Goblin Bites: Scary Stories 15

There was one story I heard a long time ago, that I honestly don't know really happened or not. It is a very sad story, to begin with, but I will try to do it justice and recount it to the best of my memory. You have been warned, and I will not judge you should you decide to stop reading here. For those more curious souls, I will continue.

I believe it all started way back in the 1960s. There was a bus load of school children, heading back from a field trip on a dark, rainy afternoon. The wind was supposedly so bad, the bus could be seen by passing cars to rock side to side whenever it went around a turn in the road. There was one particularly bad road the bus had to travel, that took them over an old wooden bridge that has since been torn down and replaced with steel and concrete. It spanned a small river, not deep but very swift under normal circumstances, that had swelled considerably with the rain. No one knows exactly what happened, but the bus driver somehow lost control when they were crossing over the bridge that day. The bus crashed over the side of the bridge into the river, and sank. Most of the children survived, but I am sorry to say that five children and the bus driver perished.

Some years later, while they were constructing the new bridge, there was a young couple driving that same road late at night. It was another awful, rainy night, with strong terrible winds that buffeted the car from side to side on the road. They were driving carefully as they could, but it was so dark they could hardly see the road. Unwittingly, the couple took a wrong turn and wound up heading straight for the unfinished bridge.

The boyfriend - who was driving - tried to stop when he realized they were on the half-finished bridge. There was so much water on the road though, he couldn't stop in time. He reached over to hold his girlfriend's hand, thinking their lives were about to end... when suddenly the car hit something solid and stopped. Both occupants of the car lurched forward from the impact, confused about what had just happened. From what they could tell, their front tires were hovering on the edge of the bridge, swaying dangerously over the churning, dark water below. The next thing they knew, the car was slowly rolling backwards on its own, and didn't stop until they were a safe distance away from the bridge.

The couple was shaken, but glad to be able to turn around and take a safer road. The boyfriend took his girlfriend home first, whose mother had been waiting up late with worry because they were taking so long getting home. When the girlfriend told her mother what had happened, her mother insisted the boyfriend stay the night on their couch instead of trying to get home on his own. He parked his car under their carport, grateful for the offer, and after calling his parents to let them know where he was and that he was okay, he went to bed.

The next morning over breakfast, the boyfriend told the rest of his girlfriend's family what had happened the night before. His girlfriend's father was an automechanic by trade, and deeply intrigued about the incident. When he asked his daughter's boyfriend if he could take a look at the car, the boyfriend eagerly agreed, and after breakfast they both headed out to the carport. What they saw left the both of them utterly speechless. On the hood and bumper of the boyfriend's car were five sets of muddy little handprints, and one larger set between the headlights.