Do you know what today is?
It was Michelle. Who else would be texting so late on a Monday night? My thumb tapped at the side of the phone. It wasn’t her birthday. That was in July and we had gone out and celebrated and it had taken two days to recover - one spent sat at a computer screen pretending to work while dying a little more each passing minute. What else could it be?
I clicked the button once and the date flashed on the screen. October 8. My mind ran back a year to find anything of significance and it hit me like a wall of ice cold air and sent shivers up my spine. Goose flesh broke out on my arms. I texted back.
I know.
The response was immediate. I’m coming over.
Ten minutes later the door swung open. Michelle didn’t knock anymore. She flicked on the light and shut the door with her foot. The rush of air brought with it the smell of booze.
“Thought you might want some company.”
She sidled over to the single chair pushed hard against the kitchen island and collapsed in a heap. She fished a bottle from the inside of her jacket.
“I’ll get us some glasses.”
I took two short crystal glasses from the cabinet above the bench and held the first in front of her. She leaned forward and poured almost to the top and cradled the bottle to her chest. “I’m fine with the bottle.”
I sat and nodded my head and held up the glass. “To Richie.”
“I didn’t think it would hit me this hard.” She turned up the bottle almost vertical.
The smell hit me before the liquor touched my lips. It was the cheap stuff. Not that I am any sort of expert. But everyone knows the almost turpentine smell of the low grade, just here to get you drunk stuff. I took a small sip.
“A year. Where has that gone?” I fingered at my glass.
“I dreamed about him the other night. I am at the bridge. The moon is full. I find his phone by the railing and it rings. Richie’s name flashes on the screen. I push the button and I say hello, but there isn’t any response. No breathing, no static, only silence. I plead with him to say something. To tell me where he is or why he…”
She trailed off. Her eyes dropped to the floor in front of her shoes and she rubbed one foot over the other. She looked up.
“I want to go out there.”
“When? Now?”
She nodded.
“I can’t. I have work tomorrow.”
“And I’m studying for the bar exam. I need to be there with him.” She stood. “You’re driving.”
I usually drove whenever the three of us would go anywhere together. I don’t know why. I guess I didn’t mind acting as chauffeur. Michelle rode shotgun and Richie would sit in the middle seat in the back and grin at me every time I looked in the rear view mirror. I tried to imagine him there now and struggled to bring his face to mind.
Michelle plugged her phone into the car stereo. She put on What a Wonderful World. A couple of years back Richie started on medication. He’d always been a bit up and down but nothing serious, or so we thought. The pills were supposed to even him out and take the edge off. He went through a honeymoon period with them and was in high spirits whenever we saw him. That’s when he started ending sentences with ’what a wonderful world’. It became sort of a mantra.
As time wore on we noticed a change in him. The medication messed with the wiring inside his brain and he became increasingly dark and morose. He kept on saying ’what a wonderful world’, but he began using it ironically. He told us a story of a boy he knew from school. He had been missing for over a year until they found his bones in the backyard of an acquaintance who had been cashing his disability checks. What a wonderful world, Richie had said.
Michelle sang it now. She rested her head against the window and breathed the words, whispering them.
The drive out to Breakwater Bridge takes about an hour. As we neared the bridge my breathing quickened and my palms were wet against the steering wheel. The alcohol churned in my stomach. I didn’t think it would hit me this hard.
“Is there anything left in the bottle?” Michelle passed it over and I swirled it and downed what remained.
The bridge is about the length of a football field and sits a solid punt distance above the water. The Breakwater River flows slow and deep below with trees covering the banks either side. I pulled over onto the shoulder at the entrance to the bridge. It was late and there wasn’t much traffic. Lights illuminated the concrete deck and made the moonlight redundant.
Michelle ran a hand over the crash railing at the threshold to the bridge proper and stepped onto the concrete deck.
“Are you crazy? What if a car comes?”
“It will see me. I want to go and look.”
I followed her onto the bridge and about a quarter of the way across Michelle stopped and leaned on the rail and peered over. The water flowed dark below. A cold wind whipped up and I crossed my arms over my chest.
They never did find Richie. He either dropped or placed his phone on the bridge deck before he jumped. His parents held out hope that maybe he’d changed his mind at the last minute and ran into the woods and got himself lost. Or that he survived the fall. But it was always a vain hope and Richie never resurfaced.
