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Someone Just Like You is a horror series. we've for episode-specific content. Listener discretion. is advised. My fingers bend backward and beg me, please let us write a story for them, let us peel their skin to reveal the horror lurking beneath. Pain that feels all too familiar. torment that hits too close to home. This isn't an alternate dimension. This isn't a liminal realm or a divergent timeline. These horrors are here and now this could happen. Someone just like you.
At 3.17am, a bus that isn't on the schedule arrives outside my house. For context, I am a middle-aged man who lives on the outskirts of Parbolt, a small English village. My house is the only one on a long, winding country road. But it does have a bus stop. From my bedroom window, I can see it on the other side of the road. It's quite handy, really.
I never miss the morning bus to work, and I know the schedule off my heart. That's why I was bewildered when I first noticed the 3.17am bus on Saturday the 14th of October. It woke me up, actually. I'm a light sleeper. I sat upright in my bed, twisting my body around, propped myself up on my knees, and gingerly inched the curtains I... The old lamppost on my road illuminated an ominous, fully grey, non-branded, single-decker bus. There was no interior lighting. I couldn't see a driver or any...
Now, this was obviously bizarre. Buses don't show up at that time in the morning. Not in this country. Not in any town or city I know. Still, I assumed, as any person would, that times were changing. It seemed like a good idea, a bus for those who'd missed the last train home after a night out, perhaps. That still didn't entirely make sense because very few people use my bus stop. It's a ten minute walk from here to anywhere. I checked the schedule. Nothing.
There was a bus at 11.07pm on Friday evening, and there shouldn't have been another one until 6.05am on Saturday morning. I watched the vehicle pull away and considered perhaps that it wasn't a public bus. Maybe it was a hired coach. That seemed like a reasonable explanation. I put it out of my mind and went back to sleep. However, it returned the next morning. And it continued to do so for...
Again, I checked the schedule. Still no mention of a 3.17am bus. I called the council and they assured me that it wasn't a public bus. They said that I could contact the local authorities to report any suspicious activity. So I rang the police. They didn't care. They passed me over to some civil department with a forgettable name, and that department passed me over to another department. Nobody was concerned.
It became clear that each person I contacted just wanted me to tire of the whole thing and stop bothering them. I gave up on seeking help, but I didn't give up on my quest for an un... I started making notes. The bus always arrived at exactly 3.17am. It would linger for approximately 30 seconds. Nobody ever boarded or departed the vehicle. I took a picture of it and posted it on various forums. Nobody could identify the origin of the faceless grey bus, but one comment did stand out.
I remember a user telling me that I should sell my house and move. They said that the bus was there for me. Most importantly, they said that I shouldn't, under any circumstances, board it. That seemed like a rather obvious piece of advice. I wasn't planning on boarding a sketchy, unlisted bus in the pitch black hours of the morning.
But everything changed on the 20th of November. The bus arrived on time 3.17am. I knelt on my bed and peeked at it through the curtain as it rounded the corner. Something that was different. I didn't quite put my finger on... Once the vehicle had rolled to a complete stop, however, I heard... Somebody on the bus was screaming. My friend...
I didn't know what to do. Silence followed, but I knew I hadn't imagined it. I knew I'd heard that scream. I watched the bus and waited. Thirty seconds passed. A lot of time passed. When I finally peeled my eyes from the road to check my phone, it was 3.29am. The bus hadn't The world outside was still eerily quiet. I reattached myself to reality and started dialing 999. The call kept failing, and then I saw that I had no signal. None.
I usually had signal at the house. I was freaking out, so I got up to turn on my bedroom light. Nothing. I flicked the switch back and forth, no power. The story was the same throughout the house. I was about to head to the fuse box, but I looked out of my living room window to see a blackened world. The lamppost was dead. It had to be a power cut. That was when I finally understood, for the first time in my ten years of solitary living, that I was truly isolated.
I had no neighbours, no friends, no family. I was all alone. The gravity of the situation dawned on me. I would have to leave for him. My self-preservation instinct was to stay indoors but I couldn't ignore the disembodied scream that had echoed through the night. I knew it had come from the bus. I knew I couldn't live with myself if I were to dismiss it. Armed with a winter coat and a wind-up torch, I bravely ventured into the night, locking my door behind me.
