Part 1

I used to think rock bottom was when they laid me off from the warehouse two days before Christmas. Or maybe it was when my landlord changed the locks on my apartment in Phoenix because I was three months behind on rent. But looking back, I realize those were just speed bumps. Real fear, the kind that settles in your marrow and turns your blood to ice, didn’t find me until I boarded that bus in Flagstaff, Arizona.

It was a Tuesday in late September. I was twenty-seven, broke, and swallowing my pride to move back in with my parents in New Mexico. I had exactly forty-two dollars in my pocket, a duffel bag full of dirty clothes, and a crushing sense of failure.

I ran to the station, my chest heaving, sweat sticking my shirt to my back. I was late. The 11:00 PM bus—the “Red Eye” that cuts through the pitch-black desert along Interstate 40—was idling at the curb. The engine purred with a low, guttural growl that vibrated through the pavement.

The driver, a heavy-set guy with grease stains on his uniform and eyes that looked like they hadn’t seen sleep in a decade, glared at me as I slapped my ticket against the scanner.

“You’re lucky, kid,” he grunted, not looking up. “Was about to pull off.”

I mumbled a thanks and stepped up. I expected the usual: a bus packed with tired travelers, crying babies, and the smell of stale McDonald’s. I was dreading the squeeze, dreading having to sit next to a stranger and pretend I wasn’t crying on the inside about my life falling apart.

But as I walked down the aisle, I froze.

Empty.

The entire bus was completely empty. Row after row of blue fabric seats stared back at me. It was just me and the driver.

For a second, I thought I’d made a mistake. Maybe this was a charter? But the driver hissed the pneumatic doors shut, and the bus lurched forward, merging onto the dark highway.

I shrugged it off. Just my luck, I thought. For once, things are going my way. I walked about halfway back and claimed a window seat. I tossed my bag on the seat next to me, stretched my legs out, and leaned my head against the cool glass. Outside, the lights of Flagstaff faded into the ink-black darkness of the Arizona desert.

For the first hour, it was peaceful. I watched the silhouette of the San Francisco Peaks disappear. The rhythm of the tires on the asphalt was hypnotic. I started to think about my life, the mistakes I’d made, the shame of showing up on my mom’s porch like a stray dog. The isolation of the bus felt appropriate. It matched the hollowness inside me.

I must have drifted off.

I woke up with a start. The bus was pitch black, save for the faint green glow of the floor lights. My neck was stiff. I checked my watch—2:00 AM. We were in the middle of nowhere, just scrub brush and darkness for miles.

Then, I heard it.

Cough.

It was distinct. A dry, hacking cough. And it came from directly behind me.

My heart hammered against my ribs. I sat up straight, my eyes darting to the reflection in the window. Nothing. Just my own tired, pale face.

I whipped my head around. The bus was still empty. The rows of seats behind me were vacant shadows.

“Hello?” I whispered, feeling foolish.

Silence. Just the hum of the engine and the rattle of the frame.

Okay, Mason, calm down, I told myself. It was the air brakes. Or maybe the suspension creaking. Or maybe the sound carried from the driver.

I tried to settle back in, but the hair on my arms was standing straight up. You know that feeling when you’re being watched? When you can feel eyes boring into the back of your skull? That primal alarm system was screaming at me.

To distract myself, I pulled out my phone. 14% battery. I had a text from my buddy, Tyler, asking if I made it out of town okay.

I typed back: “Yeah, barely. Weirdest ride ever. I’m the only person on this massive bus. Feels like a ghost town.”

Tyler replied instantly: “Pics or it didn’t happen. No way a Greyhound is empty on that route.”

I rolled my eyes. I opened the camera app, turned the flash off so I wouldn’t blind the driver, and held the phone up over my shoulder to snap a picture of the empty aisle behind me.

Click.

I pulled the phone back to check the shot. It was grainy and dark, typical low-light garbage. I frowned. I couldn’t really see much.

“Hang on,” I muttered.

I’m a bit of a photography nerd, so I dug into my bag and pulled out my DSLR. I hadn’t pawned it yet—it was the one thing I couldn’t part with. I turned it on, adjusted the ISO for low light, and swiveled around in my seat.

I aimed down the center aisle and pressed the shutter.

Click-whirrr.

The screen lit up with the preview. I looked at it. At first glance, it was just rows of empty seats. But then I noticed something near the ceiling, about three rows back. A weird shape.

I used the dial to zoom in.

My breath caught in my throat. I felt like I’d been punched in the gut.

There, dangling from the overhead luggage rack, was a hand.

Not a reflection. Not a shadow. A pale, grayish hand and forearm, extending down from the ceiling as if someone was lying inside the luggage compartment, reaching out. The fingers were long and crooked, grasping at the empty air above the seat headrest.

I stared at the screen, blinking, waiting for my eyes to adjust, waiting for it to be a trick of the light. But the more I looked, the clearer it became. I could see the tendons. I could see the dirt under the fingernails.

I lowered the camera slowly, my hands trembling so hard I almost dropped it. I looked at the spot with my naked eyes.

Nothing. Just the empty rack.

I looked back at the camera screen. The hand was there.

