The Silver Bridge

by Gray Barker

  Then a new development took place which would completely change Woody’s life. A door, where no opening or markings previously appeared, suddenly opened in the left end of the machine, and a man gingerly stepped out. He walked directly across Woody’s headlights, where he had pulled off the road onto the shoulder.

  The man was wearing a top coat and appeared to be tall, about 6 feet, Woody estimated. He quickly walked toward the window at Woody’s right.

  Was it a voice, audibly speaking inside his head? No, it was not like that. Was it some sort of “mental” suggestion to roll down the window? No, not exactly. Woody later would be unable to explain it; he would say he just knew what the man was asking him to do.

  But the impression, or “voice”, or whatever type of communication reached him was a calming one. Woody remembered, as a child in Sunday school, hearing how God spoke in a “still soft voice”. He didn’t believe this was God speaking to him, but the idea was reassuring.

  He reached shakingly for the crank and rolled down the window. At one position it stuck slightly; Woody remembered this point in the rolling process, and later this would provide him with a point of reference as to his sanity and the reality of the experience.

  It was still difficult for him to realize the utter oddness of his situation. Not until later would he connect the visitation with the stories he had heard and read about flying saucers, to which he had not given much thought, beyond remembering his enjoying reading some of the accounts, though he couldn’t believe them. To Woody, it was something like a policeman’s stopping him, to check his license, his headlights, or to warn him of danger ahead. Not until later would the full import strike him of the fact that a flying craft, possibly from another world, had passed over his car; and that an otherworldly being had addressed him.

  He regarded the strange visitor. Except for the very deep tan, he appeared like most anybody else Woody would see in the course of a day’s work. True, this man was incredibly handsome, in a masculine, almost magazine-advertisement way. His dark brown hair was combed straight back in a fashion no local people employed. He was 35–40 years old, and weighed about 160 lbs.

  The top coat was unzipped a few inches to disclose a shirt of shiny material, with the top button open and no tie. The shirt was not particularly unusual; the material was similar to that which his wife described as a “hard fabric”, though probably somewhat more shiny and glossy.

  “Why are you frightened?” the man asked him. “Please do not be frightened. We mean you no harm. We wish you only happiness. I come from a country much less powerful than yours.”

  At this point Woody fully realized the strangeness of the man’s communication. He was talking to him without moving his lips; instead only a friendly, reassuring smile remained on his face.

  “You can talk to me two ways,” the man continued; “you can say the words you wish to speak to me, or you can merely think of them. I will understand you.”

  Again the man reassured him that he meant him no harm, only happiness, which in Woody’s mind seemed to also mean ecstasy and peace. In fact Woody thought he had substituted the work “happiness” for “peace”—a pattern of term substitution the man would employ throughout the short interview.

  Woody noted that several cars were approaching and passing him and his eyes moved toward the vehicle that blocked him. It was no longer there! Leaning forward, however, and looking up through the windshield, he could see that it was hovering above, having lifted off the ground to an altitude of about 75 feet, where, evidently, the dark object would not be readily discovered.

  “What is your name?” the man, in the same incomprehensible, still somewhat disquieting manner, asked him, and Woody told him.

  “My name is Cold,” the man reciprocated.

  As Derenberger would later reflect, he would know that the visitor did not imply that his name suggested something cold, but that it was his real name—like “Smith”, “Jones” or “Derenberger”.

  Cold turned his head toward the lights of the city.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  He did not point, for his hands were still folded, and at no time did he uncover them during the interview.

  “That is the city of Parkersburg,” Woody told him.

  Cold wanted to know more about it, and Woody described and defined the city the best he could.

  “Where I live,” Cold replied, “such a place is called a ‘gathering’.”

  Again Cold calmed and reassured the witness:

  “Why are you frightened of us? We are the same as you. We eat, we breathe, we sleep, we bleed even as you do. We are like you. Please do not be frightened.”

  Later Woody would remember that Cold told him twice to look at him closely. He thought that looking at the man may have aided the voiceless exchange, whatever it had been.

  The visitor asked him how he occupied himself during the day, not seeming to understand immediately a system of working for a living. Woody tried to explain, told him how he drove the van out each day, demonstrated merchandise, and tried to influence customers to buy it.

  “I am a salesman,” he tried to communicate.

  “Where I live, I am known as a searcher,” the man replied soberly, offering no further explanation.

  Then Cold abruptly terminated the interview. He stepped back from the car, paused, then added another remark.

  “I’ll see you again,” was his reassuring, but almost disconcerting goodbye.

  As he stepped back, Derenberger noted that the craft was rapidly descending, once again to the same spot it had previously occupied on the road. But this time it did not cover the two lanes, having turned endwise. Cold hurried to the vehicle, and as he approached it, the door, now seen in outline, again opened. He stepped quickly inside, and another occupant, darkly outlined, reached out, grasped the door and pulled it shut, with a noise like the sound of a heavy automobile door closing. While the craft hovered it made a low fluttering noise, something like that of an idling helicopter on the ground.

  The craft lifted swiftly into the air and that was the last he saw of it. Derenberger shifted the van into gear and began driving the short distance home to Mineral Wells.

