The Silver Bridge

by Gray Barker

  “This man is from Detroit. His truck broke down there.” That was the only thing she could think of to say.

  Bob sensed something was wrong.

  “How did you get here from Detroit?” he asked.

  “I had to hitch-hike.”

  “Where is your coat? It’s very cold outside.”

  “I—I left it in the truck,” the visitor, his sing-song voice growing more halting, replied.

  For the first time Mary, now standing, glanced down at his feet. He must be much shorter than he originally appeared to be, for his shoes, similar to those of a policeman, were thick-soled, and obviously built up, perhaps a couple of inches.

  The man abruptly turned, stepped haltingly and angularly toward their right, turned in an odd way and half backed out the door. He apparently took off toward the bridge, for he did not pass the window.

  “That was a real weird character, Mary,” Bob joked. But she could read puzzlement in his voice and face.

  “Was he trying to threaten or harm you?”

  “No, he just gave me the creeps—that’s the best way I can describe it.”

  “I’ve seen my share of beatnicks, hippies and queer people in my work,” he remarked, still puzzled, “and some even weirder than that; but this man just sort of threw me. He—well he—just sort of gave me the creeps too.”

  Throughout her strange, brief interview with the stranger, she later reasoned that she had not so much been afraid of physical harm as she had of what she might term an unknown quantity about him, as if she were involved with something totally outside her experience.

  It was a different kind of fear she would experience later, when she would hear the rumble, first low and throbbing, then gaining quickly in volume, until it was something that “went into one ear, seemed to remain there for a moment, and then rushed out the other”. She would not hear the screams; she was too far away for that. And the pitiful cries would be drowned out, anyhow, by the groaning and crashing steel. The thunder would subside, replaced by the muted sobbings of the living.

  Donna Kenmore

  On the Ohio side, Donna Kenmore saw the silvery disc. She and her best friend, Norma Ashley, had been out for a drive, not knowing that their gay excursion would lead to terror.

  Norma had been cheerful enough when Donna picked her up, and they had joked and gossiped in their usual fashion. But soon Norma grew silent, and Donna suspected that she was relapsing into “one of her moods”.

  When Norma complained of being car sick, Donna’s thoughts became occupied with her friend’s problems. She knew Norma was having some disagreements with her father lately, which probably lay at the root of her moodiness, and she had often gone out of her way to suggest activities which would cheer her up. She telephoned her more often than usual, and had recently sent her a rather expensive gift: a riding habit her uncle sent from France, where he held a position in the embassy.

  “I’ll pull off here,” she told Norma, “and you can get out and walk around. Then I’ll take you straight home.”

  She pulled off the road, into the grounds of the abandoned water tank. She looked at her friend. Norma was obviously agitated, beginning to look pale, and, she thought, suddenly much older.

  “I don’t want to get out,” she told her. “Let’s just sit here for a minute or two. I’m sure I’ll soon feel better.”

  She pushed the window button of the Olds 98, and the cold air rushed into the car.

  “You need some air, Norma. I know it’s cold, but maybe it will make you feel better.”

  “I’m sorry, Donna. I’m terribly sorry. I think it’s because I’m so nervous. So horribly nervous. He did this to me again!”

  “Who is ‘he’?”

  “Dad. He told me this morning, again, that I should act more like my mother. Goodness knows I don’t want to do that. Her interminable screechings at me, ever since I decided to come back from school: ‘Do this, do that. Do more of the housework!’ After all, we are quite well off; we have a housekeeper—and a cook—so why should I have to worry! Why should I have to make up my bed? Now I love Dad, you know that; but now finally he has joined in with HER! If he truly loved me, he wouldn’t listen to her all the time. After all, I’m important too. Mom is so jealous. Every time Dad pays any attention to me, she throws a fit.”

  Donna tried to say something appropriate, but was interrupted:

  “Today, for the first time, he shouted at me. He has finally turned against me. When he did this, I got sick, and threw up—and just the thought of it makes me sick again.”

