2017
I stood near the river, assessing the old bridge, afraid to get too close. It had been 19 years since I had been back, had been this close to the bridge. My stomach knotted, and I questioned why I was here. I had done so well, making sure to never come near, rarely ever coming back to Mandrea Springs, much less this close to my childhood nightmare.
After I got “better”, a systematic act of pretending to forget, it was still too fresh to think of returning. Besides, my parents had moved me halfway across the country and there was no longer a reason to go back. No one believed what I remembered anyway. They looked at me with pity, calling it trauma. As the years slipped by me, it became more of a measured reaction, a plan, an obsession really. To keep myself from sinking again. Now I was 32, and I reasoned that I had nothing to prove, I had come back from there. But the bridge still called me sometimes, in my dreams and in waking hours. Sometimes I couldn’t help the needing to know, the sharp desire to understand. It sat like a small rat in my belly, gnawing just frequently enough to remind me it was there. I was no longer living halfway across the country.
The bridge looked peaceful, even beautiful. From this side I couldn’t see the feature that gave the bridge its name, an opening in a side wall that looked like a keyhole, more than big enough for a 13-year-old to slip through, big enough for a life to disappear behind. In my mind’s eye I saw us, the three of us, young and tan and loud, pounding feet on the bridge, running and jumping through the keyhole, into the slow but deep river below. The bridge was high enough to be thrilling for us, but low enough to present no real danger. Until one day, when it became infested. We didn’t know it until later, but the keyhole was just waiting to flare up.
I walked back to the car with the slight limp that I had learned to live with and put the bridge behind me again. Maybe another day I would be stronger. Maybe another day I could walk the bridge and ask my questions, and think about the happy memories. There were many of them. But also, that one big terrifying one.
1998
Jaye thought she was gorgeous, and she was. At 13 a picture nearly developed, a glimpse of the beauty she would be. Kacie was bookish, pretty in her own way, with glasses and a slow smile followed by a rare but infectious laugh. I was somewhere in between in smarts and looks, but taller than the other two. We were 13, and we were inseparable. We fought, but always made up quickly, forgetting what we were mad about within a day.
I heard my mother’s car as it left the driveway, and before I could move out of my bed, I had already planned my day. Summer vacation. Old enough to stay alone. The whole day doing whatever we wanted. I lay there for a few more minutes, feeling the sun warm my light blanket, with Callie purring by my ear. I got up with all my dreams filling my head. Those dreams lulled me into a comfort that once lost, would leave a hole, a nightmare sized keyhole, in my life.
Days went like this: We would all sleep in. One of us would call the others. We would gather at one house. We would pack lunches, then ride our bikes to that day’s adventure. Sometimes the park, sometimes the mall, often the bridge. We felt safe, and warm, and invincible. When you are that age, summer vacation goes on forever yet isn’t long enough. You don’t ever imagine yourself broken. Instead you think you can fly.
2017
I drove back to the shelter where I stayed, not because I was homeless but because I was the “proud owner”. Inheritance money that I didn’t want to use for anything frivolous. I thought about how, when you’re older, you see that broken attracts broken. Probably why I had started the shelter, to ease some of what I always felt. The two-hour drive gave me time to think. Maybe it was time to try again, to remember what really happened to us. To cut it open again and see if it would stay clean this time.
After it happened I had tried to tell the police, my parents, the court appointed therapist. After a while it became apparent that the best thing to do was to shut up, shut it out, and pretend. But I knew. I knew I hadn’t imagined it. There were details that I couldn’t remember, a fact the adults latched onto. My mind skittered around the edges, never catching hold of the other memories that were there, buried.
Is it too cliché to say that the day started out like any other?
1998
The day started out like any other that summer. August 18th, 1998. School would start soon, but not yet. We still had some freedom left, and we intended to use it. Today’s meeting spot was at Jaye’s house, which would make what happened later even harder, if that’s possible. Lunches, swimsuits, towels, bikes – and on to the bridge. A lot of people used the bridge, jumping in the water and climbing up to do it again, but it was strangely quiet that day. Two young kids sat by the bank, pitching stones. It wasn’t as hot out, and still early, so maybe it would get busy later. We reveled in having it to ourselves.
