Chapter 3 – Chap 3

PART 3

JALEN SMALLS, SOMERSET HIGH, SENIOR: I had Riley and Kylie in the back of my Grand Prix, we were peeling out of there, freaking out. They were screaming. I was screaming. Just crazy. Kinda funny when you look back on it. We were crossing the little bridge over the creek when our headlights hit ol’ Bubba. He was standing in the middle waving his arms, telling us to stop. He had the biggest smile on his face.

STEPHEN PARKER: There were red brake lights up by the bridge. It was Jalen’s car. Nick put the truck in park and leaned his head out the window, yelled for Dylan a couple more times. The chain saw sound wasn’t as loud and we could hear someone yelling and crying for help. They sounded in pain.

HAILEY ADAMS: From the back of the truck I could still hear the chainsaw, but it wasn’t revved up or anything like that, just a steady idle. And someone was screaming, “Guys! Guys! Help! I’m fucking bleeding.” Sounded like someone our age. I was worried it was Dylan.

STEPHEN PARKER: “The fuck’s happening dudes?” Dylan says out of nowhere. He’s just like emerged out of the darkness and we’re all freaking out on him trying to explain the situation. He said he had been taking a piss, and that he thought he could see someone crawling over by the campfire.

SKYE BRIGGS: There was lots of confusion. That Jalen guy and the tall cowboy dude came running past us. One of them said something to Nick, something about someone being hurt. I didn’t catch all of it. Nick hightailed it after them.

STEPHEN PARKER: I followed after Nick. Jalen and Bubba were way ahead, past the bonfire and dragging someone to the clearing over by it. Bubba ran and drove his truck around, turned his headlights on.

HAILEY ADAMS: By this point the chainsaw had been shut off and we could hear talking over by the bonfire and people gathered around. There was still this kind of groaning you could hear. Dylan and I made our way over. There was Kyle Winslow, lying on his back there on the gravel, taking deep breaths and staring at the sky. A glow in the dark hockey mask was pushed up on his head. Someone was pushing a t-shirt into his thigh, a t-shirt soaking up with blood. His jeans were dark and bloody on that leg.

STEPHEN PARKER: Nick yelled for someone to “get a damn tourniquet” and everyone kinda scrambled around until he just took matters into his own hands and cut the leg off of Kyle’s torn jeans the rest of the way off and made a strip that he wrapped around his thigh. People were offering advice like “Above the wound, above the wound,” and “get a stick”, but he seemed to have it under control. He was just cool and completely calm. You could see this gnarly open wound along the outside of his thigh all ragged and deep and beefy and for a brief moment I thought I could see the white glistening of a bone.

SKYE BRIGGS: Everything was basically resolved by the time I made it over to see what was going on. They were helping this guy into a car and one of the sophomore girls went white and started puking. Dylan saw that and started gagging as well.

HAILEY ADAMS: What kind of dumbass uses a chainsaw and mask for a prank and forgets to take the chain off of the saw?

STEPHEN PARKER: So apparently the whole thing had been a prank for the October season. Bubba had known all about Kyle hiding up on the hill with the chainsaw. Only thing is that he didn’t take the chain off the damn thing, then tripped and fell as he started coming towards us and sliced his leg open. So now he was on the way to the hospital.

SKYE BRIGGS: Soon it was just us out there, the original crew. The fire was dying out and it was quiet and we were just kinda like, “now what?”

HAILEY ADAMS: Nick was like, “Welp that was a real buzzkill. Y’all want to call it a night?”

STEPHEN PARKER: Dylan’s response to all of that was, “Nicky, Nicky, Nicky. C’mon man. The night is young and full of promise. We can’t end on a sour note like that. It’s October and we were expecting a few chills, right? I think we should pile back into the car and regroup, go do something else. We could backroad a bit?” It was clear that he wanted to make the most of his opportunity with Hailey. It wasn’t every day that he got to hang out with the hottest girl in school.

