The Null Above the Cut

In the late autumn of 1995, I was a night-shift security guard at the Pine Hollow Dam, a massive concrete structure that loomed over the Blackwater River gorge in the Pacific Northwest. The dam was old, its turbines humming a constant drone that had become the soundtrack to my insomnia. The guard shack was a small, rusty booth near the main gate, and I spent most nights listening to the crackle of the two-way radio and the occasional owl.

One clear, cold Tuesday, around 2 AM, a pickup truck came barreling down the access road from the state highway. The driver, a wiry man in a flannel shirt, slammed on his brakes and jumped out, his face pale and streaked with sweat. He grabbed my arm through the shack window, his hands shaking. ‘Call the police, or the rangers, or someone! There’s something out on the bridge! The old trestle bridge over the gorge, just east of the dam. You gotta come see!’

I should have radioed in, but his panic was infectious. He jumped back into his truck and I followed in my own car, leaving the gate open behind me. We drove the half mile to the old railroad trestle, a rusted iron skeleton that spanned the river below. As we approached, I saw a line of cars parked haphazardly on the gravel shoulder, their headlights cutting through the mist. People were standing outside, frozen, their faces tilted upward. No one spoke. No one moved.

We got out and walked to the edge of the group. The man pointed up, his finger trembling. I looked up, and for a moment, my mind couldn’t process what I was seeing. Where the stars should have been, directly above the middle of the trestle, there was a perfect circle of pure blackness. Not the dark of a moonless night, but an absolute absence, a void that seemed to swallow even the light from the stars around it. It was as if someone had cut a hole in the fabric of reality.

Then I heard it. A low hum, not from the dam, but from the void itself, like a thousand trapped flies buzzing in unison. The sound was physical, pressing down on my shoulders, making my teeth ache. The people around me didn’t react; they just stood, their eyes wide, their mouths slightly open, as if they were in a trance. One woman, a schoolteacher in a raincoat, held a child’s hand, but the child was not moving, just staring up with empty eyes.

I wanted to run, but I couldn’t. My feet were rooted to the gravel as if glued. The hum grew louder, and then I noticed a subtle change. The darkness above began to descend, slowly, like a heavy blanket lowering. It was coming down toward the bridge, and as it got closer, I could see that it was not a void, but a shape, a mass of something that writhed and undulated, yet remained utterly black. It was as if the darkness itself was alive.

Beside me, the man who had come for help whispered, ‘It’s been there for an hour. It started as a small point, and it’s been growing, dropping closer. When it touches the bridge… I don’t know what happens.’

I finally managed to break free of the paralysis, just as the void reached the top of the trestle’s girders. The hum ceased. In the sudden silence, I heard a sound so faint it was almost imagined: the sound of water dripping, but amplified a thousand times, echoing as if from a vast cavern. The black mass touched the iron, and there was a sizzling, like water on a hot skillet. The metal began to groan, and then with a crack like a gunshot, the trestle’s center section collapsed, plunging into the gorge. But there was no crash of impact. Instead, the black mass absorbed it, and a wave of cold air rushed past us, bringing the smell of wet earth and rot.

Then, as quickly as it had come, the void retracted upward, shrinking into a small point and vanishing. The stars returned, and the hum faded. Everyone seemed to snap out of their trance at once. Some gasped, some started crying, others turned to each other asking, ‘What happened?’ The man next to me was shaking, his face ashen.

We drove back to the guard shack in silence. I radioed the rangers, but by the time they arrived, there was nothing to see. The trestle was still standing, intact, but the center span was gone, replaced by a perfectly smooth, curved section that looked like it had been machined, not broken. The police found no explanation. The official report said structural failure, but we all knew what we saw.

I quit my job two weeks later. I couldn’t bear to look up at the sky at night, especially over the gorge. To this day, I don’t know what that thing was, or why it came. But sometimes, on clear nights, when the hum of the highway is just right, I hear that buzzing again, and I feel a weight pressing down on my shoulders, and I know the void is still out there, waiting. And I wonder if it was ever really targeting the bridge—or if it was just looking for witnesses.