This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/squidlogistics on 2026-05-31 06:04:52+00:00.

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I live about an hour from my school so I am the last stop on a very long bus ride. It’s a normal bus with normal students and a normal driver. I rarely pay attention to what anyone else is doing.

There is one weird thing about the bus. We stop in front of an abandoned house in the middle of the trip home. We never stop there on the way to school. Nobody ever gets on or off at that stop.

I used to think it was a bus safety thing but that didn’t make any sense. Most of the area was covered in dense forest with clusters of trailers packed together. There weren’t any laws or cops to enforce them that could rationalize stopping at this dark shack on the side of the road going one direction each day.

A few days ago, I got the courage to ask the driver about the stop when we arrived at school. I asked him why we stop at the old house when nobody ever gets on or off.

He didn’t look up from the wheel. “Someone does get on at that stop,” he said.

I told him that didn’t make sense. We only stop there on the way home, never in the morning, and I’d never once seen the door open for anybody.

He didn’t answer. He just pulled the lever and the doors folded shut in my face, and I stood there on the sidewalk for a second before I went inside.

I couldn’t let it go all day. Someone does get on. I’d ridden that route for two years. I would have noticed.

So on the way home I paid attention for the first time in my life. I sat near the back where I could see the whole bus. I watched every kid get off at every stop, watched the seats empty out two and three at a time, until the forest part of town came up and it was just me and a couple others and that long quiet hum of the road.

Then we slowed at the house.

The doors opened.

And something got on.

I don’t have a good way to describe it. It came up the steps the way a person would, one leg then the other, but the proportions were wrong, too long in some places and folded in others, and the way it moved made my eyes hurt to follow. It was shaped like a man the way a shadow on a wall is shaped like a man. Close enough to fool you if you weren’t looking. I had never been looking.

It sat down in the very front seat. And it turned all the way around to face me.

It stared at me the whole ride home.

Nobody else reacted. The two other kids got off at their stops and walked right past it like it wasn’t there. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t make a sound. I just sat pinned to that seat with this thing’s face pointed at me, and every bump in the road I prayed it would turn back around and it never did.

By the time we reached my stop, the last stop, it was only the two of us and the driver.

I have never in my life done anything as hard as walking up that aisle. I had to pass the front to get to the door. I had to pass it. I kept my eyes on the rubber floor mat and I walked, and I swear the air got thicker the closer I got, cold and wet like breath, and I felt it watching me from inches away the entire time.

I bolted for the front door and my hands were shaking so bad I could barely work the handle, and right as I got it open I looked back.

The thing was coming down the bus steps. Stepping off. Onto my driveway.

I screamed for my parents. I was crying, talking too fast, and they did that thing parents do where they get more annoyed than scared, and my dad went out front to prove there was nothing there.

There was nothing there.

No thing. No bus. The road was empty and dark and the crickets were going like nothing had happened. They told me I fell asleep on the ride home. They told me I had a bad dream coming off the bus. My mom felt my forehead.

The next day I asked my bus driver about the thing that got on yesterday. I asked where it went after it exited the bus behind me.

He looked at me this time. Dead eyes that sent dread down my spine.

“It got closer than usual.”

“It follows me every day?” I asked.

“It knows you can see it now.” He mumbled turning his head back straight.

“What does that mean?”

He stopped answering. I sat down in the back on the side I could see the house from. We picked up the first couple of students and my heartbeat sped up as the house appeared in the distance. We didn’t slow down but I could see the thing in the door way looking directly at me.

As we passed, it left the door way and started walking down the steps. Then it started jogging to the road where it turned towards us and started sprinting. It glitched as it moved and it was fast. Our bus was faster but the thing was persistent. I thought I was going to die until it suddenly turned into the woods a few miles from school.

The whole day I was looking behind my back and taking corners slowly. The coast was clear until lunch. That’s when I saw it. Standing on a hill at the far edge of the playground.

I wasn’t sure if it could see me so I hid. I locked myself in a closet for the remainder of the day. It was the first time I could relax. I didn’t want to leave. But I also didn’t want to be alone at the school with that thing lurking so I left when the final bell rang and tried to blend in with the other students.

We all filed into busses.

“Please don’t let that thing on.” I pleaded while ascending the steps of the bus.

“It’s already here” he said as he closed the doors behind me.

There it was. Sitting in the back seat that I always sat on. Staring right at me. He sat next to my friend Ashley who was deep in her phone. I sat at the front of the bus terrified, looking over my shoulder frequently.

I decided to text Ashley.

Do you not see that thing sitting next to you?

A horrified scream filled the bus and everyone looked back at Ashley trying to back away from her seat.

“There’s a fucking thing back her-“

The figure suddenly pierced Ashley’s neck with its hand and everyone on the bus could see it. As the bus continued down the road, kids were screaming and trying to escape. The thing made quick work of the back of the bus, dismembering and mashing students with ease.

We arrived at the stop the thing usually got on at. The remaining students flooded off the bus. Almost everyone ran into the abandoned house the thing came from. I thought for a second about where I should run.

“He will find all of you. You all notice him now. It doesn’t matter where you go.”

I ran home. I have been waiting.