The Tattered Man at the Crossing

The summer of 1954 in the mill town of Ashford Hollow was thick with humidity and the smell of creosote from the railway ties. My great-aunt, Margaret, lived in a crooked farmhouse that faced the rusted iron bridge where the Boston & Maine line crossed the Piscataquog River. She was a woman of quiet strength, known for her peonies and her stubborn refusal to sell her land to the railroad. On the night of July 17th, the 9:15 express from Concord derailed just before the bridge, its cars buckling and tearing into the old mill warehouse beside the tracks. The sound of tearing metal and steam screaming into the dark was heard for miles. Margaret, who had been shelling peas on her porch, saw the orange glow and heard the cries. She ran to the wreckage, her lantern swinging, and found survivors stumbling through the high grass, their clothes shredded, faces blackened with soot. She led them to her house, boiled water for bandages, and did what she could. Among the wounded was a man who walked without assistance, straight-backed, his coat hanging oddly loose. He sat on her porch step, and when the light from her kitchen caught him, she saw that the back of his coat had been torn away, and beneath it, there was no skin—only glistening muscle and the pale gleam of ribs. He did not flinch, did not look at her, just stared at the fields as if waiting for something. She made to cover him with a blanket, but he raised a hand and said, ‘No, ma’am. It don’t hurt.’ His voice was flat, like gravel sliding under a door. He stayed until the ambulances came, and then he walked off into the dark, towards the bridge, and was never seen again. Margaret never spoke of him, but she began to lock her doors at night, and she sold the farm a year later.

My father grew up hearing that story, and he passed it to me, but I never believed it until I moved back to Ashford Hollow in the fall of 2003. The old farmhouse was still there, abandoned, with the railroad bridge now a rusted skeleton over a river that had once been used for ice cutting. My own house sat at the bottom of a long hill, the same street that dead-ended at the bridge. My son Tommy and his friends called it ‘the crossing’, a place for dares and ghost stories. They would ride their bikes down the hill, stopping at the sagging gate, and dare each other to touch the cold iron of the trestle. One evening, Tommy came home breathless, his eyes wide. He told me that as they were about to cross, a man had appeared on the tracks, standing between the rails, his back to them. He was tall, and his coat was torn, and in the fading light, they could see that his back was not skin but a patchwork of sinew and gristle, like a butcher’s window. The man turned his head slowly, but he had no face—just a smooth, dark oval. Tommy and his friends fled, but Tommy swore the man raised a hand as if waving them back.

I did not sleep that night. I thought of Aunt Margaret, and of the story she had told my father about the passengers who crossed the field to her house. She had said that some of them were beyond help, that when they came to her door, they were not whole. She said she gave them water and bandages, but the ones who were too far gone she let them sit in the yard, because she felt sorry for them. The man with the missing skin, though, he was different. He was the last to leave, and he walked towards the bridge, not away. And now, over fifty years later, he was still there.

I walked down to the bridge the next morning, in the cold mist that rose from the river. The tracks were overgrown with weeds, but in the center, there was a patch where the gravel was worn smooth, as if someone had stood for hours. I stood there, and for a moment, I felt a presence, a pressure on my back like the gaze of a dead thing. I turned quickly, but there was nothing. Then I noticed a field across the river, where the old mill had stood. It was now a supermarket parking lot, but at the edge, near a drainage ditch, I saw a woman in a old-fashioned dress, wearing a torn bonnet, standing perfectly still, facing away. When I blinked, she was gone.

I returned home and told my father, who was visiting for the weekend. He grew pale, then told me the rest of the story that Aunt Margaret had never told him until he was a man. On the night of the wreck, there were many children on the train, and many died. The rescue workers collected the bodies, but some of the children were never found. They assumed they had been pulled into the river. But Margaret, in the days after, saw something from her porch: small figures, hunched and moving like broken dolls, wandering in the field, heading toward her house. She thought they were survivors, but when she approached, they scurried away. She found small footprints in the mud, but they were too shallow, as if the children weighed nothing. She told my father that some of the dead never leave. They don’t know they’re dead. They just keep walking, looking for help, and when they find someone who sees them, they stay, waiting for the help that never comes. The man with no back was one of them, but he had realized the truth, and he was not waiting for help—he was waiting for company.

That night, I had a dream. I was in the field, and it was 1954. The wreck was burning. I saw the man without skin standing among the dead, and he was not looking at me, but at the bridge. He spoke to me, or I thought he did, because his mouth moved, but the sound came from all around. He said, ‘They are still here. They are waiting. You can see them if you stand on the bridge at midnight, when the moon is full.’ I woke with a start, and saw Tommy standing at my bedroom door. He said, ‘Dad, there’s someone in the yard.’ I looked out the window. In the field beyond, there were faint, pale shapes, unmoving, like a photograph of a crowd, all facing our house. One of them was small, child-sized. And in the center, taller than the rest, stood the man with no back, his absence of skin a dark patch in the moonlight.

I did the only thing I could think of. I drove to the old farmhouse, which was now a museum, and found the parish records from the wreck. I learned the names of the children who died. There were eight. I wrote their names on slips of paper, and at midnight, I took them to the bridge. I stood where the man had stood, and I read the names aloud. As I spoke, the pale shapes in the field began to move, slowly, drifting toward the bridge. The last name I read was ‘Emily, age 9.’ At that, the man with no back appeared before me, and this time, he had a face, but it was still forming, like clay. He nodded, and then he turned and walked off the bridge, into the river, and the pale shapes followed, one by one, until only a few remained. I felt a hand on my arm, small and cold. I looked down, and there was a little girl, her dress torn, her eyes empty. She said, ‘I can’t find my mother.’ I knelt and said, ‘It’s okay. She’s waiting for you.’ I pointed to the water, where a woman’s shape was rising from the mist. The girl let go and walked into the river, and then she was gone.

The man was the last to leave. He paused at the edge of the water and looked back at me. His mouth moved, and I heard a whisper in my ear: ‘You are the first to see us and not run.’ Then he stepped into the river, and the bridge let out a groan, and the water settled. I went home, and Tommy was asleep in his bed. I never told anyone else the full story. But I started going to the bridge every full moon, just to stand there. And I always leave a piece of bread on the rail. Just in case.