Panic, cold and sharp, flooded my system. I grabbed my phone to text the picture to Tyler, to show someone, to get confirmation that I wasn’t losing my mind.

I tapped the screen.

Black.

I pressed the power button. Nothing. The little “connect charger” icon flashed red.

“No, no, no,” I hissed. “It had 14 percent!”

I frantically tried to turn it on, but it was dead. I was cut off.

Then, the whispering started.

It wasn’t one voice. It sounded like a dozen people, all murmuring at once, a low, frantic static right behind my head.

…don’t look… help us… turn around… crash…

I squeezed my eyes shut, my knuckles white as I gripped the armrests. The sounds were getting louder. I could hear the fabric of the seats behind me rustling, shifting, as if heavy bodies were moving around, getting comfortable, leaning forward.

Creak. Shift. Creak.

I was too terrified to turn around. I knew if I looked back, I wouldn’t see empty seats anymore.

I needed to get to the driver. I needed to get off this bus. But my legs felt like lead. The whispers grew into a cacophony, a chaotic noise that sounded like screams played in reverse.

I finally summoned the courage to look up at the oversized rearview mirror at the front of the bus, hoping to catch the driver’s eye.

The driver was staring straight ahead, his hands gripping the wheel. He didn’t seem to hear the noise. He didn’t seem to care that his bus sounded like a psych ward.

Or maybe… maybe he knew.

Part 2

The Silence of the Highway

I sat there, frozen, my back pressed so hard against the rough blue fabric of the seat that I could feel the metal frame digging into my spine. The bus didn’t feel like a vehicle anymore; it felt like a steel cage hurtling through a void. Outside the window, the Arizona desert was an endless ocean of black ink, swallowing the faint beams of the headlights.

There was no cell service. My phone was a useless brick of glass and lithium in my hand. The battery indicator that had read 14% just moments ago was now completely dark. I tried holding the power button down, praying for the familiar white apple logo to appear, but the screen remained an abyssal black.

I was cut off.

The whispering behind me had stopped, but the silence that replaced it was worse. It was a heavy, expectant silence. The kind of silence that happens right before a thunderstorm breaks, when the air pressure drops and your ears pop.

I stared at the digital camera resting on my lap. The screen had timed out and gone black. I was terrified to touch it, terrified to wake it up and see that grey, necrotic hand hanging from the ceiling again.

Maybe I imagined it, I thought. Maybe the stress of the layoff, the eviction, the sheer humiliation of crawling back to my parents’ house… maybe it finally broke my brain.

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to regulate my breathing. In, out. In, out. Just like the therapist I couldn’t afford anymore had taught me.

But then came the smell.

It wasn’t the smell of the bus bathroom, that distinct mix of blue chemical disinfectant and stale urine. This was different. It was the smell of wet earth. Cold, damp soil. Like a basement that had flooded and then dried out, leaving behind the scent of rot and mildew. It was the smell of a grave.

It wafted over me in a wave, chilling the air instantly. The temperature in the bus seemed to plummet twenty degrees in a second. I could see my breath puffing out in small white clouds in the dim light.

I couldn’t stay in that seat. The primitive part of my brain, the lizard brain that kept our ancestors alive on the savannah, was screaming at me to move. Predator. Danger. Run.

I grabbed my camera, looping the strap around my neck so tight it choked me slightly, and shoved my dead phone into my pocket. I left my duffel bag. I didn’t care about my clothes. I didn’t care about the few books I had saved. I just needed to be near another human being.

I stood up. My legs felt like jelly, wobbling as the bus hit a patch of rough asphalt on Route 66.

I didn’t look back. I refused to look back. I kept my eyes locked on the back of the driver’s head, illuminated by the soft green glow of the dashboard dials. He was my lighthouse. He was the only thing anchoring me to reality.

The walk up the aisle felt like miles. Every empty row I passed felt occupied. I could feel the pressure of gazes on me, unseen eyes tracking my movement. I kept my elbows tucked in close to my ribs, terrified that if I let my arm swing out, something cold and clammy would grab my wrist.

When I finally reached the front, I grabbed the metal pole behind the driver’s seat and squeezed it until my knuckles turned white.

“Hey,” I said. My voice cracked. It sounded small, pathetic.

The driver didn’t flinch. He didn’t turn his head. He just kept his hands at ten and two on the massive steering wheel, his eyes fixed on the illuminated patch of highway ahead.

“Sir?” I said, louder this time.

“Sit down, kid,” he rumbled. His voice was gravel and smoke, rougher than the road beneath us. “Company policy says passengers stay seated while the vehicle is in motion.”

“I… I can’t,” I stammered. “Something is wrong back there.”

The driver let out a long, weary sigh. It was the sound of a man who was just trying to get through a shift, a man who didn’t get paid enough for drama.

“Look,” he said, finally glancing at me in the massive rearview mirror. His eyes were bloodshot, rimmed with dark circles. “The heater’s acting up. It gets cold on these desert runs at night. Just put a jacket on.”

“It’s not the cold,” I insisted, leaning closer to the plexiglass partition that separated us. “There’s… noises. Voices. And I took a picture.”

The driver’s eyes narrowed in the mirror. For a split second, I saw something flicker across his face. It wasn’t confusion. It wasn’t annoyance.

