The Last Bus

I am a night-shift bus driver and responsible for driving the last 11th bus route. This route passes through a cemetery in the suburbs. On ordinary days, there are very few passengers, and recently, a series of strange things have been happening.

Last Friday night, after arriving at the terminal station, I counted the number of passengers as usual. I clearly remembered that there were seven people when they got on the bus, but at this moment, there were actually eight people on the bus. I wracked my brains and replayed the situation at each stop in my mind over and over again, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't remember at which stop this extra person got on the bus. At that time, although I was puzzled, I didn't take it too seriously and just thought I had made a mistake due to carelessness.

Since then, strange things have continued to happen one after another. Every night at 12 o'clock, garbled characters would appear on the electronic display screen of the bus, and the eerie sequence of numbers "444444" would be constantly shown. At first, I thought it was a device malfunction, but when it happened for several consecutive days, I couldn't help but feel suspicious. What was even more terrifying was that a woman in a red dress would often flash in the rearview mirror. Every time I turned around in a hurry, there was nothing on the seat.

And what made me the most uneasy was a girl in a school uniform. Every time the bus reached the stop near the cemetery, she would definitely get on the bus and then sit silently in the last row, bowing her head and playing with her mobile phone. I paid attention several times, and the screen of her mobile phone was always black, and it wasn't even turned on at all. This series of abnormal phenomena made me feel really scared, but I still had to keep working, so I could only muster up the courage to drive the bus.

Last night, when the bus reached the cemetery stop again, the girl got on the bus as expected. When she got off the bus, I really couldn't hold back my curiosity and called out to her. "Miss, why is your mobile phone never turned on?" I tried my best to keep my voice steady. She slowly turned her head, and I was instantly stunned by what I saw in front of me—her face was completely blank, with no eyes, nose, or mouth, just pale skin.

I was extremely frightened and in a panic, I stepped on the accelerator hard. The bus went out of control and rushed forward, crashing into a tree by the roadside. When I regained consciousness, I was already lying on a hospital bed.

When the police came to ask about the situation, I asked anxiously, "What about those passengers?" The police looked at me with a strange look in their eyes and said, "What passengers? In the past month, because there were too few passengers, the 11th bus route has long been changed to single-person operation. You are the only one driving the bus every night."

Upon hearing this, I suddenly felt cold all over, and my mind went blank. Suddenly, I remembered that rainy night a month ago. It was pouring rain, and I was driving, just wanting to go back and hand over the shift as soon as possible. When I passed a certain section of the road, I saw a woman in a red dress holding a girl in a school uniform and trying to hail a car by the roadside. At that time, thinking that I was almost done with my shift, I didn't stop and drove straight away. The next day, when I read the news, I learned that the mother and daughter had been in a car accident in the rain and died on the spot.

I quickly took out my bus card to check the punching records, and the result shocked me. The records showed that in the past month, I had punched in for work at exactly 12 o'clock midnight every day and drove past that cemetery. But in my memory, there were clearly many passengers on the bus, and those scenes were so real. How could they be illusory?

The police also made an astonishing discovery at the scene of the car accident. There was a large amount of dried blood on the back seat, and after identification, the blood came from more than a dozen different people. Under my driver's seat, a diary stained with blood was also found, and it was densely filled with the same name written over and over again—the woman in the red dress.

What was even more诡异的 was that when the forensic doctor conducted a physical examination on me, he actually found that all my internal organs had disappeared, replaced by clusters of black hair. However, strangely enough, I myself didn't notice anything at all, and I could still walk and move as usual, just like an ordinary person.

At the moment, I am quietly lying on the hospital bed, and it is very quiet around. Suddenly, the familiar sound of footsteps came from the corridor, "tap, tap, tap", slowly and rhythmically approaching me. I knew in my heart that it was the girl in the school uniform who had come looking for me, and in her hand, there must still be that mobile phone that would never be turned on...