Dead Echo

  *

  He’d never considered himself much of a fisherman, but up until the incident he still tried to track out to the old Asdlundt Pond and catch a few catfish at least once a week. He figured there must be other fish in there but only on the rarest of occasions would he catch anything different. Or would anyone else for that matter. Of course they had the old nut, Horace Timms, who swore up and down you could catch a limit of sac a lait on a full moon, but even before it happened Jester hadn’t thought of fishing there at night. The memories were too close of the bones he used to find sticking out of the mud when he was a kid (he knew nothing of the failed cattle experiment), and that had been warning enough as far as he was concerned. But the cats were good, most of them around hand-size which were perfect for frying, and the afternoons had always been good too. Soothing.

  Up until last week. He’d seen someone, or upon closer reflection, some thing. He glanced to the right self-consciously, toward the end of the Acadian wrap-around porch. Just past the corner of the house there, out where the big live oak swelled at the extent of what he kept mowed, was the trail that led out that way. Like the others, it’d been there as long as he could remember. He and his cousins used to spend more time on those damn trails than they did sleeping. So they’d always been firm and clearly lined. Now, not so. They were grown over and ragged, blocked in places by fallen trees or wasted away in sinkholes. But if you knew where they’d been you could still find where they ended up. Came from living here so long. He stood up and walked down to the end of the porch and had a long look at the Big Oak as Mamma had always called it. And he also remembered how good it had felt just the other day to see its blasted top from a distance. Because, goddammit, he’d been lost. Face it, looking out at Big Oak, thinking these thoughts, he had to admit he’d somehow gotten lost. Maybe it was just that old folks’ shit setting in early, though that explanation didn’t fit real good. Because he was pretty sure he knew what it’d been.

  He’d been chased. He’d been scared. He’d lost his way.

  There it was. Another chill coursed his spine because he had not let his mind so readily provide this simple explanation until this very moment. But there it was. He couldn’t disavow the fact that he slept with two loaded guns in his bedroom now. He couldn’t deny the locked doors and the fretful sleep. No, denying was avoiding and that was what was adding to his unease.

  He had seen something.

  His mind went back to that afternoon, fishing tackle in one hand and pole in the other. A fresh pack of Kools in one pocket and the flask in the other. It was about a mile walk out to where the slough started, and from there you had to skirt its perimeter another quarter mile to the cypress-ringed pond. He had an old pirogue turned over by a tree and even though it was about on its last leg the water out there didn’t get much deeper than nine feet or so except at the mouth of the creek. But of course the pirogue was as much protection as flotation because there were water moccasins as long as he was tall and as big around as his calf. He usually brought a gun with him but that day he hadn’t. Not that he thought it would have done any good.

  It had been an uneventful walk. It had been raining a little more than usual lately and the ground was a soggy mess, but the rise that hugged the south end of the pond always stayed firm regardless. Jester had a spot on the point where he did his fishing, a couple of five-gallon buckets to sit on and a big tree with a hole in the side where he stuffed his garbage. So far he’d been stuffing it for the better part of a decade and it wasn’t full yet.

  He didn’t carry a watch but thought now it must have been right around five-thirty or so when he saw it. He remembered he was just getting ready to gather his stuff together (he’d pulled four nice cats from the drink) and leave because he didn’t want to traverse the trail in the dark, when a touch of movement far off to the left caught his eye. Off in the bog that collected the run-off from the pond. At first he thought it must have been a nutra or beaver because it was moving and close to the ground, but then he wasn’t so sure because it stopped. Like a statue in the mud, about waist high. He wasn’t against eating either one and it was just then he remembered he’d left his gun back at the house. All he had was a pocketknife and that was as good as useless if he wasn’t cutting fishing line away from a tangle. The second time it moved he got the familiar chill. He looked down at his arms and noticed the goose bumps and shook his head. He’d been out here all his life and had never had the acquaintance of such a feeling. Not even as a boy, but there it was.

  Whatever it was that caused it ceased moving again.

  He squinted in the gathering twilight but could get no better idea of what the thing was, but he did notice where it was. He’d have to walk right past it on the way to the trail, and for some unknown reason that didn’t bode well. But with the tackle box and pole in one hand and the stringer with the four cats in the other he started back, trying to walk with a strength and purpose he had a hard time finding.

  He stopped again about thirty feet away. His eyes had not deceived him; there was something in the bog and it didn’t look like an animal. The shape was odd, the thing (whatever it was) covered, absolutely covered in bog mud. It looked almost like a broken cypress stump except for the fact that it continued to move at irregular intervals. Now it rocked back and forth as if blowing lightly in the wind, a sheet perhaps, winding back and forth. Jester also at the same time thought he heard a thin mewling sound coming from it but the wind through the trees could have fooled him.

