by Ronald Kelly
There was nothing more to be said. The children sank into dark despair in the back seat, knowing that no amount of whining or pleading would return their precious comics to them. And Fred wasn’t about to push the issue. If he did, Agnes would be sure to blame him for the boys’ preoccupation with the macabre and begin one of her endless monologues about his many failures as a husband and father.
Silently, Fred shifted into gear and headed north down the secluded, rural road.
They had only gone a few yards, when a maroon sedan—a ’49 Ford from the make and model—turned a curve and headed toward them in the opposite lane.
“There’s a car,” said Agnes. “Wave it down and see if you can find out where we are.”
Fred complied, honking his horn and waving out the side window. The Ford eased to a halt beside the Chevy and the driver rolled down his window. The man was a farmer by the looks of his clothing: denim overalls, a woolen coat, and a plaid deerhunter’s cap. He was slightly built, his features average in many ways, except for a drooping left eye and a silly, little grin on his stubbled face.
“Excuse me,” said Fred almost apologetically. “But could you tell me how to get to Plainfield?”
The man in the car smiled sheepishly and nodded. “Sure. It’s about seven miles straight ahead of you. It’s kinda small, but you can’t miss it.”
“Thanks,” replied Fred.
Before the two drivers rolled up their respective windows against the bite of the November cold, their eyes met for an instant. They exchanged something then, something that had more to do with feelings than words spoken aloud. Fred couldn’t figure out precisely what it was. Maybe a mutual understanding. Maybe a fleeting link between two kindred spirits who would meet only once during a lifetime, then move on, never to cross paths again.
And there was something else, something mildly disturbing. A sharing of dark emotions such as loneliness and utter despair. Emotions best concealed in the far reaches of the mortal mind…like refuse and filth hidden behind the shuttered windows of a desolate farmhouse.
The friendly motorist gave Fred a twisted grin and drove on. Fred did likewise. He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the maroon automobile slow in front of the farmstead that the Barnett family had just left. Before turning into the rutted dirt drive, the car passed a weathered mailbox with the name GEIN painted on the side.
“Keep your eyes on the road, for God’s sake!” snapped Agnes. “You want to kill us before we even get there?”
“No, dear,” replied Fred. There was an unusual edge to his voice that perhaps only he could hear. He regarded his wife’s face thoughtfully. It was a deceptive face, one that was soft and fleshy, yet hard and full of cynicism. It was a face of uncompromising strength and scathing ridicule. A face that was the very opposite of his own.
As he turned his attention back to the isolated stretch of Wisconsin roadway, Fred wondered how it would feel to possess such a face and stare at the world through those cold and unforgiving eyes.
BENEATH
BLACK BAYOU
I always wondered how it would be to be thrust into a situation where you were forced to live an existence that was less than human. It has happened before, in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Treblinka, or the prison camps of Cambodia and Vietnam. Places where one’s basic humanity is stripped away, humiliatingly so, until only an animalistic instinct for survival remains.
But what if, after enduring the degradation of such an experience, you denied the chance of returning to normalcy? What if your damaged psyche was so entrenched in the muck and mire of depravity that you shunned the thought of returning to your former state?
Reuben Traugott set off into the swamp in search of his brother, Lemuel. He took his most water-tight pirogue, a canteen of fresh water, a quarter pound of possum jerky, and a twelve-gauge Mossberg pump. But even as he headed across the dark waters, Rube knew deep down in his soul that he would never find his troublesome sibling alive.
Most who ventured into Black Bayou after nightfall never were.
The bayou held a dozen different dangers, perils that shunned the light of day, yet emerged at twilight to swallow its careless victims whole. There were quicksand pools, poisonous snakes, and wild animals weary of rabbits and weasels, eager for a change of menu. The Cajuns even whispered of the evil La Sanguinaire, a species of demonic spider that trapped wayward swampers in its misty web and fed upon their life’s blood.