  Norma had previously spoken of tensions at home, and while Donna had been concerned, she had never taken the remarks seriously. She assumed the Ashleys were having “just family spats”, and had so passed off the matter. But Norma now seemed to be very obviously disturbed, and for the first time she began to worry about her.

  Suddenly Norma threw her arms around her and started to cry.

  “You’re the only friend I have who understands me,” she said in halting, sobbing phrases. “Please understand me, Donna! Please understand me!”

  Donna returned the embrace and patted her.

  “It will all work out all right. There now, don’t you cry now, you never do. I’m sure your father loves you very much. Why, just the other day, when I stopped by to pick you up, there he was, washing the car, and he came out and shook hands with me and said, ‘Have you seen Norma since she got that new hairdo and that short skirt? I don’t understand her. In fact I don’t understand any of the young folks. Finally, that girl is really blossoming out. I really guess she has been blossomed out for a long time, but has never dressed to show it. I doubt if I can hold onto her very long, for lately there’s been a lot of guys casting glances at her. But I suppose that comes with old age: losing your daughter to some young smart alec!”

  She apparently had said the wrong thing. Norma’s demeanor took a turn for the worse. She grasped Donna more tightly and her sobbing became uncontrollable. Donna pitied her, but was at her wits’ ends at trying to comfort her.

  At that moment she saw the silvery disc. It had a hazy, amorphous shape, as it hovered above the old water tank. It moved in an odd, pendulum-like motion, almost as if it were on a great string or cable, dangled by some inexplicable being or force from above.

  “Look, Norma! Look! What is that!”

  In her excitement she tore herself from the embrace.

  “My God!” Norma ejaculated. “It’s out to destroy the both of us!”

  Donna couldn’t understand the statement, for to her the silvery disc brought a feeling of contentment, a sensation of calm and well being. Norma had obviously felt its presence, rather than having seen it, for she had reacted to it without looking up from her tearful convulsions.

  “I’m all right now,” she suddenly insisted. “Let’s get out of here!”

  Donna wanted to watch it longer. Now it had begun to circle. She thought she could see windows in it. It was beautiful. Fearing, however, to contribute to Norma’s emotional condition, she started the car and soon they were speeding toward home. At her house Norma suddenly opened the door, leaped from the car without a goodbye and retreated inside the house.

  “Tomorrow,” Donna thought, “she probably will be in great spirits. That’s Norma for you. But she’s still the best friend I’ve ever had.”

  Then she remembered she must pick up the dress she had fitted the past week.

  It was somewhat shorter than the traditional formal, but the other girls were wearing them that way, and she knew Bob wouldn’t say anything about it, even though he would disapprove. Anyhow, Bob’s mother was her ally, and it had been she who had given her the dress from her shop and who had personally made the alterations.

  She knew Bob would like her to wear a more traditional, more feminine gown; but he wouldn’t vocally object—for they were in what surely must be their final courting days, and he was most unlikely to dispute his mother’s selection.

  “Bob need
s a real shock, I think,” his mother had remarked, “to get him out of that prissy attitude about things. I keep telling you to give him a real scare by going out one time with some other boy, but you won’t do that. Maybe if you look a little sexier…I know, and please forgive me, honey, for he has told me that you two have never, well, you know, done anything. That’s the way he is, a stickler for convention, and I’m thankful for it. But you’ve got to make him ‘pop the question’. God knows you two have been going together long enough.”

  Donna was certain he would talk about marriage in his own good time. After all, he had just been graduated, and was “trying to get established”, as he put it. He had not yet decided what to do. His mother wanted him gradually to take over her business, and his close buddy, Brad King, had been importuning him to form a partnership with him in a profitable mail order business. Anyhow, he did discuss marriage one time, briefly, when he said he didn’t want to take on the responsibility until he could “make it on his own”.

