My hands still shake as I type this out, and my wrist still burns. If I don’t record what happened immediately, I’ll probably convince myself I dreamed the whole thing. Right now it’s too raw and real to deny, and I want to capture everything just as I remember.
It was a Wednesday night after the school shut down. I always stay late on Wednesdays to tutor in the library. Right now, I’m drilling Bryce Wilson on SAT math questions. The guy needs more help than I can reasonably give him before he retakes the exam in a few weeks, but it’s $50 an hour so I smile through the frustration when I have to explain a concept three times.
On the nights I stay after hours, I have to walk about a half mile from school to the city bus stop. Since the days are growing colder and shorter, dark was already falling by the time I exited the school grounds. Our single security guard nodded at Bryce and I and let us out of the locked gates.
As usual, Bryce offered me a ride home in his Mercedes, even though my family’s apartment is in the opposite direction of his house. As usual, I demurred, not interested in pretending to enjoy his presence any longer than necessary. I get the vibe that he’s imprinting on me as his honorary teacher crush, and I’m not about to do anything to encourage him.
I tuned out the traffic with my comfort podcast in my ears. I’d heard that episode before, I just like to decompress and let my mind wander once I can exhale from a long day. My guard was down and I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary as I sat on the bus stop bench under a streetlight. Sure there’s always the nagging awareness of being out in the open air with darkness at your back, but I could distract myself by pulling out my phone and scrolling through my socials.
When I heard the familiar hum as the bus pulled up and felt the displacement of air, I barely looked up from the post I was reading as I flashed my bus pass to the driver and claimed the nearest empty seat. The doors closed and I began to feel the jostling motions of the bus pulling back onto the road and returning to speed.
I was sufficiently withdrawn into my own world that the first thing which tipped me off to the strangeness was the suddenly flickering screen of my fully charged phone. I tried to restart it but it only glitched further into a streaked mess of rainbow bars. The podcast coming through my headphones stuttered into static before the host’s voice droned back to life, but incomprehensible and wrong somehow as if it were being played in reverse.
Unsettled by this, I slipped the phone into my backpack and looked up. At first, I didn’t even notice how unnaturally quiet it was. There was no roar of engines or wind rushing by, no talking of other commuters, not even the sound of breathing other than my own. No, the first thing that caught my attention was the number at the front of the bus. I’d boarded the 45 instead of the 35. My station only had one bus that stopped there in all the time I’d used it. Maybe they’d added a new route I just hadn’t heard of. If so, I was going the wrong way. I thought about pulling the cord to stop, but as I looked out my window into the darkness, I realized I was hopelessly lost. Usually, street lamps light the road on my way home and I can recognize familiar shops and signs as we pass. Now the outside had no light of its own, just thick forest illuminated only by the light of the bus itself.
I wanted to pull up a map, so I took out my phone again, screen completely black now. I tried the power button but it just sparked and shocked my hand, making me yelp and drop it to the floor. The phone landed with a clatter by the foot of the woman across from me. I blurted out an apology as I retrieved it with still stinging fingers. The woman didn’t react at all, not to the phone that narrowly missed her foot nor to my exclamation. Normally, I go out of my way not to look too much at other riders. It’s an unspoken rule of public transport to avoid awkward eye contact and to mind your own business. But this made me look up at the blankly staring woman before me.
What I saw made me jump back, falling painfully with the edge of my seat pressed against my spine. The woman looked faded almost, like a low resolution photo with desaturated colors. As I continued to look it became clear that I could see through her to the metal sheeting of the wall behind her. She stared right through me as well, like I didn’t exist at all.
I sat on the floor transfixed by the slowly dawning realization that I was face to face with a ghost. I’ve never been a believer in the supernatural. My feelings on the matter had been that the more you believe in that sort of thing, the more likely you are to encounter it. Why would a ghost bother haunting someone who wouldn’t even do it the courtesy of noticing?
But that worldview cracked apart before my eyes which were still fixed on her vacuous expression. When the shock wore off slightly, I tore my gaze away. I dreaded the thought of checking the rest of the bus, but the hair pricking on my arms and the chills running down my still aching back told me I had to. I chanced a look to the seats on my right and my already hammering heart almost choked me with how it leapt into my throat. Every single passenger on the bus shared the exact same hazy translucence and complete obliviousness to my presence. Looking to the front confirmed the driver was no different.
