The Crossing at Larkspur Bridge

The summer before my brother Ethan turned sixteen, he spent every spare minute at the Larkspur Municipal Pool, training for the regional swim meet. His best friend, Marcus, was not a swimmer. Marcus had a fear of deep water, a secret he only told me once, late at night, when we were sitting on the roof of our garage looking at stars. He said it wasn’t the water itself, but the idea of something brushing against his legs in the murky dark. Ethan and Marcus had been inseparable since they were in diapers, their families living two streets apart, their fathers working the same shift at the Larkspur Mill. If you saw one, you knew the other was within a hundred yards.

That particular meet was out of town, and Ethan was riding back with the team on the school bus. My mother, my younger sister Jenny, and I were in our station wagon, following the same route back. It was a humid, heavy night, the kind that makes the air feel like a blanket. The car phone buzzed—a bulky thing mounted between the seats. My father, who had stayed home to catch up on work, was calling. My mother answered, her voice bright with the excitement of the meet. But the conversation turned. I watched in the rearview mirror as my father’s face, reflected in my mother’s expression, went pale. My mother’s knuckles went white on the steering wheel. She whispered, ‘What? When?’ Then she became silent, listening. Tears started to stream down her cheeks, and she handed the phone to me, unable to speak. My father’s voice was raw, crackling. ‘Marcus is gone,’ he said. ‘He went to the bridge to watch the bus pass, and he slipped. They found his bike, but they can’t find him. They’re dragging the river now.’

We pulled over on the shoulder of the county road, under a single flickering streetlight. The car was silent except for Jenny’s sobs. My mind went blank. Marcus, the boy who could make anyone laugh, who was terrified of water, had been taken by the very thing he feared. The bridge—Larkspur Bridge—was a mile from our house, a rusty iron structure over the Blackstone River. It was a popular spot to watch the team buses pass, a tradition for families. We sat there for what felt like hours, the night pressing in on us, until my mother finally said we should go home. But she didn’t drive toward home; she drove toward the bridge.

A crowd had gathered at the bridge, a tangle of headlights and flashlights. My father was there, his face gray, talking to a sheriff’s deputy. They had pulled Marcus out, they said, about a mile downstream. He wasn’t breathing. They had tried to revive him. Now he was at the county hospital, but it didn’t look good. My mother gripped my hand so hard it hurt. We went to the hospital, a sterile place that smelled of antiseptic and fear. Marcus was in a room with machines beeping, his skin waxy, a tube down his throat. The doctors said he had hypothermia and cerebral edema, that he might not wake up. His parents, the Gundersons, were there, shattered. The next two days were a blur. We went through the motions of life, but the house was a hollow shell. I kept expecting to see Marcus walk in, to hear his laugh, to see Ethan’s relief. But Ethan was silent, sitting by Marcus’s bedside for hours, refusing to eat, his eyes hollow.

On the third night, I was in my room, trying to sleep, when I heard a faint scratching at my window. I lived on the second floor. I froze. The scratching came again, rhythmic, like fingernails on glass. I pulled back the curtain and saw nothing but the black outline of the willow tree. But then I looked down at the windowsill and saw fresh mud, and a small, smooth stone that wasn’t from our driveway. A chill ran through me. I went to my parents’ room, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell them. I was sure it was my imagination.

The next morning, Marcus died. The doctor called it a brain injury. The funeral was a blur of black clothes and crumpled tissues. Ethan didn’t cry. He just stood at the grave, arms at his sides, mouth a tight line. That’s when the notebooks started appearing. I found one on the kitchen table one afternoon, scrawled in Ethan’s handwriting, but it wasn’t his words. It was a list of times and dates, starting from the night of the accident. ‘3:00 a.m. – the bridge. 3:15 a.m. – the water. 4:00 a.m. – the reeds.’ I recognized the handwriting as Ethan’s, but I knew he had never written it. When I asked him about it, he just stared through me and said, ‘He’s waiting.’

My parents were frantic. They took Ethan to doctors, but the doctors said he was grieving, that it would take time. Meanwhile, the town was buzzing with rumors. Some people said they saw a shadowy figure on the bridge that night, just before Marcus fell. Others said they heard whispering from the river, a voice calling their names. I started to have dreams of Marcus, but they weren’t nightmares. In the dreams, he would stand at the foot of my bed, dripping wet, his eyes full of apology, trying to speak, but only a gurgling sound came out. Then one night, he managed to form words: ‘The stone. The stone under the bridge. It’s not mine.’

I woke up screaming. The next day, I rode my bike to Larkspur Bridge, my heart pounding. The sun was high, but the place felt wrong. I climbed down the embankment, my shoes sinking into the mud. I saw the spot where they had found Marcus’s bike, a tangle of black metal. Under the bridge, where the water was still and dark, I saw a glint. I waded in, the cold stealing my breath, and reached down. My fingers closed around a smooth stone, not like the others. It was perfectly round, the size of a fist, and warm, as if it had been clutched by a hand for a long time. I brought it to the surface. It was carved with a symbol I had never seen: a spiral with three prongs.

I took the stone home. As soon as I stepped inside, Ethan’s eyes locked onto it. ‘Where did you get that?’ he demanded. I told him. He grabbed it from me, holding it like a sacred object. ‘It’s his,’ he said. ‘It’s the gate.’ That night, I heard Ethan leave the house at midnight. I followed him, keeping to the shadows. He went to the bridge, stood at the railing, and dropped the stone into the river. The splash was the only sound. Then he just stood there, staring at the water. I watched as a mist began to rise from the river, forming a shape that looked like Marcus. Ethan reached out a hand. The mist reached back. I saw a hand grasp his, and Ethan didn’t resist. I cried out, and Ethan looked back at me, his face calm, and said, ‘He can’t cross without someone to guide. It has to be me.’

I ran forward, but he was already climbing the railing. I grabbed his jacket, but it slipped through my fingers as he leapt. I screamed, expecting to hear a splash, but there was nothing. The mist dissipated, and the river was silent. I called the police, but they found no trace of Ethan, no body, no disturbance. He was simply gone. The town searched for weeks, but it was as if the river had swallowed him whole.

They have never found Ethan. My parents never recovered. The bridge was closed down, deemed unsafe. But sometimes, when I walk past the river, I feel a chill, and I swear I see two shadows standing under the bridge, one solid, one not. And when the wind blows, I hear a voice, faint and distant, saying, ‘The stone is safe. Now we wait.’ I never went back to the bridge. I never talked about the stone. But I still have that symbol burned into my mind, and I know, deep down, that Marcus wasn’t an accident. The river took him because he was meant to be the first. And Ethan, in his grief, chose to be the second. They are not gone. They are waiting, under the black water, for the next one who hears the call.