A Completed Story

A Night In The Swamp

A Short Story by Cory Kutschker

The rowboat creaked as my paddles slapped the water. I had an unease as the moonlight gleamed off the water and partially illuminated the cypresses on either side of me. There were deep shadows in the midst, hiding a world from me and it was the hidden that I feared. For even though I had an oil lamp there rigged to a post at the bow, much of this world was still black, murmuring and whispering of odd and ill boding secrets. Small relief was given by the flitting small clouds of fireflies. Yet my mind escaped to necro worlds of grotesque and lurking phantasms and to hideous beasts that science balks at.

War planes were rumoured to have crashed in those placid and thick waters. I can well imagine them half sunk with creepers draped over their wings. The cockpit mostly sunk there concealing the bullet ridden corpse. The gunner possibly ejected or half draped out of its doors with ragged clothing, his flesh being picked at by the various carrion eaters. A raven very well sat upon the tail perched comfortably with an eyeball in its beak when the commotion quieted and the flesh was still ripe.

Wild folk made their home there. Odd little shacks are set out on the river's edge. It's keepers made queer practices of some voodoo or maybe some unknown or long forgotten variant of witchcraft. I had business at the swamps middle, a package that needed delivery.

“8/17/2014 Follow the river to the middle of the swamp. Signed, Gregory.” he had written it last weekend on a severely rumpled bit of paper. A young boy had delivered it.

Much earlier we had arranged the contents of the package. While I strongly objected to its manner of business, he insisted and paid me several dollars to never mind. I, in haste returned this sum to him as preservation of my dignity. All this honour I kept, even though I needed the money for the repair of my motor. And in return I urged him saying, “I will do this once, but let this be the last of this sort of content!” He agreed shortly after, in a curt nod. 

The journey there was no less queer in its tenor. Before my departing, at the bank of the river, an odd and malnourished, elderly man stooped, leaning heavily upon a hand crafted cane.

“Going to the swamps?” He queried in a dry murmur. I nodded, throwing the oars into the boat.

“Keep your sights straight.” He said, nearing a whisper. I stepped in and set the oars onto the crutches.

I looked back towards the elderly man, gone. On I paddled into the forest of cypresses, the black congealing in front of me. I knew not what set its eyes upon me beyond the folds, but it was as though I were proceeding through the world’s most primal grottoes and dimensional shifts that warped the air in front. Otherworldly ‘scapes passed as I continued paddling, rippling a mirror that knew more than I did. A rotting stench emanated from the accursed object in the box beside me. I had slowly approached a small series of squalid shacks on the riverbank. I could see into some of them, matching my sight with obscure decorations on their walls. Odd tribal markings were engraved into doors and the frames were adorned with a vast array of queer, small objects such as bones and teeth, some of these being fangs from the beasts and slithering things to be found in the swamp. Some windows were covered over what looked like ragged remains of skins and some others with great sheets or blankets. Some had tears, as though telling a story of forceful entry by a thing with claws. I finally came upon Gregory’s shack and docked the boat. I stood before that dilapidated shack with no less than a tremulous edge upon my heart and lungs, choking every breath and palpitating the circulating beats. Red and yellow slithered past my right foot, a thing that could kill a fellow. I knocked on the door and just as quickly as I knocked, it swung open. And there filling the frame stood Gregory smiling. “Come in, come in!” He ushered with his hand. I walked in noticing an odd stifling thickness about the room, an odd atmosphere that hung on every inch of my body making it feel slow and lethargic. “An uneventful journey I trust?” He queried with his head tilted to the side and his eyes drawn to the box under my arm. I nodded as he queried again, “Is that it?” I nodded and handed the box to him. At which he spared no time in opening and withdrawing that odious thing. “The candle of Abdul Alhazred! Finally!” He smiled with ardour at the object in his hands. “Tell me, was it difficult to obtain?” “Yes, actually it was and took a great deal of bribing and outsourcing to get it, never mind the final price the owner wanted for it.” “How much?” “$10,000” “That briefcase over there has more than enough to cover for it and thank-you for your years of service of retrieval of objects for me.” He said as he motioned to the briefcase in the corner. “And now I am certain that you will want a demonstration?" Ignoring any attempt of an answer, he therein produced a lighter from his pocket and lit the candle. After this he proceeded to roll up a carpet that was placed in the center of his floor revealing an engraved circle with odd markings belonging to alchemy. Then taking the candle he slowly poured the black molten wax into the engraved circle and placed a small pool of it in the center where there was a seeming indentation, perhaps to mark the center. A disturbing change took over that small puddle as it slowly grew in circumference to meet the rim. Upon fulfillment, there was a noticeable rotation in the the large mass of black wax.  And then it stopped and became as a crude black tar and then flattened out as though becoming a dark seething hole leading to oblivion. I peered into that blackness to see a kind of writhing in the depths. Contemptuous creatures moved in the darkness breathing out dark insults, snickering, giggling and querying and prying for my secrets. Outside, a kind of fervor erupted from the creatures. Everything that scuttled on the branches, flapping things and those that slither were all letting out a blasted cacophony as though having a knowledge or some dread of the ill manner that bled from the pores of this shack.

I left the money. No time.

I went to the boat and started paddling giving each oar a distinct draw as I began my frenzied return. The blackness behind me seemed to boil and there was a murmuring and that same impish giggling that I heard from that awful hole. But through the fervor there was also a distinct sense of support as though I were being given an extra dose of strength to maintain the pace down the river. What was that? Doesn't matter, keep rowing. And so onward I go paddling through the wee hours until dawn, meeting the risen sun.