Small Spaces

Easton thinks the driver is making a joke, so he ignores the warning and goes outside to check the engine. The overhead lights in the bus start to flicker, and no one can get a cell phone connection. Ollie checks her watch for the time. It’s also an altimeter and a compass, but those functions don’t work. The watch belonged to her mother, who was wearing it during the single-engine plane crash when she died. Ollie refuses to part with it, but the watch is behaving strangely: “Now there was a countdown where the time should have been (45:02), and just below that, the digital readout said RUN in gray letters, flickering like the lights” (99).

Ollie goes forward to question the driver. She wants to know what will happen at nightfall. At first, Jones refuses to answer, but Ollie offers him part of a sandwich from the lunch box her father packed for her that morning. He agrees to the deal and says that the smiling man’s servants are coming to take all the children to complete a bargain. Jones advises her to run into the woods on the other side of the mist and to hide in small spaces where the