by Matthew Spence

Chris saw the light of the bus’s headlights before he saw the bus itself. That was supposed to be a bad sign, from all the stories he’d heard. Some of the other pedestrians were already hurrying to leave before it showed up. There were rumors about how those who’d been unfortunate enough to lag behind had been snatched up by the bus as it made its way through neighborhoods like this one, never to be seen again. Chris had never paid that much attention to such stories. What he did know, and what he hoped to avoid experiencing, was that people who did dare to climb aboard the bus were often gone for years if not decades. That was the part he planned on avoiding.

Of course, his friends and family had told him that he was a crazy fool for even thinking about trying such a thing. The bus had appeared in a number of forms down through the centuries. Previous eras had known it as the Flying Dutchman; a stagecoach, a ghostly trolley car. The prize for surviving its ride was a form of immortality; but the cost was coming back to a world where those you had known had been dead for generations.

“You get on that thing, you could never be seen again, don’t you know that?” his grandfather had once told him. “Do you know what that would do to your mother?”
“I’d be careful,” Chris had insisted.
“That’s what they all say. Take it from me; I saw it happen once. A guy I knew, when I wasn’t much older than you, said he’d ride the Bus. He went out to that stop and never came back.”
“I’ll come back. And it won’t be a hundred years later, either-you’ll see.”
“Sure you will,” the old man said. “Sure you will…”

Chris heard the deep growl of the bus’s engine and looked up at the end of the street in anticipation. The bus came out of the shadows as if searching for something. At first it looked normal, but as it came closer Chris could see that its windows were fogged over with what looked like black mist. The bus let out a low groan as it pulled up to the curb. Its doors slid open with a sigh that sounded like a thousand lost souls crying out for relief.
As he climbed up its grimy steps, Chris wondered how long the bus had been traveling in this form. The legends said that it had appeared in various cities around the world, and only at certain times of the year, when it was required to pick up its cargo of the damned. Chris was determined not to become one of them, however. He’d read what literature he could find, listened to all the stories. He was going to get his share of the prize; not wind up one of the bus’s passengers.

So, here he was. Chris kept reminding himself that he wasn’t going to be here permanently, but he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of dread as he dropped his change into the drivers’ meter. The driver’s face was hidden underneath his cap and jacket, but Chris could see that his hands were thin, bony and the color of white chalk. Chris heard the doors slide shut behind him and felt the bus lurch as he looked for a place to sit down. His hand touched the guardrail. It felt sticky, like dried blood. Chris looked down the aisle. There were two rows of seats on either side. They were dull gray, and looked like tombstones in the dim light. The lights of passing buildings and other traffic rippled past the bus’s windows like ghosts as Chris studied the bus’s other passengers.