I was all alone on a busload of lost souls. Every instinct in my body begged me to run, to fling myself out of a window of the moving vehicle onto the mercy of the asphalt below. Still, I had no idea where I was and no way to phone for help. I clenched my fists and squeezed my eyes closed as I forced my breathing to slow and hopefully keep myself from hyperventilating.
The ghosts left me alone though, lost in their own silent rapture. A couple at the back must have been speaking to each other, hands touching and lips moving soundlessly. An elderly man dozed, book in hand and balding head drooping forward. The rest were a few children with mothers or fathers nearby, and some office workers holding their briefcases.
These were old ghosts, I could tell by the dated clothes each one wore. My friend Rylee is more trendy than me, but I can recognize vintage. All the outfits must have been from the 1990s or even the 80s.
A curious sympathy overtook my fear as the threat of immediate harm faded. Who were these poor people, and where had they been going? Without thinking, I stood and extended my hand toward the woman across from me. My fingers tingled slightly as they brushed her misty outline, then they ran through her shape as if she were smoke. No reaction from her. I tried again with the sleeping old man. My nerves anticipated the dry crinkling whisper of paper against my fingertips as I tried to touch his book, but it was like feeling sensation in a phantom limb.
I walked forward to the front of the bus with uneasy footsteps. The driver was a middle aged man in a blue uniform. The dials and buttons on the dash made no sense to me, but I could tell this bus was an old model, not one in circulation now. What should have been bright headlights cast a weak, misty glow on the road ahead. With a start, I realized we were approaching a crossroad after the long one-way stretch.
I tried to grab the wheel and ended up standing halfway enveloped in the ghost of the driver, my hand subsumed in his larger one. My skin crawled at the points where my body remained engulfed in the driver’s hazy form, but the curve of the wheel felt different. It was like a membrane just a bit more solid than the figures I’d phased through. Despite its surface feeling almost too delicate to touch, it resisted my grip and held its shape. I tried to wrench the wheel to the side at the intersection, hoping if I could change direction I could turn the bus around and find the stop I’d entered from. But my hand slid right off and the wheel remained exactly where the driver held it steady, barreling us straight ahead.
My hand was numb where I’d made contact with the wheel, but it faded quickly. Attempting to press the breaks or pull open the doors were both similarly futile. Finally, I gave up and clutched my backpack to my chest like a protective talisman. Despair was flooding in and filling me with a helplessness I hadn’t felt since childhood. No logic, reason, nor even lore that I knew could explain how this had happened to me. It was as if I were the ghost trapped and powerless rather than all of them.
The thought crossed my mind that maybe I had died. But I was sure I’d have remembered that. I pinched my arm like it would wake me from this dream. Despite the pain, it was comforting to be assured of my own solid form and warm flesh. It was grounding.
From the depths of my memory came stories of the underworld in Greek Mythology. I recalled journeys on the river Styx, the ferryman, and the three headed dog of Hades. It was said that those who were not buried or could not pay the toll were forced to wander the earth. I shuddered. The wrongness of this whole situation overwhelmed me. I didn’t belong here. I wasn’t like the rest of them.
I screamed at the driver though I knew he couldn’t hear. “This is a mistake! You have to take me back home. I’m still alive!”
In that moment, I’d have given everything just to be heard by one of them. I’ve never felt so alone as I did on that bus, crying for my life to any ghosts, gods, or men that could have been listening. When the bell chimed to indicate a stop and we lurched to a halt, I thought I might crash through the front windshield. I caught myself with palms against the insubstantial smoothness of the phantom glass.
A small girl of maybe five years old who I’d barely noticed had pulled the cord to request a stop. When her eyes snapped toward me, I went still as stone, like she had the face of Medusa. She rose from her seat and advanced on me. Like the others, her large eyes were cloudy, cataract white, but I knew with absolute certainty that she saw me. Her pupil-less, unblinking stare never broke with mine. She shuffled forward, arms reaching for me as her mouth dropped open. Behind her gap teeth was a darkness so deep it had its own gravity. It wanted to suck me in and swallow every part of me, from my memories and dreams to the last cell of my mortal body. The blackness was jarring against the ephemeral gray of everything that surrounded us.