  Donna drove into Point Pleasant and looked for a parking spot. But it was Saturday and the town was crowded with shoppers. There probably were spaces on the other side of the flood wall, but the area always gave her the jitters and depressed her, even before the rumor about the woman who claimed to have been attacked here.

  She drove around the three main blocks several times, easing her frustration by looking at the Christmas decorations, and at the people, hurrying through the cold drizzle, many of them dragging small children behind them at a frantic pace.

  For comic relief there was old Bill Ahrens, the traditional Santa Claus at one of the stores, shouting a voluble “Ho! Ho! Ho!” while bouncing a small boy with exaggerated oscillations. Some teenage boys were bantering him, and he would intermittently utter loud explectives at them, then hoarsely converse with the small children. Of course, he had too many “under the belt”, as the townspeople would say; and the past year he had been fired a week before Christmas—but the customers protested so loudly he had been rehired a day later.

  Giving up the search for a meter, Donna reluctantly drove behind the floodwall, while the long row of free parking spaces, carrying advertisements of local business firms which offered them, were almost fully occupied.

  The foggy expanse of the Ohio river, swollen by the rains, and now even more dismal in the gathering darkness, was muddy, and full of floating debris. She didn’t know why, but it seemed to smother her, and draw her into it. The dark and depressing water and landscape was dominated by the vast structure of the Silver Bridge, now no longer silver, but rusty and ugly, sprawling above the gurgling waters and the gray flood wall like some once living but now dead and rotting thing. It shook, swayed slightly, and she fancied, groaned, under the heavy rush hour traffic.

  She straightened the car in the parking space, locked the three other doors, and reached into the rear seat for the umbrella. Then making sure she had the keys securely in her hand, she pressed the button and locked the left front door in a slam.

  Somebody grabbed her roughly and uncouthly from behind. She screamed and was almost free, when the man, whom she could now see (although in her fright his image had swirled, partly out of focus), got a better grip and held her more securely.

  He was slovenly dressed, in ill-fitting trousers, an old black jacket over a black turtle neck sweater. In quick actions he soon had pulled her dress almost over her head, and she knew he was trying to smother her. She fought his actions, and managed to pull the dress down until she could see. He was dragging her toward the Model ’60 or ’61 Chevrolet parked two spaces over. She again tried to scream, but his strong hand now roughly and securely covered her mouth.

  In an even greater display of strength, her attacker freed his left hand from her tight grasp and forced it between her legs which she had tightened together, as if in anticipation of what he might do once he had her in the car. Once she had eluded the grasp in a display of strength she did not know she had, but had fallen onto the wet roadway; this had given him an opportunity to get an even better hold on her. He grabbed her and pushed her against the car, kissing her violently on the mouth, as her lipstick transferred to him, making him even uglier and even more repelling. Later she would remember that she expected his breath to be particularly foul; but instead it had a perfumed odor to it.

  Somehow, during the violent struggle, she had held onto the umbrella, now crushed and half closed. One of the framework spines had wounded her abdomen, and in a final burst of anger she thought how she would like to wound the terrible man. She managed to draw it back and drive it home, where she knew it would hurt worst.

  Unclutched, she ran and ran, and on the main street retched and vomited into a waste receptacle.

  Donna got over the experience itself much more quickly than she had anticipated and reached a time where she did not, each week in church, thank God that she had not been physically harmed or abducted. But still there was the subtle disquietude that it indeed might happen again, mainly because of the note. Written in an obviously disguised hand, placed under the front door of her house and warning that, “I CAN HAVE YOU ANY TIME I SO DESIRE. YOU CANNOT ESCAPE ME. YOU DID NOT HEAR ME OUT.”

  Was this indeed written by the man who had tried to rape her? She somehow doubted it; she hoped it had been put there by somebody trying to perpetrate a cruel joke. The writing was definitely feminine (she had once taken a correspondence course in handwriting analysis) and displayed anything but roughness and masculinity. Perhaps he was one of the illiterate river people, who always had two or three women around, having children by all of them. He probably had one of those whores write the note for him.

