BY Tim Lynch
Troll Hunter
The troll liked himself. His character was well-defined and sensitive, and the rocks under his
bridge were kept tidy and rustically mossy, belying their piteous number. And he was alone. I
don’t know how he felt about that. I only know he liked himself because he told me as I tied him
onto his bridge. I called him ugly and rotten. He cried, “I’m not rotten! I’m a good troll and I am
worthy of love!” He struggled at the knot until daylight turned him to stone, his eyes wide,
crystalline beads strung down his cheeks, his face trapped in contortions of bewildered rage. It
speaks to my shuttered heart, his stone face. It will erode, unrecognizable, untidy, as the rains
march across its bridge and brow, as the sun teases prismic threads from impregnable tears, as ice
and fire open it like an animal cracking back into its shell, his eyes invaded by the wilds of time.
By a column of light shot down through canopy, landing on his beaded cheek, so many colors
were sewn to my coat. His half-warmed face harbored my shadow in its shadows, and glittered
like a child’s prized and worthless geode shard held high. It answered questions I don’t ask. It
breaks me.
Monster
Story goes that this kid, his wife & another couple, on November 15, 1966,
they drive out to the TNT area, what used to be explosives storage & manufacture
from WWII & aim to get loaded & maybe some other weird shit. What can you do
in a small town? Shit, I once walked back in the swamps & stripped naked, stood
on a tree root a minute, then dressed again. It was chilly, no one saw, cows moaned
across the reeds, foxes slept & cancer was brewing in my grandfather’s prostate.
Used to pull off by a cornfield with the first girl who kissed me, though the main spot
was under the bridge by the canal, sometimes at night but mostly broad daylight.
Pretty sure fishermen coming back from the dock saw the neighbor boy buck naked,
the dock boards now busted through & I guess that’s how it goes: it goes. But see,
these kids in Point Pleasant, they’re doing their thing one muddy night, all bottles
& raucous & fingers & tongue & then they see two red eyes gleaming in the headlights.
Thing about the dark is you can’t tell what it is, even when you look it in the eye
& what they see is this tall, skinny, winged stranger, so the kids freak out & fishtail,
tires smattering the thing with mud & this thing tails them close, hovers above the car
the whole way back to town, waits for them on the outskirts when they look back
before it scurries into a field. & that’s that. The kids talk next morning to the paper,
say it’s light grey, looks like a man with nothing much of a head & fears the light.
They say they’re going to look for it that night. Don’t know if they did & it was
never found, but folks start noticing strange creatures after that. You know how it goes,
an owl lands on a shed at night & because he’s too afraid to fear an owl, a man calls it
monstrous. All told, the town agrees there’s something here & makes up Mothman.
Alien, mutation, who fucking knows. But look—the sandhill crane is four feet tall,
light grey, has red feathers over its eyes & its migration path is at least 200 miles west
of West Virginia. It was probably dying & lost. If that shit was scared on the 15th
it would’ve chased those fuckers outta town, into town, home. You ever hear a sandhill?
It sounds like steel strings on a tin violin played staccato with a spun wire bow.
It shreds what you know & tells you this is possible. It didn’t sing that night, but what
pisses me off is these people blamed that bird for the bridge failure in December ‘67.
Now, the Silver Bridge was only painted silver, but it was a helluva sight sunny days,
I’ve heard. It had a sister bridge down the river that’s held just fine but the Silver Bridge
was fucked from the start. Eyebar 330. See, the eyebars basically join those big columns
on a suspension bridge to the bridge itself. The eyebars are members in tension, so if one
fails, all of it falls down. 330 was worn just a little too much in its making, a millimetric
crack, which let in water, which froze & wore it more, which meant that on December 15,
1967, bridge full up with cars waiting for the light to change, bearing gifts & kids,
eyebar 330 cracked. There was that sound, the violin. All that wasn’t attached to land
went down into the river. 46 people died, two never found. & they said it was the bird,
or the monster they believed it was. See, you believe that owl out on your shed is a scout
from another dimension, you’ll accept that 46 human beings drowning in a river is nothing
to do with what God has failed to touch. That girl broke my heart & I’ve been scurrying
through night fields ever since, all those other hearts cracking under my boots, all that mud
kicked up in the dark. I believed I was different. Some days I wake up & think I deserve
to die. Some, to be a god. Most days I pretend to talk to God. The last thing my grandfather
said to me was Thanks. I shook his hand, said I’ll see you soon. Closest I’ve come to
knowing how to die was his loose, dry grip, how he looked me in the eye, how I held his
for a millisecond & cracked. We were members in tension. Everything failed. Pulled over
for speeding on my way to watch him die, I wailed like a squall in a violin. I am not going
to miss the death of someone I love again. I already have. It’s nearly November. The year’s
last cricket is screaming. Tell me death’s a hovering gone. Say the river was warm.
Sandhill cranes are singing. The bridge is falling down. You keep breathing. Grandpop’s
dead. Tell me I am only human. Some days: I believe it. Others: I am monstrous. I am God.
Tim Lynch's poems appear in Vinyl, The Rupture, Puerto Del Sol Online and other fine publications. Interviews with poets appear in Tell Tell Poetry and The Adroit Journal. His first screenplay was a semi-finalist in the 2020 ScreenCraft Horror Competition. Say hi @timlynchthatsit.