The Silver Bridge

by Gray Barker

  Perhaps he should have dressed as a policeman, and convinced the boy he was in trouble with the law…

  But he could sense the woman was near the end of her seemingly interminable narrative. It was time to act now, before she could continue by switching to occult subjects.

  He withdrew a bundle of forms from his attache case, and began writing down things, while looking about the room, as if listing the furniture. Now ignoring his hostess, he arose, walked to the TV set, closely examined the controls, and then wheeled it around and copied the serial number from its back. The woman, now obviously nervous, stopped her talking while she observed his actions.

  He then asked her a series of unrelated questions:

  “Does the house have a steel framework? Has anybody else visited you in regard to this sighting? Has your husband ever had a security check? Do you consider yourself a loyal citizen? Did you vote Democratic or Republican in the last election? Have you ever felt that your telephone was tapped? Have you told your neighbors about the sighting? Did you notice a shield-like symbol on the flying object? Has anybody in your family ever been arrested?”

  As she attempted to asnwer each question, she became visibly more frightened and confused. Then, upon his request, she quickly agreed to stop talking about the sighting to any other person, not even her husband (of course, she would spread the story widely throughout the community).

  At the next stop he employed different tactics and simply walked about the neighborhood, knowing that many eyes peered at him from the windows. Halting before a particular house, he made elaborate adjustments to his camera, and after readings with a light meter, he took pictures from several angles. Then making two chalk marks on the sidewalk, he stepped off the footage, then took copious notes.

  He felt a new burst of energy. The next time he dealt with a child he would try a different technique, and would be more successful. He proceeded onward. As he approached the great bridge, however, the odd feeling of exhaustion he had experienced after the encounter with the boy once again overtook him. Half way across, he slowed his footsteps to regain his energies. He leaned over the railing of the pedestrian walkway, watching the river people below. Although they did not radiate to him, he suddenly felt a kind of unexplained kinship with them. But he could never be like them, or work with them, or interact with them.

  Then out of the corner of his eye he saw the only object that had ever inspired terror deep within him. It was the same boy, with the eyes hidden by blonde hair, standing at the Ohio side of the bridge, though he could not imagine how he could have covered the great distance to be there so quickly. The child walked aimlessly in a small area, sometimes pausing to kick at the railing. He was waiting there for Agar, and Agar knew that.

  Agar had never analyzed himself, except that he believed he was forever condemned to walk in sidewise motion, and that it had been these people who had so condemned him. He felt that he was a part of them, though an evil part of them, a fear part of them; and that since he was a part of so many people he would live forever—though he wondered if he really liked living as these people liked living.

  He probably should retreat back to the West Virginia side of the river, for he felt panic at the prospect of another confrontation with the strange child, who did not react as others did, who obviously was not frightened by him, and therefore was certainly not a part of him. This boy, he believed, would somehow kill him, although the prospect of being killed, which struck great terror into people he had threatened, did not really bother him. If he died, perhaps there would no longer be this total dependence upon these people for his energies, and it would be with him, as peaceful and ecstatic as it was with people when they slept (as he had seen them do when he had slipped into their rooms and changed positions of their personal articles).

  By this time the boy had become more aggressive and had advanced a quarter of the way toward the center of the bridge, where Agar stood. He could retreat and avoid another confrontation, but that would involve admitted failure and a dereliction of his mission. If he stood his ground he probably would have to lay his hands on the boy again. He had never before physically touched another being. He had drawn his vital energies from people by remote means. When he had grabbed the child and shaken him, he had, admittedly, also drawn energies, but a different kind—or maybe they were just more powerful. Instead he believed that he, himself, had energies, which, in that case, had been drawn from him into the boy.

  He made a decision. He would take the risk, although it probably meant his complete undoing. He would threaten to throw the boy over the bridge, and that might turn the tide. He would grab him roughly, lift him up, and let him see the great gulf below.

  He moved firmly to confront his adversary. He stared at him. The boy gave in and looked away, as he slowly hummed some sort of tune in a minor key.

  Agar grabbed him and pushed him against the railing.

  “You see down there. That’s where you’re going to end up. I’m going to throw you over the bridge. Look at that murky water. You’ll cry then and ask for help. You’ll call for your father then. You’ll ask for help when you’re falling halfway down, turning over and over!”

  The boy evidenced no reaction whatsoever, except for passively going limp. Agar hoisted him almost to his shoulders. Instead of kicking and screaming, as he had mentally predicted, the boy did not say or do anything, except to brush the ubiquitous hair from his eyes with his one free hand. Agar didn’t know what to do. Of course he couldn’t actually carry out his threats, but the boy had challenged him, and if he put him down he would have to run again.

  Not knowing what to do, Agar just started walking, after he had put the boy’s legs around his neck, so that he could better carry the burden that proved heavier than it had appeared. The boy must be a thirteen-year-old, possibly fourteen. He balanced him better and began walking ahead, toward the Ohio side.

  How could he get out of this?

  “You’ll have quite a story to tell, child,” he said. “You don’t know how close you came to being thrown over the bridge. If you did not have certain information about the interplanetary intelligences which we have not collected, it would have been VERY VERY (he emphasized the ‘Verys’) serious.”

