The Modern Day Troll

Some say it was a monster. Some say it was myth. Other people say it was just a crazy old homeless man. But I know the truth; it was a troll. No, I don't mean someone who bullies other people on the internet for fun. I mean an honest to goodness, living, breathing creature that lives underneath an old train bridge on the outskirts of town. You might ask me how I know this? And that is an easy answer. I've seen it once.

​I was always told to stay away from that dried up riverbed, but naturally you couldn't keep the kids away. We had always heard stories like the ones I mentioned before and just had to know for sure what was actually down there. One boring summer night my friends and I piled into my old beat up Buick and drove out there to the bridge. We had to know what was down there, whether it was a monster, a crazy person, or nothing at all. So out we went, armed with nothing but our flashlights and courage.

There were five of us who went out there on the night that I saw the troll. I don't think we ever went more than an arm's length away from each other after getting out of the car. It was scary enough having to cross through the bushes and trees from the road to the tracks. At first, I think I was more afraid of being bitten by a spider or being attacked by a wild animal than I was anything lurking under the bridge. Once we all made it to the tracks, we spent the next ten minutes getting burs off each others clothes.

​Finally, we were ready to make the slow and scary walk across the bridge. The only way to see down below was to walk to the center of it, which was missing a few of the rails. There was enough of a gap that you couldn't jump across to the other side; that gave us plenty of space to view down in the river bed. The five of us all got in a line by the edge and started to shine our lights around through the gap. It was so dark that you couldn't really seen much of anything. We could make out some bushes, some old barrels, a pile of old tires, and...a large mass.

All five of our light beams converged on the object after one of our friends said “WHAT IS THAT?!” at the top of their lungs. I thought it may have been just a moss covered rock, at first. But I knew that couldn't have been right, because the mass started to move. It turned a huge body halfway so that we could finally see what it was.

It's head was almost as wide as the body itself, with huge dark eyes that reflected our lights back at us like a deer. It was a deep, dark color like a muddy brown or green. What looked like moss on a rock was actually it's hair; wiry and tangled like an old carpet. It's arms were massive and went down to the ground like a gorilla. And it's legs, though short, were incredibly stocky and powerful looking. We must have startled it as much as it did us, because it let out a hideous bellow and bounded away through the thickets. It moved slowly, but you could tell that it carried a lot of weight and power. We could hear it thunder away but it didn't go far. Perhaps just on the other side of the pillars.

We didn't stick around to find out where it was, however. We darted back across the bridge and through the bushes to my car. There was no stopping to pick off the burs this time. I had the engine on and the tires peeling away before everyone had even gotten in. It was then that I finally realized that what we saw must have been a troll. Even after seeing it for ourselves, my friends and I debated about what it could have been or where it came from. I didn't care though; I just knew that I didn't want to see it again. Once was enough for me.

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