The taxi you absolutely shouldn’t have taken at midnight.
It’s not a time to walk on this road. Hop in, we’ll drop you off. He should never have taken that car at midnight. There are some mistakes that cannot be undone. Decisions made in a fraction of a second in the fatigue and cold of a weeknight that change everything without us realizing it at the time.
Most of the time, these mistakes have consequences that can be fixed. We miss an appointment, we lose something, we regret something too soon, life goes on. We learn, we move forward. [music] But there are other mistakes. Mistakes that leave no room for regret. Mistakes that are already made before we even understand what we’ve done.
And in these [music] cases, the question is no longer how to go back, it’s how to accept that we won’t go back. I’m Fiona and you’re following my incredible African stories. The main road between the two cities was empty at that time. In the morning, a straight line 40 kilometers long bordered by fields on one side and [music] a dense forest on the other.
A road that everyone in the region knew, not because it was beautiful or remarkable, but because something had happened there 10 years ago. A nighttime accident that local people still talked about, not often but regularly, with that [music] way that certain events have of coming back into conversations, even when you thought you had put them away .
That evening, [music] a man was walking on the side of that road. He had a backpack over one shoulder and his hands in his jacket pockets. He walked quickly, his eyes lowered against the wind. Behind him [music], several hundred meters away, the city lights were receding. Before him, [music] there was only blackness.
He shouldn’t have been walking on that road at that time. [music] He shouldn’t have accepted the ride when the car’s headlights emerged from the darkness and [music] the window rolled down, but it was cold. He was tired and at three o’clock [music] in the morning on a deserted road, you take what comes. What he took [music] that night was the wrong car.
But to understand why this car was the wrong car and why [music] he, specifically him, was on this road at this precise time, it was necessary to go back to the day before when everything was [music] still simple and his biggest concern was whether he would get home before or after midnight. Conan Brou was 23 years old [music] and was studying accounting in the university town miles away from his parents’ home.
He was an ordinary boy in the best sense of the word. Serious without being rigid, sociable without seeking attention. He had two close friends at university, [music] a girlfriend whom he saw on weekends when schedules allowed and a room in a university residence [music] which he shared with a classmate who played guitar at questionable hours.
His life was simple [music], organized around his classes and his regular returns to his parents’ house for long weekends. That Friday, [music] he had planned to return by the 7pm shift. A 2-hour journey, usual return trip, [music] the kind of thing you do without thinking about it.
He had confirmed to his mother that he would be there for [music] dinner. He had packed his bag on Thursday evening. The Friday before her illness. [music] An unexpected make-up exam announced that very morning by a professor who was used to this kind of last-minute [music] communication . Two hours of exams that throw everything off.
Then a group meeting for an assignment due the following week that stretched beyond what the participants had planned. Each person has an additional point to add, [music] a remark to make, a correction to suggest. He arrived at the bus station at 9:30 PM. The last direct bus [music] had left at 9pm. There was nothing more until the following morning.
He called his mother to warn her. [music] She suggested that he stay at the residence and return the next day. He refused. [music] He had promised and his parents were counting on his presence to help with a family event. On Saturday morning [music], he looked for a carpool on the app he was using.
Sometimes, nothing is available for this hour to this destination. [music] He asked on a student messaging group . Nobody was leaving tonight . He finally decided to take a shared taxi [music] to the intermediate town halfway there and then find his way. The intermediate town had a bus station with early morning departures.
He could wait there. The shared taxi dropped him off at the train station in the intermediate town at midnight. The station was closed. A sign indicated that the first departure was at 5:30 a.m. 5 hours [music] of waiting in a closed station where something else was found . He left the station and started walking along the main road.
He still had [music] 40 km to go. It was absurd to walk. He knew it. [music] But movement seemed preferable to the tent standing still in the cold. He hadn’t walked 5 minutes [music] when the headlights appeared. The car slowed down as it reached him. A dark sedan, a common model, with nothing particularly noteworthy on the outside.
