Imbolc 2002

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FICTION

ATHY LANDERS SHIVERED and reached for the sheet to cover her chilled body. Her reaching hand touched something cold and slimy. She opened her eyes and screamed. At the ends of her fingers, a slug wove its way across the ground. Frantic, she scooted away from it.

Disoriented, Cathy sat up in a foreign world and surveyed the surrounding area. A blend of honeysuckle and decay floated on the air. Her fingers raked through her hair removing leaves and damp dirt, her stomach tightened as she realized where she was. Oh, my God, I'm in the swamp!

"Somebody help me!" she screamed into the darkness. The sound echoed back in waves.

Cathy held onto an azalea bush and pulled herself to a standing position, weak, wobbling as if she'd hadn't eaten for days. Shivering, her mind reeling, panic seized her heart, and she yelled again. "Help me!"

The growl of an alligator answered her call, and she ran panic-stricken through the tangle of bushes and trees with no idea of where she would go or how to find her way out.

Deep in the swamp, panting, her legs weary, Cathy stopped running. She needed to calm down and pull herself together. God, help me, I have to find a way out!

Cathy wandered through the mist-filled darkness jumping at every noise, searching for the way out. The swamp remained foreign to her. So many noises. So many creatures. How had she gotten here in the first place? She had no memory of coming to this Godforsaken area. The place always gave her an eerie feeling even from a distance, and she knew she wouldn't have come on her own. During the day, the swamp was beautiful in its forbidden beauty, but at night... She instinctively knew it to be dangerous, inhabited by an insidious evil.

"Lyle, the bastard! I bet he did this to me as some kind of sick joke," she muttered.

The creatures of the swamp seemed poised, ready to strike. Spongy earth pulled at her once white tennis shoes trapping her in its muck. Moss hanging low from the trees like long, gray strands of hair brushed her face when she passed. Bullfrogs croaked a mysterious tune. The crickets' chirps, normally soothing, became a cacophony of menacing pops and clicks in the darkness. She'd heard the sounds many times, but now it terrified her. Things moved through the trees, bushes rustled, small animals scurried through the thick carpet of wet, decaying leaves.

Cathy heard a splash. Something moved into the murky water. She uttered a small yelp and grabbed her chest as she tried to calm her racing heart. Another splash sent small waves rolling to shore and she quickly moved away from the water's edge.

She shivered again as a cool breeze caressed her bare skin. With a lump in her throat, she looked down for the first time at the clothes she wore; a pair of dirty, stained red shorts and red tank-top. She noticed that the bracelet her mother had given her no longer dangled from her wrist. I bet that creep stole my bracelet when he put me out here. Lifting the bottom of her shirt, she found darker splotches there. What is this? she wondered, rubbing her finger across the stain. The question swirled through her mind joining the many others she already had.

Cathy tried to remember how she'd gotten here. Her last coherent thoughts were when Lyle came home from work. Any other memories had vanished as if washed down a sewer after a heavy rainstorm. Did Lyle drug me? I bet that's it, that's why I can't remember.

A dark shadow passed across the weed-entangled path in front of her. Cathy gasped and stopped, searching the area. An ice cube of fear slid down her spine. Tears flooded her eyes fragmenting her vision. Frozen, her body rigid, she didn't dare to take a breath for fear of attracting whatever had cast the shadow.

After several minutes, Cathy sucked in small gasps of cool air. Her muscles twitched. A lock of sweat-soaked hair fell across her forehead and she pushed it back with a trembling hand.

Tears surged from her eyes like a wide-opened faucet and ran down her cheeks. Helpless sobs racked her small body. She recognized nothing. No lights shone through the dense foliage leading to a way out of this nightmare.

The bushes to her right swayed. Cathy glimpsed something indistinguishable seeming to track her movements. She panicked and began to run, stumbling over roots that tried to ensnare her. A tennis shoe snagged and ripped away from her right foot, she left it behind, caught in the trap. Claw-like thorny limbs reached for her, entangling in her hair. Breathing hard, she yanked herself free and kept running, leaving behind living remnants like bread crumbs to mark her path. She ran until she thought her heart would explode.