She worked her small jaws up and down as if gnashing her teeth at me. It made the black hole trapped there expand and contract its hypnotizing pull. The abyss grew larger and larger until I realized she was right before me. She’d been trying to speak to me, but all I could see was that hungry void that hid within her. The girl’s tiny hand shot forward with impossible speed and wrapped around the wrist I’d raised in a weak attempt at warding her away. I was in shock as much from her vice-like strength as I was from the now foreign feeling of another body’s touch. She was as strong as iron and both froze and burned so that my nerves could process the feeling as nothing other than pure pain.
Then the doors hissed open and cool night air poured in. The girl dragged me to the exit by my wrist and what I saw outside was the same cavernous, hungry darkness that was inside this girl, but on an infinite level. I fought with everything in me, trying to kick her small chest and head to wrench my arm free. I’d much rather brave the bus with its silent specters than this horrible darkness. My very soul recoiled and I knew by some ancient instinct that if I went with her, there would be nothing left of me, not even a ghost. We inched forward as I gave up ground. She got me halfway down the stairs and I clung desperately to the railing with my free hand.
Her feet met the ground outside now and she’d almost dragged me past the entrance when she stopped, grip still crushing my arm. Her terrible eyes locked once again with mine and her brows scrunched as if pleading. I realized by the point where my own hand stopped that she could not drag me past the threshold which I could feel shimmering just at the edge of the bus.
She urged me forward and I resisted. Mercifully, I could feel the doors start to slide back into place. The girl gave one last useless tug and the corners of her tiny mouth turned downward as the doors closed and broke her hold. I fell backwards with entirely too much relief for someone in my situation. My wrist was red and aching where the girl had touched me, and I staggered back to my seat to nurse the pain.
My imagination stayed busy concocting horrifying possibilities of what the girl had been, where we were going now, and what might become of me. I just wished I’d had time to call my mom and say goodbye. Even some people about to die in plane crashes get that.
At first, the heat was almost comforting. The metal wall I leaned against warmed until it became too hot to touch, knocking me out of my daze. The smell of gasoline and smoke hit me hard. When I realized the bus had caught on fire, it was too late. Even the ghosts around me seemed to take notice.
I could no longer see the road through the front windows, only a sheet of seething flames lashing against the windshield. There was a flickering blue outline of ghostly fire consuming the front of the bus. Inside it, a hyperreal red and yellow blaze lapped up the sides of the bus. It had come for all of us, no matter our state.
The driver slammed the breaks and brought the whole bus to a stop. I was knocked back against the searing wall. Before me, ghosts stood, trying to push past each other to the door. The scene played out in horrible pantomime, and I couldn’t look away. An office worker had pushed past the elderly reader, knocking him into a pole that left his head bleeding as he fell, unconscious. A young boy opened his mouth in silent agony as he was trampled by the crowd trying to force their way out. I saw him go down as his ankle caught on a purse strap, then his leg gave way under a shoe, a heel pressed into his spine as one woman raced past and the limp boy who now lay still.
At the front, passengers crowded the door. Our driver cut the failing engine and tried unsuccessfully to move the handle that controlled the doors. Someone strained with him to add strength, but the doors seemed to be welded shut by the melting metal. A man shook the driver by the shoulders, seeming to shout something that was lost to me. The woman wearing heels barreled into the door which were glowing red with heat. She accomplished nothing but to sear her entire side which she had thrown against the barrier. Her suit stuck to her body as if glued in place. Her flesh smoked. Someone dragged her backwards to the poor excuse we had for safety.
I was experiencing everything they did. My own fire choked off my air, filling my lungs instead with burning, dizzying fumes. Sweat poured from me and I felt feverish in the ever-growing heat. The bus had become an oven. I slammed my fist against a window but the same resistance as before kept me from breaking the boundary of the bus. All I got was stinging, hot pain.
