The Silver Bridge (17 page)

Was this indeed written by the man who had tried to rape her? She somehow doubted it; she hoped it had been put there by somebody trying to perpetrate a cruel joke. The writing was definitely feminine (she had once taken a correspondence course in handwriting analysis) and displayed anything but roughness and masculinity. Perhaps he was one of the illiterate river people, who always had two or three women around, having children by all of them. He probably had one of those whores write the note for him.

Agar

Agar adjusted his large-brimmed hat and buttoned his coat of black more tightly, even though it was a warm day and the people he had observed were in shirt sleeves. They appeared to be uncomfortable, even in their brief garbs, and perspired freely. Agar wondered why he was not similarly affected, though he was glad he did not have problems such as this.

If he had any serious problems, he had not thought about them. His work occupied most of his thinking. Today, for example, he could concentrate only on the compelling impulse which drew him into the cover of bushes behind the school playground, where he secreted himself, waiting and watching for the child to whom he was so strongly drawn. While he waited, an excitement came over him. It was more than the usual involvement. This was going to be a
big
one, for the victim had projected extraordinarily powerful vibrations.

Suddenly he spotted the person who had so drawn him, over many miles, the boy who had photographed the moth creature. The child was standing apart from the group, and as he watched, walked aimlessly in circles.

“Soon you will come over here, closer to the bushes where I hide,” Agar thought and knew. The boy moved closer toward him, but in a series of perambulations involving further circling and parabolic curves, with now and then a quick step sidewise.

Although Agar didn’t understand why, he felt strangely compassionate toward the boy, and he fought this feeling because it made him physically weak, and mentally disoriented. For a moment he felt he would rather have gone into the playground and pitched balls to him, as the others were doing, instead of confronting him about the picture. The boy’s blonde hair fell over his eyes, half hiding a sensitive and beautiful face, and as he moved close to Agar’s hiding place, he brushed it back twice, evidently so that he could use his eyes better.

He huddled lower, as the boy approached, drawn to him it would seem, as much as he had been drawn to come here and seek out the child. Closer and closer he came, but now he slackened his pace, as if he anticipated meeting some untoward circumstance.

Within a few feet of Agar’s hiding place he stopped dead still, and Agar fancied he could hear him breathing heavily. He probably would not come any closer, and the most propitious time to strike probably had arrived.

He parted the bushes, suddenly disclosing himself, and rose to standing position, at the same time fixing the boy’s blue eyes in his fierce gaze. The child would soon run screaming back to the school, but by that time he would be far away.

But the child unexpectedly stood his ground, innocently staring back at Agar’s slit-like eyes. Probably he was hypnotized by fright, and this would pretty well fulfill his mission, if that were true.

To make certain, he threatened the boy severely in a mechanical, somewhat nasal, but low-pitched voice. The boy glanced downward, hung his head, and picked at his fingernails not again looking up. The boy was not frightened at all! A feeling of anger, unusual for him, came over Agar, and he realized that
he
was frightened, and the boy was not.

He advanced on the boy, grabbed him and shook him, but still he did not react with fright. He then tore at the boy’s pocket and withdrew a frayed billfold, took the snapshot from it, and then threatened him again. Still the boy fiddled with his fingernails without looking up; then he reached into a side pocket, removed a pen knife and some shiny pebbles he probably had found in a creek, and held the items out as if he wished to freely give them to him.

In further fright and anger, Agar roughly struck the small white hand, and the contents dropped to the ground. Now completely defeated and shaken, he made a series of hopping, bouncing motions, and soon was out on the main thoroughfare, escaping as fast as he could, always making five steps forward, then one step right, then five more steps and one step left.

He felt he could regain his strength at the next stop. Donning dark glasses and relaxing the severe manner, he knocked politely at a door, and was quickly admitted when he told the woman he had come to ask her about the flying saucer she had seen.

She was overjoyed, and for an hour he suffered her oral aggression, but this was one of the unpleasant facets of his work which he must put up with. Pretending to listen to the lengthy details of her sighting, and politely asking a leading question here and there when he could interrupt the monologue, he let his mind stray to the boy and to analyzing his failure. He believed he had done the job well, and that there must be some logical reason why he had not accomplished the desired results.

Perhaps he should have dressed as a policeman, and convinced the boy he was in trouble with the law…

But he could sense the woman was near the end of her seemingly interminable narrative. It was time to act now, before she could continue by switching to occult subjects.

He withdrew a bundle of forms from his attache case, and began writing down things, while looking about the room, as if listing the furniture. Now ignoring his hostess, he arose, walked to the TV set, closely examined the controls, and then wheeled it around and copied the serial number from its back. The woman, now obviously nervous, stopped her talking while she observed his actions.

He then asked her a series of unrelated questions:

“Does the house have a steel framework? Has anybody else visited you in regard to this sighting? Has your husband ever had a security check? Do you consider yourself a loyal citizen? Did you vote Democratic or Republican in the last election? Have you ever felt that your telephone was tapped? Have you told your neighbors about the sighting? Did you notice a shield-like symbol on the flying object? Has anybody in your family ever been arrested?”

As she attempted to asnwer each question, she became visibly more frightened and confused. Then, upon his request, she quickly agreed to stop talking about the sighting to any other person, not even her husband (of course, she would spread the story widely throughout the community).

