As the Legends Decree

“Dangers arose from the 'below world' that could set human beings adrift.”

— Traditional oral history of the Wazhazhe migration from the sky, documented in The Osage - Missouri Encyclopedia

“Blake Conklin, have you brought me out here–wherever here might be–to try and get into my panties?” Amber’s words, a playful barb of icy clouds that plumed from her lips, hung in the frigid air like tiny, crystalline daggers. Moonlight, stark and unforgiving, etched the sharp planes of her face, illuminating the silken sheen of her dark, shoulder-length hair that flowed from beneath a pink stocking cap pulled snug over her ears. A single strand, woven with grey Creator’s Beads and white Wampum beads, miniature, hand-painted pictoglyphs of a Thunderbird, a Turtle, and a Wolf adorning their faces, dangled near her cheek. The intricate beadwork was a subtle nod to her Osage heritage, a heritage she embraced with quiet pride, a stark contrast to the bustling, often isolating, city life she’d known.

Blake offered his familiar, crooked smile, a country-boy gesture that still managed to charm, to reveal those dimples she’d once adored. “Nah, babe. Nothin’ like that. Though I do ’spoze that drivin’ ’round to see the Chris’mas lights was a ’scuse to git yer sexy li’l ass out here.” His voice, a comforting Southwestern Missouri drawl (a peculiar melding of the Yankees' aristocratic twang and the South’s slow, lazy phonetics), was laced with a familiar teasing, but beneath it, Amber sensed a current of something else, a nervous energy she hadn’t detected in him before.

The warmth was still there–sure–the silly cuteness–absolutely–but the easy intimacy they’d once shared had been subtly eroded by the looming arrival of their child, the increased pressures of their differing lives, and now, this inexplicable compulsion of Blake’s.

“Then what, honey? Surely you didn’t bring me out here just to show me this creepy bridge,” she nodded toward the icy concrete stretch upon which they stood beneath the starless pall of winter’s bone. It seemed to gleam, unnaturally white against the dusting of snow that clung to its flesh. She turned her gaze back to Blake and mustered her best fake smile, playing the game. “Di-i-i-d you?”

Oonawieh Ungg, “The Oldest Wind,” howled from the dark timber flanking the old farm road with a sorrow that felt both ancient and immediate, joining the wails of overburdened trees, their branches groaning under glacial yokes, creating an eerie lament for warmer days, for what was lost. Powdery cyclones of snow swirled and roiled down the length of unnaturally white concrete, whispering, like that of mischievous ghosts dancing gavottes in the night. This place…it’s too quiet, even for winter, she thought, a primal instinct prickling her skin. The air itself felt heavy, thick with a disquiet she couldn’t name, a frigid energy surging through her bones, leaving a sour taste on her tongue.

“I mean, this place really creeps me out! Like… I feel like we’re being watched or something, you know?” A shiver traced its way up her spine. Her dark, wide eyes, seemingly of their own volition, took in a vista deserving of one of Dante’s circles, like when you come upon an accident along the freeway, and you know you shouldn’t look, yet your eyes can’t help but scour the twisted metal and shattered glass for a pool of congealing blood, a severed arm. “There is mąko pi-zhi– Bad Medicine, here.” The words, in her people’s tongue, felt heavy, laden with meaning, a protective incantation she murmured almost unconsciously. “And I’m freezing this sexy little ass off, Blake! This high school game of yours is fun and all–you have officially creeped me out, OK?–but I really should get back in the truck bef–”

“Well, Hell! Why didn’ ya jus’ say somethin’?” Blake’s voice boomed, a jarring contrast to the hushed, ethereal atmosphere. He moved closer, snow made dirty by commuting traffic and glistening sheets of black ice sounding off with the brittle CRUNCH! CRACK! CRUNCH! of winter beneath his battered Redwing boots. Drawing up behind her, his hulking farm boy arms wrapping around her waist and palming her swollen belly, Blake pulled her petite frame tight against his monstrous bulk. “That better, babe?”

“Yes. Thank you.” She snuggled into his warmth, the stark reality of the setting intruding once more. “But I still want to go home. What are we doing here? There’s nothing out here, Blake. Just woods, this eerie bridge, and that house.” She nodded towards the dark silhouette of a farmhouse perched on the hill, its windows like vacant eyes staring into the night.

The wind answered with another mournful sigh. The trees creaked, their icy burdens threatening to break. Powdery snow swirled, whispering secrets only the night could understand.

“Well… I happen to think ’s jus’ like those paintin’s yer always goin’ on ’bout.” Blake’s voice was matter-of-fact, a stark contrast to the burgeoning unease coiling in Amber’s gut.

Hmmph. Men. She suppressed a sigh. Why were they so often oblivious, so… primitive? And to think his ancestors once called us savages.

