Chapter 17
The Confrontation
Amy returns to the bridge at midnight. The ghost appears, and Amy speaks her apology aloud. The spirit smiles and fades into mist.
The bridge at midnight looked different than it had in the daylight, when Aunt Mae and I had stood here just yesterday, her frail hand gripping mine. The moon hung low and fat, casting silver ribbons across the water that seemed to writhe like living things. Spanish moss dripped from the cypress trees that lined the bank, each strand a ghostly finger pointing toward the center of the bridge where I had seen her—the Whispering Willow Ghost—for the first time so many weeks ago.
I had come prepared. In my left hand, I clutched the small velvet pouch Aunt Mae had given me before she pressed her dry lips to my forehead and whispered, "You'll know what to do, child. You always have." In my right hand, I held a single photograph, yellowed and curled at the edges, the image of a young woman with dark eyes and a smile that had been frozen in time for over a hundred years.
The air was thick with the scent of honeysuckle and damp earth, the kind of Southern night that wrapped around you like a familiar blanket. But there was nothing familiar about the tremor in my chest as I stepped onto the wooden planks of the bridge. Each board groaned beneath my weight, and I half-expected the whole structure to give way and send me plunging into the murky water below.
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