Desi Horror Stories

Death Bus

"Do you need something?" the conductor came up to him and asked.

Well, at least the conductor wasn't all that odd, Raj thought. He said quickly, "You didn't give me my ticket."

The conductor looked at him as if he had uttered some unmentionable obscenity. "You don't need a ticket," he said scornfully.

"But why? Why not? I want a single ticket to Prabhadevi."

"You don't get a ticket!" the conductor said.

"That's not legal," Raj protested. "You have to give everyone a ticket and take money for it."

"Your money is no good to us."

There was something in the way the conductor had said it that sent a shiver up Raj's spine. Whatever did the man mean? Was he drunk?

Raj stood up. It was difficult to walk as the bus was moving very fast. He came up to the driver. "Why is your conductor not giving me a ticket?" he asked. But the driver did not reply, and, with his eyes open wide in horror, Raj saw that the driver broke the red light at a busy circle, narrowly missing a few pedestrians.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Raj shouted. "You cannot drive like that. Didn't you see the signal?"

"Don't teach me to drive, asshole!" the driver spat and pressed his foot on the accelerator, making the bus go still faster than it was before.

Not knowing what to do, because he was sure this bus would kill him, Raj ran up to the other passengers. He went to the senior couple first, "Dear sir, madam, the bus driver is trying to kill us. Why are you all sitting silently? Come on, we will all talk to him."

None of the passengers moved for a while. It was bizarre. Then Raj felt a tug on his sleeve. He looked down to see the child. He was standing next to him now, his little head looking up, and there was a vacant stare in his eyes. Raj saw the emptiness in his eye—like an empty tunnel led from his eyes to his brain from inside his head.

"You must sit, child," Raj said. "The bus is going too fast."

The child just smiled. He turned and went to sit. When he turned, Raj saw something on the back of his neck. It was a multiple digit number. What kind of number was that?

Then, with a jolt, he realized what that number was. Aghast, he ran from one passenger to the other. Courtesy had no place in his mind now. The bus was closing in on them, and Raj realized there was no time to be polite. He went up to each passenger in turn and checked the backs of their necks.

And on each of them, he found the same kind of number. The digits were different for all, but they had the same pattern, and he knew instantly what they were.

"Sit down, you bastard!" the conductor screamed. "Or, you know what? I don't care. Do whatever you want."

But Raj was too speechless to talk. He had recognized the numbers. They were insurance policy numbers!

And then he recognized them all. These people in the bus, they were his clients. People he had sold policies to and then never cared about them.

There was the sexagenarian Mr. Khanna and his wife. Mr. Khanna died when a wall collapsed on him, but the company did not pay, claiming that he had flouted safety regulations and walked too close to the wall. Mrs. Khanna died subsequently of a heart attack.

There was Jitendra, the young officegoer, who had died in a train accident. The company somehow managed to prove he had crossed the railway track and hence did not qualify.

The child was Leo, a darling of his parents, who was discovered to have a hole in his heart. Raj still remembered the early-morning phone call from his young father pleading fervently to get the policy amount disbursed. However, all Raj did was to point out that the policy did not cover congenital diseases.

They were all his victims in the bus. All whom he had sold promises to and delivered nothing. He was happy in meeting his quota month after month, but this was what he was leaving behind—a trail of the unhappy dead.

The victims now stood. There was a scary calm on their faces. With barely shuffling feet they moved towards Raj, their hands outstretched, to grab his throat.

Raj flopped and fumbled. He ran up to the front of the bus again and almost cried. "Driver, please, please, I beg of you. Let me get off."

The driver turned to face him and said, "Don't you recognize me?" He then lowered his shirt collar and there it was—his policy number. In a flash, it came to him. Vinayak Sarpotdar. Killed in a bus accident while performing his duty. Reason for disqualification: he was drunk. But was he? Raj knew for sure he wasn't.

They all came up to him then. All the passengers led by the conductor, and then even the driver. The bus miraculously went on somehow. They came to him with their long arms outstretched, their fingers trying to reach him. And then they did. Raj felt those clammy fingertips on his skin. They entered his ears, nose, mouth, and then they poked his eyes. Mercifully, he saw nothing after that. Not even what exactly killed him.

The irony was that his family did not get the money of his insurance policy either. Reason for disqualification: death due to causes that cannot be ascertained.

[I hope you liked Death Bus. To read all my published books, visit here: https://amzn.to/2NZf7JQ]