmm?” Tilford asked.
Sam turned back from the window to stare at Tilford again. Neither option was particularly comfortable.
“I know that you’re Tilford Till,” Sam said. “That you were born in 1920 in Tacoma and fought in World War Two. I know you married Janine Chapman in 1947 and moved here to Ferris Island in 1950 to pursue a career in the lumber business. I know that Janine died of cancer in 1982 and you started driving this shuttle as a way to fill your time. And you’ve been driving it ever since.”
Tilford could feel sweat beading on the back of his neck and dripping down his spine, despite the shuttle’s air conditioning. Sam’s gaze did not waver.
“That’s an awful lot to know about a person,” Tilford said, trying to keep his voice steady. “How do you know all that stuff, Sam?”
Sam’s expression shifted, a sorrow passing over his face. “Because you’re my grandfather,” he said, quietly. “And you’ve been dead for seventeen years.”
Tilford blinked. The word dead fell to the floor and rolled to the back of the bus where it sat, hunched, like a watchful bird.
In one sense, Tilford was not surprised by it.
Dead? Sure. That’s no surprise. What the hell am I doing, driving this bus so late at night? Twenty years driving this thing and I never drove it past 9pm.
What other option is there? Why else would I be doing this?
But that didn’t mean he wanted to believe it.
“If I’m dead,” he said, slowly, “then how are we talking, huh?”
Sam sighed. “We all know the stories about the ghost bus,” he said. “We learn them as kids and pass them around the playground. That if you wait outside at the cemetery until 3am you’ll see the bus pass by, driven by the ghost of Tilford Till. So I waited for you. I admit, I wasn’t expecting you to appear like that, out of nowhere, and let me actually ride. It really scared me.”
Tilford tried to keep his focus on the road, but his mind was racing. “I scared you?”
“Sure did,” Sam said. “I’m still not entirely sure I’m not dreaming.”
“You and me both.” Tilford scratched the back of his neck with one hand. “Well, you’ve had your fun. You’ve seen me. Now what?”
Sam’s face softened, making him look even younger than he already was. “I guess, I just wanted you to know that…Mom misses you. A lot.”
Heather. The name of his daughter landed on his tongue. Heather. Brassy red hair and freckles, bright white teeth in a mischievous smile. Now that he mentioned it, Sam looked like her. Same eyes, same voice, same clever face. Heather had always been sharp and sweet all at once.
Just like her mother. Just like Jeanie.
“I miss her, too,” Tilford said, and he was suddenly aware of how true that was, in a way that only the dead can understand. He had never been good at talking, but maybe the conversation wasn’t over so much as changed.
“And you can tell her I said so, if you can ever explain this,” Tilford added, quickly but firmly. “Tell her that I love her. Will you do that, Sam?”
Sam nodded. “I will. For sure.”
The shuttle crested the hill, up and over into Seavend where Tilford pulled into the marina parking lot with practiced ease. The sea whispered its own counsel beyond the walls of the bus, and the two men sat in the idling shuttle for a few minutes in silence.
“I reckon my time is up for tonight,” Tilford said, though he didn’t know how he knew. He opened the shuttle door. “It was awful nice to meet you, Sam.”
Sam stood and headed for the door, but on the threshold he paused. “Do you think I could ride with you again, sometime?”
Tilford smiled. “You know where and when to find me. You can join me whenever you like. I reckon I’ll be around for a while, yet.”
Sam disembarked the bus, giving Tilford a last wave before walking off into the darkness up the hill, toward home.
In the stillness, Tilford closed the door of the bus, quieting the sea’s restless mutter.
“Okie dokie,” he said, to no one, before turning off the shuttle’s engine. Then he took his reading glasses out of the glovebox and picked up his newspaper, as usual.
The whistled strains of The Tennessee Waltz followed Sam on his walk home. But when he turned around, the marina parking lot was empty.
END
Ugh. My eMoTiOnS. This was poignant. Keep it together scoot.
My grandfather died when I was 12. One of the things he said on his deathbed while he was still lucid was “the closest shot we have at immortality is through your grandchildren”. Here’s to keeping our grandfathers alive 🍺
(PS, his actual last lucid words were to my grandmother. She walked in and he said “Hello, beautiful”)
Anyway brb got to go emotionally process this.
PS “The sea whispered its own counsel” is an excellent turn of phrase.
Well that was certainly different. And here I thought the kid was, well, you know. Such a great spin on it. Absolutely beautiful. (When I grow up, I wanna write like you.)