And then there was Ma Gator. Old Ma was Black Bayou’s resident man-eater. It wasn’t known if the alligator was indeed a female or not, but the sheer fury of her constant attacks reminded the men in the area of a wrathful woman with an axe to grind. Ma was said to be well over eighteen feet long from toothy snout to scaly tail and close to a thousand pounds in weight. There was no record of precisely how many men had been killed by the gator, but there was speculation that the number had grown to nearly thirty-five since the mid-1950s. Usually the only thing found to mark a Ma Gator attack was the ruin of a canoe or pirogue floating upon the still waters and, occasionally, an arm or leg that had been severed by Ma’s massive jaws and forgotten as she dragged the remainder of her catch to the muddy bottom of Black Bayou.
Rube headed out at daybreak, hoping to find some sign of Lem’s whereabouts by afternoon, which would allow him enough time to make it back to Point Bleau before darkness fell. His brother had been a damned fool for taking his canoe across the bayou the night before, but then such behavior was to be expected of a man like Lem Traugott. The trapper was a notorious drunkard and wife-beater, and his indiscretions were what drove him from his home twelve hours before. Lem had come in all liquored up and angry over having lost at poker. He had decided to take out some of the misery of his misfortune on his children rather than his long-suffering spouse. But Harriet Traugott had not taken kindly to that. She had grabbed an old scattergun from the corner and peppered Lem’s britches with rock salt. Lem had lit out of there like a scalded hog. Cursing to the high heavens, he had untied his canoe and set off across the bayou. Harriet had expected him to show up in time for breakfast the next morning, shame-faced and sore-tailed, but he had not.
So Rube was on the bayou looking for him. The swamper rowed his low, wooden boat slowly through gnarled columns of water-logged Cyprus. Sunlight was sparse, scarcely able to penetrate the upper layer of dense foliage and stringy Spanish moss that hung from the limbs overhead. By noon, Rube had drank half his canteen and nibbled away most of the possum jerky, and still he hadn’t discovered hide or hair of old Lem.
It was nearing three in the afternoon and Rube was seriously considering turning back, when he spotted a gleam of sunlight on bare metal a hundred yards ahead. He rowed up next to a sandbar and found the rear half of Lem’s canoe beached there. It looked as if it had been cut in half with a chainsaw. But Rube knew exactly what had done it. Only the snaggle-toothed jaws of Ma Gator could have torn the narrow boat so violently asunder.
He made a slow circle of the sandbar, looking for more evidence of poor Lem, but all he found was a splintered oar and his brother’s soggy hat with a couple of crawdads walking around the brim. He yelled Lem’s name several times, but to no avail. He found himself feeling a little foolish calling to a man who was probably in the process of being digested at that very moment.
“I am sorry, my brother,” apologized the Cajun after uttering a silent prayer. “But I must head on back without you. One Traugott for supper is quite enough for dat wicked bitch.”
But Ma Gator wasn’t so sure.
As Rube steered his pirogue north and started back for Point Bleau, he felt the boat rise below him. It lurched a good two feet into the humid Louisiana air, then hit the water’s surface with a resounding splash. Rube forgot the oars and grabbed for his shotgun. He was in the act of jacking a shell into the breech when a great, leathery tail, as thick as a tree trunk and covered with algae and barnacles, rose from the swamp and lashed out. It hit the barrel of the Mossberg, sending
the twelve-gauge spinning from his hands and into a dense clump of cattails. Then the tail continued to fall. Like an unyielding pillar of stone it struck the pirogue squarely in its center, parting the sturdy dugout as if it was made of flimsy paper maché.
Abruptly, Rube found himself in the water. He kicked off his knee-high boots and began to swim for the sandbar he had just left. He was halfway there when he felt a heavy tug at his right leg. His heart played a symphony of dread as he felt himself sinking. A crushing pain gripped his lower body as an eighteen-foot demon began to haul him to the very depths of hell.
But, unlike the hell of his upbringing, it was not one of fire and brimstone. This hell was a decidedly liquid one, as cold and black as the womb of a dead woman.
***
Rube Traugott awoke…but not in the belly of Ma Gator.
He found himself lying in two inches of rank swamp mud, surrounded by total darkness. He reached up and his hand touched the slimy stone three feet overhead. He was in some sort of cave…an underwater cave from the sound and motion of water lapping at the narrow opening to his left.
