See the full description in the August 1 newsletter. You’ll be working with first, second, and third points-of-view, as well as past, present, and even future tense. Have fun with this one. Reflect on how it works for you. And what questions you have.
Note that I will be hiking until the 4th of August, but post away. And I look forward to seeing what you come up with.
OK, I've tried everything. I got to the newsletter via my email and so saw the prompts, but... when I click any link I get this message: You're logged in as ggevalt@gmail.com, but this page is private. Try logging in with a different email, or letting the author know they've linked to a private page.
At some point I got sent a link to log into Unschool by clicking here, but that takes me to a general substack search page in which a long number has been inserted into the search bar and it says to me that no such item was found.
I am using a mac and Firefox browser. I suspect something is not working right (perhaps my status was not changed even though I am an annual supporter?) Or... who knows.
Anyways, I think you are away for a few days but I thought you'd like to know my experience. ... a fun prompt. I love 7 minute writes. So let me know how to participate.
At the stroke of midnight, I go to the old bridge. Not sure what I will find there, but the instructions were clear. Be there and wait seven minutes. Could be dangerous, I suppose, but then everything is dangerous. Crossing the street is dangerous.
I decided to light a cigarette. Talk about dangerous. Everyone knows cigarettes will kill you. But they relax me. I take a long drag on it. Think what will happen at the bridge. If Garcia is there, it could be trouble. But if he’s not there, it will be even worse. How did I even get involved in this? There I was in the office just adding up figures, minding my business, counting the days till retirement, and then Johnson said, Want to do something interesting?
Like a fool, I said yes. But maybe that’s because my life is not interesting enough. And now I have to go to the old bridge. Will the Cubans be there? Why am I involved with Cubans? It’s crazy. Maybe I just won’t go. But no, that could be a problem. They’re expecting me, relying on me. Yes, but they’re criminals. Why am I involved with criminals? Well, it’s a long story.
At the Bridge 2
At the stroke of midnight, he went to the old bridge. Garcia was supposed to be there, but he wasn’t. Garcia was never there, never there when you wanted him, that is. Oh, he’d pop up at the oddest times, but when you had an appointment, Never. I would have come, he would say, I always plan to come, but if something better comes up, how can I refuse?
It always seemed so outrageous to Stevenson. How can somebody think like that? It was so beyond his belief system that he had just gone silent, said nothing. Maybe Garcia would think he agreed with him. But did that matter? Did anything matter? You should let people know where you stand. You should stand up for yourself. But why? And if you do, you go overboard and then what? You have to apologize.
Anyway, Garcia was not there. Maybe he should apologize. But of course he wasn’t there to apologize. Stevenson wondered how long he should wait. Some people were just late. But that wasn’t Garcia; he just wouldn’t show – although wait, was that him in the distance, wearing that beat-up old raincoat of his. Yes, he was coming. Now they could start figuring things out.
At the Bridge 3
At the stroke of midnight, you will go to the old bridge. The old man will be waiting for you, and will give you directions. Don’t ask me now, I can’t tell you. You can light a cigarette, sure; that doesn’t matter. Just be at the bridge.
You think, This is crazy. I can’t go to the bridge. Who knows what will happen? And why can’t Garcia just tell you? That’s crazy too. Sigh. You wish you had never met Garcia. He was just shuffling around at the airport looking like a homeless person, but then he said, Do you want to do something interesting?
Of course, you shrank away from him when he said that, but he came after you. I’m not a crazy person or a pervert, he said, but I need someone to help me out. I need to meet someone at the old bridge, but I can’t go. Maybe you can go for me.
And do what, you think? Deliver drugs, get mugged, be the patsy?
I’ll pay you, said Garcia. Here, a hundred dollars. He peeled it off a roll. Who carries money like that anymore? Here, he said, take it – and you’ll get ten times as much if you show up at the old bridge. At midnight.
But why, you want to ask? And do what? But he wouldn’t say. Just: The old man will be waiting for you.
