by Peter David
All around me now . . . are popping sounds . . . as slick vines intertwine . . . leaves slap against one another. I create a circulatory system . . . of hollow vines and tubers . . . and pump into it . . . the water of the swamp . . . the lifeblood . . . of my world.
I raise my arms . . . massive and strong . . . as strong as the earth . . . and I hear a rustling . . . and realize it is me.
Part of me . . . is aware . . . this body is not human. It is not meant to be . . . but merely an approximation . . . in honor . . . of a rebirth.
I look down . . . and see my feet . . . are rooted to the ground. The earth mother . . . does not wish to part with me . . . but I must probe the mystery . . . of what is happening in the swamp.
I lift my right leg . . . and with a snapping sound . . . the roots rip free . . . and moments later the left . . . and the earth mother . . . with a sob . . . releases me. I shamble forward . . . the living embodiment . . . of nature . . . seeking out what is unnatural.
And I remember . . . that the newly born cry.
I tilt my head back . . . run a tongue of vegetable matter . . . across teeth of wood . . . and howl a greeting.
4
The alligators knew.
The water birds knew.
The small, furry creatures and the larger, cold-blooded creatures shared as one in the knowledge.
And more . . .
At the Wein Motel, Alan the desk clerk was doing the London Times crossword puzzle when he swatted away a fly buzzing in his ear.
That was when he realized. He looked up, watching the fly circle the room lazily, and it was buzzing—the damned thing was making a noise.
“Oh, tell me it’s so,” he could barely whisper.
And then, from deep within the swamp, a cry wafted through the air. A cry as new as an infant, as old as the earth.
Alan smiled through his thick beard and said, “So . . . you’ve returned. About bloody time.”
Harry felt around frantically, certain any second he would manage to lay his hands on his glasses. Certain he would be able to regain control of this nightmarish situation.
His questing hands reached out and grasped something hard: a misshapen leg.
He knew immediately what it was, and he threw himself backward frantically, his heart sinking. The Leech reached down and hauled him to his feet.
He felt the Leech’s fetid breath blast into his face, and he struggled fiercely, his throat paralyzed with fear. Then he found his voice and started to scream, locking his arms and legs against the Leech’s chest in vain hope of accomplishing what two of his peers had already failed to do: live.
“Please, no!” As the sucker prepared to close on his face, Harry sent out a plea to the entity he was certain had deserted him. “Oh, God, please!”
And suddenly he was torn, as if by divine force, from the grasp of the Leech. He had a brief impression of leaves, of sinewy muscle as strong as a tree, and then he was hurled backward, tumbling end over end.
He never thought he would be so happy to land in the thick, unpleasant water of the swamp. But at least he was alive to do it.
He scrambled up out of the water, peered through the darkness and haze as best he could. His mind screamed at him to run, to get the hell out of there, not to question what had just happened but merely be thankful it had while quickly covering ground.
But he couldn’t. He stared, anchored to the spot. Rooted. Trying to make out the bizarre scene playing out before him.
The Antibody hesitated. Its instinct told it something had just prevented it from destroying the infection. And that something was now standing before it, waiting, appraising. It watched the Antibody carefully through two small, glowing red eyes that seemed to float in huge pools of black.
Dimly the notion began to fight through to what served as the Leech’s mind that this was no new intruder it faced now. This was not another invasion of the bloodstream. This . . . this was the bloodstream. This was the heart of the swamp, the brain of the swamp now sending new instructions to the Antibody.
The heart and brain of the swamp pointed.
The order was clear. Leave the body.
The Antibody was staggered. It was part of the body now. It had no humanity left, so it had to be part of the swamp. If the swamp rejected it, it had nothing.
Perhaps . . . perhaps it had always had nothing. Perhaps the idea that it was a defender against invasion was a delusion. Yes, yes, it was becoming clear. It was not an Antibody. It was just . . . just a parasite. A bloodsucking leech, a monster with no purpose except to destroy, to feed off the living.