I tentatively strolled down my front path, stopping at the gate to cast the torchlight onto the other side of the road. It revealed the grey, stationary, seemingly abandoned bus. There were no signs of life. Everything was so quiet. I swore to myself that I could hear my heartbeat in my eardrums. I swung the creaky gate open and began to cross the road, futilely attempting to steady my quaint...
My torch wobbled in my shaky left hand, so I clasped my wrist with my right hand. I shone the light into the windows of the parked vehicle. There was definitely no driver, but it was an elevated coach, so I couldn't see whether there were any... I walked around the front of the vehicle, summoning the courage to...
When I reached the other side of the bus, I stood still. I tried to control my breathing. I eyed the doors for what seemed an eternity. And then I felt my entire body clench. The doors. My torchlight still wasn't revealing a driver. I couldn't see or hear anyone. I thought for a brief moment of that internet stranger who told me not to board the bus, but I couldn't get that scream out of my head.
My gut told me that somebody was in danger. I stepped onto the bus and started to climb the stairs. The doors closed. I held the torch before me as if it were a weapon, and I gradually climbed the next set of stairs to the elevated path. I spent several seconds on each step, savoring what I felt could be my final moments on Earth. Then I illuminated the passenger area before me. I half expected to see nothing. No.
There was somebody on the bus. The young girl was sitting on the middle seat of the back row. Her head was in her palms. She was crying. I couldn't see her face. Are you okay? So I started to walk forwards. I didn't know whether there was anyone else on board, but I couldn't leave her. Once I was standing only a few yards in front of her, I knelt down in the aisle. Are you okay?
I asked a second time. The girls crying abruptly ceased, but she didn't lift her head from her hands. You shouldn't have worded the best. My torch died. I furiously wound the lever at the side, but it didn't spring back to life. The girl and I had been plunged into darkness. Then I heard the bus doors open. I slowly turned my head to face the front of the bus. I could hear the sound of low, guttural breath.
It was followed by clunking footsteps. Dim moonlight shone through the front window, but it was sufficient to display a hulking figure at the other end of the aisle. A black spectre with gangly limbs was moving towards us. He hunched forwards, and his elongated arms dragged along the tops of the... It was too tall and too wide to fit in the aisle. I turned to face the girl. She had lifted her head from her hands. I could barely see her. I could barely hear her. This is the last stop.
I was really hoping you wouldn't bore. I wanted more time. Before I could even comprehend what was happening, I felt an icy limb coil itself around my ankle. It yanked, and I fell. My nose connected with the floor of the aisle, and I heard something crack. I thought that was it. I thought that was the end. But I looked up to see the demonic creature coil its other limb around the girl's neck.
It hoisted her from her seat. She screamed as she was lifted towards the indistinguishable figure in the aisle. I couldn't really see what happened in the darkness, but I'll never forget the sound her body made when it was consumed by the black entity. It sounded like leaves crunching beneath walking boots. I had almost entirely lost my sense of reality at this point, but some vestige of survival instinct persisted in my fractured mind. I twisted onto my back and looked down at my ankle.
I couldn't really see what I was doing in the dark. I just knew I had to act. So with my free foot, I stamped on the creature's limb. I stamped as hard as humanly possible. The demons which had been devouring the poor girl unleashed an inhuman wail. I pierced my eardrums and shattered every window on the bus. The limb retracted from my ankle and returned to the shadowy being. I seized my opportunity. Catapulting to my feet, I spun around and lunged for the now glassless back window of the bus.
Clinging to the frame of the window for dear life, I took one last look at the dark entity that was hurtling towards me. Then I dropped my feet on the road. I sprinted away from the boss and didn't look back. It only took me a few minutes to reach the warm and welcoming lights of civilization.
I looked at my phone and cried when I saw that I had service. I booked a taxi. I wanted the farthest possible destination. I chose Manchester. Then I took the first train to London. For the past couple of weeks, I've been living in a hotel. I know I was a little late, but I finally took the advice of that online stranger. I moved away. I moved far away. I don't go outside at night and I definitely don't look out of the window after 3 a.m.
The 3AM Bus was written by Dominique Eagle and performed by David Ault and Kayla Temchev. The Fable and Falling Network, where fiction producers flourish.