At the stroke of midnight, I go to the old bridge…
(first person, present tense)
At the stroke of midnight, I go to the old bridge. It’s the only place that offers a breeze on this stifling hot summer night. I touch the cool metal railings that are painted a mossy green, perhaps to blend in with the churning river below. I smell the slightly salty air that the river breeze brings in from the nearby ocean. It’s dark, with just a fingernail moon in a starless sky. My thoughts are free and I feel the sweat finally dry on my skin. I’m here to breathe, just breathe in the midst of this heat and the turmoil back at the house.
(third person, past tense)
At the stroke of midnight she went to the old bridge, knowing it was the only place that offered a breeze on that stifling summer night. She had touched the cool metal railings, their mossy green colour reflecting the churning river below. There was a slightly salty smell that had drifted in from the nearby ocean. It was dark that night, with just a fingernail moon in a starless sky. Her thoughts had been freewheeling as the sweat finally dried on her skin. She went there to breathe…breathe, in the midst of the heat and the turmoil that had been waiting back at the house.
(second person, future tense)
At the stroke of midnight you will go to the old bridge. It will be the only place that offers you a breeze on a stifling summer night. You’ll feel the cool metal railings, see their mossy green colour reflecting the churning river below. There will be that slightly salty smell in the air that drifts in from the ocean nearby. It will likely be a starless night with just a fingernail moon pasted to the sky. Here you will let your thoughts run free and any sweat will finally dry in the soft air. You’ll be there to breathe, in the middle of the heat and the turmoil that awaits you back at the house.
Thoughts:
What I love about this exercise is that you are pushed to think of things differently, come up with a different way to say the same things and this pulls different adjectives, descriptions. This is exciting and useful...because you can go back and choose the version you like best but edit with the best parts of the other versions.
For example I like in my second person that ‘fingernail moon pasted to the sky’ came out. I would use that in the first person if I were to carry on with that version and that sentence would change to ‘ It’s dark, with just a fingernail moon pasted in a starless sky.’
The second person is clunky and it’s tricky to not make it sound like a list of instructions.
First person is closest to the main character as it’s happening in the minute… but I like third person as well as I feel you can add a more reflective tone, from the character’s point of view, as it is something that they’re remembering rather than living it in the moment.
In third person, I’ve used the word ‘had’ too much.
To those being sent to a private page, as I have been: try accessing the August 1 newsletter from the page that opens when you first click on Unschool, or substack, rather than by clicking on link above. That worked for me.
My comment seems to have disappeared, or I'm blind, but if you open in the substack link or the unschool for writers, or however you've saved it, and click on the August 1 newsletter you will get the full August prompt.
1. At the stroke of midnight I go to the old bridge. The edge of the road I walk is crowded on one side with overly-cut trees and bushes in a swamp, on the other cottages, living room window bright and I see people playing cards, watching TV.
The old bridge if fragile in the moonlit dark. Hesitant, afraid to fall through, I step on the old railroad ties and see water shimmering below. On either side stretches lake. If I fall in what water monsters will grab my feet? What ghosts?
In case a car comes flashing over on the boards wide enough for its tires, I stay close to the edge of the bridge.
I have challenged myself to make this walk, afraid, always, afraid of what lurks beneath the water. The ghost outline of a canoe. Of a broken paddle.
2. At the stroke of midnight she went to the old bridge.
Day after day, month after month, year after year, the bridge scared her. Not the bridge. The water beneath it.
She was tired of being scared.
The road was narrow, the bridge weightless in the moonlit night. Knowing cars would not see her and that someone was always driving home from somewhere she stayed to the edge of the road, of the bridge.
She was sad to leave the card-playing cottagers behind, bright in their living rooms.
On the other side of the road, and bridge, swamp, and weed-choked lake.
As she put one toe on the railroad tie, then edged her whole foot on, she saw the water below. The lake spread on either side.
3. At the stroke of midnight you will to to the old bridge. You will shiver at the scrubby swamp on one side of the narrow approach, you will feel left out as you look into the bright cottage windows on the other side and see laughing people playing cards, quiet people watching TV.
You will be scared, but you will step on to the bridge.
Also afraid of any quick cars no seeing you int he dark, you stay on the side of the bridge.
You will face your shadows.
You will see the lake glimmer below between the old railroad ties. On one side you will see it, placid, shimmer into the too-dark.