  “I’ll be good,” the boy spoke for the first time. “I won’t tell.”

  “Oh, but you must tell,” Agar corrected, “else other children will be in danger of being thrown over the bridge.”

  “Then I will if you say so.”

  The rather large boy was getting lighter, and Agar suddenly felt proud that he could carry him without effort. It would be fun to jog him up and down a bit, but that would be out of character, and only serve to please his adversary which had shown no fearful response to violence. He also realized that, for the first time he could remember, he turned not as he went. He made five steps forward, and then another, with no sidewise motion.

  “How will they ever know you tried to throw me over the bridge?” the boy asked. “They’ll never believe me. They say I tell lies in school.”

  “They’ll have to take your word for it.”

  “Gee, they won’t ever believe me.”

  “I can’t help that. I’ll have to put you down now.”

  They were almost across the bridge.

  “If you see me vanish,” Agar told him suddenly, “do not tell this particular thing. They might believe this, but they would never understand it.”

  He put the boy down and helped him raise to his feet. He slicked back the hair and for the first time saw tears in the eyes.

  “Don’t go away, Agar!”

  Agar tried to change the expression on the slit which was his mouth. He found it impossible to smile. He pushed the boy from him, opened his eyes as far as he could, growled at him and danced around. He changed into various shapes, and took to threatening the boy once again.

  The boy sobbed.

  “I know that you are dying, and I don’t want you to go!”

  “Dyin
g? of course not. I’m not going to die. But I do have to go over into Ohio, for I have very important business there. I won’t be back, for because from Ohio I have to go to Indianapolis.

  “I think I can go right now, if you will promise not to make me come back.”

  “If you will take this, you can go, Agar (Agar was puzzled as to how the boy knew his name).” He again handed him the rocks and the pen knife.

  Agar accepted these gravely and put them in his pocket.

  “Here, you take THIS.”

  The boy eagerly grasped the object, turning it over and over, letting the light reflect on it from all angles. Then he held it close to his body, as if it might get away.

  He walked with the boy the remaining length of the bridge. Noting the absence of the arm around his shoulder, the boy looked up and Agar was no longer there.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE CURSE OF CORNSTALK

  The Point Pleasant Battle Monument towered almost a hundred feet into the night sky. Erected as a memorial to heroes of the prerevolutionary Indian wars, it rose over a local museum, and in daytime commandeered a beautiful plaza.

  Tonight, however, fog rose from the river and gave it an amorphous, undulating shape, backlighted by illumination from the town. The monument cast a grotesque shadow through the fog.

  This had been the battleground on which the town had been defended from more than a thousand Indians, assembled by chief Cornstalk, a young Shawnee of remarkable courage and leadership. He had marshalled the warriors not only from his own tribe, but also from the Mingo, Deleware and Ottawa. The somewhat loose tribal federation became tightly united in war—an amalgamation known to local settlers simply as Northwest Indians.

  In the 1760’s the Indians were thoroughly defeated in a series of battles and a peace treaty of enduring quality was negotiated with chief Cornstalk.

  As I regarded the spectral monument, the events of the past few months seemed to fade into oblivion as I considered the long, bloody struggles which had taken place on this very spot two hundred years ago.

  The fog poured up from the river like smoke. First the base, then the apex of the monument disappeared into the murky shroud. Only the automobile headlights, their rays penetrating only a few feet, provided any reference to the world around me. Suddenly within the diffused beams I noted a violent agitation in the fog, as it swirled, and a myriad of colors appeared. The kaleidoscopic pattern changed, opened like a huge iris, to disclose a scene within. Here in this great hollow tube in the fog appeared a remarkable and terrifying drama. Several men, some of them in uniform, others in the rough farm clothing of another century, dragged a handsome Indian, his long hair flowing and muscles rippling—and a small Indian boy—into the foreground.

  The adult Indian was securely bound with ropes, and, considering his appearance, evidently had been beaten, and slashed with a knife. He still mustered strength as he tried to free himself and remonstrated loudly, though the entire drama was played out like a silent movie. The boy was not bound but securely held by two of the soldiers.

  Suddenly the men threw the wounded man to the ground, kicked him and spat upon him. Withdrawing a ceremonial tomahawk (which I assumed belonged to the victim), one of the soldiers rained a series of bloody blows on the fallen body, as if trying to hack it to pieces. The Indian went limp. The boy struggled in his captors’ grasp, as if wishing to offer assistance to the dying man. The soldiers momentarily released him, then threw him to the ground. As the child rose, one of the men swung the butt of his rifle, hitting him a tremendous blow on the head, crushing his skull with that first blow, I would think. Then he pointed the gun at the fallen adult and discharged it into his pelvic area.

  Ben Franklin rolled down the window, stuck his head out, in order to better guide us through the the fog. We crept along at five miles per hour.

  “I shouldn’t have taken so long to tell you that awful story,” he apologized, “but the fog usually doesn’t come in this fast.”

