The Ride

A ghostly hitchhiker prompts a man to confront guilt, compassion, and unseen tragedies.

The city had a different face at night. Not the noise and chaos of yellow buses and impatient horns, but a quieter, watchful Lagos like it knew something you didn’t.
Jayjay’s Corolla hummed along the dim stretch of road between Surulere and Oshodi, headlights cutting through occasional mist. The traffic had eased, but the tension hadn’t. It lingered in his shoulders, sat heavy behind his eyes. He hadn’t meant to work this late again. But the week’s invoices wouldn’t process themselves, and his boss had a thing for 11:59 p.m. deadlines.
He rubbed his temples. He hated driving at night. Something about the way the shadows shifted, how familiar places looked like strangers. The streetlights here flickered in slow convulsions, as if unsure whether to stay alive. One had died completely, casting an entire stretch in darkness.
Jayjay’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “God abeg,” he muttered.
A dead dog lay crumpled near a gutter, ribs exposed like broken piano keys. He looked away quickly, then regretted it, the image burned itself into his memory. He turned up the radio. Static. He flipped the dial. Nothing but talk shows already halfway through arguments. He switched it off.
His phone buzzed once. A message from Tinu: “Babe, u still on d road? Pls drive safe. Kids ask of u.”
He smiled faintly. His girls — Amara and Teni. Eight and five. The thought of them curled in their pink pajamas helped settle the buzz in his nerves.
And yet, the unease remained. Like someone watching. Or waiting.
Up ahead, the road curved past a line of tall trees that blocked the moonlight. Jayjay squinted. Something moved.
A man stood by the roadside, barefoot, waving slowly, not frantic, not urgent. Just a steady wave, as if expecting to be seen.
Jayjay slowed.
“What are you doing?” he asked himself. But his foot eased off the pedal. The man stepped closer to the edge. No car in sight, no houses nearby, no bus stop.
He didn’t usually stop for strangers.
But something about tonight… Something about the stillness of the air, how the trees weren’t rustling, how his heart had begun to beat a little too fast.
Jayjay pulled over.
He glanced at the rearview. The man stood motionless, now just watching. Waiting.
“Guy,” Jayjay called, voice low. “You dey go where?”
The man didn’t answer. He simply walked to the door, opened it, and got in.
No bag. No sweat on his skin, even though the night was warm. He wore a faded school uniform shirt. His feet were caked with dust.
Jayjay put the car in gear, his pulse thudding.
“Where you dey go?” he asked again, trying to sound casual.
The man turned slowly to face him.
“Anywhere light dey.”
Jayjay nodded, not quite sure why. “Alright. I fit drop you for Cele side.”
The man didn’t respond. He just faced forward, hands resting on his thighs like he was waiting for something, or someone, to begin. Jayjay took the car back onto the road, headlights carving uncertain paths through the dark.
A silence settled. Not comfortable, not hostile either, just... wrong.
“You no get slippers?” Jayjay asked, trying for something light.
The man gave a small smile. “I waka reach here.”
Jayjay almost chuckled, but something about the reply scratched at his spine. He cleared his throat.
“You stay around this side?”
“No,” the man said. “I no dey stay anywhere.”
Jayjay tried not to look at him. He focused on the road, though the lines were beginning to blur. The radio crackled back to life suddenly, not with music, but with a sharp hiss, then the haunting vocals of an old Fela track, the kind his father used to play on cassette tapes. He reached for the dial, turned it off again. His fingers felt oddly cold.
The man finally spoke.
“You get children?”
Jayjay hesitated. “Yes. Two girls.”
“Dem small?”
“Yeah. Eight and five.”
The man nodded slowly, eyes still fixed ahead. Then he said, almost like a prayer, almost like a curse:
“I dey pray make you see them tomorrow.”
Jayjay’s grip on the wheel tightened. “Wetin you talk?”
But the man didn’t answer. He leaned back into the seat, eyes half-closed like he hadn’t just said something chilling.
Jayjay’s mind raced. Should he stop? Push the man out? No. He was tired, that was all. He was imagining things. Maybe this guy was high. Or mad. Or both.
A wind slipped through the closed windows. Cold. Sharp.
Jayjay glanced at the side mirror. The reflection of the road behind was there. But the man wasn’t.
His throat went dry.
He looked again, but still no reflection.
He stole a glance sideways.
The man was still there.
Jayjay’s mouth moved, but no words came out. He swallowed.
“Guy... you sure say…”
“I died on this road.”
Jayjay slammed on the brakes.
The car skidded slightly before coming to a stop on the shoulder. His breath came short. He turned fully to the man.
“Wetin you talk just now?”
“I been dey go school that morning,” the man said calmly. “Rain fall well. We dey inside the bus wey no get brake. Driver no wan lose money. I remember the sound. How the sky bend. How the road just open for us.”
He smiled again. A sad one.
“Dem no even find my body for two days. Na my mama buy uniform wey resemble my own put for coffin. She no fit see me. Only for dream.”
Jayjay sat frozen. The engine still hummed. Outside, the trees swayed though the air inside the car had gone dead still.
“You fit drop me small after Odo-Olowu,” the man said.
Jayjay didn’t move. Couldn’t.
The man looked at him now. Deeply.
“E no dey pain me say I die. Wetin pain me be say people dey pass. Dem dey see me. But nobody ever stop.”
Jayjay opened his mouth, then closed it. His heart was drumming in his ears.
“You be the first to stop,” the man said. “You dey hear.”
Jayjay finally forced out a whisper. “Who you be?”
The man turned slightly, the light from the dashboard catching a faded name tag stitched onto the front of his school shirt:
O. ALABI — SS3B
Jayjay stared.
“I no dey vex,” Alabi said. “But I wan go. E dey pain to stay.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out nothing. His fingers just closed in the air like muscle memory. Then he looked up.
“You go help me?”
Jayjay blinked. “Help how?”
“You go go cemetery,” Alabi said. “Odo-Olowu. You go find grave wey no get name. You go pour water before sun rise. Just small water. You go feel am.”
Jayjay’s head shook slowly. “This thing wey dey happen….e no real.”
“I no dey beg you to believe. I dey beg you to help.”
Jayjay looked down. His hands were trembling. His breath fogged slightly in the suddenly cold air.
When he looked up again, Alabi was watching him with a calm that made the hair on his arms rise.
“You go still see your girls,” Alabi said gently.
Jayjay turned sharply toward him, but the seat was empty.
The door hadn’t opened.
The cushion hadn’t moved.
The car was still.
Jayjay’s voice came out small: “Jesus…”
He looked into the rearview again. Nothing.
But his ears picked up a sound like water dripping onto dry earth. Then silence.
He started the car and drove.
Jayjay didn’t remember the drive. He only knew the road turned familiar and strange all at once. He passed places he knew; churches, beer parlors, mechanic shops, but they looked different, older somehow. Shadows hung heavier. The night pressed in.
Odo-Olowu.
The turn came quietly, without warning. The sign was half-buried behind weeds and rust. He took it.
The cemetery loomed ahead. No gate. No security. Just a sagging fence and rows of crooked tombstones like teeth in an ancient mouth. The Corolla idled for a moment before Jayjay killed the engine. He sat still, listening. The silence wasn’t silent. It buzzed, like insects whispering secrets.
He stepped out.
The air was truly cold now, not just eerie. He clutched the small water bottle from his dashboard, the one Teni had stuck smiley-face stickers on. His feet crunched on dried leaves and broken twigs.
He walked between rows. Names stared up at him from cracked marble: “Olumide Olayiwola, beloved father.” “Adaobi Eze, gone too soon.” Some were fresh. Some worn.
But he wasn’t looking for names.
He walked past three rows. Four. Five.
Then something shifted.
A sudden weight pressed down on his chest; not pain, but presence. The hair on his arms stood. His bones... hummed.
Jayjay stopped.
Before him, a patch of ground. No stone. No marker. Nothing but disturbed earth, slightly sunken.
He kneeled.
The bottle trembled in his hands. He opened it. Poured the water gently. Drop by drop. It soaked into the soil, darkening it, quenching something unseen.
He didn’t realize he was crying until the tears hit his knuckles. He wiped them roughly, ashamed of what, he didn’t know. Then he wept harder. Quietly. Fully.
Something passed through him.
A breeze. A breath. A whisper.
It wasn’t a word, just a knowing.
Something had shifted.
Peace.
He sat back on the ground, breathing like a man who had been holding his breath for years.
Then, as if on cue, a bird sang. Just once. Soft, but bright.
Jayjay looked around. The moonlight fell clearer now. The cemetery, though still ancient, no longer felt cruel. Just old. Just quiet.
Just... resting.
He rose and walked back to the car.

