No cars were coming. No people were anywhere in sight.
They’re all under the bridge, I thought.
The Division Street bridge might’ve been better than this.
I considered turning back, trying another route.
Don’t be a wuss.
Approaching the bridge, I quickened my pace.
They probably are under this one, I thought. Or maybe hunkered down, clinging to the other side of the parapet, waiting to leap over and grab me when I go by.
Why don’t I just run across it?
Not unless something happens.
As I started across the bridge, I stepped off the curb and took a diagonal route to the middle of the street. Then I walked the center line to keep a lane of pavement and a sidewalk between me and either side of the bridge. Space to see them coming.
Of course, I might get hit by a car.
Nothing was coming, but that could change in a matter of seconds.
I’ll have plenty of time to get out of the way.
I hurried over the bridge with long, quick strides, swinging my arms high, watching both sides and straight ahead, glancing over my shoulder every few seconds to make sure I was safe from behind.
So far, so good.
I was halfway across when, a couple of blocks up the street, headlights brightened an intersection. My stomach tightened.
The unseen car was on a sidestreet. It might continue straight ahead, turn left or turn right. Only a left hand turn would bring it in my direction.
The car stopped at the comer. I could see its front bumper, but no more. Too many trees and bushes stood in the way.
Couldn’t tell if it was a police car.
Couldn’t tell if it was a pickup truck.
If it was either, I didn’t want to be seen walking down the middle of the street. I hurried to the left.
The vehicle moved forward and its headlights swept an arch of brightness through the intersection as it turned left.
Not a patrol car or pickup truck, thank God.
Some sort of dark, medium-sized van.
Hugely relieved, I hopped the curb and strode along the sidewalk, too close to the parapet for comfort.
Almost across.
The van was rumbling closer.
I glanced over my shoulder. Nobody was sneaking up behind me.
The parapet ended. I’d reached the other side of the bridge slightly nervous but safe and sound.
The van, slowing down, eased toward the curb in front of me and stopped. In the glow from a nearby streetlight, I could see that it was black. Its front passenger window glided down.
Oh, God, what now?
I stopped, remaining on the sidewalk.
The passenger seat appeared to be empty. The driver leaned toward it, looked out at me and spoke. Because of the engine noise, I couldn’t make out her words. I shook my head.
‘... over here,’ she called.
Shaking my head some more, I took a couple of steps closer to the van.
‘... find ... street ... know ... it is?’
Asking directions? It might be a trick.
The whole town isn’t crazy, I told myself. Maybe this person is really lost.
I stepped to the curb and leaned forward. The woman behind the wheel had a thin, pale face. Hair as dark and sleek as oil hung to her shoulders. She seemed to be wearing a shiny black blouse.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t hear you too well. Where are you trying to go?’
‘Why don’t you climb in?’
Confounded, I didn’t know whether to be ftattered or frightened... or neither.
‘I thought you needed directions,’ I said.
‘Just climb in. I want to ask you something.’
‘I can hear you from here.’
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘What’s the matter with you? I just want to talk to you.’
‘About what?’
She unfastened the top button of her blouse. ‘Get in, then I’ll tell you.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Please?’ She unfastened another button. Then another. ‘Scared?’
‘No.’
Then another. ‘I bet you’re lonely, aren’t you?’
‘No.’
‘Walking out here all by yourself at this hour.’
‘I’ve got to get going.’
‘Why don’t you just climb in here with me?’ She slid the blouse aside.
Everybody’s nuts!
I stared at her pale breast and its dark nipple.
‘Now will you climb in, honey?’
‘Uh, no thanks.’
Through the quiet rumble of the engine noise, I heard soft laughter. It didn’t come from the woman, though. It came from somewhere behind her in the van and it sounded like men.
I think I squealed.
I know I ran like hell.
Chapter Thirty-one
I expected the van to speed after me in reverse, just as Randy had done a couple of nights earlier. Then the gal would hit the brakes and the side door would fly open and her hidden men would leap out and chase me down.
Nothing like that happened.
As I dashed for the nearest comer, I glanced back and saw the van take off ... driving forward, its doors still shut.
Just some sort of prank? I wondered. Give the kid a scare?
Sure.
Afraid the van might return, I ran across the street and around the comer and hid behind the trunk of a tree. Several minutes went by.
Maybe I should head for home as soon as it’s safe, I thought. One close call is enough for one night.
And miss the girl?
I might not be able to find her, anyway. Besides, it’s not worth the risk.
What if I’d gotten into the van?
Don’t even think about it, I told myself. I didn’t get in; that’s what matters.
On the other side of the street, a man walked by with a Great Dane on a leash.
That’s what I need, I thought. An enormous, dangerous dog. Keep the fiends at bay.
The man and his dog vanished around a comer, but I remained in hiding. The van didn’t return. No other vehicles went by, either. I finally stepped away from the tree and began to walk in the direction from which I’d come.