You will know that on the other side weeds tickle the surface of the water, below dense as -
In each case I tried to move deeper into the moment, the why, the atmosphere. In #2 I changed sentences to make it more interesting for myself - I hated that movie "Groundhog Day" - and to feel more of what was happening. As somone else wrote, #3 begged to be written as an order, and that is how it felt. It begged more clipped sentences.
Not excited about posting - my first drafts are always dull as dishwater - but wonder if anyone sees what I thought I was doing each writing.
Aug 14, 2022·edited Aug 14, 2022Liked by Alison Acheson
At the stroke of midnight, I go to the old bridge. I go every night. In my mind. Or for real. Sometimes, in the winter, I stay in bed and imagine myself walking on top of the snow and reaching the bridge in the blue light of the moon. Me, snug in my bed, the air so cold it freezes your nostrils.
I'm obsessed with the old bridge. You know the one. Down on Dark Hollow Road. The one where Kenny Randall jumped off and broke his neck. Little Kenny Randall. He never wanted to jump off. Yet he'd come with us every day and watch and stand on the edge of the bridge even after every one of us had jumped. We treading water in the river begging him to jump, yelling at him to jump. And then, one night he did. In the light of the full moon we watched as he let himself fall, and we knew as soon as he did that it was all wrong, that he'd gone way too far to the right, and the sound of his body hitting the shallow water, the sound of his bones crashing against the rock horrified us. We rushed to get him out of the water, of course, otherwise he'd drown, but the doctors told us later that the moving of him was what had paralyzed him, and we said, 'What were we to do?'
His parents never spoke to us again, always looked the other way when we walked past their house and eventually took us all to court, said we were the ones who made Kenny jump, we were the ones who made him the way he was. And we had, of course. We had cajoled and teased and bullied and finally gotten him to jump.
But the judge threw the case out, said the boy was capable of his own choices, had jumped with his own free will and the rest of us had no choice but to try to pull him from the water to keep him from drowning.
Kenny Randall was just a head, really. He could move his eyes and his mouth. He could speak, but he could not move his head, could not move his arms or legs or any part of his body. At least that's what we were told. His mother and his father would not let us see him, instead caring for him in solitude, night and day, around the clock for 11 years until, finally, mercifully, he expired. Word is that it took his mother quite a while to realize he was gone. 'A blessing,' my mother said.
But that's when the dreams happened. We all have them. Little Kenny Randall comes to all of us in our sleep and tells us to be at the bridge at the stroke of midnight that he has a message for us. We seven. We seven friends who are so frozen in time by what happened we have never left town, never amounted to much, chained, as we are, to the dream. Oh Sidney did leave for a time but he said the dream just got worse, more frightening, so he came back.
And so we take turns going to the bridge at midnight. For a while all seven of us would go. But then we decided to take turns, sometimes getting one of the others to go with us and when nothing happens we walk back and talk about Kenny Randall and how he really was a nice kid, simple, but nice and we are sorry for what happened to him.
Nothing ever happens, of course, but we still go there. Perhaps it has become habit. Or curiosity. Or our desire that something happen so that the dreams will stop.
And then tonight happens.
I am at the edge of the bridge and the moon is full and I can see the wooden beams now exposed from years of weather and disuse. I balance-walk across the first 20 yards until I reach the center where the road bed is still intact and I peer over the edge of the bridge's railing, rickety now, at the river bed below, the full moon casting blue shadows on the rocks, sparkling off the dribbles of water. I stand there and suddenly feel a hand on my shoulder.
----
At the stroke of midnight she goes to the old bridge. She has no idea why. She has had the dream again. She is frightened. Again. In the dream she is at the old bridge down on Dark Hollow Road in the moonlight and she sees someone at the edge, looking over, watches as someone comes out of the shadows and pushes them. That's when she awakens. She is drenched in sweat. The image plays over and over and over in her mind.
She gets up and, in silence, dresses, goes downstairs and out the door. She looks at her watch. It is ten minutes before midnight. She passes the Randalls' house; it is dark. She takes the River Trail at the end of the road and is upon the bridge at the stroke of midnight. An owl startles her, calling from the limb of the live oak, white-blue and still. She continues on.
