Shadows under the Bridge

Quiet steam filled the narrow city streets at nightfall. Headlights roamed. Engines gurgled. Black buildings spired between glowing street lights. Fans spun on the mansion hilltop over the city, and the crown of fog blew back over the city. The droning of engines and the hiss of air units rose over the city.

Over the bridge all city sound wailed through mist and waves, and plummeted to the bottomless mist below where the seagulls called and heavy explosions pushed cold air up the legs a pedestrian slid his hand on the rail, and scraped away steam droplets. His steps trampled soaked newspapers, and kicked plastic bottles cast from passing car windows. He turned his phone back on. He tried to make some calls, but no one answered. He looked at the hour. He’d been walking for three hours, and crossed the bridge twice. He looked down and imagined grinding against the cast steel of the columns, then his innards gelatinize as he washed up atop the sharp rocks below. The crabs pull him apart piece by piece. He shuddered, and deposited his phone into an inner pocket and looked over the rail to the fathomless green of the midnight fog beneath the bridge.

A new coat of paint invigorated the walkway. They added trash baskets. No more bums fortified the passage with cardboard shelters. The seagulls no longer rested on the arch towers. Not a single nest rested on the utility walk underneath him. He looked up at the decade old graffiti and noticed that the old spray cans remained as evidence of the climber's feat. That’s how much time he thought must’ve passed since he last visited the bridge.

That time he threw over his phone, threw off his shoes, a hopped over the rail. It was colder, and his flesh peeled from the frosted pole. The sea wind he bit dried his throat tasted of salt and fish. At first the way down expanded beyond his expectations, but then a pleasant sleepiness nestled his bones. He took comfort in knowing that ice at the bottom may render survival impossible, but then someone walking by put a heavy winter coat over him, and left him there to hang.

After climbing back over the rail he waited, warm in his coat, until sunrise, then went home under its pink glow. After that he started Valdez Winter Coat Company and sold coats across the northern plains.

Years later he heard foreboding rumored by the wealthy friends investing in his winter coat charity. 

“The monster may have started that way, but most people don’t walk across anymore,” his lips quivered. “now it looks up beyond the windmills, to the open windows where our sons and daughters sleep.”

In the alley of shoreside restaurants, a kitchen door cracked open and a cook stamped in the mud pools and threshed his buttons loose. He pushed the door shut, and bounced into the alley way vanishing beneath wires in his ears. The kitchens shut off behind him one by one. He peeled off his apron, and took off his neckerchief. From the alley he turned towards the bridge and walked for home.

On this night he thought he heard the resonating echos of an injured bear flaring its warning into the air originating from the bridge tower. Too distant for his eyes, but by the lamps burning on the roads he made out the figure of someone dressed in a white gown climbing the tower. He watched longer, and he heard screams from the gown out pierced and rang out further. Her legs kicked and arms slung. But before he admired to himself that he saw a person, she was already flung down. The monster kept climbing, and at the peak it howled over the pit.

Valdez heard the same from other passing mouths as they whispered about things that came out from the salt fog under the bridge to plunge those on the surface under its formless abysm. He never saw whoever placed the coat on him, but he heard footsteps and the clasp of keys. Yet the possibility kept him awake at night, staring over his balcony down the deep slope. The bridge joined two city hills together. He sent his house staff home, and took the old coat from its sealed bag. He put it over him to check if it still felt the same. It didn’t, but he knew by the inner fabrics that whoever donated the coat purchased it from a manufacturer that died out years ago with the market for black spider monkey fur.

He watched the bridge for several sleepless nights, short tempered over the phone and curt in person, but with a telescope aimed at the bridge he finally saw someone kicking and fighting up the bridge, until finally dropped and crushed by passing traffic.

He watched the other balconies, and even visited his neighbors to leave their windows unbolted. The creature left greasey prints on the balconies and the glass, but it moved idly enough to left the security measures undisturbed. No cat stepped on, no dog barked, not a sound made until the panicked screams being stolen out the window.

Valdez didn’t want to believe it, but he looked upon his own wife and sleeping daughter and feared the monster might strike them next. So he purchased. .45 revolvers for them both and left one night while his bowl of soup cooled on the table.

He took the old coat with him to the bridge. He went through its pockets once more, finding empty vials stained with green and red oils. Further inside he found a fork, an unopened envelope notated “This potion will reverse some of the effects for now, and make the process easier” - Dokter Kulenpepper.

The letter inside provided him with three things. Snake oil. Dragon blood. Werewolf milk. Valdez placed it all back, and entered the night shade, wore a hood over his head, and walked along the bridge until he knew the moans of the support, the song of the crashing waves far below, and the clashing hiss of fog clouds.

He found fine, deep scratches in the steel surfaces, and half eaten sea gulls laying under the arch tower. He crossed strangers meandering past, and even found one person perched over the side. Valdez asked them to face him, and at once they wiped foam from thier mouths and told him to leave them be before they walked away into the rising fog.

Once alone, so still late that the traffic stopped, and the mansion windows darkened, as did the apartments on either side of the bridge and the businesses around them. Only then did he hear it’s fur wiping under the bridge.

He looked below him and gasped for he saw a seagull flap its wings in the jaws of a monstrosity. In its grasp dangled a gasping girl he feared at first to be his own loved one, but a stark relief thawed his senses when he saw the features of a stranger. Valdez tried to chase it as it flung itself to the column and climbed up to the tower. It’s captive clung to its host as it carried them higher and higher.

Valdez climbed behind. With leather wings swinging like barbed whips cut his face, but he wiped the blood from his eyes, and maintained his pursuit. The wind swayed the bridge, and garters twisted, under his feet. He kept climbing, knocking over empty spray cans and using his belt to latch his body to bolts and nuts. The belt already split, and the buckle bent. The high winds forced salt and fish into his nostrils. His palms slipped on the beam while the creature he pursued rested. Passing car lights beamed up the arch, and for glimpses he saw the bent back, and slouched shoulders. He held his coat out for the creature to take, and idly advanced onto the cable. The creature stood balanced on one claw, hosting his captive against the weight of the bridge.

His leg fur burned red from the illumination below, he crossed one leg, and folded its wings to keep maintained as it lurched closer, and closer. With its claw lifting the rest of it, he leaned forward and extended its arm, and hooked the coat. The creature stood up straight, like a knife in a table, it stretched the sleeves forces its arms in, then it tied it shit to hide its chest. It tossed its captive to Valdez and rode down the cable to dissapear in the dark.

Valdez took the captive home and left the window to his balcony open every night in hopes that again he’d meet the creature. But the wind and rain caught the house a cold, and when the sea fog rose it reeked of scallops and brine, so in time he let them shut the balcony. One morning he found a winter coat folded over the banister.