The living swamp was still pointing, still ready to banish the Leech.
The unnatural, banished by nature. The unreal, forced to face reality. It was too much. Too much for the Antibody. Too much for anybody.
Harry watched in horror as the Leech went berserk.
He could barely make out the Leech’s opponent: He was tall and dark, filthy as hell and covered with vines and leaves, and smelling of dirt. And then, with a scream torn from an inhuman throat, the Leech leapt at him, that terrible sucker mouth lashing out and clamping down onto the face of the newcomer.
Harry gasped and, in defiance of all logic, actually got a little closer. For the Leech was having trouble with the newcomer. This . . . this swamp man stood there with incredible patience while the Leech was trying to find some sort of a hold on him. It was tough going. Huge pieces of dirt and weed came off in the Leech’s hand. Its sucker mouth pulled away clumps of mud, desperately seeking somewhere on that impassive face to latch onto.
Then the swamp man reached out and, as if dealing with a child, lifted the Leech man high over his head. He half twisted and hurled the monstrosity a dozen yards, the Leech smashing into a large tree. The Leech slid down to the ground, momentarily stunned, and the swamp man splashed through the water toward it, silent and pulsing with power.
The Leech stood, turned, and uprooted the tree.
Of all things, ripping the tree from the ground seemed to stagger the swamp man for a moment. He looked disoriented, as if the act of the separation had actually been felt by him. The Leech, seizing upon whatever opportunity it could, charged forward, slamming the tree around like a battering ram. It caught the swamp man midsection, knocking him down into the water.
Harry could feel the impact all the way from where he was standing. Whoever was fighting the Leech, he had to be dead or dying from that blow. Crushed ribs, punctured lungs, could be the only results from such a pounding.
The Leech advanced on the swamp man and slammed the tree down, pinning the swamp man beneath it. “Get away from him!” screamed Harry, but if the Leech heard, it paid no mind. The swamp man struggled clumsily, as if unused to his own body, and he placed one arm against the tree and tried to lever it off.
Immediately the Leech perched on top of the tree, finding tentative traction on the slippery branches, and it grabbed the swamp man’s arm and pulled, pulled with all its strength, all its madness . . .
It ripped the arm from the swamp man’s socket with a horrible splutch sound.
Harry sank to his knees, now waist-deep in the water, moaning in fear and illness. That was that. Now blood would fountain from the amputated arm, from the maimed shoulder, and the Leech would drink deep, become stronger still, and they were going to die.
But there was no blood.
Even without his glasses, Harry could see there was no blood. But the swamp man was still alive. How could it be?
Not only was he still alive, but now he was fighting back.
Harry had once been in lumberjack territory some years ago, and had heard the cracking sound of a tree as it was falling over, the moan of something hundreds of years old protesting its fate.
He heard that roar now, impossibly, from the throat of the swamp man: the roar of the wood as the swamp man hurled the tree, with the Leech creature on top of the tree, off himself using his legs and good arm.
The Leech leapt clear
and advanced on the swamp man once gain. Meantime the swamp man was fishing beneath the water, apparently searching for the lost arm.
Yes, Harry was thinking insanely, find the arm. Pack it on ice. It can be saved, reattached . . .
Just as the Leech got within range, the swamp man stood, holding the severed arm by the wrist. He turned and swung it at the Leech.
The arm smashed across the Leech’s face, staggering the creature. The Leech tried to pull itself together, but another blow spun it completely around, and it fell into the water. It pulled itself up just in time to have the arm smash down on its back.
Calmly, implacably, the swamp man pounded on the Leech using his own severed arm. The Leech couldn’t mount an offense, couldn’t even get a defense going. The swamp man continued to batter it mercilessly, moving faster and faster as he became more confident, more powerful. The more of a beating the Leech took, the greater the swamp man’s strength seemed to become.
