Have you heard about the passenger who boards the last bus to Oru?
If you have, then you already know what to do when the driver asks you to count the passengers.
You count them once.
You count them twice.
And if the number changes, you keep your mouth shut.
Oru is a small town tucked between two hills in the eastern part of the country, where the roads narrow into red earth and the trees grow so close together that their branches scrape the roofs of passing vehicles. Most people leave before sundown. Those who stay know better than to travel after the last church bell rings at eleven, when the night insects fall silent and the old bridge disappears behind a curtain of mist.
There is one bus that still makes the journey after that hour.
A battered blue-and-white coaster with a cracked windscreen, a missing rear light, and a handwritten destination card that reads 𝘖𝘙𝘜 — 𝘓𝘈𝘚𝘛 𝘛𝘙𝘐𝘗. It leaves the motor park at eleven fifteen every night, provided there are passengers enough to fill the seats.
The drivers take turns. None of them likes the job, but the pay is good, and in a town where good money is scarce, fear is a luxury most men cannot afford.
Besides, the rules are simple.
If a man in a dark coat boards the bus after midnight, you do not ask him where he is going.
If he sits in the last row, you do not look at him in the mirror.
If he asks whether you have crossed the old bridge, you do not answer.
And if you hear your own voice answering him, you stop the bus.
You stop it, you get out, and you run.
You do not wait to see who is speaking.
That is what the drivers are taught, anyway. Nobody knows who first made the rules. The oldest drivers claim their fathers knew them. Their fathers claim the rules were already old when they learned them. Ask anyone where the story began, and they will tell you the same thing:
It began with a driver who answered a question.
But nobody agrees on what happened to him.
Some say he drove his bus into the river. Others say he arrived in Oru with every passenger missing, though their bags remained on the seats. A few swear he never arrived at all.
The strangest account comes from an old conductor who worked the route for forty years. Shortly before his death, he told his grandson that the first driver had not died.
He had simply been replaced.
By what, the boy asked.
The old man closed his eyes.
“Something that knew how to drive.”
---
On the night Chike broke the rule, the rain was coming down hard enough to turn the road into a black ribbon of water.
He had been driving the Oru route for six years. He was thirty-eight, broad-shouldered, and practical in the way of men who had spent their lives repairing things that refused to stay repaired. He believed in bad roads, corrupt officials, and the occasional unfortunate accident. Ghosts, however, were nonsense. The dead had enough problems without troubling the living.
He knew the rules, of course. Everyone on the route knew them. But Chike had always suspected the stories were a convenient way for older drivers to frighten newcomers into obedience.
That night, he had seven passengers.
A woman with a sleeping child. Two young men sharing earphones. A trader with three bulging sacks of yams. An elderly man who smelled strongly of camphor. And a schoolgirl who had spent the entire journey staring at the rain-streaked window.
Seven passengers. Chike counted them at every checkpoint.
Seven.
Seven.
Seven.
Then, somewhere between the abandoned filling station and the turnoff to the old bridge, someone knocked on the bus door.
Chike glanced at the clock.
12:04 AM.
He had passed the last village nearly twenty minutes ago. There was no house nearby, no roadside stall, no reason for anyone to be standing in the rain.
He should have kept driving.
Instead, he stopped.
The man waiting outside wore a long black coat buttoned to the throat. His trousers were dark, his hair neatly combed, and his hands hung at his sides with the unnatural stillness of a person posing for a photograph. He looked neither frightened nor inconvenienced by the weather.
Chike opened the door.
The man climbed aboard without a word.
Water dripped from his shoes onto the metal steps. He paid with a note so old that Chike nearly laughed at it, then walked down the aisle and took the last seat.
The door shut.
The rain continued.
Chike glanced at the mirror.
The man was sitting perfectly upright, his hands resting on his knees. His face was pale, but not sickly pale. It was the colour of something kept too long in a dark cupboard, untouched by sunlight.
His eyes met Chike's in the mirror.
Chike looked away first.
It was nothing, he told himself. A strange passenger. An eccentric old man. Perhaps someone who had been stranded in the rain.
