by Wile E Young
****
I came to in a wooden chair that didn’t recline. My back hurt terribly.
Luc had redecorated the inside of Cy’s cabin. Bottles full of plants and spices that I couldn’t identify littered the exposed shelves while the furniture all looked homemade, carved lovingly with intricate designs whose meaning went over my head. I sniffed and caught the scent of honey, a crisp warm smell mixed with a hint of nature. Luc was at his kitchen counter, staring intently at a teakettle that was beginning to steam under a warm flame from the stove. Bones, powders, and odd items that made me think of something exotic decorated virtually every space that was available. I shifted in my chair, looking around at everything and trying to hide the fear that was beginning to jump through me.
“I like to handmake things. Patience is a virtue when you do what I do.” Luc said softly as he poured the tea into matching chipped green cups and walked over, handing one to me. “Drink up, you’ll feel better.”
I sniffed it and the aroma was pleasant, but I still eyed it warily “Is this…” I felt incredibly stupid saying the next words. “Magic tea?”
To his credit Luc didn’t laugh. “No, Mr. Pope, just some herbal tea like Mom used to make. It’ll take the edge off.”
I still wasn’t entirely convinced, but I began sipping the concoction slowly. it washed down my throat and I felt a sense of peace and calm come over me.
Otis…
My hand clenched around the cup hard enough for the warmth to seep in and sear my skin. There would be a small blister when it was over, but that paled in comparison to the pain I felt.
“What… the hell… happened to him?” I enunciated every word, letting my young friend know that I wasn’t fucking around. I needed answers: about Lincoln, about Otis, about every piece of weird shit that had permeated my life since Sammie Jo had reappeared on my dock.
“You sure you want to know?” Luc walked around the living room, my eyes following every step as he examined the various jars and rearranged them, his hands trailing down the small chicken bones he had strung from the ceiling. “Once you know, Mr. Pope, there is no going back.”
“Cut the shit and tell me.”
Luc smiled with no humor. “My family was around for a long time, Mr. Pope. Came down and settled in the 1700s, if you believe old Grandpappy’s tales. From there our kin spread all over Texas and Louisiana: hoodoo workers, voodoo priests, traiteurs. Everyone had an inclination towards the more spiritual side of things.”
My hands were shaking as I tried to sip on the tea. The rumors were true: he and his had practiced black magic.
Maybe he could see the look in my eyes or maybe the tensing of my shoulders. Either way he swiftly defended himself. “It isn’t evil, Grady Pope. I don’t traffic with the Devil or any other kind of witchcraft. Magic, hoodoo, everything is all about intent and entreating the right things.”
I was feeling guilty that I had saved this man when he was just a boy. My anger flared, and I decided to stab at him where it really hurt. “None of that saved your family though, did it?”
That easy-going smile disappeared and suddenly I felt very alone and very powerless before the Cajun as his fist clenched. There was a sudden growling, and I froze in my seat.
A monster emerged from the garage. It was the biggest dog I had ever seen, all muscle and white fur with teeth like daggers.
“There you are, Mojo,” Luc said simply, and the dog ceased growling at me and padded over to his master who proceeded to scratch behind his ears.
“You’re a good man, Mr. Pope, and I respect you. I owe you my life, but don’t speak of my parents in that way.”
The massive dog leaned into him and I gulped down the rest of my tea, trying to hide that the Cajun man intimidated me.
“What you do in this world comes back sevenfold. The folks who murdered my kin will pay, of this I swear to you.”
Luc sipped from his own cup of tea and licked his lips afterward, looking out towards the river. “That being said, I don’t reckon I’ll be taking up that grudge until we solve the Deep Folk’s grievance.”
Deep Folk. I had never heard the phrase before, but I figured that he must have been talking about whatever it was that had taken Otis and put its ghastly hand around me.