The front passenger window [music] rolled down. A young woman watched him from the seat. She was about 25 years old , with [music] hungry features, short hair. She smiled at him. Where are you going? Conan said the name of his city. We’re going too. Mounted. He hesitated for half a second, the kind of automatic hesitation you have at night on a deserted road facing [music] an unknown car.
Then he looked at the empty road ahead, felt the cold wind on his neck, and opened the back door. There were two people in the back, a young man on the left side, 20 years old [music] maybe, dark t-shirt , headphones around his neck who nodded at him without [music] smiling. and an older woman in the middle, around forty years old, with half- closed eyes that seemed to be half asleep [music].
Conan settled himself on the right side and closed the door. [music] The car drove off again. The driver was a man whose profile was all Conan could see, in his fifties, broad-shouldered, and silent. He drove with the calm concentration of people who have driven this route often. “My name is Inè,” said the young woman in the front seat, turning halfway around.
Her smile was pleasant, even warm. “Con!” The young man in the back said his name without looking up . Lassan, the older woman, opened her eyes a crack. Adjobo, her voice was soft, a little veiled, like someone waking up . The driver didn’t say his name; he was driving. The car moved forward into the night.
Conan put his bag between his feet and looked out the window at the straight road, the fields, the forest getting denser as they drove on. He was tired. The warmth of the car after the cold outside acted like a mild sleep aid. Inè started talking about ordinary things again, wondering what he was doing if the journey was typical for him.
A normal carpool conversation, the kind of polite exchange you have with strangers when you share an enclosed space. [Music] and that we want to avoid silence. Conan answered, then asked a few questions in turn. It was during this exchange that he noticed the first strange thing [music]. The first thing he noticed was that the window showed no condensation.
It was cold outside. The car was [music] heated. In any heated car that starts out cold, the windows accumulate a little condensation, especially with several passengers breathing. [Music] There was no condensation, neither on the window to his left, nor on the windshield, [music] as if the temperature inside the car was exactly the same as outside, or as if no one was really breathing.
He pushed [music] this thought away. He was tired; his eyesight was failing. The second thing, he noticed a few minutes later [music]. The radio was on, the volume very low, a station playing music. He strained to identify the song. [Music] Something about the melody was familiar to him , not familiar this week or this month, familiar from much longer ago .
A song he’d heard as a child, [Music] he had n’t heard in years because it was n’t played anywhere anymore . He said, without really [Music] thinking, “What’s this radio station?” Inessourna. “Why?” ” I haven’t heard this song in a long time.” In [Music] gave a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. It’s an old station.
It plays things from another era. Conan [Music] nodded, looked out the window again. The third thing was harder to rationalize. They passed a car, [Music] the first since he’d gotten in. The other vehicle’s headlights illuminated the interior of the sedan for a split second. Conan instinctively looked at the other passengers, [Music] the way people suddenly see each other in a bright light.
The Light crossed the car. Not exactly [music] crossed, it wasn’t that clear. But there was something strange about the way the light behaved on the figures around him. As if the light was n’t quite meeting resistance, as if the shadows weren’t forming properly, he blinked . He was having trouble seeing. Fatigue was doing things to perception.
But an idea had begun to take shape in his mind, still vague, still rejected by the part of his brain that preferred reasonable explanations. [music] It was Lassan who said something that shifted the conversation. He had been driving for about 21 minutes. Conan had [music] managed to keep up a light conversation with Ines.
Adjobo was sound asleep now, or seemed to be. The driver had n’t said a word since they left. Lassan, who had hardly spoken either, suddenly said, looking out the window, “We’re approaching kilometer 47.” Silence settled in. [music] Conan didn’t immediately understand the silence. Then he saw. Iness had [music] stopped smiling.
Her hands on her knees had tightened slightly. In the rearview mirror, the driver’s eyes were fixed straight ahead, but [music] something in the tension of his neck had changed. Ajobo, who was asleep, murmured something without opening his eyes. Conan didn’t catch the words. [music] What’s happening at kilometer 47? Conan asked.