He put the bus in gear.
They drove on.
Five minutes later, Chike noticed the smell.
Wet earth. Old leaves. And something else, something faintly metallic, like the air inside a room where the windows had been shut for years.
He glanced at the passengers. Nobody seemed bothered. The woman rocked her sleeping child. The young men shared their music. The trader had fallen asleep against his sacks.
Then Chike looked at the floor.
A trail of wet footprints ran from the back seat towards the front.
They were bare footprints.
Long, narrow, and dark with water.
They stopped halfway down the aisle.
Chike stared at them for several seconds before forcing his eyes back to the road. His hands tightened around the steering wheel.
He had seen the man's shoes. He had watched him climb aboard. He had heard the soles scrape against the metal steps.
There was no reason for those footprints to be bare.
He told himself the rain had made him see things.
Then the passenger spoke.
“Driver.”
His voice was soft and ordinary. Almost polite.
Chike swallowed. “Yes?”
“Have we crossed the bridge?”
The question was so unexpected that Chike nearly checked the rear-view mirror again.
He remembered the rules.
𝘐𝘧 𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘴𝘬𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘤𝘳𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘸𝘦𝘳.
The bridge was still ahead. He could see its warning sign through the rain, its white paint peeling beneath the headlights. Beyond it, the road dipped between two hills and wound towards Oru.
“No,” Chike nearly said.
His lips had already begun to move when he remembered the second part.
𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘷𝘰𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘪𝘮, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘴.
He shut his mouth.
The passenger waited.
Chike accelerated.
Behind him, the sleeping child began to cry.
The woman tried to soothe him, but the child only grew louder, his tiny face turning towards the back of the bus. He stretched one arm over his mother's shoulder and pointed.
“No,” he whimpered.
The woman turned to see what had frightened him.
Her expression changed.
For a moment, she looked as though she had seen someone she recognised.
Then she pulled the child's head against her chest and covered his ears.
“Don't look,” she whispered.
Chike heard her.
He also heard the sound that followed: a slow, wet scrape against the floor, as though someone were dragging a heavy sack down the aisle.
He did not look back.
The scraping stopped.
“Driver,” the passenger said again.
Chike gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles ached.
“Have we crossed the bridge?”
The bus headlights flickered.
For one brief second, the road ahead vanished, and Chike saw only a flat expanse of black water stretching into the darkness. Something pale floated beneath the surface. It was too far away to make out, but it was moving against the current.
The headlights steadied.
The road returned.
Chike was sweating despite the cold air blowing from the vents.
He knew this stretch of road. He had driven it hundreds of times. He knew every pothole, every bend, every broken signpost. Yet the trees outside now looked unfamiliar, their trunks twisted at angles that made his eyes hurt. Their branches leaned over the road, tangled together like fingers clasped in prayer.
Then he saw the first sign.
WELCOME TO ORU.
He frowned.
That was impossible. They hadn't reached the bridge yet.
He passed the sign.
A few minutes later, he saw it again.
WELCOME TO ORU.
The same rusted post. The same missing letter. The same white bird perched on top, staring at the bus with a head that seemed a little too large for its body.
Chike pressed harder on the accelerator.
The passengers had gone quiet.
Not asleep. Not resting.
Quiet.
Every face in the bus was turned towards the front, eyes fixed on Chike as though they were waiting for him to do something.
The elderly man with the camphor smell began murmuring a prayer. His lips moved quickly, but no sound came out.
The schoolgirl was crying silently.
The trader's sacks had split open. Yams lay scattered across the floor, and among them were several objects Chike couldn't understand at first glance.
Small, waterlogged shoes.
A child's schoolbag.
A wristwatch with its hands spinning backwards.
He looked away.
He had almost reached for his phone when a voice spoke from the driver's seat.
“Have we crossed the bridge?”
Chike froze.
It was his voice.
Not something that sounded like him. Not an imitation. It was his own voice, with the same roughness, the same slight rasp, the same peculiar way he swallowed the last syllable of a question.
And it had come from somewhere behind him.
