The Bridge (3 page)

The truck driver dropped Olav off in Crested Butte, then drove on toward Gunnison. Olav had decided to change his name to Henry Walker.

He had always liked the name Hank, so if anyone asked his name, he was prepared. “My name’s Henry Walker,” he’d say, “but you can call me Hank.” It sounded like a real outsider’s name to him. His first stop was a jewelry store. A sign in its window said, “We pay top dollar for gold and silver.”

“My mother gave me this platter and the silver knives and forks.”
he told the man behind the counter.

“How old is it?” asked Willy, the store’s manager.

“At least three hundred years, maybe even more. She told me it was brought over from Iceland over three hundred years ago. She said it was probably from England. It’s solid silver.”

The man took a book from under the glass case and flipped through the pages until he came to the page he was looking for. A platter with the exact same pattern was shown on the page.

“I’d have to have a real expert look at this to be sure, but I think you have something very valuable here.”

“How valuable?” said Olav.

“More money than we have in this store. You’d have to take it to New York to one of the big auction houses. They could tell you what it’s worth. The silverware has the same pattern. Something tells me you’re going to be a rich man.”

A woman came out of the back room and over to the glass jewelry case and looked down at the silver platter.

“My name’s Bonnie, Mr....”

“I’m Henry Walker,” he said with a smile, “but you can just call me Hank. I’m new in town and I’m afraid I’ve exhausted my funds. I need to sell some of this today. I don’t have enough money to even buy a meal.” Bonnie looked at the store manager.

“How much is this platter worth, Willy?”

“Oh, maybe ten to twenty thousand.”

Bonnie was looking at Hank knowing that Willy was trying to take advantage of him. She knew Hank wasn’t from Colorado, at least, not the Colorado she was from. His skin was so different, almost like a baby’s, and his blue eyes were so clear, it was like he’d never been outside, but his clothes were all handmade like a farmer’s. Then it finally dawned on her. He was Huldufolk. One of The Hidden People.

“No, Willy. How much is it really worth?”

“If it’s what I think it is, at the right auction, it could bring millions.”

“What about Denver?”she asked.

“Denver has some big auctions, but if it were mine, I’d take it to New York.”

“But I don’t have the money to go to New York,” said Hank, “and even if I did, I wouldn’t know what to do once I got there.”

Bonnie knew she was being forward, but she could tell Hank was inexperienced in the way of the outsiders.

“Why don’t you let me buy you lunch,” she said, “and we can talk about it.”

She gathered up the silver and put it in a box before Willie had a chance to convince him otherwise, then took Hank by the hand and out the door they went. She drove past the restaurant and took Hank to her apartment.

“You look like you could use a home-cooked meal,” she said once she got him inside. “I have a little money set aside and I’ve always wanted to go to New York.”

Bonnie and Heidi had moved away from Eagle’s Nest to have some privacy from their parents. They had rented separate apartments for the same reason. Bonnie had her job at the jewelry store and Heidi worked all hours of the night and day writing her novels. They seldom saw each other, but when they were younger and living in Eagle’s Nest, they’d often heard of The Hidden People. Their father had even mentioned hunting them like they were animals.

While they were eating, Bonnie and Hank couldn’t take their eyes off each other. He was so clean and
innocent looking and she was as beautiful as Hank’s mother. They had both noticed their infatuation with each other and laughed about it, but they both had the same feeling without talking about it. It was like they had known each other forever. The more they talked the more her attention was on him, but the silver platter was always in the back of her mind. After dinner, they showered together and then made love. It was a new experience for Hank. He could actually see the dark shadows swarming around them, but the sensation of sex was so great he didn’t care.

The silver sold at auction for eight hundred thousand, not the millions that Willy had thought, but Bonnie was happy. Hank had never had any money at all, so the amount didn’t make any difference to him as long as Bonnie was happy. That night she took their relationship to a whole different level. She taught Hank new ways of pleasure that he had never dreamed of. They were married in New York and after a week of being locked up tight in their hotel room, flew back to Colorado. Hank’s memory was fading fast.

