FEVER DREAMS: A Bracken and Bledsoe Paranormal Mystery

by April Campbell Jones

  I stared at her. “Uh…now where was it exactly you saw this print of my film?”

  “At your mother’s house.”

  “My mother’s house in Cincinnati?

  “Unless she has another house or there’s another Cincinnati.”

  “Mom has a print of my film?”

  “Elliot, yes! The only surviving print, according to her. You didn’t know?”

  I thought about it. “Tell you the truth I wasn’t sure where the damn thing was…even if it still existed.”

  “You need to get with Martin Scorsese about preservation. Anyway, it exists, and the ending is just as I described it.”

  “Katie—“

  “The little girl drowns.”

  “Katie—“

  “—she is pushed underwater, Elliot, murdered actually, by an off-screen person we never see.”

  “Katie! I made the goddamn thing! Don’t you think I ought to know how it ends?”

  She looked into my eyes. “…maybe it’s that shit she gave us to drink…”

  “What?”

  She touched my shoulder gently, as if patronizing a lunatic. “Elliot, I was at your mother’s house less than a month ago. I saw the film. Twice. She said it was the only film you ever made.”

  “It is the only film I ever directed, and it doesn’t show anyone drowning!”

  Katie seemed to stare into space. “Shit…” she mouthed softly.

  I thought she was referencing my student film, then saw she was clutching the little leather pouch around her neck unconsciously, eyes gazing past me.

  I turned and looked. We’d reached the end of the dock.

  The grinning black kid and the leaky little boat were gone.

  FIFTEEN

  We stood there at the end of the dock like a pair of lost children, staring out over the endless black waters and emerald mangrove forests that kept them contained.

  Black waters now as opposed to tea-colored, because the sun had slipped behind a bank of dark clouds, turning both the sky and air around us an unsettling green. Like pre-tornado skies I’d seen in the Midwest. There wasn’t a whisper of breeze, not a breath.

  “It’s going to rain,” Kate said softly, almost philosophically. “Can you smell it?”I felt a hot rush of blood up my neck and saw a mental picture of myself strangling the smiling black kid in his stupid boat. Great! Just absolutely-fucking great! Stranded in the Manchac Swamp! Isn’t this where I came in?”

  Katie scanned our bleak surroundings once more, then turned to me.

  “What are you looking at me like that? This was your idea.”

  “You’re not a bad looking man, Elliot Bledsoe. Almost handsome. People ever tell you that?”

  “Yes, yearly. The co-eds I dare not touch.”

  She nodded, looking me up and down. “…yep, not bad at all. And you can be halfway charming when you want to be.”

  “Thank you, is this a proposal? ‘Cause I know a great place for a honeymoon. It’s called LAND!”

  “It is a proposal,” she said, setting down the cat box and retrieving her cell phone. “I propose that you use every ounce of those looks, summon every molecule of that charm, walk back down this raggedy-ass dock and get that crazy old bat to let us back in. I miss the gator skulls already.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen, Katie.”

  “Neither do I, but it’s worth a try.” She took the phone from her ear with an air of disgust. “Nothing! This place is beyond primitive. I mean, who doesn’t have cell towers these days?”

  “It’s a swamp, Katie.”

  “Which, according to Cormac’s young deputy, has one of the world’s largest bridges running through it linking Interstate 55. You’d think they could stick up a tower or two.”

  I looked dubiously back down the skinny dock where the uneven planks disappeared into the shadows of the mangroves. “She won’t let us back in, Katie, I can feel it in my bones.”

  “Haul your bones back there and bang on her door anyway, I’ll keep a look out for that kid and keep trying my phone.”

  “The kid isn’t coming back, nor the other half of your fifty. I can—“

  “Feel it in your bones, yes, you told me. Get going please, before it starts pouring.”

  I clumped back down the dock to the old lady’s jungle shack.

  Ten minutes later I walked back, urged along by a chasing rumble of thunder.

  “Well?”