His mouth was closed.
The voice came again.
“Have we crossed the bridge?”
Chike slammed the brakes.
The bus skidded sideways, tyres screaming against the wet road. The passengers lurched forward. Somewhere behind him, glass shattered.
He tore the door open and stumbled into the rain.
For several seconds, he could do nothing but breathe. Cold water soaked his shirt. The road beneath his feet was firm, the trees were trees, and the headlights shone on ordinary wet asphalt.
He was alive.
He was outside.
He had followed the rule.
Then he heard the passenger door open behind him.
Chike turned.
The man in the black coat stood beside the bus, perfectly dry.
Rain fell through him.
Not around him. Through him.
Drops passed through his shoulders and chest as though he were a shadow painted on the night. His face remained pale and expressionless, his eyes fixed on Chike.
“You stopped,” he observed.
Chike couldn't speak.
The man tilted his head.
“That's good.”
Behind him, inside the bus, all seven passengers sat perfectly still.
Chike counted them through the open door.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.
Then he counted again.
Eight.
A face was pressed against the rear window.
It was Chike's face.
The same broad forehead. The same crooked nose from an old childhood accident. The same small scar beside his left eyebrow.
Except this Chike was smiling.
Chike stumbled backwards.
The man in the black coat glanced towards it, and for the first time, his expression changed. His lips parted slightly. Something like fear crossed his features.
“Oh,” he whispered.
The face behind the window smiled wider.
The man turned to him.
“Whatever you do,” he said, his voice suddenly urgent, “don't let it drive.”
From inside the bus came the unmistakable sound of Chike's seat creaking as someone sat down.
Then the engine started.
Chike ran.
He ran through the rain, down the road, past the trees and the warning signs, without looking back. He ran until his lungs burned and his legs threatened to give way. He ran until the road widened and the first houses of Oru appeared ahead, their windows dark, their doors locked.
He reached the motor park just before dawn.
The other drivers found him crouched beneath the ticket booth, soaked to the skin and muttering the same words over and over.
𝘐 𝘥𝘪𝘥𝘯'𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘸𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘪𝘮. 𝘐 𝘥𝘪𝘥𝘯'𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘸𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘪𝘮. 𝘐 𝘥𝘪𝘥𝘯'𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘸𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘪𝘮.
When they asked where the bus was, he began to cry.
They searched the road that morning. They found the bus parked beside the old bridge, its doors open, its seats empty.
All eight of them were gone.
The passengers. The man in the black coat. And Chike.
Only the driver's seat remained occupied, though nobody could explain why the cushion was wet.
---
The story might have ended there, if not for what happened three nights later.
A bus arrived at the motor park at eleven fifteen. It was battered blue and white, with a cracked windscreen and a missing rear light. Its destination card read 𝘖𝘙𝘜 — 𝘓𝘈𝘚𝘛 𝘛𝘙𝘐𝘗.
The driver stepped out.
He was a broad-shouldered man with a familiar face and a calm, easy smile.
The other drivers stared at him.
One of them dropped his cigarette.
“Chike?”
The man looked at him, amused.
“What's wrong with you people?”
Nobody answered.
Chike laughed and climbed back into the bus. The engine started, and the vehicle rolled out of the park, carrying seven passengers.
The drivers stood watching until its rear lights vanished around the bend.
Then the oldest among them began to pray.
Because they had counted the passengers.
Seven had boarded.
But through the cracked windscreen, just before the bus disappeared, they had seen someone sitting in the last row.
A man in a dark coat.
His clothes were perfectly dry.
And his eyes were fixed on the driver.
---
If you ever find yourself travelling to Oru after midnight, remember the rules.
If a man in a dark coat boards your bus, don't ask him where he's going.
If he sits in the last row, don't look at him in the mirror.
If he asks whether you've crossed the old bridge, don't answer.
And if you hear your own voice answering him, stop the bus.
Get out.
Run.
Whatever you do, don't let it drive.
Because the passenger who misses his stop has been looking for a driver for a very long time.
And sooner or later, he always finds one.
ns216.73.216.62da2
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