Discretion being the better part of valour ...
What is wrong with this town, anyway?
Maybe there’s a lunatic asylum nearby and they open its doors at night, let all the inmates run loose in the streets. Have a good time, darlings. Raise some hell. But you must be back before sunrise.
Nice.
Might make for an interesting story, I thought. Sort of far-fetched, but a situation like that would explain what’s wrong. Something has to be wrong with this place. Every town isn’t like this at night.
Or maybe they are.
Soon, I found myself approaching the Fairmont Street bridge. It stood between me and home. I looked at its empty, shadowed street, its low stone parapets, and the darkness on both sides.
I would have to cross it sooner or later. This bridge or another, and God only knew what might be lurking under any of them.
Nothing will happen, I told myself.
I’d walked across such bridges hundreds of times in the past couple of years - often late at night - without any trouble.
That was before I knew.
We used to joke about trolls lurking under the bridges, but we never knew.
Well short of the bridge, I halted, suddenly reluctant to cross it again.
Aside from whatever fears I had in regard to the bridge, I hated the idea of being a quitter. I’d set out to search for the girl. Was I really going to call it quits because some creeps in a van scared the hell out of me?
If I quit tonight, I may never see her again.
I have to see her, I thought. And talk to her. And find out her name and why she roams the streets at night and whether she’s lonely and what it’s like to be with her.
Shaking my hea
d, I turned my back to the bridge and left it behind.
I kept a sharp watch. Every so often, the approach of a person or vehicle forced me to duck out of sight. As time went on without any more troubling incidents, however, my courage seemed to grow. I spent less time hiding, more time hurrying from block to block.
After making my way northward on Fairmont for nearly an hour, I turned right on a sidestreet. I followed it to the east and came upon Division Street, then continued eastward until I arrived at Franklin.
As I found myself nearing region of the mystery girl, my fears seemed to fade beneath the excitement of possibly encountering her. Instead of watching all around me for dangers, I watched for her.
She’s somewhere, I told myself. If not on this sidewalk, on another. Or she might be in one of these houses. Or even crouching behind bushes somewhere, hiding from a suspected threat.
She might even be hiding from me.
Perhaps I had already walked past her and she’d watched me from the shadows.
Please don’t hide from me. I told her in my mind. I’m nobody to fear. I would never hurt you.
At length, I came upon the house that she’d entered on Monday night ... the house where, on Tuesday night, I’d watched the tequila woman. I looked toward the kitchen window, but it was dark.
From what I could see as I walked by, the entire house was dark.
At the end of the block, I crossed Franklin. I came back on the other side of the street and hid among bushes in a front lawn directly across from the house.
My wristwatch showed 12:40.
Everyone’s probably asleep in there, I thought.
But who?
The tequila woman almost certainly lived in the house.
What about the mystery girl? I’d seen her go in, but she’d shown up later the same night over on Division Street. Had she only come here to visit the tequila woman or some other member of the household?
Perhaps, I thought. Or perhaps this is her house. Monday night, she might’ve returned home for something that she needed, sneaked in and grabbed it, then headed off for her main destination.
I could see a problem with that theory, though. After watching her go in, I’d hung around for a while, then walked to Dandi Donuts and spent time there with Eileen ...
Where Randy watched us.
Don’t start thinking about him. Get back to the problem.
Where was I? The girl. The time lapse.
Between the time she entered the house and when I later saw her on Division Street, more than an hour had gone by.
Her two locations were only about a five-minute walk from each other.
An hour, maybe longer, was unaccounted for.
If she’d spent it inside the house, she hadn’t just rushed in to grab something ... or change shoes or go to the bathroom or take care of some other simple matter. She’d been inside too long for anything of that sort.
Why would someone return home in the middle of the night, stay an hour, then leave? What did she do in there? Take a nap? Take a shower? Bake a cake?
Make love?
Making love in her own house, then leaving within the hour, didn’t make sense to me.
I couldn’t think of any good reason for her to sneak into her own house at that time of night, stay an hour, then leave.
It’s not her house?
But that doesn’t mean she isn’t in it. She might be inside right now. Or she might be on her way over.
I made up my mind to stay put. There was a good chance she would either show up or leave before too long. All I needed to do was wait.
I waited. And waited.
Of course, she might be fast asleep in her own house on some other block. Or she might be having a maple bar at Dandi Donuts or roaming along a sidewalk miles away. She might be almost anywhere.
What if Randy snatched her, gave her the works?
She’s fine, I told myself.
Or she’s dead under a bridge ... ?
She’s fine.
Or captured by the van people ... ?
No. She’s fine. But she isn’t likely to stay fine if ...
I heard a distant engine. It slowly grew louder. From the rough grumbly noise, it sounded powerful. It might belong to a truck. Or a pickup truck.
