Another jumped off the bridge last week. That bridge had taken 34 in the last 5 years. If local legend was to be believed, the bay held fantastical creatures that granted you free passage to heaven if you were daring enough to jump. The theory was absolutely ridiculous, and it spoke volumes that it was the leading hypothesis.

Smith had been working as a detective at the police station for 26 years now, and in all that time, nobody had ever figured out how to tackle that bay. Anytime someone tried to measure, scan, or tamper with the bay for any reason, it went wrong. Equipment malfunctions, illogical readings, nothing had ever worked. And no bodies had ever been recovered.

The bay mystery had been Smith's pet project for months, but he'd made no headway whatsoever. It simply didn't make sense.

The most recent death had been one Matthew Enman, a law student visiting family for spring vacation. He had a well-off family, good friends, and a fiance that was to become a spouse in only a few months. Smith didn't claim to know about this boy's mental state, but by all accounts, he seemed to have been living a good life.

None of the deceased seemed to have anything in common. Wildly varying ages, backgrounds, and lives.

The bay was nothing if not a mystery, and Smith was set on figuring it out.

Smith was really unable to figure out anything at all.

He had gone to the ally more than once to check again and again, if he would find something that he was missing.

He waited for days together thinking and thinking about what was happening and was not still able to figure it out!

One fine morning he woke up and left his place went down to the alley kept searching! 10 miles away from the scene! What he found was another dead body that no one had even looked at for a long time. It was hanging from the bridge of the alley, that looked like a tiny piece of cloth. Smith thought what had happened suddenly and why was no one able to find this quick.

He called in the officers to check if this body was there since long and how was it missed! Smith was getting it clearer and found that there were many more dead bodies in and around the area. This body was of a rich woman who had multiple businesses. She was young and just 20 years old.

As the days became weeks, Smith reviewed and re-reviewed all of the information he had compiled. He had doggedly searched every possible source from information available in the public arena to sources reserved for law enforcement looking for some common thread. He interviewed every single family member, friend and associate of all souls who gave themselves to the bay in the last 12 months. He felt like he knew all of them personally, some even intimately after uncovering every possible detail of their lives and personalities. He had become invested in each of these people, gaining an understanding of who they were based on the stories relayed by those close to them, most happy but some unimaginably sad. He knew each of their likes and dislikes, their successes and failures, and had even uncovered a few of their secrets. Bad habits, quirks, kinks, lovers and one even living a double life with two complete families blissfully unaware of each other. It wasn't his place to divulge their secrets and he vowed to take them to his grave.

He was increasingly determined to make sense of what they had done and spent nearly all of his free time pouring over every detail about them. He couldn't find any reasons, obvious or concealed, nothing that indicated they weren't totally committed to living their lives for many years to come. There was nothing, in spite of the fact that his mind was constantly consumed with the question, there was no answer. He knew he was on the board of obsession, but he didn't care. It was just him and Meatball anyway.

Meatball was his devoted and beloved companion of 5 years in form of a 205 lb English Mastiff with a brindle coat and an attitude problem. Meatball didn't mind if Smith was obsessing, as long as he got his regular meals, walks and Smith didn't encroach on his side of the bed. So, there was nothing to stop him. No reason to give anything less than his all to understanding what had compelled these people to swan dive off of that damned bridge into that damned bay. He was at his wits end and could feel the panic creeping up when he realized he may never understand. He had done everything he could think to do and the only consistent answer was that some mystical force pulled them into the bay in hopes of experiencing whatever was on the other side. He didn't believe in that mumbo jumbo stuff though. When you die, you die. There's nothing after. It's just like Stephen Hawking said, the supposed afterlife was a fairy story for people afraid of the dark. And Smith wasn't afraid of the dark. He wasn't afraid of anything.

About 3 insomnia ridden weeks after he realized he had hit a stone wall and had no hope for a solution, it hit him. Sure, he hadn't slept more than 2 hours in a single night during the last 23 days. So what if he hadn't showered or taken Meatball for a walk in the last 6? He was of sound mind and tuned into this epiphany. It was the only way. He knew he had to jump to find out for himself what they were after. And whether they found it.

Smith left his apartment late, nearing to 1am, dressed simply in a work shirt and slacks. He fed Meatball, and once he was asleep, his large body curled up on the floor, Smith slipped out into the night, walking through the streets that hummed with nightlife: cabs and drunk people. A girl in a skimpy skirt knocked into him as he neared the bridge, and slurred an apology. Smith simply waved it off and continued on. Smith reached the foot of the bridge a little after 1:30, nightlife thinned out behind him, and the noise of the city faded to a low hum, like a television left on in another room.