The council erected a steel grating on each side of the bridge about five years ago. Breakwater Bridge had and has a reputation as the location for a lot of final acts. Maybe the grating deterred some, but others climbed and went anyway.
Michelle stepped back from the edge and took the empty bottle from her jacket and swung it high over the grating and out into the darkness. It turned and glinted in the lights as it fell and then we lost it. The sound the bottle made when it hit the water barely made it back up.
“What is that?”
Michelle stood in the middle of the road looking across to the far end of the bridge. I went and stood by her. A figure stood against the railing. And then the figure started climbing.
“No.” Michelle shrieked.
She sprinted down the middle of the road towards the figure. Her arms swung wildly and her feet barely seemed to touch the ground. If the person wearing black heard or saw her coming they paid her no mind. The figure mounted the top of the grating and paused for a moment and flung itself out and dropped from view.
“No.” Michelle yelled again. She stopped and went to the railing and searched the darkness. The half-moon offered little help. Then we heard the splash.
“We have to go and help,” Michelle said.
“They won’t have survived.”
“How do you know? Come with me.”
Michelle sprinted the rest of the distance to the end of the bridge and I followed. When she made it to the edge she slipped below the crash rail and started down the steep slope. I shouted at her to stop. I hurdled the crash rail and skidded down the slope and came up behind her. She had stopped by a tree and held a branch for support. The ground fell away beneath her feet.
“Do you see anyone?”
I opened my eyes wide as if it would help and searched the murky darkness. “If only we had more light.”
Michelle took her phone and turned on the torch but it made little headway into the darkness. Michelle sobbed. The sight we had only imagined until now had become a reality. Our friend Richie had gone the same way as that poor soul.
Then we heard a sound from the river. It wasn’t a voice or someone swimming, but a rhythmic splashing. Through the darkness a shape came into view floating on the water. It was a small boat with someone at the oars. It moved out into the stream and then stopped. The person in the boat leaned over and grabbed at something in the water. The boat rocked and the person in the boat hauled a shape out of the water and into the boat. A big, heavy shape.
“He’s picking them up,” I said.
“I’ve heard of this. People who live near bridges saving people. Talking them down.”
“Except that isn’t what this is.”
“Yes it is.”
The boat rowed back to the shore and we lost it from view behind the trees. Michelle turned to me. “What if they picked up Richie?”
“Richie is gone.”
“He might not be. Help me find a way down.”
We first went up and then scrambled down the slope guided by the torches on our phones. As we moved away from the bridge the bank flattened and the trees thinned. The water lapped against the bank and the sound of a car engine came from the darkness ahead.
“Hurry.” Michelle set off at a trot and the light from my phone shook as I tried to keep pace. I bumped into Michelle, who had skidded to a stop. She shone her light onto a small inlet cut into the bank. Two trees with thick trunks overhung the channel and hid it from view. A rowboat rocked gently at a wooden pier. A track led up from the pier and out of the darkness a set of taillights shone.
Without turning back or saying a word, Michelle raced up the track after the retreating vehicle.
“Wait.”
I went after her. The track was narrow and the ground hard beneath my feet. The vehicle turned a bend and the lights disappeared. Michelle kept on at pace.
“Wait.”
“Hurry, we’re losing them. We can’t lose them.”
We climbed steadily uphill and turned bends and caught errant tree branches in the face. We had gone far enough that I could no longer hear or see the river. Michelle’s words played over in my mind. People who live near bridges. They talk them down. This person hadn’t been on the bridge but under it.
Ahead was a light. A porch light shining over a deck with a single chair and a small round table. A cabin in the woods. Beside the cabin was a separate structure, light spilling out from a half-open door. Inside was a black truck that surely had been the vehicle we had followed. From the room came shouting. A man’s voice.
Michelle slowed to a walk and pocketed her phone. I did the same.
“We don’t know who this is,” I said louder than I would have liked.
“He might know about Richie.” Michelle pressed on, the gravel of the driveway crunching under her shoes.
We were close enough now to discern words amongst the shouting from inside the garage. “Come on. Breathe damn you breathe. Come on.”
Maybe Michelle had been right. She tilted her head to the side as she neared the garage and tried to get a look at the man within. Something moved on the left hand side and the shouting ceased. Michelle palmed one side of the double swing door and inched it open.
“Excuse me.”
A man wearing a black raincoat and dark waterproof pants jumped and turned. He had been leaning over a workbench where a body lay, wet and unmoving. The man placed his right hand in his jacket pocket and kept it there.