Now the Leech looked as if it could barely stand, and the swamp man swung the arm again, caving in the side of the Leech’s head. It sank beneath the water, and the swamp man advanced on where it had gone under, still clutching the arm and waving it threateningly.
Harry tried futilely to rub the dirt from his eyes, and then suddenly the swamp man turned and shambled toward Harry. Harry stood unmoving, too tired and too terrified to budge as the swamp man bore down on him.
Oh, God, I’m next, he thought.
The swamp man dropped his lopped-off arm, and his good hand lashed out toward Harry. Harry shrieked.
But the swamp man was reaching over Harry’s head. Tentatively Harry looked up and saw the swamp man was now holding the head of a snake, which was snapping and hissing angrily at him.
Slowly Harry craned his neck around and saw the snake’s long coils wrapped around the tree branch overhead. It was then it dawned on him: The snake had been about to strike, and the swamp man had ensured that hadn’t happened.
Harry had been saved twice in one night. Not bad.
The swamp man pulled the snake down from its perch, turned, and hurled the reptile a fair distance away.
Harry looked down and almost started to scream again, for now a hand was reaching up at him from the bog, and he thought the Leech was trying to get him again. Then he realized, though, it was the hand, leaf-and-muck-encrusted, belonging to the rest of the swamp man’s arm the Leech had torn off.
He pointed and managed to get out, “You . . . you better have that arm taken care of . . . Maybe you can still . . . still . . .”
The swamp man looked down, picked up the now-useless arm. Harry was incredulous. He didn’t consider himself squeamish, but he would have had real trouble even touching a dismembered portion of his own anatomy, much less pick it up and study it with the clinical detachment this guy had.
The swamp man turned the arm around and placed the upper arm against the shoulder.
Harry tried to see clearly, and indeed he was seeing what was happening but simply couldn’t accept it.
Root and tendrils were shooting from the arm, and the shoulder was intertwining amid little sounds of spuk and pwop and fwep. At first the arm hung loosely, and then it was pulled tightly against the shoulder, the seam vanishing, the moss-encrusted muscles starting to flex.
It was as if the arm had never been detached. The swamp man bent it at the elbow, moved the fingers, and nodded his great head, satisfied.
Harry sat down hard in the water. Once such indignity would have elicited a symphony of complaints from him. Now Harry wasn’t even aware of it.
He knew he owed this . . . creature . . . his life. That whatever he was facing was sure as hell more benevolent than the monster that had been chasing him, which had sucked his friends dry and been ready to do the same to him.
Thinking of the Leech, Harry cast a nervous glance in the direction where the monster had last gone under. There was no sign of it. It was either dead or, hopefully, mortally injured. Still, his major concern at the moment was what he was facing right now.
“You . . .” He licked his lips, spitting out the dirt his tongue found there. “You’re not human?”
It was more or less a rhetorical question. Nevertheless the great creature before him slowly shook its head.
“What . . . are you?” asked Harry.
The creature paused, considered this. And then he spoke, his voice funereal, pulled from somewhere deep within himself, from deep within the earth. Each word was an effort, each syllable a challenge. But he spoke just the same.
“The swamp,” he said.
“ ‘The swamp’?” Harry repeated in confusion. “The swamp isn’t alive. It’s just a . . . a thing.”
He does not . . . understand. He would never say that . . . if he did understand . . . or ever could . . . but I will put it . . . in a way he may yet . . . understand . . .
And he spoke one more time to Harry Dugan in his sepulchral voice.
“Yes . . . a thing . . . and I am . . . the Swamp Thing.”
5
Alan the desk clerk heard the familiar muttered profanity, this time distinctly from a female voice, and he put down his magazine and called out, “Knob come off again?”
The door was pulled open as sunshine flooded into the musty interior of the lobby. Alan squinted, putting an arm up against the sun’s brilliance, as an attractive blond woman, dressed far more appropriately for the shores of Malibu than the shores of Suicide Swamp, struggled in. She was hauling a small red checked bag and audibly grunting.