SKYE BRIGGS: Hailey said she was down, but that she didn’t want to hang out at Buster’s any longer. The place was giving her the creeps. It was me, too. I couldn’t help but imagine more chainsaw wielding maniacs coming out of the brush. Real ones this time.

STEPHEN PARKER: Nick drove while a few of us drank some more as we made our way down the gravel road off of the property. I kept thinking of his response to the accident, how calm he was and how he had saved the day. He was just a cool dude. I remember just feeling that energy coming off of him as I sat next to him in the seat.

SKYE BRIGGS: So I was sitting next to Stephen, our legs were touching, and I happened to look down and I noticed that he had…well…you know.

HAILEY ADAMS: As we got up to the exit of the property, Dylan said, “I know! We could play Critter!” Critter was a game that involved driving down the backroads at night, a strip poker sort of game. You would take a carload of people—hopefully a mix of different genders— and everyone would keep their eyes peeled for animals as they rode through the night. Once someone spotted an animal, whether it was a possum or raccoon or deer or cow, you had to yell “Critter!” The last person to yell “Critter” was the loser of that round and had to remove an article of clothing. I had never played a game where one of the dudes completely lost. If they did, they made up some lame excuse before the full monty. Fucking hypocrites.

I could only think about Skye and putting her into a situation like that. It seemed like it would be too much.

STEPHEN PARKER: With the Critter idea shut down, we pondered on what to do and where to go. It was only like eleven o’clock. There was a Denny’s by the interstate that was open 24 hours. We could’ve hung out there. As for the time being, we stuck to the backroads.

I could hear Dylan and Hailey talking in the back seat. I remember thinking that that had to be a good sign. Skye, I think she was a little drunk and she was laying her head on my shoulder.

SKYE BRIGGS: I was pretending to be drunker than I was. He just wouldn’t make a move. He seemed interested.

HAILEY ADAMS: Dylan gets this bright idea that we should do something for the Halloween season. He said he knew of a place out by the old Whitebear Cemetery, an abandoned radio tower. Legend had it that you could drive out there and park, turn your radio dial to the static and let it sit for a while. Eventually you’d get a special message from beyond the grave or something. I’d never heard of this legend. Sounded like some Bloody Mary shit to me.

STEPHEN PARKER: I asked Nick what he thought. He said, “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts. Just chainsaw wounds.”

SKYE BRIGGS: We made our way out to the cemetery, through a night that seemed full of possibilities. It’s a weird visual when you’re a little buzzed and going down the backroads at night. The dark is all around and the road lit by the headlights whizzes underneath you in a gray blur. The branches of trees fly by, forming tunnels overhead and reach for you like demonic fingers.

I could smell Stephen and he put his arm around my shoulder and I felt a tingle down my spine and my heart raced.

HAILEY ADAMS: Out towards the Whitebear it’s really flat and there aren’t a lot of trees. You can see this old abandoned radio tower and the cemetery is at the end of the drive. It’s on this sort of hill that overlooks the interstate. We parked and waited.

STEPHEN PARKER: Nick pulled over to the side of the road and killed the headlights. It was quiet in the cab for a second except for Dylan giggling about something. Nick shushed him. He turned on the radio, spun it over to some static.

SKYE BRIGGS: I sat up. I remember the first thing I noticed was how strange it was that a truck full of high schoolers could be that quiet. There was just the static on the radio. The white noise.

HAILEY ADAMS: I was the first one to hear it, bubbling up through the static. It was faint at first, kinda like you were hearing it from far away on some autumn night, a marching band. I was like, “holy shit ya’ll. Can ya’ll tell what that is?” The band was playing the school fight song.

STEPHEN PARKER: Nick said, “maybe it’s a rebroadcast from last night’s game? We’re picking it up somehow.” But there was something different about it. Every now and then the note would be wrong. Underneath it all there was the sound of a voice in super slow motion singing the lyrics, a wet sounding voice…Somerset High, loyal and true.

SKYE BRIGGS: Stephen was holding my tight and I had my hand on his thigh. I don’t think either of us consciously did so.