It was fear.

He quickly looked back at the road, his jaw tightening. “Phones play tricks on you in the dark. Reflections. Glare.”

“It wasn’t my phone,” I said, lifting the heavy DSLR camera hanging around my neck. “It was this. And it wasn’t a reflection.”

I fumbled with the switch, turning the camera back on. The lens whirred as it extended. I hit the playback button.

“Look,” I said, thrusting the camera screen toward him.

The driver kept his head forward. “I’m driving. I can’t look at your vacation photos.”

“Please!” I shouted, the desperation bleeding into my voice. “Just look at it! Tell me I’m crazy! Tell me that’s a smudge on the lens!”

The bus swerved slightly, correcting as the driver’s grip tightened on the wheel. He slammed on the brakes just a tap, enough to jostle me, a warning.

“Sit. Down.” He growled it this time.

“No!” I snapped. I was past the point of politeness. I was a twenty-seven-year-old failure of a man, terrified out of his mind, and I wasn’t going to die quietly on a Greyhound bus. “Look at the damn picture!”

I shoved the camera past the partition, right into his peripheral vision.

He had to look. It was human nature. His eyes darted to the small LCD screen.

The bus seemed to hold its breath.

The driver stared at the image of the grey, elongated hand reaching down from the ceiling. He stared at the empty seats. He stared at the darkness I had captured.

I expected him to laugh. I expected him to tell me it was a prank, or a prop, or a double exposure.

Instead, the color drained from his face. His skin, which had been a flushed, unhealthy red, turned the color of old parchment. He licked his lips, his hands trembling slightly on the wheel.

He didn’t say, What is that?

He didn’t say, How did you do that?

He whispered, barely audible over the hum of the engine, “Not again.”

My stomach dropped. The words hung in the air between us, heavier than the smell of the damp earth.

“What?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. “What did you say?”

The driver snatched his gaze away from the camera and fixed it rigidly on the road. He sped up. The needle on the speedometer climbed past 70, then 75. The bus began to shudder, the frame protesting against the speed.

“Delete it,” he said. His voice was tight, strained.

“What?”

“Delete the photo,” he commanded, his tone sharp. “Right now. Erase it.”

“Why?” I demanded, pulling the camera back to my chest protectively. “You know what this is, don’t you? You saw it.”

“I didn’t see anything,” he said, but his voice lacked conviction. He was reciting a line, a rehearsed denial. “And neither did you. You’re tired. It’s the altitude. Flagstaff messes with people’s heads.”

“Don’t lie to me!” I yelled. “You said ‘not again.’ This has happened before! What is on this bus?”

The driver slammed his hand against the dashboard, making me jump. “You want to get off?” he shouted. “I’ll pull over right here! You can walk the rest of the way to Kingman in the dark with the coyotes and the rattlesnakes! Is that what you want?”

I looked out the windshield. The darkness was absolute. There were no streetlights, no houses, just the unending black of the high desert. If he dumped me here, I was dead.

I swallowed my anger. “No,” I said quietly.

“Then sit down,” he hissed. “Sit in the front row. Right behind me. Don’t look back. Don’t take any more pictures. And for the love of God, don’t talk to it.”

Don’t talk to it.

The phrasing sent a fresh spike of adrenaline through my veins. Not don’t talk to yourself. Not don’t make noise.

Don’t talk to IT.

I collapsed into the front seat on the right side, directly across the aisle from the driver. I huddled into the corner, pulling my knees up to my chest. I felt like a child again, hiding under the covers, hoping the monster in the closet wouldn’t notice me.

I clutched the camera in my hands, my thumb hovering over the delete button. But I couldn’t do it. This was proof. This was the only evidence that I wasn’t losing my mind. If I deleted it, I was just a crazy guy on a bus. With the photo, I was a witness.

I sat there for what felt like an hour, staring at the driver’s profile. He was chewing on the inside of his cheek, his eyes darting to the mirrors every few seconds, checking the interior of the bus, then quickly looking away.

He was just as scared as I was. He was just better at hiding it.

My mind started to drift. I thought about my dad. The last time we spoke, it was a shouting match in the driveway. He told me that pursuing photography was a waste of time, that I needed a trade, something “real.” He told me I was afraid of hard work.

If you could see me now, Dad, I thought bitterly. I’m working pretty hard just to keep my heart from exploding.

I wondered if I would ever make it to Albuquerque. I wondered if the bus would just keep driving into the darkness forever, trapped in some kind of loop.

Then, the lights flickered.

It wasn’t a subtle flicker. The overhead lights, the ones that ran the length of the bus, strobed violently. On, off. On, off. Like a distress signal.

The dashboard lights died completely, plunging the driver’s area into darkness. The only light came from the high beams cutting through the night outside.

“Damn electrics,” the driver muttered, but his voice was shaking.

The air grew colder. That smell—the wet earth, the rot—intensified until it was choking me. It tasted like copper in the back of my throat.

And then, I heard the footsteps.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Heavy boots walking down the aisle. Starting from the very back of the bus.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Don’t look back. Don’t look back.

