Best Short Horror Stories: Driving With a Corpse
The THF Team
The Ride to Feni
It started like any other job. I run a car service in Dhaka — the kind people call when someone's died and the body needs to go somewhere. Nothing special about that morning. Just another call, another family, another address to drive to.
The man had died in Dhaka. We took him to Ibne Sina for the ritual wash first. After that, the family wanted a second wash done at the mosque we use in Dhanmondi — we call it Taka Masjid. So we went there too. Two washings. I don't know why, exactly. Maybe it was just what the family wanted.
After the second wash, we loaded him into my car. Eight people rode with us, packed in with the body. Me and my staff up front, the rest of them in the back with him. Another vehicle came with us too — a Hiace, full of more people from the family.
It was around noon, or close to it. Somewhere between 11:30 and 12:00 — I couldn't tell you the exact minute. We stopped for gas near Signboard before really getting on the highway. Ordinary stuff. Nobody thought anything of it yet.
Then, about a kilometer past the gas station, the car just died.
That part still bothers me. It was a new car. Brand new — fresh off whatever you'd call "new" for a car like that. Not something with wiring problems or a bad battery. I tried the ignition. Nothing. Tried again. Nothing. Third time, it caught, and we were moving again.
And then I started feeling it. A headache, first. Then this weakness spreading through me the further we drove. I didn't say anything about it right away. I just kept driving and hoping it would pass.
It didn't pass. The car died again a few kilometers later. We'd get going, make it maybe two, four, sometimes ten kilometers, and then it would just stop. Every time, we'd sit there a minute, my staff or I would try the ignition again, and eventually it would start. Then the same thing, over and over, the whole way down.
On top of the car dying, the emergency light — the one that's supposed to flash on top when you're carrying a body — wouldn't come on at all. The siren was silent too. All of it, just dead. Nobody in the back said much about it. They just kept telling me to hurry, that the family needed to get there in time for the funeral prayer.
So I tried. I really did. But the car wouldn't cooperate no matter how hard I pushed it.
By the time we reached the edge of the city, I was in bad shape. Weak all over, barely able to keep my hands steady on the wheel. And that's when I clipped a CNG — one of those three-wheeler autos — without meaning to. Just a light hit, nothing that should've caused real damage.
The CNG driver got out furious, stormed toward my window ready to shout. Then he looked past me, into the back seat, and saw the body lying there. His whole face changed. He just said, fine, go on then, you've got a dead body in there, I forgive you.
I remember thinking about it later — how sometimes, if you've been in close contact with a body during the washing, something like this happens at night. Cars acting up, lights going strange. That's what I'd heard before, anyway. But it was afternoon. Broad daylight. Nothing about "night" explained what was happening to us.
We got into Feni around four, four-thirty. The funeral hadn't started yet, so we weren't even late in the end. My helper leaned over at some point and said, quietly, that maybe this one had been a hard man in life. Said sometimes when someone's lived rough, sinful, never prayed — it shows up like this on the way to burial. I didn't argue with him. I didn't agree either. I just didn't know what to say.
We got out. Took the body down, laid him on the bier. And that's when my staff said, go on, try starting the car now — see if it's fine.
One try. It started clean. Siren worked. Light worked. Everything, all at once, like none of it had ever been broken.
That was it. The last time the body was in the car.
Some of the people standing around told us the man had been someone with real power in that area — that people there hadn't been able to stand him, that he'd pushed people around, made life hard for folks under him. I don't know how much of that is true. I only know what I was told, standing there.
And the weakness in my body — it just left. I couldn't tell you the moment it happened. My staff looked at me and said, see, I told you, something was off with this one. I didn't have an answer for him then, and I still don't now.
We got back in the car and drove straight to Dhaka. No stopping, no trouble. The whole way back, nothing. Not one stall, not one flicker in the lights. Like the return trip belonged to a completely different car.
I still don't understand what happened on the way down there. I've thought about it more times than I'd like to admit, and I've never landed on anything that actually explains it. The car worked fine before that trip. It's worked fine every trip since.
Has anything like this ever happened to you — a vehicle, an object, anything just acting wrong around a body or a death? I'd like to hear it if it has.
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