It Came from Black Swamp Read online

  It Came from Black Swamp

  Dane Hatchell

  This story is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 Dane Hatchell

  Cover Copyright © P.A. Douglas

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this story may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

  From Severed Press:

  From Severed Press:

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  It Came From Black Swamp

  Terrence Hastings closed one eye while pulling at the barbed hook stuck in the lower lip of the catfish. The fish refused to make the task any easier, struggling to flip out of his firm grip. The layer of slime coating its skin made Terrence afraid it would squirt out of his hand and fall back into the water.

  The catfish stared back at him with bulging eyes, begging with a sad face for a return to its nurturing liquid home. The whiskers above its lip and under its chin gave it the appearance of a wise Chinese man. Terrence could have sworn he heard the fish curse when the hook popped free.

  Careful to avoid the pectoral fins tipped with irritating toxin, he let the fish drop into the ice chest with the rest of his catch. Not a bad haul so far, having almost enough for the night’s meal. This would make the third time this week fish would be on the menu for dinner. He didn’t mind, and he knew his wife wouldn’t either.

  Terrence pulled out a fat red worm from the bait box and threaded it carefully on the hook. He returned his expanding buttocks to his lounge chair at the end of the pier and dropped the hook in the water. The plastic bobber floated on the surface looking like a big red eyeball staring at the sky.

  “Hi, honey. How’s the fishing today?” his wife, Patricia, asked.

  “Can't complain. I did hook a couple of bullheads, but tossed them back in the bayou. Funny, when we lived in Minnesota we would have eaten those. There’s so many channel cats here in Louisiana we can be choosy. Channel cats taste so much better.”

  “They sure do.”

  “I guess it all has to do with the diet. Bullheads will eat just about anything, including dead fish. Channel cats only eat live bait.”

  “We’ve been here for two months. You’re not getting tired of the same routine, are you?”

  “Heck, no. I lived the first sixty-two years of my life in the frozen north. I'm enjoying my retirement, feeling warm and toasty in this subtropical weather. Living by the water is a lifelong dream. I'm going to live this dream until the day I die.” Terrence lifted his line to check the bait.

  “It certainly is ‘warm and toasty’ out here. A little bit too much for me. I just wanted to come and see about you. Don’t let time get away.”

  “Baby, I got all the time in the world,” Terrence said, looking up at the blue sky and basking in his new stress free lifestyle.

  Patricia strode down the pier toward the house, careful to avoid remnants of discarded fish guts and dried bird poop.

  “I got a big one!” Terrence shouted.

  Patricia turned and saw her husband lift a large channel cat from the water. The pole bent from the weight with the fish nearly touching the pier.

  “Look at the size of it! I bet it weighs ten pounds!” Terrence stood at the end of the pier, holding his prize before him for his wife to admire.

  Before Patricia could utter a word, a huge white creature leaped out of the water behind Terrence. A long massive mouth spread wide showing rows of pointed teeth clamped down across his chest and pulled him into the water.

  It happened so fast Patricia didn’t believe her eyes. Terrence was there one second and gone the next.

  “Terrence . . .” she called softly in disbelief. “Terrence!” She ran to the end of the pier and yelled his name.

  Terrence plunged into a netherworld of cool, wet darkness. The air bubbled out his lungs as two inch teeth sank through his soft skin and found bone. It all happened so fast it had hit him like a powerful locomotive.

  The water boiled as the enormous alligator spun over and over, subduing its prey until the struggle ended.

  Terrence’s consciousness faded. He watched his last few bubbles of air float toward the surface. The dream he had been living had come to an end.

  * * *

  Clovis Gilchrist sat on his porch cutting trash fish harvested from his traps into strips for bait. Blue crab season was at its peak. His morning haul netted over twelve dozen of the biggest and fattest crabs he'd seen in the last 10 of his 50 years of life.

  Lake Maurepas connected Lake Pontchartrain through Pass Manchac; otherwise known as ‘Black Swamp’ by the locals, as the infamous Black Swamp was located on the northern section of the pass. Gunther Gilchrist, Clovis’s father, built the cypress wood three room house on Black Swamp in the late ’40s. His father ignored the folklore of the Swamp Witch, Addie, and of the tortured souls haunting the crystal waters, a result from an unnamed hurricane killing all but 20 residents of the near town of Frenier in 1915. Gunther purchased the ten acres of land his house now set on for only one hundred dollars.

  A studious man of German descent, Gunther married a young Cajun woman named Bertile. The swamp and the two lakes it connected harbored a bounty of fish and crustaceans, and provided an endless supply of food to live on. The excess catch had been sold at the local fish market for cash. By fate and by heritage, the rugged, but simple lifestyle had been passed on to Clovis, their only child.

  Clovis’s parents died within six months of each other before he reached the age of fifteen, taken by the Grim Reaper in the form of lung cancer, though neither smoked. There were those who blamed the Swamp Witch and her evil spells. Others blamed the ghosts that drifted along Black Swamp, jealous of those who walked among the living.

