Laura Morrison_ComeBackToTheSwamp_EbookFormatting Embedded Cover

by Come Back to the Swamp (retail) (epub)

  “If you come back again, I will show you the power of the swamp,” Swamp reiterated.

  Bernice winced. “Uh. Sure. So, let me get this straight. Let’s get down to business. Mystical rambling aside, you are saying that you are okay with me coming back to protect the swamp.” Maybe she would take Professor Zimmer up on her suggestion of bringing Kevin along after all. This old lady couldn’t shove drugs down Bernice’s throat if she had a bodyguard. Kevin was by no means huge, but two young people vs. one elderly one was decent odds, even if the elderly one was super strong.

  The old lady gave one slow nod.

  “Great,” Bernice said. “Great. Glad we had this chat. Cool that we could get to this place of … uh, understanding. You know, after getting off on the wrong foot and all, how we did yesterday.”

  “Mm.”

  “Oh-kay … So, like, is it cool if I get back to work now, then?” Bernice asked, turning back to the barberry she’d been cutting, and gesturing toward it. She turned back to look at Swamp, and gave a startled scream.

  The old woman was like two inches from her face, her eyes bugged out again. Really, really bugged out. Like her face might be two inches from Bernice’s face, but her eyes were totally even closer. Swamp growled, “You wish to cut? To chop?” She grabbed Bernice’s arm in that old familiar iron grip. Shoot. They had apparently not bonded nearly as much as Bernice had thought they had.

  “Oh my … wow … seriously,” Bernice gasped. “How do you move like that? That is so creepy.”

  “Senseless slaughter. Senseless harm,” the old woman mumbled, looking at the ground. “Senseless. Their roots are interwoven into the very fiber of my being. We are one. You will leave. You will cut no more.” She stopped, and stared into Bernice’s eyes.

  “Um.” Swamp was so close Bernice could smell her disgusting breath. Bernice knew for a fact wintergreen grew in Cleary Swamp. For the love of all things good, why did the old woman not chew some wintergreen every now and then? Oh yeah, probably because wintergreen was interwoven into the very fiber of her being, and was therefore part of Swamp, and so she couldn’t chew it or it’d be like she was chewing her own finger off or something. Did the old woman not eat plants, then? Was she a carnivore? Eww. She probably ate birds raw. The birds that had the audacity to eat berries off the trees that were a part of the swamp. What did she do about all the insects chomping away at leaves? Insects were pretty much constantly eating plant matter. Probably within a three-foot radius of Swamp were about one hundred bugs eating away at the fiber of her being. And what about beavers chewing down logs? Bernice felt she’d found a flaw in Swamp’s logic, but now was not the time to point it out. Not while that iron grip was on her arm.

  “Go now,” Swamp said. “Go. Think long and hard about whether you will return. If you do, and if the swamp chooses you, there will be no going back.” She gave Bernice a good, hard shake, then released her with a push.

  Bernice caught her balance, rubbed her arm, glared at Swamp, and sighed. Was she seriously, for the second day in a row, going to leave without getting any work done? Seriously? Professor Zimmer was going to lose it. If Bernice told her. Which she was most certainly not going to do. She was going to, instead, track down a homeless shelter or social worker who could help her get Swamp out of the swamp so Bernice could get her work back on track and make it so her boss didn’t yell at her and maybe not write her a stellar recommendation for whatever PhD program she decided on pursuing down the road. “Okay, I’m going,” Bernice grumbled. “I’m going.”

  She turned and, again, left the swamp, defeated by the crazy old lady.

  She hadn’t even used her pepper spray. But, then, the confrontation hadn’t gotten all that physical. It would have been hard to justify blasting Swamp in the face.

  When Bernice got to her truck, she stopped in her tracks and stared. Right in the center of the hood was another pile of twigs, leaves, and yellow flower petals. After a few paralyzed moments, she glanced left and right without any real expectation that she might see Swamp. Then, she brushed the pile off her truck’s hood. At least the pile hadn’t been inside the shut and locked truck. Now that would have been horrifying.