  Downtown the visibility improved. We stopped at Ball’s restaurant.

  “You tell a gory tale,” I half-kidded, half-complimented him. “With the fog, that eerie battle monument, and your harrowing description, for a moment I fancied I was almost actually witnessing the murder of chief Cornstalk.”

  The incident represented a black mark on the town’s history. Cornstalk, though powerful and valiant in war, had been the major force in maintaining an uneasy peace. The region began to build and prosper. A few of the settlers, however, along with renegade soldiers, still harbored old grudges; so one night they seized chief Cornstalk and his young son and brutally murdered them.

  Such had been the bloody account Ben had rendered, a rare interlude in our discussions and investigations of the Mothman incidents. Ben, after our initial interviews with the two young couples, had become my valuable ally in running down further reports. Because he was well known and highly respected throughout the different economic and social strata of the area, a half dozen prominent people involved in business and politics had confided in him about their own sightings of creatures and flying objects. However, most of them would not consent to have their experiences publicized.

  He and I had been returning from the home of one such witness when we stopped to view the fog-enshrouded battle monument. The woman, who insisted on anonymity, was the manager of an important civic-commercial organization in Point Pleasant.

  Possibly the very first area witness of Mothman, she told us of a frightening phenomenon she and her father witnessed in 1961.

  In the summer of that year she took her father out for a drive on Route 2. She braked the car when they saw what appeared to be a very tall man, in gray clothing, standing facing them in the middle of the highway. When they approached to within 100 yards of it, the figure suddenly spread a set of huge wings, filling the entire width of the road. The man, creature, or whatever it was, then zoomed straight upward.

  Both were greatly frightened by the incident, turned and drove directly home. Her father wanted to report it to the police, but they finally decided to keep it to themselves, fearing ridicule if they let the story get out.

  Nor did she tell, until this evening, of other puzzling events which took place at her home, located at Gallipolis Ferry, a few miles south of Point Pleasant. Hearing of Ben’s interest in such cases, she came into the store one day, drew him into his office and first told him of seeing a brilliant, multicolored disc in the sky, on March 28.

  That was not the thing that had alarmed her, however. Prior to the sighting, odd thumpings on the outside and roof of her house, occurring at three different times, had frightened her. At one time during the thumpings she looked out the window and saw a shadowy shape, suggesting a winged creature, float past it. She heard high-pitched beeping sounds, “somewhere between the cries of a bird and electronic noises”, which seemed to emanate “from all around” her. Her house was on a back road, and she was often alone there during evenings because of her husband’s work which often took him out of town overnight. Because of the incidents she moved to Point Pleasant, where Ben and I had interviewed her.

  As we talked, Ben pointed out the similarity of her experiences to those of the Mallette couple. For several weeks after their encounter with Mothman, they were often awakened at night by loud hangings on the top of their house trailer, and what they also described as “beeping sounds”.

  Another friend of his, who lived in Ohio, had apprised Ben confidentially of a frightening experience which took place on March 12, 1967, about two weeks previous—though he could neither give me the name of the witness nor introduce me to her.

  A housewife was driving home from an evening church service with her daughter when a huge creature, much larger than a man, flew across the road in front of them. It had a wingspan of more than ten feet. Its body was white, and they saw long white hair streaming from the thing’s head.

  The family, Ben said, belonged to a small fundamentalist religious sect, and was very devou
t. They believed the creature was supernatural in nature, and was either Jesus Christ, or one of His angels.

  They too reported puzzling events associated with the experience. Their telephone often rang, with nobody on the line, and sometimes did not function for brief periods. Their television set developed interference, when neighbors’ sets worked all right, and they reported that in one instance “a Communist program” had been received on an otherwise unoccupied channel. They had also seen lighted objects land in a gravel pit about a mile from their house.

  Ben started to change the subject, but was interrupted by the waitress. After we gave her our orders, Ben hit his fist on the table.

  “Doggone it, Gray! There’s something I want to tell you, but every time I think of it, I’m interrupted, and it slips my mind !”

  “I know how that is,” I sympathized. “MY GOD!” I thought. “You know I’m supposed to be in Charleston tonight, taping a radio show with Hugh McPherson, and I completely forgot about it! What will I do? Perhaps I could call him up with some manufactured excuse, but I suppose I’ll level with him and tell him I forgot about it. I can always point out, if he argues with me, how he forgot his bird (Hugh is the sole support of and trainer of two Mina birds) in a supermarket, cage and all, and was somewhat embarrassed after it had engaged in language unbecoming to the usual sedateness of the establishment.”

  I told Ben how I had been impressed, not only by the quality of most of the Mothman reports, but also by their quantity. I briefly reminded him of some of the other accounts which appeared in the press shortly after the initial sightings in mid-November, 1966.

  For example, a man who would not identify himself because “people think those who see this thing are crazy” told The Point Pleasant Register that a large bird-like creature appeared in his yard the night of November 14. He discovered the thing after his dog barked loudly. The creature flew upward and to the southwest. As it flew it appeared to be “cigar-shaped” and made a noise “like a Washington time signal…it had a motor or hum to it”.