The Third Passenger

I had never given much thought to the supernatural. It was the kind of thing that existed in campfire tales and cheap horror movies, not in the sun-scorched highways of Rajasthan. But by the time I was twenty-one, I had three stories that defied every rational explanation I could muster. The first began on a return trip from the Maha Kumbh Mela in 2013, and it taught me that some roads are best left untraveled after dark.

I had just finished my first year of engineering, and the world felt vast and promising. My family and I had joined our guru, a serene old man with eyes that seemed to hold centuries, for the holy dip at the Sangam. We had lingered there for two days, surrounded by a sea of pilgrims, chanting and incense, the air thick with devotion. But all good things must end, and we had to return to our home in Gujarat. Our guru insisted we take the Jaipur route, a decision that would later haunt my dreams.

The journey began beautifully. The first day was a breeze. We had hired two massive Force Traveller vans. Our van carried me, my two friends, Vikram and Arjun, and the guru himself. The other van held our parents and the rest of our extended family. We drove through the desert landscape, the road stretching endlessly ahead, and we laughed and sang bhajans. By evening, we reached an ashram on the outskirts of a small village, where we were welcomed with warm food and simple bedding. We slept soundly, the sacred dust still clinging to our clothes.

The next morning, our guru woke us before dawn. ‘We have a long journey ahead,’ he said, his voice a gentle whisper. ‘More than eight hundred kilometers. We must make haste.’ We packed quickly, loading our luggage into the vans. As we settled into our seats, I noticed a change in the guru. He seemed tense, his usual serenity replaced by a furrowed brow. He glanced at the empty seat beside him, then at the road ahead, and muttered something under his breath.

Our van was second in line, following the first. The morning sun cast long shadows as we pulled out of the ashram. The road was nearly deserted, a ribbon of black asphalt cutting through ochre sand and sparse scrub. We drove for hours, the monotony broken only by occasional trucks laden with sand. But as the sun climbed higher, I began to feel a strange unease. It started as a prickling at the back of my neck, a sensation that something was watching me. I turned to look behind us, but there was only luggage. Vikram, sitting next to me, dozed off, his head bobbing with the van’s motion.

Then I saw it. A figure standing by the roadside, barely a hundred meters ahead. It was a woman, draped in a white saree, her head covered with the pallu. She stood perfectly still, facing the road, and as our van approached, she did not move. We passed her in a blur, but I caught a glimpse of her face. It was impossibly pale, and her eyes were dark voids. I felt a jolt of fear, and I turned to see if the guru had noticed. He was staring straight ahead, his lips moving in a silent prayer. ‘Guruji, did you see that?’ I asked. He did not respond.

We drove on, and I tried to shake off the image. But minutes later, Vikram woke up and said, ‘Did anyone else see that woman? She looked so sad.’ Arjun, who had been silent, nodded. ‘I saw her too. She was just standing there. In the middle of nowhere.’ The guru finally spoke, his voice low. ‘She was not a woman. She was a soul waiting for her ride.’ A cold chill ran down my spine. We all turned to look at the road behind us, but there was nothing.

An hour later, we approached a narrow bridge over a dry riverbed. The second van, ahead of us, crossed it first. As our van began to cross, I felt a sudden drop in temperature, as if we had driven into a pocket of cold air. The engine sputtered, and the van slowed. Our driver, a local man named Raju, frowned and pressed the accelerator. The van lurched forward, but then stopped completely at the far side of the bridge. Raju tried to restart it, but the engine only coughed and died. ‘It’s the heat,’ he said, wiping his brow. ‘Give it a minute.’

But it wasn’t the heat. As we sat there, I noticed a smell, a faint odor of burnt offering, like camphor and incense mixed with something acrid. The guru’s hands were trembling. He whispered, ‘She followed us.’ We all looked around, but the road was empty. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a pale face pressed against the window closest to the guru. It was the same woman, her dark eyes boring into us. I screamed, and everyone jumped. The face vanished the instant I looked at it directly, but the image was seared into my mind.

The first van had pulled over to the side of the road, and our parents got out to see what was wrong. The guru ordered us to stay inside. He stepped out of the van and walked to the riverbed below the bridge. We watched from the windows as he picked up a small stone, muttered a mantra, and placed it at the edge of the bridge. When he returned, his face was ashen. ‘She lost her life on this bridge,’ he said. ‘A car accident. She did not realize she was dead. She wants to go with us to Gujarat, to her family.’

We were terrified, but the guru seemed to regain his composure. He made us all chant a protective mantra, and then he told Raju to try starting the van again. This time, the engine roared to life. We sped away as fast as we could, not looking back. We did not stop again until we crossed the border into Gujarat, hours later. When we finally reached home, the guru performed a small ritual in our house, burning incense and sprinkling holy water. He never spoke of the incident again, and we never asked.

But I could not forget the face at the window. I saw her in my dreams for weeks, always with that pitiful expression, as if she were confused and lost. I did not know it then, but that was only the first of three encounters with the unknown. And each one would strip away the certainty I had about the world, leaving me with a chilling realization: the dead are not always at rest.