The Hollow Span

The town of Calvert Crossing was small, the kind of place where the stoplight blinked yellow after midnight and the only sound was the hum of crickets from the surrounding wetlands. I was a sophomore at Tate University, a historically Black college that had risen from the ashes of an old cotton plantation. The campus was pretty enough in the daylight, with moss-draped oaks and redbrick buildings, but at night, the swamp crept in, and the shadows seemed to breathe.

It was the first night of spring break, and the campus was a ghost town. My roommate had gone home, but my boyfriend, Marcus, and I stayed because we had no money for a bus ticket, and we wanted peace and quiet. We’d spent the day binge-watching horror movies in the common room, and by 11 PM, we had polished off the last bag of chips. The convenience store was a mile away, across the old iron bridge that spanned the muddy Blackwater Creek, and Marcus said, ‘Let’s walk. It might be nice.’

I pulled on my sneakers, and we stepped out into the humid night. The air was thick, and the moon was a pale sliver behind thin clouds. As soon as we passed the campus gates, the streetlights became sparse, and the darkness grew solid. Marcus held my hand, and we walked in silence, but there was a tension in his grip. I felt it too—a prickling on the back of my neck, as if something was watching from the treeline. We crossed the bridge, the metal grating clanging under our feet, and the water below seemed to churn with black shapes. On the other side, we got our snacks—a bag of pretzels, some soda, a chocolate bar—and started back.

The bridge was empty when we first stepped onto it. But halfway across, we saw a figure on the opposite sidewalk, coming toward us. He was tall, lanky, wearing a long coat that looked too heavy for the weather, and his face was obscured by a wide-brimmed hat. He walked with an odd gait, a slight dragging of his left foot, and he carried a burlap sack over his shoulder. Marcus squeezed my hand and whispered, ‘Don’t look at him.’ We kept our eyes ahead, but I couldn’t help a sideways glance. He was now directly across from us, no more than thirty feet away, and I saw that his coat was stained with dark mud, and the sack moved slightly, as if something inside was alive.

We passed him, and the air around him was cold, sharp with the smell of rot and wet earth. I held my breath, and then we were past, and I let out a shaky exhale. Marcus said, ‘Just keep going.’ But as we neared the campus side, a sound came from behind us: a low, wet dragging, and then a voice, thin and reedy, like wind through a cracked door: ‘You dropped something.’

We froze. I turned around, and the man was standing at the midpoint of the bridge, facing us. The sack was gone. He raised a hand, and in it was my phone—I hadn’t even noticed it was missing. He held it out, but something about his posture was wrong, his arm bent at an unnatural angle. Marcus said, ‘We don’t want any trouble.’ The man tilted his head, and his hat fell back, revealing a face that was all hollows—eye sockets like empty pits, a mouth that was too wide, with teeth like splintered wood.

‘I said you dropped something,’ he repeated, and his voice seemed to come from all around, not from his lips. ‘It’s not yours anymore.’ And then he opened his mouth wider, impossibly wide, and a sound came out—not a scream, but a swarm, a buzzing hum, and the water below us began to boil. The bridge began to tremble, and I felt a hand on my ankle, cold and wet, pulling me down. I looked down and saw that the bridge grating was now covered in a slick black moss, and through the gaps, hands were reaching up, pale and clutching.

Marcus grabbed me, his fingers digging into my arm, and he dragged me forward as the bridge shuddered. The man was gone, but the air was filled with that hum, and the hands were everywhere. We ran, stumbling, falling, and the bridge seemed to lengthen, the campus gate never getting closer. I could hear the man’s voice, not words, but a low murmur, like a prayer. Just as I thought we’d never make it, we burst onto the grass of the campus, and the bridge behind us was silent, still. The night was quiet again, but the smell of rot lingered.

We didn’t stop until we were locked in our dorm room, the lights on, the curtains closed. Marcus was breathing hard, and I was shaking. He looked at me, and his eyes were wide. ‘Your phone,’ he said. I looked at my empty hand. It was gone. I had dropped it somewhere, but I didn’t remember. For a week, we didn’t talk about it. We stayed inside, avoided the bridge, and told no one. But on the last night of break, I had a dream. I was on the bridge again, and the man was there, and he held my phone. In the dream, he said, ‘You can have it back, if you come across.’ I woke in a cold sweat, and I knew I’d have to cross that bridge again, because the phone wasn’t just a phone—it had my mother’s last message on it, and I couldn’t let it go.

The next morning, I walked to the bridge alone. The sun was high, and the water was calm, and the bridge looked old and harmless. But as I stepped onto the metal, I saw a dark stain on the grating, and the smell of rot was there, faint but unmistakable. I walked to the midpoint, and there was no man. But on the railing, balanced on the edge, was my phone. I reached for it, and as my fingers touched it, I heard the voice, right beside my ear: ‘You didn’t drop it. You gave it to me.’ I snatched the phone and ran, not stopping until I was back in my room. The phone was cold, and when I turned it on, the screen flickered, and there was a picture of my mother, but her eyes were black, and she was smiling. I deleted it, but the image is burned into my mind. I never crossed that bridge again. I don’t know what that man was, but I know he’s still there, waiting, under the span, in the water, and sometimes, late at night, I hear that hum, and I know it’s calling me back.