legends · 4 min read ·
Route 9, Incident Notes
A night bus driver's incident notes count passengers who all share his face at different ages.
**Northline Buses · Driver Incident Notes · Route 9 · Vehicle 412**
**Driver:** Dale Hudson · **Shift:** 21:40–06:00 · **Date:** 14 Oct
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**21:52 · Stop 14 (Market Square).** Boarded: 3. Fare paid. Normal.
**22:08 · Stop 22 (Ferris Road).** Boarded: 1. He asked for a ticket to "the stop after the stop." I said we don't have one. He said he'd been told I'd know it.
**22:19 · Stop 9 (Carrow Road).** Stop not on route map. Sign reads "Carrow Road" in the same font, with a bus shelter, timetable, and a bench. Nobody at the stop. Stopped anyway. Four passengers boarded.
*Note: all four had my face. Not like mine. Mine, from the rear-view mirror. They each sat down and looked straight ahead.*
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**22:31 · Stop 9 (Carrow Road), return.** Passengers have not got off. Asked them to leave. They said they'd been asked to ride to the end of the line, and that they'd wait for the next stop to be called. None of them pressed the bell.
Dispatch radio: asked dispatch if Carrow Road is on the route. Dispatch said yes, stop 9 is on the route. Asked dispatch to check the stop list. Dispatch said stop 9 is "Carrow Road, request only."
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**Dispatch radio log (Route 9, 22:40)**
Dispatch to 412: "Hudson, you've got a passenger count of nine. Please confirm."
412 to dispatch: "Nine, yes. Seven of them are me."
Dispatch: "Say again, 412?"
412: "They're all asking for the same stop. The one at the top of the hill, where the road turns into the cemetery. They say it's their stop. They say I'm the one who keeps driving past it."
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**22:48 · Stop 19 (Hollis Crescent).** Boarded: 1. Passenger was a man, aged about forty, with a holdall. He sat in the front seat, behind me, and said "Morning, Dale." I said it was night. He said, "It's always morning for the first one out."
*Note: passenger has no ticket. He says his father told him to stay on the bus until the driver remembers where they live.*
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**23:17 · Stop 3 (Station Road).** Boarded: 2. Both women, older, sitting together. They asked me to check the time. My clock said 23:17. They said, "That's when we got on last time, too."
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**Driver's note (Dale Hudson, 14 Oct, 00:05, at the end of the line, stationary)**
Bus is at the terminus. Engine off. Lights on. I've turned round to look at my passengers.
There are twelve of them now. I count them in the mirror, one at a time. Every one of them is me, at a different age. The youngest is the man from Hollis Crescent. The oldest is a man in his seventies, with grey hair and a pen clipped to his shirt, who has been looking at the back of my head the whole way round.
I've been driving this route for nineteen years. I've never seen any of them before. But they all know my name.
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**Depot memo (Northline, 16 Oct)**
Vehicle 412 has been taken out of service for inspection. Driver Dale Hudson has been placed on leave pending review.
Inspection finds no fault. The route log shows stop 9 has been used on 412's journeys every night since 2006. The log shows the stop was not added to the timetable until 2011. Passenger count for the route in 2011 was recorded as 11, including the driver.
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**Dispatch radio log (Route 9, 19 Oct)**
Dispatch to any Route 9 driver: "Standby, we have a bus at Carrow Road that is not on the timetable. Driver's logged in as Hudson, but he's not at the wheel. Passengers say he's in the back seat."
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**Final driver's note (Dale Hudson, 27 Oct, at home, written on the back of his route card)**
I've been asked to come back to work. I said I'd think about it.
I went to Carrow Road this morning. The stop is there, the shelter and the bench, the sign in the same font. I sat on the bench for an hour. A bus came by, number 412, and stopped, and the doors opened, and I looked up, and the driver was me.
He said, "You're late, Dale. We've been holding the stop for you. Everyone's on board."
The bus company retired vehicle 412 in November and sold it for scrap. The yard reports the dashboard clock is set to 23:17 and has not moved since the sale. Dale Hudson returned to the day route, which has no stop at Carrow Road.