Chapter 3: The Passenger in the Small Hours

My friend’s father, Uncle Li, had been hauling freight over long distances for more than twenty years. The steering wheel of his truck was worn to a dull shine by his palms, and the glove box beside the passenger seat always held the same few things: a thermos, half a pack of cigarettes, and whatever small roadside odds and ends had accumulated there. Men who drive through the night know this better than anyone: the road has more strange stories than any service station has bowls of instant noodles.

It was late autumn when it happened. Uncle Li and his partner were making a run to Inner Mongolia, and Uncle Li had taken the back half of the night, the hours when even the highway seems to be holding its breath.

By three in the morning, the expressway had disappeared into fog. It drifted over the road like cotton packed with ice. The headlights carved two pale tunnels through it, catching only the guardrail, the black stretch of asphalt ahead, and now and then a road sign that flashed up and was gone before the eye could settle on it. His partner slept in the bunk behind him, snoring heavily. Uncle Li held the stub of a cigarette between his fingers, his knuckles gone white from too many hours on the wheel. Each breath he exhaled left a faint film of mist on the windshield.

He never knew exactly when it began.

He only felt the passenger seat dip, just slightly, as though someone had eased himself into it.

Uncle Li looked over from the corner of his eye.

A man was sitting there.

He wore a gray cloth shirt. His hair was damp, as if it had gathered the night mist. His face was buried in shadow, but his eyes were visible enough: fixed straight ahead on the road, wide open, staring without a blink.

Uncle Li’s heart struck hard against his ribs. The cigarette slipped from his fingers and dropped near the accelerator. He did not reach down for it. He did not turn his head for a better look.

After all those years driving night roads, he understood at once.

He had not stopped the truck.

Something had climbed aboard anyway.

The cab turned cold all at once, a cold that seemed to rise from the metal and settle into his bones. Even the hot water in the thermos appeared to lose its warmth faster than it should have. Uncle Li tightened both hands around the wheel. His throat moved, but he said nothing.

Old drivers had rules for things like this. If such a passenger got into your cab, you did not ask where he came from. You did not ask where he was going. You did not make conversation, and you did not let him touch you. You simply kept the truck steady and let him leave when he was ready.

So Uncle Li kept his eyes on the fog lamps and the road beyond them. There was only the low, constant growl of the engine, and his partner’s snores rising and falling from the bunk. The man in the passenger seat sat like a figure carved from dark wood. No warmth clouded from his mouth. His body did not shift with the bumps in the road. He remained rigid and silent, staring forward, his eyes never closing.

Uncle Li could not have said how long he drove that way. He smoked through half the pack without noticing. At last the headlights caught the mouth of a tunnel ahead.

It stood at the border between Inner Mongolia and Hebei. Above the entrance hung the sign: Yinshan Tunnel. Wind poured down through the mountain pass and hit the truck hard enough to make the cab shudder.

Uncle Li drove into the tunnel.

When he came out on the other side, he dared to glance toward the passenger seat again.

It was empty.

The cold was still there, faint but unmistakable, as though a block of ice had only just been lifted away.

Only then did Uncle Li let out the breath he had been holding. He pulled into the next service station, wrapped both hands around his thermos, and drank several mouthfuls of hot water. By the time he lowered it, he realized the shirt beneath his jacket was damp. Sweat had soaked through his back.

Later, when his partner woke, Uncle Li mentioned it in the most casual voice he could manage.

“Someone was sitting up front just now,” he said. “I never stopped, so I suppose he was only catching a ride.”

His partner put a cigarette between his lips and laughed.

“That happens around there,” he said. “There was a bad accident near that tunnel years ago. Probably someone who never made it to where he was going.”

Uncle Li said nothing more. He only refilled his thermos with hot water.

He understood how it was for men who spent their lives on the highway. Sooner or later, each of them met a passenger or two like that. Perhaps they were lost souls. Perhaps they were ghosts who had missed the first bus home. They climbed aboard without a sound and disappeared the same way, no heavier than fog on the road.

By morning, they were gone.

After that night, one more thing appeared in the glove box beside Uncle Li’s passenger seat: a string of peach-wood beads.

He said it was not because he was afraid.

It was only something left there for those still trying to get somewhere.