one lane bridge

NARRATOR: And, even though he'd made this trip be-fore, twice, there was the anxiety that he'd miss a turn, that the snow would hide some landmark, and he'd have to backtrack along the canyon roads. Strange that his fear of being late should exceed his fear of getting lost.

ELLIE: (thinking out loud). Which is ridiculous if you think about it. Nothing bad happens if I'm late.

NARRATOR: No, it is her. Standing there, at the end of the driveway, as though she didn't mind the snow.

(Ellie stops)

SAMANTHA comes rushing to the car.

ELLIE opens the door. Their conversation is urgent. They need to get SAMANTHA out of the cold.)

ELLIE: Hi! You must be freezing!

SAMANTHA. Pretty cold! (Her bag:) I just need to set this in your trunk.

ELLIE: Oh, hang on! Let me find the latch! (She can't find it.) Or you could just set it in the back.

SAMANTHA. Your seat'll get wet. (She brushes snow from her bag.)

ELLIE: It’s fine!

SAMANTHA: You're sure?

ELLIE: Yeah, let's just get you into the car! (Open back door)

(She sets her bag in the backseat. Gets in the car, closes the door.)

ELI (cont'd). Oh, man! You must be freezing.

SAMANTHA: A little bit.

ELLIE: (the heat). Let me turn this up.

SAMANTHA: Thank you. I do feel bad about your seat.

ELLIE: It's plastic. And it's my dad's old car anyway. (Beat.)

I'm Ellie.

SAMANTHA. Samantha Captain.

ELLIE: Kep-tin?

SAMANTHA: Captain. Like a ship's captain.

ELLIE: Nice to meet you.

(They shake hands. Hers is cold.)

Didn't your mother ever tell you not to stand outside in a snow-storm? I hope you're not in a rush.

SAMANTHA: Oh...

ELLIE: Are you?

SAMANTHA: Well, Home Depot closes at nine so...I guess, a little bit, I am.

E: Thirty five minutes. We can make it if we hurry. (He pulls out onto the dark road.) How do you know the Carvers?

SAMANTHA. Friends of friends is all.

ELLIE: How are they?

SAMANTHA. I don't really know them.

Ellie: Mrs. Carver sounded funny on the phone.

SAMANTHA. She's distracted. She got sick and then she gave it to the six-year-old.

Ellie: Ben.

SAMANTHA. Right. So there's a lot of sneezing and coughing and vomiting and Ben's technique for covering his mouth is sort of a megaphone.

ELLIE. I've seen that.

SAMANTHA. Yeah. And they don't want the baby to catch it, so— It just doesn't seem like a great time for an extra body to be hanging around.

ELLIE: What are you going to Bloomington for?

SAMANTHA. Home Depot for a shower curtain. And then just some unfinished business. How about you?

ELLIE: I'm picking up a trumpet from my friend Mason— (He is a distractable driver.)

SAMANTHA/MALE NARRATOR (simultaneously).

Watch the road!

ELLIE: Sorry! (Beat.) They warned you, right?

SAMANTHA. About what?

I've only been driving three and a half weeks.

SAMANTHA. No. Nobody mentioned that.

This is only my sixth—well, sort of my seventh solo trip.

SAMANTHA. Is that right?

ELI. Yeah. Hang on...this is the turn I always miss. (He

makes the turn.) There. All set.

NARRATOR (spoken and maybe holding a sign). Winding road

ELI. Hope you don't get carsick.

SAMANTHA. Not usually, no.

If you do, just feel free to close your eyes, if that helps.

SAMANTHA. Thank you. You're a nice girl.

And you're a nice elderly person.

SAMANTHA. Twenty-eight, thank you very much. Should I have said nice young women?

It doesn't matter.

SAMANTHA: Did you know the boy?

Which-oh. No, he was from the public school. I go to St. Pius.

SAMANTHA. You're Catholic?

I try

SAMANTHA. What does that mean?

Just, you know, I try.

SAMANTHA. The paper says the parents are still holding out hope.

Yeah

SAMANTHA. They shouldn't. He's dead.

ELI. How do you know?

SAMANTHA. He was an honor student. Honor students don't run away. They fall into wells. Or they trust people they shouldn't.

Meaning what?

SAMANTHA. Someone offered him a ride, probably.