At the next stop he employed different tactics and simply walked about the neighborhood, knowing that many eyes peered at him from the windows. Halting before a particular house, he made elaborate adjustments to his camera, and after readings with a light meter, he took pictures from several angles. Then making two chalk marks on the sidewalk, he stepped off the footage, then took copious notes.

He felt a new burst of energy. The next time he dealt with a child he would try a different technique, and would be more successful. He proceeded onward. As he approached the great bridge, however, the odd feeling of exhaustion he had experienced after the encounter with the boy once again overtook him. Half way across, he slowed his footsteps to regain his energies. He leaned over the railing of the pedestrian walkway, watching the river people below. Although they did not radiate to him, he suddenly felt a kind of unexplained kinship with them. But he could never be like them, or work with them, or interact with them.

Then out of the corner of his eye he saw the only object that had ever inspired terror deep within him. It was the same boy, with the eyes hidden by blonde hair, standing at the Ohio side of the bridge, though he could not imagine how he could have covered the great distance to be there so quickly. The child walked aimlessly in a small area, sometimes pausing to kick at the railing. He was waiting there for Agar, and Agar knew that.

Agar had never analyzed himself, except that he believed he was forever condemned to walk in sidewise motion, and that it had been these people who had so condemned him. He felt that he was a part of them, though an evil part of them, a
fear
part of them; and that since he was a part of so many people he would live forever—though he wondered if he really liked living as these people liked living.

He probably should retreat back to the West Virginia side of the river, for he felt panic at the prospect of another confrontation with the strange child, who did not react as others did, who obviously was not frightened by him, and therefore was certainly not a part of him. This boy, he believed, would somehow kill him, although the prospect of being killed, which struck great terror into people he had threatened, did not really bother him. If he died, perhaps there would no longer be this total dependence upon these people for his energies, and it would be with him, as peaceful and ecstatic as it was with people when they slept (as he had seen them do when he had slipped into their rooms and changed positions of their personal articles).

By this time the boy had become more aggressive and had advanced a quarter of the way toward the center of the bridge, where Agar stood. He could retreat and avoid another confrontation, but that would involve admitted failure and a dereliction of his mission. If he stood his ground he probably would have to lay his hands on the boy again. He had never before physically touched another being. He had drawn his vital energies from people by remote means. When he had grabbed the child and shaken him, he had, admittedly, also drawn energies, but a different kind—or maybe they were just more powerful. Instead he believed that he, himself, had energies, which, in that case, had been drawn from him into the boy.

He made a decision. He would take the risk, although it probably meant his complete undoing. He would threaten to throw the boy over the bridge, and that might turn the tide. He would grab him roughly, lift him up, and let him see the great gulf below.

He moved firmly to confront his adversary. He stared at him. The boy gave in and looked away, as he slowly hummed some sort of tune in a minor key.

Agar grabbed him and pushed him against the railing.

“You see down there. That’s where you’re going to end up. I’m going to throw you over the bridge. Look at that murky water. You’ll cry then and ask for help. You’ll call for your father then. You’ll ask for help when you’re falling halfway down, turning over and over!”

The boy evidenced no reaction whatsoever, except for passively going limp. Agar hoisted him almost to his shoulders. Instead of kicking and screaming, as he had mentally predicted, the boy did not say or do anything, except to brush the ubiquitous hair from his eyes with his one free hand. Agar didn’t know what to do. Of course he couldn’t actually carry out his threats, but the boy had challenged him, and if he put him down he would have to run again.

Not knowing what to do, Agar just started walking, after he had put the boy’s legs around his neck, so that he could better carry the burden that proved heavier than it had appeared. The boy must be a thirteen-year-old, possibly fourteen. He balanced him better and began walking ahead, toward the Ohio side.

How could he get out of this?

“You’ll have quite a story to tell, child,” he said. “You don’t know how close you came to being thrown over the bridge. If you did not have certain information about the interplanetary intelligences which we have not collected, it would have been VERY VERY (he emphasized the ‘Verys’) serious.”

“I’ll be good,” the boy spoke for the first time. “I won’t tell.”

“Oh, but you
must
tell,” Agar corrected, “else other children will be in danger of being thrown over the bridge.”

“Then I will if you say so.”

The rather large boy was getting lighter, and Agar suddenly felt proud that he could carry him without effort. It would be fun to jog him up and down a bit, but that would be out of character, and only serve to please his adversary which had shown no fearful response to violence. He also realized that, for the first time he could remember, he turned not as he went. He made five steps forward, and then another, with no sidewise motion.

“How will they ever know you tried to throw me over the bridge?” the boy asked. “They’ll never believe me. They say I tell lies in school.”

“They’ll have to take your word for it.”

“Gee, they won’t ever believe me.”

“I can’t help that. I’ll have to put you down now.”

They were almost across the bridge.

“If you see me vanish,” Agar told him suddenly, “do not tell this particular thing. They might believe this, but they would never understand it.”

He put the boy down and helped him raise to his feet. He slicked back the hair and for the first time saw tears in the eyes.

“Don’t go away, Agar!”

Agar tried to change the expression on the slit which was his mouth. He found it impossible to smile. He pushed the boy from him, opened his eyes as far as he could, growled at him and danced around. He changed into various shapes, and took to threatening the boy once again.

The boy sobbed.

“I know that you are dying, and I don’t want you to go!”

“Dying? of course not. I’m not going to die. But I do have to go over into Ohio, for I have very important business there. I won’t be back, for because from Ohio I have to go to Indianapolis.

“I think I can go right now, if you will promise not to make me come back.”