Blake saw a landscape; she felt something off with the natural balance, a malevolent presence. He knew she was an Oklahoma City girl, a pragmatist, not fully disconnected from her roots as her parents were, yet finding beauty in the precise logic of law books, in the abstract strokes of artists, in the quiet miracle of the life growing within her. Not in some desolate, moon-drenched tableau that reminded her of the bleak, lifeless Americana photographs her father kept on his office walls–some desolate dinner along Route 66, the trash-strewn parking lot of the "Glass House" McDonald's over I-44 in Vinita, the stark realities of his own difficult whitewashed past.

“Well… I-I guess…” Amber’s voice was laced with reluctant concession. “In a Brothers Grimm sort of way.” She was surprised Blake hadn’t grasped her discomfort, hadn’t noticed her tightening grip. Usually, he was so attuned to her every flicker of unease, especially now, with the baby nearing its due date. What was occupying his mind?

“Huh? Who’r the Brothers Grimm?” His brow furrowed, thick eyebrows rising in question, lost to the reference. “Ah, never mind. See, that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout: Ya’ve got to use yer ’magination, babe. Of course ’s all gloomy an’ spooky lookin’ right now, bein’ the middle of winter an’ all. Ya got to open yer mind an’ look pas’ the obvious; see the beauty ’neath the skin.”

“You know that I’m lacking in the creativity department, honey.”

“So that’s why ya married me, huh? ’Cause I’m not?”

She giggled, a flicker of their old spark. “Yes, Dear–the only reason.”

“Well then, let me help ya with that.”

“I’m freezing, Blake! And I don’t like this place… I don’t like this icky feeling it gives me, OK? I-I don’t know what in the world you’re talking about, but can’t we just go home?”

“In a minute. In a minute.”

“Bla-a-a-ke!” Amber pouted.

He ignored her, his gaze fixed on the hill. “Ya see way up there, babe? On top of that furthest hill…” Blake stretched a burly arm towards the silver-blue crest, towards the lonely silhouette of the farmhouse.

“Uh, yes…?”

“Ya know what I see up there?”

“No, honey, I don’t. But I suspect that you’re going to tell, right?”

“I’ll do ya one even better: I’ll show ya. Now close yer perty li’l eyes…”

𐓏𐒻͘𐓐𐓊𐒷

Its cadaverous visage stretched north and south, a pale phantom swallowed by the gelid, voracious embrace of night. It offered a path–ostensibly smooth, safe–over a creek mirrored in black ice, shimmering under the moon like an Anguilla eel’s slick length slithering through the shadowed depths of the hollow twenty feet below.

The Albino Bridge.

Aptly named, whispered about for a century and a half over sperm whale candles in Confederate sibly tents and Netflix documentaries in a loft downtown alike, perhaps longer. In the contemporary sense, who truly knew how long it had stood here? This modern iteration, a pale echo of its steel-and-timber predecessor, retained an unnatural pallor, as if the baleful essence of the old structure had seeped into its concrete bones. A fabled quarter-mile stretch of Springfield-Greene County lore, whiter than the whitest snow, yet haunted by secrets blacker than any abyss.

How long had it been since Blake had last thought of it? How many years–thirty…three? Five?–had bled into the present since the legends had begun to claw their way into his mind? This infamous locale, a cunt’s hair north of Springfield, had been “red-flagged” by the Greene County Sheriff since those football glory days of Blake’s youth. A place where teenagers and thrill seekers alike, fueled by rebellion, cheap liquor, testosterone, and throbbing cocks, flocked to within the “Witching Hours” of the night to rebel against the stringent civilities of home life with some graffiti tagging here, perhaps partake in some variety of drugs there. Maybe pick a fight or two to prove some primitive aspect of manhood, or perhaps fondle their lover in an inebriated rush of sexual desire.

Or… to test the boundaries of truth behind the legends. To play Russian roulette with those twisted decrees of the unknown.

A place where, even Blake, all those years ago during the varsity glory days of his youth at Hillcrest High School, had come to test the boundaries of truth behind the legends. He remembered the thrill of bravado, the gnawing fear disguised as courage, the whispered tales of spectral figures and vengeful spirits and axe-wielding murderers. He remembered daring his friends–Shaun, Chris, ‘ol “Patches,” and Shaun’s tag-along little brother, Mike–to spend the night (which they didn’t, the pussies!), to prove the urban myths were just that–stories.

And to Blake, they had remained just that. Legends.

Amber loved this side of him, the dreamer.

The man who painted worlds with words, who imbued the mundane with an almost magical luminescence. He brought a spark to her pragmatic life, a romantic passion she sometimes felt she lacked. He saw potential where she saw only the concrete realities of life, a stark contrast to her upbringing in a family that valued stability and tradition above all else. Her parents, both respected elders and tribal lawyers in the Osage Nation and of that generation who had finally lost all connection to the old ways, had instilled in her a deep respect for facts and evidence, a skepticism towards the unexplainable. Yet, here she was, pregnant and on a desolate stretch of road, her husband’s gaze fixed on a place steeped in the very folklore she typically dismissed.