Exhausted, out of breath, Cathy dropped to her knees. The wet, soggy ground sloshed and muddied the light skin of her quivering legs and she shivered. What used to be light-blonde hair, now stringy, dirty, and dull, fell across her face when she lowered her head and rested her chin on her heaving chest.

Objects hidden in the darkness moved around her. Like a wagon train surrounded by murderous evils, she felt lost, alone, and trapped. In a gasping voice she wailed, her voice sounding foreign in a world without human noise. Birds took flight. Creatures scrambled for cover. Shadows shifted.

"Please don't be frightened," a voice echoed from the darkness.

Cathy jerked her eyes from place to place, searching as she sprang to her feet. Legs that once were firm, wobbled like a deboned chicken.

"Who's... there?"

Something stirred. Leaves rustled from the passing.

"My name is Joshua Winters," a male voice said.

A shape moved forward into her line of sight and became a young man. Cathy stepped back until a tree stopped her retreat. The man wore a pair of dirty jeans. No shirt covered his hairless, muscled chest. He wore a pair of brown work boots like her husband's. His dark hair glistened in the soft moonlight that peeked through the rooftop of the branches reaching for the sky.

A calming effect preceded him. From what she could see, the way he carried himself contained a softness, a caring way about him. Full lips parted and Joshua smiled.

"I'll not harm you," he said. "What is your name?"

Cathy trembled as she waited for him to advance. When he didn't move closer, she relaxed but didn't intend to let her guard down. "Cathy."

"You're lost, are you not?" Joshua asked.

"Of course she's lost," a deep male voice shouted from her left. "Why else would she be out here?"

Cathy gasped her hand on her throat. She scanned the bushes to her left. An owl hooted in a distant tree.

"Shhhhh," a gravely female voice said. "Let Joshua handle it."

"Who are you people?" Cathy asked in a raised voice as she tried hard to control her fear. "Why are you in the swamp? Do you live here?"

"Yes," Joshua said, "Yes, we live here."

"Can you show me the way home?" Cathy asked.

"You---" She heard the deep male voice start to say something then abruptly cut off.

"Yes," Joshua said, "We can show you the way."

Cathy looked toward the bushes then back at Joshua. "Why are they hiding? Are they gross or disfigured or something?"

Joshua laughed.

The laugh sounded strange to her in the alien world.

"I already like you," Joshua said. "I believe we shall be good friends."

"I don't know how I got here," Cathy said. "I'm lost and I want to go home, but I can't find a way out. This swamp is endless."

Joshua stepped closer.

Cathy stayed her ground against the tree. What good would it do to run now? She didn't have the strength left and it terrified her to think that she might only get herself buried deeper in the swamp.

"Come with me, Cathy. I want to show you something," Joshua said, motioning with his hand. "Don't worry. No harm shall befall you." Joshua took several steps away from her and turned. "Come," he said. "It is important."

After a moment of indecision, Cathy pushed herself away from the rough bark of the tree and followed a step behind Joshua. No matter how frightened she felt, she would rather follow then stay lost alone in the swamp. Please, God, don't let me get raped out here or worse, killed. Cathy heard whispered voices as the other people stayed hidden and followed along side of them as they walked.

Joshua chuckled. "You are like a scared mouse staying one step behind the cat," he said over his shoulder. "I promise I shall not take a swipe at you with my long, sharp claws."

Cathy laughed. She realized she had not done that in a long time. Joshua's teasing put her at ease and she picked up her pace until she reached his side.

"I do feel like a caged mouse with the cats staring at me. Why don't your friends come out into the open and walk with us?"

"They are shy and not used to strangers. They will come around soon."

"How old are you?" Cathy asked.

"Seventeen," Joshua answered.

"Funny," Cathy said, "you don't sound like you're seventeen. That's my age too, although I feel like an old woman sometimes."

"Why do you feel that way?" Joshua asked as he held back a branch and waited for her to go through. "Old, I mean."

Cathy sighed and shrugged her shoulders. "From I what I can remember, it's not a happy story."

"Tell me, please," Joshua said, and helped her step over a fallen tree.

"Bad childhood. Worse marriage. End of story." She stopped speaking and watched a rabbit skitter under a bush. How can I tell a complete stranger about my horrible life?