She does not see the man until she is at the edge of the bridge. He is at the railing looking down and she does not recognize him at first and is sure he is going to jump. She walks quickly, but carefully, down the beam to the man and reaches out her hand to touch his shoulder.
----
You go to the old bridge at the stroke of midnight. You are not sure why. Your head is filled with an image of a young woman and young man embracing at the edge of the bridge just as they topple over the edge. The dream. But different this time. You awaken. You are sweating even though the window is wide open and the air is cold and damp. You get up and put on your pants and a shirt. You don't know why. You just do it. You slide your feet into your sneakers and tie them tight and slowly, quietly open the door and go down the stairs careful to step on the side so as to not have the steps creak and awaken your family. You go out the door and close it behind you without sound. You breathe again.
You walk down the street and pass the Randalls' house and you think of little Kenny Randall and the night he jumped the night of the full moon when everyone was in the water and laughing and having fun and trying to talk little Kenny into jumping but when he does...you can't think about it. You stop yourself from thinking about it. Instead you think about how beautiful the moonlight is, the patterns of the shadows on the ground as you walk.
You hear an owl ahead, down by the river. You take the trail, the trail that used to be the Dark Hollow Road, back when the bridge was used, back when parents used to let their kids go to the bridge to go swimming because everyone knew the water was deep enough, except on the right bank, stay in the center children, you were told. And everyone but Kenny Randall heard it, understood it, but Kenny was always a little slow, a little off and he thought that was where you were supposed to jump and you remember correcting him once, that day he almost jumped, and you told him, no, Kenny, jump to the middle, always jump in the middle, and you thought he understood you but the night he jumped you knew in a split second that he hadn't understood at all.
You hear the owl again, louder now, and you look at your watch and it is exactly midnight and you have come to the edge of the bridge and you see, in the middle, a form, two forms, one a woman reaching out to a man at the edge and then they embrace and then a form darts out from the shadow and pushes the couple and they break the railing and go tumbling off and land on the rocks below making a horrible crunching noise because the river is a trickle now, nothing like it was, in this the 11th year of the drought.
You cannot move. Your voice makes no sound. And then you notice that third form at the edge of the bridge has turned. It is a man. He is looking at you. He is smiling.
Hi. Link takes me to a private page.
G
I get sent to the private link, too.
OK, I've tried everything. I got to the newsletter via my email and so saw the prompts, but... when I click any link I get this message: You're logged in as ggevalt@gmail.com, but this page is private. Try logging in with a different email, or letting the author know they've linked to a private page.
At some point I got sent a link to log into Unschool by clicking here, but that takes me to a general substack search page in which a long number has been inserted into the search bar and it says to me that no such item was found.
I am using a mac and Firefox browser. I suspect something is not working right (perhaps my status was not changed even though I am an annual supporter?) Or... who knows.
Anyways, I think you are away for a few days but I thought you'd like to know my experience. ... a fun prompt. I love 7 minute writes. So let me know how to participate.
cheers,
geoffrey
Three Ways of Looking at a Bridge
At the Bridge
At the stroke of midnight, I go to the old bridge. Not sure what I will find there, but the instructions were clear. Be there and wait seven minutes. Could be dangerous, I suppose, but then everything is dangerous. Crossing the street is dangerous.
I decided to light a cigarette. Talk about dangerous. Everyone knows cigarettes will kill you. But they relax me. I take a long drag on it. Think what will happen at the bridge. If Garcia is there, it could be trouble. But if he’s not there, it will be even worse. How did I even get involved in this? There I was in the office just adding up figures, minding my business, counting the days till retirement, and then Johnson said, Want to do something interesting?
Like a fool, I said yes. But maybe that’s because my life is not interesting enough. And now I have to go to the old bridge. Will the Cubans be there? Why am I involved with Cubans? It’s crazy. Maybe I just won’t go. But no, that could be a problem. They’re expecting me, relying on me. Yes, but they’re criminals. Why am I involved with criminals? Well, it’s a long story.
At the Bridge 2
At the stroke of midnight, he went to the old bridge. Garcia was supposed to be there, but he wasn’t. Garcia was never there, never there when you wanted him, that is. Oh, he’d pop up at the oddest times, but when you had an appointment, Never. I would have come, he would say, I always plan to come, but if something better comes up, how can I refuse?
