The Girl On the Bridge

CW: Death of a teenager

It was July, and the summer sun had beaten Silver Falls and all its inhabitants into a sticky, languid submission. The town was filled with the drone of fans and rattling old swamp coolers. Children lived perpetually in shorts and bathing suits, trying to eat popsicles before they could melt and darting through sprinklers to wash away the rainbow carnage on their faces and fingers when they weren't fast enough. The days crawled snail-like into weeks, even time seeming to have decided it wasn't worth the effort to brave the heat. 

The older kids dared to leave the minor comfort of the plastic sprinklers and cheap fans, carting coolers of soda and the odd pilfered beer out to the woods to enjoy a secluded stretch of the river. The humid air was thick with bug spray and shrieking laughter. The heat and the boredom had driven the misfits and small town royalty alike to the river bank for relief, and that’s how Marianne Jacobs found herself in the shadow of the old trestle bridge. Her head felt heavy and hazy from the relentless humidity, her mind only clearing when Jesse suggested they play a game.

“It’s too hot for games,” Carley complained, pressing a cold can of Coke to her forehead. 

“But this isn’t any old game,” Jesse said, her smile going sly. “It’s the bridge dare.”

“What’s that?” Carley asked.

“You don’t know about the bridge dare?” Devin asked, rummaging in the battered plastic cooler they’d brought. “You climb up on the bridge to see if you can see the ghost.”

He let out a ghostlike moan and waggled his fingers at Carley, and she wrinkled her nose. 

“Back in like, the seventies or something, this girl climbed up to jump into the river from the bridge,” Jesse explained. “But the water was too shallow so she landed on a rock and died. And now her ghost haunts the bridge, and they had to ban people from going up there because kids kept climbing up as a dare. You can only see the ghost if you go out to the middle of the bridge. And if you see the ghost, you’ll die too.”

“That’s just an old urban legend.” Carley rolled her eyes. “The bridge is off limits ‘cause it’s old and rotten. You don’t need any ghost to get killed up there.”

“That’s Carley code for being too chicken to do it,” Devin declared, earning an elbow jab to the ribs. Marianne lifted her gaze to the bridge high above them, overgrown with greenery; a carcass being devoured by the scavenging woods. She imagined a ghost up there, watching them with empty eyes. 

“Well I’m going up,” Jesse said, and Marianne nodded. She felt an inexplicable pull to the bridge. 

“I’ll go too,” Devin said, taking a gulp of soda and turning his baseball cap around backwards. Carley scoffed.

“You’re a bunch of idiots,” she said. Marianne followed Jesse and Devin into the foliage, scrambling up to the rusted out old train tracks. They followed them to the bridge, pausing before the chain strung across it, the WARNING KEEP OFF sign hanging limply from the links. It struck her as almost funny; that this simple chain was meant to serve as a warden of the bridge. The three of them stepped over it and the wooden boards creaked a protest under their feet, as if in pain. Or like a slumbering beast being woken from its hibernation. They picked their way toward the middle, and Marianne peered over the side into the river below. They were higher up than she’d expected and she swayed with vertigo.

“Maybe we should head back,” she suggested but they kept walking. Marianne drew away from the rail and hurried after them. Jesse paused to look over her shoulder, and her face went pale as she stumbled to a halt. 

“Oh my god,” she whispered. Marianne cast a look behind her, seeing nothing.

“Jesse, what’s wrong?” she asked.

“It…it’s her,” Jesse said, her hands lifted as if to ward something off.

“Jesse, what are you talking about?” Devin asked. “There’s nothing over there.”

“I can see her!” Jesse’s voice had gone from a whisper to a shriek. “She’s right there!” 

Jesse moved as if to flee across the bridge, but now that they were here it seemed like the bridge didn’t want to let them leave. A board snapped beneath Jesse and her foot fell through, dragging her roughly to her knees. She screamed, and Marianne and Devin rushed to pull her to safety. Her ankle was bloody and she was gasping with ragged sobs. 

“Coming up here was a bad idea,” Marianne said.

“Let’s go back down, you might need stitches for that ankle,” Devin said, helping Jesse back onto her feet. 

“I saw the ghost,” Jesse said, her teeth chattering despite the heat. Marianne reached out to lay a hand on her arm. 

“There was nothing there,” she said gently, but Jesse was insistent. She cried the whole way back to town, but finally lapsed into silence as they drove her home. Her ankle wasn’t as bad as it had looked, though they all got an earful from her mother. 

“I told you not to go up there,” Carley muttered. Marianne offered to stay the night, so Jesse wouldn’t be alone when her mom left to work her night shift at the diner. Jesse was jumpy and anxious all evening, flinching around corners like she expected someone to be standing there. Marianne fell asleep on the couch with the TV on, waking sometime in the middle of the night, in those hours where it feels like time warps into strange shapes. She didn’t remember getting up but she found herself in the upstairs hallway, and Jesse was screaming. 

“What’s wrong?” Marianne asked with alarm. “Jesse, what’s wrong?”

“She’s here!” Jesse cried. “No, leave me alone, please. It’s not supposed to be real!”

Jesse clawed the air in front of her, tears streaming down her face. Marianne grabbed her arms, trying to hold them down. Jesse’s eyes were so wide that the whites looked like terrified moons. 

“Jesse, there’s no one there! Stop!” 

Jesse’s nails raked across Marianne’s cheek but she didn’t even feel it. Her panicked sobbing cut off with a gasp as Jesse bent double, gagging like she couldn’t get any air. Marianne realized she was repeating Jesse’s name in a frantic mantra, trying to calm her. Jesse stood and reeled away; a puppet dancing on a string. Her hands gripped the stair railing and then she launched herself over it. 

Marianne screamed as Jesse struck the coffee table below. After all of Jesse’s screaming, the sudden silence was deafening. Marianne placed her shaking hands on the rail and peered over, seeing Jesse sprawled below her. She was inexplicably lying in a puddle of water, and her neck was bent at an awful angle, her blank eyes staring up toward the ceiling but seeing nothing. 

Marianne walked out of Jesse’s house. She had the fleeting thought that she should stay, should call someone for help. But she kept walking. She wondered if she was in shock. Her feet carried her back to the woods, to the river, to the bridge. It loomed up from the heavy shadows, a hulking animal poised to strike down its prey. Marianne made her way to the train tracks and once again followed them onto the bridge, ignoring the useless chain. The river seemed louder this time; she couldn’t even hear the boards creak underfoot this time. 

She saw a figure on the bridge and drew to a halt, wondering at how calm she felt. “Are you the ghost?” she asked. “Did you kill Jesse?”

The figure wavered and then solidified, revealing Jesse. Her head hung to the side, the bones of her neck straining against the skin. Her eyes were shadowed and her skin looked gray. She stared at Marianne and said nothing, but there was a devastation and an accusation in her gaze. Marianne looked down into the rushing water and her head spun with vertigo again. She felt like she was falling, and as she raised her head again to see Jesse’s phantom eyes glistening she realized that she remembered falling. She had walked onto the bridge, but it was so high. It had sent a spike of fear through her chest. She decided at the last minute not to jump into the water, but her foot betrayed her and slipped as she turned away. She fell and fell for an eternity and mere seconds, and then there was just water and darkness rushing over her. 

Marianne felt a jolt as her neck twisted to mirror Jesse’s. Jesse had told the story about how she died, and it woke her from where she’d been quiet on the bridge, waiting. She got lonely up here, and the others she’d taken always faded until they didn’t remember where they were or who they had been. But Jesse was new; she would last a while. Marianne smiled. 

“It’s not so bad, Jesse,” she said. “We can play a game.”