  Spying a large black cockroach following the trail of fresh fish drippings on the porch boards, Clovis took careful aim and spat a wad of warm tobacco enriched spittle on its head.

  “Take dat, you disgusting bastard. Get you’self on outta here.”

  Though only a lowly insect, its species survived a hundred million years of evolution by sensing when to flee and live another day. It turned and headed back to the pile of rotting firewood near the side of the house.

  The distinct cadence of an Evinrude 250 hummed down the pass. Clovis could identify any boat motor by its sound alone. Engine noises were similar to tones of people’s voices. He knew this particular engine belonged to the sheriff of St. John the Baptist Parish.

  His heart skipped a beat at the thought of the Sheriff snooping around. Self-preservation took control, directing his attention toward the 60-quart ice chest near his front door. He sprang to his feet letting his fish and knife fall to the
porch as he rushed over and grabbed the handle of the cooler, intending to hide it inside the house. It was full of twice the legal limit of speckled trout from his fishing trip from the day before, or so he believed.

  Giving it a mighty tug, anticipating over fifty pounds of fish and ice, Clovis jerked it off the porch and crashed off balance against the front door, bruising his shoulder. The ice chest was empty.

  His son, who he affectionately nicknamed Rooter, apparently had taken him up on his invitation for a cooler full of fresh fish. ‘If you want ’em come get ’em. You clean ’em they’re yours,’ Clovis remembered saying.

  The Sheriff was halfway down the pier, his arms swinging gorilla-like by his side. Sheriff Michael Browning filled his 44" waist pants with that ‘no ass at all’ look in the rear. The back end practically caved in. His bottom lip bulged from a quarter can of Skoal, but his lip was in more proportion with his face than his beer keg gut with the rest of his body.

  Clovis remembered the Sheriff from his younger days, how fit and trim he was from a stint in the U.S. Marines. Sitting at a desk job had its way of adding on a few pounds each year. Sheriff Browning now found himself tipping the scale near three hundred.

  “Clovis Gilchrist, now just what in heaven’s name are you doing standing there with that shit eating grin smeared across your face?” Browning said.

  “I don't know what you talkin’ ’bout Sheriff. I was just t’inkin’’bout how my ice chest is empty, and I got no fish to eat.”

  “You can save your sad stories for someone else. I've heard them all before. I'm only here to talk to you about gator hunting.”

  “Whoa, Sheriff. I ain’t be dynamitin’ nothin’. I don’t care what stories you heard.”

  Browning lifted his hands and shook his head. “I'm not here to start any shit, Clovis. But I ain't going to take no shit either.” Browning stopped, and made a face like he had a bad taste in his mouth. “I need your help.”

  Genuinely stunned, Clovis stuck his right pinky in his ear and jostled it about. “You say you need my help?”

  “Don't make this harder on me than you have too. You can think of it as doing a service for your community,” the Sheriff said. “You've been keeping up with the news, the missing people on Pass Manchac?”

  Clovis closed one eye. “I hear t’ings. I travel Black Swamp every day of my life.”

  “A fourth person in the last six months has gone missing. We suspected gators all along, but we got an eyewitness on this one.

  “The victim’s wife reported the gator grabbed her husband as he stood on the edge of the pier in front of their house. The man-killer should be easy enough for you to identify. It’s an albino, and it had to be pretty big for it to get that high out of the water to grab him.”

  As if believing the stories over the last several months for the first time, Clovis’s eyes turned as big as saucers. He uttered two words, “Ol’ Lu.”

  “Huh? Oh, you mean that old wives tale of the Swamp Witch's pet gator.”

  “Dat ain't no wives tale,” Clovis retorted. “The Swamp Witch is angry. She warned the town that if dat con-du-minium was built, she would curse the waters.”

  “That senile old woman, Addie Landry? She can't even gum the kernels off an ear of corn. The only curse that woman ever knew is when she was young enough to still have her period.”

  “She may be old, she may be weak, but her magic is strong. I can’t help you Sheriff, you on you on. The best t’ing for you to do is get the permit pulled for construction right now. They is just clearing the land. There is still time.”

  Browning lowered his head. “I know the power of local legends. This one though, I hoped you had grown out of. Sometimes age has a way of shattering both the wonders and fears in life.”

  “Sorry, Sheriff. Some t’ings just aren’t meant to be.”

  “Well, Clovis, I do appreciate your time. You let me know if you change your mind.”

  “I ain’t changin’, Sheriff.”

  “Okay. How about your son, Albert? You taught him everything you know. I'm glad he decided to make more of his life and got an education. But there ain't nothing you can do that he can’t match.”

  Clovis sighed. “Maybe, maybe not. I learned the boy real good. He is his own man now. Gator season is short. He helps me make my limit at season’s end. You have to ask him you self, Sheriff. If he’s smart, he’ll say no.”

