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The No. 4 Bus
by
Ben, age 11.

I tell this story as it happened to me, and is merely a recollection of the unusual string of events that occurred on my first few days at secondary school. If there are any others who remember – though I doubt it, as I am getting old and frail, and surely everyone else that travelled on the bus to and from school is dead – that strange week then I would be sincerely grateful for any helpful criticism. Now I shall begin…

It all started on the Tuesday morning following the end of the summer holidays. My mum had arranged that I was to meet up with the boy from over the road – he went by the name of Ben Holton, I believe – at the bus stop at around eight O’clock. This all went well, and I also met my friend George who, I discovered, was travelling on the exact same bus as me. But things started to get a bit odd when the bus arrived. I remember it vividly. I heard the screech of the brakes, and the hiss as the doors opened.

“One child into town, please,” I asked the bus driver, handing him the fee. I looked him up and down. He was a tall, gangly man, six foot at the least, and had cold grey eyes clouded by thick, round glasses. And he was middle-aged, about fifty I would have said, and did not look in the least pleased by his job. He had enormous bags under his dismal eyes, and smelt strongly of cigarettes and tobacco. It sent shivers done my spine just to look at him, and as my skin brushed his in the exchange of the money and the ticket, I felt it cold against my skin. Too cold for a live person, just warm enough, perhaps, for a corpse. I stumbled to the back of the bus, nudging outstretched feet and bags in the gangway. I sat down and waited for George to follow, and he eventually pushed his way to the back, and sat down beside me. Ben followed suite.

“Is he a creepy driver, or what?” George exclaimed.

“Too right,” I replied, “He’s like a corpse,”

“But the bus driver was a woman.” Said Ben, confused.

We thought it was a joke, and laughed.

“No, I’m serious, she was a woman with black hair and brown eyes, ask that kid there,” he said, pointing at a small child, who must have been on his first day also.

“Excuse me,” I enquired, poking the boy gently, “But was the driver a man or a woman, and what did they look like?”

“That’s a stupid question,” he replied, “Of course it was a woman, and she had black hair, and was wearing a t-shirt and jeans. She looked about twenty,”

This knocked the stuffing out of me, and I was a bit shocked.

“He must have overheard our conversation,” I stated, and left it at that.

When we got off the bus, the bus driver had got off for a stretch, and I didn’t see him (or was it a her?). The school day went well – books given out, homework set, introduced to teachers – the sort of thing that happens on your first day at a new school. I forget about the business with the bus driver, and on the way back, it was just your average, run-of-the-mill bus driver, with a cap, jeans and a shirt from Gap.

But the next day things really started to get weird, almost scary, and I would definitely call it occult. We got on, and the driver was a woman with black hair, a t-shirt and jeans, and was pleasant enough although she did seem a bit bored. I think some of the sixth-formers had their eye on her.

Anyway, I managed to get a seat relatively near the front this time, and I found myself sitting next to a young girl of about six. All journey she stared at the bus driver, and she looked dazed and confused. Her mother stood up at the next stop, and tugged her arm:

“Come along now, Chloe, or you’ll be late for school,” she said.

“No! I don’t want to leave Grandpa!”

“What do you mean? Grandpa died before you were born! How would you even know what he looked like?”

“I’ve seen pictures! I have! Look! He’s there, he’s there!” the little girl wailed, pointing at the bus driver. She pretended not to notice.

“Grandpa died in the accident. The accident on the bus!”

“No, he’s there! He’s there!” she screamed hysterically, flailing her arms in the direction of the driver, tears streaming down her face.

“Come along, or we’ll be late for school, Chloe!” said the mother, and she eventually dragged her out of the bus and onto the pavement. The doors hissed close. I sat, amazed and terrified by what had happened. I tried to dismiss the whole episode from my mind, but all the time at school, the same words were gnawing away at my brain: “I don’t want to leave Grandpa!”… “Look, he’s there, he’s there!”…

The next morning it was misty and muggy; the humid weather you get after a wet summer. I walked up to the bus stop alone (Ben was feeling ill), and when I got there, George was waiting for me. We got on the bus and came face to face with a man, who was at least sixty, with grey eyes and glasses. I swallowed my scream, and handed him the fare. I had to stand up for the journey, but then I saw ‘Grandpa’ was opening a window next to where he sat.

The bus was going at full speed, and, before I could realise what was happening, he had unclipped his seatbelt and launched himself from the window. As far as I could tell, no-one else had noticed, and I ran to the window to see what had happened. There was no man on the road, no blood, no sign that anything had been there. I stared out of the window in shock, before my attention turned to my own safety. Who was driving the bus?

I ran to the front, to find a woman with black hair and brown eyes. She looked about twenty. Her eyes were fixed on the road ahead. I think I must have fainted, because the next thing I knew, I was gazing up into the faces of about a dozen schoolboys and the bus driver. I didn’t mention what had happened to anyone, for I was sure they would just laugh at me if I did.

They thought that, on a sharp corner I fell and hit my head on the floor, thus knocking me out.

A few months later, my Dad and me were given the unenviable job of clearing out the attic. I was particularly interested in a box of newspapers. One headline read… Bus driver killed as he leaps from bus.

I was intrigued after the events of the previous months. I read on:

Terry Baker, 53, died in a tragic suicide at around 08:10 yesterday, when he leapt from a bus carrying around 50 school children to Lawrence Sheriff School. Fortunately, an adult managed to take control of the bus and steer it to safety. No one was hurt except the driver, Terry Baker.

Terry, it was revealed, had recently divorced, and lost his successful job as a journalist for The Times. He was employed as a bus driver, but shortly after his brother died of heart failure. It must have been all too much. An envelope was found in his house, which contained a letter reading… ‘“I can’t go on. I just can’t. It’s all been too much for me. Goodbye.”’

“Terry was a good man from his early twenties all the way into his forties,” quotes Andrew Brown, friend and ex-co-worker, “Although he had a cold exterior, he was a good man at heart.”

I stopped. I glanced at the picture for the first time. It was the picture of a man, whose cold, grey eyes stared at me from out of thick-framed glasses.

I had seen and read enough to make my conclusion.

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