After Midnight (17 page)

I’ve worked for the National Park Service for over fifteen years, and in my time I’ve seen some pretty strange things: weird footprints, ghostly lights, things in the night sky, Satanic altars hidden away in dark corners of the forest. None, however, top Old Stony Bridge.

When I first started with the service, I was living and working in Oregon, south of Portland. A year later, however, I was given the opportunity to move east; there was a shortage of rangers in the nineties, and they were desperately needed in Virginia, West Virginia, and New York. I put in for a transfer to Upstate New York, but, unbeknownst to me, that position had already been filled. Within a week, I was offered a spot at Virginia’s George Washington National Forest.

I initially passed, but, after talking to my parents, I decided to accept. In June 1999, I drove all my worldly possessions across the country in a rented U-Haul and moved into a tiny one-bedroom house in the rural highlands north of Harrisonburg; my nearest neighbors were three miles down the road, and they were a part of a large Mennonite community. The outskirts of Harrisonburg rose out of the pastureland less than ten miles away, but, sitting on my front porch that first night, exhausted from unpacking, I felt as though I were living on the frontier in the 1840s. Perhaps ten cars passed by on a busy day, and at night it was so quiet all you could hear were crickets and banjos.

My first day on the job, however, more than made up for it; I’ve always been an outdoorsman, and the
GW Forest was my paradise. Lush and green, the forest covers roughly 1.8 million acres across three states, with over a million of those acres completely undeveloped. A number of roads and trails, including part of the Blue Ridge Parkway, crisscrossed the woodland, but, for the most part, it was pure and unspoiled.

My boss, Ted Houser, a plump man in his mid-fifties, made it a point to show me every square inch of land I’d have jurisdiction over, which amounted to nearly fifty thousand acres. It took us a while, but, in a topless Forestry jeep, we covered it all.

There were signs of humanity here and there, of course, but they were few and far between; a dilapidated cabin here, an abandoned road there, that sort of thing. On the last day of the tour, deep in the heart of the forest, “Ten miles from civilization,” as Ted put it, we came across a cracked blacktop highway overgrown with weeds.

“Old logging road,” Ted told me as we turned onto it and followed it, the treetops so close together overhead that hardly any sunlight filtered through.
“Closed down back in 1946. No one uses it anymore. A lot of people get kinda spooked out here.”

“Why?” I asked.

Ted shrugged. “Kind of a spooky place, I guess. And Old Stony Bridge don’t help none.”

“Old Stony Bridge?”
I asked.

“You’ll see.”

Less than five minutes later, Ted took a little dirt road sloping off of the main track, and we followed that for about ten minutes, pressing deeper into the heart of the forest, before coming out on a wide, rocky flat that, I surmised, had once been a river.

Ted killed the engine and looked at me. “I don’t believe in ghosts or curses or anything like that, okay? But Stony Bridge...man, I don’t know.”

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.

Ted turned in his seat and pointed east, up the riverbank. There, obscured by overgrowth, was a stone bridge, perhaps a hundred-and-fifty feet high.
“Watch.”

I did. Two, three minutes ticked sluggishly by, and then, something fell from the bridge, turning end over end, before splattering on the rocks below.

“What the hell was that?” I asked.

“That was an animal,” he said, “I don’t know what kind yet, but it’s an animal, and it killed itself.

I must have looked like as incredulous as I felt, because Ted got slightly defensive. “It happens all the time. I don’t know why. Animals just...jump off of it.”

“Like...suicide?”

Ted nodded. “Strangest thing too. I saw a fox do it once. Got up on the parapet and leapt. It hit the bottom but didn’t die. Got right back up, dragged his shattered body up the hill, and did it again.”

“Really?”
 

“I swear to God. I’m not playing.”

I didn’t think he was.

“Why?” I asked. “Why do they do it?”

“No one knows. Some scientists were out here back in the eighties and said it
could
be some kind of scent drawing them, but why in the name of God would they jump off the bridge when they can go around? You know?”

I looked up at the bridge.
“How many?”

“I don’t know. It’s a lot. I usually come out here two, three times a month and carry the bodies off. I’d say at least twenty, thirty a month.
All kinds, too. Foxes, dogs, mice, even, deer, a few bears...weird stuff.”

