The Missing Husband

Short Horror Stories in English

Short Horror Stories in English – A bus conductor finds something strange about a woman who boards his bus regularly. The story unfolds more mysteries as he decides to find out the reason.

Across the crowded downtown of Delhi, the 30-year-old rickety bus would ply to and fro all through the waking hours. The shadow of its imperious amour propre flashed over other vehicles that looked like nano wagons crawling over the roads.

Ravi, the conductor was a twenty-year-old boy originating from a poor background. His father did not have enough money to spend on his studies. So he dropped out of high school and had been managing the full day toil for the last five years. In his humdrum meaningless life, what kept him absorbed was the passengers who used the bus every day, stimulating his adolescent sense of curiosity and helping the interminable hours go by. It was quite a doozy for him to think that every person has a destination on mind as they board the bus. He would observe them carefully, trying to figure out their purpose. The pale guy in threadbare clothes who haggled incessantly over the prices must be a merchant heading to the shop. A lady dressed in ostentatious clothes must be a wedding attendant. A gentleman carrying a small bouquet must be going home, eager to propitiate his wife for some wrongdoing, maybe.

Suddenly, his roving gaze settled on a lady, the new arrival in a pink sari. She had been boarding the same bus for over three months. But what had felt strange to Ravi was the fact that she would never disembark at the same place.

“Who was she?” – A saleswoman who scurried from one home to another to sell her wares? Or a mistress who met someone else’s husband at different hideouts? Or a whore? Ravi chided himself for sordid thoughts and started to collect the fare from the passengers.

The woman took time scrambling her purse for the coins in her characteristic slow movement while Ravi waited patiently with his back supported on the iron pole. He collected the fare and moved on to other passengers while his eyes kept getting hold of her. Like what was nothing less than a ritual, the same pink sari draped meticulously around her fair complexioned skin, her long hair that hung over her shoulders, wetting her clothes. And all of this imbibed under the sweet musk of lavender.

In due time, she stood up and rushed towards the gate through the jostle of passengers. Her hand went vehemently into the purse as if making a hasty search while leaving the staircase. She embarked in wild fervor. The familiar lines of anxiety on her forehead had brought an uncontrolled curiosity to Ravi’s perplexed mind.

It had been several months that he’d been captivated by this mystery. Every day he looked for her and followed her in his mind’s eye, trying to imagine where she went and what she did. He needed to resolve this mystery. He told the driver that he had important work in the area and left the bus, following her while maintaining enough distance so as not to get noticed. It took him a few brisk footsteps in the crowded busy market of the village to find her.

Ravi saw a photo in her hand, probably that was what she was searching for in the bus. She seemed to be desperately looking for a missing person whose photograph she was showing to the people.

When she moved from person to person, her hair shredded pearls of water on the dry soil arousing an appetizing musk. She ran further and asked more villagers but no one seemed to recognize the person in the photo. Some more pearls fell on the soil, this time from her eyes. It was her pain which flowed freely until it effervescently hit the dry earth.

Before Ravi could approach her, she spotted him and scurried. He followed suit and screamed, “Ma’am! I am here to help you. Please wait!” But she kept running without turning back, while the end of her sari flew along with her wet hair in the wind. All of a sudden, she vanished like a gust of wind leaving behind a trail of water drops on the soil along with the photo.

Ravi picked it up from the ground. It was the photograph of a handsome beardless face topped by a baseball cap. The photo of a man, Ravi was absolutely clueless about. He shoved it inside the pocket of his jacket and left.

The next day, Ravi looked for her at her stop but she was nowhere to be seen as if the mystery evaded from his life without a solution. Few days passed when one day, Ravi was attending the passengers at a stop and he spotted a man on the road with a familiar face. He furrowed his brow and took out the photo from his pocket. He disembarked from the bus unperturbed by the angry driver.

From his appearance and given the time of the day, the man seemed to be going for work. And before he could take a taxi, he was stopped by a distant but loud voice, ‘Sir!’, Ravi approached him panting. He was short of breath to speak anything in response to the man’s perplexed expressions and fished the photo out of his jacket.

The man turned towards Ravi as his gaze shifted towards the photo. It was a photo of him. Intense anxiety pervaded his face and desperate tears walled his eyes. “Where have you got it from?” The man asked.

Ravi told him about the strange woman in pink sari who searched for him every day.

The man was confused and asked more about the lady after which he took out his wallet and showed it to Ravi. The lady who Ravi had seen for the last three months and who had disappeared in the wind was resting inside his wallet. Ravi had never seen her so calm and serene.

“This is exactly the woman I was talking about,” Ravi said.

“It cannot be her.”

“But I regularly saw her in the bus until I found your photo, ”Ravi said in a choked voice. The taxi which the man was about to board had left and now the two of them walked to sit under the shade of a nearby tree. The man narrated the story.

“I worked in a secret anti-terrorism detective squad which used to elicit important information about terrorists and criminals. As per the corporate norms, I was supposed to keep my identity privy from everyone including my family for whom I was a sales manager in a Food Corporation who earned nothing more than a modest livelihood.”

Ravi was aghast. The strange man was confiding him a secret that he had kept hidden from his family, his wife. If any mishap happens, he could be condemned for disclosing the information. It would be safe for him not to become part of the secret and run away. Thought Ravi and stood up to leave. But the firm hold of the man’s arm on his wrist did not let him escape.

