For years, my parents had told me about the crazy bus crash that happened near our house years ago. One morning, just days before I was born, my mother had been out in the garden, plucking weeds, when she heard a horrible noise. It was a series of high pitched screams, then a screeching of tires, followed by a tremendous crash. All of the people in the area rushed out of their houses to see what was going on.

Down at the bottom of the old coach road, they found black tire marks leading to a nearby cliff. When they rushed to the cliff edge, they saw the wreckage of a bus down below. It had apparently driven straight off the cliff and crashed on the jagged rocks at the bottom. The people ran down to where the smoking wreckage was lying strewn about, in an effort to help the survivors. They were horrified when they discovered that it was the local school bus and all of the passengers on board were their own children.

The bodies of the dead kids lay tangled in the twisted metal. Some had been thrown out of the bus as it fell and their bodies had smashed against the rocks, killing them on impact. Others had been decapitated by flying glass and shards of metal inside the bus. The parents were screaming and crying as they found the mangled remains of their sons and daughters in the charred wreckage.

When the ambulance and fire department arrived, they found no survivors. Every single child on the bus had been killed in the crash. It was the most horrific disaster the area had ever experienced. In one horrible moment, an entire generation had been wiped out. The parents of the dead children were inconsolable.

A few days later, a huge funeral was held for all of the kids who had perished. People came from miles around to pay their respects and share in the grief. Almost every family in the area had lost a child in the accident. Some had even lost two or three. Almost 40 small coffins were lowered into the ground that day.

An inquest was held shortly afterwards, and police got to the bottom of what had happened and finally determined who was to blame for causing the terrible crash. It seems that a mental patient from the local insane asylum had escaped the night before. He had broken into the bus station and stolen a driver’s uniform. That night, he lay in wait until the doors of the bus station were unlocked. Then, he crept aboard the school bus and drove out through the gates without alerting anyone.

That morning, he drove the school bus around the countryside, picking up all the unsuspecting kids who were waiting by the roadside, on their way to school. He was dressed in a bus driver’s uniform, so nobody suspected a thing. Once he had collected every kid on the route, the mental patient floored the accelerator and drove at high speed off the cliff.

The people in our area never forgot the terrible accident that escaped mental patient caused. When I was growing up, there were not very many other children to play with. Most had been killed in the crazy bus crash. The only kids that survived were those who had been too young to attend school at the time.

The story I am about to tell happened when I was thirteen years old. My parents allowed me to go to the movies at the theater in town. I met a bunch of friends there and we had a great time watching the movie. Afterwards, we lost track of time and it was very late by the time we decided to go home.

I must have been waiting at the bus stop for half an hour before I realized that I had missed the last bus. Cursing myself for being so careless, I wondered how I would manage to get home. It wasn’t all that far to walk, perhaps a mile or two. But the roads were treacherous at night because, in our area, there were no street lamps to light the way. A lot of people had been hit by cars as they walked in the darkness.

I found a payphone and called home. My mom answered and I told her I’d missed the last bus home. She began to panic, telling me that my father was out and had taken the car with him. She wouldn’t be able to pick me up. I told her I’d just walk home, but she begged me not to, saying that the roads were much too dangerous at that time of night. Even worse, it was beginning to snow, which meant that even if a car did manage to see me in the dark, it probably wouldn’t have time to brake before it hit me.

She said she would try to contact our neighbors and see if they would be able to drive into town to pick me up. After I hung up the phone, I began to get impatient. Eventually, I decided that the only thing I could do was walk home by myself, so I set off and hoped for the best.

I was walking along the lonely country road in complete darkness, trying not to trip over a pothole or fall into a ditch, when I saw headlights coming up over the hill behind me. Whether it was a car or a bus, it was coming up very fast, and quite noiselessly through the snow-covered road.

As it drew nearer, I could make out the outlines of the vehicle. It appeared to be a bus and my only hope was that the driverwould be able to see me in the dark and stop for me. It came round the bend of the road, and bathed me in bright white light. The headlights blazed through the darkness like a pair of fiery meteors.

I jumped to the side of the road and waved my handbut the bus passed me at full speed and for a moment I feared that I had missed it. But then I heard the screech of brakes and the bus stopped dead a short distance ahead of me. I ran as fast as I could and came up to it just as the door swung open.

As soon as I stepped in, the door shut behind me and the driver took off again at full speed. The bus was dark inside but as my eyes began to adjust, I could see that it was almost full, despite the fact that it was late at night. I found a vacant seat and sat down, resting my weary legs.

The atmosphere of the coach seemed cold. Colder, if possible, than outside, and there was a strange and disagreeable smell. I looked round at the other passengers. They were all silent. They did not seem to be asleep, but each of them stared straight ahead. The deathly quiet was unsettling and the smell was quickly becoming unbearable.

I felt much too ill to say anything at all. The icy coldness inside the bus chilled me to the bone and the strange smell was making me sick. Shivering from head to foot, I turned to the young boy beside me and asked if I could open the window.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t even blink.

I repeated the question more loudly, but still got no answer. When I could no longer stand the stench, I reached across and tried to open the window myself but the latch broke off in my hand. It was then that I realized the window was covered in cobwebs and mildew. In fact, every part of the bus seemed to be in a terrible state of disrepair. Almost decay. The leather seats were crusted with mould, and the floor was literally rotting and breaking away beneath my feet.

I turned to the boy beside me again and asked “What is wrong with this bus?”

Without saying a word, he turned his head slowly and looked me in the face. I will never forget that look as long as I live. My heart turned cold and all the blood drained from my face. His eyes were wide and seemed as if they were popping out of his head. His face was as pale and leathery as a corpse. His bloodless lips were drawn back, showing big yellow teeth.

The words that I was about to utter died upon my lips, and a dreadful feeling of horror came over me. I became aware that everyone on the bus was staring straight at me with the same ghastly look on their faces. Their awful faces were covered in rotting flesh and their clothes were covered in dirt. Only their eyes, their terrible eyes, were living; and those eyes were all staring menacingly at me.

A shriek of terror burst from my lips as I ran down the aisle, threw myself against the door, and tried to open it. In that single instant, as the bus door swung open, I heard a mighty crash and the bus rocked to and fro like a ship in a storm at sea. Then, I heard many voices, children’s voices, all screaming in unison and I felt a crushing pain before everything went black.

It seemed as if I had been unconcious for days when I woke up and found my mom was by my bedside. She told me I had fallen over a cliff, near the old coach-road. The only reason I hadn’t been killed was that I had landed on a deep snowdrift that had accumulated on the rocks beneath. I was discovered at daybreak by a local farmer, who carried me to the nearest hospital. The surgeon found me in a state of raving delirium, with two broken legs, a broken arm and a deep cut on my forehead.

The place where I fell, my mom told me, was the same exact spot where the horrible school bus accident had happened, thirteen years before. Now, you can believe what you want. Some people may call me a liar and others may say I’m just crazy, but I know that thirteen years ago, days before I was born, I was a passenger in that crazy bus crash.