The footsteps were slow, deliberate. They didn’t sound like a person walking; they sounded like dead weight being dragged. One foot, then a drag. One foot, then a drag.

Thump… shhhhk. Thump… shhhhk.

They were getting closer.

“Do you hear that?” I whispered to the driver, tears stinging my eyes.

“Quiet!” the driver hissed. He was hunched over the wheel now, driving purely by instinct. He wouldn’t look in the mirror. He refused to acknowledge the sound approaching him.

The footsteps stopped about halfway up the bus.

silence again.

Then, the sound of a zipper.

It was the distinct, jagged sound of a zipper being pulled slowly. It sounded like it was coming from my duffel bag—the one I had left in the window seat ten rows back.

I felt a wave of nausea. My clothes. My life. Something was rifling through my things.

“Hey!” The voice was clear as a bell.

I jumped so hard I banged my knee against the seat in front of me.

It wasn’t a whisper this time. It was a man’s voice. A young man’s voice. It sounded… normal. American. Casual. Like someone trying to get your attention at a bar.

“Hey, buddy. You forgot your bag.”

I froze. I stopped breathing.

“Don’t answer,” the driver whispered, his face pale in the light of oncoming traffic—a solitary semi-truck passing us in the other lane.

“I think you dropped your wallet,” the voice continued. It was closer now. Maybe five rows back. “You’re gonna need that. Can’t get home without money.”

It knew. It knew I was going home. It knew I was broke.

“Come back here,” the voice coaxed. It was sickeningly sweet now. “I found something else in your bag. A picture. Of your family.”

My heart hammered against my ribs. I did have a picture of my family in the side pocket of that bag. Me, Mom, Dad, and my little sister, taken at my high school graduation. It was the last time we were all happy together.

“Your mom looks nice,” the voice sneered. The tone shifted instantly from friendly to menacing. “She looks… tasty.”

A sob escaped my throat. I clamped my hand over my mouth.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” the driver chanted under his breath, knuckles white.

Suddenly, the seat directly behind me—the empty seat—creaked.

I felt a cold puff of air against my right ear. It felt like someone had just leaned forward, placing their chin on my shoulder, their lips inches from my skin.

“Why didn’t you stay?” the voice whispered. But it wasn’t a man’s voice anymore. It sounded like me. It was my own voice, twisted and mocking. “Why are you running away, Mason?”

I screamed. I couldn’t help it. I screamed and scrambled out of the seat, falling into the aisle, scrambling on my hands and knees toward the driver.

“Stop the bus!” I shrieked. “Stop the goddamn bus!”

The driver swerved. The bus crossed the yellow line, the tires roaring on the rumble strips. BRRRRRRT.

He wrestled the wheel back, pulling us into the lane.

“We’re almost there!” the driver yelled, his composure finally shattering. “Kingman! We’re almost to Kingman! hold on!”

I sat on the floor of the bus, right next to the driver’s seat, hugging my knees. I refused to look up. I stared at the dirty rubber mat on the floor, counting the grooves.

One, two, three, four…

I could feel the presence standing over me. I could feel the cold radiating from it. I could hear the wet, rattling breathing of something that shouldn’t be breathing at all.

It was standing right there. In the aisle. Looming over me.

If I looked up, I knew I would see it. I knew I would see the owner of that grey hand. And I knew if I saw its face, I would never be the same again.

So I didn’t look. I stared at the floor mat and prayed to a God I hadn’t spoken to in years.

“Please,” I whispered. “Just let me get off. Just let me get off.”

The bus began to decelerate. The roar of the engine dropped in pitch.

“Lights,” the driver gasped. “Streetlights.”

I looked up, just slightly, out the front windshield. In the distance, I saw the amber glow of civilization. A gas station. A fast-food sign. A cluster of houses.

Kingman.

The presence behind me seemed to recoil. The oppressive cold lifted slightly. The breathing stopped.

The driver didn’t wait to get to the station. He pulled the bus onto the shoulder of the exit ramp, gravel crunching under the massive tires. He slammed the gear shift into neutral and hit the door release.

Hisss-thump.

The doors folded open. The smell of dry desert sage and gasoline flooded in. It was the sweetest thing I had ever smelled.

“Get out,” the driver said. He wasn’t looking at me. He was staring straight ahead, his chest heaving.

“But… my bag,” I whispered.

“Forget the bag!” he shouted, turning to me with wild eyes. “Get your ass off my bus!”

I didn’t argue. I scrambled down the steps, my camera banging against my chest. My boots hit the gravel, and I nearly collapsed.

I stumbled away from the bus, putting ten, twenty feet between me and that metal beast.

I turned around.

The bus idled there on the side of the off-ramp, a massive, hulking shadow. The interior lights were still flickering.

And there, in the window of the seat I had just vacated—the front row, right side—I saw it.

A face.

It was pressed against the glass. Pale. Gaunt. Its eyes were hollow pits of darkness. Its mouth was open in a silent scream that stretched too wide, unhinging the jaw. And raised next to the face was a grey hand, waving at me.

Goodbye, Mason.

The driver slammed the doors shut. The engine roared as he gunned it, gravel spraying everywhere. The bus peeled out, merging back onto the empty highway, disappearing into the night toward the west.