“Who are you? What are you doing?”
“We saw you. From the bridge. Did you save him?”
The man in the coat turned his eyes down at the body on his bench the back up to Michelle. “I couldn’t revive him.”
“Should we call an ambulance?” I said. Towels covered the bench where the body lay. A rolled up sleeve exposed naked white flesh and beside it lay a used syringe.
“No. He’s already gone.” The man opened the cupboard below the bench and pulled out a white sheet and covered the body. As he pulled up the sheet I took a look at the face. It was a boy, a teenager, maybe just out of high school. Purple welts bruised his skin at the neck. “There’s nothing more to be done.”
“We should call an ambulance,” I said.
The man straightened and his right hand went back into his pocket. He took a step forward and stood directly below a single light bulb hung by a wire from the ceiling. The man lowered his big brown eyebrows and shadow engulfed his eyes. He parted his lips. Several teeth were missing and I caught a hint of a tattoo extending up his neck.
“You won’t get any reception up here. We can’t call anyone.”
I checked my phone. The man was right, I had no service. The man took another step forward and I instinctively took a step back. Michelle, through either determination or curiosity or by the recklessness imparted by all the alcohol, stood her ground.
“A year ago,” Michelle said, “our friend jumped from the bridge. His name was Richie. Did you save him?”
“I never ask their names.”
“Is Richie alive?” Michelle shook and her voice faltered.
The man in the coat took his right hand back out of his pocket and rubbed his hands together and looked Michelle in the eye. “No, he isn’t. Come inside and we will drink to the departed.”
The man exited the garage and held the door open and motioned us towards the cabin. We waited for him on the porch while he locked the garage. He was thick set and his boots fell heavy on the steps. He unlocked the door and we followed him inside.
The cabin was a picture of order. What furnishings there were stood uncovered and in place. Pairs of shoes lined up neatly below a coat rack. No photos or pictures hung on the walls. Every surface was clean and uncluttered.
The man went to the kitchen and reached into his pocket and pulled out a small gun and placed it on the counter. He then took a bottle and three glasses from a cabinet and sat at the square dining room table. He held out a palm and we each took a seat. He poured into the glasses and pushed them in front of us. I spun mine in my hand and looked over the shoulder of the man to the firearm on the counter. Michelle kept her arms folded in front of her.
The man raised his eyebrows and his glass. “Cheers.” I held up my glass but I did not drink. Michelle sat with her arms folded, staring at the man in the coat. “I guess I’m the only thirsty one.”
“How do you know Richie is dead?” Michelle said.
“The water and the rocks kill most. Sometimes they live, but it’s never for long. They come here to die and that’s what they do.”
“What were you doing out on the water?” I said. “Were you fishing?”
“I’m no fisherman.”
“Then what? Do you sit there in your boat all night and wait for someone to come and jump?” Michelle unfolded her arms and leaned forward. I shot her a glance. I wasn’t sure if she’d seen the man place the gun in the kitchen.
The man leaned back in his chair. “They choose to come here. I don’t force them or coerce them. They jump in and I pull them out. Sometimes I can bring them back. Sometimes I can’t. That part is not for me to decide.” He drank.
“There’s something I don’t understand.” Michelle said.
“What’s that?”
“Why don’t you spend your time up on the bridge instead of in the water below? You’d save more if you could stop them jumping.”
“I need them to choose.”
“Choose what?” I said.
“Choose death. When they jump they’re consenting to die. They give up rights to their own bodies. Empty vessels I call them. And if I can revive them, I can do what I want with them.”
“And what’s that?”
“I give them what they want. I kill them.”
Michelle balled up her hands into fists. “Was Richie alive when you pulled him out?”
“I never ask their names.” The man drained his glass and poured another. “And mostly what is left of them can’t tell me.”
“What a wonderful world,” I said almost automatically. The song playing in the car and talking about Richie made me fill that gap just as Richie would have.
“What a wonderful world,” the man repeated. He smiled and chuckled. “Did your friend used to say that?”
My stomach leapt up into my throat and I fought for breath.
Michelle stood and leaned over the man. “Did you kill Richie? Did you kill him?” Michelle was almost shouting now. Her shoulders rose and fell and her hands shook.
The man didn’t move and took his glass and drained it. I watched the gun on the counter. The man looked at me. I reached under the table and grabbed Michelle at the knee. I wanted to leave. The man had sat himself closest to the kitchen and would be at the gun in about three steps.
