The Silver Bridge by Gray Barker Read Free Book Online Page A

continue to plague the couple long after the initial experience. His first impulse was to get out of there, but the eyes held him momentarily in an almost hypnotic trance, while he tried to fill in the features of the creature or thing which looked out through them.
    It was a tall, waddling, ungainly thing. Folded around and behind its shadowy body was an enormous pair of wings. It seemed to be trying to get away, out of the light.
    “It was more or less running,” Steve told us, “trying to balance itself with its wings which spread slightly outward. It staggered like a crippled chicken as it disappeared around the corner of the building. I’m sure it was trying to get out of sight, into the door just around the corner.
    “We paused for about a minute, not knowing what to do. The girls hadn’t got a good look at it, though Mary had caught a glimpse of its eyes.”
    Roger insisted it was only a bird of some kind, and that they had nothing to fear. But he hadn’t got a good look at it, as had Steve.
    “It looks something like those old pictures in the family bible. Like an evil angel. I don’t think we ought to hang around here any longer,” Steve argued.
    This description startled Roger, and suddenly convinced that Steve was right, he pushed in the clutch and shifted into second. The Chevy lurched forward and stopped, as the motor died.
    “Roger, it’s not going to let us go,” Linda screamed. “Let’s get out of here and run!”
    Roger ground at the starter. In his excitement he had flooded the engine. He pushed the gas feed to the floor and turned the engine over a few times. Waiting a few precious seconds, while the suspense, and his fright mounted, he tried the starter again and the motor uttered an encouraging cough. But the starter slowed, gave one last groan and quit. The battery was dead.
    “Hurry, give me a shove. We’re on a downhill grade,” he insisted to Steve.
    “I didn’t want to get out of that car, but I was desperate, I suppose. I felt that that thing was going to come back around that corner and get us at any moment. But I knew we had to get out of there. I jumped out, put my hands in the window frame and rocked the car. After a few rocks it began to move, and then I really shoved at that old Chevy!”
    The car gradually picked up momentum on the downgrade, and Steve pushed harder, each yard of progress putting him farther out of reach of a nameless horror. He did not look back, for fear the ugly thing was looking at him, following him, ready to jump on his back.
    With a grinding of gears Roger threw the shift into low, and released the clutch. The car paused, stiffened, and backfired. Then the motor started with little spurts, and he pushed in the clutch and gunned it. Linda opened the door, crying, “Hurry, Steve!” and he hopped in.
    Roger let out the clutch and burned rubber.
    “I guess we’re getting away from that old buzzard!” he yelled jauntily. But Steve knew that by then Roger was just as frightened as he.
    “I saw the back of old Rog’s neck get white,” Steve told us, “and he’s always red back there,” and he grasped his crony’s head and twisted it, somewhat to the other’s embarrassment, to show us the ruddy complexioned neck.
    “Could those have been animal eyes, do you think?” Ben Franklin asked Steve.
    “I see a lot of animal eyes at night. You could see them along the road all the time. These eyes seemed to be so much larger. That’s what made me notice them.”
    “Would you say they were as big as a half-dollar?” I asked.
    “They were bigger!” Roger averred. “When you see animal eyes on the road, they just aren’t that large, or spaced as far apart. Then this thing was six or seven foot tall.”
    “That’s about as tall as I am,” I joked, but nobody laughed. The witnesses were ready to recount the further events of the night.
    Once the suspense of starting the stalled car had ended, their fears lessened, and they were further relieved