I stood there on the side of the road, shivering in the desert heat, clutching my camera like a holy relic.

I was safe. I was off the bus.

But as I watched the taillights fade, a horrible realization settled in my stomach.

The driver wasn’t going to stop. He was going to keep driving. He had to finish his route. He had to go all the way to Los Angeles.

He was alone in that metal box with It.

And I had left him there.

I walked to the nearby gas station, my legs numb. The attendant, a teenage girl with bright pink hair, looked up from her phone as I stumbled in. I must have looked like a maniac—sweating, shaking, no luggage, holding a camera.

“You okay, dude?” she asked, popping her gum.

“I need to use your phone,” I rasped. “Please.”

She slid a landline across the counter. I dialed my parents’ number. It was 3:00 AM, but I didn’t care.

“Hello?” My dad’s voice was groggy, irritated.

“Dad,” I choked out, tears finally spilling over. “Dad, come get me. Please.”

“Mason?” His voice shifted instantly from irritation to concern. “Where are you? What happened?”

“I’m in Kingman,” I sobbed. “I… I got off the bus. I couldn’t stay on it. Dad, something was wrong with it.”

“Okay, okay, calm down,” he said, his “problem-solver” tone kicking in. “Stay put. I’m coming. It’s a three-hour drive, but I’m coming.”

I hung up the phone and slid down the counter to the floor. I sat there for three hours, watching the door, terrified that the bus would come back. Terrified that the doors would open and the driver would say, You forgot your ticket.

But the bus didn’t come back.

When my dad’s truck finally pulled into the lot, the sun was just starting to crack the horizon, painting the desert in hues of purple and orange. It was beautiful. It was normal.

I threw my arms around my dad when he got out of the truck. I hadn’t hugged him in five years. He stiffened at first, surprised, but then he hugged me back, patting my back awkwardly.

“You’re freezing,” he said.

“I’m okay,” I lied.

We drove home in silence mostly. I couldn’t tell him. He was a practical man. He believed in taxes, hard work, and the Dallas Cowboys. He didn’t believe in ghosts on the Greyhound.

For the next week, I tried to move on. I stayed in my childhood bedroom. I applied for jobs. I tried to forget the face in the window.

But the photo. I still had the photo.

I kept the camera in my drawer, hidden under my socks. I was afraid to look at it, but I was afraid to delete it. It was my burden.

Then came the news.

It was seven days later. September 11th. I was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, scrolling through news on my laptop.

A headline from an Arizona local news station caught my eye.

“TRAGEDY ON ROUTE 66: BUS CRASH LEAVES 6 DEAD, DRIVER CHARGED.”

My blood turned to ice. My hands shook so bad I spilled coffee on the table.

I clicked the link.

A Greyhound bus traveling westbound on I-40 veered off the road late last night near the California border, rolling multiple times into a ravine. Six passengers were killed instantly. Eleven others were critically injured.

The driver, identified as Earl J. Miller, 58, survived with minor injuries. Authorities suspect driver fatigue or negligence. Toxicology reports are pending.

Witnesses say the bus was swerving erratically for miles before the crash.

I stared at the screen. The photo in the article showed the wreckage. The bus was crumpled like a tin can.

But it was the next line that stopped my heart.

Police are investigating strange footage recovered from the onboard security camera. Sources say the footage shows the driver interacting with an empty bus moments before the crash.

Earl.

He didn’t make it to LA that night. He must have finished his shift, taken a few days off, and then… he had to go back to work. He had to get back on the bus.

And It was waiting for him.

I felt a wave of guilt so profound it nearly doubled me over. I knew. I knew the bus was haunted. I knew something evil was on board. And I got off. I saved myself and left him there.

And now, people were dead.

I ran upstairs to my room. I ripped the drawer open and grabbed the camera. I needed to see it again. I needed to be sure.

I turned it on. The battery was still good. I hit the playback button.

The photo appeared. The grainy aisle. The darkness.

But as I stared at the image, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before.

In the original panic, I had focused on the hand. The grey, reaching hand.

But now, looking closer, I saw the sleeve of the shirt the arm was attached to. It was a flannel shirt. A red and black flannel shirt.

I looked down at my own chest.

I was wearing a red and black flannel shirt.

I looked back at the screen. The hand wasn’t just grey. It was… translucent. Fading.

And on the ring finger of the grey hand, there was a silver band. A class ring.

My class ring. The one I had pawned in Phoenix two weeks ago to pay for a motel room.

The room spun.

The hand wasn’t reaching for me.

The hand was me.

Or a version of me. A version of me that hadn’t gotten off the bus. A version of me that had stayed, and died, and was trapped in that metal box forever.

The entity on the bus… it wasn’t just a ghost. It was a mirror. It showed you the worst possible outcome. It showed you your own death.

And the driver? Earl?

He hadn’t crashed because he was tired.

He crashed because he finally looked in the rearview mirror. And he saw himself sitting in the back.

I dropped the camera. It hit the floor with a crack.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. A notification from Facebook.

Memory from 7 years ago.

I didn’t open it. I knew what it was. It was a photo of me, smiling, full of hope, before everything went wrong.

I walked to the window and looked out at the street. It was a sunny Tuesday in New Mexico. The world looked normal.