The bridge was old but sturdy – no loose boards, no nails sticking up. When my dad heard we were playing there, he insisted on walking it, foot by foot, to make sure. He was thinking of our bare feet on the wood, running. The name – keyhole bridge – was a local thing, as its real name was on a plaque by the trail. “Hunt’s Crossing,” it said, named after James Corning Hunt, local settler and businessman. Originally built in 1928. Not used any more for its original purpose, with a newer and larger bridge just upstream. The Keyhole shaped opening in one side of the covered bridge was at least seven feet high and over four feet at its widest part and had many origin stories. Jilted lover plus car, drunken teenager plus motorcycle, aliens plus death ray (my favorite). I now know the cause, and it’s more horrifying than the other explanations.
I had an ongoing interest in the bridge, so I asked around. I was told it happened in August of 1931. A man named Charles Johnston, who lived nearby, had apparently lost his mind after a weekend of drinking something called Jake, which sounded a lot like gasoline and spices. He systematically killed his whole family with a shotgun, most at close range. His Wife, three daughters, and two sons. His oldest, Caleb, had made it all the way to the river, and was cowering in the bridge, when his father found him. Approximately 12 shots later, Caleb was dead and there was a hole in the bridge wall we would innocently call a keyhole. I now think about Charles, loading and reloading, only stopping when the local lawman tackled him from behind. One old story claims he was screaming “there’s something wrong with their eyes,” but I could never find mention of this again. I was told the stain from the blood is still there, though I can’t ever remember seeing it.
We spent the morning repeatedly jumping into the water, screaming and laughing, and by 2 pm we had eaten our lunches and were lounging on our towels by the river bed, telling stupid stories about other girls in our class. A cloud hurried across the sky, blocking the sun for a moment, making me shiver. Some of the color seemed to bleed out of the day, leaving it slightly overcast. I sat up and suggested we go back to Jaye’s and watch a movie. I was suddenly cold. The kids who were skipping stones had gone, and we were alone. Kacie agreed right away, but Jaye went to work on us, begging us to jump in just once more. Jaye could convince you to do just about anything, with her pleading puppy dog eyes, pouting and cajoling. I gave in. Kacie told us she really didn’t want to, but after a few minutes, relented anyway. I wonder what would have happened if one of us had stuck to our guns.
2017
I sat on my bed in the private living area I had inside the shelter. A small apartment was a perk of being the owner. Looking through the few pictures I had of that time transported me back. My parents had thought that I needed to put everything behind me, so they took all but the few pictures I had hidden. They wanted me to get better and not remember. They didn’t seem to realize that even without pictures it would have all been stamped clearly in my memory. So many good times blotted out by that one day and the aftermath. As if in response, my leg ached, and I rubbed it as I always did, a habit I had been asked about by more than one of the men I affectionately called “my guys”. The regulars at the shelter. They looked out for me, as I did for them. They knew a little of my story and marked me as damaged, a kindred spirit. None of them knew the whole thing, but some might have believed it, considering some of the things they had seen.
1998
We were missing for a week. I was told that our frantic parents had started searches right away, when they found only our towels and lunch bags by the river, our other belongings still at Jaye’s house where we had left them. Phone calls turned to panic and a week of waiting and hoping and fearing the worst. Volunteers walked the nearby woods. Divers checked the water, police searched along the banks upstream and down. A press conference, because this was big news in such a small town.
I remember jumping, after Jaye had gone first. I remember looking over my shoulder at Kacie, who was to go third. I remember a change in the light, pain, and waking up on the bank to more pain, Kacie lying still beside me. I screamed and screamed. The first to find us was a deputy, patrolling the area that had become the focus of the town’s fear. I fell back into myself, and the next time I woke at the hospital.
After a week of fear, my family had me back, broken but whole. Kacie’s parents had a body, something to mourn, someone to bury. Jaye’s family had nothing. No body, no explanation. I told what I remembered, but they insisted the trauma was making me leave out a piece. A man maybe? A kidnapper? Movie of the week ideas, stories from the cop shows. I insisted that none of that had happened, but they didn’t believe me. So I stopped insisting, quieted the memories, and tried to forget.
