The Bus Revamped by Frank Dingle

The Bus Revamped. An analysis of the story.

Bill and Mary, two unlikely travellers. One heading to Sydney the other migrating to Melbourne. Each searching for a new life, and unknowingly will fall in love before the story ends.
The story actually begins, almost, half a century earlier with one of Bill's forerunners who has escaped a psychiatric institution and moves out on a bus, to head up north from Melbourne.
He snaps and inadvertently sends passengers and driver over the side of a cliff.
There is only one legacy, a passenger by the name of Mrs. Winshore, who when feeling well enough to speak, tells the police that the man stood up and began bellowing at the driver "YOU ARE A FOUNDATION OF THE DEVIL, AND YOU MUST SUCCUMB!"
Thus begins the quest for the descendants of Peter Lamb.

The bus remodels it's surface to match perfectly with other large bus lines and both it and the chauffeur are one with the devil himself. And they are out to gather other passengers to keep itself alive with the blood of the upright. The driver of this bus is in point of fact the driver who had died many years earlier and is linked with this vehicle to hell.

In the end a direct descendant, who happens to be Bill, is located and thus begins over two hours of insane driving as Bill and Mary compete against time and to what seems a sure and terminal ending of death.

Here is a small section from "The Bus Revamped"

On the Nullarbor, under a full moon; shimmering silver and raw bile, the bus travelled the plane tarred strip, so as to stretch into a vista which spoke of eternity, silence, like silent words. It moved toward a course of events that could only bring doom.

Succubus ( a short poem from Mary's Musings)

You run, your feet sail over the ground, eat the miles, nothing can catch you.
You ease up; start slowing down, mistake, soon you can't lift your feet,
They're growing heavy something's back there, out of sight, starting to make headway on you.
You are now running through something like molasses, stretch, you gain an inch but it's much nearer now, it's here. It springs, terror beyond, you howl........

To read the full story, go to Frank's site ArmChairHorrorTales.com or to hear Frank read a section of The Bus : Revamped