But I knew the truth now. The thin line between the living and the dead wasn’t a wall. It was a window on a bus, speeding through the dark. And sometimes, if the light hits it just right, you can see what’s waiting for you on the other side.

And sometimes, what’s waiting… is you.

Part 3: The Ledger of the Lost

The crack of the camera hitting the floor echoed like a gunshot in the quiet suburban house, but the silence that followed was heavier. I stood there, staring at the shattered plastic body of my DSLR, the lens twisted at a sickening angle. I wanted to believe that breaking the machine would break the connection, that smashing the lens would blind the eye I had inadvertently opened.

But the cold remained.

It wasn’t the air conditioning. It was that same subterranean chill, the damp, cloying temperature of a root cellar or a mausoleum, seeping out from the cracked casing of the camera.

I didn’t sleep that night. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the grey hand reaching down. I saw the flannel shirt. My flannel shirt. The realization that I had captured my own ghost—or a version of myself that was destined to die on that bus—gnawed at my sanity.

By the next morning, the paranoia had metastasized into obsession. I needed answers. I couldn’t just sit in my parents’ kitchen, eating toast and pretending I hadn’t stared into the abyss. I needed to talk to Earl Miller.

According to the news reports, Earl was being treated at Kingman Regional Medical Center before his transfer to county jail. He was under police guard, the villain of the week, the negligent driver who fell asleep at the wheel and killed six people. But I knew the truth. He wasn’t asleep. He was terrified.

I told my dad I was going for a drive to clear my head. I took his truck—my own car had been repossessed months ago—and hit the I-40 West, heading back toward the darkness I had just escaped.

The drive was surreal. Under the harsh sunlight of the Arizona afternoon, the desert looked innocent. Just sagebrush, red dirt, and blue sky. It was hard to reconcile this landscape with the nightmare world of the bus. But as I passed the mile marker where I had forced Earl to let me off, my hands began to shake uncontrollably. There were skid marks on the tarmac further up the road. Flares were still burning on the shoulder where the recovery crews were winching the wreckage of the bus out of the ravine.

I didn’t stop to look. I couldn’t.

Getting into Earl’s hospital room wasn’t easy. There was a deputy stationed outside the door, a young guy more interested in his phone than the prisoner inside. I lied. I told him I was Earl’s nephew, that I had brought him a change of clothes. It was a flimsy story, but the deputy just shrugged and waved me through. “Five minutes. He’s barely lucid anyway.”

The room smelled of antiseptic and fear. Earl was strapped to the bed, one arm in a cast, his face a map of bruises and lacerations. He looked twenty years older than he had on the bus. His eyes were wide, staring at the ceiling tiles, darting back and forth as if tracking a fly.

“Earl,” I whispered, closing the door behind me.

He flinched violently, straining against the restraints. When his eyes locked onto mine, he didn’t look relieved. He looked horrified.

“You,” he croaked. His voice was a ruin, shredded by smoke and screaming. “You got off.”

“I got off,” I confirmed, stepping closer. “But you didn’t.”

“I tried,” he whimpered. Tears began to leak from the corners of his eyes, cutting tracks through the grime on his face. “I tried to keep driving. I thought if I just got to the depot… if I just got to the lights…”

“What happened, Earl? What caused the crash?”

He laughed then, a wet, bubbling sound that made my skin crawl. “The Ledger,” he whispered. “The Ledger had to balance.”

“What are you talking about?”

Earl struggled to sit up, his eyes wild. “The empty bus. It’s never empty, kid. Never. There’s always passengers. You just don’t see them until they’re ready to be seen.”

He leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial hiss. “That route… Route 66 at night… it collects things. It collects people who are lost. People like you. Broken people. People with no place to go.”

I felt a chill run down my spine. He was describing me perfectly.

“You took a picture,” Earl said, accusingly. “You saw the Collector. The hand from the ceiling. That’s the Collector. He comes down to check the tickets. He comes to see who belongs to the road.”

“But it was my hand,” I said, my voice trembling. “In the photo. It was wearing my ring. My shirt.”

Earl nodded slowly. “Because you were supposed to be on the list, Mason. You were supposed to be one of the six. You were marked. When you took that picture, you locked it in. You signed the contract.”

“But I got off!” I argued. “I left!”

“You can’t cheat the Ledger!” Earl shouted, straining against the cuffs so hard the metal clinked against the bed rails. “You got off, so he had to take others! He took the family in the back! He took the old lady! He took the boy! He had to fill the seats! Because you left a hole!”

I stumbled back, hitting the wall. The guilt that had been simmering in my gut boiled over. “No,” I whispered. “That’s not true. It was an accident.”

“Look at me!” Earl screamed. “Look at my eyes! Do I look like I fell asleep? He grabbed the wheel, Mason! He reached down from the ceiling, that grey arm, and he grabbed the wheel and he pulled! He wanted his quota!”

Suddenly, the lights in the hospital room flickered.

Bzzt. Click.

The hum of the medical equipment dropped in pitch. The heart monitor next to Earl’s bed skipped a beat, then sped up. Beep-beep-beep-beep.

