The Last Bus from Murkwood

The rusted bus groaned as it pulled away from the terminal, its headlights cutting weak cones through the November fog. Elena pressed her forehead against the cold glass, watching the familiar brick of the depot melt into a smear of grey. She was seventeen, the second eldest of seven, and tonight she had her youngest brother, Tomas, asleep against her shoulder, his small fist clutching a worn teddy bear. Their mother had insisted she take him to the city for the specialist appointment, even though it meant missing her shift at the diner and riding the last bus home.

The bus was nearly empty. A gaunt woman in a threadbare coat sat three rows ahead, humming a tune Elena didn’t recognize. Two rows behind, a man in a stained raincoat stared out the window, his face half-hidden by a wide-brimmed hat. The driver, a heavyset man with a nicotine-stained mustache, hummed along with the woman, his eyes fixed on the road.

They passed the old mill, its smokestacks like skeletal fingers, and then the woods began. Murkwood Forest pressed close to the road, black and impenetrable, the trees leaning as if to eavesdrop. Elena had heard the stories, the ones the old folks told in hushed voices about people who vanished on this route, but she’d always chalked them up to rural paranoia. She tried to stay awake, to keep an eye on the road, but the warmth of Tomas and the rhythm of the wheels pulled at her eyelids.

She dreamed of the garden behind their house, the one their father had planted before he got too tired to care for it. She was a child again, running through the rows of tomatoes and beans, and the sun was high and golden. But then the sky turned grey, and the plants began to wither and curl, and a voice from the undergrowth said, ‘You should have stayed at the bus stop.’ Elena woke with a start, her heart hammering.

The bus had stopped. The engine idled, a low growl. The fog had thickened, pressing against the windows like a living thing. Elena looked around; the woman in the threadbare coat was gone. The man in the raincoat was gone. Only she, Tomas, and the driver remained. The driver sat perfectly still, his hands on the wheel, his head tilted as if listening. ‘Where are we?’ Elena called, her voice thin. The driver didn’t answer. She saw his lips moving, forming words she couldn’t hear.

A soft knock came from the door. Tomas stirred, murmuring in his sleep. Elena unbuckled her seatbelt and crept to the front. Through the windshield, she saw a figure standing just beyond the headlights—a man in a long coat, his face obscured by shadow. He raised a hand and knocked again, three slow thumps on the metal door. The driver turned to her, and for the first time she saw his eyes—milky white, like a man who had been blind for years. ‘He’s been waiting,’ the driver said. ‘He’s been waiting since the last bus broke down.’

Elena stumbled back. ‘There’s no one else on the bus,’ she said. ‘We’re supposed to be the only ones.’ The driver smiled, and his lips were cracked and dry. ‘You’re not the only ones. You never were. You just couldn’t see them.’

Tomas woke with a cry, pointing at the window. Elena turned and saw a face pressed against the glass—pale, with hollow cheeks and eyes like polished stones. It was the woman from before, but her coat was soaked, as if she’d been standing in rain that never fell. Then another face appeared beside her, the man in the raincoat, and then more, dozens of them, crowding the windows, pressing their palms against the glass, leaving smears that looked like fingerprints but smelled of earth and rot.

Elena pulled Tomas into her lap, her back against the seat. ‘What do you want?’ she screamed at the driver. He turned in his seat, and his face seemed to shift, the skin stretching over bones that moved underneath. ‘They want to get off,’ he said. ‘But they don’t know where they’re going. And you’re going to help them find their way.’

The bus began to move, not forward but sideways, sliding off the road and into the trees. The headlights flickered, then died. In the darkness, Elena felt hands closing around her ankles, cold and wet, and she heard Tomas’s voice, but it was not his voice anymore—it was deeper, older, full of names that didn’t belong to her. ‘Let us in,’ the voices said. ‘Let us rest. We’ve been walking for so long.’

Elena clutched Tomas, but he felt wrong in her arms—too light, as if his bones had hollowed. She looked down and saw that his face was not his own; it was the woman’s face, grinning with needle teeth. Elena screamed, and the bus filled with the sound of her own voice echoing back, layered with the laughter of the dead.

When the grey dawn finally crawled over Murkwood, the bus sat empty in a clearing, its door ajar, its engine cold. A search party found it later that day, and the driver slumped over the wheel with no eyes. But there was no sign of Elena or Tomas. In the days that followed, people on the other side of the forest would leave out offerings—small bowls of milk, bits of bread—for the ones who wandered the roads at night, whispering to each other that if you ride the last bus through Murkwood, you’ll get off at every stop but your own.