“I see that two-story farmhouse remodeled in white with black shutters, lattice work crawlin’ with Traveller’s Joy n’ White Bryony, a workshop ’round back,” Amber smiled, resting her head on his shoulder as he spoke. The image of the bridge and the dark house began to recede, replaced by a vision conjured by Blake’s words. “There are two new vehicles – Mopars, of course – ”

“Oo-o-o-ff course.”

“A Plum Crazy Purple Challenger R/T for ya, an’ a Demon Green Viper Ram SRT for me, parked n’ the asphalt drive that winds down an’ over through them foothills there – maybe down ’long the crick? – an’ out to the road there on the northern end of this here bridge.”

With her eyes still closed, she felt his arm move, his hand tracing an invisible map through the night. His breath, tepid clouds warm against her neck as they ghosted into the night, sent a shiver through her, not of cold, but of… something else.

“’Roun’ the house,” Blake continued, his voice a low rumble, “’s a white picket fence – jus’ like ya’ve always wanted – dozens of the reddes’ roses yer beautiful li’l brown eyes have ever seen linin’ ‘s perimeter, a green pad of the sof’est Kentucky Blue fescue fillin’ the yard. In that sof’, green yard – a towerin’ maple here, a copse of birch an’ dogwood there – are a li’l boy an’ girl playin’ in the sprinkler, the summer sun beatin’ down on their l’ready tanned bodies. There’s a dog – a Sheppard? Maybe a retriever? – runnin’ ’long ’hind ’em.”

The world he painted bloomed in her mind’s eye, vivid and bright. She could feel his smile, even with her eyes closed, that goofy, crooked country-boy grin. Against her back, she felt the insistent THUDUMP-THUDUMP-THUDUMP of his heart, a frantic rhythm that spoke of excitement, of anticipation.

But eager for what? She pondered. To share a secret?

Perhaps… But whatever it might prove to be, this was as good a way as any to share it, even if her only wish was to be home.

The legends of the Albino Bridge were a tapestry woven with blood, bones, and lives–not measured in years, but in the crimson stain they left behind. Blake had never known them all, or perhaps, he hadn't truly cared to investigate. Ghost stories, he'd always thought. Tales spun by horny high school boys to convince dates to slide a little closer, snuggle a little tighter, under the hormonal anticipation that they might be permitted to cop a feel of some cheerleader tit, maybe even score a piece of virgin ass. Urban legends that fed into the primal urge to impress, to conquer. He'd dismissed them with a shrug, a laugh, a roll of his cerulean eyes.

He’d never truly believed–the old lore about mad scientists, inbred monsters, a hatchet-wielding Jason Vorhees wannabe slasher, or milky-pink-eyed skeletons lurking within those somber depths–never granted them even a pig's shit of conviction. Not until he’d conspired to make an executive decision as the Head-of-his-Household and the real estate agent, a man with eyes that seemed to hold a thousand secrets and a smile that never quite reached them, had offered him such a hell of a deal on this very land.

“A bit of local color,” the agent had said, a glint in his eye, “adds character, don’t you think? Keeps the riff-raff away, mostly.”

Blake, ever the pragmatist when it came to business, had seen a prime investment. His dream of a farm, a legacy for his burgeoning family, seemed more tangible, more within reach than ever. He’d reasoned that the land itself, its well-documented history of fertile soil and strategic location amongst the hills and valleys on the northern border of Springfield, was the true value, the legends merely a peculiar quirk of local history. He’d been so eager to build Amber her dream home, to provide a safe and idyllic future for their child, that he’d glossed over the unease that had pricked at him.

Most locals, Blake included, did not know the Indigenous oral accounts that whispered of an ancient people, the U-tah-non-dsi, who long before the Missouria, Delaware, Osage, Otoe, or Cherokee, walked these lands in the darkness, a people who by day dwelled in the shadowy crevices of the Ozark mountains, in cursed villages piled with human bones, seeped in disease and decay, deep inside the unexplored caverns that pockmarked the landscape. These were not spirits in the traditional sense–there existed no petroglyphic reference or written account of them, part of a pact forged long ago between the U-tah-non-dsi and the original tribes–but something more visceral, more elemental. Beings of flesh and bone yet touched by a primal darkness that set them apart.

The early white settlers, encountering these elusive figures–disrupting the balance, violating the pact–had often misconstrued them. Drawing from half-understood snippets of Indigenous folklore and their own deeply ingrained ignorance and fears of the unknown, they’d conjured the image of the “Wild Man of the Ozarks,” or, in this specific case, the “Albinos.”

