Phantom Bridge (Part 1 of 3)

In the town of Peachville, there lived a funeral director and his wife.  Their names were Neal and Lucinda Macy, and theirs was a troubled marriage.  One night, Lucinda got mad and went to her mother's house.  As she left, she told Neal that she didn't know when she'd return.  About a minute after she left, Neal called a young woman named Lisa Graham, who'd just moved to town about a month earlier and with whom he'd been acquainted for about two weeks.  He asked her to let him come and pick her up to bring her to his house.  Before he called, he made sure that there were no pictures of him and Lucinda anywhere for Lisa to see.

 

He returned home with Lisa and showed her around the house.  The tour ended in his and Lucinda's bedroom, where he told Lisa that he'd fallen in love with her and proceeded to have an affair with her.  Two hours later, Lucinda returned and entered the house quietly.  Suddenly, she heard laughter coming from her and Neal's bedroom, just like a man and woman having fun together.  She went upstairs and into the bedroom to find Neal and Lisa being intimate with each other.

 

Both of them horrified, Lucinda and Lisa beheld each other; Lucinda was horrified to see her husband cheating on her, and Lisa was horrified that Neal had never told her he was married.  Rather than fight each other, Lucinda and Lisa took turns beating up on Neal and calling him names; Lisa went first, and then Lucinda.  Lisa stormed out of the house and Lucinda started packing her bags to leave her husband once and for all.  She scoffed at Neal's begging and pleading to change her mind and stay; and then, Neal slipped into a fit of rage and ran after her into the hallway.  Lucinda struggled to get free from his grip, and Neal threw her down the stairs.  He ran to her, and found she was dead of a broken neck.

 

He loaded her body into his van and took it to the funeral home for cremation.  At midnight, he dumped Lucinda's cremains in the river from off the Hammond Bridge, which was known as the very same location from which a serial killer named Luther Lyon dumped his thirty three victims about three decades earlier.  Once the cremains were in the river, Neal heard an angry whisper say to him, 'You will pay...you will pay...you will pay'.  In terror, he looked around, wondering from where the whisper was coming.  After a couple of moments, he scoffed at the whisper; and then, he went home to go to bed.