Trembling, he ran his hand down his belly toward his lower body and the sharp pulse of agony that had brought him back to consciousness. Relief flooded him as he discovered his right leg intact. It was cocked at a strange angle and broken in a place or two, but was still attached to his hip. But what was he doing here? And why hadn’t Ma Gator gorged herself on him during their frantic struggle near the sandbar?
Slowly, Rube’s mind cleared and he found that he had a pretty good idea. Gators rarely ate large game at a single meal. While the reptiles gulped down bullfrogs and swamp coons like popcorn, they preferred to take their time with larger critters. It was well known to the Cajun that a gator would sometimes drag a wild boar or small deer down into the depths of the bayou and stash it away in its underwater lair. There it would remain in storage, safe from rival predators, until the gator returned to consume it at leisure.
But there was something particularly odd about Ma Gator’s latest catch. It was still very much alive.
Rube sat up and bumped his head on the cave’s low ceiling. The man cussed and lay back down, propping himself up by an elbow. He breathed raggedly in the darkness and gagged on the cloying smell of stagnant mud and something else. He had to concentrate for a moment before he realized that the offending odor was that of decay. The creeping decay of something that had not been dead for very long, but was turning sour mighty fast.
The swamper rummaged through his trouser pockets. All he had with him was his lucky buckeye, a black plastic Ace comb, a three-bladed Case pocketknife, and the old Zippo lighter he had carried around with him since the Army. He sat there for a moment, as if waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, but no dice. There was no light to separate shadow from contrast, not even from the narrow mouth of the cave.
Almost reluctantly, he opened the lid of the lighter. He didn’t really want to see the cramped conditions of his predicament or the putrid thing that shared it with him. But Rube Traugott was not a man to pussyfoot around when things looked bleak. He placed his thumb on the roller and struck the flint.
The flame licked up, casting a pale glow on the surroundings. The depth of the cave, from mouth to back wall was about thirty feet. Gator dung and old bones lay scattered across the muddy floor. In the corner there was a broad nest constructed of wilted ferns and thick moss. Amid the hollow of the nest were six leathery eggs. The unhatched young’uns of Ma Gator.
Then Rube turned around and the flickering light of the Zippo revealed the source of that godawful stench.
It was the body of his lost brother. Lem lay on his side, arms gnarled into fighting claws of fruitless rebellion, his pale face stretched taut into a rictus of horrible fear. Rube directed his light downward and found that his brother’s body ended just below the ribcage. Ma Gator had bitten the poor bastard clean in half.
Rube was overcome with shock and nausea. He doubled over and vomited up that afternoon’s jerky, as well as the sorghum molasses and biscuits he had eaten for breakfast. He tossed the Zippo aside and the blue-yellow flame winked out as the lid snapped shut on impact. Merciful darkness embraced him once again. But the smell—oh dear Lord, that confounded smell was still there, stronger than ever.
His brain boiling hot with panic, Rube scrambled for the narrow opening of the cave and squeezed through. Abruptly, he was surrounded by cold, black water. He struggled against the chill blanket of liquid limbo, bubbles of oxygen flooding from his mouth and nostrils. His eyes caught a glimmer of soft light from above and he knew that he was looking at the surface of Black Bayou. He kicked against the muddy bottom, pushing himself upward. An explosion of white-hot agony shot through his shattered leg, sending a wave of sickening dizziness through him. It seemed as though he surged toward the growing light for an eternity. Then his head broke through the barrier and he was back into the world of the living, back into his world.
But not for very long.
The first thing he saw when he reached the surface was Ma Gator. She lay on the sandbar, sunning herself in the last crimson rays of the Louisiana sunset. The splash of his emergence drew the reptile’s attention. With a snap of horrid bear trap jaws, Ma bellied toward the edge of the sandbar and slid smoothly into the water after him.
