The moon, full and bright, exposed predators and prey within the murky bayou of the river delta. A sole silver eye hung in the sky, draping in its light the twisted roots of ancient cypress trees, like the spectral tendrils of Spanish moss that hung from the gnarled upper branches.
A hunter and his Acadian guide glided underneath the wetland canopy with each quiet oar stroke in their nocturnal journey through the swamp.
Still waters licked at the bow of the flat-bottomed wooden pirogue as it cut through the gentile current. Trailing ripples caused small flickers to meet the glowing gator eyes floating in wait for opportunities to feed by the shoreline.
Fireflies flitting above further illumed the passage through the narrow channel maze, drawing the stranger closer to the embrace of nature.
The night air was thick with hugging humidity, and the suffocating dampness behind the blanket of mosquitos enveloped all creatures great and small within the tangled labyrinthine of fresh and rotting vegetation. The potent scent of damp earth and gasses of decomposition mingled with the fragrance of blooming magnolias as the spirits breathed, infused the passing breeze with a marriage of an earthy sweet stench, relaying the ever-present cycle of life and death.
As the two men pushed the boat through the relative calm, the gentle lap of the water against the vessel joined in rhythm with croaking frogs, the occasional buzzing of nocturnal insects, and the rare howl of the red wolf in a somber chorus with eerie echoes that seemed to warn of unseen dangers.
The hoots of distant owls and mournful cries of soaring crows and hawks added a carnivorous layer to the already foreboding atmosphere and aural discord of sounds.
Feeling like the spot was right, the paid scout backpaddled the boat to turn into the weeds toward a small ridge line. The two men stepped off into the murky marsh, with watchful eyes on the Jurassic beasts drawing nearer, as their own footsteps sunk into the dangerous mire.
“Judas’s silver,” the local guide whispered aloud, French-Canadian accent thick. “I sell my soul but certain for your coin.”
“Shhh,” hushed the hunter, eagerly sloshing through the muck as if he was the one who knew the way. “You took the silver. Show me my prize.”
A dense mist anchored to the ground once they waded past the waters, concealing treacherous potholes and sinkholes that threatened to swallow unwary souls. Wraith-like wisps of settled fog snaked their way around the men’s legs as if the swamp itself sought to ensnare them in its clutches, to stop them from themselves.
Unwavering, the men pressed on, senses honed.
The guide was the first to catch a fleeting glimpse of movement amidst the tangled underbrush.
He raised his arm to halt.
There, bathed in the moon’s soft radiance, stood the elusive wolf at the base of a tall rise. Its sleek silhouette melded with the shadows; yellow eyes gleaming with primal intelligence.
The beast paused, tilted its head back, and released a mournful howl that sent a shiver down the men’s spines.
To the alpha’s left, another wolf appeared from the lush growth, a tad slighter. Then trailed the small ones. Four cubs in total.
The guide pointed to the male and gave a knowing nod.
In that instant, time seemed to slow. His heart pounding, the hunter raised his rifle and brought his conquest into the long barrel’s sight.
The moon, a backdrop to the impending drama, bore anxious witness to their encounter with a dimming shade of sad luminescence. Another wave of thin passing cloud cover offered to shroud the shame it could not bear to watch.
The encounter crackled with trepidation and exhilaration as the hunter and his quarry locked eyes.
In that haunted tableau, the hunter’s finger curled around the warm trigger; walnut stock pulled tight to the shoulder, his breath held in tense anticipation.
He sucked in the sticky night air through a small crack in his lips.
The guide wheeled his head around, nervous. He wiped clammy hands on soaked pants.
The swamp, knowing their kind and the impending act of violence, rose to a crescendo of creature calls, desperately trying to dissuade him.
In the seconds that followed, the hunter’s decision hung in the balance, his own existence entwined with the life of the majestic creatures before him.
His decision had been made hours before he set off in search.
He exhaled.
And then, in a split second…pulled the trigger.
A deafening crack shattered the ardent cacophony in the night, reverberating through the dense foliage.
The wolf popped at the sound nearly as quickly as the force doubled him over—dead in the brush.
With an instinct honed by centuries of evolution, his mate and her babies vanished into the inky blackness, eluding the hunter’s deadly aim.
As the echoes of the gunshot faded away, the hunter waited as if alone in the moonlit swamp, his eyes fixed on the spot where the female and her litter had vanished.
“Allons-y. We must leave,” coaxed the guide, his rush a clear sign of growing fear. “I’ll get him for you. He’ll make a fine skin.”
The hunter grabbed his tracker by the shoulder and squeezed. “I want all of them.”
“No. We mustn’t. You’ve taken the male. No more.”
The night sounds of frogs, owls, and other creatures gradually resumed their refrain, scolding the hunters, enraged by the killing.
Neither of the two expected the bitch to return as quickly, but there she was with the family in tow.
She approached her lying mate, cautious, crouched, afraid.
First, a sniff.
Then a lick.
A paw. A desperate claw.
She reared her head, scanning the swamp.
She howled, grieving her loss. The litter mimicked the grief.
“Please,” the guide begged.
