A Lonely Ride Home

My wife and I lived in a boarding school in Tailevu known as Ratu Kadavulevu School (RKS).  I still worked in Suva and it took 3hours by bus to get to work.  The mornings was a single bus ride at 4am,  the dirt gravel filled road would rock me to sleep till I got to the Suva Bus Stand at 7am.

The travel home after work was usually a 3 part journal. A mini van 🚐 from Suva to Nausori,  another mini van from Nausori to Korovou.  At Korovou if we missed the bus we had to hire a ute (carrier service) to drive me home.  My friend Sikeli would share the fare of the ute. The drivers of the ute knew the community well and had the latest news of events in the area.

One evening Sikeli and I missed the bus from Korovou.  We hired a ute and started our journey along a bumpy dusty gravel road.  The Sun was setting as we passed a village that had a river running beside it.  As we drove over the bridge,  I could make out the figure of a young child running in front of us. 

This is normal in rural Fiji,  the child was probably swimming at the river and had been left behind by family or friends.  The child was soaking wet,  so I asked the driver to slow down to give the boy a ride.

To my surprise the driver didn’t slow down and I had to ask the driver to stop as we approached the boy.  As soon as the vehicle stopped the boy jumped onto the tray of the ute.  From the rear view window,  I could see the boy staring back at me.  A little wave from the boy was a signal that he was safely onboard. The boy was shirtless and he was only wearing a pair of shorts.  The boy looked cold and wet,  but the way he kept staring at me made feel uncomfortable.

The driver said he knew the boy.  I told the driver,  that I didn’t mind if he dropped the boy home first.  We continued down the road as night fell,  lights of villages illuminated the dark road.  Village after village was passed but the driver continued to drive at speed,  never slowing down. 

When lights of RKS were shining in the distance,  I looked through the rear view window and all I could see was a puddle of water where the boy sat.  I was angry with the driver.  The child must have jumped out of the vehicle when we passed his village.  I was worried that the child may have hurt himself jumping out of vehicle as we traveled at speed on a dirt gravel road.

Out of the darkness we emerged into the flood lights of the school and then slowly we entered my driveway.

The driver stopped the vehicle and looked at me.  “ I knew the boy”,  the driver said.  “I didn’t want to talk about him while we were on the dark road.  Spirits can do scary things in the dark. His family lives just over the hill after the bridge where we saw him”. The driver’s eyes filled with tears.

“He was swimming in the river this morning when a truck lost control over the bridge. The truck fell on top of him,  pinning him to the river bed.  The truck was towed away earlier today but they couldn’t find his body.”

The hairs on my neck stood as I realised that I had witnessed a manifestation of a phantom hitchhiker.

The phantom boy was trying to find a way home…