  Browning raised his eyebrows, as if he could sense the fear harboring inside of Clovis. He went to speak and held himself in check, and then turned and walked away.

  * * *

  Rooter Gilchrist huddled inside his Ford King Ranch 250 for the fifth night in a row. He mindlessly rubbed the St. Christopher medal hanging from his neck for luck. The medal was one of the few possessions that linked him with his mother, who had died before he reached the age of five.

  Rooter earned his nickname from his insatiable curiosity as an infant. A pile of clean clothes waiting for someone to fold was a mountain to explore. What mystery hid between the sheets of a bed? Rooter always took the challenge. Even couch cushions proved to be doors leading to hidden treasure. He delved right in with no fear of the unknown.

  This is one heck of a way to spend my vacation, he thought. A sentiment his wife, Claire, and his seven-year-old son, Gaston, shared. Rooter put the annual beach trip to Florida on hold. One of the motives for sacrificing his family fun was the ten thousand dollar reward for the capture or killing of the alligator menacing the area. The other motive, and more important, was to protect his financial investment.

  Cyprus Point Condominium’s primary goals were to free the wealthy residents of New Orleans and the greater area from the concrete and steel of urban life, and their money. The elite complex would offer the latest in luxury living, with access through Black Swamp to lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain just a step outside the door.

  The recent ups and downs of the stock market motivated Rooter to invest his savings in a local business that ‘guarantied’ to triple his holdings within six months of completion.

  The only way he knew to eliminate any controversy out of the minds of potential buyers was to assure the killer alligator no longer hunted the region.

  His hope of killing the beast quickly and salvaging a few days of vacation to spend on white sands and turquoise water ended the night before. Though a total of ten alligators took the bait thus far, Old Lu remained free to haunt the waters.

  Rooter’s GPS tracker beeped three times, pulling him from the refuge of thought, and back to the dark waters of Black Swamp.

  Exiting the truck and giving his body a quick dousing of mosquito repellent, he waited for his target to travel fifty yards before trailing it in his bass boat.

  Hunting alligators normally involved a baited hook hanging a foot or so above the water. Rooter used a whole fresh chicken from the supermarket using only a string with no hook, as he didn't believe even the strongest of hooks could hold Lu. The idea was for the alligator to take the bait and sleep off the meal. The GPS transmitter hidden in the cavity of the chicken would end up in the alligator’s belly and lead him directly to it.

  This gator was different from the others, traveling almost twice as fast, and not stopping to rest within the hour of swallowing the bait. Rooter had a good feeling he found Old Lu, especially when it turned up a narrow tributary flowing into Pass Manchac alongside the actual Black Swamp area.

  That good feeling gave way to foreboding fear as every story his father had told him about Black Swamp and the witch rolled through his mind.

  ‘You stay away from there if it the last t’ing you do. Give, Swamp Witch Addie, her peace. She give you yours,’ he remembered his father saying on more than one occasion. A lesson Rooter had always adhered to. Until now.

  He invested too much time into this endeavor already. He shook off the fear as ignorant superstition and sped toward his target.

  * * *

  The Swamp Witch’s shack loomed against the orange li
ght of a full moon on the horizon. Its outline reminded Rooter of a haunted house in a picture book Gaston loved. The front of the house was so dark that if it had any windows, it was impossible to tell. There was no way of knowing if Addie was on her porch waiting and watching.

  The blip on the GPS locator had him within a few yards from the alligator. Careful not to shine his flashlight in the direction of the house, Rooter scanned the waters, looking for the telltale signs of a resting gator.

  In less than a minute, he found it. The beam of light bounced off what first appeared to be an empty red Coca Cola can. He knew different. It was the eye of an alligator. From the size of it, a huge one.

  It was difficult to tell if this was Lu at first, the gator’s body hid under a patch of lily pads. But as it snaked its way parallel to his boat through the lilies, there was no doubt it was Lu. Lu, was short for Lucifer.

  The reptile clearly exceeded 20 feet in length. Rooter estimated it weighed over fifteen hundred pounds. The only albino alligators he had seen were at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans. This one would be the largest ever on record, looking like a creature time forgot.

  Rooter grabbed his Rock River Arms AR15, complete with night-vision laser scope. A descendent of the Late Cretaceous period, Lucifer turned toward him with an alligator smile that made the back of his neck tingle. The wicked smile was definitely a warning. Rooter considered abandoning the hunt but once again pushed his fears aside.

  The red dot of the laser danced between the eyes of the alligator. A single shot cracked through the songs of insects, bringing a creepy silence over the swamp. The unnerving scream of a woman filled the void.

  Lucifer lay still on the water. His legs rose from underneath and floated on the surface by his body.

  Rooter whipped his rifle around the bank, using the night-vision in hopes of finding the source of the woman’s scream. He questioned if it was a really a woman’s scream he had heard. Maybe it was just a startled heron and my imagination, he wondered.