The Silver Bridge

by Gray Barker

  Aesthetically speaking, I consider this work to be quite pleasing. But aesthetics and literal detail may not be all that is available to the reader.

  I do not know quite what we have—in this book. I wonder if the author, himself, knows what he had done. It may well be nothing, or it may be that…

  Perhaps Gray Barker has done, subconsciously, what Mr. Universe did, and forged a golden ball for the children of the world.

  Allen H. Greenfield

  January 1, 1970

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  THE SETTING

  Chapter 1: THE EERIE NIGHT

  Chapter 2: THE RECORDER

  Chapter 3: THE LONELY PLACE

  Chapter 4: LIKE A BIG FAT BIRD

  Chapter 5: MR. UNIVERSE

  Chapter 6: THE SEARCHERS

  Chapter 7: THE WINTER WIND

  hapter 8: THE MAN WITH THE BEARD

  Chapter 9: THE GOLDEN BALL

  Chapter 10: INDRID COLD

  Chapter 11: TAD JONES

  Chapter 12: THE MEN IN BLACK

  Chapter 13: THE CURSE OF CORNSTALK

  Chapter 14: THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT

  Chapter 15: THE DOG THAT SAW MOTHMAN

  Chapter 16: BARBARA HUDSON

  Chapter 17: PSEUDOTRITON RUBER RUBER

  Chapter 18: THE EMPTY BED

  AFTERWORD

  THE SETTING

  In Point Pleasant, W. Va., Mrs. Ralph Thomas opened the ancient family bible, and with shaking finger delineated the passages she knew so well. Then with a shudder she turned the ponderous volume to the steel engravings that depicted the diabolic realm of the wicked, as they burned forever for their transgressions, deep in the bowels of fiery and eternal Hell.

  Yes, the creature was there, or one almost like it. The evil thing, somewhat like an angel, but with wings shriveled and grown blackened, and its face a horrible mask, was indeed terrifying. But never could the picture grip her and hold her in its spell; never could it inspire that power of terror that had welled over her in the vision.

  Again Mrs. Thomas prayed long and fervently; then she prophesied and spoke loudly in tongues.

  And in Parkersburg, a good two hours’ drive to the north, Woodrow Derenberger was also frightened. The fear that shook him was not at the memory of his strange experience, but from the realization of having told it. His fellow human beings, he thought, through prejudice, ignorance or fear, would be his persecutors.

  He had seen a strange ship land and a man get out of it. The man had talked with him, though he spoke no words. Through a process which somebody described as “mental telepathy” he had apparently conversed with a being from a strange world, whose cities were called “gatherings,” and where visitors were known as “searchers”.

  Derenberger held no fear of Indrid Cold, which the man called himself.

  “I mean you no harm. I come from a country much less powerful than yours,” Cold had assured him.

  And in Ripley, midway between Point Pleasant and Parkersburg, Mr. Universe forged his golden ball. He plunged it into the searing heat and drew it out again; then he tempered and retempered it. As he carefully and lovingly polished it, the noise of the forges subsided and he could hear substituted the sounds of laughter and great sport. He could almost see it glistening in the November sun as it was hurled in friendship and good will.

  But in the eyes of man, it would inspire only briefly the wonder of an otherworldly origin, and he would soon test it, drill into it, and lock it in a bank vault for its lucrative value, snatching it from the children of Earth, for whom Mr. Universe had intended it.

  As to the flying creature, Newell Partridge had probably seen it first; rather its eyes, one should say. The fictional protagonist in Edgar Allen Poe’s classic, The Telltale Heart, might have expressed the same fear. “I think it was his eye,” he explains, when he tries, maddened by the telltale beating, to explain why he murdered the old man.

  The eyes glistened like bicycle reflectors from the vicinity of the abandoned barn. Partridge’s German Shepherd dog, “Bandit”, rushed at the eyes as he had often charged wild game. But he encountered something from the unknown.