  As she drove out of the swamp, Bernice did not once look in her rearview mirror.

  CHAPTER FOUR:

  VERY IMPORTANT RESEARCH

  “What do you mean, you can’t?” Bernice snapped into her phone as she walked into the Sperka Science Building. “There’s a homeless old woman―super crazy―out there all alone in the swamp, and you can’t do anything to help her out?”

  Bernice had made so many calls the previous evening and that morning that she knew the response before the shelter employee had even begun. He said, “Miss, I understand your concern for the woman, but you gotta understand our resources are spread really thin. There are people in need within a few blocks of our building that we can’t adequately care for. To go all the way out there to Cleary Swamp … I don’t know … I just don’t think it’ll be possible.”

  “But come on, man. What am I supposed to do? Just throw up my hands and leave the poor dear to die of exposure? She’s got no clean water. No shelter. Her food must be just crawling with germs and parasites and stuff.” Bernice stomped across the spacious foyer of the science building toward the stairs leading to the basement.

  “Look, maybe you could bring her to us?” the guy suggested. “Could you do that?”

  As Bernice walked down the echoey cement stairs toward the basement office she shared with two other students, she said, “Seriously? I gotta bring her to you? I’d need a straightjacket or something. A sedative. A—”

  “Wait. You’re saying this woman doesn’t want help?”

  Bernice sighed. Great. She saw where this was going. “No.”

  Silence for a few moments. “Uh. And you’re not a family member.”

  “Nope. Just a concerned citizen. Just looking out for the welfare of a―” Bernice stopped short. “You know what? Never mind. Thanks for your time. Really. You’ve been a super help.” She hung up, stuffed her phone into her backpack, and stomped down the hall to her office. She swung the door open and looked around. Good. No one else was there. She didn’t want anyone to know she was in the office. She really should be in the swamp making up for her oodles of lost time. But first she needed access to the journals on file. Over the years, there had been a fair amount of research done in and around Cleary Swamp for one reason or another. Invasive species, little brown bats, various wildflowers, deer population studies. Somewhere in one of those articles someone might have mentioned a crazy old lady.

  She threw herself into her swivel chair, spun around a few times, and then stared at her black computer screen for a bit. That had been the last shelter on her list. Apparently no one was willing to drag swamp lady away from the research plot and stick her in a padded cell.

  Bernice switched on her computer. While she waited for it to boot up, she leaned back in her seat and let her eyes travel across the array of posters and pictures taped to the wall over her desk. A poster of native Michigan swamp flowers, a poster of the crew of the Space Mantis posing in front of their trusty ship, a map of Middle Earth, an aerial photo of Cleary Swamp, a picture she’d taken of a pileated woodpecker feeding its baby―she’d won 3rd place in the university nature photography contest the previous year for that photo.

  Once the computer was ready for her, she typed in her password and started up her music. It was a 70’s funk kind of morning. It was also time to get down to business searching journal articles for mentions of a crazy old woman. Or a crazy young woman. Clearly the old lady hadn’t always been old, and some of these articles went back decades.

  Sure, Bernice knew this was a complete waste of time. Sure, Bernice knew she was just doing this in order to feel productive while avoiding what she should really be doing. But at least it would be cool if she did, in fact, find any refer
ences to the old lady, to be able to show the references to Professor Zimmer so her boss would know Swamp had a history of making trouble.

  Some previous researcher had to have run into the old lady. It was beyond obvious she had been in that swamp for ages. Her skin was so leathery. Her hair was so nasty. Skin and hair didn’t get like that without years of super rough living, exposed to the elements season after season, year after year, for a crazy long time. So, yes, someone simply had to have crossed paths with the creature. But would they have made mention of it in their articles? That was the problem. Journal articles were supposed to be sterile, professional, and factual. There would be no, “OMG! When I was out in the swamp I totally had the creepiest encounter with some lunatic lady who said she was the swamp! Dude!” Bernice’s only hope was in the discussions. The discussions at the end of journal articles were where the researchers would let their hair down and allow a sentence or two of humor or speculation or randomness.