He had driven across this bridge hundreds of times and walked it dozens, always with a notebook, a camera, or an officer at his elbow. He had never come here with empty hands. It felt strange. He patted his pockets out of habit and found only his keys and his wallet. He considered leaving them on the pavement like some kind of evidence, then stopped. This was not a suicide. He had no right to treat it like one. The bay was strange now. There was no wind, and the water didn’t move. It lay under the lamps like poured glass, giving back no reflection of the bridge, the lights, or the moon hanging fat and yellow above it.

“Evening, Detective.”

Smith nearly came out of his skin. A man sat on the curb near the guardrail, bundled in a gray coat too heavy for spring, a paper cup of something steaming between his hands. Smith knew him vaguely: Walter, a night custodian from the ferry office who had given a statement after the Enman boy. Smith had written down everything, and kept it neatly in a drawer even when it was the opposite of helpful.

“Walter. Bit late for a stroll.”

“Bit late for you, too.” Walter nodded at the dark water. “I come here most nights after my shift. Feels right to keep watch.”

“Watch for what?”

Walter shrugged. “Folks like you.”

Smith’s jaw tightened. “I’m not folks.," he said, and his hands went to his pockets again, the wallet jogging lightly, as if evidence again that this was not a suicide.

“No,” Walter agreed mildly, and sipped his drink. “None of them were, either.”

Smith stopped. He wondered if Walter understood what he did, or if he was just an old seaman rambling. Then he walked past, his shoes loud on the pavement, and left Walter sat by the guardrail once again. Halfway across, he stopped at the railing. The metal was cold and damp under his palms, though there was no condensation on it, his heart was going hard and fast.

He wasn’t afraid.

Somewhere far below, the water made a sound, more a whisper than a splash, as though something down there had been waiting a very long time for him to come and was in no hurry now that he had.

There was nothing in the water. He could see it swirling beneath him, blue and green with patches of sickly foam around the base of the bridge's supports. He knew, rationally, that there could be nothing in the water that the many scans and soundings had not found. And yet.

The longer Smith looked, the more he felt something was terribly wrong. His vision tunneled straight down, taking in the tapestry of waves until everything else blurred away. Even the bay began to seem disconnected from itself, a microcosm of motion and chaos instead of a real and watery place. Tiny ripples pulsed subtly outward from the bridge, not inward towards town. Stranger still, exactly in time with his heartbeat. It was totally indifferent to his existence, could not be bothered to affect him, and yet it called him all the same.

This was not a suicide, he repeated to himself again. He did not want to die. He simply wanted to find the truth. And you will not die, whispered the haze of fog hanging over the bay. And it will open your heart and mind, agreed the yellow streetlamp light cutting through the darkness.

Smith clambered up on the metal railing, feeling it slippery beneath his feet. This was what all the others had done, he realized with certainty, a sense of intuition that did not come from deductive reasoning. He thought of Matthew Enman, who had been found washed up by the meatpacking warehouses, still wearing his sharp suit and checkered tie in university colors. The boy's face showed no sign of struggle, only a calm smile that seemed to show he was at peace with himself. He thought, also, of the urban legends passed around the playground in his youth. The angels at the bottom of the bay like sheep's blood best. If you send them a lamb with twenty golden charms in its fleece, they'll send you to heaven. And the church girls, the ones who always wore clean white dresses with pink flowers and talked about love and obedience, had sat in a circle and whispered about the best ways to steal a lamb without anyone noticing.

What am I doing? he thought to himself in one final moment of lucidity. Meatball would be expecting him in the morning, whining at the door for his daily feeding. But it was too late to turn back. His boot slipped on the condensation and he fell.

Across the way, Walter drew his jacket in around himself, then made an old hand sign for warding off evil. "An 'nother one," he muttered. "Hope he knows what he's in for." Then he finished his drink and walked off to go throw his cup in the rubbish bin. And the bay became glassy smooth for a moment, as if time had briefly stopped for its entropic motion, before returning to its regular chaotic roar.

Under the water, Smith felt his heart beating.

He saw nothing but darkness. The inside of his eyes were clearer than the cold water around his body. Then, somewhere in the distance, a golden light.

For you have taken the leap of faith, a voice echoed from nowhere and everywhere--or rather, many voices, young and old, male and female, all whispering together. He recognized one of the voices: old Clarence, one of the bridge's first victims, a senior police officer who he had called a friend. And you have entered the domain of the Ancient One.

Are you an angel? thought Smith, remembering those girls and their hushed prayers.

But as the light became clearer, he realized angels didn't usually come with enormous yellow eyes and tentacles.