“There are old things in this world, Mr. Pope, things that people aren’t equipped or don’t want to see. They came up from the Atlantic. You see my family entreated them here, made pacts and promises. This was before they blew up the Great Raft and the lake lowered; that’s where it all started…”
Luc shuddered as his eyes closed. It scared me to see his own hand trembling, the tea bouncing up and running down his hand. Mojo licked his other hand as Luc gritted his teeth. “I had only seen them once before today, back when I was a boy and their chieftain came to entreat with my father. The Deep Folk don’t like the light of day or interacting with humans. But down under the lake, down in the Cradle, they feast and mate and kill…”
He spoke with conviction, with fear, and with a certainty that every word that he was speaking was true. I was almost afraid of the answer, but I asked the question that had come to my mind since the beginning.
“What are they?”
“The First Tribe, Primordial Rulers, the Bishop Fish, Dagon… Man has called them many things over the countless millennia. There is no word in our language for what they call themselves in their tongue.”
Luc turned and began rummaging through an old drawer until he removed a book that looked like it had seen the better part of a few centuries. “This is The Charor Psalms, written in a language long dead but handed down through the centuries and teachable, if you know where to learn.”
The book landed heavily in front of me, the ancient hide cover flipping open ancient parchment flipping. Words written in diagonal and spiraling text were scrawled across the page, hard angles and periodic dots. It looked like nothing I had ever seen and nearly hurt my eyes to look at.
“Don’t stare at it too long. It does nasty things to the head if you don’t properly prepare. But you want to know about the Deep Folk? Turn the page.”
Luc patted me on the shoulder as he passed, heading into the kitchen. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him remove a bottle of Pernod and begin pouring himself a glass.
I flipped the page in front of me.
There was a drawing on the next page, detailed to the point it could have been a photograph. The image was like a man but with a square head, sharp blocky teeth like a guillotine’s blade, black eyes as deep as an ocean, pallid brown and green skin that spoke of savage muscle, with webbed hands and feet that ended in hooked claws that the artist depicted dripping in blood. A bloated belly and a monstrous member hanging between its legs completed the image of this monstrous cross between fish and man.
My mind swirled… I thought I was going to be sick.
Luc gently closed the book and set a glass of Pernod into my hand, advising me to drink.
“Imagine seeing one in person. If you don’t come properly prepared, you’ll be vomiting for a week.” He whispered a few words and my nausea began to disappear. “These are the things that you heard speaking and that took Otis.”
“Why?” I managed to choke out, and my friend tapped the book in front of me. “The Deep Folk know the ins and outs of unspeakable and ancient rites that I don’t. The book says they can mask themselves to our minds, make us see what’s not there or worse: overwhelm the senses.”
“No, why did they take Otis?”
Luc swallowed all of his Pernod in one go and began pouring himself another one before setting his glass on the floor and drinking straight from the bottle. “I tried to reason with them, let them know that you watched over Lincoln and that Otis was a sworn protector of Uncertain… I thought together we could make a new pact with them.”
Another swig. Mojo appeared by his side, whining softly, and Luc reached down to scratch his ears. “But it’s pointless. They’ve all gone mad, insane in the mainfr
ame, fucking frenzying to mate with anything that they can get their hands on.” Luc chuckled mirthlessly. “At least I compelled them to bring back the deputy’s body.”
I leaned back in my chair, just staring at the wall, trying to wrap my mind around all of this and realizing that I had hopped, skipped, and fallen straight down the fucking rabbit hole.
It was all crazy and it was all true.
I had never been keen to the existence of the supernatural or anything so crass. Even God in church on Sunday was more abstract.
Magic and fish monsters, fucking crazy.
Lincoln…
“You said something about guarding my grandson… why would they even care?”
Luc sighed and took another swig of the bottle, a deep one, then pointed a crooked finger at my chest. “Now we come to the crux of it. They’ve done put a powerful working on your mind.”
I snorted, my subconscious desperately hoping that it was a joke and Luc’s grim features letting me know it was anything but.
