Escape Africa (3)

 

3: Spook Brug

There are so many accounts of a mysterious woman in white
across South Africa, I searched them all; Uniondale, Rustenburg, Port
Elizabeth. I wasn’t a true believer at first so let me start from the
beginning. People don’t impress me, never have, they live out dull lives
aspiring to achieve the most of nothing until their loneliness draws an
attraction to someone new and the shallow need of trivial comparison awakens.

‘What scares you?’ The question caught me off guard
because it wasn’t what I consider an appropriate casual office conversation
question. My colleagues insistent to the third coffee break with their peculiar
questioning.  I’d arrived in Heidelberg,
the one near Johannesburg, and had the job less than a week when this topic of
discussion flew too close to the personal “shit I’m not going to share with
people I barely know” mark. I knew nothing of the town tucked away in a valley,
the people were friendly if a bit odd then I was not there by chance, it was my
business ad I held no desire to disclose it with anyone.

‘I’m not really sure,’ being the first response to come
to mind, ‘why do you ask?’

I could deflect their enthusiastic curiosity, there was
excitement bubbling on their faces, hiding some mischief to their enquiries. My
vague response was handed a piece of paper, I was left to my own devices, my
peers dispersed with refrained sniggering. Tucking the note into my pocket I
returned to my office, shrugging off this strange encounter as some weak
attempt at hazing the new employee to welcome them to the firm, the idea passed
as soon as I reached my desk. Days passed before I returned any thought to the piece
of paper crammed into my pocket. I revisited the notion when the crumpled piece
of paper felt out onto the counter while I was rummaging for loose change while
paying at the grocery store. The cashier seemed curious enough to slide it back
to me with one finger.

‘Thanks.’ I mutter sheepishly, the cashier seemed
embarrassed in front of a stranger yet seeing the paper I felt slightly
compelled to read it. The note made no sense to me, two words:

SPOOK BRUG

I had no idea what it meant.

‘That bridge it haunted,’ the tentative voice of the
cashier spoke suddenly, ‘Some say a young girl jumped to her death,’ her eyes
searching mine, ‘Others say she fell while avoiding a speeding car,’

I thanked her, not knowing what to make of this surprise
information. A quick Google search showed me where this bridge was, well screw
it maybe I need to explore my surroundings. That afternoon I went for a drive. My
Google read turned up something called “Blue Diamond and Spook Brug”.

The two definitive versions of the tale told of a young
girl perishing on the Spook Brug either jumping to her death or falling to her
death sometime back in the mid to late 40s. Her ghost first appeared when a
couple driving through was scared shitless by their car radio switching on to
play a popular song of the early 50s called Blue Diamond Blues. The girl
appeared walking along, they stopped to offer her a ride but she was gone over
the edge, fell or jumped depending. The couple investigated nothing there.
Similar stories repeat the pattern of events. Spook Brug is supposed to be
haunted but I doubted if this trip was designed to scare me.

‘Shit, I must have missed a turn somewhere;’ I’d enjoyed
the serenity of the drive I took my eye off the GPS and now I couldn’t find the
road back. I crossed several bridges several times, followed the dirt track back
but I could not find the damn road I drove down from the main road. Half an
hour passed and I had been driving in circles. No matter which way I turned I
arrived back at the same crossroad, I’d turn onto back roads that lead straight
back to either side of the same damn place. Frustrated and lost I pulled over
to search for the road back to town, as if it had suddenly disappeared leaving
me stranded on route to the Spook Brug. I hadn’t seen or passed anything for
some time so I figured keep true and carry on until I find some sense of
direction, dead slow, hoping to scan the horizon for something to guide me out
but there was nothing beyond the shroud of approaching nightfall. I reached a
bridge; I didn’t like the idea of being stranded on a ghost bridge at night but
then I was out there by my own volition. About half way across I caught
something in my rear view mirror, a person walking up the siding of the bridge.
I reversed back to meet them, rolled down my window and sure enough standing
next to my car was a pale looking pedestrian prodding up a thumb.