2017
I dream often, and most are nightmares. Many about the bridge. This dream was different. This dream had the shine of memory.
At first, I thought nothing had happened as the water below my feet was coming toward me too slowly, haltingly. I didn’t even see Jaye hit the water. Then a sudden shift, a brightening of the colors drew my eyes upwards just before I hit the surface. The sky was blue, but wrong somehow. The world was an overexposed picture. I looked over my shoulder, the bridge loomed like bleached bone. Kacie tumbled after me, her face a mask of confusion. I hit the water which was strangely warm and seemed too thick, viscous. Like blood. As I half swam, half crawled to the shore, a scream building in my throat, something slammed into my leg, sharp as a knife, followed by a horrible flash of pain. I looked down, the scream finally breaking free, and now I did see blood. It poured redly from the place where my kneecap used to be, mixing with the strange water. Kacie’s hand hit my arm, and I grabbed it. We dragged each other to the shore, gasping in pain and shock. I stopped only briefly, resting my ruined leg. I felt I had to get back on the bridge. Something in my mind shouted at me, telling me that was the way to escape this garish world that looked like mine but wasn’t mine. I screamed Jaye’s name over and over, until Kacie slapped me weakly. “Something’s coming,” she gasped. “Something big.” I turned to see the trees on the other side of the river swaying wildly, as if in a great wind storm. I grabbed Kacie’s hand again and pulled her with me toward the bridge, dragging my leg. I sensed movement behind us, at the shore, but didn’t stop. I was a person made of pain, made of terror. She moved slowly, barely helping herself walk, and when I finally looked at her, I saw why. She was turning red, as if strangled by something I couldn’t see. Her lips were bluing. She slapped at her throat, her chest, her breath squeaking in and out, I tried to go faster, to get us there.
Somehow, we made it to the bridge. I pushed Kacie through the keyhole, and it seemed she snapped out of existence halfway to the water, limp, lifeless. As I jumped, I thought I heard something. Was that my name? Jaye yelling my name? But it was too late, I was already falling, falling forever it seemed. I was only a child really, and my panic had driven me forward. I finally hit cold water with a splash and felt the pain still there, blooming. I found Kacie there too, still limp, and dragged her to shore with me, her body buoyant on the shallow water. I collapsed on the shore in a puddle of blood. It seemed only minutes had passed.
I sat bolt upright in bed, suppressing the scream I so often woke with. That had happened. The things I couldn’t remember before. Another thought hit me, and I fumbled with the light, grabbing my paper and pen from the nightstand. I started to write…
10 min there = I week here
60 min = 6 weeks here?
19 years here. 165 hours there. About 7 days
I did the math in my head, then in the margins when it got too confusing. I had been out for 19 years. I had been in there for maybe ten minutes but missing a week here. Jaye had been in there for only a week, even though 19 years had passed. Jaye could still be alive. I covered my face with my hands, bursting into hot tears that lasted nearly an hour. About 19 years’ worth of tears for Jaye, who I had abandoned in that other place. Was there a way to go back and get her?
1998
My time in the hospital is forever and stands out in sharp relief in my mind. I remember every surgery, every test, my parents’ pleading eyes. The news they finally gave me about Kacie, about Jaye, when I had asked for the hundredth time and they couldn’t keep stalling. Jaye’s parents arguing with my mother in the hall, heard through a fog of pain and pain killers. Not being able to stay awake, then not being able to sleep. All the doctors and specialists, treating body and mind. The pastor trying to treat my soul, and me screaming until he left. Missing Kacie’s funeral. Kacie’s parents coming to see me just once but not setting foot in my room. My parents were in the cafeteria, and I felt a sharp twang of panic, trying to figure out what to say to them. I saw them through the partially open door. Pacing, hesitating. Her mom’s eyes found mine, and then she was running away down the hall, crying, her husband following with fluttering hands and calming words. My face burned with the shame of being the one who was alive. My grief like a hole. A keyhole. I didn’t have any answers that would help them. I was useless and alone in my hospital bed.
