The mountain route had two names.
Passengers called it the road to the city. Drivers called it the road home that was far too long. But after sunset, when fog descended from the slopes, everyone knew it by the same name: the Asem Tree Bend Route.
The road was narrow, hemmed in by cliffs and ravines. The lights of residents' homes appeared only now and then, like fireflies on the verge of going out. In some places, the asphalt was cracked and covered in moss. No one wanted to stop there, especially after eleven at night.
Bayu had been driving an intercity bus for ten years. In that time, he'd traveled plenty of dangerous roads: slippery inclines, bridges without guardrails, even a road that had once been hit by a landslide and now had only half its asphalt surface left. He wasn't afraid of ghost stories.
"The most dangerous thing isn't a supernatural passenger," he often told the younger drivers. "It's a drunk living passenger."
That night was his first assignment on a new route. The Wanasari–Madya City bus left the terminal at nine p.m. with twenty-three passengers and a conductor named Ujang. A light rain had been falling since they departed. When the bus entered the mountain route, fog began clinging to the windshield.
The digital dashboard clock read 11:55 p.m.
That was exactly when Bayu saw someone standing at an old bus stop by the roadside.
The bus stop had not been used in a long time. Its roof was full of holes, its sign hung crooked, and weeds had grown all the way to the concrete bench. Bayu nearly passed it, but the woman there raised her hand.
He hit the brakes.
The woman climbed aboard slowly. Her clothes were shabby, her loose hair covered part of her face, and an old cloth bag hung from her shoulder. She was thin, as though she'd just emerged from a long stretch of rain.
"Destination?" Ujang asked.
She didn't turn toward him. Her eyes were fixed on Bayu through the partition glass behind the driver's seat.
"Please let me off at the Asem Tree Bend."
Her voice was faint, but it carried clearly throughout the bus.
She walked to the back seat. None of the passengers spoke to her. A man sitting near the aisle even pulled in his legs so they wouldn't touch her.
A few minutes later, Ujang began collecting the fare. He approached the back seat, then stopped.
"Sir, where's that passenger who just got on?"
Bayu looked in the mirror. The woman was still sitting there.
"In the back."
"There's no one there, sir."
Ujang looked at the seat again. The woman suddenly appeared between two passengers, sitting with her head bowed. Her face was pale. Ujang backed away without saying a word.
Bayu gave a small smile. "Maybe you haven't gotten enough sleep."
But when he looked again, he saw something that erased his smile. There was no water on the floor, even though the woman's clothes looked wet. Beneath her seat, the bus floor was instead covered in black soil.
Thirty minutes later, they reached the Asem Tree Bend. An old tree stretched out from the edge of the ravine, its branches forming shadows like hands reaching for the road.
"Stop," the woman said.
Bayu switched on the cabin lights and looked in the rearview mirror. The woman was already standing in the aisle. Not one of the other passengers was looking at her.
The bus stopped.
The door opened. The woman got off with her cloth bag. Fog immediately swallowed her body. She had taken fewer than five steps when her figure vanished.
Ujang approached Bayu, his face tense.
"She didn't pay."
"We'll collect it tomorrow."
Bayu tried to laugh, but the sound was strange even to his own ears.
The next morning, at the garage, he told the senior drivers what had happened. No one laughed. An old foreman named Seno instead pulled a newspaper from a desk drawer.
The article had already yellowed with age. Fifteen years earlier, a bus had plunged into the ravine at the Asem Tree Bend. Twelve people had died. One of the victims was a young woman named Laras. Her body had never been found.
"Ever since then," Seno said, "she's always boarded at 11:55 p.m."
"And she always gets off at the old cemetery near the bend," another driver added. "Never pays a single rupiah."
Bayu stared at them. "If you know she's a ghost, why do you still stop?"
Seno shook his head. "We don't stop the bus. The door opens by itself."
The following night, Bayu vowed he wouldn't stop. He locked the doors and sped up before passing the old bus stop. But at 11:55 p.m., the doorbell rang.
Ding.
The woman was already sitting in the back seat.
Bayu felt the palms of his hands grow cold. In the rearview mirror, Laras was staring at him. Beside her sat a little boy with a red balloon, an office worker in uniform whose face was covered in wounds, and an old woman smiling without blinking.
Those passengers hadn't been there when the bus left the terminal.
One by one, the seats that had been occupied by living people became empty. The ordinary passengers disappeared without a sound. Only their bags and jackets remained.
"Now it's your turn to take us home," Laras whispered.
Bayu hit the brakes.
The pedal sank without resistance.
The bus sped toward the Asem Tree Bend. Outside the windows, the fog turned into a white wall. From far away came the repeated sound of impacts, like an accident that happened over and over again every night.
Bayu gripped the wheel and recited a prayer. The bus shook. The supernatural passengers rose as one. Laras's cloth bag fell to the floor and came open.
Inside were battered tickets.
Every one of them bore the name of a passenger from the bus that had plunged into the ravine. At the very bottom, Bayu saw one new ticket. The ink was still wet.
His name was printed clearly.
BAYU — DRIVER.
He yanked the wheel with all his strength. The tires shrieked against the wet asphalt. The bus spun sideways and stopped only a few yards from the edge of the ravine.
The dawn call to prayer drifted from the village beyond the hill.
In an instant, all the passengers vanished.
Bayu was found still gripping the wheel. Ujang was asleep in his seat and remembered nothing. The living passengers reappeared one by one in the back of the bus, bewildered, as though they'd just woken from sleep.
While the bus was being cleaned at the garage, Bayu found a ticket wedged beneath the back seat. It bore no company logo. Its destination contained only one sentence:
"Next trip: for the driver who comes home late."
Bayu crumpled the ticket and burned it.
The fire went out before the paper was gone.
The following night, he didn't go to work. But at 11:55 p.m., while standing in front of his house, Bayu heard a bus stop in the street.
Ding.
The door opened.
Behind the fogged glass, Laras sat in the back seat. There was an empty space beside her.
The woman raised her hand, as if calling for the last passenger.
And from inside the bus, Ujang's voice drifted faintly.
"Bayu, hurry up and get on. They're waiting."