It always seemed so outrageous to Stevenson. How can somebody think like that? It was so beyond his belief system that he had just gone silent, said nothing. Maybe Garcia would think he agreed with him. But did that matter? Did anything matter? You should let people know where you stand. You should stand up for yourself. But why? And if you do, you go overboard and then what? You have to apologize.
Anyway, Garcia was not there. Maybe he should apologize. But of course he wasn’t there to apologize. Stevenson wondered how long he should wait. Some people were just late. But that wasn’t Garcia; he just wouldn’t show – although wait, was that him in the distance, wearing that beat-up old raincoat of his. Yes, he was coming. Now they could start figuring things out.
At the Bridge 3
At the stroke of midnight, you will go to the old bridge. The old man will be waiting for you, and will give you directions. Don’t ask me now, I can’t tell you. You can light a cigarette, sure; that doesn’t matter. Just be at the bridge.
You think, This is crazy. I can’t go to the bridge. Who knows what will happen? And why can’t Garcia just tell you? That’s crazy too. Sigh. You wish you had never met Garcia. He was just shuffling around at the airport looking like a homeless person, but then he said, Do you want to do something interesting?
Of course, you shrank away from him when he said that, but he came after you. I’m not a crazy person or a pervert, he said, but I need someone to help me out. I need to meet someone at the old bridge, but I can’t go. Maybe you can go for me.
And do what, you think? Deliver drugs, get mugged, be the patsy?
I’ll pay you, said Garcia. Here, a hundred dollars. He peeled it off a roll. Who carries money like that anymore? Here, he said, take it – and you’ll get ten times as much if you show up at the old bridge. At midnight.
But why, you want to ask? And do what? But he wouldn’t say. Just: The old man will be waiting for you.
At the stroke of midnight, I go to the old bridge…
(first person, present tense)
At the stroke of midnight, I go to the old bridge. It’s the only place that offers a breeze on this stifling hot summer night. I touch the cool metal railings that are painted a mossy green, perhaps to blend in with the churning river below. I smell the slightly salty air that the river breeze brings in from the nearby ocean. It’s dark, with just a fingernail moon in a starless sky. My thoughts are free and I feel the sweat finally dry on my skin. I’m here to breathe, just breathe in the midst of this heat and the turmoil back at the house.
(third person, past tense)
At the stroke of midnight she went to the old bridge, knowing it was the only place that offered a breeze on that stifling summer night. She had touched the cool metal railings, their mossy green colour reflecting the churning river below. There was a slightly salty smell that had drifted in from the nearby ocean. It was dark that night, with just a fingernail moon in a starless sky. Her thoughts had been freewheeling as the sweat finally dried on her skin. She went there to breathe…breathe, in the midst of the heat and the turmoil that had been waiting back at the house.
(second person, future tense)
At the stroke of midnight you will go to the old bridge. It will be the only place that offers you a breeze on a stifling summer night. You’ll feel the cool metal railings, see their mossy green colour reflecting the churning river below. There will be that slightly salty smell in the air that drifts in from the ocean nearby. It will likely be a starless night with just a fingernail moon pasted to the sky. Here you will let your thoughts run free and any sweat will finally dry in the soft air. You’ll be there to breathe, in the middle of the heat and the turmoil that awaits you back at the house.
Thoughts:
What I love about this exercise is that you are pushed to think of things differently, come up with a different way to say the same things and this pulls different adjectives, descriptions. This is exciting and useful...because you can go back and choose the version you like best but edit with the best parts of the other versions.
For example I like in my second person that ‘fingernail moon pasted to the sky’ came out. I would use that in the first person if I were to carry on with that version and that sentence would change to ‘ It’s dark, with just a fingernail moon pasted in a starless sky.’
The second person is clunky and it’s tricky to not make it sound like a list of instructions.
First person is closest to the main character as it’s happening in the minute… but I like third person as well as I feel you can add a more reflective tone, from the character’s point of view, as it is something that they’re remembering rather than living it in the moment.
In third person, I’ve used the word ‘had’ too much.