  Two young couples, Mr. and Mrs. Steve Mallette and Mr. and Mrs. Roger Scarberry, were the next to see it, and the fiery eyes would be forever implanted in their memories. The old T.N.T. plant, with its black windows, like blind eyes staring at them through the darkness, would help set the eerie, almost unnatural scene. Mothman would follow them as they fled homeward. And even after the creature itself went away, its invisible spectre would continue to haunt their lives.

  It was the younger, almost boy-like image of Jesus which Mrs. Ralph Thomas fixed in her mind when she knelt and prayed—not for her personal safety, but for the evils of the world, on Nov. 16, 1966. She first thanked Him for the gift of prophecy which she felt had been bestowed upon her unworthily. Through this gift she had predicted the war in Viet Nam, had accurately foreseen what man would photograph on the moon, and had apocalyptic views of the future, of dire and cataclysmic nature.

  The other image of the Christ, which hung in the small ante room, was older and more severe. Although His visage there carried the benign promise to save mankind, it also suggested an avenging power, the idea that Man, however holy, is still born in sin, and must repent of it with penance and suffering.

  “Dear Jesus,” she implored, “forgive us for our terrifying sins, for we are not perfect. And further, in Thy infinite mercy, forgive us for those greater and perhaps more terrible sins, those of omission, committed against God and His Holy Son!”

  It had been the material world which had intruded the preceding Monday. When Mrs. Thomas finished her housework, putting the large eight-room home in neat shape, it was her custom to kneel silently in the kitchen, where, surrounded by her accoutrements of housewifely arts, she would move her lips in a prayer of thanksgiving for her many blessings. Since she could not often remember any common sin she had committed (she was known throughout the neighborhood as an almost saintly person who was the first to comfort a grief or nurse an illness), she envisioned sins that few others would admit or call to mind: the many things she had not done in the fulfillment of her daily living and the practice of her chosen faith.

  That Monday she had turned on the television set to catch a noon report on the Viet Nam war. There had followed an entertaining program and she had been caught up in it. The young MC of the contest show had reminded her of a relative who had died in an accident—still in sin, though she felt that Jesus would suffer only the most wicked to burn in Hell, and that surely the young, weeping and looking heavenward as they entered those dark and awesome gates, would not be denied one last chance for repentance.

  And she had not prayed for all sinners everywhere: those on drugs, those languishing in prisons, those uncorrupted children of heathen lineage who had never heard even the shortest biblical verse, “Jesus wept.”

  Especially, she had not prayed for those lost souls, who according to the Bible, had not one hope, being damned forever, as had the rich man who begged Lazarus for one drop of water to moisten his tongue.

  “Let me, O Lord, implore you,” she prayed, “to take my own precious life and soul, and place me in that fiery furnace, if but one of those lost souls there might be given a chance once more to bask in the brilliance of Thy golden light, and to experience Thy forgiving and redeeming power.”

  Although she couldn’t understand why even the most wicked should be consigned to eternal suffering, she felt that the ways of God were mysterious and far beyond her mortal powers of understanding.

  But she had forgotten on that day; she had neglected to offer this prayer. And shortly afterward the vision came over her.

  Her prophecies usually came in such visions, but mostly they were less dramatic and not as frightening. Instead it would seem that a quiet voice would speak on such occasions and tell her of events to come.

  This time
the vision was different. It began with black clouds billowing toward her. Out of the clouds came lightning and flame. Then the clouds parted, and a huge airplane, its jets screaming, plunged out of them into her view. It was a vast, unearthly plane, with many engines, all spouting fire and fumes. It poised high in the sky and then plunged toward her, and the noise of the jets seemed to mingle with the screams of many passengers.

  Mrs. Thomas felt this was a portent of a forthcoming plane crash, such as she had experienced before the collision of two planes over the Grand Canyon some years previous.

  The plane became amorphous, and changed shape. Now it was a huge, awesome bird that still plunged toward her with terrifying swiftness. Its wings flapped wildly, and the screams of the passengers changed to a wild and unearthly croaking. Its eyes, red and glaring, seemed to hold her in a hypnotic trance. They became larger and larger, with the blackness closing in around them.