Soon I was well enough to go home, but I was still broken. Dragging a new leg brace, which I would always need. Crutches, which I wouldn’t. Physical therapy and tears and pain and anger, so much anger. Mostly at myself. But time does nothing if not pass. I was far from home by then and reinventing myself, playing pretend. My parents moved us so far, I could be anyone I wanted. I didn’t have to be the girl who went missing and was the only survivor. I didn’t have to be one of the town stories.
2017
My memories, once loosed, wouldn’t be put back down. I did my research. I knew about the tragedy in 1931. I knew about my own tragedy in 1998. I wanted to know what else had happened on that bridge. I won’t bore you with the details of libraries (yes, actual libraries), online searches, talking to the old people who knew someone who knew someone. The results, as best I can figure, look something like this:
1927 - The bridge was opened in 1928 but during its construction, three men died in a freak accident and two others were maimed. No one seems to know or recall many details, other than the date. August 18, 1927. There was a fair in town that helped mark the occasion in people’s minds and recollections, as it was the day they put up the tents. The same fair we still have every August. The Mandrea Springs Festival runs from the 19th to the 21st, sort of an end to summer/welcome fall. It’s a tradition that I didn’t realize went back so far. It was cancelled the year we were missing.
Something else of interest. James Corning Hunt, the bridge’s true namesake, had lost his wife the previous year to Scarlet Fever. He had spent most of his remaining funds seeking out every psychic and fortune teller this side of the Mississippi since then, as he believed she haunted him. He was a spiritualist after spiritualism was no longer in vogue. And he was afraid of ghosts.
1931 – you already know the story of Charles Johnston and his murders. I found out that he had been the foreman on the 1927 bridge project, and one of the men maimed. He had lost sight in one eye. Afterwards, he claimed he could see spirits with his bad eye. Everyone said he was never the same after the accident. He died in jail under suspicious circumstances. I was told he had a pen sticking out of his good eye.
1942 – On August 18th, 1942 a man was found hanged and dangling from the bridge, an apparent suicide. He tied a rope to a rafter during the night and jumped through the keyhole, breaking his neck. I couldn’t find a name to associate with this act, only a date and the disturbing detail that he was apparently smiling, swaying in the breeze, dead for hours when he was found.
1950’s – I found mention of four separate incidents, with six people dying on or under the bridge. Very few details were given, and they were short articles. All on August 18th, all different years.
1960’s – the bridge was no longer used for motor traffic by 1961, and became something of a hippie hangout, according to one local I talked to. There were several overdoses but only one death recorded, on August 18th, 1965. Tests showed heroin mixed with some sort of rat poison. Carlton Hunt, local man and descendent of the original Mr. Hunt, was quoted as saying that he hoped “that will teach those hippies to stay off our bridge.” The death was officially ruled accidental.
1973 – the only major incident reported in the 70’s came on August 18th, 1973. A woman was found dead, having been raped and beaten, one arm nearly torn off. The apparent perpetrator was found a few feet away on the bridge, dead of a single gunshot wound and missing most of his head. He also had strange animal bites on his arms. Despite forensics and animal experts, what caused the bites was never identified. I saw a blurry microfiche photo of the man which had been illicitly snapped by a reporter, and the bites look like angry red chunks missing from his forearm, bicep and shoulder. It’s not in color, so I can’t be sure. I called the photographer listed after a bit of searching for his number, but he hung up on me, twice. The second time the click was prefaced by an old man whisper. “I know who you are. Quit fucking around with this shit.”
1982 and 1985 – a murder and what looked to be a copycat murder. The first, August 18th, 1982 was a man, Edward Johnston, shot execution style after being whipped. The murderer was never caught but on August 18th, 1985 a known criminal was killed in the same way. The brother of the 1982 victim turned himself in 3 days later but would give no reason for the killing. He never spoke another word until his death 13 years later. August 18, 1998. The day we went missing.