Rube had no choice but to return to the dungeon from which he had escaped. He kicked and flailed wildly, diving deeper, ever deeper into the pit of murky darkness. He could feel Ma Gator behind him, getting closer, her huge tail propelling her forward like a leathery torpedo. On his way down, Rube wondered if he would even be able to find the cave again. He struggled with the twisted roots of a sunken cypress for one maddening moment, escaping from its tangle only seconds before the gator’s jaws could grab hold.
Then there it was—the narrow mouth of the underwater lair. He pulled himself through and skittered across the mud and excrement to the back wall. His hasty entrance was followed by that of Ma Gator. She poked her huge head through the slit of stone, snapping and bellowing like an angry bull. He could not see the monster coming for him; it was much too dark. For some reason that was much worse than experiencing the horror close up and personal—the thought of not knowing when violent death would come to claim him.
He cringed against the rear wall, squeezing into a thin crevice that ran from ceiling to floor. He held his breath. He could hear the wet sound of Ma Gator crawling through the muck toward him. Rube felt something blunt and alive press against the foot of his injured leg and he knew that it was the reptile’s probing nose. He cried out in fear and pain, and pressed himself further into the crevice. As he did so, his hand brushed a long, hard object lying near the nest of eggs. His fingers enclosed the bludgeon. With a snarl of desperation, Rube struck blindly at the stalking gator, catching it across the snout. Ma bellowed with surprise and began to back away. He struck out again and again, driving the gator toward the mouth of the cramped cave. His other hand came into play and grabbed hold. Swinging the object like a baseball bat, he laid a stunning blow between Ma’s beady eyes, or the spot where he assumed they were.
It did the trick. The alligator had had enough for now. She slid back through the opening, into the freedom of the open bayou. “Git yourself on away from here, you ugly she-bitch!” sobbed Rube. He collapsed against the floor of the cave and listened to the fading sounds of Ma Gator’s retreat.
After a while, he gathered the will to get up. He scrambled around the cave for a time, searching for his discarded lighter. He finally found it. Once again he snapped it on. The fluid-fed wick revealed the true nature of the weapon in his hand. The thing he had chased Ma Gator away with was the denuded leg bone of a full-grown man.
Rube laughed until he cried. “Looky here, dear brother,” he cackled, waving the femur above his head. “Now wasn’t dat a good one pulled on de old gator, do you not think so?”
Lem Traugott gave no reply. He only laid there and grimaced grotesquely at his livin
g brother. Death had done nothing to improve Lem’s sense of humor, which hadn’t been much to begin with.
Despite the stink of the decaying body, Rube tenderly propped Lem’s upper torso against the back wall and secured the Zippo in the stiffened fingers of one of his hands. He frowned in disapproval at the state of his brother’s appearance. He pulled a couple of bloated leeches from Lem’s unshaven cheeks and combed the mud-plastered hair carefully into place with the Ace comb. It helped to promote the illusion of life, but not very much. There was still that frozen mask of unspeakable terror seizing his brother’s lard-white face. A terror that would remain, transfixed, for as long as the flesh was intact.
***
Hours passed. Exhausted, Rube slept, dreaming of him and Lem as children, of the coon hunts they had taken through the marshland and the Huck Finn raft of cut saplings they had constructed and poled all the way down to Baton Rouge.
When he awoke he was hungry. The stench of decay had intensified, but that didn’t seem to ruin his appetite. He lit the Zippo again, aware that the flame was growing shorter and dimmer with each use. He had no earthly idea whether it was morning or evening, noonday or night. He had no timepiece to consult with. His father had passed his pocket watch down to the elder Lem upon his deathbed. Whole lot of good it had done his brother, though. The big railroad watch was probably ticking its way through the maze of Ma Gator’s bowels by now.
His stomach grumbled, pleading for nourishment. Slyly, he turned his eyes toward the nest in the far corner.
Rube crawled over and took one of the leathery, gray eggs in his hand. His fingers dug into the soft shell and a slimy residue erupted through the punctures. He could feel the small, warm body of a gator embryo loll against his fingertips.
“Eat me, will you, Ma Gator?” grinned Rube. “Maybe so. But a condemned man, he must have his last meal. And while you have a taste for man-meat, I have my own…for gator.”