“How could they… never even caught a glimpse of them when they came up…” I sounded like a school kid whining to the teacher about his poor grades. I was pushing sixty and the thought sickened me to my core.
“It’s been laid on you from the start. Once you laid eyes on your grandson it was laid on you.”
I knew what he was implying. The realization had already dawned on me, but I began shaking my head, refusing to believe it.
“I whipped up a little something that I thought might help clear the cobwebs in your head.” He produced a small red bag tied with a cord and slipped it over my neck before I could protest.
The floodgates opened and the weight I had been feeling on my life dried up. Lincoln’s birth came first, but it wasn’t a newborn covered in steaming afterbirth and blood but a fish-shaped abomination that squalled deep warbling cries at me.
“They come out of the womb fully ready to subjugate the uninitiated.” I heard Luc say faintly.
More of the horrid sight of that squalling thing before he was two years old and standing in front of me, the blocky shape of his head already formed and the beginnings of muscle beginning to show on his frame. The clothes I had given him were mildewed and frayed, and with a small warbling gurgle he grinned.
“G’mpa!”
I screamed and tore myself out of the memory, panting hard before I realized the full extent of what was happening. I broke down into sobs at the confirmation that my grandson, my last flesh and blood, wasn’t my flesh and blood at all.
Should have taken my rifle and ended it, put a bullet right through my brain and slipped off to Hell. Would have been better that way.
Luc patted my back and didn’t say anything until the tears had run their course and I sat in silence, unable to speak or say much of anything.
“It’s my family’s fault, you know.” Luc sounded mournful. “They lured them up from the Gulf with promises, that this place would be their home, that no harm would come to it… so they swore.”
Luc pulled up a chair and sat across from me. Mojo laid his head down in his lap and his owner stroked the massive white head. “Then came the destruction of the Great Raft, then the oil wells in the big lake, and the ammunition plant. The Deep Folk ignored it for as long as they could, content that my kinfolk were working their art against the powers that be.”
He was lost in a memory now, his eyes looking a someplace distant that I couldn’t see. “That ammunition plant was the end of everything for us. It was the mercury you see, dripped right down into the Cradle and drove all of them mad. They used to peaceful, intelligent. Now look at them: ignorant savages worshiping a toxin as a god.” It was like he was hardly aware of me now, lost in the ennui of old memories and times long past.
“Stunted their children when they had them, wretched things that had to be put down as soon as they came slithering out of the womb. That’s why they started abducting people with the help of everyone they whammied. Even then, that just produces stunted things out of some inbred nightmare.”
He sighed, and for a moment he didn’t look like a young man barely hitting his prime but an old soldier that had seen too much and walked away with even more pain.
“My dad tried to get it shut down several times.” Luc snorted and raised a middle finger towards the sky. “But there ain’t no fighting city hall, is there?”
He was in full form now spitting each word with venom at no one in particular before shrinking in his chair, patting his dog on the head and joining me in my blank stare, both of us lapsing into silence.
Maybe ten minutes passed with only muffled bird song supplying noise.
“I’m going to have to kill Lincoln, aren’t I?” My voice was calm, quiet, devoid of hope.
Luc looked up at me and slowly shook his head. “No. That would just end whatever restraint they have. His father would declare open war. Uncertain, Mooringsport, Ferry Lake… they’d kill everyone.”
Father…
The word roused me from my morbid thoughts; my anger lifted its head and smelled blood. Subconsciously I knew that one of them had to have been the boy’s father, but seeing that Luc Robichaude knew which one of these blasphemous monsters it was… that gave me a terrible hope.
“You can point out Lincoln’s father? You know which one he is?”
Luc nodded his head, seeing the terrible gleam in my eye. “Don’t even think about it, Mr. Pope. They’re stronger and faster than any man. He’d tear you apart before you could get a shot off.”
I didn’t protest. I now knew that the thing was closer than I thought it had been. Just had to wait for the opportunity to kill it.