1998 - Ours was the first major incident recorded in the 90’s, though there were rumors of a strange group that met on the bridge regularly. I couldn’t get anyone to confirm this, and most people refused to answer any more questions once I mentioned it. One man physically pushed me away from him before storming off down the street. The years since have seen various accidents, deaths, suspicious injuries, but I feel I have made my point. The repeating doesn’t add anything to my situation. August 18th is a bad day. There’s no pattern of something happening every certain number of years, but the date is always the same.
Such a place of concentrated pain and blood. Was the bridge bad, evil even before it was built, causing bad things to happen? Or did all the bad things saturate the bridge with blood and the negative thoughts of some very wrong people? I wanted to think that all this evil had made the place thin in spots, with somewhere else bleeding through. Like I said, broken attracts broken. I needed to embrace this to try and erase my survivors’ guilt. Why the bridge was this way didn’t really matter anymore.
What do you pack when you plan to try and replicate the worst day of your life? It was November 2nd. I had over 9 months to figure it out.
2017
Days passed, and I felt less sure, less prepared. Some days I felt like a fucking idiot and didn’t believe my own logic. I felt like I was in a movie. The one where the action hero trains for the big mission. Except maybe the bad b-version with a hero you don’t like and a mission that is doomed. My mind jumped back to the dream memory. Something in the water, something in the woods. I wished I was able to swim better, maybe run. As a girl with a brace, I was never much into sports or swimming, and the last pool I had been in was the therapy pool at the PT clinic. I started walking every night. I used the excuse that I was trying to reach more of the homeless, tell them about the shelter. Some of my guys would walk with me, a shield against the world and my thoughts. I thought about a pass to the school pool but chickened out. I didn’t like too many people around and the scars on my legs are not something for public viewing. I felt like a failure, who was going to fail again. I would lose my friend all over again.
My mind on the water over there, I bought a protective wet suit that could be used with my brace. Nearly shark proof, the salesman proclaimed proudly. I hoped that would be enough. I had a knife, a handgun that I bought on the street, bottles of water. I had no idea what else to put in my new backpack. I felt ridiculous as it was. But I was terrified. I added protein bars and Oreos, in an airtight plastic bag. Jaye always loved Oreos. This made me cry again. Everything was making me cry again.
1998
Jaye’s voice just as I jumped/fell back into our world. “Selena, help me!” I was sure of it now.
2018
August took forever to arrive but came too soon. The guys saw me fidgeting but were polite enough not to ask. They had their own demons and could spot the symptoms when they saw them. But some of them hung a bit closer to me, when they could. I found this sweet but suffocating. By the 15th, I could barely put a coherent sentence together. I faked sick and stayed in my apartment where I was left alone to agitate only myself.
Saturday, August 18, 2018
I rose too early, packed and repacked the few things I had. My tank was already filled with gas. I headed out with the sun to avoid the questions. I couldn’t eat but seemed to have no limit to the amount of coffee I craved. My drug. My leg ached in waves, in sympathy for the broken girl I had been and was again. Two hours was both too long and over in a flash. I stood on the shore. My car was in a lot nearby. My keys under a big rock at the edge of the woods, well hidden.
A note sat on my dresser just in case. I wanted to be prepared because even though I didn’t admit it to myself, I thought I might die there. Everything was taken care of. My bills prepaid, my taxes caught up. Plus, five years ahead just to be safe. My paid staff and volunteers had been given a story. I needed to get away. They could manage themselves. Everything was automated, organized, with my savings continuing to pay salaries, utilities, other necessities, until the money ran out. That wouldn’t be for several years and by then, the city would probably take over my place. I didn’t know what to expect so I was prepared for everything and nothing. My phone message said I was away for a long vacation. I left my cell in the car, charged. I put the wetsuit on over my clothes, over my brace, and walked stiffly to the keyhole, the end of everything good in my life. I perched there a moment, backpack over one shoulder, doubting. Debating myself. If it didn’t work, I would be wet, sore and feeling again that loss and guilt grow larger. If it worked, I would probably die. That seemed like a fair trade. My watch read 8:18 AM. I jumped.