Heidi and Bonnie still met each other for lunch occasionally to catch up on things, but they never told each other about their husbands, each being afraid the fact that her husband was Huldufolk would get out and he would be killed, but eventually, they were invited to their parents’ house at the same time and everyone was surprised that the sisters were not only married, but also married to brothers. Everyone except their father who acted as if he had known them forever. He kept asking them questions about their family until the conversation became heated and, by the time they left, he was so mad he would tell his daughters never to come back if they were going to bring their husbands. A year flew by and the sisters were pregnant. Heidi first and then Bonnie six months later.

****

Axil and Heidi were on their way to her parents’ house during a thunderstorm when her water broke. She wanted to be close to her mother when her first baby was born. “It’s coming,” she said. Axil stopped the van and she got in the back seat. “You’d better pull off the highway. I don’t think it’s going to wait.” He pulled off the highway and parked the van next to a bluff, then got in the back of the van with her. The rain was coming down so hard they could barely hear each other, then suddenly a boulder loosened by the rain slid down the mountain causing a mud slide. The rocks and mud hit the van, crushing the roof and knocking out the windows. It all happened so fast that all Axil had time to do was tell Heidi he loved her and that he would find her in their next life no matter what he had to do. Then they were both covered with mud.

Just moments after the mudslide, Hank and Bonnie drove by slowly, looking at the mass of mud and rocks alongside the highway, not knowing that Axil and
Heidi were buried under the mudslide. Bonnie suddenly thought of Axil for no apparent reason then felt a sudden jerk in her stomach, and a warm glow came over her.

Axil and
Heidi were found when the mud slide was cleared away and their bodies were buried in the cemetery across the highway. Her parents had a huge granite headstone made that simply said “Axil and Heidi Wakefield” and, since Axil had called Heidi Butterfly, they had a butterfly engraved into the headstone.

****

“So what you’re saying now,” said Meva, “is that Axil’s body was killed as Hank and Bonnie drove by and he somehow entered into the body of Bonnie’s baby. So didn’t that make Axil his own uncle?”

“Something like that.”

Chapter 7

“You’d better hurry,” Bonnie called out, “you know how mother gets when we’re late.”

All she heard from Hank was a grumble. “Why do we always have to have Thanksgiving dinner at their house? It would be so much easier for them to come over here. We’ve got the baby to contend with. Seems like they could be a little more thoughtful.”

“Well, they’re getting old and, besides, they had to go through the same thing with me and so did your parents.”

My parents never went anywhere and they never got old,
he thought. He had never told Bonnie the whole truth about his past. If he told her, she had to be able to travel through time into the future in order to find Alfheim. She’d think he was crazy and leave him. He had gone back into the forest where the mist covered the river and there was nothing there. No bridge and no village. He doubted he would ever be able to find it by himself, if there really was a bridge. It was all like some dream. He was turning into an outsider and he knew it.

“I know how you feel,” said his father. “I thought about crossing over that bridge many times myself
when I was a young man, but you’ve got to remember: The people out there are different. They’re not like us. Once you cross over, you’ll start to change until your mind is so twisted that you won’t remember where the bridge is and, even if you did stumble onto it, you wouldn’t be able to see it. It all happens fast, within a day or two. Alfheim is a very special place. As far as we know, there’s nowhere else on this earth like it. The mist and the shroud protect us. Out there, you will be on your own, with those dark shadows. And another thing you’ve got to think about are those bats. Don’t forget about those bats.”

I should have stayed in Alfheim
, he thought as he rubbed the pain in his elbow
, but then, I’d have never found Bonnie.