To those being sent to a private page, as I have been: try accessing the August 1 newsletter from the page that opens when you first click on Unschool, or substack, rather than by clicking on link above. That worked for me.
My comment seems to have disappeared, or I'm blind, but if you open in the substack link or the unschool for writers, or however you've saved it, and click on the August 1 newsletter you will get the full August prompt.
Unedited (apologies) response to August Prompt:
1. At the stroke of midnight I go to the old bridge. The edge of the road I walk is crowded on one side with overly-cut trees and bushes in a swamp, on the other cottages, living room window bright and I see people playing cards, watching TV.
The old bridge if fragile in the moonlit dark. Hesitant, afraid to fall through, I step on the old railroad ties and see water shimmering below. On either side stretches lake. If I fall in what water monsters will grab my feet? What ghosts?
In case a car comes flashing over on the boards wide enough for its tires, I stay close to the edge of the bridge.
I have challenged myself to make this walk, afraid, always, afraid of what lurks beneath the water. The ghost outline of a canoe. Of a broken paddle.
2. At the stroke of midnight she went to the old bridge.
Day after day, month after month, year after year, the bridge scared her. Not the bridge. The water beneath it.
She was tired of being scared.
The road was narrow, the bridge weightless in the moonlit night. Knowing cars would not see her and that someone was always driving home from somewhere she stayed to the edge of the road, of the bridge.
She was sad to leave the card-playing cottagers behind, bright in their living rooms.
On the other side of the road, and bridge, swamp, and weed-choked lake.
As she put one toe on the railroad tie, then edged her whole foot on, she saw the water below. The lake spread on either side.
3. At the stroke of midnight you will to to the old bridge. You will shiver at the scrubby swamp on one side of the narrow approach, you will feel left out as you look into the bright cottage windows on the other side and see laughing people playing cards, quiet people watching TV.
You will be scared, but you will step on to the bridge.
Also afraid of any quick cars no seeing you int he dark, you stay on the side of the bridge.
You will face your shadows.
You will see the lake glimmer below between the old railroad ties. On one side you will see it, placid, shimmer into the too-dark.
You will know that on the other side weeds tickle the surface of the water, below dense as -
In each case I tried to move deeper into the moment, the why, the atmosphere. In #2 I changed sentences to make it more interesting for myself - I hated that movie "Groundhog Day" - and to feel more of what was happening. As somone else wrote, #3 begged to be written as an order, and that is how it felt. It begged more clipped sentences.
Not excited about posting - my first drafts are always dull as dishwater - but wonder if anyone sees what I thought I was doing each writing.
At the stroke of midnight, I go to the old bridge. I go every night. In my mind. Or for real. Sometimes, in the winter, I stay in bed and imagine myself walking on top of the snow and reaching the bridge in the blue light of the moon. Me, snug in my bed, the air so cold it freezes your nostrils.
I'm obsessed with the old bridge. You know the one. Down on Dark Hollow Road. The one where Kenny Randall jumped off and broke his neck. Little Kenny Randall. He never wanted to jump off. Yet he'd come with us every day and watch and stand on the edge of the bridge even after every one of us had jumped. We treading water in the river begging him to jump, yelling at him to jump. And then, one night he did. In the light of the full moon we watched as he let himself fall, and we knew as soon as he did that it was all wrong, that he'd gone way too far to the right, and the sound of his body hitting the shallow water, the sound of his bones crashing against the rock horrified us. We rushed to get him out of the water, of course, otherwise he'd drown, but the doctors told us later that the moving of him was what had paralyzed him, and we said, 'What were we to do?'
His parents never spoke to us again, always looked the other way when we walked past their house and eventually took us all to court, said we were the ones who made Kenny jump, we were the ones who made him the way he was. And we had, of course. We had cajoled and teased and bullied and finally gotten him to jump.
But the judge threw the case out, said the boy was capable of his own choices, had jumped with his own free will and the rest of us had no choice but to try to pull him from the water to keep him from drowning.
Kenny Randall was just a head, really. He could move his eyes and his mouth. He could speak, but he could not move his head, could not move his arms or legs or any part of his body. At least that's what we were told. His mother and his father would not let us see him, instead caring for him in solitude, night and day, around the clock for 11 years until, finally, mercifully, he expired. Word is that it took his mother quite a while to realize he was gone. 'A blessing,' my mother said.