The hunter lifted his gun without a word. Another shot cracked the bayou. And then more. So many more, as fast as the hunter could fill and tamp, point and shoot.
The pups scurried around in panic but failed to seek refuge. One by one, they fell.
The calm of the night air grew to a torrent gale.
The hunter, unlike the French trappers who’d migrated from Canada, had no intentions of harvesting his kills for meat, hide, or bone. His quest was one of adrenaline and domination.
His guide, made uneasy by the deed and with the shift in surroundings, fled, followed only by the slapping sounds of his feet to the ground.
The chirps, trills, and lisps of the disparate bugs and beasts converged into one. The sound was piercing. The night calls transformed into a pitch and pattern of mockery. Taunting the hunter, who twisted, reloaded, took aim, and fired at his deserting accomplice.
“Traitor,” he said upon taking aim and drawing in the trigger slack.
Within the gunshot crack and an ensuing splash of the guide’s death-fall, the volume of the bayou grew louder and repeated a pattern. A pattern that twisted and warped into an imitation of voices.
The hunter hastened his own retreat, pace quickening as the ghostly groans grew. He steadied a bouncing engraved hatchet at his side and cushioned occasional stumbles with his rifle tangling in tall grasses, slowing only to leap over his lifeless guide.
The swamp calls resonated faster. Clearer.
Take. And you must give.
Over and over the spectral voice of the swamp groaned.
Take. And you must give.
From his left.
The right.
Front.
Back.
The Crossroads kingdom opened. Spirits of nature, indigenous souls, and swamp witches all thrashed the hunter’s senses as he rushed to the boat. Black animals gave chase as the hunter bolted.
Take. And you must give.
The moonlight burned through the ghostly obscurity, guiding his way, illuminating the path ahead as if by a turn of events, nature now conspired to aid in the escape.
But why?
—
The hunter awoke with a start at dawn.
He heaved a deep breath of relief.
How he’d returned unscathed was as thick in his mind as the fog he closely recalled navigating back to his home and family.
Turning to his wife’s bed, his heart jumped, and the breath he’d expelled did not readily return.
He flipped from his mattress to his feet and rushed to her.
“Marie? Marie, wake up.”
A bloodied heap lay on the floor. The torn gown was one he immediately recognized as one he’d given as an anniversary gift to his wife. Now it was shredded and sopping. He pulled at the soaked fabric to find his beloved. Rib cage split. Her hanging jaw was fractured, unhinged, and ripped to the side. Her abdomen ravaged and void. Legs broken akimbo, splintered and blue through her once milky skin.
As he howled in disbelief and sobbed when he could catch a breath, a new revelation struck him, and he collapsed at the nightmare’s revalation—the children.
He sprung from the floor, roaring in panic as he raced to his children’s room. “Christian? Thomas? Margaret?”
“Margaret!”
“OH GOD!”
“OH GOD!”
“No. No. No. No. This can’t be.”
They, too, were cast about in a similar broke and bloody butchering.
“Who would? How?” His hatchet, clean, was embedded deep into the wall. He paced in a circle around the heap of decimated, drained bodies.
“What the… my… oh, God. Who would do—?”
The hunter buried his head in his hands. Shaking, he clawed his fingers through his own hair, still unable to catch that desperate full breath.
It was then that he felt the wet stickiness on his hands, strands of hair curled around his fingers and stuck to his palm and in his crusted broken and torn nails. His hands moved against his will to his own mouth. He suckled his fingers and savored metallic aftermath in his mouth, coating his tongue and teeth with the liquid life of his family.
“No, this can’t be.”
Visions filled his reeling mind. He saw it. Saw it all clearly.
“Why would I—”
He struggled in vain to calm himself. Raising his head to catch the elusive air stuck behind his knotted heart. As his wind returned and filled his lungs, a smell rose to his nostrils. The familiar smell of the swamp and of a wet animal.
“The wolf,” he breathed with heavy regret. The heaviness turned to a rapid pant. “This… for an animal?”
A buzzing emerged near his ear. Nay, a whisper. There is more to give.
—
It was after one hundred and one days that the cursed hunter returned to a small desolate cabin in the bayou from his nightly cursed call in the marshes. Bloodied, coarse hair patches fell from his shifting skin. His sentence served, the hex would pass to another. At least that was what the voice of the Conjure Man coached through a black spectral shape like a guiding shadow in the night.
An unconscious poacher lay miles away, a large bite wound clotting and healing from the man’s ravaged shoulder.
The hunter walked to the earthen circle he’d dug out earlier and emplaced a blackened lit candle. Melted into a ball within his other hand was what had once been a precious silver necklace he’d given his young daughter. It was one of the few objects he carried as he fled from killing his family months ago.
“Adja gebe o. Kutu adja gebe o,” he recited eleven times, as instructed.” He blew out the candle and turned it over, sinking it into the soft earth.
The hunter dropped the ball into a gunpowder-filled barrel, pressed the pistol to his temple, and fired.
As he fell, the wetlands spoke as they had before, the sounds of the swamp coming together in one voice.
You have given back to Damballah and Bondye, and commanded the same of another. He will protect Brother Bayou. This is the rebirth you have been fed.
