The Hollow Fare

I never believed in ghosts until that April morning in 2019, when the city of Mandaluyong was still wrapped in the gray blanket of pre-dawn. My name is Clara, and I worked as a night-shift coordinator at a logistics firm near the Boni Avenue intersection. My shift ended at 4 AM, and I usually took a cab home because the jeepneys were sparse at that hour. That particular morning, I flagged down a decrepit taxi with a cracked windshield and a driver who looked like he hadn’t slept in days. He nodded toward the back seat, and I slid in, the vinyl seats cold against my legs.

We took the usual route along the Pasig River, passing the old warehouses and the shuttered shops that lined the road. The driver, a middle-aged man with a frayed cap, was silent, which suited me fine. I was exhausted, my mind replaying the spreadsheet errors I’d been fixing all night. As we approached the footbridge near the Polytechnic University, I noticed a figure standing under the flickering streetlamp. It was a girl, or at least it had the shape of a girl—thin, with long black hair that hung past her waist, and a white dress that seemed to glow faintly in the sickly yellow light. She was facing away from us, her arm raised as if hailing a cab. I thought nothing of it, except that it was odd for anyone to be out at that hour. But as we drew closer, the hair on my arms prickled. The dress was soaking wet, clinging to her skin, and there was a puddle forming around her feet. The driver must have seen her too, because he slowed down, his hand on the gear shift.

‘Miss, you see her?’ he asked in a low, strained voice. I nodded, not trusting my own voice. He pressed the accelerator, and we zoomed past her. But as we passed, I turned to look back, and my blood froze. The girl had turned her head, and where her face should have been, there was only a smooth, black void—like a perfectly shaped mask carved from polished obsidian. No eyes, no nose, no mouth. And the dress was not white; it was a pale, bone-white that seemed to absorb the light. I felt a scream build in my throat, but no sound escaped. The driver was muttering, ‘Hindi ko nakita ang mukha. Hindi ko nakita ang mukha.’ He was gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles were white.

We didn’t speak for the rest of the ride. When he dropped me off at my apartment, he refused to take my payment, just stared ahead, his lips moving in a silent prayer. I stumbled inside, locked the door, and sat in the dark until sunrise.

I tried to convince myself it was a trick of the light, a homeless person with a hood over their face. But the image of that black void stayed with me. I started avoiding that route, taking a longer way home. For two weeks, nothing happened. Then, one night, I had to work late again, and the only cab I could find took the same route. I was tense, scanning the sidewalks, but the street was empty. I sighed in relief. But then, from the corner of my eye, I saw her again. She was standing under a different lamp, but the same wet dress, the same raised arm. And this time, she was on the other side of the road, running alongside the cab with impossible speed, her bare feet slapping the asphalt. She caught up to the window, her face turned toward me—that same black void—and I heard a whisper, like the rustle of dry leaves: ‘Mali ka. Mali ka.’ Wrong. Wrong.

I shut my eyes, screaming at the driver to go faster. When I opened them, she was gone. The driver was pale, shaking. He pulled over, and we both got out, gasping in the humid night air. He looked at me with wild eyes and said, ‘Miss, that thing—I see it before. My nephew, he took a fare from that spot last month. He never came home. They found his taxi abandoned near the river, with wet footprints leading from the driver’s door into the water.’

We called the police, but they dismissed it as a prank. I quit my job the next week. I couldn’t bear the thought of that route at night. To this day, I take only the MRT, even if it means longer walks. And if I ever see a black void where a face should be, I’ll run. But I know, deep down, that she’s not done. She’s looking for another fare, another driver, another passenger. And I can’t help but wonder—if I had taken her cab that night, would I have been the one to disappear?