The Last Bus to Millbrook

I never thought I’d set foot in Millbrook again. Not after the accident. But when my cousin Derek died, I had no choice. He was murdered on a rainy Tuesday, beaten with a tire iron in a cheap motel room over a gambling debt. The police said it was a drug deal gone wrong, but I knew Derek wasn’t into that. He was a sweet guy, a gentle giant, the kind who’d give you his last dollar and then apologize for not having more. We grew up together, shared secrets, laughed until we cried. And now he was gone, and his funeral was in the town we’d both sworn to leave forever.

I hadn’t been back to Millbrook in fifteen years, not since our trip to the old quarry when we were seventeen. We’d gone swimming, and I’d almost drowned. Derek pulled me out, saved my life, but the memory of that cold, dark water never left me. Millbrook was a place of wet gravel, rusted signs, and the constant smell of damp earth. The funeral home was a squat brick building on Main Street, its parking lot full of cars with out-of-state plates. My aunt stood by the door, her face a mask of grief, and I hugged her, murmuring the usual empty words. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of lilies and stale coffee. I avoided the open casket, afraid of seeing Derek’s face rearranged by violence. I took a seat near the back, next to a window that looked out onto the street.

The service was brief. A minister talked about Derek’s kindness, his love of music, his crooked smile. I barely heard a word. My eyes kept drifting to the window, where a fog began to creep in, curling around the streetlights. It was that strange, thick fog that seemed to swallow sound, making the world feel muffled and unreal. When the service ended, I lingered, watching the crowd disperse. I wasn’t ready to go home. The last bus to Millbrook, the one that ran from the city at odd hours, had dropped me off that morning. I knew the next one left at 11:47 PM. I had hours to kill.

I wandered the streets, past the closed diner, the shuttered hardware store, the old movie theater that had been converted into a church. Everything looked smaller, shabbier. I found a bench near the bus stop, across from the town’s only gas station. The fog had grown thicker, so thick that I could barely see the pumps. The silence was oppressive, broken only by the occasional hum of a distant car engine that never seemed to arrive. I checked my watch: 10:30 PM. I sat there, thinking about Derek, about the last time we’d talked. He’d called me the night he died, his voice oddly calm, saying he needed to tell me something important. But I’d been busy, and I’d told him I’d call him back. I never did. I’d carried that guilt for three months.

Suddenly, a sound cut through the fog: the heavy clatter of footsteps on wet pavement. I turned, and there was a figure emerging from the mist. It was a man, tall and gaunt, wearing a long coat that seemed too thin for the weather. His face was pale, almost translucent, and his eyes were fixed on me. I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold. As he approached, I realized he was walking with a slight limp, and he was holding something in his hand. It was a bus ticket. He stopped a few feet away and spoke, his voice like gravel scraping against stone. ‘You waiting for the last bus?’ I nodded, my throat tight. ‘You’re the one they call Jamie, right? Derek’s cousin?’ I stiffened. ‘How do you know my name?’ He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Derek told me about you. He said you two were close, like brothers.’

My heart pounded. ‘Who are you?’ I demanded. He held up the ticket. ‘I’m the one who’s going to make sure you get on the bus. It’s not safe here at night. This town has a way of keeping people.’ I glanced at the bus shelter, but the fog had swallowed the light, making it hard to see. ‘What do you mean, keeping people?’ He didn’t answer. Instead, he reached into his coat and pulled out a small, battered radio. He turned it on, and static hissed, then a voice crackled through: a distorted version of a song I remembered Derek used to hum. My blood ran cold. That song was our private joke, something Derek and I made up. No one else knew it. I looked at the man, my voice barely a whisper. ‘How do you know that song?’ He looked at me with something like pity. ‘Derek taught it to me. Right before he died. He said to give it to you.’

He held out the radio, and I took it, my hand trembling. The song continued, but then it started to change, the melody warping into something dissonant, wrong. And in the background, I heard a whisper, faint but unmistakable: ‘Don’t get on the bus.’ I dropped the radio as if it were burning, but it kept playing, the whisper growing louder, repeating over and over. The man stepped closer, his face now inches from mine. ‘You see, Jamie, Derek didn’t want you to forget. But there’s something you need to remember. That night at the quarry, when you almost drowned, it wasn’t an accident. Derek told me the truth. He pushed you in.’

I stared at him, my mind reeling. ‘What? That’s crazy. Why would he do that?’ The man’s eyes flickered, and for a moment, I saw something else behind them—something cold and ancient. ‘Because he wanted to be the one to save you. It was a game to him. He was obsessed with the idea that your bond was forged in fear. And when you thanked him, he felt powerful.’ My throat tightened. ‘You’re lying.’ But even as I said it, a memory surfaced: Derek’s odd smile after he pulled me out, the way he’d talked about it for weeks, the way he’d sometimes look at me with a strange intensity. I had always thought it was gratitude. Now, doubt crept in.

The man continued, his voice dropping to a low murmur. ‘That’s why he called you that night. He wanted to confess, to clear his conscience before it was too late. But you didn’t answer. So he came to me instead. He wrote it all down in a letter, gave it to me for safekeeping. He said if anything happened to him, I was to find you and tell you the truth.’ He reached into his coat again, this time producing a crumpled envelope, stained and yellowed. ‘Here. Read it.’

I took the envelope, my hands shaking. It was addressed to me, in Derek’s messy scrawl. I tore it open. Inside was a single page, covered in his handwriting. The words swam before my eyes, but I read them anyway. He confessed to pushing me, to manufacturing the incident, to feeling a sick thrill from being my hero. He apologized, said he couldn’t live with the guilt, and that he feared for his own soul. The letter ended with a strange plea: ‘Don’t take the last bus, Jamie. It’s not the way out. There’s a truth about this town that I should have told you long ago. The quarry isn’t just water. It’s a doorway. And something came through when you fell. Something’s been waiting for you. Don’t go back to the city. Face it.’

I looked up, but the man was gone. The fog had thinned, and the bus stop was empty. But the radio still lay on the ground, still playing that distorted song, the whisper now a high-pitched keen. I felt a presence behind me. I turned slowly. There, at the edge of the fog, stood a figure—a girl, no older than twelve, her skin pale and wet, her hair plastered to her face. She was wearing a summer dress, the kind Derek’s little sister used to wear before she died of leukemia. I knew, somehow, that she was the thing from the quarry. She smiled, and her eyes were black, bottomless. ‘Jamie,’ she said, her voice like water trickling over stones. ‘You forgot me. You left me down there. You let him pretend it was a rescue.’

I stumbled backward, my mind screaming. I wanted to run, but my legs wouldn’t move. She took a step closer, and I saw that her feet didn’t touch the ground. ‘Derek was a liar, but he was my boy. He fed me your fear. He fed me your gratitude. And now, you’re the last piece. The bus won’t come, Jamie. Not for you. Not ever. You’re going to stay, and you’re going to remember what you did.’ I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. The fog closed in around me, and the world became cold, wet, and dark, just like the quarry that day. And I knew, with a sickening certainty, that I had been the one who had pulled her down, that Derek had only been the bait. My own cowardice had sealed our fate.

The last thing I saw before the darkness swallowed everything was the bus pulling up to the stop, its headlights cutting through the fog, but the door never opened. And I was left there, waiting for a bus that would never come, in a town that had finally claimed me.