STEPHEN PARKER: Skye was all up on me, scared out of her mind. We all were, I think. I actually had my hand on Nick’s thigh and he didn’t say anything. That’s when we heard the laughter and the voice come on clear as day.

TRANSCRIPT FROM BROADCAST FROM UNKNOWN DISC JOCKEY, CALL LETTERS UNKNOWN: Well hello there! Fancy seeing a car full of young fresh faced fellas such as yourselves out here. Buck Hensley here with yet another episode of “The Rules of the Road”.

Here’s a fun fact: the teenager as we know it today has only been in existence for the past hundred years or so. Back in the old days it would be straight to the factory or the mines or the fields once you were as strong as good ol’ ma or pa. If you were lucky you might even have to join up in whatever war was raging at the time or work the homefront. At a certain point and well before you’d be ready for today it would be time to settle down and start making some babies, boosting up the numbers to work on the farms and factories.

There was no cruising or going to the movies or working jobs for extra spending money. So I’d say to you to look around and just appreciate how good you got it. Ha! Like I can tell y’all that. It’s in your nature to blow off old fogies like me. Only when you’re one like me will you look back and think “damn, if could go back then knowing what I know now…”

And that is the cruel joke of life, that there’s no replay button when you need it most. Your mistakes can be permanent and the lessons learned won’t come until well after the fact.

Speaking of mistakes, you’re bound to make quite a few. Why, the mind of a teenager is downright pathological. Believe me, I was one once and I’m lucky to have made it through by the skin of my teeth. I got other folks’ skin stuck in my teeth these days. Always gotta be sure to floss.

Well shootfire, I sound like a dang graduation speech. I’ll stop now, but all this talk of youth and how it’s wasted on the young makes me think of the very young. I’m talking infancy. Which brings me to tonight’s “Rule of the Road”.

If at any point during your journey, you come across the fabled Crybaby Bridge, then you must stop before driving onto the bridge. Turn off your lights. Get out of your car. Listen closely. You might hear the baby cry. Walk across the bridge to the other side. You should see a woman appear. Do not fear her. She will appear upset. She will ask if you’ve seen her baby. Tell her, “No, but I did hear it.” Once you say that I’m not entirely sure what she will do, but hold steady. Don’t get rattled and wait it out. Once it’s over, you’re free to go.

What happens if you don’t follow these rules? Well folks, then her baby will find you. Rumor has it that she’s the ghost of some gal with a bun in her oven that was crossing that particular creek while on the lam. It was a rainy night and she was trying to get home and BLAMMO! A bolt of lightning struck her, killing her and the babe inside.

I hear lightning can have special properties on the unborn and I don’t rightly know how old the lil’ tyke would be nowadays. I just know you don’t want to tussle with ‘em if you can help it.

That’s all I got for tonight for you youngsters. Thanks for dropping in on my. Ya’ll stay safe out there. Stay young. Stay lively. Stay lonely.

HAILEY ADAMS: The broadcast turned to static and we were all frozen there, silent. I broke it with a “what the fuuuuuck”. Nick turned everything off and Dylan let off a wild cackle. “Oh my god, did ya’ll hear that shit? That was wild.”

SKYE BRIGGS: After that rush of adrenaline, Hailey was skeptical. “C’mon guys, where’s the CD? Ya’ll planned this whole thing out didn’t you? Pretty damn good show. It was Dylan’s idea, right? Nick, you were in on it, huh?” Nick just shook his head and held up his palms in a sort of, “not me” gesture.

STEPHEN PARKER: I only knew that I hadn’t been in on it and Dylan didn’t have the constitution to keep a thing like that secret from me. Although, maybe he and Nick had planned it. They had been getting closer and maybe he was the only confidant he needed for a prank such as this. Still, there was just too much to chance, unless they did have a CD they kept in his truck and this was a scheme they had pulled before. Dylan was the one that had suggested it after all. Maybe he and Nick would pick up girls in town and come out here and scare the pants off of them. The thought of it made me jealous for some reason.