No one answered immediately. [music] Then Iness said softly, with that same smile that didn’t reach her eyes, “That’s where we were going. Ten years ago.” Conan [music] looked at her. “You already drove this route ten years ago?” ” Not exactly.” She hesitated, [music] looked out the windshield. “That’s where we stopped.
” “Did you break down ?” Lassan said from the back seat. [Music] with absolute neutrality. Not a breakdown, an accident. Conan felt something change in his [music] chest. Not fear yet. Something prior to fear, a quality of vigilance, an alerting of all [music] senses. You had an accident here 10 years ago? Yes, all four of us. A silence.
[Music] Ines said, “There were three of us in the car that night.” Conan counted. The driver, Ines, Lassan, [music] Adjobo, four people, he understood. He said very slowly: “There were three of you.” “Yes.” He looked at Ines then turned to look at the sanne then at the sleeping [music] Adjobo. “And I ‘m the fourth.” The silence lasted a long time.
Conan was looking at Iness. [music] She was looking back at him with an expression he began to analyze differently now that he was looking beyond the surface smile. Not malice, not a threat, something harder to name, expectation. Like someone holding a door open and waiting for the other to decide to cross [music] the threshold.
You’re dead! he said. It wasn’t really a question. Iness nodded slightly. Lassan said, “The accident was on this stretch.” The driver had slept. The car left the road. Conan looked at the driver in the rearview mirror. Her eyes in the mirror were [music] fixed. Not in the sense of concentration, but in the sense of something that doesn’t blink often enough.
Something that looks without really seeing. He was the driver that night too. Yes, said Inè. And the three of you, were you the passengers? Yes. And the accident killed everyone. Another silence. Adjobo moved in his half-sleep, [music] a slow movement like someone floating in a warm high rather than someone sleeping normally.
“Everyone in the car,” said Lassan. Conan felt his throat tighten, everyone in the car and now [music] in the car, there were four people, three of whom had died in an accident on this road 10 years ago. And he said, “Why did you take me ?” Iness looked at him. Something crossed his face. [music] Something that resembled embarrassment or what embarrassment would look like on a face that has [music] lost the habit of ordinary emotions.
We’ve been driving on this road for 10 years. Every night. We can’t leave. Go where? Where we should be going. [music] We’re stuck here on this road, in this car. For what ? [music] The sanne said because there were four of us in the car that night. Conan waited. No, there were three of us. There were supposed to be four of us [music].
An additional passenger was supposed to come aboard with us that night. He missed the start. His car arrived late. He never knew that the car he missed [music] was the one in which he should have died. Conan looked at his hands resting on his knees. His hands [music] were concrete, with their overly long nails and the small scar on his right thumb from a bicycle fall at age 12. Living hands.
[music] You’ve been looking for the 4th passenger for 10 years. Iness simply said, “Yes, Conan was scared now. The clean, cold fear of someone who understands a situation and doesn’t tell themselves stories about it. But he was also still thinking, and the thinking part of him refused to consider the situation over.
‘I’m not your fourth passenger,’ he said. ‘You’re in the car,’ Lassan said. ‘I got in the car on a road at night.'” “That doesn’t make me your fourth passenger.” Iness looked at the car that had stopped for you. Cars often stop for people walking at night. Adjobo, without opening her eyes, said in a very calm voice, “Not at this hour, not on this road.
” Conan turned to face her. It was the first time she had spoken clearly. Her voice was soft, precise, the kind of voice that carries authority without needing to raise its tone. “How many other cars have you seen since [music] you started walking?” Conan thought for a moment. Since he had left the station in the middle town , there had been that car that had passed them earlier .
And before that, nothing, not a single vehicle since he had started walking. How long had he been walking before they arrived? ” The car that passed you earlier,” he said. “Did it see you?” Silence. “Iness, say ‘us’?” No. Conan felt something move. in his understanding of the situation. If the other car hadn’t seen them, if the passing cars saw only an empty road, then [music] the question was no longer whether these people were ghosts.