  Article after article, no luck.

  Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

  Hours passed.

  Bernice got more and more guilty about how she was neglecting the swamp for the third day in a row.

  She started to get hungry, so she crept out to the vending machine to secure some potato chips. Baked, not fried. One had to draw the line somewhere. Bernice could only pollute her body so much. She slunk back to her office, thankful that she crossed paths with no one on her vending foray. She so, so, so needed to be out of this office and in the swamp.

  One more hour. Just one more hour of procrastinating―er, valuable research―and then she’d go.

  Bernice was on the verge of giving up when she finally found something in an article from 1972. An article about yellow warblers.

  I feel I should note that, toward the end of my research, I had an encounter with a woman. There was an overgrown area I needed to get through. I was cutting vines out of the way when the woman appeared behind me and started yelling, saying I was hurting her. She said she was the swamp. She pushed me and chased me out. She was alarmingly strong, and I was rather concerned, but she never appeared again. It was suggested to me that she might be Rebecca Hallett, the young woman who went missing in the swamp ten years ago. I notified the police. Hopefully they will be able to get to the bottom of it.

  Bernice stared at the screen. It was her. It had to be her. Rebecca Hallett. Interesting.

  Bernice almost forwarded the article to Professor Zimmer, but that would have tipped her off that Bernice was not in the field. She left it open for later and decided she really had to get back to the swamp. She would have to work sunrise to sunset for the rest of the week to get on schedule again at this point. And that was assuming that Swamp didn’t scare her away again.

  Grudgingly, Bernice got her phone out to call Kevin. His phone rang and rang. He was probably too busy playing guitar or painting to answer. Heaven forbid he actually keep his phone nearby to take a call that might be important for work. She nearly hung up. But then …

  “Hiya, B!” Kevin answered. “What’s up?”

  Bernice rolled her eyes. “You busy?”

  “Nah. Just down by the water playing guitar. Why?”

  Playing guitar. She had called it. Kevin was such a slacker. How he got decent grades was beyond Bernice. His days were so full of painting and writing songs and playing in his folk band in the evenings that Bernice had no idea how he managed to fit studying in. But on top of all his arty crap, he was also a great student. Bernice kinda hated him. “I need you to come out to Cleary Swamp with me. Cool?”

  “Sure thing. You okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine. Why?”

  “Professor Zimmer mentioned―”

  Bernice did not want to hear Professor Zimmer’s misinterpreted slant on Bernice’s paranoia. And more, she didn’t want to hear Professor Zimmer’s misinterpreted slant filtered through Kevin’s misinterpretation. She cut him off before he could start. “I’m at the science building. My truck’s in the back lot. Meet me there as soon as you can.”

  #

  “Wait, wait, wait,” said Kevin. “We’re going to what?”

  Bernice sighed and glanced at her shaggy-haired, bearded companion. “Going to bring a crazy old lady to a homeless shelter,” she said slowly, as though she was talking to a child. Or an idiot (which, in her opinion, she was). Honestly. She’d explained it once already. Did he need her to put together a PowerPoint presentation? Did he need a lecture with handouts and the threat of an exam hanging over his head? Or maybe he could only understand things written out in the form of stupid wannabe Bob Dylan lyrics.

  Kevin went on, “And this homeless woman lives in Cleary Swamp?”

  “Yep.”

  “And she doesn’t want to leave?”

  “I don’t know that yet.”

  “Well, I mean, she’s gotta want to be there, right? Like she’s not lost. Yeah? Sounds like she’s been living there for ages.”

  “Yeah, if her hair is any indication.”

  “Well then, B, she must wanna be there if she’s been there a long time,” Kevin said, speaking slow as though he was talking to a child. Or an idiot.

  Bernice glared. “Not necessarily.”

  “But … uh … yeah. Like, the swamp’s big, but it’s nothing a person couldn’t trek across in two days and spot some sort of civilization. If she wanted to leave, she could have done so any time just by putting one foot in front of the other and finding a house in a day or three.”

  Bernice frowned. “Sure. But if she’s crazy I don’t think logic really applies, Kevin.”

