Where the River Doesn’t Flow

The bus broke down ten miles outside of town.

I hadn’t planned on coming back — not after twelve years, not after everything that happened — but the driver said it would be hours before a replacement came.

So I started walking.

The air smelled the same: damp soil, honeysuckle, and something faintly metallic, like rain on rust. The road bent, and there it was — the old iron bridge spanning the river.

Only the river wasn’t moving.

I froze.

The water below lay as flat as black glass, not a ripple breaking its surface. The sound of rushing current — the sound that had filled every summer of my childhood — was gone.

And then I saw her.

A girl in a white dress, standing in the middle of the bridge.

Barefoot. Still as the river.

She turned her head slowly, as if she’d been expecting me.

“Do you remember?” she asked.

Her voice was soft, but it carried in the empty air.

I swallowed. “Remember what?”

Her lips curled in the smallest smile. “You promised you’d come back.”

Something inside me tightened.

The last time I’d been here, I was fifteen. I’d been standing right where she was now, with someone else — another girl, younger than me, laughing as she dangled her feet over the edge.

The memory came in flashes: the sound of her laughter, the rope swing above the water, the moment her fingers slipped.

I’d run for help, but by the time they found her, the river had carried her away.

Her name had been Emily.

“You’re not real,” I said.

The girl in white tilted her head. “Neither is the river.”

She was right — the water below didn’t move, didn’t glisten, didn’t even reflect the sky. It was like staring into a sheet of obsidian.

“I waited,” she whispered. “I thought you’d dive in after me.”

My throat went dry. “I was just a kid. I—”

“You promised.”

I took a step back.

The air felt heavier now, the sky dimmer. My shoes scraped against the old planks of the bridge, but the sound seemed swallowed.

“Why am I here?” I asked.

Her eyes — too dark for daylight — didn’t blink. “To finish what you started.”

The wood under my feet groaned.

And then I was no longer standing on the bridge.

I was waist-deep in the river — only it wasn’t cold, and it wasn’t wet. It was thick, almost like oil, pressing against my skin.

Shapes moved beneath the surface. Not fish. Not anything alive. More like memories — flickers of the past — Emily on the rope swing, my mother calling from the shore, the fight with my father the night before I left.

The girl’s voice came from everywhere at once. “The river keeps what you leave behind.”

I tried to move, but the water held me. My chest tightened.

“What do you want from me?”

Her form appeared a few feet away, her dress billowing without wind. “Not me. Her.”

The river’s surface rippled, and Emily was there — exactly as she’d been that day, hair dripping, eyes wide with shock.

Only she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking past me, at something else.

I turned.

It was the bridge. Empty now. Rusted, sagging, a ruin.

And I realized — the bridge I’d walked onto, the girl in white, the frozen river — none of it was here anymore.

The water began to pull me under.

I fought, gasping.

“You can still go back,” Emily’s voice said.

“How?”

“Let it go.”

For a moment, I didn’t know if she meant the memory or my life.

But I closed my eyes, let my breath leave me, and stopped fighting.

When I opened them, I was standing on the side of the highway. The bus driver was waving me over, saying they’d fixed the engine.

The bridge was gone. The river, if it had ever been there, was just a strip of overgrown grass.

In my pocket was a wet piece of rope.

That night, I dreamed of the river. And in the dream, it was flowing again.