The Bridge (Para-Earth Series) Read online

  The Bridge

  By

  Allan Krummenacker

  2nd Edition

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the creations of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, organizations or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or otherwise, without the written permission of the author Allan Krummenacker

  Cover Art by Allan Krummenacker

  THE BRIDGE

  Copyright © 2012 Allan Krummenacker

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN:

  ISBN-13: 978-1481847001

  DEDICATed to Helen Kathryn-henry Krummenacker

  My wife, my best friend, my biggest inspiration and above all… my heart’s desire.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  I

  Prologue

  1

  Several Weeks Earlier…

  5

  The Morgue

  26

  The Policewoman Ponders

  43

  Julie

  58

  The Impound Lot

  64

  The Promise

  75

  Alex

  77

  Sassy-Cassie

  85

  The Graham Estate

  95

  Cloudfoot

  104

  Interludes

  114

  Next Day

  119

  One Legend… Two Versions

  126

  Revelations

  137

  Cassandra

  144

  Open House

  151

  Seeds of Doubt

  177

  Counseling

  188

  Questions

  193

  Distant Thunder

  206

  Return to the Morgue

  218

  Ominous Rumblings

  227

  Answers and Questions

  237

  Lives Interrupted

  254

  Dark Clouds Gather

  269

  The Storm Breaks

  284

  Reunion

  302

  In the Heart of the Tempest

  307

  The Final Stand

  337

  New Beginnings

  362

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book was a long time in coming and a lot of very good people helped me make it a reality. Without them I’d still be making a lot of mistakes and banging my head against the desk. So let me say a huge thank you to a few of them:

  Caroline Henry, for having such an awesome daughter who fell in love with me, and for also being one of my beta-readers as well as editor.

  Tracy Hernandez for being a such a good friend and beta-reader.

  Stacey Donaghy, for rejecting the earlier version and giving me such a valuable critique as to what was wrong with the story.

  The folks at Caffe Bene in Santa Cruz, for letting me sit for hours drinking tea and eating bearclaws while I wrote the first couple of drafts there.

  Authors Debra Savignano (aka Scarlet Black) and Dean Sault for cheering me on and being the voices of experience and wells of wisdom I could draw upon and learn from.

  And finally, I’d like to say thanks to you the reader for picking up this book and giving me a chance. I hope you enjoy it. I can assure you this is just the beginning and that several sequels are already in the works. I’ll try not to keep you waiting too long. But if I do, it’s only so I can keep delivering a great story and a good product to you.

  prologue

  Rain fell mercilessly as the young man collapsed onto the wet stonework. His wounds were taking their toll. Blood from his leg mingled with water from the storm, making a red stained trail down the slope of the bridge and pooled where it met the path. He tried to look up but saw only strands of his own blond hair. Pushing them out of the way, he looked back over his shoulder and waited. Lightning lit up the area and then left him in darkness once more.

  Brief as it was, he had seen a perfectly manicured lawn with a few lone benches near some flowering bushes, and her. She was still some ways in the distance. Another crack of lightning illuminated the scene with a kind of strobe-like effect. It only lasted for 2-3 seconds, but with each flash she appeared closer and closer. First 30 yards away, then 20, and then standing in the pool of water mixed with his blood. Then… she was gone.

  He waited. Nothing happened.

  “I know you’re out there.” he whispered in a heavy British accent. The relentless pain from his leg made him wince, as he struggled to keep his wits about him. He knew his tormentor was somewhere nearby. “Are you standing behind me right now? I’ve seen enough telly you know.”

  No response.

  He turned his head and body as much as he could to look. There was no one, not even a solitary figure standing at the other end of the bridge. He quickly turned back again to find…nothing.

  “Where are you?” he called mentally. As if in answer to his silent question, a new sound reached his ears. Amidst the thunder and the falling rain, came the faint crying of an infant.

  It took him a moment to realize it was coming from underneath the bridge. He shook his head. “Sorry, not playing that game, Luv,” he murmured, painfully sliding away from the openings in the railing.

  He moved just in time. A slender hand suddenly reached through the railing only to grasp empty space. A furious hissing noise escaped the lips of the arm’s unseen owner, while the talon-like hand flailed angrily, still trying to reach its prey.

  ‘Too close,’ he thought, watching the hand in a mixture of horror and fascination. He had no idea of what he could do next, or what she would try.

