Hi, thanks for taking my call. I've been going back and forth on whether to share this for a long time now. This happened when I was sixteen. May of 2004. I was living in Kellerton, which is this tiny nothing town about an hour outside Dayton. Population maybe eight hundred on a good day. I'd been at my friend Sarah's house that night. We were supposed to walk home together because she lived just two streets over from me, but her mom made her stay in last minute. Something about not finishing her chores. So I was walking alone. It was probably quarter past ten when I left her place. I remember I'd had this awful headache all day. Took three aspirin before I left and it still wouldn't quit. Weird thing to remember, but I do. Anyway, there were two ways to get home. The long way around by the main road, or the shortcut through the old railroad crossing under Crestwood Bridge. I'd taken that shortcut a hundred times.
It was a warm night. Late May warm, where you can finally go out in just a t-shirt and feel fine. The fireflies were just starting to come out that week. I remember watching them blink in the tall grass along the road as I walked. Everything smelled like cut grass and honeysuckle. The bridge itself was this old concrete thing from the thirties. Railroad tracks ran over the top, but they hadn't been used in decades. Underneath was this wide concrete culvert, maybe twelve feet tall, with Deer Creek running through the middle of it. There was a concrete walkway on either side of the water, and kids used to go down there to smoke or hang out or whatever. I knew that bridge like I knew my own bedroom. The streetlight at the entrance was out. Had been for weeks. The city never fixed anything in that part of town. There was a half moon that night, so I had some light on the road at least. But once I ducked under the bridge, it got dark. I was walking slow, feeling my way along the wall.
I was maybe twenty feet in when I heard it. This low humming sound, like electricity running through a wire, but deeper. It was coming from further inside the culvert. I stopped walking. Just stood there listening. The humming would pulse. Get louder, then softer, then louder again. Like breathing almost. And there was this light. Pale blue, coming from around the bend where the culvert curved. Not flickering like a fire. Steady. Cold looking. I should have turned around. I know that. But I was sixteen and I was curious and honestly I thought maybe it was just some older kids with a lantern or something. So I kept walking. The humming got louder. The blue light got brighter. And then I came around the curve and I saw it.
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