  “Those eyes had gripping power over you,” she told her neighbors. “I feared it was going to tear me to pieces.”

  By Wednesday, Nov. 16, Mrs. Thomas had recovered from the initial shock of the vision, but was worried about the events which it must have portended.

  Mrs. Katherine Wamsley, along with Marcella Bennett, both Point Pleasant residents, had come to visit her, and they had cheered her up. Mrs. Bennett brought her new baby, and Mrs. Thomas saw it for the first time. As soon as the mother unwrapped her, the child confirmed Mrs. Thomas’s reputation with children. The baby opened her little eyes and made a gurgling noise, and tried to reach out and touch her large necklace, even though the child was only three months old.

  “There, Baby, Baby, let me hold you,” Mrs. Thomas offered, a warm glow permeating her as she took it from its mother. It burbled pleasantly again.

  “She’s been so cross lately,” Mrs. Bennett told her; “you work wonders with babies.”

  “I like her little pink dress,” Mrs. Wamsley said, “I think she’s divine.”

  A short distance from the Thomas home the old abandoned T.N.T. plant seemed to lurk, like something vast and living, where the preceding night had been one of horror for the two young couples. Mrs. Thomas had felt that her vision had indeed been prophetic, but that instead of a plane crash she had foreseen the advent of Mothman, the great bird which would terrorize Point Pleasant.

  As the two women prepared to depart, she hoped her mind would not again begin to dwell on the subject, for the tale the young couple had told disturbed her in a peculiar way. She felt that not only had her dream been prophetic, but that the creature portended something even more horrifying and tragic. “Something will happen…something will happen,” she told herself, even then, under her breath, as she walked with her friends to the door.

  As she hooked the night latch she heard Mrs. Bennett scream. She re-opened the door to witness a scene of wild confusion. Mrs. Bennett had dropped her baby and was picking up up, apparently examining it for injuries. It was crying. Mrs. Wamsley pointed fearfully to the sky.

  “It had a body like a man, yet it was a bird, oh a terrible bird! I think it was the devil himself!”

  Both fled back into the house. The baby had been wrapped heavily and apparently suffered no injuries, but the two adults were hysterical. They slowly gasped out the story. A huge, bird-like creature, with glowing red eyes, had suddenly dropped like a heavy wet sack upon the sand of the yard. It made a flapping, gurgling sound, as it righted itself and stood up.

  The red eyes had almost hypnotized them, holding their gaze for a few seconds before it suddenly shot up into the air “like a rocket”.

  Mrs. Thomas thought that she, herself, had caught a glimpse of the red eyes as she opened the door, but she could remember no huge bird. They had been the same red eyes of her vision.

  When the excitement had died down and her neighbors had finally departed, she retired to her kitchen, carrying there the ancient bible. Again she opened it and looked upon the terrifying creatures doomed to suffer in agony and perpetual darkness and ugliness because they were out of God’s Light.

  Was the great bird one of them, or had it been a sign sent upon her, reminding her she had forgotten to pray?

  “Oh Lord,” she prayed, “forgive this poor trespasser who would let the ways of the world intrude upon her worship. Withdraw this terrible visitation and withdraw Your anger. Let not the innocent be punished for the ways of the transgressor. And Oh Lord, even though it be blasphemy, set Thy Light also on those creatures, who expelled from heaven, dwell incessantly in the shadows of the precious Light, away from Thy sweet face; and who, if but for a day, could dwell again in that Light, would perhaps repent, and descend upon the world with warnings, even though Elijah and the prophets failed. For even though the fires torment them, and the terrible worms bite at them, it surely must be their hope that You, in Thy infinite wisdom, have not completely withdrawn from them.”

  Mrs. Thomas sobbed at this thought, and then a feeling of peace came over her. She knew it was time she should go to bed.

  “And if it please you, dear Jesus,” she added, “let no more prophecies come tonight.”

