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It was dark on the old road through the woods. The streetlamps had been left behind them, and the moon was new. Any starlight was intercepted by an overcast sky and the canopy of the surrounding trees. All that lit their way was the limited beams of their flashlights. It was unsettlingly quiet. The only sounds were the whispering of the trees as the occasional breeze rustled through them.
“There’s the bridge,” Sulu said in a whisper as he and Chekov walked down the empty road.
Chekov shivered. “Are you sure we should be out here?”
“What, are you scared?” Sulu teased.
“Pssh, no!” Chekov protested, then nearly jumped out of his skin as something large swooped by in front of them.
Sulu laughed. “It’s just an owl. Admit it, you’re freaked out. Do you actually believe in the Goatman?”
“No, I don’t believe in the Goatman,” Chekov replied mockingly, recovering from the owl jump-scare. “That’s just ridiculous.”
“Then what are you afraid of?”
Chekov waved his arms, “I don’t know, we’re out in the woods at night! There could be wild tigers out here or something!”
Sulu snorted. “Really, tigers? They don’t have tigers here, dingus.”
“They have them in Russia,” Chekov grumbled.
“Wait, really?” Sulu asked, but forgot all about their conversation when they came up to the bridge. They stopped in their tracks just before the road ended and the wooden bridge began. “We’re here. Ready to meet the Goatman?”
“There isn’t a Goatman!”
“Shhh,” Sulu said urgently, then whispered, “Don’t say that, you'll just make him angry.”
“Oh, shut up!” Chekov punched Sulu in the arm, which only made Sulu laugh. “Let’s go on your bridge and get this over with.”
Together, they stepped onto the bridge, their footsteps amplified in the hollow sounds of the old wood, the occasional warped plank triggering an awful creak. Halfway across the bridge, Chekov suddenly stopped and spun around, shining his flashlight down the bridge in the direction they had come. “Who's there! Show yourself!” He shouted, accusingly.
“What?” Sulu asked, turning around to peer back down the bridge. “There’s nothing there.”
“I heard something,” Chekov said. “Footsteps, following us.”
Sulu shook his head. “I didn’t hear anything. Maybe you were just hearing the echoes of our own footsteps?” He suggested.
“Maybe,” Chekov said. “Or maybe this is a trick you’ve set up and Nyota is out here making spooky noises to scare me.”
“Pfft, come on, you think she doesn’t have better things to do?” Sulu scoffed. “Besides, if I had set up a prank it would be way better than this, trust me.”
“Whatever,” Chekov grumbled. “Are we done here? Can we go back now?”
“We haven’t seen the Goatman yet,” Sulu said.
“There is no Goatman.”
“Okay, well, we haven’t tried to see the Goatman yet,” Sulu corrected. “Come on, we can’t leave without trying to see the Goatman.”
“Fine! What do we do to see the Goatman? Let's hurry this up, I have alpha shift in the morning,” Chekov huffed impatiently.
“We gotta provoke him,” Sulu explained quietly. “Make him angry. If he’s angry he’ll come out to throw us off his bridge. Or, so the legends say.”
“Alright then, get on with your provoking.”
“No, you do it.”
“No!” Chekov protested in a loud whisper. “It’s your idea, you provoke the Goatman!”
“You provoke the Goatman, he’ll respond better to a believer!” Sulu whispered back.
“I don’t believe in the Goatman!” Chekov hissed.
“If you don’t believe in the Goatman then why are you scared of him?” Sulu countered.
“I am not scared of the-”
“Yes you are!”
“Am not!”
“Then why won’t you provoke the Goatman?”
“Because this is stupid!”
“Because you’re a chicken!”
“I’m not a chicken!”
“Yes you are!”
“Am not!”
“Then prove it!” Sulu said, punctuating their whispered argument. Chekov glared at him. Sulu started flapping his arms in an imitation of a chicken and started clucking quietly. “Come on Chekov-”
Chekov threw his hands up. “Fine. Shut up, I’m doing it!” He stood in the middle of the bridge, and shouted, voice shockingly loud compared to the previous whispers. “FUCK YOU, GOATMAN!”
“Holy shit,” Sulu said under his breath, putting a hand to his mouth to hide a grin.
Chekov began stomping around and dancing on the bridge. “I’M DANCING ON YOUR BRIDGE GOATMAN! GUESS YOU’RE GONNA HAVE TO COME KILL ME ABOUT IT!” He stopped, and waited. “See, no Goatman, can we go now?”
Sulu laughed. “Yeah, sure. That was great, you should have seen your-”
“Wait, what’s that?” Chekov asked, pointing. His flashlight beam had landed on something scrawled on the railing of the bridge.
Sulu squinted, reading the inscription. “It says ‘Ryan and Shane’s bridge.’”
“Who’re Ryan and Shane?” Chekov asked, just as the wind picked up, rustling the trees. There were crashing sound in the woods all around them, as if something large was running through the trees, circling them impossibly fast. Chekov and Sulu stood back to back on the bridge, waving their flashlights, trying to see who - or what - was causing the noise.
“Uh… Maybe this bridge is haunted after all,” Sulu said nervously.
Chekov elbowed him. “Can you quit trying to scare me already?” He snapped.
“No, Pav, look.” Sulu grabbed Chekov by the arm and spun him around to look up the bridge.
“There’s nothing-” Chekov’s voice caught in his throat as he saw it. An eerie fog was cast over the bridge, nearly opaque, completely concealing the far end of the bridge. Two shadowy figures appeared in the mist, eyes aglow. Chekov and Sulu stood entirely still, in too much disbelief and shock to react.
An otherworldly voice came out of the fog. “Goatman’s not herrrrre, idiots!” It said in a spooky ghost voice.
“Yeah, this is ouuuuuuur bridge now!” A second voice said in an equally exaggerated spooky voice.
“I fought the Goatmaaaaan for this bridge!” The first one said.
“You didn’t fight shiiiiiiiit.”
“Whateveeeeeeer, let’s just get these nerds off our briiiiiiidge!”
“Okaaaaaaay.”
Fog suddenly descended on Chekov and Sulu from all angles. The two shadowy figures with their glowing eyes charged at them, shouting “GET OFF OF OUR BRIDGE” in a horrifyingly distorted demonic chorus. Chekov and Sulu turned and ran back across the bridge, back the way they came, flashlights useless in the thick fog, their screams drowning out their hammering footsteps.
“I’M SORRY I MADE FUN OF YOU FOR BEING SCARED!” Sulu shouted as they sprinted out onto the road and kept going, not wanting to slow down for even a moment.
“GOOD!” Chekov shouted back.
Back on the bridge, the two ghostly figures watched Chekov and Sulu run off into the night, absolutely terrified.
“Well that was fun,” one of the figures said, dropping the fake spooky voice and speaking in a normal human tone.
“You know, I had my doubts, but haunting this bridge has been a fantastic way to spend eternity,” said the second one. It did a double take as it spotted a giant, horned face with glowing red eyes peering up at them from under the bridge. “Hey!” The ghost shouted at it. “Get out of here, Goatman!”
“Yeah! This is our bridge, Goatman!”
“Go find a different bridge, Goatman!”
The Goatman slowly dropped back out of sight.
“God, I hate that guy.”