The question was whether he was still on this side of what he represented. “If I get out of this car,” he said, “what [music] happens?” Lassan looked out the window. Outside, the forest [music] had become denser. “Can you try?” I didn’t ask you if I could. I asked you what would happen. No one [music] responded to that.
Conan looked out the window, at the road, the shoulder, the grass of the ditch visible [music] in the light of the headlights, concrete, physical, present things. He stretched out [music] his hand and touched the cold, real glass. The glass under her fingers had the exact texture of glass. He placed his hand on the door handle. The handle moved.
That surprised him. He had half-waited for her not to move, for something supernatural [music] and absurd to prevent her from doing so. But the handle moved normally with the usual [music] click of a car door. The door opened. The wind from the road suddenly came in. The cold air, the speed of the [music] car which created outward pressure.
There was something real in it, real wind, [music] of real speed, a ditch that passed by at a speed that made everything dangerous. Inè turned around. Conan. His voice hadn’t changed in tone. No urgency, no pleading, [music] just her first name. Said with something in the voice that sounded like anticipatory sadness.
The driver is not slowing down [music]. Conan watched the roadside go by . The vegetation, the ditch. He calculated. [music] Jumping at that speed, perhaps kilometers per hour, meant [music] a brutal fall, a certain injury, perhaps serious, but an injury was repairable. [music] What the car represented might not have been.
He jumped, rolled in the grass on the side of the road, absorbed the shock as best he could, felt his left shoulder hit something hard under the vegetation. He stopped, lying on his back in the cold, damp grass, breathless. He was alive, he [music] was breathing. The shoulder hurt, a real, precise pain, the kind of pain that indicates a real impact.
He moved his fingers, his legs, everything worked. He sat up straight and looked at the road. The car kept going. The red taillights moved away into the dark, steady, without slowing down, without swerving, as if nobody inside had noticed its [music] jump or had wanted to notice or knew that noticing changed nothing.
He watched them disappear. Then he got up, married himself, took his bag which he had managed to keep in the fall [music] and looked around him. He was alone on the road. Night, cold wind, the forest on one side, the fields on the other. He had no idea of the exact distance to the next [music] dwelling, but he was out.
He picked up his phone to call someone, [music] his parents, a friend, anyone. The screen lit up, but there was no network. He walked for a few minutes, watching the signal bars. Still nothing. He saw the light before he heard the car. Headlights behind him, a car approaching in his direction, not in the opposite direction [music] , in the same direction as him, coming from behind.
He turned around and raised his hand. [music] The car stopped. The window went down. Inè watched him from the front passenger seat. Conan remained motionless at the side of the road, his hand still raised, looking at Ine’s face. The same smile, the same way of holding her head slightly tilted. “You’ve left,” she said, “but you’re still on the road.
” [music] He looked at the car, then at the road behind him from which the car had come. He had been walking [music] in one direction since he had left. The car had come from behind him in that same direction, [music] which meant that it had turned around or had gone on and come back or something else he didn’t want to formulate yet.
“How many times can you jump ?” said Lassan [music] from the back. The question was asked without mockery, really asked as if the answer [music] mattered. Conan looked at his hands, his own hands. The scar on my right thumb, the pain in my left shoulder that throbbed regularly. He had gotten out of the car. He had rolled in the cold grass.
He had dirt on his knees. All of that was real. [music] So, why was the car in front of him? He said, in a calmer voice than he thought possible, I’m not going up . Iness looked at him for a long moment, then she said something he wasn’t expecting [music]. Conan, do you remember the exact moment you got into the car? He was going to answer yes.
Of course he remembered . It was 20 minutes ago [music] when something went wrong. He searched for the memory, the window going down, the smile of his own hesitation [music] for a fraction of a second, the handle, the door. But before that, just before that, [music] what had happened? Were there headlights in the dark? Yes, the pharaohs were approaching.
And before the headlights, he walked. He was walking along the side of the road, the wind on his neck, the bag on his shoulder. [music] And before walking, he searched for the memory of the station in the intermediate town, the parking lot, the sign that indicated 5:30. He had gone outside [music] and had started walking.