The temperature in the room plummeted. The smell of antiseptic vanished, replaced instantly by the smell of wet earth and rotting leaves.

“He’s here,” Earl whispered, his eyes rolling back in terror. “He followed you. He knows you’re here. He wants to finish the transaction.”

“No,” I said, backing toward the door. “No, this isn’t real.”

“The camera,” Earl hissed. “Where is the camera?”

“I… I broke it. It’s at home.”

“The memory card!” Earl yelled. “The image! As long as the image exists, the door is open! You have to destroy it! You have to burn it!”

I froze. I hadn’t destroyed the memory card. The camera body was smashed, but the little black SD card was still sitting in the slot, intact. In fact, I had instinctively put it in my wallet before I left the house, a habit from my photography days—never leave data behind.

I reached into my pocket. My fingers brushed the cold plastic of the SD card.

Cough.

The sound came from the bathroom attached to the hospital room. That dry, hacking cough.

The bathroom door creaked open slowly. Darkness spilled out, darker than the unlit room should allow.

“Give it to me,” a voice whispered from the darkness. It wasn’t the “Collector’s” voice. It was my voice. Just like on the bus. “Give me the ticket, Mason.”

I pulled the SD card out of my wallet. It felt burning hot in my hand, vibrating with a low frequency.

“Destroy it!” Earl screamed. “Do it now!”

From the bathroom, a figure emerged. It was tall, stooped, its limbs elongated and unnatural. It wore a tattered flannel shirt—red and black. It raised a grey, translucent hand, pointing a crooked finger at me.

“You owe me a ride,” the thing hissed.

I looked at Earl. He was hyperventilating, his face turning blue. The entity was moving toward me, but its gaze was locked on Earl. It was going to kill him. It was going to finish the job it started in the ravine.

I had to choose. Run, or end this.

I looked around the room for something, anything. My eyes landed on the red sharps container on the wall, and below it, a lighter Earl’s pack of cigarettes sitting on the bedside table (the cops must have left them there).

I lunged for the lighter.

The entity shrieked—a sound like metal tearing against metal. It lunged at me, closing the distance with impossible speed. The room spun. I felt cold fingers brush my neck, icy and solid.

I flicked the lighter. The flame sparked to life.

I held the tiny plastic SD card directly into the flame.

“No!” the entity screamed. It sounded like a chorus of voices—the six people who died on the bus.

The plastic bubbled and melted. I didn’t drop it. I let the fire bite into my thumb, searing my skin, but I refused to let go until the chip inside cracked and blackened.

Pop.

The SD card disintegrated into a glob of molten plastic and ash.

A shockwave blast hit the room. The windows rattled in their frames. The lights flared bright white, blindingly intense, and then blew out completely.

Silence.

Heavy, absolute silence.

The smell of wet earth evaporated, replaced by the sharp scent of burnt plastic and ozone.

I stood there in the dark, my thumb throbbing, my heart hammering against my ribs.

“Earl?” I whispered.

There was no answer.

The emergency lights kicked on, bathing the room in a dull red glow.

I looked at the bed. Earl was slumped over, his head resting on his chest. The heart monitor was whining a flat, continuous tone.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

The door burst open. The deputy and two nurses rushed in.

“Code Blue! Code Blue!” one of the nurses shouted, pushing me aside to get to Earl.

I stumbled back into the hallway, dazed. I watched through the open door as they tried to revive him. Chest compressions. The defibrillator. Clear!

I looked at my hand. The burn mark on my thumb was shaped like a small, black square. A brand.

They worked on him for twenty minutes. But I knew it was useless.

Earl Miller was gone. The Ledger was balanced. He had paid the debt for both of us.

I turned and walked away. I walked down the sterile white corridor, past the nurses’ station, past the waiting room where families sat crying or scrolling on their phones. I walked out into the blinding Arizona sun.

I was free. But I was empty.

Part 4

The Long Walk Home

The funeral for Earl Miller was a small affair. It was held in a dusty cemetery on the outskirts of Kingman, a place where the wind kicked up devils of red sand that danced between the headstones. I didn’t know Earl, not really. I knew him only as the captain of a doomed vessel, a man who had shared the most terrifying hour of my life.

I stood at the back, hidden behind a large oak tree, wearing a black suit that was a size too small—a remnant of my high school graduation. There were maybe ten people there. His ex-wife, a daughter who looked numb, and a few guys in Greyhound uniforms who looked like they were fulfilling an obligation rather than mourning a friend.

The priest spoke about God’s plan, about tragic accidents, about finding peace. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run up to the podium and tell them that there was no peace on that highway, that God had looked away when Bus 404 turned onto the interstate. I wanted to tell them that Earl died a hero, trying to hold back a tide of darkness that none of them could comprehend.

But I stayed silent. I was an intruder in their grief. A ghost in my own right.

When the service ended, I waited until everyone had left. I walked up to the open grave. The dirt was fresh, piled high. It smelled like the bus.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small, crumpled piece of paper—my bus ticket from that night. I hadn’t burned it. I hadn’t destroyed it. It was the only proof I had left that I was ever there.

I dropped the ticket into the grave, watching it flutter down until it rested on the casket.

“Ride’s over, Earl,” I whispered. “You can rest now.”

