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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/4shn1 on 2024-11-02 00:39:26+00:00.

I’m writing this on a bus, coming home early from a frustrated trip. I can’t stop thinking about what happened, and I feel like I need to share it with someone else. 

This year, a few friends and I decided to take a vacation together and go on a beach trip, planning to stay for about a week. We arranged for everyone to take time off at the same time and rented a house on the coast of a neighboring state.

At first, everything went smoothly, I took the bus around nine PM, and knowing that the trip would take around three hours, I put on my headphones, reclined the seat and enjoyed the view. We agreed to meet at the town’s port.

At a certain point in the journey, the bus stopped, and the driver informed us he’d be making a brief stop in a town near our final destination. I went to a restaurant, grabbed some coffee and a sandwich, which I barely had time to finish before the bus started moving again.

I was dozing off when I felt the bus stop. The driver turned off the engine, the lights came on and the passengers began to get off. I quickly looked out the window to check that I was in the right place, and after seeing some containers, I got off too.

That’s when things started to get weird.

As soon as I stepped out, I noticed there were no other passengers around, which felt odd since it had been barely twenty seconds since everyone had disembarked. The place I was standing in was just part of the road; it didn’t even look like a bus stop, much less the port and bus station that my friends had mentioned earlier. The only sign of life nearby was a gate with a guard booth and, inside, a collection of containers and cranes that looked like a shipping company.

When I tried to get back on the bus, to ask the driver if I hadn’t gotten off at the wrong stop, he had already left.

I looked at my phone, paused the music, and checked the time: midnight sharp. I called one of my friends to let them know I had “arrived,” hoping that this was the right place. No answer. I only managed to send a quick message – “I think I’m at the port” – before my battery died. Apparently, listening to music for three hours straight was just too much for my old phone. With no idea what else to do, I approached the guard booth to ask for information.

Inside was a woman, who smiled when she saw me approaching. I asked her if I was in the right place and explained a little bit of the situation. 

“Ah, the port? Oh, no, you’re far away, about five miles I believe, my dear.” She replied, with a big smile and a voice a little… strange.

I can’t explain it, but the woman seemed off. Her skin looked different, in a way that I couldn’t tell whether she was 26 or 62, and her voice didn’t sound natural. At the time I didn’t pay much attention to any of this, but in retrospect, it seemed as if she wasn’t human, but something trying to be human.

“But if you want, you can go through here, James and I will take you to the port, everything will be fine!” She said while gesturing to a colleague who was near the gate.

I hadn’t noticed the colleague before. In fact, it’s is as if he appeared out of nowhere as soon as she called him. He came towards me, with the same huge smile and strange skin.

For some reason, that gave me chills. Those two looking at me, piercing me with their eyes, and with that sinister smile, almost drooling, as if I were a dish from a five-star restaurant. Something told me not to wait for this “James” guy to approach, so I walked away, muttering a goodbye.

I couldn’t see much ahead, just the road and the silhouette of vegetation on both sides of the asphalt. There were no streetlights except one in front of the “company,” and likely none for the next five miles. I started walking, but I soon realized that it would be a long trek, so I raised my thumb in hope that someone passing by would give me a ride.

And it didn’t take long for a truck driver to pull up next to me. I got close to his window, and to my surprise, he didn’t look right either. He was an older man, or at least I think it was because of his white hair, but he had the same strange skin as the woman and “James“ I just met. He invited me into the truck, saying he would take me to the port in no time. Strange, because I hadn’t even told him where I wanted to go.

“Come on, kid, I’ll take you there, you won’t even notice! You can sleep if you’re tired. Everything will be fine!” The old man insisted. He spoke in the same strange, weirdly broken way as the other two.

The chill I had felt before now intensified, and it went up my spine like an electric shock. I didn’t even bother to say something to the truck driver, I just moved on, quickening my pace. He just stood there.

From then on, I started to walk faster. I had a weird feeling, as if things weren’t right, and what scared me the most: that something was watching me.