  She turned out the light and lay there, still experiencing the tranquil calm. She thought about the baby and how beautiful she was. She would rock her to sleep later, and tell her stories of past days in the valley. She hoped Mrs. Bennett would bring her back for visits, despite the harrowing circumstances of that evening.

  It was a cold, calm night. The rain had stopped, and only intermittent clouds, sweeping rapidly across the sky, obscured, then revealed the moon. She could see one bright star. It was now past midnight. Only a occasional car interrupted the peace of the lonely T.N.T. area, and she began to hear the far-away sounds of the city.

  The sounds were diffuse and indistinct, though she could distinguish the occasional auto horn. Later, when all was quiet in her neighborhood, the city noises could be identified by the steady rumbling she always heard—the sound of trailer trucks as they shook the eye bar-suspended structure, as the heavy traffic progressed, bumper-to-bumper, across the Silver Bridge.

  CHAPTER 1

  THE EERIE NIGHT

  I always dread the drive to New Martinsville, which I make about once each month in connection with my educational sales work. From Clarksburg its route of access is a tortuous, twisting, narrow stream of macadam, pock-marked with “pot holes”, and marked here and there with warning signs, one-lane bridges and precipitous mountain views, where one slight misjudgment in steering might well throw one over a towering embankment, with no guard rails present to slow or stay the crashing descent.

  On the evening of Nov. 19, 1966, as I negotiated the treacherous road at a careful speed, I wondered why the State Road Commission allowed it to remain so primitive. But the old farm houses, perched nervously on the banks above it, and unpainted for years, with occasional half-naked children standing on their porches despite the cold weather; the rusting automobiles in their yards, often with wheels and other parts removed, indicated that here was a people without any political personality or power.

  The utter drabness depressed me. The old mine tipples, most of them abandoned, with timbers rotting and crumbling, contributed to my low mood. A small railroad station, no longer operative, and with yellowing timetables and notices on its doors, added to the evidence of general decay. Not only, it seemed, had the area declined economically, but psychologically and spiritually as well.

  The driving rain, along with the descending early darkness of winter, further impeded my progress. Mud, hurled from the tires of a creeping coal truck impossible to pass on the crooked road, fouled my windshield and headlights. I thought of the many remarks I hadheard about the people of the area, where it was said that intermarriage between kin was widely practiced, and that, as a result, deformities of children were commonplace. Social workers had attempted to help, but residents preferred to exist at near starvation rather than to reveal their secrets. Rumors had it that in many a locked room along the road, a “dummy”
as these defective progeny were called locally, was imprisoned, to live out its days guiltily hidden from society.

  I was glad to reach Wallace, the westernmost village in Harrison county; for here not only would the road improve, but the general tone of the countryside as well. Although the outward signs of degeneration would end with my crossing the boundary of Wetzel county, generally known as more progressive, a rural atmosphere still prevailed. All business places were closed except one small service station where an unkempt, deaf old man finally understood my questions, and directed me on the road that would lead to the home of Newell Partridge, whose German Shepherd dog, “Bandit” may have been snatched out of this world by Mothman.

  The side road was paved, and not much worse than the main highways I had negotiated; but the rain had increased and driving was even more difficult. I hoped the old man had been correct with his directions.

  I wished I had not gotten mixed up in the matter at all. A friend from the local television station had called me and given me the lead. Newell Partridge had telephoned the station two nights previous and asked them about the news item they had telecast about the Point Pleasant happenings.

  “He began by asking me in particular about the report of a dog being found dead in that area,” the news director told me. “Then this fellow said his dog disappeared on the same night—a large German Shepherd animal. He was pretty well shook up about the loss of his dog, and I think he half suspects that ‘Mothman’ got his dog.”

  I then telephoned Partridge, who at first was reluctant to talk. After I explained that I considered myself a reliable reporter, and was after only the facts, he assented to invite me to his house for an interview.

  As the pavement ended, and a graveled road continued, gutted by mud puddles, I seriously considered turning back, for I felt I might be on the wrong road. I noted with disquiet that my gas was low, for I understood the witness lived a short distance off the main road and had neglected filling up before leaving Clarksburg.