The drive back to my parents’ house felt different this time. The paranoia that had gripped me for weeks had receded, replaced by a dull, aching melancholy. The entity—the Collector—was gone. I could feel its absence. It was like a static noise that had been playing in the back of my brain had finally been switched off.

But the silence it left behind was loud.

My parents didn’t ask questions about the burn on my thumb or why I had come home looking like I’d seen a war. They were just glad I was safe. They attributed my mood to the job loss, to the depression of moving back home. They told me to take my time, to get back on my feet when I was ready.

I tried. I really did.

I got a job a month later at a local hardware store. It was mindless work—stocking shelves, mixing paint, cutting keys. It was exactly what I needed. No cameras. No art. Just concrete tasks and tangible objects.

I stopped taking photos. I sold my replacement camera. I couldn’t look through a lens anymore. Every time I brought a viewfinder up to my eye, I expected to see It standing in the background, waiting. Photography, once my passion, had become a portal I was too terrified to open.

But trauma has a way of rewriting your geography. I couldn’t drive on the interstate at night anymore. If I had to go somewhere, I took back roads, and only during the day. If I saw a bus—any bus, even a bright yellow school bus—my chest would tighten, and I’d have to pull over until the panic attack subsided.

I followed the investigation into the crash obsessively. The final report ruled it “driver error caused by acute medical episode.” They found trace amounts of adrenaline in Earl’s system, but nothing else. No drugs. No alcohol. Just a heart that gave out, or a mind that snapped.

They never explained the footage. The mention of the “strange interaction” on the security tape was buried, dismissed as a glitch in the recording equipment. The world moved on. The news cycle churned out new tragedies, new scandals. Route 66 kept flowing, a river of headlights cutting through the desert.

But I couldn’t move on. Not fully.

One evening in November, about two months after the crash, I was closing up the hardware store. It was dark early now, the winter solstice approaching. The store was empty. I was sweeping the back aisle, the rhythmic swish-swish of the broom the only sound.

I walked past the section where we sold mirrors. A whole wall of them—bathroom mirrors, vanity mirrors, full-length door mirrors.

I usually avoided this aisle. I didn’t like looking at myself these days. I looked tired. I looked older.

But something caught my eye.

In the reflection of a large, oval mirror, I saw movement behind me.

I froze. The old fear, cold and sharp, spiked in my chest.

I gripped the broom handle, turning slowly to face the reflection.

There was nothing behind me in the aisle. The store was empty.

I looked back at the mirror.

My reflection was standing there. But it wasn’t holding a broom.

The Mason in the mirror was standing with his arms at his sides. He was wearing the red and black flannel shirt. And he was smiling.

It wasn’t a happy smile. It was a knowing smile. A sad smile.

He raised his hand—his left hand—and pressed it against the glass from the inside. On his ring finger was the silver class ring.

I stared at him. He stared at me.

We stood there for a long minute, two versions of the same man separated by a thin sheet of silvered glass.

Then, the Mason in the mirror mouthed a single word.

Balance.

And then he blinked, and he was just a reflection again. He was holding the broom. He was wearing my work uniform. The flannel shirt was gone.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

I realized then that Earl was right. The Ledger had to balance. But maybe the transaction wasn’t as simple as life and death. Maybe a part of me did die on that bus. Maybe the innocent, hopeful part of Mason—the photographer, the dreamer—had stayed in that seat. And the man standing in the hardware store was just the survivor. The shell that made it out.

I walked out of the store and locked the door. The night air was crisp and cold.

I looked up at the sky. The stars were bright, indifferent to the struggles of the ants crawling below them.

I pulled my phone out. I hadn’t taken a picture in months. But tonight, the moon looked particularly beautiful, hanging low and heavy over the desert.

I hesitated. My thumb hovered over the camera icon.

Don’t do it, a voice in my head whispered.

But I was tired of being afraid. I was tired of running.

I tapped the icon. The camera opened.

I aimed it at the moon.

Click.

I looked at the photo. It was just the moon. A blurry, white orb in a black sky. No hands. No faces. No ghosts.

I smiled. A real smile this time.

I was alive. I was damaged, yes. I was haunted, maybe. But I was here.

I got into my dad’s truck and started the engine. I turned on the radio. A classic rock station was playing “Hotel California.” I chuckled at the irony. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

I pulled out onto the main road. I drove past the bus station. A Greyhound was idling at the curb, its engine purring, exhaust curling into the night air. The destination sign read: LOS ANGELES.

I slowed down as I passed it. I looked at the dark, tinted windows.

For a second—just a fraction of a second—I saw a face pressed against the glass in the back row. A heavy-set man with a grey beard, looking out with sad, tired eyes.

He raised a hand in a slow wave.

I didn’t panic. I didn’t speed away.

I raised my hand and waved back.

“Safe travels, Earl,” I whispered.

I accelerated, leaving the bus behind in the rearview mirror, shrinking until it was just two red taillights in the darkness, and then, nothing at all.

I turned onto the road that led home. The highway stretched out before me, long and dark, but for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t afraid of what lay ahead. I kept my eyes on the road, my hands on the wheel, and I drove.

Because that’s what survivors do. We keep driving.