I rounded a bend in the road and saw a broken guardrail and a crashed car beyond it. It looked like the accident had happened some time ago, but obviously, the scene didn’t help with my anxiety at all.

The further I got, the more unsettling the place became. The air grew heavy, and I started to hear noises in the vegetation, twigs snapping, leaves rustling. I was getting exhausted from the walk, and my eyes were strained from trying to see in the pitch-dark.

After about two hours of walking, just past another curve, this time forming a big “S” along with the previous one, a car stopped next to me. It was an old hatchback, probably from the '90s. I couldn’t see much, but the car looked run-down. At this point, I was obviously no longer hitchhiking, and my paranoia made me completely suspicious of whoever the driver was.

And with good reason.

“Get in, Alex, I’ll take you to the port.” He said, calmly.

“HOW DO YOU KNOW MY NAME?” I shouted, desperate.

"What do you mean, Alex? We all know your name. We just want to help you! Trust us, everything will be fine!" He replied, lifting his head and looking directly at me, with the same massive, twisted smile as the others.

Taking a good look at his face, he looked almost identical to the truck driver, like twins, both equally disfigured and weird.

This time, I ran.

I ran like I’d never run before, without even looking back to see if anything was following me.

I must have run for another two hours until exhaustion took over, and I sat down on the roadside. Everything seemed quiet and safe. Too safe. I opened my backpack to take the last sip from my water bottle when I began to hear them.

Voices, coming from the bushes next to me. At first, I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but slowly I began to recognize my name being called.

“Alex… Alex… come this way, Alex… it’s a shortcut, Alex… everything will be fine, Alex.”

The feeling of safety soon turned to horror, and I went back running.

The voices grew louder, more distorted, and when I inevitably looked back, my fears were confirmed.

There was a man – no, a creature – chasing me. It was humanoid, but with disproportionate limbs and a bizarre skin, as if it were imitating human skin, which writhed and twisted. And it was smiling at me.

That thing came closer, initially walking slowly, but picking up it’s pace towards me.

I ran awkwardly, totally consumed by fear, crying and screaming, the creature chasing, obviously faster than me, at one point getting close enough to touche me. And it did. It put it’s hand, boney and cold, on my shoulder.

As I fumbled to get away from its grasp, I tripped and went rolling. The thing came after me, opening it’s mouth, revealing rotten and missing teeth, kneeling down in my direction.

I’ve never been a fighter, but at that time some kind of instinct came over me. Somehow I felt this would be my last seconds alive if I didn’t try to fight it. So I kicked, punch, did everything I could to get away.

After a few blows to its head, the creature seemed to recoil for a second, looking at me with a twisted and broken smile, mixed with an expression of confusion, as if it didn’t believe that I could defend myself like that. To be honest, I didn’t believe it either.

But that single moment was enough for me to get up on my feet and start running again.

I soon encountered the first streetlight in what felt like years.

As I got closer, I saw the sea, containers, docked ships, a lighthouse in the distance, and a small group of people. It was the port. I stopped running but was still paranoid and anxious, so I avoided contact with anyone. Looking behind me, at first I saw nothing besides the darkness of that godforsaken road, but squinting my eyes, I could barely see that pale figure, standing still, staring directly at me. For some reason, it had given up on chasing me after I’ve entered the light.

Then I saw the bus arrive, and exactly the same passengers who were with me got off. Soon I also saw my friends approaching. They were drinking and laughing, and when they saw me, they ran over, shouting and cheering to celebrate my arrival. One of them tried to talk to me, asking me why I was looking terrible, sweating, dirty, and shaking.

I just lit a cigarette, walked with them to the house, a few blocks away, and told them that I was extremely tired and needed some sleep.

When I got there, I left my things in my room, plugged in my phone to charge and went to take a shower. There was a clock in the hallway, and, giving me one last moment of terror, it showed twelve-oh-five.

The next day, m…

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