  The experience had still not taken the fullest impact upon him. To Woody it still held the suggestion of an ordinary, everyday experience, and he was trying to deal with it in that fashion. But as the signs warning of the end of the completed stretch of interstate appeared, he began to realize that the happening had indeed been most unique, far from the realm of conventional events. As he slowed and prepared to take the exit to Route 21, he remembered a television program he had seen a few weeks earlier.

  It was the Joe Pyne show, an interview program featuring guests with odd beliefs and experiences. Woody didn’t particularly care for the show’s host, for he always seemed to be putting his guests down and browbeating them. His wife loved the program, however, though she constantly criticized Pyne, and said she’d “like to get him by the neck”. Still she religiously watched the program and, Woody suspected, secretly found Pyne quite fascinating. It probably was just an act, he reflected, and the host likely was a nice guy when he was off the air. He reflected that his wife also took TV wrestling matches seriously, and couldn’t be convinced they were staged.

  He thought of Pyne because he had interviewed a man who talked about flying saucers. The puzzling thing to Woody had been the guest’s apparent sincerity as he told the wild stories, making them almost believable. The man appeared to be normal, obviously was well educated, but he insisted he had seen people from outer space, and that they had talked to him and had even taken him for a ride in their craft, from California to Venus.

  “My God!” he said aloud to himself. “Maybe that man was telling the truth.” Maybe Mr. Cold was from space, though he hadn’t said as much. During the strange meeting Woody routinely thought that he came from some other country on Earth.

  He had laughed heartily at the man on the Pyne show, but his wi
fe tended to take it seriously.

  “You can’t tell,” she told him. “After all, we’re shooting rockets into space, and soon we’ll go to the moon. We’ll go to Mars and Venus eventually. If we can go there, why can’t they come here? I’d like to tell that Joe Pyne a thing or two. Oh, how I’d like to wring his neck!”

  As he reflected about the show he decided that he would tell her what had happened. In some ways his experience had been similar to those of the man on TV, and she would probably believe him. He would swear her, however, not to tell the neighbors, or anybody else.

  He turned off the highway and up the gravel road to the two-story farmhouse which he rented. As usual, alerted by the sound of the van, the door opened, and there she stood, outlined in the door, making certain it was he. There would be a kiss, and then a good supper.

  “I’m lucky,” he said to himself, “to have such a good woman.” She was much younger than he; Woody had married in his 40’s. She could have had any man she wanted in the small suburb where they met, but she had been drawn to him.

  “I have a real happy marriage,” he thought, and then the two children joined his wife at the door. They would run out to the truck, grabbing and hugging him as he got out.

  Yes, he would tell her of his experience, though probably not just then. He suddenly remembered, for the first time since his encounter with Cold, his successful sales of the day. He would begin by relating this to her. His feeling of masculinity, with his young woman, grew, as he grabbed his sales book, tossed his raincoat jauntily across his shoulder, and all smiles, with the children hanging onto him, walked swiftly to her waiting embrace.

  Late at night, in bed, he would reflect on his experience. Should he tell other people about it? What would the people of Parkersburg think of him if they knew about it? Could he face them? Would they laugh at him? Did he have the courage like the man on TV, to stand up and tell the truth about what he had experienced?

  His wife was also awake. He more sensed than knew this, for she was pretending a deep breathing.

  “I know you’re awake,” he told her, “and I’m troubled. I want to tell about Mr. Cold. I don’t mind people laughing at me, but it’s you I’m concerned about. What do you think about having a crazy man for a husband?”

  “This Mr. Cold,” she whispered, without answering his question, “are you certain he said he would be back?”

  “I’m positive.”

  “Do you think he really will be back?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not. I wouldn’t want him to. But I’m afraid that he will.”

  She grew silent again, and he sensed that this time she had actually dropped asleep. Woody shifted in bed, turned toward the wall and buried his face in the pillow.

  Did he want Cold to come back, or not? Of course not. The visitation had not really been terrifying, but he sensed that it might bring a change into his life, and interruption of the happy existence he now shared with his family. If Cold returned, things surely would never be the same. But there had been that feeling of fascination. He confessed to himself that he had been strangely drawn to this unusual man. He had hoped Cold would approve of him, would perhaps tell him more about his strange craft and possibly invite him inside to look at it more closely.

  While his better judgment told him he didn’t wish Cold to return, he was quite sure he would see him again. He would ask him exactly where he came from, what he was doing here. Maybe he could get to know this strange visitor better.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE WINTER WIND

  Jimmy Jamison sat up in bed and cautiously opened the window curtain.

  The outside scene was one of the same terrifying splendor. The trees on the hilltop, sharply outlined in the bright moonlight, turned into their familiar shapes: faces, dragons, devils, and another kind of thing that had defied conventional terminology. In his arbitrary nomenclature he had called it a “flinderation”. It writhed and undulated in the winter wind.

  After he stared at the hilltop, his eyes passed, with some relief, to the tall oak tree about a hundred yards from his window. There, five nights previously, the day after he heard about it in school, had perched Mothman, gazing toward his window with blazing hypnotic eyes.