Again, I felt that tilt, that tightening of the air and brightening of the colors. The wrongness. The fear. I almost vomited and was glad I hadn’t eaten. This all happened before I even hit the water. The fall stretched, made longer by what, I didn’t understand. I hit with no more force than before. The water felt the same. Too warm. Cloying, dragging me down. I moved fast, as fast as I could manage, and reached the shore. No bite this time, and nothing in sight that would indicate danger, other than the wrongness I felt. I hopped-ran to the tree line, throwing myself behind a big pine, catching my breath. I had no fucking clue what to do next. It was too quiet, too bright. I sat and gathered my thoughts and reminded myself that I was wasting days.
I got up and made my way along the tree line, peeking over my shoulder, staying quiet. I saw something surface there in the river, close to where I had landed. My mind refused to process it properly and tried to assign names of animals, real or imagined. Alligator dragon elephant dog. Fur, scales, eyes. Too many eyes. Too many teeth. It snorted the air and dove again. I bit my scream down as it headed to shore, lumbering out, its wrongness fully exposed. It yawned, or growled, a terrifying sight. It was now between me and the bridge. I was frozen. I had to make noise to find her. I couldn’t make noise, or I would be found. Hiding behind another tree, I saw foot prints. Human. Not mine. I followed them deeper into the trees. I looked for 10 minutes, my mind screaming ONE WEEK. I sat again, the foot prints having become too hard to find. Maybe too old or washed away. That was when the noises started. A chirp, or maybe a high bark. Up in the trees. Large eyes and small heads. I ran. Almost too late, I reminded myself to keep the river nearby. It was my only real escape route.
In my head I calculated. Two hours. 12 weeks. I had been in here for what would be 12 weeks out there. Give or take. My watch wasn’t working. I walked, steering clear of the noises. Once, I accidentally walked into a circle of the things, all eating another, dead creature. I can’t even say what it looked like. It was like nothing I had ever seen, scaly, bloody. But the blood was…green? I backed away slowly as I heard hissing and two dove for my feet. I was glad for the shoes, the wet suit. I kicked at them, their bites stinging but not breaking skin as far as I could tell. Later I was chased by something unbelievably tall and thin. I soon realized it was blind, reacting to the sound of my retreat. When I stopped, it stopped. I waited, exhausted and crying, until it lost interest and wandered away. I ran again until I had to stop, hiding in the underbrush.
I heard a rustle nearby, as if something was approaching slowly, staying hidden. No more creatures, I thought, praying to whatever thing ruled here. I was too tired for anymore. A dragging and walking, then stopping, then starting again. I got up, preparing to run. I first saw a blond head, matted hair, come into view. A dirty face followed, a look of sheer amazement mixed with terror giving it a clown’s frozen expression. I held my breath. It was Jaye. Jaye from my memories, my pictures. She leaned on a long stick, her ankle swollen and badly bruised. How the fuck had I found her so fast? How the fuck had she found me? I wanted to giggle like a schoolgirl. Then I remembered that fast here wasn’t fast out there. I might have been gone for months by then.
Since my only vices were coffee and anxiety, time had been pretty good to me. I still wore my hair in the same short cut I had at 13, and it was the same auburn as back then. I had reached my full height that summer as well. “Sel?” She looked at me, tears beginning to gather above her dirty cheeks. At the sound of my name – my shortened name that no one had used since that summer, my eyes filled too.
“What…where were you? Why are you old?”
I did laugh then, quietly. I walked to her, still aware we were in a make-believe forest of death and nightmare monsters. I hugged her, she hugged me back, crying silently onto my shoulder. I took her hand. I told her I would explain everything. We needed to go, and fast. We needed to get to the bridge. After we were safe, I said I would tell her everything.
“Do you have any food? I am so hungry.”
“Oreos,” I told her. She smiled with her whole, filthy face.