  “I knocked and hammered until my knuckles bled. Place is silent as a tomb. How’s the phone reception?”

  Katie took the phone from her ear and sighed. “Silent as a tomb. Here…”

  She handed me the phone, hitched up her handbag. “…keep trying. I’ll give the old woman a whirl.”

  “It’s useless, Katie.”

  “Probably, but I’ve still got my credit card.”

  She marched off down the dock.

  Garbanzo said, “Meow” in his cage.

  “It’s all right, boy” I told him, phone to my ear, “she’ll be back.” I craned around just as Katie’s figure disappeared under black shadows of foliage, along with her footsteps. “I hope.”

  The line was dead.

  Then the BAT light on her phone began to flash and I turned it off to save whatever remained of the battery.

  A single raindrop plopped on my forehead like warm pigeon shit.

  I looked to the sky. Nothing else fell immediately but I could feel the storm building in my gut, not to mention my joints. The primal swamp smells grew suddenly more intensely fetid.

  Then Katie called me sharply from the mangroves “Elliot! Hurry!”

  I was so startled I forgot all about the cat and launched myself down the rickety planks.

  The front of the shack was empty, branches crowding in like clutching fingers. “Katie--?”

  “Over here!”

  I came round the south side of the shack, found Katie bent over a crude, stilted walkway, doing something with her hands at the water’s edge.

  “Be careful! What is it?”

  She turned with a grin, a length of soggy hemp in her hand. “Freedom! Freedom! Great God Almighty, we’re free at last!”

  The other end of the rope was tied to the bow of a small, moss-colored wooden dinghy sitting there amid the cypress stumps and foliage like a deserted bride. Sitting there. Not floating.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a freight train, Einstein, what’s it look like?”

  “Like the exposed gunwales of a sunken boat.”

  Katie was bailing furiously with cupped hands. “I knew the old bat had some way in and out of this swamp! Is this pure luck or what?”

  “No, I believe this would be called ‘stealing’, if the thing actually floated.”

  “Locking us out under an approaching storm, that’s criminal, Elliot!”

  “Come on, Katie, it’s not like she bludgeoned us or something! That kid’s the criminal, handsome little shit!”

  “Elliot, I am not spending the night out here on this joke of a dock in a Louisiana monsoon!” There was no-argument finality to her tone.

  I looked down uneasily at the dinghy, felt myself shudder reflexively. “It’s full of water!”

  “The rental boat was full of water. This is just from previous rains, it isn’t sinking!”

  “Because it’s sitting on underwater foliage and cypress stumps!”

  But then it began raining.

  And the rain was cold.

  When I lowered my eyes from the sky, Katie was already in the boat, lifting the oars from their rusty locks. “Get the cat!”

  “I don’t like this, Katie!”

  “Neither will Garbanzo when the dock floods! Get the cat!”

  “It’s filling with water under your weight—I can see it!”

  “Oh, forget it, I’ll get the cat!”

  “You don’t even know which way to row!”

  “Good-bye, Elliot!” She pulled at the oars with a grunt. The littl
e boat pulled away.

  “I can’t swim, goddamnit!”

  “Remember that when the river rises between the planks!”

  “At least I have scruples!” voice breaking in terror.

  “But not the lucky ju-ju pouch!” and gave me her pretty pink tongue.

  * * *

  The rain and wind hit us hard, the former so driven, as if by some enormous moving hand, it actually stung as Katie and I took turns, now rowing, now bailing. I’ve never seen or heard a wind like that, howling like a demon loosed from the netherworld, and in such blinding sheets we couldn’t have read a compass even if we’d had one.

  What we did have—the only thing—was the knowledge of which way we’d approached the old hag’s shack, so we naturally rowed in the opposite direction, praying it might be the way back…eventually. But it was also the way into the wind and, though it was impossible to be sure in the ghost of green mist surrounding us, I’d wager we lost a foot for every five feet we gained.

