The Gravel Path

The bus depot at the edge of town was a gray, hollowed-out shell of a building, its windows dark and its benches cold. I worked the night shift at a processing plant that sat on the western outskirts of the city, and my commute home took me through a stretch of farmland that turned to skeletal woods after midnight. I was always the last passenger off, and the driver would watch me in the mirror with a knowing look, as if he expected me to vanish into the cornfields.

That night, the rain had turned the gravel roads into slick ribbons, and the bus lumbered through the darkness, its headlights carving a dim tunnel through the trees. I was dozing, my forehead against the cold glass, when the brakes whined and the bus shuddered to a halt. I blinked, aware of the sudden silence. We were not at the intersection where I usually got off—still several miles out, on a stretch I didn’t recognize. The road here was lined with abandoned cars and old farm equipment, and the only light came from a single flickering streetlamp that buzzed like an angry insect.

The driver, a man named Elias who had ferried me home for months, sat motionless, his hands gripping the wheel, his eyes fixed on the rearview mirror. The other passengers—a grandmother with a grocery bag, a young couple, a man in a suit—stirred, looking out the windows. I could see nothing but the wet road and the black shapes of trees.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked the man in the suit, his voice tight.

Elias didn’t turn. ‘Someone’s hailing us down.’

We all leaned to look. The rain had stopped, leaving a mist that clung to the ground like a shroud. There was no one on the road. No one at all.

‘I don’t see anybody,’ the grandmother said, squinting.

‘She’s coming,’ Elias said, his voice flat. ‘She’s got a child with her. They’re just about to the road.’

We stared. The mist shifted, and for a moment I thought I saw a tall shape, a thin woman in a dark coat, holding a small bundle. But then it was gone, and the road was empty.

‘There’s no one there,’ the young woman said, her boyfriend clutching her arm.

Elias turned the key, and the engine coughed but died. He tried again, and the bus shuddered but refused to start. The overhead lights flickered, and the air grew cold, despite the heater.

‘Maybe she’s the reason we stopped,’ I said, not meaning to speak aloud.

Elias looked at me in the mirror then, and his face was pale. ‘I’ve seen her before,’ he whispered. ‘Three times this month. She always appears on this stretch, and she always smiles when I pass. But she never boarded until tonight.’

A woman’s laugh, low and melodic, drifted from outside. We all heard it. The grandmother crossed herself. The young couple huddled together. The man in the suit pressed his face to the window, breathing shallow.

‘I see her now,’ he said, his voice trembling. ‘She’s standing at the edge of the trees. She’s holding a child by the hand.’

I looked, but I saw nothing. Only shadows.

Then the bus door hissed open, and the mist rolled in, curling around our ankles. A woman stepped aboard, pale as bone, with black hair that seemed to drink the light. She wore a long coat that dripped with water, and beside her stood a child—a boy of maybe six, with dark eyes that didn’t blink. The child smiled, and his teeth were too sharp, too many.

‘Take me to the gravel path,’ the woman said, her voice smooth as a funeral bell. ‘The one that leads to the abandoned church.’

Elias shook his head. ‘I don’t know that road.’

‘You will,’ she said, and the bus engine roared to life. Elias’s hands were forced to the wheel, and the bus lurched forward, off the main road, onto a dirt track that I had never seen before. The trees pressed in on both sides, their branches scraping the windows like fingernails.

I tried to move, but my legs were locked. I could feel the cold radiating from the woman, and I knew, deep in my gut, that she was not alive. The child hummed a tune I didn’t recognize, and the passengers began to moan, as if in a trance.

The bus drove for what felt like hours, through a forest that seemed to grow darker and more twisted, until it finally stopped in front of a ruin—a crumbling church with a steeple that leaned like a broken finger. The woman led the child off, and before she disappeared into the mist, she turned and looked directly at me.

‘You brought me home,’ she said, and then she was gone.

The bus door closed, and Elias drove back to the main road in silence. No one spoke the rest of the way. When I finally got off at my stop, I noticed that the man in the suit was not with us. Neither was the grandmother. The young couple huddled together, shaking, and I knew they’d seen something I hadn’t.

The next day, I saw the news: a man found dead on the gravel path, his face frozen in terror. The police said he’d died of a heart attack. But I knew better.

I never took the night bus again. But sometimes, when I’m in my car on that road, I see a woman and a child standing at the edge of the trees, and the woman smiles at me. She knows I’m the one who saw her—the one who remembered the gravel path. And I know, somehow, that she’s waiting for me to join her.