  Suddenly the hand stopped moving and was slowly withdrawn. Aside from the storm and his own heavy breathing, he could hear nothing. Lying there on the damp stonework, he waited for the next flash of lighting. He didn’t have long to wait. As the area lit up, he saw that she was still there on the other side of the railing watching him, her face devoid of emotion.

  He reached out with his mind once more. “Why are you doing this?”

  Darkness, then another stroke of lightning revealed she was gone.

  Slowly he started to ease his way over to the far end of the bridge, carefully dragging his injured leg. He had just passed the ornate slab that marked the halfway point when a new noise reached his ears. It sounded like something scrabbling along stonework. It was coming from the underside of the bridge again. “You were soaking wet the night I saw you”, he said mentally, “I even put my jacket around you.”

  The scrabbling stopped.

  He spoke aloud. “You looked so lost and alone. I only wanted to help you.”

  The falling rain and his labored breathing were the only sounds to be heard.

  “I still want to…” he stopped in mid-sentence. The scrabbling had resumed, only it was moving away from him and towards the end of the bridge he was facing. If she got there first, he would be cut off. Instinctively, he began to scramble forward, but his efforts were painfully slow as he tried to protect his injured limb.

  He risked a glance and saw the girl emerging at the far end. Her movements seemed jerky and awkward. As if she was not used to actually taking steps.

  That was when he heard the grinding of stone against stone and froze.

  The structure beneath him began to pulse, like a beating he
art.

  They were not alone.

  He cursed himself for not sensing it sooner. But before he could do anything, the bridge began to move.

  Desperately, he tried to grab the railing, but the undulations became more severe and began to toss his injured form to and fro. A particularly violent wave smashed him against the stone rail. The blow knocked the breath out of him and he almost blacked out. But sheer terror, and an overwhelming will to survive, prevented him from giving in. If he passed out now, he’d be thrown into the icy water and where he would surely drown.

  Another violent upheaval tossed him towards the opposite railing. To his horror the slits in the stone wall began to stretch open wide, like the mouth of some ancient stone giant. Helpless, he passed through the opening and hit the dark waters below. Soaked as he was from the wind and rain, the frigid waters of the swollen stream were even worse. Yet somehow, he managed to struggle to the surface, gasping hungrily for air.

  The strong current tried to sweep him away, but he managed to grab the branch of a tree that had become lodged against one of the bridge’s supports. He looked around and then up. The girl was watching him from underneath the bridge, clinging to the underside like some sinister spider.

  The cold of the water was seeping into his injured body. It was becoming more and more difficult to hang onto the branch. Yet he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the figure above. It seemed to shrink and grow at the same time. As if one image was superimposing itself upon the other.

  “Please…” he whispered, “Why do you hate so much? All I want is to reach out to you.”

  For an instant, he swore he could see a flicker of emotion cross her face.

  The man felt his limbs growing weaker. “I CARE ABOUT YOU!” he cried.

  Suddenly, something reached up out of the water beneath him. Grabbing him by the neck, it and turned him around so they were face to face.

  Nothing could stop the scream that escaped his lips in that instant. He was literally in the grip of something out of a nightmare…

  Several weeks Earlier…

  It was still early summer in upstate Connecticut, when Sergeant Veronica Ross was trying out her new police issued motorcycle. She was using a lonely winding stretch of US 44 to see how it handled the curves at higher speeds. So far she was impressed with the machine, it was doing quite well. But she had a second reason for being on this particular 2-lane road. There had been several reports of a couple driving erratically in this area.

  It might have been foolish to some for her to test a new motorcycle under these circumstances, but she’d been in uniform for almost 25 years and knew how to handle herself. How else could she have risen in the ranks to become second-in-command of New Swindon’s Police Department?

  A quick glance in her rearview showed only empty road and trees. There was no other vehicle in sight. Perhaps she should try one of the side roads?

  Suddenly the sound of a car horn blared from off to her right, followed by the roar of an engine. A white Toyota appeared from among the trees and began following her.

  “Oh, you do not want to be playing that game with me mister,” she began, only to realize the gap between her motorcycle and Toyota was shrinking. The driver floored his vehicle making it lurch forward, forcing Ronnie to open the throttle to stay ahead.

  They were hitting some of the sharper curves now, with Veronica hoping this would force the driver to ease up. He didn’t.

  Luckily for her, she had patrolled these roads for the last 20 years and knew there was a rest stop just around the next bend. Gunning her engine, she managed to put a little bit more distance between them. As soon as she spotted the empty rest area, she drove up onto the grass, while her pursuer stayed to the pavement and shot past. Tires squealed as the driver swerved into the left lane trying to manage the turn, and disappeared round the bend.