“Did you kill Richie?” Michelle slammed her fists on the table and the glasses and the bottle jumped and clanged back down.
“I told you they kill themselves when they jump. But if you want to know what I do with what is left then go into that cabinet in the next room and get my laptop.” The man pointed at me and then into the next room.
“Me?” I said.
“When I point at you I mean you.”
The man turned to me and I first shrunk down in my chair and then, reluctantly, I stood. My chair scraped against the tiled floor and I almost kicked it over. I went to the wooden cabinet and beside the handle was a lock and in the lock was a small key. I turned the key and tugged the handle but the door did not give.
“You locked it,” the man said. “I don’t keep it locked.”
I turned the key back and the lock clicked. I opened the door and inside were neatly piled stacks of books and magazines and a closed laptop alone on a lower shelf. I took the laptop and brought it back to the table. I slid it over to the man and he shook his head and slid it back. “You do it.”
I opened the laptop and turned it on. There was no password and it opened onto a home screen with a monotone blue background and a single unnamed folder.
“Click on the folder,” the man said.
“What am I looking for?”
“The files are arranged by date. You said your friend jumped a year ago. I’d look for a day or two after that.”
Inside the folder were video files named and arranged by date. I used the mouse pad to scroll down and found a file dated from three days after Richie went missing. I double clicked the file.
The man looked at Michelle. “You’ll want to see this. Or maybe you won’t. It can’t be unseen.”
Michelle came and looked over my shoulder. The video began. It shook at first with glimpses of trees and blue sky and a small patch of grass. A dark shape obscured the camera and then the shaking stopped and a man walked away from the camera and came into view. It was the man in the coat, the man sitting at the table in front of us. He smiled and waved and moved out of view.
A second figure lay on the grass, far away and out of focus. I leaned in and tried to make out who it was, but I could guess. The camera jolted and the lens zoomed in and removed all doubt. It was Richie. And he was alive. He lay on his back and flailed spasmodically, kicking his legs and pointing his arms to the sky. His right foot veered off to the left at an unnatural angle and appeared to be broken. He smiled and turned his head from side to side in the sunlight. Michelle breathed hard and hot onto the back of my neck.
On the screen the man reappeared. He carried a sledge hammer in one hand. The hammer had a long handle and a huge grey metal head. The man, despite his size and bulk, tilted under the weight of the tool. The man walked over to Richie and dragged him closer to the camera. Richie made no effort to resist and seemed almost lost in delirium. The man placed Richie’s head on top of a sawn off stump of a tree cut to about ankle height. Richie lay on his side and looked directly into the camera and smiled and said, “What a wonderful world.” Behind him the man raised the hammer over his head and gripped it in both hands and brought it down with all his strength. The gigantic head of the hammer pulverized Richie’s skull and it burst like a watermelon, blood and brain and skull fragments flying in all directions leaving a flattened and shattered mess. Richie’s body gave one last twitch and stopped. The man smiled at the camera and dropped the hammer to the ground and bent his knees as if performing a curtsy.
I slammed the laptop shut. The man looked at us expressionless. He poured himself another glass and drank, his hands lifting the glass smoothly and deliberately.
“Some things can’t be unseen.”
“You fucking monster,” Michelle said.
I sat speechless. Why had he shown us the video? He must know we would tell the police. I eyed the gun sitting on the kitchen bench. In a flash I concluded the man meant to murder us. We had seen the body in the garage. He had shown us his video of Richie. This is it. This is how I die.
Michelle stormed into the kitchen and grabbed the gun and stood behind the man and pushed the barrel against the base of his skull. The man did not react.
“You killed Richie,” Michelle said, her voice quivering.
“I’ve been clear on this point. Your friend chose to die. He jumped and he would have died then and there in the cold water had I not pulled him out. I only delayed the transaction.”
“He didn’t choose to go like that. Butchered like an animal. Worse than an animal.”
“The method is immaterial and I promise you he did not suffer.”
“How can you say he didn’t suffer?” I said.
The man calmly took another sip. “When I revive them I inject them and believe me they feel nothing but bliss until I finish them.”
“You immoral monster.”
“And what have I done that is immoral?”
“Anyone who compromises the well-being of another is immoral.”