  “Maybe. But with all the research and hiking and stuff that goes on in the swamp, I fail to see how she wouldn’t have been found ages ago unless she didn’t want to be. Like maybe she’s just a hobo who chooses that lifestyle.”

  Bernice rolled her eyes. “No one would choose that life.”

  “I dunno, B, maybe you’re just saying that because of your frame of reference. It’s hard to understand poverty or alternate ways of living if you’ve lived an easy life.”

  Bernice scoffed, “Oh, and you’re so enlightened and world-wise, Mr. Private School Grosse Point rich boy?” She turned off onto the dirt road that ran into the swamp.

  “Wow, B. Chill out. No need to get personal.”

  Bernice growled, “I hate when people tell me to calm down. Does that ever work? Like do you ever tell someone to chill out and they actually do it?”

  Kevin cleared his throat. “Sorry.”

  Bernice looked away from the road to glare at him. She snapped, “I didn’t ask you along so you could irritate me and argue and tell me to chill out. I asked you along for help.”

  “Eyes on the road, B,” Kevin said, pointing ahead of them.

  Bernice stupidly gave him a bit more of a glare just to see the nervousness in his eyes as she drove without looking. Then she turned back to the road. “Got me? I don’t wanna argue about whether she’s crazy or whether she wants to leave. Let’s just go and find out.”

  “Sure, sure. Fine,” he muttered, folding his arms and slouching away from her.

  They drove on in silence for a bit. Bernice was aware Kevin kept glancing at her, but she ignored him.

  After a bit, he said, “Sorry, B. Didn’t mean to make you mad. I just wanna understand the situation I’m getting into.”

  Bernice clenched her teeth and was quiet for a few seconds, then muttered, “I guess you’ve got a right to ask questions. You okay with the plan?”

  “Uh, I guess so? I dunno. I mean, if she doesn’t want to come we’re not going to force her, right? We’re not going to grab her and drag her out of the swamp against her will, are we?”

  “No,” Bernice said, though if it weren’t for the old lady’s superhuman strength, Bernice had to admit she might have been tempted to drag her to the homeless shelter against he
r will. “No, we won’t force her. But I just gotta see if I can talk her into it. Okay?”

  “Sure. Sure.” He gave her a sidelong glance.

  “What, Kevin?” she hissed as she parked the truck in her usual spot.

  “You’re really on edge.”

  “Uh, yeah I’m on edge. I just explained the past two days to you. It should be clear why I’m on edge.” She got out of the truck, slammed the door, grabbed her backup clippers out of the back, and tromped into the swamp without a backward glance.

  CHAPTER FIVE:

  ASIATIC BITTERSWEET

  Behind Bernice, the passenger door slammed and Kevin called, “Wait up!”

  She slowed a bit.

  “You still mad at me?” he asked from behind her as he crashed through the underbrush, probably snapping branches and sending stabs of pain through the fiber of Swamp’s being. Not that Bernice really thought that. But it did enter her mind. In a totally not believing kind of way. Totally not believing.

  “No. I’m not mad. This is all just so frustrating.”

  “Totally. Totally,” Kevin said as he caught up and fell into step beside her. “Look, I’m not doubting you here. I’m sure this lady’s every bit as creepy as you say she is. I’m just saying you’re totally on edge and maybe you should take a pause. Take some breaths. Get some perspective. If you’re gonna be trying to talk her into leaving her home and going somewhere she probably doesn’t want to go, you better be in a good place mentally. Yeah? She’s gonna catch your stress vibes and she’s gonna be all on edge, too. Yeah?”

  Bernice gritted her teeth and adjusted her backpack on her shoulder. “Did I for ask your advice?”

  “No. But you did ask for my help.”

  “That doesn’t mean you get to―” she started, then stopped herself. Why was she being mean to him? Poor Kevin. It wasn’t his fault he bugged her so much. So what if he floated through life without a care in the world and everything always magically fell into place for him? He’d never done a thing to her other than help her out when she asked him to. “Sorry, man. Sorry.”