ELI. Why would someone do that?

SAMANTHA. Don't know. You'd have to ask him.

Justin?

SAMANTHA. No. The man who killed him.

How do you know it was a man?

SAMANTHA. It's always a man.

…What do you do for a job?

SAMANTHA. I'm an actuary.

I don't know what that is.

SAMANTHA. An actuary is the person who sets insurance rates. Like car insurance rates, for example.

That's a whole profession?

SAMANTHA. Oh yes.

You should see my insurance! It's crazy high!

SAMANTHA. Yes, well, that's what the statistics tell us.

The average sixteen-year-old is crazy and—

MALE NARRATOR. Hi.

ELI. Not me.

SAMANTHA. No. It's just an average.

So it's just all about math?

SAMANTHA. Pretty much, yeah. Although I could tell

you some horror stories.

ELI (beat). OK.

SAMANTHA. What?

Give me some horror stories.

SAMANTHA. I don't want to unsettle you.

You won't. I like roller coasters and, I guess you'd call 'em, slasher movies.

SAMANTHA. Me too.

Really?

SAMANTHA. Yeah. I love them.

You do not.

SAMANTHA. Are you surprised because I'm female, or because I'm ancient?

Both. (Pause. The snow) Wow. It’s coming down even-

SAMANTHA (mouths)/MALE NARRATOR. Watch the road!

What?

SAMANTHA. You know what? That was cute, once—

I wasn’t trying to be cute-

SAMANTHA. You need to be careful!

I wasn't even near the edge!

SAMANTHA. Should I drive?

No.

SAMANTHA. If it happens again, I'm going to insist.

No you are not. (A sullen moment.) I've got a car horror story.

SAMANTHA. Uh-huh.

Doesn't that surprise you?

SAMANTHA. No. Everyone has one.

Not like mine

SAMANTHA. Well, let's hear it.

It's something that happened about... eleven years ago.

It was the front page of our paper for a month at least.

They kept learning new stuff. And there were these numbers that kept going up. Five people confirmed dead. Eleven, thirteen, and it just kept—I mean it went all the way up to thirty-eight. Or forty, depending on how you counted. (Beat.) It was this story about a bridge that had washed out on a...let's say a foggy night. There was some reason drivers couldn't see very well. Way down below, on the river, a boat—a ferry— had smashed into one of the, uh, the pylons. It knocked out a whole section of the bridge. But it was snowing or fogging so hard the cars couldn't see it in time. And so they just kept plunging off the bridge. One after another. And no one could stop it because by the time you knew it was happening, you were thirty seconds from being dead.

911 NARRATOR A. Sir? Sir, (Ma'am? Ma'am,) are you still there?

ELI. For three and a half hours, people just vanished.

NARRATOR $. Hey sweetheart, listen, I'm-I'll probably be home soon but just in case, I wanted—I just wanted to let you know, that I really really really— (Silence.)

Twenty-six cars. Thirty-eight people. But they only ever found thirty-one bodies. There was believe it or not there was a man driving his wife to give birth. So they argued about the count.

SAMANTHA. Awful.

ELI. Yeah. Three people had time to make phone calls.

The third phone call came from this boy: Hayden Lane Silver. That was his name.

911 NARRATOR B. 911, what is your emergency?

ELI. But he couldn't remember it. He was so scared he couldn't think of his own name.

911 NARRATOR B. What's your name, son? Talk to me.

ELI. The call goes on for nineteen minutes and six seconds.

(Just the sound of HAYDEN hyperventilating, or maybe sobbing, or maybe drowning.)

ELI (cont'd). In the tape it sounds like he's, you know, standing somewhere. Watching it. Praying it would—

911 NARRATOR B. Son, you have to guide me here.

Where are you? (Beat.) Are you there?

Seventy-one seconds of silence on his end. (S)he has to get creative.

911 NARRATOR B. Hey, do you have brothers and sis-ters? (Beat.) Superbowl's coming up. Do you watch any football?

Then, at twelve minutes and forty-five seconds.

911 NARRATOR B. Is he a loving god? Is your God gen-tle?

A minute and a half more of silence.

SAMANTHA. At least it ends well, in a way.

No. It doesn't. Hayden Silver's connection had gone dead at the fifteen minute- and six-second mark. Which meant that the last words he would have heard were

"your fault."