But that's when the dreams happened. We all have them. Little Kenny Randall comes to all of us in our sleep and tells us to be at the bridge at the stroke of midnight that he has a message for us. We seven. We seven friends who are so frozen in time by what happened we have never left town, never amounted to much, chained, as we are, to the dream. Oh Sidney did leave for a time but he said the dream just got worse, more frightening, so he came back.
And so we take turns going to the bridge at midnight. For a while all seven of us would go. But then we decided to take turns, sometimes getting one of the others to go with us and when nothing happens we walk back and talk about Kenny Randall and how he really was a nice kid, simple, but nice and we are sorry for what happened to him.
Nothing ever happens, of course, but we still go there. Perhaps it has become habit. Or curiosity. Or our desire that something happen so that the dreams will stop.
And then tonight happens.
I am at the edge of the bridge and the moon is full and I can see the wooden beams now exposed from years of weather and disuse. I balance-walk across the first 20 yards until I reach the center where the road bed is still intact and I peer over the edge of the bridge's railing, rickety now, at the river bed below, the full moon casting blue shadows on the rocks, sparkling off the dribbles of water. I stand there and suddenly feel a hand on my shoulder.
----
At the stroke of midnight she goes to the old bridge. She has no idea why. She has had the dream again. She is frightened. Again. In the dream she is at the old bridge down on Dark Hollow Road in the moonlight and she sees someone at the edge, looking over, watches as someone comes out of the shadows and pushes them. That's when she awakens. She is drenched in sweat. The image plays over and over and over in her mind.
She gets up and, in silence, dresses, goes downstairs and out the door. She looks at her watch. It is ten minutes before midnight. She passes the Randalls' house; it is dark. She takes the River Trail at the end of the road and is upon the bridge at the stroke of midnight. An owl startles her, calling from the limb of the live oak, white-blue and still. She continues on.
She does not see the man until she is at the edge of the bridge. He is at the railing looking down and she does not recognize him at first and is sure he is going to jump. She walks quickly, but carefully, down the beam to the man and reaches out her hand to touch his shoulder.
----
You go to the old bridge at the stroke of midnight. You are not sure why. Your head is filled with an image of a young woman and young man embracing at the edge of the bridge just as they topple over the edge. The dream. But different this time. You awaken. You are sweating even though the window is wide open and the air is cold and damp. You get up and put on your pants and a shirt. You don't know why. You just do it. You slide your feet into your sneakers and tie them tight and slowly, quietly open the door and go down the stairs careful to step on the side so as to not have the steps creak and awaken your family. You go out the door and close it behind you without sound. You breathe again.
You walk down the street and pass the Randalls' house and you think of little Kenny Randall and the night he jumped the night of the full moon when everyone was in the water and laughing and having fun and trying to talk little Kenny into jumping but when he does...you can't think about it. You stop yourself from thinking about it. Instead you think about how beautiful the moonlight is, the patterns of the shadows on the ground as you walk.
You hear an owl ahead, down by the river. You take the trail, the trail that used to be the Dark Hollow Road, back when the bridge was used, back when parents used to let their kids go to the bridge to go swimming because everyone knew the water was deep enough, except on the right bank, stay in the center children, you were told. And everyone but Kenny Randall heard it, understood it, but Kenny was always a little slow, a little off and he thought that was where you were supposed to jump and you remember correcting him once, that day he almost jumped, and you told him, no, Kenny, jump to the middle, always jump in the middle, and you thought he understood you but the night he jumped you knew in a split second that he hadn't understood at all.
You hear the owl again, louder now, and you look at your watch and it is exactly midnight and you have come to the edge of the bridge and you see, in the middle, a form, two forms, one a woman reaching out to a man at the edge and then they embrace and then a form darts out from the shadow and pushes the couple and they break the railing and go tumbling off and land on the rocks below making a horrible crunching noise because the river is a trickle now, nothing like it was, in this the 11th year of the drought.
You cannot move. Your voice makes no sound. And then you notice that third form at the edge of the bridge has turned. It is a man. He is looking at you. He is smiling.