  Agar

  Agar adjusted his large-brimmed hat and buttoned his coat of black more tightly, even though it was a warm day and the people he had observed were in shirt sleeves. They appeared to be uncomfortable, even in their brief garbs, and perspired freely. Agar wondered why he was not similarly affected, though he was glad he did not have problems such as this.

  If he had any serious problems, he had not thought about them. His work occupied most of his thinking. Today, for example, he could concentrate only on the compelling impulse which drew him into the cover of bushes behind the school playground, where he secreted himself, waiting and watching for the child to whom he was so strongly drawn. While he waited, an excitement came over him. It was more than the usual involvement. This was going to be a big one, for the victim had projected extraordinarily powerful vibrations.

  Suddenly he spotted the person who had so drawn him, over many miles, the boy who had photographed the moth creature. The child was standing apart from the group, and as he watched, walked aimlessly in circles.

  “Soon you will come over here, closer to the bushes where I hide,” Agar thought and knew. The boy moved closer toward him, but in a series of perambulations involving further circling and parabolic curves, with now and then a quick step sidewise.

  Although Agar didn’t understand why, he felt strangely compassionate toward the boy, and he fought this feeling because it made him physically weak, and mentally disoriented. For a moment he felt he would rather have gone into the playground and pitched balls to him, as the others were doing, instead of confronting him about the picture. The boy’s blonde hair fell over his eyes, half hiding a sensitive and beautiful face, and as he moved close to Agar’s hiding place, he brushed it back twice, evidently so that he could use his eyes better.

  He huddled lower, as the boy approached, drawn to him it would seem, as much as he had been drawn to come here and seek out the child. Closer and closer he came, but now he slackened his pace, as if he anticipated meeting some untoward circumstance.

  Within a few feet of Agar’s hiding place he stopped dead still, and Agar fancied he could hear him breathing heavily. He probably would not come any closer, and the most propitious time to strike probably had arrived.

  He parted the bushes, suddenly disclosing himself, and rose to standing position, at the same time fixing
the boy’s blue eyes in his fierce gaze. The child would soon run screaming back to the school, but by that time he would be far away.

  But the child unexpectedly stood his ground, innocently staring back at Agar’s slit-like eyes. Probably he was hypnotized by fright, and this would pretty well fulfill his mission, if that were true.

  To make certain, he threatened the boy severely in a mechanical, somewhat nasal, but low-pitched voice. The boy glanced downward, hung his head, and picked at his fingernails not again looking up. The boy was not frightened at all! A feeling of anger, unusual for him, came over Agar, and he realized that he was frightened, and the boy was not.

  He advanced on the boy, grabbed him and shook him, but still he did not react with fright. He then tore at the boy’s pocket and withdrew a frayed billfold, took the snapshot from it, and then threatened him again. Still the boy fiddled with his fingernails without looking up; then he reached into a side pocket, removed a pen knife and some shiny pebbles he probably had found in a creek, and held the items out as if he wished to freely give them to him.

  In further fright and anger, Agar roughly struck the small white hand, and the contents dropped to the ground. Now completely defeated and shaken, he made a series of hopping, bouncing motions, and soon was out on the main thoroughfare, escaping as fast as he could, always making five steps forward, then one step right, then five more steps and one step left.

  He felt he could regain his strength at the next stop. Donning dark glasses and relaxing the severe manner, he knocked politely at a door, and was quickly admitted when he told the woman he had come to ask her about the flying saucer she had seen.

  She was overjoyed, and for an hour he suffered her oral aggression, but this was one of the unpleasant facets of his work which he must put up with. Pretending to listen to the lengthy details of her sighting, and politely asking a leading question here and there when he could interrupt the monologue, he let his mind stray to the boy and to analyzing his failure. He believed he had done the job well, and that there must be some logical reason why he had not accomplished the desired results.