Hank had written down everything he could remember about his past and kept it locked up in his safe at home where no one could read it. He knew Bonnie had a great imagination, being a writer, and someday he hoped he could recall enough to tell Bonnie about his childhood in a way that didn’t sound insane. Alfheim was a perfect place, but so small that some of its people left after a while, thinking they could make a difference on the outside. The outsiders had so many things, like television, computers, telephones and food. The different kinds of food and the sex was
unbelievable. Maybe the outside isn’t so bad after all. His memory of Alfheim grew more vague with each day. He knew there was an invisible bridge and it was important. You had to move into the future in order to find it, but he didn’t remember where it was. He couldn’t tell Bonnie that. He was starting to age. He knew that wasn’t a good sign and then there were the bats. At first, he had to spray himself with a foul odor to keep them away from him. They seemed to know he was not normal, but now, that was no longer necessary.
I should have stayed in Alfheim
.

“...don’t you agree?” said Bonnie, jerking Hank’s mind back to the present.

“But it’s snowing outside,” he said.

“They always have something special for Shannon. He’s their only grandchild and their house is always so warm and comfortable.”

They bundled up their baby and strapped him in the back seat, then they were off. The snow had just started at their house, but their driveway was only covered with a light dusting. They thought they could make it before the real storm hit. It was a good hour’s drive from Crested Butte, to Eagles Nest, when the weather was perfect, but the farther they drove, the heavier the snow fell until it became a whiteout.“We’re gonna have to turn back, Bonnie. It’s too dangerous to be out here in this, especially with Shannon. We’ll just have to miss Thanksgiving this year.”

Bonnie called her mother and told her their problem. “Hank says it’s too dangerous. We can hardly see.”

“I know,” said her mother, “it’s coming down hard here, too. I was just getting ready to call you when the phone rang.”

“We’ll just have to make it next year,” said Bonnie. “Or maybe we can have Thanksgiving after the storm blows over.”

Hank pulled off the road and turned the car around at the entrance to the cemetery. The snow was coming down so hard his wiper blades barely cleared the windshield. He looked back to see if any cars were coming and didn’t see any lights, so he eased out onto the road.

Chapter 8

Clint Edwards and his wife, Mattie, were driving a semi truck from California to Steamboat Springs, Colorado. They had been on the road all night and were looking for a motel to sit out the storm. Mattie was as good a driver as Clint in normal weather, but they changed places when the snow started. He had come this way so many times that he knew the road by memory and she felt safer with him driving. There was no sign of any traffic, so Clint took his eyes off the road just for a second. He looked over at Mattie who was trying to nap and only caught a glimpse of Hank’s headlights when their vehicles collided. He hit the air brakes, but they locked and the loaded trailer jerked and slid on the packed snow and pushed Hank and Bonnie’s car off the road and into the cemetery. The trailer jackknifed, taking out the fence and slamming into a series of tombstones before finally coming to a stop. Then there was an explosion. Not from fire, but from inside the trailer.

“Oh, no,” said
Clint. “There goes the load.” He checked on Mattie, who had sprung straight up out of her seat when the truck slammed into the car and was wide awake now, wondering what had happened.

“Are you alright? Did we get hit by a bomb or something?” He looked her over
, making sure she wasn’t hurt.

“What was that?” she said. “What happened?”

“We hit somebody. I think it was a car, but I’m not sure.”

He used his radio and got the sheriff and an emergency team on their way out, then climbed down out of the cab and waded through the snow to the car all crumpled up between a huge granite monument and his front bumper. Steam was sp
ewing out of the radiator and water was pouring out of the fuel tanks.

“Better shut down the truck,” he yelled back at Mattie. “We’re not going anywhere
.”

“We need the heater
,” she called back.

He climbed over the wreckage to the driver’s side of the car, afraid of what he was going to find,
and reached through the shattered window. The man’s head had smashed into the windshield and the steering wheel was bent into a semicircle. The woman had gone through the windshield and was halfway out onto the crumpled hood. It was obvious that both Bonnie and Hank were dead.

“They didn’t have on seat belts and their air bags didn’t deploy,” he called out to Mattie.

“In a minute,” she called back, not understanding what he had said.

He checked their pulse anyway.
Nothing.
No one could live through that.
He could hear Mattie on the CB radio talking to other truckers, giving them their location and advising them to stay away.