“If we measure morality on well-being then there can be no argument I did your friend a favour. I gave him pleasure he would not have had if not for me intervening and after his bliss I gave him a swift and painless execution. I increased the well being of that boy and brought a little joy to the world.”
“He didn’t consent to what you did.”
“He consented to die.”
“You are a fucking monster.” Michelle pushed the barrel against the head of the man and he leaned forward.
“Why?” I said. “Why would you do this?”
“I’ve seen things worse than that. They shipped me overseas and they ordered me to do unspeakable things and they told me to come back and act like it never happened. The inside of my head is dark and the voices are constant. They pretend to help but the only help they provide are a bunch of pills and injections that made me something I wasn’t. They ripped the soul right out of my body and left nothing but a mumbling and numb sack of meat. And then they took away my doctor and my meetings and used the money they saved to build that railing on the bridge. And so the darkness returned and the voices grew louder. Doing what I do is the only joy I have. It is the only way to silence the voices, and only then for a while. And I only do it to empty vessels who give their consent by jumping. I am no more a monster than you or your friend or anyone else.”
“Richie didn’t deserve what you did to him,” Michelle said.
“I didn’t walk him to that bridge and I didn’t make him jump. Whatever led him there had nothing to do with me. I took what was already gone.”
“He was alive,” Michelle said. “You could have helped him and instead you splattered his brains. You’re inhuman.”
“Oh I’m all too human. And now you have to choose. You can pull the trigger and end me and stop this. If you are so sure I’m an inhuman monster then it should be easy and it won’t weigh on you. Squash me like you would a mosquito on your arm. Maybe even I would prefer to be gone. In fact I do. Pull the trigger. I consent.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“I’m instructing you. Pull it and end me. Do it now and make the voices stop and send me into the darkness. Do it.”
Michelle straightened her arm and pushed the man’s head further forward. Her hand shook and she squeezed her eyes closed and then opened them again and tears ran down her cheeks. She bent her elbow and dropped her arms to her sides and sighed. She put the gun on the table. The man sat upright and expressionless and drank.
I exhaled for the first time in what felt like minutes. Michelle bent over the table. The man smiled at me and winked. I put my head to my hands and turned my back. I couldn’t bear to look at him, the man who killed my friend.
The next thing I knew I heard a loud pop. I turned and the man slumped in his chair. Michelle’s arm outstretched and holding the gun. Michelle brought her free hand over her open mouth.
“What did you do?” I said.
“I don’t know.”
Michelle’s eyes went white and she collapsed to the floor. I laced my arms under her back and sat her up. She mumbled and shook. I leaned her against the wall.
I took a cloth from the kitchen and wiped the gun and all the surfaces we had touched. I placed the gun in the hand of the man. I put the two glasses the man had taken for us and tipped out the liquor and washed them and put them back.
By the time I was done the colour had returned to her face. She bowed her head and shook it slowly. She sobbed.
I leaned over her and whispered in her ear. “We never ever breathe a word of this.”
She nodded.
“We have to go,” I said.
“I’m a monster,” she said.
“No, you’re not.”
We followed the path back to the river. The boat rocked gently in the haven of the inlet. I began to scramble up the slope and to the bridge. I looked back and Michelle was not there. I slid back down. She stood by the boat watching the river ease by. I grabbed her arm and gave a gentle tug. She did not move.
“We have to go. Someone might have heard the shot.”
She looked up at the bridge and blinked away tears.
“We have to go.”
I gave another pull and this time she followed.
We made it up to the bridge, deserted in the early hours of the morning. When the car came into view I started running, my feet slapping against the concrete deck. I became aware that my footsteps were all I could hear. I turned and searched the bridge for Michelle. Then I saw her. She stood by the railing, watching the dark water of the river. She looked up and then started climbing.
“No!”
I screamed at her and started running. I skidded to a stop on the concrete deck of the bridge and jumped and managed to grab her by the ankle. She kicked, but I held firm. I pulled and she came loose and we fell together in a heap on the cold concrete.
That was a week ago. Michelle is a wreck. She apologised repeatedly on the drive home. She looks like she hasn’t slept. I know I haven’t. I watch the news each night expecting to see a story about a body discovered alone in a cabin in the woods by the river. And with it a cache of videos found on a laptop. But nothing. I expect a knock on the door or a phone call from the police, telling me they found some evidence we left behind and to come with them please. But only silence.
Eventually it will come to light, all of it, I am sure. And what then? Will they call us monsters?