The Cursed Passenger

The night was eerily quiet as the bus sped down the desolate highway, cutting through the darkness like a ghostly vessel. Ali, a freelance photographer, was on his way to a remote village to document an abandoned mansion rumored to be haunted. The bus was nearly empty, with only a few scattered passengers—a woman with a sleeping child, an old man staring blankly out the window, and a student immersed in a book. The driver, an elderly man with hollow eyes, seemed oddly detached from reality, his hands gripping the wheel as if he had been driving forever.

As the bus rolled past a dimly lit road, it suddenly slowed down. A lone figure stood by the roadside, wrapped in a long black coat. His face was obscured by the shadows, and though he made no signal to stop, the driver opened the door without hesitation. The man stepped in, moving silently to the back of the bus. A strange chill settled over the vehicle as he passed. Ali shivered but dismissed the feeling, chalking it up to exhaustion. However, something felt undeniably wrong—none of the other passengers even acknowledged the new arrival.

Out of curiosity, Ali lifted his camera and snapped a quick photo of the man’s reflection in the window. When he checked the screen, his stomach twisted in terror. The seat was empty. The man was sitting there, yet his image did not appear in the reflection. His heart pounded as he turned around to check again, but the figure remained motionless, staring straight ahead. Every instinct told Ali to ignore it, to pretend he hadn’t noticed, but the unnatural silence in the bus grew heavier, pressing against his chest like an invisible weight.

As the bus continued its journey, Ali realized something unsettling—the landscape outside wasn’t changing. The same crooked tree, the same flickering streetlamp, the same broken signpost kept appearing over and over. It was as if the bus was trapped in an endless loop. He glanced at his watch, but the hands had stopped moving. The air inside the bus felt colder, suffocating, as if time itself had frozen. Then, in the suffocating stillness, a whisper slithered into his ear. “You shouldn’t have seen me.”

His body went rigid. The voice was too close, yet the black-coated man remained seated at the back. Heart racing, Ali turned to the other passengers for reassurance, but his breath caught in his throat. The woman with the child was gone. The old man had vanished. The student’s book lay abandoned on the seat, its pages fluttering in a wind that didn’t exist. Only their belongings remained. Panic clawed at Ali’s throat as he stumbled toward the driver. “Stop the bus! Something is wrong!” he shouted. The driver, unblinking, kept his gaze forward. Ali grabbed his shoulder, but as his head tilted slightly, his breath hitched—his eyes were nothing but hollow sockets. In a voice too deep, too unnatural, the driver murmured, “You bought a ticket. You cannot leave.”

The bus suddenly felt like a coffin, an inescapable prison bound to an unknown fate. Ali turned toward the only remaining passenger—the man in the black coat. Slowly, the figure stood, his movements too smooth, too unnatural. The bus flickered like a dying lightbulb as the man took a step forward. Ali backed away, his voice barely a whisper, “Who are you?” The man smiled, revealing unnaturally sharp teeth. “You already know.”

Ali’s knees weakened as he looked at the window’s reflection. It was no longer his face staring back at him—it was the man in the black coat. His heart stopped as realization dawned. The bus wasn’t just picking up passengers. It was collecting souls.

Darkness swallowed him whole.

When the bus slowed at the next stop, a new passenger stepped inside. At the very back, wearing a black coat, sat Ali—silent, waiting. The journey never ended.