Last Stop for Lost Souls
For every day of the week, Barry Thompson rode the number eleven bus. It wasn’t just his commute; it was a ritual. The bus took him from his drab office near Oxford Circus to his flat in Brixton, winding through the London streets in all their grey glory. His seat of choice was the one right above the wheel, where he could lean back against the window and watch the city slice past. But this Tuesday was different, marked by an urgent chill in the air, hinting at autumn.
As he settled into his usual spot, something caught his eye—a woman sitting across the aisle, her face obscured by a curtain of black hair. She looked out of place in a navy blue coat that shimmered beneath the fluorescent lights, a stark contrast to the usual parade of tired professionals. Barry dismissed the sensation of unease fluttering in his chest and sank into his phone, scrolling through the latest news while the familiar creaks and groans of the bus enveloped him.
It was during a jolt that he glimpsed her again. The hair, now pulled back, revealed a pale face with sunken cheeks. Barry’s heart raced at the sight of her piercing grey eyes boring into him. He felt a nudge of cognition—he had seen those eyes, or something like them. She turned away suddenly, her gaze focused out of the window, and Barry’s practical mind urged him to look away. He resumed his scrolling, yet couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched.
The next day, rainclouds loomed, and the streets glistened like silver. Barry boarded the bus and took his seat. As they wound through the city, there she was again—the same woman, the same black coat, her eyes now fixated intently on him. This time, he noticed not only her eerie appearance but the sensation of the bus pressing against him, as if the vehicle were alive, holding him tighter in its grasp. And just as before, her gaze pierced through the noisy crowd, drawing him in a way that felt urgent and desperate.
“Can I help you?” he dared to ask, though he felt like a fool. There was no response, her eyes unyielding, surfacing something deep within him. A longing. For what? He shivered and turned away.
Over the following week, their encounters multiplied. The woman became a constant presence, and so did the strangeness surrounding her. The fabric of reality felt stretched. Barry began experiencing vivid dreams where he wandered through abandoned buildings, the woman always just ahead of him, leading him deeper into darkness. He would wake clammy, the air thick with anxiety. At the office, colleagues noted his distractedness. They expressed concern, but he dismissed them with half-hearted reassurances.
Yet, it became impossible to ignore the unease. The atmosphere on the number eleven morphed; the laughter of passengers dulled to background noise, tension hung in the air like fog. And then one evening, without provocation, the lights flickered and dimmed, sending ripples of concern through the bus. Barry’s breathing quickened as he saw the woman’s eyes flash with a glimmer of hope. She leaned forward, almost imperceptibly, reeling him in once more.
“What do you want?” he blurted, running a hand through his hair. Simultaneously, the bus lurched to a halt.
Suddenly, a scream shattered the air, and all heads turned towards the rear of the vehicle where an elderly man loomed, pale and gasping. Barry’s heart raced. The woman’s lips moved, a silent conversation burgeoning in an unspoken tongue. The panic spread as passengers dispersed to avoid the old man’s thrashing. But Barry remained frozen, convictions battling within him; terror against a strange compulsion to reach out to the woman.
The old man collapsed, and just like that, his life left him in a feathery breath. Disbelief surged through the bus, passengers propelled into chaos, shouting and scrambling to offer assistance. Barry watched the woman’s brow crease in sorrow, yet joy glinted in her eyes. She felt something; she had taken something.
In the following days, whispers of the incident spiralled throughout the city. Barry, unable to articulate what he had experienced, felt the pressure of the woman’s presence inescapable. Panic and paranoia settled in. Friends grew concerned about his pallor, whilst his boss noted the level of distraction. Every evening, he took the bus, desperately hoping this nightmare would fade as quickly as it had begun.
Yet the woman held firm. Every day, he met her gaze—those penetrating grey eyes filled with promise and sorrow. And each night, he dreamt of wandering darker streets, where shadows lengthened and truths were buried.
It was on a notably gloomy Friday night that he confronted her as the bus rattled through the dim-lit neighbourhoods of South London. “Why can’t you leave me alone?” he shouted, startling other commuters around him.
“Because you are lost,” her voice was a soft echo, reaching through the dimness.
“What do you mean? Who are you?”
“I am someone you don’t remember.” The bus lights flickered again, and Barry’s view warped, pulling everything into spirals of unknown dread. “You feel it, don’t you?” she asked, her demeanor softening, contorting into something almost maternal. “You wish to be set free.”
The words sank into him, lodged within the cracks of forgotten memories. The bus groaned, creaking under the weight of some unseen force that thickened the air. Images flooded him—childhood secrets whispered in the dark, humiliation felt in silence. A moment of clarity drowned in years of ignorance.
With a wrenching pang, Barry realised he wasn’t merely a bystander. He felt the pulse of an old grief he’d locked away—an ache for a sister lost. The ghost wanted an escape. She was tied to the pain of his past, drawing strength from his unresolved guilt, the horrid mix of sadness and shame.
“I want to be set free,” he whispered, choked with sudden understanding.
“If I am here, it is because you have not finished with me,” she replied, her voice echoing in the tight confines of the bus.
No amount of pleading for absolution would suffice; this was an old world, a place of torment reaching across the years, and now—now, Barry understood. By acknowledging her, he was tethering himself deeper into her web.
As the bus came to a stop at Brixton, Barry scrambled to exit, but the doors sealed shut, trapping him. The atmosphere changed; the remaining passengers seemed shadows, silhouettes with indistinct features melding into the background.
“You can’t leave me,” the woman said, stepping closer, that magnetic pull intensifying. “You’ll take my place instead.”
Panic surged through him as the bus trembled violently. Instinct urged him to escape; yet his will began to fade like a waning moon, lost in the intensity of her gaze. Unbidden, the memories flooded back—accidentally leaving her behind, her last wail echoing through the void.
“Barry!” she twisted his name, rendering it into a curse, drawing tight the wraps of his conditioning. He watched as, one by one, the other passengers faded away, until it was just him and her. Defeated, alone.
All too quickly, he felt himself slipping away, his identity blending into the ghostly essence of the forgotten. The last remnants of life grew dim as she burrowed into him, and he became ensnared—lost within the heart of the woman who had once been his sister, but now lived on as a spectral plea for recognition.
Days turned into weeks, a year passed as the bus continued its route, bringing soft whispers of a heartbroken man searching for peace. Yet, it would always stop at the same point—the last stop for lost souls, where they stepped off and were no more.