Joshua nodded. "There's more to you than that, is there not?"

Cathy glanced sideways at Joshua and saw the sincerity in his eyes. The black pupils resembled glass. She could see her reflection in them, and she didn't like what she saw; a pale, washed-out, battered face, stringy hair, and lonely, trusting eyes. Joshua gave her an encouraging smile.

She glanced away from Joshua's searching eyes and focused on the ground in front of her. "There's more, but I don't want to talk about it. To sum it up, I married young to get away from my parents, but my husband turned out to be an abusive drunk who likes to play tricks on me. I think he drugged me or something and left me out here as some kind of sick joke." Her eyes misted and she quickly swiped away the moisture.

"I'm sorry," Joshua said.

Cathy nodded. "Thank you for being so nice."

"You are quite welcome. It is my pleasure," Joshua said, bowing at the waist.

"Thank you for showing me the way home, but what do you want to me to see? Are we almost there?" Cathy asked, changing the subject from her miserable life.

"It's right through here," Joshua said and led her to a bramble of bushes.

Her body tensed, she felt muscles stiffening from a new start of fear. Eyebrows raised, she said, "What? I don't see anything."

Joshua turned and faced her. Cathy looked into his dark eyes, questioning them with her own. His eyes encompassed sadness. Tears brimmed on the edge of his eyelids. He blinked and a single tear escaped and rolled down his pale cheek. What makes him so sad?

"There is no easy way to do this," Joshua said, touching her lightly on the shoulder and turning her toward the opposite side of the bushes.

A bluish body lay tangled in the blood-spattered bushes. Bugs crawled through decomposing flesh. Two vultures worked steadily, ripping small hunks of meat away from the thigh, exposing bone. The mouth lay open, frozen in a predominate cry of terror. Long blonde hair, turned muddy-brown rippled in a soft breeze. A hand, fingers twisted into a claw, lay across a swollen belly partially concealing a large wide-open gash. Empty eye sockets stared at nothing.

Cathy looked into the dead, empty face and recognized it. She saw what Joshua wanted, needed her to see and understood. She dropped to her knees.

All the missing memories came rushing back to her like a tidal wave roaring over the coastline. Lyle, drunk and angry. Berating her once again for being pregnant. I don't want brats, have one for a wife. Bitch. His fist, a jackhammer, smashing into her face. The knife. No. God no. Not my baby! Slicing. God, not my baby! Her stomach. Her yellow maternity shorts and tank-top... The blood---

Cathy screamed, her anguish cascading into the open from denied pain; the pain of death, the pain of a baby slaughtered. For eight months she had carried and loved her child. She had loved her child more than anything in the world, but Lyle hated it, hated the baby so much that he killed her to destroy it. Her trembling hand went to her stomach and felt the void. "Why---" she screamed, slicing into the pain. "Why destroy me, my child?"

The shadows shifted, left the darkness behind and joined them. Hundreds of people of all ages, different forms of dress from past and present moved out of the darkness. Through the tears, Cathy saw bruised necks, pierced flesh, bloated, blue faces, sliced skin, visible remnants of every type of painful death imaginable.

"I am sorry," Joshua said, stroking her hair. "This is your home now. This is home to all of us whose bodies were hidden here in the swamp. It keeps us forever trapped."

Cathy turned away from the shell of her body and rose to meet Joshua's eyes. She felt released from a horrible man to whom she had been married, but she was overwhelmed at the loss of her baby and her own death. She felt something else too; anger. The man who had stolen her life, who had killed her baby still lived!

An old white-haired woman wearing a long, deep-blue cotton dress, her neck blackened, stepped up to Cathy and held out a bundle of cloth.

Cathy sniffled and wiped her eyes. "What's this?" She took the bundle in her arms and carefully slid back the cloth. A tiny infant suckled on its finger. She smiled as tears flooded her eyes again. Her lost baby had found the way home.

"A girl," the old woman said with a toothless grin.

"Thank you for taking care of her," Cathy said, placing the baby against her breast. The child began to suckle. "Her name is Charity."

Cathy smiled at her baby and then felt the anger springing to the surface at Lyle for stealing Charity's life. She shook her head, stuffed the emotions away someplace safe, and then took Joshua's outreached hand.