As we made our way slowly, Jaye leaning on her stick and eating Oreo after Oreo, we whispered. She told me we absolutely could not go to the bridge, even though she knew the way. She said she had been trying but was always blocked. “There’s something that lives in the water Sel, something awful. It almost got me the first time when I tried to follow you and Kacie, because I didn’t know it was there. It never sleeps.” Her eyes looked haunted, and so young. I rubbed my leg at the mention of it. Jaye looked down, noticing the lumpy brace under my wet suit for the first time. “Oh, I saw that you were bleeding,” was all she said. I think she knew. Getting to the bridge had been my only goal after finding Jaye, and our only route of escape. I knew we had to try. I had a plan. A simple, stupid plan. I was hoping the creature wasn’t as smart as we were.
Whatever was in the water stayed hidden under the surface until the last moment, scaring the shit out of me as we approached the river slowly. Jaye didn’t even jump, she just looked resigned to her fate, turning away. We backed again into the tree line, and it retreated, showing its teeth. Guardian or territorial beast, it didn’t really matter. It didn’t want us on the bridge. Even with my brace, I felt I was faster, though Jaye had youth on her side. We would approach from opposite sides I told her, me first. I hoped to confuse it with two targets, leaving it unable to pursue one or the other of us. We would run to opposite ends of the bridge, meeting at the keyhole. She had been alone, a single target. But now there were two of us. After a long moment, she reluctantly agreed. I was the adult, after all.
I started out first. The creature lunged then lumbered. I kept my distance, luring it left. Jaye approached from the right, and it turned toward her, ignoring me momentarily. It was almost comical, whipping its head from side to side, as we both crept forward. “Now!” I yelled, and we both took off, my speed hindered by my bag and brace, Jaye making good time despite her injury. For one heart-stopping moment I thought it had me, but it whipped back around to pursue Jaye as she lunged onto the bridge, and I was able to get on as well. The creature bellowed, a pitiful moan that seemed to shake the very sky. I hoped it wasn’t a call for backup.
I told Jaye over and over, we had to jump. It was the only way back. She didn’t want to, she didn’t trust what I kept repeating to her, but in the end, she really had no choice. Something big in the forest started to make its way closer, and several small somethings below the trees were starting to get brave enough to run toward us, retreating, then returning. Her eyes had that haunted look again, and I again thought of her youth. She had been here alone for a week. No food, no help, no hope. “I hate those fucking things,” she said, showing me small bites on her hands. They looked infected. “Me too,” I nodded, and pulled her through with me.
Monday, July 1, 2019
We jumped into a warm and windless day, the sun high and bright. No one was there to see us fall, as if from nowhere, into the still-chilly water. Jaye had only her swimsuit and t-shirt. A dirty, hungry 13-year-old who had been lost in a nightmare for a week. We were thrust into the world almost a year after I had gone in. For Jaye, time had worked differently, and it was so much harder for her to process. I had a blanket in the car, and my keys were where I had left them all those months ago. Thank God for small towns, I thought to myself. No one had even thought to tow it. My phone was dead but charged quickly once the car was started. She stared at it in awe and disbelief, the teenager reemerging from the dirty, battered child before me. I sat her down with the Oreos and water, cocooned in the blanket. She looked so small, so young. I started talking slowly, back to the day we went in. I told her as gently as I could, but she sometimes asked me to stop, peppering me with questions, tears flowing more readily now that she had the water. Other times her eyes were blank, and she went silent in a way that scared me. I preferred the crying and questions. The two hours of driving gave me time to tell it my way, and we hit up two drive throughs on the way back. She wanted fries. She wanted donuts. She ate and ate until she couldn’t anymore. I kept looking at her. She was changing. I had a hunch about that but would tell her later.
We reached my apartment at the shelter and I snuck her in the back. The place was still there, the key still worked, the electric still on. The fridge was empty, but I went up to the big storage units behind the actual shelter and grabbed a few things. My secret stash of beer was still there, replaced several times over I was sure. I needed one right now but decided to wait. Jaye wasn’t old enough to drink yet. I stopped her questions and made her take a long, hot shower. She was still frightened and asked me to stay in the bathroom, where I perched on the toilet seat top, chewing my thumb nail. Dressed in my sweatpants and t shirt, her feet stuck in my fuzzy slippers, she looked like a hostage from a long-ago sleepover. I saw more changes. Her ankle was healing, the bruises fading. The cuts on her hands now closed, less red. I applied Neosporin and Band-Aids, though I thought she might not need them soon.