‘Get in.’ I offered and the poor girl obliged. My
overwhelming enthusiasm to engage in conversation with another person was brief
as my passenger offered the same silent reply to all of my enquiries. I don’t
think she was ignoring me on purpose; maybe she was out of it if her dress
sense was any indication. She stared straight ahead as we neared the end of the
bridge. Desperate for direction I asked her where she was going, hoping for
some kind of response but she remained silent and motionless in the passenger
seat beside me. Then things took a turn for the weird, she reached forward to
turn on the radio, which only picked up static but suddenly started playing Blue
Diamond Blues. I reached down to switch the radio off but a cold hand gently
stopped mine.

‘I like this song,’ her soft voice said. I felt her
staring at the trinket hung from my rearview mirror, the necklace my sweet
Kirsty wore, a pendant of blue gems. Her cold hand slowly moving toward the
pendant, ‘Blue diamond,’ she smiled.

My fidgeting with her frigid fingers gently grasping the
hanging chain drew my eyes from the road ahead for a moment when a sudden
bright white light filled the car. I reacted, thinking it’s the high beams of
an oncoming truck, I severed, the car spun off to the side which was weird
because I was barely travelling at any speed. I stopped in the middle of the
road, the light was gone and so was my passenger. I looked out to see her
standing on the edge of the bridge, quietly slipping over the edge. I freaked
out, thinking she’d jumped I ran to the edge of the bridge but saw nothing
through the rolling fog. I heard my car radio playing; went back, climbed in
and tried starting it again but the engine would not turn over yet the damn
radio was playing. I reached down to switch the radio off, it turned back on
and it still played the same song.

‘Damnit what the hell is going on?’

Blood curdling screams suddenly filled the interior space;
the screams were coming from inside my car. I jumped from the car to roll a
short distance; I could have sworn I saw that girl sitting in the back seat
holding her hands up to her face screaming in blind terror. Silence followed as
if nothing had happened; there was nobody sitting in the back of my car, there
was no bright light or screaming; I was alone on the Spook Brug. I climbed back
into my car, checked the back seat then slumped back in relief. I turned the
key, it started first time. Feeling a sudden chill come over me I saw the road
back to town. I never mentioned what happened to anyone, especially not the
jerks I was working with, they would laugh it off but the more I thought about
it the more I knew this was no joke. The illusion of my workspace environment
became evident as my social interactions were reduced by the sudden onset of
panic. I distanced myself from colleagues and quietly completed my work. My
panic was resurging more since I discovered I lost Kirsty’s necklace on the
Spook Brug but I dared not venture back to look for it. Its absence saddened
me, sentiment, the more I thought of it the more I longed for its return. Again
things got weird when I received a call at the office from an outside number. I
lifted the receiver to hear static at first then the faint sound of Blue
Diamond Blues making its way through handset. I dropped the phone and patched a
return call through the switchboard but the line was dead. The next time I
received my Blue Diamond Blues call was directly after I thought about my lost
necklace and briefly longed for it. This couldn’t continue. I had to muster up
my courage and go back to Spook Brug. I left the office last one Friday and
headed for the highway that would take me out to the bridge. Fierce rain fell
as I drove along but I remained determined to do something about Blue Diamond
Blues. I slowed for the storm as the rain intensified and reduced visibility.
There was nowhere to stop so I pushed on cautiously, thinking about the longing
and sadness that possessed me when the sudden onset of static from my radio drew
my attention away from the road; Blue Diamond Blues. I panicked enough to hit
the brakes and veered off the road. After a few bumps into the veld I stopped
the car, everything went quiet. The rain unleashed passing sheets of water over
me. Blue Diamond Blues played to the end and my radio went dead. I looked up to
see something hanging from my rearview mirror, it was Kirsty’s necklace. I had
swerved off the highway, stopping directly under Spook Brug in time to avoid a furious
torrential downpour that washed out the road ahead. I noticed other vehicles
were pulled over. We all sat there shielded from the flash flooding under the
Spook Brug. I sat staring at Kirsty’s necklace long enough not to notice the
blue light pull up behind me. An officer tapped on my window.

‘Hell of a storm,’ the officer’s face obscured by his
thick black rain coat. I assured him I was fine, he nodded politely and moved
onto the next car.