Randy on the prowl?
Maybe it’s the van.
Though I was well hidden among the bushes, my heart pounded hard as I watched the street in front of me.
Headlights brightened the pavement.
A police car passed by, moving slowly.
Keep going! I told it. Keep going! Keep going!
It did.
When it was gone, I crouched there trembling and sweaty and breathless.
Oughta be glad it was cops, I thought. They might be the ones to save my ass if things go really wrong.
A lot of good they did last night.
What did they do last night? Did they even look under the bridge?
Maybe they’re in cahoots with the trolls.
That seemed awfully far-fetched, but sometimes far-fetched stuff is true.
When they pick up suspects at night, maybe they take them underneath one of the bridges and turn them over to the trolls.
Ridiculous. But it might make for a story.
Why would the cops do something like that? For a bottle of wine? For a piece of the action? A piece of the person pie?
Got it! The cops kill two birds with one stone: they eliminate suspects permanently, plus they keep the trolls from going after decent folk for fresh meat.
But what do they get?
The satisfaction of a job well done.
I chuckled softly.
That makes two story ideas. Not bad for one night.
Even if I don’t fmd the girl, this has been a pretty worthwhile ...
Across the street, a dark shape drifted down the porch stairs and cut across the lawn toward the sidewalk. Out of the shadows, the shape had a light, springy stride. Behind it, a ponytail bounced and swung.
Chapter Thirty-two
I gaped at her, astonished. Though I’d hoped very much to find her, I hadn’t really expected to have an easy time of it. The search might have taken three or four nights, or even a week or two. It might’ve taken a month. There had also been a real possibility that I would never see her again at all.
And here she was, coming out of the very house I’d seen her enter on Monday night.
At the sidewalk, she turned to her right and headed north on Franklin Street. When she reached the end of the block, I scurried out of my hiding place.
What if tequila woman’s watching?
Nobody seemed to be on the porch. The front door appeared to be shut. All the downstairs and upstairs windows that I could see were dark, and nobody was visible at any of them, looking out.
If she saw me, it’s too late to do anything about it.
Staying on my side of Franklin, I walked toward the end of the block.
Tomorrow night, she’ll tell the girl.
If not sooner. Maybe she’ll tell her on the phone tomorrow. Or in class. Or at work. Honey, when you left the house last night I observed a stranger creep out of the bushes across the street and commence to follow you. In my mind, she spoke with a mellow drawl like a Tennessee Williams character. You’d best take care. Perhaps you should stay away from here until the matter has been resolved.
Then again, there was no good reason to assume she’d seen me. When the time came for the girl to leave, she might’ve remained in bed. Or perhaps she had gone to the kitchen for a nightcap.
In fact, she might’ve slept through everything. For all I really knew, someone other than tequila woman was the object of the girl’s visits to the house.
What if that person looked out and saw me?
Nobody saw me!
Probably not, I told myself. But if someone did, the girl will probably find out about it tomorrow. Tonight might be my only chance.
I crossed the street, and we were both on
the same sidewalk.
Though we walked nearly a block apart, the narrow, straight strip of concrete joined us.
Her pace was more gradual than mine. She strolled along as if out for no other purpose than to savor the night. For a while, I allowed myself to close the gap. Then I slowed down.
As on the night of our first encounter, I felt the strange awareness that in all the vast reaches of time and space, she and I were now occupying the same moment and place.
In so many different ways, we might’ve missed this rendezvous.
And yet, here it was.
The forces of chance or nature or God had drawn us together on this night of all nights of the year. With a little help from my own determination to find her.
Now what? I wondered.
I wanted to know her, not just follow her.
I’ve gotta get closer.
How? So far, she seemed unaware of my presence. That wouldn’t last for long, however, if I tried to catch up.
She sees me coming, she’ll take off.
Not for the first time in my life, I wished I were invisible. I would hurry up the sidewalk, stay only a stride or two behind her for a while to watch the way she moved, then rush ahead and walk backward to study the front of her. Unseen, I would be free to stare at her for as long as I wished. I wouldn’t have to go away, not even when she reached her home. I could simply go inside and stay with her. Perhaps she would take a bath before going to bed.
I imagined standing nearby in her bedroom while she pulled her sweatshirt off.
Yeah, right, I thought. In my dreams.
On the off-chance I can’t turn invisible, I thought, what should I do?
Instead of closing in from behind, how about making my approach from the front? That would be less likely to spook her. Run around the block and get ahead of her. Maybe even start walking away so she’s behind me. Then I slow my pace. I slow it way down and she closes in. Maybe.
Great plan, I thought. Better, anyway, than trying to turn myself invisible.
Moving in the right direction.
Only one little problem. In putting my plan into effect, I would make the detour and return to Franklin Street and the girl would be gone. That’s how things work in real life.