We spent hours talking about time. How long I was in there, how long she was in there, how old I was and what had happened to every person we knew. I was embarrassed to admit I knew little about where anyone else was. My parents were seven years dead, thanks to a drunk driver and bad luck. After enduring a bit of a freak out, I showed her my computer and how it worked today. Her puzzled “no AOL?” gave me a ten-minute laughing fit, which segued into crying, and then hiccups. She hugged me non-stop that first day, needing to be reassured, needing to be safe. Still a child.
Her parents were alive and not too far away from the shelter I ran, and for her it had only been a week since she had seen them. I knew she missed them, but I wasn’t ready to give her up to them just yet. There were a few more things I needed to tell her. We talked about Kacie, and my time in the hospital. I kept thinking about how long I waited to go back in, how long it took me to figure it out. Twenty fucking years! Although she said she forgave me a hundred times, I couldn’t forgive myself. I made her more food, and then told her what I suspected. She was aging rapidly. I thought she would probably reach her true age out here in a few days. This was the hardest thing we talked about. Jaye felt 13. She was 13 really, but not out here. Out here she would be 34 now like me, and the weight of all she missed finally hit her. Growing up, graduation, college, marriage, a career, babies – things she always talked about. She was a small town girl with small town dreams and hopes as big as the sky. I could see them all shatter around her, like glass falling from her hands. She locked herself in the bathroom and I could hear her sobbing through the cheap door. I kept telling her it wasn’t too late, that 34 wasn’t old at all. Still time for college, career, babies, the whole thing. It took me fifteen minutes, but she came out, dry eyed. She always was a girl with a good head on her shoulders. I think she had seen in the mirror what I had already told her. I would say now that she was a young woman of twenty or so. Seven years in a day. Before this I always thought time was so constant, so set in stone, ticking away. Now I saw it as a river, moving fast or slow, drying up, sometimes raging. She couldn’t fight it so she sat, resigned, and we made a plan.
Monday, July 8, 2019
They say never burn your bridges, but we did. We burned that evil fucker down and watched to make sure it worked before we took off in the night, singing as loud as we could to oldies that weren’t old to her at all. We had decided on overkill, saturating it with gallons and gallons of gas, because I secretly wondered if this had been tried before. I didn’t know if getting rid of the bridge would really rid the place of its evil past, and I said that to her, but it wouldn’t hurt to try. Jaye didn’t care, she wanted it gone as much as I did. We went west, and the firetrucks came east, but we knew they were too late. I took that old man’s advice and stopped fucking with that shit once and for all.
Jaye went home. She had reached the ripe old age of 34. She was beautiful, no sun or alcohol damage to mar that face, only the years that a week could add to her. She went home in clothes bought with cash at a cheap-mart and with the stated recollection of no memory of the last 21 years. I dropped her a few blocks from her parents’ house then watched the local news for the next part of her story. Once the media died down and everyone was done poking and prodding her, her family was so ecstatic to have her home that they eventually stopped the questions. No scars to see, no physical injuries to treat. I had a feeling they really didn’t want to know. Knowing might have been too painful.
Now
Jaye and I are close, like sisters. Inseparable. We fight, but always make up quickly, forgetting what we are mad about within a day. She still thinks she is gorgeous, and she is. I’m still a little taller, and no one else understands why she calls me an old lady, since we are the same age. She found someone, and I found someone, so our lives are full of love and kids and pets (her kids, my pets), but we still like to spend time, just the two of us. Sometimes we drive past the ruined and blackened stumps of the bridge, not talking, our thoughts kept to ourselves but plain as day. Because there are really three of us then. We can feel Kacie there, in between us, laughing in that way she did. A book in her hand, her glasses slipping down her nose, a summer vacation that never ends. As important to us now as she was back in 1998. She will always be 13 to me. After all, time isn’t constant. It isn’t set in stone. It’s a river, sometimes of laughter, sometimes of tears. A river that reflects three girls, young and tan and loud, and a friendship that neither time nor death could destroy. Bridges can be burned, but memories can’t.