Besides the fallen bodies, everyone had retreated to the rear where flames had not yet fully surrounded the windows. The driver released an emergency fire extinguisher upon the walls, but with the flames still outside, it had little effect. He then tried to use it to batter a rear window.
Flames from the front of the bus had grown hungry and curious. I raced to the back as well, grateful I did not have to fight all these people for the safest corner. The fire licked along the roof until metal gave way above the driver’s seat and door, and sparks of hot metal showered down. The woman in heels tried to cover her head with her arms, but bursts of glowing red metal caught in her hair and lit her up like a torch. One man pulled off his jacket to try to smother the flame on her head, but the cotton burned just as easily, quickly doubling the size of the fire and pulling him in too.
Now the bus was engulfed. The driver managed to crack a hole with the empty fire extinguisher through the rear window, but it only allowed the fire to spring inside. A spark caught on his sleeve and fire spread down his arm before he could even react. Those who remained tried to huddle under seats or smashed their fists against glass just as I had.
The entire bus was engulfed by the inferno. There was nowhere to run and nothing to do but hack on the smoke-filled air which the greedy fire stole all oxygen from. I fell to the ground as my vision started to go black around the edges. My knees and palms slammed into the scorching metal of the bus floor as I dropped. Though I tried to jerk away as a tendril of flame lashed out toward me, it caught the leg of my jeans and the heat spread up them like a candle’s wick.
Fire was my world. Its blinding lights and smoke filled my stinging eyes. Its savage burn sapped my sweat and boiled the blood within me, and the horrific screaming drowned my ears. Vaguely, I was aware that the shrill wailing came only from me, though it sounded like the agony of many voices, as if the cries of all my silent ghosts joined mine.
Clothes burned quickly, offering no protection. Hair gave way so fast it could have just vanished if not for the sulfurous smell it left around my melting face. After the fine hairs of the body burn away, the top layers of skin cracks and curls like its fragments are reaching for the drops of moisture the fire has just taken. Once that paper-thin barrier is breached, the fat congealed under it has already started to soften and drip off the meat. It takes a bit longer then for the flames to eat through the thicker, denser muscles and tendons, but its ravenous appetite licks clean every bone that it can’t also devour. My absurd mind supplied the image of Sunday morning bacon sizzling in a pan and a demented laugh wheezed out of me.
I screamed myself hoarse, until my voice choked off, my lips cracked and bled, and then the blood was wicked dry. I screamed until the hot air expanding in my lungs burst the alveoli within and made them collapse completely. Then my scream was added to the silent chorus of the ghosts burning with me in soundless misery. This time the voices ringing in what had been my ears were all of us together.
It was an eternity or an instant, I still can’t tell which. Suddenly, I realized the screaming was once again only my own. My hands were pressed to the roughness of solid asphalt below me. It was blissfully cool. The smell of gasoline and rubber wafted up from the road. I gasped in air and it tasted so sweet and fresh it almost hurt. Comforting darkness cocooned me as I blinked away the bright after-images of flames. My nerves still tingled all over, but no more pain wracked them.
I raised my head to see the back of a ghostly bus pulling away as it continued its journey without me. The apparition was whole and unburnt again, as was I. When I looked to my right, I realized it had left me in the exact spot I’d boarded seemingly a lifetime ago. The mundane bus stop with a street lamp spotlighting its bench looked like scenery in a dark theater. The change of setting was so abrupt I could barely comprehend it. As I turned back, I caught the last glimpse of bus 45 rounding the block, completing its next loop of fiery hell.
A woman already waiting at the stop eyed me like I was mad. To her, I must have looked like a strung-out junkie or a psych hospital escapee. I grinned at her anyway with all the gratitude I’d have if she’d pulled me out of the burning bus herself. Then the 35 pulled up and I very purposefully waited for her to board first.
Only when I settled on the bus did I realize I was still wearing my backpack. I hadn’t even thought to check for it after realizing I was still alive. I went for my phone in the back pocket and almost dropped it in shock. My wrist was covered by a furious burn exactly where the little girl’s fist clenched it when trying to drag me off into the darkness. I’ve checked obsessively. There’s not a single shred of proof I have other than this peeling, red burn.