Maybe it was Ted’s story, but, suddenly, I could see why people shunned this place; the air was too cold, the
light too dim, the atmosphere too dark.

“Has a person ever jumped off?”

Ted didn’t answer. He started up the Jeep. Neither of us spoke on the ride back. I almost asked again, but didn’t press the issue; his silence was answer enough.

Over the next couple years, I never thought of the bridge until I had to go there and clean up all the bodies. Ted wasn’t lying.
Thirty or thirty-five a month, never more than thirty-six and never less than twenty-eight. I hated those thrice-monthly excursions; not only was it hard work, but the place felt...evil, that’s the closest I can get. There was a thickness in the air. And every time I found myself out there, I felt like I was being watched by some creature in the brush. And every time, as I drove off, I felt stupid. I was acting like a superstitious peasant. There was a rational explanation. That might sound like a cliché, but it’s true. The unexplainable is only unexplainable until it is explained.

Anyway, it was 2005. I did my body detail on the first, thirteenth, and twenty-fifth of every month. On the first of September, I came to work, grabbed the keys from the pegboard in the office, and went to take the Jeep, but Ted stopped me, calling out from his office, “Hey, Tim!”

I backtracked and stuck my head in the door. “What’s up?”

Ted’s office was cramped and disorganized. On any given day, it looked like a bomb had gone off in there. Today, he was hunched over his desk and furiously
writing something, most likely an incident report, as a hiker had gone missing the previous day, spending ten hours lost in the woods before we found him.

“If you give me a minute,” he said without looking up, “I’ll come with.”

“Alright.”

It was more like five minutes, but that was okay. I stood in the dayroom, drinking coffee and eating doughnut holes until he was ready.

Finally all set, we climbed into the Jeep and took off. It was hot that day, somewhere on the wrong side of one hundred, and by the time we got to the bridge, we were both baked alive.

Lucky for us, there weren’t as many animals this time around; six, I think, though it could have been seven.

“I’ve never seen this few,” Ted said, getting out of the Jeep.

“Hey, I’m not complaining,” I replied.
“Less work for me. Maybe...”

Before I could finish, my eyes were drawn almost magnetically to the bridge. There, standing on the parapet, was a woman with long black hair and a white dress, her feet bare and, from what I could see, covered in mud.

Ted saw it too, for he started. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, taking an involuntary step forward.

We looked at each other, neither one knowing what to do. Finally, Ted looked back to the woman and cupped his mouth with his hands. “Hey!” he shouted, “what are you doing? Get down from there!”

Her arms now raised at her sides, the woman jumped.

“No!” Ted screamed.

Splat!

“Jesus!” I screamed, and raced Ted to her side.

Surprisingly, she was still alive. She’d fallen head over heels and landed on her back, no doubt breaking it. Blood pooled beneath her. Her eyes were wide and mesmerized, her lips slowly moving, forming unknowable words, and her nose gushed.

Ted knelt down beside her, reached out to touch her, but yanked his hands back. “We have to do something!” he screamed. “We have to call someone! Load her in the Jeep...”

“We can’t do that,” I moaned. “You can’t move someone with a neck or back injury.”

Ted looked up. “You’re right. Go back to the office and call 911. I’ll stay here.”

“Ted, that’s...”

“Do it!” Ted barked.

I looked down at the woman, shattered on the rocks, and nodded. “Okay.”

It seemed like it took me forever, but I made it back to the station and called 911. At first they were going to send a helicopter, but I convinced them that the forest was too dense there. I told them to send an ambulance to Old Stony Road, which winds from the bridge to Freemason Drive. Done, I raced over to the Gate 18, and waited for the ambulance. When it showed up, I led it down Old Stony Road, over the bridge, and down the little dirt tract.

When I pulled up, I killed the engine and threw open the door. I was half way to the girl’s broken form before I realized that Ted was no longer hunched over her. In fact, he was nowhere at all.

“Ted!” I cried, my voice refusing to echo. “Ted?”

I just happened to glance up at the bridge, and there he was, mechanically climbing the parapet.

“Ted! No!” I screamed.

He stood for a dazed moment, and then jumped.

Splat!