  I soon gave up trying to guess if the little wooden boat was truly leaking or if it was merely the pounding rain rising past my ankles; my chief concern was keeping it from creeping up to wooden seat, under which Katie sat and the cat cage rested. Garbanzo may have been the driest of the three of us, snug in his cage, but if capsized or scuttled, he’d be the first to drown. I couldn’t decide which was worse, opening the wire front and letting the wind-driven sheets pound and possibly blow him into the water, or keeping him caged up and risk not being able to get to him in time if we floundered. Maybe he could swim to a small island hummock or log I couldn’t even see.

  I don’t think fifteen minutes had passed before I became certain we were fighting a losing battle.

  My back was an ongoing knot of pain, arms so leaden they were visibly trembling; the water within the boat seemed determined to reach the gunwales and the heavy curtain of rain was so thick now there was no way to determine if all our straining efforts were doing any more than keeping us in one spot.

  I was an occasional Austin jogger, not a Harvard sculler champion, my inner mind rapidly approaching my musculature’s outer limits; I hadn’t the strength or will to keep at it much longer nor quite the courage to give up, and I could see from the tight expression under her plastered helmet of hair that Katie was in the same bind, both of us loathe to admit it to the other.

  But maybe it was more than simply admitting defeat; we had long ago lost sight and direction of the sagging dock and I was too bone-weary to attempt getting the now-heavier, water-laden craft turned about to search for it.

  When the sharp bump jolted us from below I had a brief moment of sweet hope we’d run blindly ashore or at least into some grass-lashed hummock, but when I looked around I found only dancing water, a snaking trail of ominous ripples and the sudden conviction we weren’t completely alone in the rain.

  Less than a minute later a rifle crack of thunder shook the craft, then a moment afterwards, to my horror, I saw was not thunder at all, but the keel of the little wooden dinghy literally parting under us, split neatly down the middle stem-to-stern. The wooden seat exploded, my stomach went whoosh and we dropped like lead sinkers into the warm soup of swamp.

  I heard Katie scream, tried stupidly to reach for her flailing figure (the most I could have done was pull her down with me), caught a quick glimpse of the cat cage shooting past my head in a blur…and the next moment everything was much warmer, much darker, and very, very silent. I opened my frantic eyes to a murky, sepia world the stringy texture and hue of a clogged toilet.

  A world without air.

  I saw the delirious rush of my own bubbles escaping my nose and mouth before quick, darting shapes that must have been small fish or frogs.

  I thought of the dean’s swimming pool back in Austin, how I’d warned myself to relax and not panic, let my weight sink me calmly to the bottom—it would be all right, someone would see me before I ran completely out of air. It didn’t help much that I could barely see my hand before my face. But I forced myself to uncoil, give in to it…and in moments I detected the spongy, sucking floor of the swamp.

  Cheeks puffed like a frog’s, hair a seaweed halo seductively caressing my face and nose, I floated there quietly, glad to be free of the tumult overhead, willing myself calm…and I had the strangest thought…maybe inspired by what Mama Grace had said during the séance: this could be almost peaceful…there could be worse ways to die…

  I felt another little tickle of bubbles escape my nose, rush greedily past my eye.

  “But it isn’t peaceful,” Amy said somewhere behind me, “it’s the least peaceful thing in the world. And it hurts…not for long but it’s an awful pain that goes on forever, for years even, and only gets worse.”

  “The drowning, you mean,” I replied sleepily, not really wanting to hear this, wanting so much more to give into the peacefulness.

  “And the loneliness more. And the knowing.”

  “The knowing?”

  “That you’re the only one who does. The truth, Elliot. The thing that made your movie so good…so honest nobody wanted to see it, to face it. Sometimes the truth is all we have and that makes it become everything. Do you understand? Please don’t go to sleep yet.”

  “Not really, Amy.”

  “You must understand, though, and quickly. If another twenty years go by no one will ever know, ever care.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, Amy. I’d like to help,” I burbled drowsily, “but I can’t swim.”

  “Swimming’s not why I picked you, Elliot.”

