The Fifth Passenger

Part-3: The Other Car

Meena turned to look at the children instead, trying to calm her nerves. Aarav had fallen asleep properly now, his head resting against the window. Riya was still awake, staring out at the passing trees, her toy rabbit held tightly in her small hands.

"Riya, beta, try to sleep," Meena said softly.

Riya turned to look at her mother. In the dim light of the car, her eyes looked darker than usual, almost black.

"Mumma," Riya said quietly, "Papa has been driving for a very long time. Why is his shirt still wet from the rain? It should be dry by now, no?"

Meena's blood went cold. She looked at Ravi's shirt. Riya was right — even though almost forty minutes had passed since he had changed the tire in the rain, his shirt was still soaked, clinging to his back and shoulders as if he had just stepped out of the storm seconds ago.

"Maybe the car heater is not working properly," Meena said, trying to keep her voice steady, though her hands had started to tremble in her lap.

She looked at Ravi again. He continued driving, calm and steady, his eyes on the road, his wet shirt not drying at all despite the warm air blowing from the car's vents.

A few minutes later, without warning, the car's radio — which had been off this whole time — suddenly turned on by itself. Static filled the car, sharp and loud, making everyone jump. Riya let out a small scream. Aarav woke up with a start.

"What happened?" Aarav asked, rubbing his eyes.

"Nothing, just the radio," Meena said, quickly reaching over to turn it off.

But before her fingers touched the dial, a voice came through the static — faint, broken, but clear enough to understand.

"...four... only four... watch the mirror... watch the mirror..."

Then the radio went silent again, as if it had never turned on at all.

Nobody spoke for a moment. The only sound was the rain, now falling softly instead of heavily, tapping gently against the roof of the car.

"That was strange," Aarav finally said, his voice shaky. "Old radios sometimes catch weird signals, right, Papa?"

Ravi did not answer. He kept driving, his eyes fixed straight ahead, his expression completely blank, as if he had not heard the radio at all.

Meena reached out and touched his arm gently. "Ravi?"

Slowly, Ravi turned his head toward her. For just a moment — half a second, maybe less — his eyes looked completely black, with no white part visible at all. Then, just as quickly, they returned to normal, and he smiled at her, a warm, familiar smile.

"Yes, Meena? What is it?"

"N-nothing," Meena said, forcing a smile back, though her heart was hammering in her chest. "Just checking on you."

She turned back to face the front, her mind racing. Was she imagining things? Was the stress of the long night making her see things that were not there? She wanted to believe that. She wanted to believe it so badly.

But then Aarav leaned forward from the back seat and whispered into her ear, so softly that only she could hear.

"Mumma, when we were at the tea shop, I looked through the window. I saw Papa talking to an old man inside. But Papa never went inside the shop. He stood at the door the whole time. I saw two Papas for a second — one at the door, and one inside, sitting in the old man's place."

Meena's whole body went cold. She turned slowly to look at her son. Aarav's face was pale, his eyes wide with fear, but he was completely serious. He was not joking.

"Are you sure?" Meena whispered back.

Aarav nodded. "I only saw it for one second. Then it was gone. I thought maybe I was dreaming, because I was half asleep. But Riya saw it too. She told me."

Meena turned to look at Riya, who was staring out of the window again, humming a soft, tuneless song under her breath — a song none of them had ever taught her.

"Riya," Meena said gently. "What song is that?"

Riya stopped humming and looked at her mother with a strange, calm expression that did not belong on the face of a seven-year-old child.

"It's Papa's song," Riya said. "The other Papa taught it to me. He said if I sing it, he will always know where to find us."

A cold silence fell over the car. Outside, the rain had almost completely stopped, but the darkness remained thick and heavy, pressing against the windows like something alive.

Ravi continued driving, his face calm, his hands steady on the wheel, as if he had heard nothing of this conversation at all.

Then, ahead of them, headlights appeared in the distance — another vehicle, coming toward them on the narrow road.

"Someone else is on this road," Ravi said, sounding relieved. "Good, that means we are close to the highway."

As the vehicle came closer, Meena felt a strange tightness in her chest, a feeling she could not explain. She squinted through the windshield, trying to see the approaching car more clearly.

It was the same model as theirs. The same color. The same small dent on the front bumper that their own car had gotten last year in a parking lot accident.

"Ravi," Meena said slowly, "that car... it looks exactly like ours."

"Don't be silly," Ravi said, though his voice had changed slightly, become flatter, less like himself. "There are thousands of cars like this on the road."

But as the other car passed them, moving in the opposite direction, Meena turned her head to look through the back window, and what she saw made her stomach drop.

Inside the other car, sitting in the driver's seat, was a man who looked exactly like Ravi — same face, same clothes, even the same wet shirt clinging to his back. And in the passenger seat, sitting exactly where Meena was sitting now, was another woman who looked exactly like her.

In the back seat of that other car were two children, a boy and a girl, who looked exactly like Aarav and Riya.

The other car did not slow down. It disappeared into the darkness behind them within seconds, its taillights fading into the rain and fog.

Nobody in Ravi's car spoke for a long time. Meena sat frozen in her seat, unable to make sense of what she had just seen. Aarav had gone completely pale, staring at his mother with wide, frightened eyes. Riya was the only one who seemed unbothered, still humming her strange little tune.

"Did anyone else see that?" Meena finally whispered.

Aarav nodded slowly. "That was us, Mumma. That was our car. But how can there be two of the same car, with the same people inside?"

Ravi laughed — a short, strange laugh that did not sound like his usual laugh at all. "You are all tired. It's very late, and we have all had a long, scary night. Our minds are playing tricks on us. Once we reach the hill town and get some rest, everything will feel normal again."

But Meena was no longer looking at her husband with trust. She was looking at him the way you look at a stranger — carefully, cautiously, trying to find something familiar in a face that suddenly felt unfamiliar.

She thought back to everything that had happened since the tire burst. The strange light in the jungle. The old man's warning to count her family. Ravi's shirt that would not dry. The radio that spoke of "only four" and told them to "watch the mirror." Aarav's story about seeing two Ravis at the tea shop. Riya's song, taught to her by "the other Papa." And now, an identical car with an identical family passing them on this same, endless road.

Slowly, carefully, without letting her fear show on her face, Meena reached into her bag and pulled out her phone. Still no signal, as expected. But the camera worked without needing signal.

She held the phone low, near her lap, and quietly opened the camera, pointing it toward the rearview mirror where Ravi's reflection would appear.

She pretended to check something on her phone, and while doing so, she took a picture.

When she looked at the photo she had captured, her hands began to shake so badly that she almost dropped the phone.

In the picture, the rearview mirror showed the reflection of the back seat — Aarav and Riya, sitting exactly as they were. But in the driver's seat, where Ravi's reflection should have appeared, the mirror showed nothing. No reflection at all. Just empty space, as if no one was sitting there.

Meena looked up from her phone, her breath coming in short, panicked gasps, and looked directly at her husband, who was sitting right beside her, very much visible, very much real, driving the car with steady hands.

"Ravi," she said, her voice trembling, "who are you?"

TO BE CONTINUED...