At the precise moment he hit, a frigid breeze ran through the forest, rustling the treetops and knocking my hat off. It sounded not like wind, but voices, a thousand voices babbling in unison.

And there, high upon the bridge, I saw something, something I’ve refused to talk about to this very day, something that prompted me to drop everything and move back to Oregon.

It was a man, an Indian in full regalia, as far as I could tell. But where its head should have been was a skull with burning red eyes and teeth as sharp as a cat’s.

It spoke to me. It told me to come, to join my ancestors in glory. Gazing deeply into its eyes, falling, falling, falling, I almost went. If it hadn’t been for the paramedics shaking me awake, I would have
went. God help me, I would have went and I would have jumped... 

They destroyed the stone bridge, and construction workers had to stay in teams of five, after two of them jumped together. Closing that area to the public was the only thing they could do, but I hear animals still jump from the cliffs around and the bodies pile up now. Nobody clears them, they just rot.

May
23, 2013: It's my birthday today. Yay me! I'm twenty-one, and instead of a car or a visit to the strip club, I got a pack of smokes from Jimmy Muro, a Coke from Cory Knight, and this notebook from Quincy Jennings. I mean, I'm touched and all, I didn't expect shit, but...yeah. Still kinda disappointed.

It'll be a year in June since I got here. Wonder if I'll get something then. You
know, a little anniversary present. A Hustler would be nice. I'm starting to forget what a woman looks like. The only one around here is Tina Snipe, who works the night shift, and she's manlier than I am...not that I'm a bitch or anything. I work out and play ball in the yard, so I'm pretty toned, but Tina...shit. Her arms are about as big around as Rambo's, and her neck looks like a pack of hotdogs. She keeps her hair really short, and swaggers up and down the block like she's got a Ron Jeremy between her legs. Some of the guys who've been in here for years talk about doing her if they could get ahold of her. Shit. She'd probably rape
them
.

God.
I hope I don't end up pounding myself to her one day. But, then again, I’m not like a lot of guys in here. It’s amazing how much sex means to some people. It’s like a sickness. They get taken off the streets, so they start putting it to other men.

And it’s not even gay guys you have to worry about, it’s the straights. I knew this black dude who was a
gangsta, in for pimping, and every time he came back to prison, he was suddenly gay. He was the pitcher, now, but gay nonetheless. He had this other little black dude, just a regular gay guy, as his bitch, rubbing his feet, getting his tray, sucking his dick, all that shit.

But, whatever.
To each his own. I don't have anything against queers. This one gay dude named Matt's pretty cool. He has kinda...I dunno, feathered seventies hair and a 5'o'clock shadow. We play chess in the yard sometimes. He's good, too. Has a little table set up near the wall in the shadow of one of the guard towers, and waits for guys to play him. "Step right up!" he occasionally calls out, "come get that ass beat." Anyone who steps up loses big time. This black dude got pissed once and flipped the table over, scattering Matt's pieces everywhere. Man, he got pissed. Beat the holy fuck outta the dude. Left, right, left, roundhouse. Looked like a fucking UFC match. It took six guards to drag him off.

Later.

It’s about three or so in the morning, and I just woke up from a terrible nightmare. I can’t really remember any details, but it was about zombies, I know that. I think I was in this isolated farmhouse and they were shambling through the dark, all over the front yard, the back yard, the side yards, and I was alone. For some reason I think I was a little kid. Maybe six or seven, and I was trying to hide somewhere…I can’t remember where, but it was like right in plain sight.

Living room.
That’s it. I was in this living room cowering in a semi-dark corner hoping the fucks couldn't see me through the big picture window. There was a porch light streaming in, and I was just outta its reach, so I thought I should be safe.

God, it was horrible. They were on the porch passing back and forth, and finally one looked right at me. He was a tall guy in a dusty suit, and his head was
all rotted and brown and lumpy. He smiled (yeah, fucking smiled) at me and then started pounding on the window. I was too scared to move. His buddies joined in, and the sound of smashing glass is what woke me up.

Damn it. I never should have watched the news today. I was trying to keep away from that shit, but my curiosity got the best of me. It’s not like I saw any of them up close, just shaky footage from a chopper. Some of them were crossing a huge field, and guardsmen were shooting at them from the highway. After that some bubble-blond came on and interviewed this scientist out of Harvard or Princeton or something. That’s it.