HAILEY ADAMS: Dylan adamantly denied it, said, “Look, Hailey, I swear this isn’t a prank. There’s no CD or tape. Show her Nick. See? Just Foo Fighters. While I like that you think I was clever enough to come up with this and maybe scare you out of your panties, I swear I had nothing to do with it.” I smacked him in the arm hard for the panties comment and he winced. The little shit.

DYLAN BAKER, MSN MESSENGER CHAT TRANSCRIPT TO STEPHEN PARKER, MAY 2003: In my experience in the field so far, you should let a girl know you’re interested in her in sort of a jokey manner. It keeps the pressure off of both of you and allows you to gauge her interest. If she doesn’t react much, you play it off as a joke, but if she does…You should totally try it.

**STEPHEN PARKER: “**Welp, I’m sufficiently creeped out. Between chainsaw wounds and whatever that was, I think it’s time to call it a night. What do ya’ll say?” Nick asked. He had a point. I was creeped out, too. I was beginning to wonder if we passed any bridges on the way back to town. I had never heard of anything called Crybaby Bridge.

SKYE BRIGGS: The night had turned out better than I hoped. I had Stephen’s e-mail. He had put his arm around me. I think those were signs.

HAILEY ADAMS: I needed to regroup with Skye and discuss plans. Maybe there would be a way for Stephen to give her a ride home. I was certain sparks would continue to fly. I was trying to figure out the um logistics of it. I figured what I would do was say that Skye had to be back by a certain time and that I would hang out at the depot and talk with Dylan while Stephen drove her home.

STEPHEN PARKER: We all saw it as we topped the hill. One of those things that’s been conditioned to strike fear into the hearts of small town teenagers everywhere: the spinning red and blue lights.

HAILEY ADAMS: We were up in the trees and coming down a hill so we could see the cops from a ways off. It was a freaking road block. Nick said, “shit!” and made a hard turn to the left, killing his lights in the process. He said he knew a backway home.

OFFICER DANIELS, MOMADAY COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPUTY**:** A kid had shown up at the Somerset General emergency room with a nasty chainsaw wound. He had arrived via private vehicle and he and his driver both smelled of alcohol. Apparently there had been some sort of party out in the sticks. We had the general area narrowed down and decided to set up a little roadblock to catch any drunk teenage drivers. There had been two drunk driving fatalities on the backroads the previous year—both teenagers—and the sheriff had started an initiative to crack down on this sort of thing.

SKYE BRIGGS: Nick kept his lights off for a while and there was almost a full moon. You could actually see pretty good, the fields lit by moonlight, the dark shadows of cows huddled in the pasture.

STEPHEN PARKER: I had never been out to this area before. It was all farmland and fields and cattle and trees. There were hardly any houses out here. Nick assured us he knew where he was going, that we would be back safely to the depot in no time at all. I was getting anxious to be back home. The whole night had really taken a turn and I was tired of the uncertainty.

Of course, would it surprise you at this point to tell you that we came upon a bridge? I mean, you knew where this was headed, right?

HAILEY ADAMS: The goddamn bridge.

SKYE BRIGGS: That fucking bridge…

STEPHEN PARKER: And I’m sure it wouldn’t surprise you to know that we stopped, that Dylan had seen the old concrete traffic barrier that was on the side of the road, the one with all the graffiti on it, the graffiti that he noticed in particular that clearly read “CRYBABY.”

HAILEY ADAMS: Dylan, he yells “Look! Look! Stop, Nick! Crybaby! We have to stop and get out like the broadcast said.”

Nick had already pulled over and I was like, “Hold up just one holy minute. This is awful convenient don’cha think?”

SKYE BRIGGS: Hailey, she was pissed. She had had enough shenanigans. I think we all did. We all just wanted to go home. She lit into Dylan, accusing him of setting up this whole ordeal.