911 NARRATOR B. Your fault.

ELI. They never found him. They never even found his car. But they found his phone. He'd set it in the crook of a tree. (Long pause.) It just seems like one faith you should be able to have, that the road is still there.

SAMANTHA. You said maybe 40.

The captain. Samuel Carpenter Stancher. My dad.

SAMANTHA. Oh, I'm sorry.

You know, there was all this, Was he asleep? Was he drinking? Did he really not know that he'd hit that pylon? The speculation didn't stop even after he hung him-self.

SAMANTHA. Oh.

And the thing is, they never even proved for sure that he'd even hit that bridge. That particular design, it's called the triple pylon. These days there's this whole debate about how maybe the triple pylon doesn't hold up so great in the cold. The middle pylon freezes at a different rate from the others. They don't even allow you to build those type of bridges anymore! (A long moment.)

SAMANTHA. I'm sorry, Ellie

Thanks.

SAMANTHA (a gentle joke). At least there aren't any bridges on this road.

Where are you from?

SAMANTHA. Pinecliffe.

There's three.

SAMANTHA. Oh.

The second one is a triple pylon.

SAMANTHA. Is that a joke?

No. But it’s funny.

(Off to the side of the road, they see something.)

SAMANTHA. Look! (They stare at it as they pass it. She cranes her neck to keep looking at it.) Spooky.

ELLIE. No kidding.

SAMANTHA. Those eyes!

know. You don't usually see them standing out in the snow.

SAMANTHA. It was under a tree.

Oh I couldn't see that.

SAMANTHA. Do you want to know what scares me?

Yeah

SAMANTHA. Mmmm. No. I take it back.

What? Why?

SAMANTHA. My stories are too scary to say out loud.

They are not, either. Are they?

SAMANTHA. They're not the kind of things I want to plant in your mind.

Try me.

SAMANTHA. Natural or supernatural? Serial killer or ghosts?

I don't believe in ghosts.

SAMANTHA. That might change someday.

ELI. I don't think so.

SAMANTHA (beat). Murder or ghost? Or both?

Both.

SAMANTHA. Brave little girl

Scary old woman.

SAMANTHA. Are you all right?

Yeah

SAMANTHA. I'm not quite done yet.

No?

SAMANTHA. No. As Ezra drives away in the stolen Path-finder, finally safe, he looks into the rearview mirror, and he sees a pair of eyes that aren't his own.

Oh... Oh that is scary.

SAMANTHA. Isn't it?

No, that is really like, now I can barely even drive I'm so scared. I didn't check my backseat. Would you do it?

SAMANTHA. What?

Would you check the back for me?

SAMANTHA. I'm not looking.

All right, then. I'm going to have to. You hold the wheel.

SAMANTHA. You're serious.

Or I can stop.

No. You're on. Whenever you say... (She

reaches over and takes the wheel.)

ELI. Ready... One, two, three.

(He leans over the backseat and makes a point of check-ing. The MALE NARRATOR removes SAMANTHA's hand from the wheel and replaces it with his.)

(cont'd). Hey, I have that exact same bag. All clear. We're safe.

SAMANTHA. Good. (ELI stares at the hand on the wheel.) (ELI looks away, to cover his panic,)

MALE NARRATOR AS SAMANTHA. Is anything wrong?

No.

MALE NARRATOR AS SAMANTHA. You're quiet all of a sudden.

Just watching the road

MALE NARRATOR AS SAMANTHA. You're sweating.

I'm fine. (She reaches over to him.) What are you do-ing?

MALE NARRATOR AS SAMANTHA. Let me help you wriggle out of that coat. (He's careful not to look at her, but he does let her help.) Better?

Yeah. Thank you, Samantha.

MALE NARRATOR AS SAMANTHA. You can call me Sam. (She puts his coat in the backseat, next to the bun-dle.)

I was just—I started to think about Mrs. Carver. You said she was, uh...

MALE NARRATOR AS SAMANTHA. Not doing well. Poor thing. Just lying dead on the couch.

Maybe we should go back.

NARRATOR (quietly). Crash the car jump out crash the car crash the car crash the car (and so on.)

(ELI hits the gas.)

MALE NARRATOR AS SAMANTHA. Did you see that sign?

I saw it.