These were not mere superstitions but superficial labels; echoes of a primal fear, a testament to entities that predated the very tribes who had, in turn, learned to fear and respect the domain of beings whose true nature was far more terrifying and ancient.

“An’ ya know what else I see, babe?” Blake’s voice was a warm current against the biting cold.

“No, handsome, I don’t. But you can tell me.” Amber squeezed his forearm, the solid muscle a testament to his life of hard, manual labor and his innate, almost stubborn, optimism. Despite the shivers wracking her body, she savored this moment, this connection with her dreamer-man. He was so different from the men she’d known in the city, so grounded, yet so full of wonder.

“I see myself an’ ya sittin’ in the porch swing that hangs from the second’ floor balcony, watchin’ over those two adorable children an’ that crazy, but loveable dog. I see us snugglin’ up nex’ to one another as the sun sets over the timber an’ clover-patched fields to the west there, a hint of honeysuck’l an’ alfalfa teasin’ our noses in the summer’s breeze. I see us growin’ old together in that house, sendin’ those children off to university, an’ having many happy memories.”

“You see all that, do you?” She turned in his arms, sliding her hands beneath the rough wool of his Carhartt jacket. He reciprocated, his hands tracing the curve of her back, the swell of her hips, squeezed the firm padding of her ass. The press of his erection against her belly, the hardness of her nipples against his chest, sent a jolt of heat through her, momentarily banishing the chill.

“Mmmm…” Amber purred, pulling him closer. “I knew you brought me out here just to get into my panties…But tell me, dreamer-boy, how is it that you see all these lovely things? I wasn’t aware that there were Redneck psychics?”

“Oh yeah, Babe, They’r ever’where! ’Specially here in M’Soura. ’Lot in Arkansas, too. But they’r of a lower gene pool.” Blake laughed then leaned in, his lips brushing hers, a sensation like cold silk against her chilled skin. “But I don’ have to be psychic to see all that.”

The moonlight, sharp and unforgiving, carved deep shadows across his face, transforming his familiar teddy bear features into something almost alien. Gooseflesh erupted on her arms. She could only imagine what grotesque trickery the light was playing on her own visage. Probably made her look forty pounds heavier, vamping her deep copper-brown flesh of all pallor and that soft glow all pregnant women possessed.

“W-what are you talking about, Blake Conklin?” She pursed her lips, a single eyebrow arching in a curious frown, a hint of unease returning.

Blake hesitated, a slow smile spreading across his face, revealing teeth stark white against the shadows. “Think of it as an early Chis’mas gift, babe. I jus’ couldn’ wait!”

“Wh-what? I-I don’t… What have you gone and done, Blake Conklin?”

“Guess.” He teased, his smile widening.

“BLA-A-A-KE!” Amber swatted his shoulder.

“’Kay! ’Kay! No need to git all violent an’ wha’not! Damn! I, uh, I-I bought all that land, babe. All one hun’red an’ seventeen acres. The ol’ farmhouse. S’ all ours, good an’ clear like! An’ I’m gonna turn that ol’ farmhouse inta ya yer dream house right on that hill there… an’ my dream shop, of course.”

A dark, marrow-freezing silence descended. The wind howled, the thousand woeful voices of Oonawieh Ungg a portend, spectral routs of snow hissed like serpents along the bridge, slithering and coiling around their feet. Amber stared at her husband, her eyes wide, unblinking. The romantic images he’d painted dissolved like the fading image of a fevered dream.

“You did what? H-how…? W-why…? I still have student loans I can hardly pay as it is! We have the mortgage on the house right now, NO insurance, the baby is due in less than a month an–”

“Amber. Babe. Ya trus’ me, right?”

“O-of course I trust you, honey. B-but–” A sudden, noxious wave of shivers wracked her. Fuck! Not here! Not now! The burning cold was nothing compared to the unnamed dread that suddenly slithered down her spine, a swarm of unseen larvae writhing beneath her flesh.

“But nothing’. Don’ worry, babe. Ever’thing ‘ll be fine, ya’ll see. Ya’ll absolutely love this here place come the spring! I promise.” He kissed her forehead, oblivious, or perhaps willfully ignoring, the tension that had seized her. It wasn't like Blake to be so inattentive, especially concerning her health. It made her suspect there was something more, something about this place, he wasn’t telling her. “Now whatta ya say we git back in the truck? Selfish me, I’ve gone an’ kept ya–an’ the baby–out here in this cold fer too long!”

Amber breathed a sigh of relief, a silent prayer of thanks escaping her lips.

But then, a flicker. A momentary shift in her periphery, from the dark timber on the bridge's southeastern side. Eyes. Eyes that reflected the moonlight with a sickly reddish sheen, shimmering with a savage intellect.

There one moment, gone the next. A low rumble, like thunder from a distant valley, sounded in their wake.

