NOS4A2(38)

She relished the thought of all the days and weeks they would spend missing her, tormented by dreadful fantasies about what had happened to her. They would picture her out in the sleet, shivering and miserable, gratefully climbing into the back of the first car that pulled over for her. She might still be alive somewhere in the trunk of this old car (Vic was not aware that it had, in her mind, become an old car of some indeterminate make and model). And they would never know how long the old man kept her (Vic had just decided he must be old, because his car was), or what he did with her, or where he put the body. It would be worse than dying themselves, never knowing what dreadful person Vic had come across, what lonely place he had taken her to, what ending she had found for herself.

By then Vic was on the wide dirt road that led to the Merrimack. Acorns popped beneath her tires. She heard the rush of the river ahead, pouring through its trough of rocks. It was one of the best sounds in the world, and she lifted her head to enjoy the view, but the Shorter Way Bridge blocked her line of sight.

Vic squeezed the brake, let the Raleigh gently roll to a stop.

It was even more dilapidated than she remembered, the whole structure canting to the right so it looked as if a strong wind could topple it into the Merrimack. The lopsided entrance was framed in tangles of ivy. She smelled bats. At the far end, she saw a faint smudge of light.

She shivered in the cold—and also with something like pleasure. She knew, with quiet certainty, that something was wrong in her head. In all the times she’d popped Ecstasy, she had never hallucinated. She supposed there was a first time for everything.

The bridge waited for her to ride out across it. When she did, she knew she would drop into nothing. She would forever be remembered as the stoned chick who rode her bike right off a cliff and broke her neck. The prospect didn’t frighten her. It would be the next-best thing to being kidnapped by some awful old man (the Wraith) and never heard from again.

At the same time, even though she knew that the bridge wasn’t there, a part of her wanted to know what was on the other side of it now. Vic stood on the pedals and rode closer, right to the edge, where the wooden frame rested upon the dirt.

Two words were written on the inside wall, to her left, in green spray paint.





SLEIGH HOUSE

1996





Haverhill


VIC BENT, GRABBED A PIECE OF SHALE, AND FLUNG IT UNDERHANDED out onto the bridge. It hit the wood with a bang, skipped and bounced. There was a faint rustle of movement from above. The bats.

It seemed a sturdy enough hallucination. Although maybe she had also hallucinated the piece of shale.

There were two ways to test the bridge. She could roll forward another twelve inches, put the front tire on it. If it was imaginary, she might be able to throw herself back in time to keep from falling.

Or she could just ride. She could shut her eyes and let the Raleigh carry her forward toward whatever waited.

She was seventeen and unafraid and liked the sound of the wind rustling the ivy around the entrance of the bridge. She put her feet on the pedals and rode. She heard the tires bumpety-thump up onto the wood, heard the planks knocking beneath her. There was no sensation of drop, no ten-story plunge into the arctic cold of the Merrimack River. There was a building roar of white noise. There was a twinge of pain in her left eye.

She glided through the old familiar darkness, the flicker of the static blizzard showing in the gaps between boards. She was already a third of the way across and at the far end could see a dingy white house with an attached garage. The Sleigh House, whatever that was.

The name held no meaning for her and didn’t need to. She knew, in an abstract sense, what she was riding toward, even if she didn’t know the specific where.

She had wanted to find some trouble, and the Shorter Way Bridge had never steered her wrong.





The Other End of the Bridge


INSECTS MADE A SAWING NOISE OFF IN THE HIGH BRUSH. IN NEW Hampshire, spring had been a cold, mucky slog, but here—wherever here was—the air was warm and breezy. At the edge of her vision, Vic saw flashes of light, glimmers of brightness out in the trees, but in those first few moments she didn’t give it any thought.

Vic slipped off the bridge and onto firmly packed dirt. She braked to a stop, put her foot down. She turned her head to look back into the bridge.

The Shorter Way had settled among trees, to one side of the house. It stretched back and away through the hardwoods. When she peered through it, she saw Haverhill on the other end, green and shadowy in the last light of afternoon.

The house, a white Cape Cod, stood alone at the end of a long dirt lane. The grass grew waist-high in the yard. Sumac had invaded from the trees, growing in bunches as tall as Vic herself.

The shades were drawn behind the windows, and the screens were rusted and bellied out, and there was no car in the drive and no reason to think anyone was home, but Vic was immediately afraid of the place and did not believe that it was empty. It was an awful place, and her first thought was that when the police searched it, they would find bodies buried in the backyard.

When she had entered the bridge, she had felt like she was soaring, as effortlessly as a hawk carried on an updraft. She had felt she was gliding and that no harm could come to her. Even now, standing still, she felt like she was moving, sailing forward, but the sensation was no longer pleasant. Now it felt like she was being pulled toward something she didn’t want to see, to know about.