STEPHEN PARKER: Dylan’s voice hit a desperate note. “I didn’t plan any of this. The only thing I wanted to do was to go to Buster’s and hang out. I didn’t know the radio thing was real. I had only heard about it. I’ve never even been out to this bridge. I had never even known there was one of these out here. Nick, Stephen, back me up here.” He was telling the truth as far as I was concerned. I swore up and down that I had no foreknowledge of any of this and Nick did too.

Then Nick was like, “Now what? Do we just drive on across? Forget we even heard the broadcast?”

HAILEY ADAMS: Of course Dylan was adamant that we follow the rule, that Nick shut off the headlights. And of course, Dylan was the one that volunteered to cross the bridge on foot. Nobody else volunteered. Not Stephen, not I, not even Nick.

SKYE BRIGGS: The windows were down and you could feel the crisp autumn air coming in and hear crickets. Other than that, everything was dead quiet. I think we were all pretty scared. Dylan, he said he would walk across the bridge, listen for the baby cry. He said we had nothing to lose. If it was all just a goof, he would cross the bridge and nothing would happen. If not, he’d see the ghost lady and tell her the magic words and we’d be on our way with a killer story.

STEPHEN PARKER: But what was in it for him? Surely he wasn’t going to risk getting up close and personal with a ghost for no reason. He was probably trying to impress Hailey.

HAILEY ADAMS: Yeah he asked if I’d go on a date with him if he walked across the bridge. I was like, “sure. Yeah, whatever.” I didn’t really care at this point. I just wanted to get home.

SKYE BRIGGS: So it was this old metal truss bridge, all rusty and with a grid of metal beams criss-crossing over the top. On the other side aways off there was one of those country street lights, the kind that are on the telephone poles. It was casting this eerie blue-green light and beyond it was just darkness.

STEPHEN PARKER: Dylan stood in the middle of the road and looked back at us. You could barely see his face, but I could make out the grin and the thumbs up. He called out back to the truck, “Alright guys, wish me luck! Hailey, I hope you like Red Lobster!” He was full of piss and vinegar now. Facing off against a potential ghost had granted him all the courage he needed to face his real fear: asking a girl out.

SKYE BRIGGS: Right as Dylan got to the threshold of the bridge, Hailey called out, “Dylan! You don’t have to do this. I’ll go on a date with you regardless. Just hop back in the truck and let’s go. This doesn’t feel right.” There was no arguing that. It didn’t feel right. I was holding my breath the whole time he started approaching that bridge, just waiting for the moment to be over.

HAILEY ADAMS: That crazy bastard. He didn’t care. He just kept walking—backwards actually—as he just responded that he’d never live it down if he didn’t do this. “Besides, the radio said it’s bad news if we don’t cross, right?”

STEPHEN PARKER: And he turned and we could just see the back of him as he walked slowly until he had reached the middle of the bridge and abruptly stopped, held up the back of his hand to us. That’s when we all heard it.

SKYE BRIGGS: Just this muffled sound, like it was coming from the bottom of a well.

HAILEY ADAMS: At first my brain tried to process it, trying to fill in what would make the most sense. Was it a wild pig or a bird? No. It was a baby. Crying.

STEPHEN PARKER: The street light flickered violently, just this kind of strobe-like effect. Flash! Flash! Flash!

SKYE BRIGGS: Through the flashes of dark and light we saw her standing at the other end of the bridge.

STEPHEN PARKER: Her eyes were white and her hair was dark and tangled. Her clothes were from another era.

HAILEY ADAMS: She had stockings with a large tear in them and blood running down her knee. The look on her face was just….flat. No emotion. I don’t know how to explain it.

STEPHEN PARKER: We all sat frozen in terror as she directed her gaze to Dylan. She slowly began to shuffle towards him, all herky jerky like, like reality was just a reel of film and she was being spliced back and forth between short distances.

HAILEY ADAMS: He didn’t move. I don’t know if it was bravery and commitment to the task at hand or that he was just that petrified. I would find out soon enough.