Legends.

The legends decree, the most common one, that if you parked your vehicle on the concrete stretch of the infamous Albino Bridge–that fabled quarter-mile stretch, whiter than the whitest snow, haunted by secrets blacker than the blackest abyss–turned off the engine, and removed the keys that you–

–would b' testin' the boundaries'v truth 'hind the legends–

–might not be able to start the vehicle again. Or you might. Those vehicles that neglected the simple act of turning the key were said to have fallen prey to the ancient totem powers that possessed the deathly pale bridge. This, the legends decreed, was when the true horrors began.

The contemporary legends swirling around the Albino Bridge were a grim tapestry woven from fractured truths and primal fears, a far cry from the sanitized ghost stories whispered around campfires. One prevalent tale spoke of the "Albino Farm," or Springlawn Farm, a once prosperous agricultural and equine hub, now desolate property lurking just north of the city. This place, according to the whispers, became home to something monstrous following a mysterious fire and subsequent commercial bankruptcy–a secluded, inbred family of albinos the local townsfolk had run out of Springfield at the turn of the century, their pale eyes reflecting a madness born of isolation. Some versions of the myth painted a more sinister picture, speaking of a mad scientist and his grotesque Dr. Moreau-like experiments, of a mutant brood hidden away from the world. And then there was the Hatchet Man, a spectral guardian of the road, a phantom axman whose presence was felt most keenly on the bridge itself, a silent sentinel ensuring no one trespassed onto the forbidden grounds without paying a terrible price. Other variations of this narrative hinted at even darker secrets buried beneath the farm, tales of an abandoned underground hospital, a place of forgotten medical atrocities, or simply a lineage of pure, unadulterated malice that had festered for generations–Springfield’s version of “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

But the truth was not the ghosts of settlers or the antagonists of 1980s Hollywood B-movies; it was something far older, far more primal.

After descending to earth to be humans, "The Little Ones"–the people who had first inhabited this land–spoke of the U-tah-non-dsi, the Isolated Earth People, the Pale Ones who dwelled in the deep earth and the shadows of the ancient woods in villages of human bones, excrement, buffalo intestines, decay, and disease. They were indigenous beings of immense power–men tattooed around the mouths and eyes, women with tattoos on their breasts–capable of shapeshifting, of preying on the minds of men, their existence intertwined with the very fabric of the land. Seeking to be apart from the other tribes, a pact was formed–the land of the U-tah-non-dsi was not to be disturbed.

The settlers, misinterpreting these ancient fears through their own lens of the "wild man" and the "albino," had inadvertently given a name to something that predated their understanding, something the original inhabitants had long respected and feared. These beings, the legends claimed, would emerge to claim those who trespassed too deeply into their domain, especially during the deep dark of winter when the veil between worlds thinned.

But they were just legends. Ghost stories for horny teens, silver-screen profits, and social media clickbait. Blake knew, from personal experience, that there wasn't one fucking iota of truth to them.

Then… why wouldn’t the damn truck start? And why couldn’t he shake the insistent, dark narrative that kept replaying in his mind? Why did he suddenly feel that purchasing this land had been a grave mistake?

They were just legends, after all.

Finally buckled into the massive Dodge Ram dually–why her husband needed a truck the size of a small semi, Amber had long ago stopped questioning, chalking it up to silly boys and their toys–her heart skipped a beat when the four-month-old truck refused to start. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No power, no indicator lights, no familiar whine of the starter, which, according to Blake, his beloved Mopars were renowned for. No clankerous firing of the Cummings turbo-diesel engine.

“What the hell?” Blake’s bushy eyebrows knitted in surprise, the whites of his eyes stark against the shadows. The practiced ease with which he normally handled mechanical issues was replaced by a growing unease.

“Honey?” Even in the rapidly chilling cab–how had it cooled so quickly? We weren’t outside but for maybe fifteen minutes–Amber could feel a clammy layer of sweat prickling her skin. The warmth of her pregnancy, usually a comfort, now felt like a suffocating blanket.

“I don’ know, babe. This ‘s jus’ strange.” There was an undertone in his voice she didn’t like, a hint of fear, perhaps? No, not Blake. He wasn’t afraid of anything.

“D-do you think that maybe it’s the battery? Something to do with the cold?” Amber knew enough about cars to feel competent with minor issues–she’d always prided herself on being the only one of her girlfriends who knew how to change a tire–but this felt different. A slick, slimy feeling deep in her gut told her it was nothing as simple as a battery or a rational explanation. It was something she couldn’t explain, but she felt willing their truck to be immobile. Perhaps she did have an imagination after all, one that was being amplified by the unsettling energy of this place

“Nah, can’ be. I jus’ put that new six-cell Optima in last week. ‘Sides, even if the battery was dead–which I don’ think that it ‘s–there should be ‘nough juice in it at leas’ to light the instrument panel, hea’lights an’ wha’not. This jus’ don’ make a lick of Ga’damned sense!”

