The Bridge of Hollow Trunks

This is not a story I lived, but one that my mother carried with her, a tale she told me only once, on a night when the monsoon winds howled through our apartment. She had grown up in a village in Kerala, in a house that no longer exists, replaced by my uncle’s concrete block in the 1990s. The house was old, with thick mud walls and a thatched roof, and it sat on the bank of a river—a narrow tributary that twisted through the landscape like a dark vein. She loved that place, loved the green, the water, the ancient trees that leaned over the bank. But there was a shadow over that love, a secret that she kept until she could keep it no more.

At the narrowest point of the river, there was a log bridge. It was made from two long coconut trunks laid side by side, their surfaces worn smooth by years of bare feet. They were supported by other trunks driven into the riverbed, and a single rope ran alongside, stretched taut between two stumps on either bank. The bridge was the only way to reach the temple on the other side, and my mother crossed it every day. But she never crossed it after dusk.

It was on the night of the Karkidakam, the month of torrential rains, that my mother, then a girl of twelve, found herself on the wrong side of the river. The temple festival had run late, and the oil lamps had been lit, casting flickering reflections on the water. She had lingered, watching the priest’s final rituals, and by the time she started back, the sky had bruised to a deep purple. The rain had not yet begun, but the air was thick with the smell of wet earth and impending storm. She hurried to the bridge, her heart beating fast.

As she approached the bridge, she saw a figure standing at the middle of it. It was a woman, draped in a white sari that seemed to glow in the dim light. Her back was to my mother, and she was still, facing the water. My mother called out, thinking it was old Amma from the neighboring house, but the figure did not turn. The river was unusually loud that night, gurgling and hissing as if it were alive. My mother took a step onto the bridge, the logs smooth and slippery under her feet. She touched the rope for support, and the wood groaned.

The woman began to hum. It was a low, mournful tune, unfamiliar to my mother, yet it stirred something deep in her bones. She stopped, halfway across, a cold dread creeping up her spine. The woman turned her head slowly, and my mother saw her face—or what should have been a face. It was a void, a blackness that seemed to drink the light, and from that void came a voice, soft and soft like moss on a gravestone: ‘Don’t cross tonight, child. The river is hungry.’

My mother stood frozen, her knuckles white on the rope. The woman reached out a hand, and that hand was not a hand but a tangle of roots, gnarled and dripping with water. And then, the river seemed to surge, and the bridge itself began to tremble. The logs beneath my mother’s feet began to move, not with the rush of water, but with a slow, deliberate groaning, as if they were being twisted by some unseen force. The rope in her hand was suddenly slick and cold, and she realized it was not rope but a vine, studded with thorns that bit into her palm.

The woman’s form blurred, shifting, and for a moment she looked like the tree on the bank, its branches warped and twisted, its roots reaching into the river. And the humming grew louder, filling my mother’s head until she thought she would burst. In that moment of panic, she let go of the rope and ran. She ran across the bridge as it bucked beneath her, as the logs tilted and threatened to throw her into the churning water. She reached the other side just as the sky split with lightning and the rain came down in sheets.

She turned back, soaked and shaking, and the bridge was empty. The river was calm, as if nothing had happened. But the bridge was not the same. The logs were no longer smooth but covered in a thick, black slime, and the rope was frayed and broken, hanging limply. The stumps that held the rope had been pulled out, leaving raw, torn holes in the earth. And from the water, something rose—a dark shape, like a massive serpent, but it was not a serpent. It was a trunk, a coconut trunk, but it was writhing, and it had eyes—many, many eyes, all of them open, all of them staring at her.

My mother fled to her house, but she never spoke of it for years. She told me that the river claimed the bridge that night, and the next day, the logs were found broken and tangled on the bank, and the rope was gone. The villagers said the bridge had simply rotted away, but my mother knew better. She never crossed that river again, not even when they built a new bridge. She would take a long way around, even if it meant walking for hours. And when she told me this story, she made me promise never to go near that place. She died two years later, and I have kept that promise.

But sometimes, in my dreams, I stand on the bank of that river, and I see the bridge, whole and beckoning. And I hear a humming, low and sweet, and I see a figure in white at its middle, waiting. And I wonder: what if I had been the one to cross? What would the river have taken from me? My mother’s last words to me were not ‘I love you,’ but ‘The bridge is listening.’ And I believe her. I believe the bridge, even in its absence, is still there, beneath the water, waiting for another child to cross.