“Don’t worry. I have left that job. But someone needs to listen.” The man continued.

“On a Saturday morning, after a terrorist attack took place in the parliament, I was called for an immediate investigation. My wife, Priyamala had come after the bath and was getting ready in her favorite pink sari for our planned outing. I remember vividly how the drops of water were trailing down her long hair which she combed. I did not want to ruin the sweet smile that lingered her lips she just daubed in pink. I had no choice but to tell a lie that I urgently needed to visit a sick friend. She wanted to accompany me but I fussed about the shady past of his virtual friend and asked her to stay back. I took a bus, reassuring her that I would be back in sometime. From the window of the bus, I kept looking at my Priyamala waving her hand in deep despondency until she became a thin minuscule line and gradually blurred into nothingness.

When I reached his office, my boss informed that it was an emergency. Humungous data was waiting at my desk in the form of cluttered papers and grotesque photographs to be inspected. The case that raised a challenge to the highest legislature of the nation had turned all the ministries hysterical. My phone was ringing erratically but in a red alert situation like that, there was a possibility of my phone getting tapped by the terrorist squad. So it was replaced with a secure handset which was meant for all confidential official communication. Also, I was strictly ordered to stay undercover during my work which meant to not have any communication with Priya.

I was worried about her but I could not escape my duties either. So I stayed in office and directed all my focus towards the investigations which prolonged for a week. I was on the run every minute of the day during which I would plan the installation of tracking devices, analyze the data gathered from multiple sources, convene important meetings, scurry from one office to another and liaison with various ministers. I barely got time to sleep during those nights that passed without notice, without thinking at once about myself, or my personal life whose major part was Priyamala.”

The man went quiet, looking down on the ground, perhaps to hide his tears. Ravi patted his back and allowed him for a silent introspection as if he was in a constant debate with himself. His mind seemed to be muddling over many thoughts, experiencing a deep agony.

Ravi had known that the woman was the wife of this man who had kept his occupation a secret from her and was AWOL to investigate a terrorist attack. Maybe that was why she had been searching for him along the route of the same bus boarded by the man on the day he disappeared. If he tells her about everything, the two can unite. Ravi could not wait anymore for the story to end which was join all the missing links and solve the mystery with a happy ending.

The man said, “By the end of the week, I had collected enough information about the parliament blast suspects. After handing over the data to executive authorities for verification, I returned home. But it was not the same place anymore. An eerie song buzzed in the air. A melancholy lurked in the corners. And a wailing crowd sat in Verandah. When I stepped up towards the courtyard, several dark shadows loomed over me. They were formed by my relatives and neighbors who told me that Priya had succumbed to death out of bad health the same morning. She was anxious about my missing and had been desperately searching for me everywhere since the last week…

In the worst of his dreams, I could not think that hiding my reality could take her away from me forever. It was the biggest loss for me who craves to undo the mistake of not calling her once during the whole week. Since that day, I resolved to not enter the house which reminded me of my dead wife.”

He once again burst into tears while Ravi kept looking at him with wide open eyes. His face screwed up unconsciously into a grimace of acute shock. His mouth stood open, while the breath was stalled for a few seconds. How could such a tragedy befall anyone? The man could never tell his wife the truth. What happens when someone leaves you forever with an incomplete story? Do they become ghosts? So the woman who had been traveling in the bus for the last three months was a dead woman? A volley of questions struck his mind in that small moment.

He did not have the slightest hunch that the story could indeed have a frightful ending. But now, everything appeared clear when he recalled the pain he had seen in the woman’s eyes every day. She was worried and curious. He had understood her feelings.

Ravi said to the man, “Your wife has died waiting for you. But she is still searching for you in that bus. I think that you should go back home for once so that her soul can be free forever.”

The man cried while he followed Ravi to the bus. But as soon as Ravi entered the bus and turned around, there was no one to be seen. The furious driver groaned, “Have you lost your mind stupid chap? I could forgive you for anything but talking to yourself. This is insane.”

Ravi stood at the gate, frozen.

He was so for days, struggling with his tattered mind. The screeching wind flooding through the doors and windows of his bus evoked an inexplicable chatter as if someone was murmuring around his ears. He would often feel the presence of the lady there, still stepping down the road at all places to look for her husband. She was waiting for him to return home. What did the husband do? Did they meet?

Grey clouds had conquered the sky taking away its white luster. The lightening roared in the sky like a devil before it started to rain. They were the pearls falling from her hair, or maybe her eyes which defined her sadness and worry. The air was tainted with her scent. Was she still sitting in the corner seat? But the bus was on stop with its staircase submerged under water. The roads were flooded and jammed bringing the city to a halt as if to mourn over the loss only known to the sky.

Clutching his umbrella against the biting wind, Ravi tread the puddles that now had become valleys of water to visit the house of the man which was a creaky dilapidated hut locked from the outside. His photo, now drenched and withered with water was shown to a neighbor who lived next door only to know that one year back on the same day, the man committed suicide after knowing about his wife’s death. “Fathomless and eternal love.” The neighbor sighed ponderously.

The mystery, which had been troubling Ravi for months was resolved but not without leaving behind the sad realization about the fate of an incomplete story he would never forget.