A pale, fleeting image stirred in her periphery. An unnaturally white form, there one second, gone the next, vanishing over the bridge's western rampart like a specter in the mist–a trick of the light? Amber’s heart hammered against her ribs.

“Bl-Blake?” Amber whispered, her voice cracking. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the ghostly concrete, from the stygian depths of night beyond it. “Th-there’s somebody o-out there!”

“What? Who the fuck’d be–” He turned to look at her, his face obscured by shadows. “–There’s nobody out there, babe. Are–are ya l’right? Yer not gonna have another one of yer 'tacks, are ya?"

“DAMN IT, BLAKE! Why do you have to always bring that up?” The instant the words left her lips, she knew he was right to ask. Was it another panic attack? The overwhelming stress of their situation, the sudden isolation, was it all too much for her?

“I jus’ ask out of concern, Babe. One happen’n out here with the truck not startin’ could be anything but pretty, ya know?"

“I–I know. Sorry. But… I did see some… something. Over there.” She pointed a trembling finger at the side of the bridge. “It-it looked like a… a man, Blake. A naked, ghostly white man. Can’t you just get us out of here?”

She saw his eyes widen, heard the hard swallow in his throat at her words. Or perhaps, at what she thought she’d seen. The skepticism was still there, warring with a dawning concern. The whispers of her grandmother, tales of the U-tah-non-dsilong, the pale beings who dwelled in the deep places, suddenly felt chillingly relevant.

“I’m doin’ what I can, Amber. Uh… ya, uh,” he stammered, his eyes scanning the darkness. “Go ’head an’ check the phone; try an’ call the sheriff’s department, ’kay? Jus’ ‘ta be safe. I’m gonna check the battery.” He leaned forward, reaching beneath the dash, and popped the hood. “Maybe there’s jus’ a bad connection or somethin’?” But his voice lacked conviction, as if he knew it was anything but a simple mechanical issue.

“NO!” She shouted, a sudden terror seizing her at the thought of him stepping out onto the bridge. That ghostly white bridge. Because she knew, deep in her heart, that it somehow played a part in them being stranded there. “S-stay in here, p-please? D-don’t leave me alone!”

“Babe, ‘ll be right there.” Blake gestured to the dually’s nose, disappearing into the blackness. To Amber, it felt like it was miles away. The silence that followed his departure was deafening, broken only by the mournful howl of the wind and the thumping of her own terrified heart.

“P-please, Blake? I-I’m scared! Don’t l-leave me…”

Stepping back out of the darkness a moment later, he climbed back into the dually and sighed. “Too dark ‘ta see any damn thing. Maybe if we, uh, jus’ let it sit fer a minute ‘r two?”

“Th-thank you, honey…”

“Go ’head an’ try the phone anyway.”

She did. On the third ring, a 9-1-1 operator answered. Before Amber could fully explain the situation–the truck, the isolation, the growing dread, the figure–the phone cut out, leaving an icy silence in her ear.

The true horrors begin when a vehicle refuses to start… This thought, a venomous serpent, coiled in Blake’s gut.

Whenever the vehicle failed to start, they–whether it be the mad scientists and their mutant abominations, the Hatchet Man, or the Albinos–would come. Ghastly specters prowling through the shadows, their eyes glinting with a predatory hunger. What happened to those taken into the abominable depths of those woods and caverns was unknown. If anyone knew, the legends guaranteed they would never live long enough to tell.

Rumors abounded, as they always do with urban legends, that the occasional corpse would wash up near the bridge or tumble lifelessly through the creek below, viscera extracted, skulls reduced to husks, flesh gnawed clean from bone. Not by animals, but by the teeth of beings with an ancient hunger. These macabre tales, once dismissed as campfire fodder, now seemed to whisper with a chilling veracity.

But that was just how legends went–a grisly, undeterminable ending. Just another ghost story.

Then why won’t the damn truck start, Blake? He silently questioned, not wanting to further frighten Amber. Why can’t you stop thinking about those ghost stories?

He’d never been one for superstitions, but the sheer impossibility of the truck’s failure, coupled with Amber’s mounting fear, was chipping away at his resolve. He recalled the words of Amber’s grandmother when he had first approached her for her blessing and with his idea to make the purchase. She was a woman who had spoken with quiet respect for the land, for the old ways, a woman who had warned him about disturbing places where “the old ones sleep.” He thought of the history she had then shared of the Osage Nation, who had once inhabited this land before being pushed westward to the Reservations, their reverence for the spiritual world, their knowledge of the unseen forces that governed their existence.

Had he, in his attempt to do right by his family, unknowingly stumbled upon a place where those forces still held sway?