He had taken the main road. He searched for the memory of having left [music] the station. He didn’t find it . He methodically searched again for the shared taxi he had dropped off. Yes, [music] there was that. The station was closed, there was a sign, and then there were the headlights.
Between the station and the headlights, there must have been walking, time on the road, the cold [music] on his neck, his feet on the asphalt. But when he searched for that memory precisely, not just its existence, [music] its concrete texture, he found nothing solid, just the idea that he had walked, not the [music] memory of having done so. He looked at his shoes.
The right sole had mud on it, [music] logical if we had walked in the damp night. He looked at his hands, the scar on his right thumb, [music] the pain in his left shoulder since the fall. He said very softly to Iness, who was waiting, “Has there been an accident tonight on this road?” Iness [music] did not respond.
Lassan said from the back without looking at him. The collective taxi [music]. Conan felt the ground give way beneath him, not physically. He was standing, his feet on the asphalt, everything was solid. But something in his way of inhabiting [music] this body, this road, this night, shifted, the shared taxi he had brought [music] from the university town to the intermediate town.
A 2-hour journey in the night. He had dozed off. He remembered the departure, the bus station, the other passengers, the engine starting. He remembered leaning against the window and closing his eyes. He did not remember arriving. [music] He did not remember getting out of the taxi, paying, seeing his luggage on the sidewalk, [music] entering the station and reading the sign.
His memories were not hazy. There was no [music]. He said, “The taxi was in an accident.” Adjobo, from inside the car, said softly: “Yes, I did not survive. A silence [music] on the road.” “No,” said Ines. Conan stood by the side of the highway [music] at 2 or 3 in the morning, or whatever the time was, since hours no longer counted the same way [music], and looked at his hands one last time: the scar on his right thumb, the pain in his shoulder, traces of life his body still carried out of habit, out of loyalty to what he had been for 23
years. He looked at the car. Ines in the shadows of the rear, the profile of the silent driver. He opened the back door and got in. The car drove off. Conan sat in his seat, the bag between his feet, his hands on his knees. Adjobo beside him was no longer asleep. She was looking at him with something in her eyes that was neither pity nor satisfaction, something [music] simpler, gratitude, the look of someone who sees someone else arrive where they themselves are.
Conan looked out the window, at the road, [music] the fields, the forest. He says, “The fourth passenger, the one who was supposed to be with you 10 years ago and who missed [music] the departure.” Iness says, “Yes, who was it?” “A silence.” Then Ines says, “Someone who took this route regularly like you, a student.” Conan [music] thought about that.
He didn’t know you were waiting. No, he continued with his life. He has finished his studies. [music] He found a job. He had a family. He died an old man in his bed surrounded by his children. [Music] ” So, he’s not here with you.” No. Conan stared straight ahead through the windshield. The straight road [music] continued.
The headlights illuminated a few meters ahead. So why do you need a fourth passenger if the real fourth one had a whole life and died some other way? Why are you still stuck here? The silence [music] that followed was different from the other silences of the night. Longer, denser. Ines stared straight ahead. Lassan didn’t move. Adjobo looked down.
It was the driver [music] who spoke for the first time since the beginning of the journey. A low, unaccustomed voice [music] like someone who hadn’t spoken in a long time. He said, “Because I knew I wanted to sleep.” Conan looked at the driver’s profile in the rearview mirror. He didn’t move.
He continued to stare at the road [music] with that fixity that was no longer concentration. “You knew you were going to fall asleep.” I’d been feeling it for an hour. My eyes were closing. I’d [music] asked if anyone wanted to drive. They said, “No, he was asleep.” And you kept going anyway. [music] I thought I’d be okay , that it was still far away, that the cold would help.
Iness said in a voice that [music] was n’t reproachful. We were asleep, we didn’t know . I knew. Conan understood the whole [music] structure of what he was experiencing. The car that had been driving for ten years, the three passengers who couldn’t [music] leave, not because they needed a [que] to complete something, but because they were bound to the driver.