  Jimmy liked this house better than the last. He enjoyed the farm and the view from the window, especially the spectral trees—which, when spring came, he fancied, would leaf out, and his familiar friends, the monsters, outlined in the barren trunks and branches, would be gone and dead.

  He was supposed to be asleep, for his new parents had imposed a 9:00 bedtime, a part of his rehabilitation, they said. Tomorrow he would go to Sunday school, then sit through a long sermon by his new dad.

  Jimmy’s last home had been in Parkersburg. He had tried to be a good boy, and his parents there had been kind to him. But an urgent impulse to slip away, and again wander the back streets had overtaken him, and he had opened his bedroom window and escaped. What a sweet, wonderful time it had been! He had talked to a man who had been around the world, who called him “son”, and had warned him about the evils of drinking. Slumped in the doorway with the finally empty bottle, the man became drowsy and ceased to be a companion, collapsing into a sleazy snoring.

  “Wake up! Wake up!” Jimmy cried; then, giving up, he ran off among the back streets. A dog took up with him, and they gamboled through the dark alleys. Running onto a main street, chasing an old can Jimmy threw, the dog disappeared under the wheels of a noisy car with older boys in it.

  Jimmy ran. The buildings became a blur. Finally, out of breath, he crumpled and sat on the sidewalk and kicked at it. A chunk of the decrepit curb gave way. Jimmy took it in his two hands and weighed it, swinging it back and forth. Then, with all the strength he could muster, he hurled the concrete through the window of the main reception office of the Department of Internal Revenue.

  And so it was, off to new parents. He liked the new school in Ripley, especially the counselor, who, as his parents put it, “took a real interest in him and had been out to the house”.

  He fingered the warm bed clothing, and in the darkness tried to follow the random patterns of the “crazy quilt” which served as a comforter. He dared not turn on the light, for it would reflect outside and they would see it. He hoped he would not start shaking again. When this happened, and he cried, his mother would come into the room and comfort him, but with the adjuration that he was a big boy now and should not be afraid of the dark—which he wasn’t anyhow. He loved the darkness, for in it he could think.

  It had been as big as Mothman, but not quite like the newspaper accounts the science teacher had read. The red eyes were there, but there were no feathers and he could not believe it to be a bird.

  That night, unable to drop asleep at the prescribed time, Jimmy had again taken to fantasizing about the trees. He pulled open the curtain and looked, but instead he had seen the terrible thing.

  There, limned in the bright moonlight, and perched on the huge horizontal branch of the oak tree, was a bone-chilling creature. It seemed to grasp the branch with claw-like feet, like an immense, overgrown parakeet. Its head was set low between the apex of a huge set of wings, folded around it. But here the resemblance to a bird ended. Jimmy could see the rough outline of a man’s torso. It reminded him of the picture of his real father, who, at one time, had been a carnival performer. His picture showed a handsome young man, with bulging muscles displayed under the tights and blouse of a trapeze artist’s costume.

  As terrifying, somehow, as its red hypnotic eyes, was its stillness. It didn’t move, except to sway up and down with the branch in the winter wind. Jimmy must have stared back at it for some time, for he remembered the darkening and lightening of the creature, as high, fast-moving clouds obscured and revealed the moon.

  Jimmy screamed. His parents ran in, and he sobbed out his story to them. His father jerked back the curtain which Jimmy had closed in terror.

  “See! You’re imagining things. There’s nothing out there!�
�� There was strong displeasure in his voice.

  “God does not permit such things.” And his father sat down, took the bible from the table and read him a passage of scripture about how Jesus had said to suffer the little children to come unto Him. His mother lingered, however, hands on his bed, after her husband departed. She took the bible, which had been roughly thrust into the child’s hands, and closed it. She smoothed back his hair which had fallen into his eyes. She bent down and kissed the forehead the mop of hair had hidden, then suddenly departed silently from the room.

  Ever since that night Jimmy had lived in the terror that Mothman might return. He was certain that the next time, Mothman would fly to the window, break it open, enfold him in those huge wings, hold him in that inescapable grasp and peck at him with his long, sharp beak.

  So each night, before he finally fell asleep, Jimmy had to reassure himself that Mothman was indeed not there, perched upon the horizontal limb, and that only his familiar monsters, and the flinderation, haunted the darkness.

  Despite the absence of Mothman, Jimmy pulled the crazy quilt over his head and lay there half-dreaming. By this time his parents had gone to bed, and from the next room he could hear the muffled but recognizable sounds of sex.

  They were somewhat like the sounds he had known, made by the stranger, with the greying hair which receded from a balding hairline. They had been whispered, and reassuring, mixed with the smell of foot powder and cologne. A worn, one dollar bill had been the only evidence that, for him, had separated this real experience from fantasy; and he still had it, folded upon fold and hidden where it would never be discovered, in a remote corner of his dilapidated billfold.

  Jimmy liked going to sleep, once he could really get started. For the real world dovetailed into one that was unreal; and in that half-lit country he could feel warm forms engulf him and a babble of voices which praised him, lifted him from one to the other as he ran a corridor of smiling, faceless people, swimming with him through pleasant vapors.