Then he heard Shannon cry.

He tried jamming himself through the shattered window over Hank’s body, trying to reach the baby, but the doors and roof were crushed in and Shannon was out of reach.. He climbed up on the back of the car and kicked out what was left of the rear window, then released Shannon from his car seat and pulled him out.

“I need you now
, honey.” Mattie climbed down from the truck and took the baby.

“I can’t believe this happened,” he said. “I’ve never had a wreck before and those poor people, so young.” Mattie tried to look inside the car, but Clint stopped her. “You don’t need to see that, hon.”

A few travelers stopped and Mattie gave them flares.

“Is there anything else we can do?” a man said. “Have you called for an ambulance?”

They walked down the highway and set the flares out to the front and rear of the accident. The snow was coming down so heavy that even the flares were hard to see. Mattie wrapped Shannon up in a blanket and sat in the truck and held him. “I wonder what’s gonna happen to you?” She checked him for any cuts and bruises as the shock of what had happened started to set in and tears filled her eyes.

By the time the sheriff and the emergency crew flew in
, the snow had almost covered the car. Hank and Bonnie’s bodies had to be cut out of the wreckage. The emergency medical technicians took the baby from Mattie and examined him in the air ambulance. “He doesn’t seem to be hurt in any way,” said the technician. Mattie walked over to the ambulance and sat inside with Shannon, rubbing his tiny hands and talking to him. “I’m so sorry this happened to you. If there’s no one to take you, I will.”

The snow was coming down hard as Clint dug around on the floorboard of the car, picking up Bonnie
’s things that had spilled out of her purse.

“Look here,” he said to the sheriff. “I found her cell phone. Maybe we can trace down her family or some friends.
” He saw the remains of a pumpkin pie smashed against the dashboard. “I bet they were on their way to a Thanksgiving dinner when the storm hit.” He bit his lower lip and shook his head. “They just suddenly appeared right in front of me. I was on the right side of the highway. He just appeared out of nowhere.” With shaking hands, he wiped the blood from the phone and handed it to the sheriff.

“So, that’s it. You didn’t see anything. Look at that car. How fast were you going?”

“I was driving slow. Nowhere near the speed limit. The truck is loaded with compressed box springs. He pointed to the trailer with its sides bulging out. “The straps broke on the springs. That trailer’s had it. It was like hitting a brick wall without any seat belts or air bags.” The sheriff walked over to the ambulance to talk with Mattie.

“Could you tell me what happened here, ma’am?”

“I was asleep when the truck hit the car and then the springs exploded. That’s what woke me up. I didn’t see anything.”

“How could you sleep in a snow storm as dangerous as this one and at this time of day?”

“We’ve been on the road all night, coming from California. I had been driving and we had just changed over. I don’t like driving in the snow, especially in these mountains. I was tired, that’s all.”

The sheriff frowned and walked back to Clint.

“You been popping sky-fly to stay awake?”

Clint shook his head no.

“Well, there’s two dead bodies being hauled away. We’re gonna have to have a blood test.”

“No problem,” said Clint. “It was no one’s fault. The snow was coming down so heavy I couldn’t see anything.
You won’t find any drugs in my blood.”

“This is the second fatal accident to happen right here at this cemet
ery,” said the sheriff. “The last one was about a year ago. It’s a dangerous place to be, this cemetery. The last one was right over there.” He pointed across the highway to a bluff. “The mud and rocks came down off that bluff and buried those folks alive. They were parked over there next to the bluff. I remember the woman had given birth in the back seat of a van and the baby was gone. We never found it.”

The sheriff and Clint walked back to where the col
lision occurred. “He was on your side of the highway,” said the sheriff, pointing down at the car tracks almost covered by the snow. “You were right about that.”

Mattie stayed in the ambulance with Shannon and watched while two wre
ckers pulled the truck to a safer location.

The sheriff hit the redial button and Bonnie
’s father, James Baker, answered the phone.