From amongst an ulterior cluster of timber that watched over the land with the glassy eyes of a famished predator, they stirred. Beckoned by a resonance within the earth, a vibration felt deep in their bones, a call that had no voice yet spoke to them through the totem of the bridge.

It had been over a millennium since their tribe–once populous in numbers, now thinned by disease, violence, and western expansion–had been so directly summoned.

And they were hungry–not the simple hunger of a predator, but a communion with the primal forces of the earth.

Hungry for the flesh of those who had violated their domain through the centuries. Longing to again taste the sweet meats of organs broiled in cauldrons of blood over stone dolmens. Lusting for the savoring of brains slow-cooked in their skulls. Craving the chewy tenderness of roasted facial muscles and lips, testicles and tongues and eyeballs, ovaries and uteri, guts and vaginal lips spiced with wild berries and bone marrow and onions.

They stirred. Their pale lips, coursed with dark purple-black veins, salivated. Their milky-pink eyes absorbed the night. And to the cadence of earth drums crafted from bones yellowed with age and flayed human flesh, they began to skulk through the snowy timber. Their forms, gaunt and spectral, seemed to merge with the shadows, their movements fluid and unsettling, their pale, almost translucent feet making not the slightest sound…

That nameless dread returned, creeping over her shoulder like a venomous spider. A sepulchral air settled around the truck’s cab, thick and stagnant, like the air above a morgue’s cadaver-strewn gurneys. Did Blake notice it? Feel its constricting tentacles coiling around him? Amber’s mind was consumed by the portending notion that they were not welcome here. That something dark and vile was lurking just out of sight, creeping through the cold shadows.

Waiting. Waiting. Waiting…

Call it a woman’s intuition. Call it a mother’s primal instinct to protect her child. Call it the Ancestors speaking to her as They did from time to time. Call it what you will, she felt it festering deep within her bones, roiling in her entrails like spoiled food. The spiritual sensitivity she’d inherited from her grandmother, a woman who spoke of visions and whispers from the spirit world, was now a torment. She remembered how her grandmother–in spiteful deference to her parents’ assimilated whitewashed beliefs and lives that they had pushed on Amber with all the zeal of the original colonizers–would tell the story of the U-tah-non-dsi, the pale beings who resided in the deep places, beings to be respected, to be avoided, but never to be angered.

“Bl-Blake…?” Her voice cracked as her heart began to pound, a painful thud sure to rupture her chest.

“’Kay, babe. ’Ll, uh, ’ll try again.” Blake’s voice was strained, a frantic edge to it now. He was no longer dismissing her fears; he was succumbing to them.

DU-DUMP…THU-DUMP--DUMP-THU-DUMP…DA-DUMP…

It came from the darkness of the timber, like barely audible thunder in the distance, growing closer. The eerie cadence of… drums? No, that wasn’t possible! It had to be the blood pumping through her arteries, fueling her fear, her panic, resounding in her head. Amber scoured the dour scene around them, frantically, trepidatiously.

The eyes, feral pink slivers, hovered over the bridge's western rampart, appeared in the pitch void. Ghostly hands, long bony fingers tapering into grotesque yellow talons, gripped the snow-covered concrete, pulling up fleshy bodies as sickly pale as the bridge itself. They were not human, not entirely. Their forms flickered at the edges, as if struggling to maintain coherence in this reality, but that might have been a trick of the swirling snow. Their skin, the color of bleached bone, seemed to absorb the moonlight, giving them an unearthly glow.

“Blake…” His name barely escaped her lips. Her breath came in short, erratic gasps that burned her lungs, her swollen breasts heaving with abnormal vigor. Clammy sweat soaked her trembling body. Without realizing it, her arms wrapped tightly around her belly. Around her unborn child. The world around her shifted. Amber swam in a dizzy vat of ominous blacks, cold, lifeless blurs of silvery-blue landscapes. Of distorted humanoid forms flowing with the uncanny fluidity of phantoms from the darkness. Of burning pink orbs that glinted with hate and lust in the moonlight.

The engine fired then, the diesel’s deep VRUUMM-CLANK-CLACKITY-CLANK drowning out the banshee-like wails of the wind.

“HA! HA-HA!” Blake bellowed in triumph, sliding the transmission into gear. “See there, babe? Nothin’ t-”

In that instant, Blake realized Amber had succumbed to another of her panic attacks. SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! He should have known better than to bring her out here, at night, and keep her standing in the cold so long! What a selfish prick he was! Her mouth was agape in a silent scream, eyes wide with terror, trembling. Her body was covered in sweat that glistened coldly in the moonlight, her dainty arms clutched tightly around her swollen belly.

As he admonished himself–Wha’ the hell’s that? Sounds…sounds like thunder? Or-the fuck? Drums?–his eyes followed the horror-stricken gaze of his wife. It was then that he bore witness to the harrowing truth of which Amber had spoken only moments before.