  “You son of a bitch,” Veronica panted, her heart racing. “You’re going down for that,” she muttered and reached for her shoulder radio. Just then the sound of screaming metal reached her ears followed by a terrific crash. Then silence.

  “Oh no,” she muttered and gunned her engine once more to investigate.

  Within moments she spotted the dust and steam rising from the new tear in the railing along the side of the road. Another driver had already stopped and was rushing over to check on the occupants.

  She recognized the man as Dr. Stephen Hagan, one of the local physicians, and quickly went to join him.

  By the time she parked her machine, he was already at the wreck with a puzzled expression on his face.

  “Do we need an ambulance?” she called out as she approached.

  The man looked up and shook his head, “No, but you might want to take a look at this, Sergeant. Something isn’t right here.”

  Veronica’s brow furrowed as she drew closer. The man was an experienced medical practitioner; what could be troubling him so much? “What’s wrong?” she asked upon reaching the wreck.

  “Take a look,” he replied and stepped back and gestured for her to look inside the vehicle.

  She did so and caught a whiff of something foul. “What the…”

  “Exactly,” Hagan nodded. “And look at the driver and passenger. They’re soaking wet, like they came out of a swamp or something. And their skin, see how pale it is.”

  Veronica nodded, “They’re practically white and… oh no.”

  “What is it?”

  She’d just gotten a good look at the victims’ faces. Sadly, she knew them both all too well. “It’s Tommy Williams and his girlfriend Jessica Miller.”

  An hour later, she watched the stretchers being loaded onto an ambulance destined for the coroner’s office at the hospital. A tall man in his late 50’s stood next to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “There’s nothing more you can do here, Ronnie,” he told her kindly. “Why don’t you take the rest of the day off? I’ll notify the parents.”

  “Is that an order, Chief?”

  “More like a suggestion from the guy you were first partnered up with back in New York,” her boss replied and then added, “You Snot-Nosed Rookie.”

  “Okay, Oldtimer,” Veronica replied and headed over to where she’d left the motorcycle. In a way she was glad to be sent off. She needed to be with a certain someone who’d know how to make her feel a little better.

  But, he’d have his work cut out for him this time. Something about this accident was really bothering her.

  There were only a few patrons in the bar that morning. Some girls were playing billiards, while a handful of tables were occupied by regulars and the occasional new face. The proprietors behind the bar made for an interesting study in contrast. The man was young and had long brown hair. The long sleeved white shirt, black vest and tie did little to disguise his bodybuilder physique.

  His female partner also wore a tuxedo-like outfit as well. But hers was a tank top with the design painted on the front, which showed the results of her workouts to excellent advantage. Hers was a body that, whenever she went sunbathing, would get pre-teen boys talking in much lower octaves and thinking about cars. She glanced over to the doorway as one of their favorite regulars entered. Quietly putting down the glass she had been wiping, tapped it and waited.

  As the room fell quiet, one of the regulars turned to his buddy and murmured, “Showtime.”

  The big barman’s eyes narrowed as he spotted the newcomer, a slender man in his late 20’s, with short blonde hair and striking blue eyes. He was also just 5’ 8”, but carried himself with the ease of a professional jockey.

  Putting down the beer he had been filling, the burly bartender said loudly, “I see the resident smart-ass has decided to grace us with his presence.”

  A low “Oooooo…” ran through the bar.

  The newcomer paused in mid-step and began to look around. After a moment he turned around and bent over leaving his backside in the air, facing the bartender. A muffled voice, that seemed to come from the area of the butt
ocks, began to speak. “Why, yes, I did graduate with top honors from my university. I was valedictorian and also recently passed the test for Mensa. Their counterpart Morons, called to say that they would like you to take their test. They think you have the very qualities they’re looking for in an Ignoramus.”

  The barman’s face darkened, but his shaking shoulders betrayed his amusement.

  A moment later he was laughing hard, along with the rest of the crowd.

  His partner tapped the glass once more, declaring they had a winner.

  Alex Hill straightened up and went over to collect the drink being poured by his opponent.

  “All right Limey-Boy, you win this round, but just wait. I’ll get you next time,” the big bartender smiled evilly.

  Alex frowned. “Beggin’ your pardon, Guv, but you’ve won the last three rounds. It was about bloody time I got one up on you,” he replied, accepting his free drink.

  The barman nodded, “Yeah, but I still need to beat your record.”

  “Oh, you mean the time I got you five weeks running?”