“Your grandson is the first pure born they’ve had in a long time. That’s why they want him so bad. He ain’t deformed or mixed up in the head like the rest. He’s full, one hundred percent primal monster.”
I took this in with the same measure I took all of the rest, wondering how in the world I was ever going to come back from this with my sanity intact.
“He isn’t ready to live down there with them yet, no gills you see.” The Cajun hoodoo man made double lines across his neck like a mocking execution. “Make no mistake though: they’re coming, which is why I need you to go back down to your house and bring Lincoln here. They’ve been working heavy on you to raise him until he’s ready to come down to the Cradle, and I’ve been doing my damned hardest to break it, but my methods work better up close.”
I clutched the bag that Luc had slipped around my neck. “I don’t know if I can look at him. I just… he’s a fucking monster.”
“He’s also your blood. No matter what you say or where he comes from, he’s your kin and he’s human enough to love you at least for a little while more.”
I sighed and wobbled to my feet, feeling every ache and pain that had accrued in my fifty-eight years. “You’re going to have to be my voice of reason when we pick him up, Robichaude. He’s not human and he killed my baby girl just by being born. The little bastard can hang for all I care.” I stabbed a finger at Luc, my anger realized and on full display. “If you want him you can have him, but he ain’t no kin of mine.”
The Cajun should have thought better of it before he worked his hoodoo and made me see the truth of things; I wasn’t under some fish fucker’s mind whammy now. I saw the truth and there was no love in it.
Luc seemed to ignore everything I said as his face paled. “Pick him up?”
That caused a bit of confusion on my part. Usually people responded to a cuss filled tirade trying to reason with me. “Yeah, I left him with Victoria Barnes at her place…”
Luc turned before I even finished talking and began gathering a few things and muttering under his breath.
“What is it?”
The Cajun ignored me, rummaging around in his drawers and bottles. “High John the Conqueror Root, Silver Dime, Paper, Bible…” The list made absolutely no sense to me and it was only when I grabbed his shoulder that Luc seemed to snap out of whatever
fugue he was in and look at me.
I had never seen him look afraid until now.
“Grab your gun Mr. Pope. You’ve handed the first Deep Folk pure blood born in twenty years over to the people that seduced your daughter away from you.”
Chapter Fifteen
The truck bounced over the long road. It was an older model Dodge from the seventies; the paint had been beat all to hell and the A/C didn’t work, but Luc said that it was the little things that made this truck special. His father Jean Phillipe Robichaude had smoked cigars exclusively and had often snuck out to sneak a puff in the cab when his mother Felicite caught him in the house. On their way to church one Sunday, his youngest brother Leon had wedged a toy horse in the alcove on the inside door and it wouldn’t come out. His older brother Cyprien had ridden in the bed and had drawn little designs on the inside of the metal. His sister Bastienne, a few cousins and other relatives… all of them had somehow made their mark on that truck. Despite the passage of years and toll it had taken, Luc had endeavored to keep it running.
I could smell the ancient hints of burning leaves and tobacco stains that spoke of Jean Phillipe’s old habits. It was all trying to distract me from the facts Luc had told me.
Sometime ago after the Robichaudes had failed to protect their home, the Deep Folk had made a new pact. Certain citizens of our beloved little community had discovered the fishmen. They were compelled into something monstrous: the great treasures the river had swallowed were offered up to people who would see fit to sacrifice their sons, daughters, and wives in return. Not death—no, that would have been a mercy. They were taken down to the Cradle, never to be seen again.
I always thought that the official report of the Klan killing Luc’s family had been convenient. Sketchy even back then, but with the knowledge that there was a damn cult worshiping rapist fishmen, I had my doubts. Luc shared my sentiment.
“My cousin Guy brought me back a few years ago, helped me go back to the old homestead and recover what little magic that hadn’t been destroyed. Caught one of them and ‘persuaded’ it to talk.”