I wonder what the hell’s making them come back, anyway. The government’s saying radiation from the Saturn probe, but I don’t believe that shit. Look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Did any of that shit produce flesh eating zombies?

I bet it's a virus, something escaped from a government lab somewhere. That makes the most sense to me.
Some new biological weapon in the works, based on the zombie myth; an accident. Sounds like the plot of a movie, doesn't it? Like they say, truth is stranger than fiction,

May 24, 2013- Today was typical. Nothing exciting. That’s fine with me, though. Exciting here doesn’t mean the same thing it does out there. Usually it means terrible. We had an exciting few days last week when the Nazis and the Crips over in E-Block started a little mini riot. See, during most of the day, our cells are open and we can come and go as we please. There’s not really much to do, go down to the dayroom or the “rec room,” which is just an open space with metal tables where you can play cards or checkers or something like that. Anyway, I guess some kinda drug deal was going down and went bad or something. I dunno, but all hell broke loose. The guards made us go back into our cells and put us on lockdown for like two days.

So, nothing major happened and I’m cool with that. I got up at sunrise like always and did my workout. The cell block was still dim and almost eerily tranquil, so I tried to be as quiet as I could.

Around seven, when the others were coming groggily awake and stirring in their cells, a guard came around and did a headcount. He caught one guy, Steve Jordan, a bank robber, jerkin his gerkin. “Get it out your hand!” he yelled, his steely voice echoing up and down the hall. Some of the other guys jumped in, laughing and making fun of Jordan. Hypocrites. They beat their meat too. Everyone jacks off around here. If you don’t, you’re using some dude’s butthole to get you there.

Fifteen minutes later, while a few of the guys were still razzing Jordan, the doors slid open and we fell into line. A few marble-faced guards stood along the way to make sure we behaved ourselves. I was the last, and shuffled along after everyone else. A door at the end of the cellblock opens onto a long
hall, lined with barred windows which let in the bright orange morning sun. I glanced out, seeing the rising barbed wire topped fence, and turned back to the bald head in front of me. Through another door is the cafeteria which, if you’ve ever gone to a public school, I don’t need to waste space on. We filed along the counter and picked out what we wanted. Cold scrambled eggs. Rock-hard toast. Half-raw potatoes. A glass of orange juice. It sounds kingly for prison, but you try choking the shit down every morning.

“Hey, Benny, what’s up?”

I looked up from my metal tray, already recognizing the voice. Will Legg stood about five foot and weighed about the same as a paper bag. He wore a plastic hairnet and a drab blue apron over his light blue shirt. He was smiling, revealing his rotted teeth.

“Not much, Will,” I replied. Will’s a serial killer. He used to run around Newport News and Hampton Rhodes shooting people in the back of the head.

He escaped the death penalty because the ACLU didn’t like how he was taken down and advocated for him to the bitter end, paying for the best legal defense and everything. He laughs about it, saying he “played” them for all they were worth. Instead of death, this son of a bitch is looking at parole in thirty years.

“Can’t wait ‘til real summer gets here,” he commented, slopping potatoes onto my tray, “I love the heat.”

“Yeah, me too,” I said, moving on.

“Enjoy your breakfast.”

What the fuck did that mean? Did he spit or cum in it or something?

Probably not, I figured. Serial killers are notorious bitches when they get into the penal system.
Model prisoners.

I sat down at one of the long tables against the far wall across from Quincy and Jimmy. “What’s good,
cuz?” Quincy asked as we did one of his black handshakes.

“Not a goddamn thing,” I said, settling down.

“I hear we’re getting an extra five minutes at rec time,” Jimmy put in, stuffing toast into his mouth and crunching it, “since we ain’t started any shit.”

“I wish,” Quincy said, bending over his food.
“Probably bullshit. Who told you that anyway?”

“Tina.”

“Man, that bitch is lying,” Quincy turned. “She just wants you get your hopes up.”

“I don’t think she’d do some shit like that,” Jimmy replied. “She’s pretty cool. You just
gotta…”

Quincy shook his head. “Okay. But when your ass is
comin' in same time from the yard, you’ll see.”