He imagined the bag hadn’t seemed all that heavy when she’d started out on her odyssey. The humidity of the swamp, however, tended to take its toll. She dropped the bag and paused, waiting for her eyes to become accustomed to the dimness. She pulled in frustration at the tank top adhering to her skin since she had become covered with sweat.
“Got a phone here?” She addressed the general dark, still not quite certain where anything or anyone was.
Ordinarily Alan would have directed her to the pay phone around back, but something about her prompted him to take pity on her. He reached under the desk and pulled out a small unit and said, “Right here, love.”
She walked over slowly, now clearly able to make out objects. In addition to the tank top she wore a pink miniskirt and stylish bright blue tights. She paused a moment and said, “Excuse me,” then turned her back to him, slid out of her shoes, and with a quick movement, pulled down the tights.
“Nicely done,” said Alan appraisingly.
“Thanks,” she replied, wadded the tights into a sopping ball, and stuffed them into her bag. She withdrew a pair of thigh-high white stockings and pulled them on. Then she picked up the phone and stopped, her finger poised over the dial. “Who am I calling?” she asked.
“Couldn’t say, love.”
“Right. A taxi.”
“Didn’t you just get here in a taxi?” said Alan. “I could have sworn I heard one pull away just now.”
“Yeah, well . . . he heard where I wanted to go and wouldn’t take me there. Oh, he agreed to it when he picked me up at the airport, but his nerve ran out.”
“Well . . .”—Alan steepled his fingers, leaning on the edge of the desk—“where did you want to go?”
“The Arcane Mansion.”
He looked at her askance, his hair covering his face so only his sunken eyes were visible. “Why would you want to go to that godforsaken place?”
“The guy who runs it is my stepfather. I’m Abigail Arcane.”
He was silent for a long moment. “Condolences.”
“What do you mean by—”
“Look, love,” he said affably. “Why not check in to this place? Stay a night or two. Soak in the beautiful atmosphere . . .”
“I’m soaking enough already.”
“And then turn around and leave. I already gave that advice to one chap, and he didn’t listen. Perhaps you might.”
“Well, I’d really like to, but I can’t put this off any
longer. Now . . .”—she held the phone impatiently—“who should I call?”
He sighed and pushed a small advertisement for a taxi service. “You’ll have to tip the chap a hefty bit, but they’ll get you there.”
She gave a quick nod of thanks and made the call as Alan stepped back, his arms folded. There was something about her, he realized, something he couldn’t quite put a finger on.
She certainly didn’t carry with her any of the pure evil that seemed to radiate from Casa Arcane. No, she seemed to have just the opposite about her.
“About twenty minutes? Fine, I’ll be in the lobby,” she said, then hung up. And now she was looking not at Alan, but just past him. “Excuse me,” and she came around the desk and went straight to a potted fern that was positioned listlessly on the table behind him.
She started to murmur to the plant in low, encouraging tones. Alan watched her speculatively. “It seems to like you,” he said at length.
“I’ve always gotten along real good with plants,” she said.
“That’s a knack that will serve you in good stead out here.”
She turned and said thoughtfully, “You’re British, aren’t you?”
“That’s right, love.”
“ ’Cause that’s not the kind of accent I’d expect to hear in the middle of the bayou. What in the world are you doing around here?”
“Oh . . .”—he glanced around—“it reminds me of where I grew up.”
“They have swamps in England?”
“Boggy areas, actually. That’s where I hail from: the moor.”
“Well, then . . .” She stopped, realizing she didn’t know his name.
“Alan,” he supplied helpfully.
“Well, then, Alan of the Moor, do you actually make a living out of this place? I saw a vacancy sign outside.”
“At the moment we have only one guest,” he said, sounding almost apologetic, and he pointed. “That chap right there.”
Abby turned and gasped, startled.
There was a man seated in a large wicker chair, tucked over in the shadows of the corner. He simply stared out, not appearing to focus on much of anything.