Dozens of spectral figures materialized out of the wintry ink of night, creeping out of the surrounding timber, up and along the bridge's ramparts with all the grace of stalking felines. Crude and primitive instruments clutched tight in their clawed hands, pale eyes that reflected the crisp moonlight. They were not simply pale men and women; their forms were unnaturally elongated, their naked skin stretched taut over bone. Their skin, the color of bleached bone, seemed to absorb the moonlight, giving them an unearthly glow. Networks of dark veins pulsed visibly beneath their translucent flesh. Long, wispy hair, white as chalk, tasseled in the wind from their heads, arms, torsos, genitals, and legs. Prominent, almost simian-like brows, knitted together above broad noses that set between those blood-red slivers of glowering eyes, cadaverous faces, sunken cheeks, and hard lines, that housed tattooed mouths snarling to reveal yellowed, elongated teeth.

“HOLY SH-”

Blake’s words were cut short, the grey-white blur of some primitive-looking object–an axe? A club? A rock?–hurtling end-over-end from the darkness, crashed through the front windshield. Slivers of glass that shimmered like ice, imploded upon the cab, pelting Amber in a violent rain of agony. They sliced open her face, warm rivulets of blood forming here and there, cutting through her pink jacket, impaling her soft flesh.

The object connected hard and sure with its mark. A wet mashing sound, disgustingly similar to the pulping of a rotten melon, followed in rank by a horrifying CRACK! that echoed in her ears. Blake’s face detonated in a violent spray of rent fleshy pulp, jagged bone fragments, slimy globules of grey matter, and warm, steaming blood that coated the cab in thick oily spatters that reeked of salt and pennies. Frigid winter air rushed in through the shattered window, tossing snow around in cyclonic routs, hindering her vision.

In both terror and pain, Amber made to scream, but it was shoved back down her throat as her body was suddenly tossed to the left in a blur of sickening motion. The seatbelt being the only factor that kept her from being flung onto the still twitching, bloody, and faceless mess that had been her husband. Her dreamer-man. The father of her child. The numbing crackling of vertebrae resonated through her skull like thunder as the massive truck suddenly leapt forward.

O-OH, GOD! THE T-TRUCK’S IN GEAR! BLAKE P-PUT IT I-IN GEAR!

In an ear-piercing squall of rubber contacting cold concrete and rancid plumes of burning rubber, the 1-ton truck grabbed traction, violently turning as the ass-end suddenly slid out from behind it. Advancing white forms and glinting pink eyes and darkness mingled before her in a nauseating blur. The truck grabbed traction once more, tossing her back to the right. Amber’s head careened, only to slam with dizzying results into the passenger windshield, spider-webbing the glass.

DU-DUMP…THU-DUMP-DUMP-THU-DUMP…DA-DUMP…the eerie percussion grew louder, closer. And as those monstrous forms, crude wood and stone instruments clutched tightly in their talons, paltry nails grating across fiberglass, sheet metal, and glass, their beastly brays and hissing filling her ears, the truck hurtled forward.

Towards the side of the bridge.

Towards the bleak gullet of night beyond its sickly-hued ramparts.

The End

The legends demand more–Prepare yourselves for the next terrifying installment.

Don't miss "Meat for the Beast," Part 2 of T.L. Hutton's gripping Urban Horror and Indigenous Mythos fiction, “As the Legends Decree.” Stay tuned to Obsidian Skull Press for what promises to be an even more visceral and unforgettable descent into darkness.

The legends decree it.

“As The Legends Decree: Meat for the Beast”– Coming soon!

Original: January 2013

Revised: May 2026

(ween-keh)

𐓍𐓂͘𐓄𐒰

(thon-pah)

𐓍𐒰𐒴𐒻

(thah-brey)

𐓈𐓂𐓄𐒰

(doh-pah)

(sah-dah)

𐓆𐒰𐓈𐒰

𐓇𐒰𐓄𐒷

(shah-peh)

(peh-thon-pah)

𐓄𐒷𐓍𐓂͘𐓄𐒰

(key-doh-pah)

𐒼𐒻𐒷𐓈𐓂𐓄𐒰

(ley-brah-tze-ween-keh)

𐒿𐒰𐒴𐒳 𐓊𐒷 𐓏𐒻͘𐒼𐒷

(ley-brah)

𐒿𐒰𐒴𐒳

(ley-brah ah-gthin ween-keh)

𐒿𐒰𐒴𐒳 𐒰𐒼𐒻𐓐 𐓏𐒻͘𐓐𐓊𐒷

𐒿𐒰𐒴𐒳 𐒰𐒼𐒻𐓐 𐓍𐓂͘𐓄𐒰

(ley-brah ah-gthin thon-pah)