“I bet you pack of ‘Ports she ain’t
lyin,” Jimmy said.

“
Nigga, you got yourself a deal,” Quincy and Jimmy shook. Quincy then rubbed his hands and looked at me. “I taste ‘em already.”

“Keep dreaming,” Jimmy said.

Breakfast was over in twenty minutes. We all lined back up and were led back to our cells. A lot of guys go back to sleep after breakfast and don’t wake up until lunch. I’m the type that gets up and stays up, so I worked out a little bit.

“
Lookin’ to beat me, kike?”

I was doing pushups against the wall, facing the little barred window. I turned. Billy Sutherland occupies the cell next to Quincy’s, which is right across from mine. He was standing naked to the waist, looking out at me, his hands clutched around the bars.

“You wanna take me down, Jew-boy?”

“Shut the hell up,” I said, and then turned my back on him. Billy was a Neo-Nazi Aryan-Brotherhood ankle biter, full of talk and shit.

“I’ll rip that big nose off your face and shove it up your ass.”

“I got something you can shove,” I muttered under my breath, getting back to my workout.

“I’ll shank your guts out, you fucking kike maggot.”

I ignored him.

“Then I’ll skull-fuck you.”

Ignored him.

“Heil Hitler!”

Ignored.

Finally he stopped.

When I was done, I climbed up onto my bunk and read the opening hundred pages of a Dean Koontz thriller. I could have gotten more, but Billy would occasionally call out and distract me.

“Always got that fat fucking nose buried in a book, you fucking nerd.”

When
rec time came, the doors were opened and we were led out. I stood behind Billy. He didn’t make a move or even look at me.

The sun was high in the cloudless sky, and the temp must have been around eighty. I played a losing game of chess with Matt, and then walked around with Quincy and Jimmy. We talked about a lot of nothing. Jimmy boasted about some of the crimes he committed in the ghetto. A lot of guys like to brag on
themselves, and I fucking hate it. I keep to myself about what I did, and Quincy does too. He told me once what he did (robbed a liquor store) only when I asked him.

“…So I jumped in the river and fucking dipped,” Jimmy was saying.

“Lucky your ass didn’t get hypothermia,” Quincy replied, hitching his pants up for the hundredth time.

“I was in the woods after that for about three hours. Man, I was cold as shit.
Finally got a ride from some old redneck in a pick-up.”

“All that over parking tickets?”

“Yeah. I didn’t have any money.”

“Man, you’re dumb. How much
time’d you get when they caught your ass?”

“A year.”

“See? You wouldn’t got shit for parking tickets. But you had to run. Man.”

Quincy looked at me. “See this shit?”

I nodded. “Not really smart, Jimmy.”

“Fuck you guys,” Jimmy said offensively.

Quincy laughed.

Rec
time ended at the normal time, and back on the cellblock (our doors were open now) Jimmy grumblingly gave Quincy a pack of Newports.

May 25, 2013- Ahhhhhhhhh! Godamn it! Shit! Today sucked dick, big black dick dripping with yellow pus and creamy cum. God, I could rip someone's fucking head off right now! I mean it, too. A lot of people talk shit, but I'm serious.

A C.O. named Rob, real cool guy, was supposed to smuggle me in a blunt today, but the dumb bastard called in sick.
Third motherfucker this week to do that.

I caught some Fox News in the dayroom with Jimmy and Billy earlier, and that didn't help my mood. Pictures of burning cities, looted storefronts, riot police,
interstates crammed with traffic, hoards of walking dead, the president declaring martial law from a fallout shelter in West Virginia...yeah, fucking grim. Of course Billy spent the entire time bitching about niggers swarming out of the ghettos and taking advantage of the situation, carrying away TVs, stereos, and shoes. I finally had to leave the room. The combination of him and the news was too much.

Best not to even think about it.

Oh, at dinner there was a fight in the cafeteria. A black guy named Derrick and a Mexican named Antonio started throwing fists outta nowhere. A couple of testosterone-drenched retards.

Anyway, we came right back to our cells and might be on lockdown tomorrow. Those two ass-clowns will be lucky if they don’t get their heads cracked open. I hate that punish one, punish all system.