The Last Bus to Bhusawal

The dream was still wet on my skin when I woke, my throat raw from a scream I couldn’t remember. It was 8 a.m. on a Tuesday in March, the air thick with the smell of damp earth and diesel from the street below. My mother came in, her hands flour-dusted, and asked what was wrong. I lied and said it was just a dream, but my heart knew better. It was the same dream I’d had for three nights now: my cousin Arjun, standing on a stool, his eyes apologizing before he kicked it away. I never saw the fall, only the rope and his face, and then I was screaming his name into a void that swallowed it.

I dialed his number as I paced the narrow hallway of our flat in Nagpur. The line rang once, twice, three times, and then a robotic voice told me the number was unreachable. That wasn’t like Arjun. He was the kind of person who always had his phone, always answered, even at 3 a.m. if you drunk-called him. We’d grown up together in a cramped two-room house in Bhusawal, a railway town where everyone knew everyone. I’d moved away after my father got a transfer, but we’d kept in touch, sharing inside jokes about the station master’s mustache and the constant smell of coal.

I called his younger sister, Meera, who I knew would be awake. She picked up on the second ring, her voice crackling with static.

‘Hey, is Arjun okay?’ I asked, trying to sound casual.

There was a pause, a long one, and then Meera said, ‘He’s… he’s gone, Diya. He left early this morning for Bhusawal. Said he had to settle something. He wasn’t acting right. He gave me his diary and said, ‘Give this to Diya if anything happens to me.”

My blood turned cold. ‘What do you mean, if anything happens? Meera, what did he say?’

‘Just that he was sorry. He said he was sorry for everything. And he told me not to worry. But the way he looked… it wasn’t right. I’m scared, Diya.’

I told her I’d come. I didn’t even think about the 6-hour journey. I packed a bag, grabbed the diary from Meera when I met her at the bus station, and boarded the next bus to Bhusawal. The bus was half-empty, the kind with worn-out seats and a driver who played old Hindi songs. I opened the diary, its pages yellowed and pressed with dried flowers. The first entry was from three months ago, written in a shaky hand.

‘It started with a whisper, but I told myself it was just the wind. Then it grew. It spoke to me at night, in the dark, when the house was quiet. It said, ‘You know what you did.’ But I didn’t do anything. I swear I didn’t.’

Another entry, a month ago: ‘The clock stopped at 3:33 again. It does that every day now. I saw her in the reflection of the window – the woman in the white sari. She had no face, but she had eyes. They were black, like the void. She mouthed my name, but the voice came from inside my head: ‘You have to pay.’ Pay for what? I didn’t do anything. I didn’t.’

The last entry, dated yesterday: ‘I’ve decided. I’ll go to Bhusawal and end it at the old bridge. That’s where it started. That’s where I have to finish it. I’m sorry, Diya. You were always the only one who believed me.’

The bus lurched, and I nearly dropped the diary. The old bridge – the one over the Tapi river that had been decommissioned years ago, known for its rusty iron and the legend of a woman who drowned there in the 1970s, a bride whose sari got caught in the railing and pulled her under. Arjun and I had dared each other to walk across it as kids, but we’d never made it more than a few steps. He was going to the bridge. To hang himself? I felt bile rise in my throat.

I called Meera again. ‘What happened in Bhusawal? Why would he go there?’

She hesitated. ‘Our grandmother had a plot near the bridge. Arjun went there last year to check on it, and he found an old photograph in the collapsed shed. It was a wedding photo, but the woman’s face was blurred, like someone had scratched it out. He brought it home. He said he’d been having nightmares ever since.’

The bus turned onto the highway, the landscape flattening into fields of dry grass and scattered trees. I clutched the diary, my mind racing. The woman in the white sari, the whisper, the clock at 3:33 – it all felt too familiar, like a story I’d heard somewhere but couldn’t place. And then it hit me: our grandmother, who lived in Bhusawal until she died, used to tell us about a bride who was jilted at the altar and drowned herself in the river. Her name was Savitri. She was said to be so beautiful that the moon hid when she sang. But her groom, a railway officer, never showed up. She waited for three days, and on the third night, she walked into the water.

The story always gave me chills, but Arjun was obsessed with it. He once tried to find her grave, but no one knew where it was. He said he wanted to prove it was real.

As the bus neared Bhusawal, I called his number again. This time, it rang. And rang. And then, a voice – not his – whispered, ‘You’re too late.’ I froze. The call ended. I looked at my phone: the screen showed ‘Call ended’, but the time was 3:33. But it was only 2:15 in the afternoon. That was impossible.

The bus pulled into the station, and I jumped out before it fully stopped. The old bridge was a twenty-minute walk through the town’s edge, past crumbling buildings and a market that smelled of rotting fruit. I ran, the diary in my hand, my heart pounding so hard I thought I’d collapse. I reached the bridge just as the sun began to dip behind the hills. And there, in the middle of the rusted span, a figure stood – tall, thin, wearing a shirt I recognized. It was Arjun, facing the water, his back to me. I screamed his name, but he didn’t move.

I approached him, my steps echoing on the metal. ‘Arjun, don’t!’

He turned. His face was pale, his eyes hollow. He looked at me as if through a glass, and then he smiled – a smile that was not his. It was too wide, too smooth. He said, in a voice that was not his, ‘You came. She said you would.’

I stopped. ‘What are you talking about? Who is she?’

‘She’s been waiting for me. For years. But she’s tired of waiting. She wants me to join her.’ He pointed down at the murky water. ‘It’s peaceful there.’

He took a step toward the railing, and I lunged, grabbing his wrist. He was cold, so cold, like he’d been standing in a freezer. ‘Arjun, snap out of it! It’s me, Diya! You’re not yourself!’

He just stared at me, his eyes flickering with something like recognition, then fading. ‘It’s too late,’ he echoed the voice from the phone.

And then he twisted, pulled free, and climbed over the railing. I grabbed his shirt, but the fabric tore, and he fell. I screamed and watched as he hit the water with a sickening splash. I didn’t think. I jumped in after him.

The water was cold, black, and it closed over my head like a hand. I struggled, gasping for air, and swam toward where he’d gone down. I felt something brush my leg – soft, like fabric. I reached beneath, my fingers closing around his wrist. I pulled, and he came up, limp but alive, coughing. I dragged him to the bank, my body shaking.

He lay on his back, water streaming from his hair. When he opened his eyes, they were clear, and he looked at me with confusion. ‘Diya? What am I… what happened?’

I helped him sit up. He was shivering, but he seemed himself again. ‘You were going to jump off the bridge,’ I said. ‘You had a plan. You wrote in your diary about ending it there.’

He blinked. ‘I don’t remember any of that. I just remember… a dream. A woman in white. She told me to come here.’

Then his eyes widened, looking past me. I turned. On the bank, where there had been nothing but mud and grass, stood a woman in a white sari, her face shadowed, her sari wet and clinging. She was pointing at us, her finger long and white, and her mouth moved, but no sound came. Then she faded, like she was made of mist, and was gone.

We didn’t speak. We just helped each other up and walked away from that bridge, never looking back. Arjun told me later that he’d found the photograph in the shed, but it wasn’t a wedding photo; it was a picture of him, taken years ago, when he was a kid, standing on the same bridge. On the back, written in faded ink: ‘He will return.’

We burned the photograph when we got back to his house. We told no one, not even Meera, what we saw that day. But sometimes, at night, I hear a whisper in my ear, and I smell the river. And I know that Savitri doesn’t let go easily. She’s waiting for the next one to cross her bridge.