And the driver couldn’t leave because he hadn’t yet said what he knew. He looked at the driver in the rearview mirror. You never said it. In ten years on the road, you never told them you knew. A silence. Lassan said since the tang of a voice that carried something the ten years hadn’t erased. No. Iness said, “We knew it from the beginning, but he had to say it himself.
” [music] Conan looked at the driver. The man in the front seat didn’t turn around . His hands on the steering wheel were [music] motionless. “Talk to them,” Conan said softly. The driver did n’t speak for long, not with elaborate words or a constructed confession. [music] A few simple sentences spoken in a low voice into the night to three passengers who had been hearing them for [music] ten years without having heard them.
They knew, he had carried on, he was asking for their forgiveness. What happened [music] next, Conan experienced without being able to explain it in ordinary terms. The car slowed, not abruptly, gradually, as if the [music] engine was losing its purpose rather than its power. It stopped at the side of the road [music] on a grassy verge in a place where nothing was visible It was indistinguishable from other sections of road.
But Conan knew, without being told, that it was kilometer 47. [music] The doors didn’t open. Nothing spectacular happened. Just the silence [music] suddenly complete after hours of driving, the engine off, the headlights going out. In the darkness of the car, [music] Conan felt something dissolving around him.
Not a sudden disappearance, a slow dissolution [music] like fog lifting with the morning heat. Iness was there, then she was less there, then she wasn’t there at all. Lassan did the same [music] to Jobo, the driver. And then Conan was alone in an empty car on the side of a national highway [music] at 3 a.m. with mud on his knees and pain in his left shoulder and [music] a backpack between his feet.
He sat for a long time in the silence [music] then He got out of the car. Outside, the air was cold, real. [music] He took a deep breath, looked up and down the road. He was [music] alone. He picked up his phone, two bars of signal. He called [music] his mother. She answered with the voice of someone who wasn’t really asleep.
“Conan, [music] it’s 3:00 a.m. What’s going on?” He said he’d had a problem with transportation, [music] that he was on the highway, that he needed someone to pick him up . He gave his approximate location. [music] She said okay. She was sending her father. He waited by the side of the road, [music] hands in his pockets, looking at the stars that were visible here, far from the city lights.
He thought about the [music] four people in the car, about what being on a highway meant, about how an unacknowledged mistake could become such a real prison. than a concrete cell. When the headlights of his father’s car appeared at the end of the straightaway, he felt something he could never quite name, [music] not exactly relief, something more fundamental, the simple certainty of being there, [music] present, alive, on a road that led toward something rather than looping back on itself.
[music] He got into his father’s car. The door closed. The car drove off. His father didn’t ask him [music] any questions. He drove in silence, his eyes on the road, with the quiet concentration of someone who has been awake for 20 minutes and is driving [music] carefully because the night is dark and the road is long.
Conan looked out the window. Kilometer 47 passed without incident. Just a grassy shoulder like any other, [music] a stretch of road like any other. He never told anyone what had happened [music] that night. Not to his parents, not to his friends, not to his girlfriend. Not because he didn’t believe what he had experienced.
He believed it deeply and undoubtedly [music] possible. But because some things belong to the night in which they happened [music], and recounting them in the light of day would have been a way of betraying them. The dead don’t always seek to harm. Sometimes, they just seek to finish something they [music] couldn’t finish.
A word left unsaid, a fault unacknowledged, a truth that had stagnated in silence for too long. Conan [music] was lucky, not because he got out of the car. Getting out of the car wouldn’t have changed anything. [music] The road always led back to the same place. But because he understood what the night was asking of him.
Not to be the fourth ghost, to be the witness who allows a truth to be spoken. There are [music] things one cannot Not something to take with you to the afterlife without leaving a trace in the world of the living. Delayed confessions, denied responsibilities, words tucked away deep inside, thinking they no longer mattered since you were dead. They still matter.
Thank you for following this story. If it kept you on the edge of your seat, if it made you think twice before getting into a car at night, subscribe, share it, and tell us in the comments what scared you the most. See you soon for a new story that will send shivers down your spine. M.