  Then it moved again and it was a man, or at least something man-shaped. Two bog-covered arms lifted out from the sides, pulling free of the muck. The hands at the end of those arms clenched and unclenched and the mud fell away in gloppy chunks. That’s when Jester noticed the mewling came from a mouth as two white eyes opened above it on either side. Pointing his direction. The head swiveled around to get him head-on and Jester froze solid. His eyes told him one thing but his head told him another: his eyes that a person, a man probably, was sitting embedded in the marsh, while his mind frantically whispered that such a thing was completely implausible. Dangerously so. There’d been nothing there when he’d passed earlier and even if someone had been buried in the mud down here and he’d missed it, it shouldn’t be moving now! He looked away from the thing and back to his feet. They seemed a long way away and as if they’d belonged to someone else. He could give them no command. He heard a squelching and looked back.

  Whatever it was was getting up. A very big man. Covered head to foot with cake-black mud except for those milky white eyeballs still drilled upon him. It began to shake itself free with great, dog-like tremors, slowly pulling itself from the bog. Great wads of mud, clinging to what must have been ragged clothes bent the figure into a slump. But it seemed determined. The milky eyes blazed and Jester dropped everything he had in his hands. And, lucky for him, the sound broke him from his paralysis. Suddenly his feet belonged to him again and the first thing he did was take two shuffling steps backward and fall over a root. He came down amid the tackle and fishing pole (not even realizing until he got home later that he’d gotten a fish hook caught in his right thigh which proved a bitch getting out) and gulped air like a landed fish.

  The thing was almost out now.

  And that’s when the stench hit. Jester remembered as a child finding a dead cow half-submerged by the side of Mill’s Creek. He’d been the youngest in the group that day and one of the older boys had dared him to hit it with a tree branch. Not wanting to lose face he’d crept up to the creek side and laid a hefty blow on the cow’s bloated side. The exploding stench as the branch broke through the rotted meat was easily the worst he’d ever encountered.

  Until now.

  This was worse because its bearer was not dead, not in the classic sense. This thing that made dead and bloated cows smell not so bad was almost completely out of the slough, and although the eyes showed no pupils, their whites remained fixed upon him. The mewling had turned into a chest-deep grunting, like a
large pig’s. The rotting stench surrounded him, and he thought he might puke. But he didn’t…didn’t think he had the time. The white eyes shown with a faint red haze now and its hands were reaching out for him, somehow no more than twenty or so feet away. It was trying to cut him off on the left side, he noticed in horror, trying to force him back, deeper into the bog.

  It was this thought that finally got him moving, his action suddenly mirrored in the larger thing’s also, turning fast to cut him off, its arms outstretched and fingers splayed. Jester had not expected anything so quick and ducked at the same time he skipped over a cypress stump. Nonetheless, he felt the shirtsleeve on the thing’s side tear away, wrenching his own arm back, for a second. But then he was free and running. The thing howling behind him and beginning the chase. Because even though Jester never looked back he could hear mud slapping on the trail and breaking branches over his shoulder, a heavy rancid breathing he could not break free of. Every second he waited for a muddy hand to grab his shirttail and pull him into its clutches. So he ran and ran. At some point something did touch him on his shoulder and he spun in the opposite direction, off the path, tearing through brambles and vines with his hands out in front of his face, screaming himself hoarse as he ran. He finally tripped over a log and went sprawling headfirst into a mud hole near the base of a water oak. The second he hit the ground he knew it was over and he closed his eyes and put his hands behind his head to protect it from the claws. But none came. After a moment he rolled over on his back and stared straight up at the green canopy. It was all serenity and that fact alone goosed him to action.

  He sprang to his feet and looked around. Right smack dab in the middle of nowhere, nothing he recognized. He had no idea how long he’d been running once he cut from the track, but at least there was no sign of whatever had been chasing him. But his shirtsleeve was missing and that was as far along that track as he wanted to go right then. He wanted home, the comfort of his shabby little living room, his bed. That was all. He’d have to leave these horrors for another time when he could give them more consideration. Now all he wanted was home. And once again, luck was on his side. He’d run into the furthest reaches of dusk and the shadows were thickening up around him. In another fifteen, twenty minutes he’d be left in total darkness and have to stay out for the night. With the mosquitoes and that thing. He’d always been good with directions, but it still took him until the last vestige of light was on the way out and a lucky glance in the right direction to spot the top of the blasted live oak.

  When dark set in full he’d been standing on his front porch, reaching for the doorknob. The fishhook just beginning to pain him but paying it no mind until he was safely inside with his weapons loaded and within easy reach. Extracting the hook had occupied his mind and a good two hours of his time thereafter.