Six months later.
The road hadn’t changed.
Streetlights still flickered. Lagos still buzzed like a living thing. But Jayjay was different.
He still worked late. Still hated the traffic. But when he drove that stretch of road at night, he didn’t dread it anymore.
He watched the sides carefully.
He hadn’t seen O. Alabi again.
But he had seen others.
A girl in a hospital gown near Maryland.
An old man walking barefoot near Ojuelegba.
He stopped, now.
Not every time. But often.
Not out of fear. But out of duty.
Sometimes they entered. Sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they just nodded and disappeared the moment he slowed down.
He never asked too many questions anymore. Just listened.
He told Tinu he couldn’t explain it. She didn’t press. But she noticed the quiet peace in his eyes, how he smiled a little more when Amara and Teni rushed into his arms at night.
The city still held ghosts.
But some were not meant to haunt.
Some just wanted to be heard.
On a Thursday evening, as dusk rolled in like smoke, Jayjay saw another figure by the roadside. He slowed, just a bit. The figure looked up, a boy, maybe ten, holding a rusted toy car.
Jayjay looked at him through the glass. The boy didn’t wave. Just stared, solemn.
Jayjay nodded.
The boy smiled, then vanished.
Jayjay smiled back.
He didn’t stop that time. But he would, next time.
Because now he understood.
“Sometimes… You’re not helping a stranger. You’re freeing a soul.”