  “Sorry…it’s been great talking to you, honey, but I have to go now…I’m out of air.”

  “Look down.”

  “I don’t think I should see you, Amy…I mean, after so many years…”

  “No, no, I’m behind you. Look down. Pick it up.”

  “Look at what? This? The little leather bag? It’s…”

  “Katie’s pouch. She doesn’t need it now. Slip it on…over your head.”

  “She’s just a crazy old witch, Amy.”

  “Like a fox, you mean? There. Now you can breathe. For a time.”

  “I can. Huh. Isn’t that amazing?…But I still can’t help you, honey, I’m sorry. Maybe if I’d actually been there…”

  “But you were, Elliot, in a way. And you can help. All you need is to see a face. Just a face. Surely you can do that for me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Tell you what…you find the face and I won’t let him eat you.”

  “Let…who eat me?”

  “That gator. The big one heading toward you. There, look.”

  “Oh, my God…”

  “Tole you he was big. Almost as fat as Big Louis! And hungry. But if you promise me, I won’t let him eat you. I’ll turn him away.”

  “You can do that?”

  “I’m talking to you underwater, aren’t I? Hurry, Elliot, here he comes…”

  “Okay! I promise, I promise!”

  “Good. Stay very still now. He’ll think you’re a floating cypress root. Don’t move. They’re really very stupid. See? There he goes, right past. Certainly swim funny, don’t they? With just their tail and their legs all tucked under that way. Bye-bye old man gator!”

  “Amy. You saved my life. Bless you. And thank you.”

  “You know how to thank me. Turn around now and look at me…”

  “Why?”

  “So I can see that you know, see it in your eyes.”

  “I don’t think—“

  “Turn around, Elliot. I won’t hurt you. Not you.”

  “All right, all right…I’m turning…but—“

  “There! Is that so bad? Hey! Don’t! Don’t do that! Don’t scream! Give us a kiss…”

  But I screamed anyway. And the water rushed in. I gagged, coughed, kicking spastically…and the kicking propelled me upward, all the way to the top.

  It used up the last of my air, the screaming, but my head broke the surface again and the cool air rushed
in.

  It was still raining hard; a dancing mist that covered the surface nearly concealing the boat.

  A bigger boat this time, not like the wooden junket that split apart under us and sunk…a bigger, studier boat whose gray outline I could see now coming through the haze of rain…coming through and pulling alongside my thrashing body.

  “Take it,” the deep voice said, “Take it!”

  And the big hand reached out to me from above…

  * * *

  There was only one seat on the airboat and that was almost directly in front of the big fan. A small seat that I shared with Sheriff Cormac, who manned the stick.

  Katie was stretched out exhausted in the squared-off bow, Garbanzo beside her, nasty-wet but indignantly alive in his box. Turned out Katie had caught the cat cage moments after it zipped past my head across the sinking dinghy.

  Cormac found us, or rather found a frantic Katie making repeated dives to find me. Already exhausted, mind and limbs like lead, she dove and dove to the muddy bottom between trips back topside for a snatch of breath. And to check that the cat’s cage was still floating. Beyond endurance, brain on pure adrenalin, Katie saw Cormac’s little fan-boat rounding a corner of the river and bounce toward her waving arm. The sheriff was preparing to dive when I popped up like a bug-eyed, breaching whale next to the low, flat gunwale and Cormac dragged me aboard.

  I think Katie was more delighted to see the gris-gris bag around my neck than me.

  “You found it, you found it! I thought I’d lost it for good!”

  I belched swamp water. “Great to see you too, Katie.”

  She hugged me tight, kissed my cheek hard. “Poor baby! I tried! Couldn’t see a damn thing down there!” And she kissed me hard again, this time on the mouth. But she took the leather bag back.

  “How’d you ever stay down so long, Elliot?”

  I thought about going into it, telling her all about Amy, the big gator…then thought better of it. “Found a way new to breathe underwater.”

  “Oh?”

  “Poor, Katie. You look done in, kid.”