wooden thing that washed away a while back during a flood. This one replaced it.”
“Isn’t that bad news for your ghost?” Steve said, trying to ignore Mandy, who was fussing over the tear and inadvertently making it bigger.
“What do you mean?” Jeff said.
“Ghosts haunt old places. Once something’s gone, they’re gone.”
“You’re an expert on hauntings now?”
“When was the last time you heard of a ghost haunting something new? You don’t go out and buy a new Ford and find it comes with a poltergeist in the trunk.”
“You’re blind wrong there, my dear castaway. Ghosts haunt the places where they died. The baby died here, so it haunts here. It doesn’t matter if this bridge is rebuilt a dozen times, it’s still going to haunt here.”
“What’s so scary about a baby haunting anyway?” Austin opined. “I’m telling you, I see any baby ghost waving its spectral rattler at me, I’m gonna punt it so far downriver it’ll shit its diapers before it touches down again.”
Steve ducked beneath the bridge and was surprised to find almost no fog there at all, as if the area was somehow off limits. And was it cooler? Or was that his imagination? He took a box of matches from his pocket and ignited a match off his thumb, illuminating the sandy loam before him.
“One, two, Freddy’s coming for you…” Austin sang.
Ignoring him, Steve troll-walked forward. The dried riverbed was littered with dead leaves that had blown beneath the bridge. He heard someone following him and turned to find Jenny there.
“Where are you going, mister?” she said, tucking her blonde hair behind her ears.
“Seeing what’s under here,” he said.
“I imagine we would have heard the baby by now if there was one.”
“I’m expecting a Garbage Pail-ish thing.”
“Cindy Lopper.”
“Bony Joanie.” She paused. “Hey, where’s the fog?”
“Strange, I know.”
The bridge was less than twenty feet in diameter, and Steve could make out the other side where the inky shadows gave to the mist-shrouded night once more.
He didn’t see the baby shoes until he was nearly on top of them.
They were newish, white, and so small they would only fit a newborn.
“What is it?” Jenny asked, moving up beside him. “Hey!” she exclaimed. “Baby shoes!”
“Some kids probably left them there to propagate the legend.”
Jenny studied the ground ahead of them, then turned and studied the ground behind them. “There aren’t any other footprints except for ours.”
She was right, he realized. “Guess they raked them away.”
“It doesn’t look like the sand’s been raked.”
“Well, a baby ghost didn’t leave its shoes here, Jen.”
“Doesn’t this bother you, Steve? Seriously—look at them! They’re just here, in the middle of perfectly undisturbed sand.”
“Ow!” The flame had winnowed its way down the matchstick to Steve’s fingertips. He tossed the match away. He lit another and said, “Do you believe in ghosts?”
“I’ve seen one before,” Jenny stated.
“Where?”
“In my bedroom.”
“When?”
“A long time ago. I was just a kid. I woke up in the middle of the night, and a face was staring in my window.”
“Maybe it was a neighborhood perv?”
“My bedroom was on the second floor.”
“Did your bedroom face the street?”
“It did, as a matter of fact.”
“Maybe it was the reflection of a streetlamp?”
“I don’t think there were streetlamps on my street.”
“It could have been anything, Jen. That’s the thing with ghosts and UFOs and stuff like that—just because you can’t immediately explain them doesn’t mean they’re real.”
“It doesn’t mean they’re not real either. I’m simply keeping an open mind.”
“I’ve spent the last year cutting open dead people and sorting through their insides. I’ve yet to find any evidence of a lurking spirit. Have you?”
“We share different metaphysical beliefs. Let’s leave it at that.”
“Not so fast,” Steve said. “I’m having a hard time believing an intelligent person such as yourself, a future doctor no less, believes in the boogie monster.”
“I don’t believe in the boogie monster, Steve.”
“You said you saw something peeking in your window. That’s what boogie monsters do, isn’t it?”
“I said a ghost. They’re two very different things.”
He shrugged. “Okay, a ghost, whatever. But can you tell me why a ghost would want to peek in your window? I mean, you’d have to be a borderline megalomaniac to think something made the effort to cross dimensions just to spy on you when you were sleeping.”
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio.”
“Shakespeare’s not going to bail you out of this one, babe.”
Jenny cocked an eyebrow. “Babe?”
Steve frowned. “What?”
“I’m not a ‘babe,’ thank you very much.”
“Jeff calls Mandy babe.”
“Maybe Mandy likes being a babe, but I