THE LAST BUS RIDE ........ PART III

continued from previous post....

Why the hell haven’t we arrived yet, what’s the cause of this delay, conductor? Conductor?? Driver? I shouted with all my might but I can hear only my own voice and that never ending screaming of the bus. I was afraid to death now and I stood up and tried to look where the driver was and in that moment I realized that even the bus was having no headlights. It was moving in pitch black road with not even a single trace of light. Suddenly the whole bus was filled with a smell.

That awful smell started smothering me and choking me. It was disgusting, pungent and was making me ill. I started getting dizzy and felt like puking. It surrounded me completely and I was dumbstruck and perplexed and couldn’t figure out the source of that smell and why I can’t feel the presence of anyone else in that bus and why both the driver and conductor were not responding and why the bus was moving without any headlights. It was like a nightmare, and I was hoping that I would awake safely on the other station and would leave this bus and would laugh on my random imaginations but somehow I knew that everything was happening in real. It wasn’t a dream and there was no explanation of all the events that were happening around.

I opened the flash light of my phone and suddenly my mind was blown with sensation of such sheer stark horror which I think no one has ever experienced in their life. It was fear, plain crude fear, fear with no other emotions attach with it, no uncertainty, no assurance, no mockery, just fear and the reason of that fear was I was alone in that whole bus. There was no one, no passenger, no conductor and somehow I summoned to peek in the driver’s cabin and the magnitude of my fear increased ten folds when I realized there was no driver. The bus was running on its own on a road I don’t know, going where I have no idea and whether I will come out alive or not.

Suddenly I realized the nature of that smell. It was that of human flesh. Burnt human flash, burnt to a very serious degree and at the very moment I realized it along with the continuous screaming of bus I can clearly distinguish another sound. In fact a mixture of various sounds, and these were the sound of screaming. Scream for help, scream for getting away, scream even for an abrupt death and lastly some screams were plain scream, scream just for the sake of screaming as if you were not able to cry for help or ask for anything but can only summon enough strength to scream.

Don’t know how or because of what, suddenly I came back to my senses, I realized that I have to leave this bus as fast as I can otherwise there is no chance of me getting back alive. I don’t know how I will do that or what I will do after leaving the bus but at that time only one thing was on my mind, abandoning this god forsaken bus. The screams continued, the smell became stronger with every moment and I summoned all my strength and knocked myself out of the window of that moving bus hoping to land alive. Injuries were not in my mind, staying alive was my only aim at that time.

I landed hard and that hurt, but the joy of getting out of that bus compensated all the injuries and pain and luckily I landed on a muddy surface and rolled over to some distance but still I damaged my body badly. I didn’t even bother to look around where I was and I just started running blindly in the opposite direction. I don’t know why I was running, where I was going, from what I was trying to escape but at that time the only thing that was in my mind was to run and to get away from this place as far as I can. At that time I realized that when I jumped the speed of bus was very slow in comparison to its usual speed and when I look ahead in the direction of the bus I saw that the area was illuminated by some strong energy source.

I felt intense light radiations piercing my eyes and hurting them and simultaneously I felt great amount of heat from somewhere. I looked ahead and saw the same bus, burning, fire all around it and slowly moving towards the end of a bridge. I was transfixed, I can neither move nor think nor analyse what was happening and can’t decide what my reaction should be. The bus suddenly accelerated with a great pace, lost its balance, hit the side wall of a bridge, broke it and went down burning. A loud sound like thunderclap came and I was not having the courage to go there and look what happened to the bus.

I started running again. Running with no aim, no plan in mind where to go. I just ran and hoped that I will reach somewhere safe. I ran and ran. I ran without getting tired, didn’t giving any heed to all the pain that my body was going through. I ran for don’t know how long but it was a significant amount of time. After some time my body started giving up, the motivation was gone, everything appeared bleak, I lost all the hope. I didn’t want to sit there as didn’t know somehow I was having this feeling I can survive only by running. My throat was burning; face was red showing lack of oxygen and energy. My eyes were closing, darkness and darkness and I was lost in oblivion.  

I opened my eyes slowly and felt that my whole body was still paining. It took a lot of effort to open both the eyes properly and I felt the warm sunlight on my face now. Everything was bright and shining and alive again. I looked around and found that I was at some small tea stall covered inside a blanked. A man came with a cup of tea in his hands and told me that a truck driver found me unconscious on side of the road near a field and took me here thinking I caught cold and need some warm place. Some few more men gathered around and they asked me what happened last night.

I, at first, hesitated a bit, thinking they will laugh at me and will consider me as a fool but then  I decided to tell them everything whatever happened last night. The strange man, the bus, the conductor, the fellow travellers, how everyone vanished, that awful smell and how the bus burnt and fell over the bridge. They all were listening with pensive faces, listening carefully to every word that I was saying and showing not a single sign of distrust. As if they understood everything but no one interrupted, their eyes were focused on me and I kept on describing everything.

“Consider yourself very lucky sir” One of the man said after I had finished.

“The thing that conductor told you about that bike rider is correct, a man indeed died in a horrible accident, which was, in fact, a murder plot and his ghost indeed roams around the street with the same old bike. Though we don’t know whether he has harmed anyone or not yet but you had so far the closest encounter with him and still you are alive” said another man with a big moustache.

“But, most of all, by god’s grace or by some miracle you survived that haunted bus, few years back there was a fight between drivers and conductors of two buses over passengers and the driver and conductor of the other bus locked the first bus from outside somehow, and set it to fire and made sure that fire will continue burning slowly so that the bus will burn on road, the bus continued burning with all its passengers screaming and crying for help. The driver realizing that the bus is locked from every place and there is no chance of everyone getting out by windows decided to move it fast if in any case this will stop the fire, he collided with the side wall of a bridge and the bus fell. No one was alive. Everyone died the most painful and smothering death. Ever since this, many people have seen that bus on the same road with no drivers and no passengers. It is burning and it fells over that bridge again and again. Various people have seen that but guess you are the first person who has taken a ride in it.” Said the first one.

I was utterly aghast. I wasn't able to say anything now. Tears rolled into my eyes. I thanked god because only he can save someone from such a horrible event. The men around me were trying to make me comfortable by saying positive words and by their body languages but I realized that I would never be the same after this. Life will continue and soon things will be back to normal. I will definitely travel again but I will surely consider hiring a private vehicle or travelling by train. I was done with buses now. That ride was surly my last bus ride and I was lucky that I completed the journey and came back alive.