This all started back when I was a boy. I grew up in rural Louisiana. It’s always been weird talking about my childhood to my family and friends from Chicago. I currently live in Chicago, where my wife is from and my children were born. I moved to Chicago when I was 18 years old and it was hard adjusting at first. Comparing the city life that I live now with all of its modern conveniences to the simple upbringing I had in Louisiana always feels so strange. Where I lived, some people still didn’t have television, electricity or running water. Looking back, I feel like I had more in common with children from the 1930s than the children of the 1990s when I actually grew up. It was a place stuck in time, full of superstitions and ways of life that are long gone now. My mom and dad were in their early 40s when they had me and have since both passed away. My old house along with the other houses in the area I used to live are vacant and falling apart now. The little community I grew up in died when my generation moved away in the 2000s. When I was a boy I spent my days fishing, playing in the woods, exploring, stuff like that. I lived right beside the Bayou and spent a lot of time there.
One day when I was 7 years old, me and my grandpa went for a walk along the Bayou. We were looking for a plant that my family had used as a medicine for generations, it grew beside the water in a specific patch. The silence was cut by the sound of whistling in the distance. At first my grandpa didn’t hear it. But then he looked up at the water with one of the most serious expressions I’ve ever seen on his face. He was a huge, old Cajun man and I had never seen him scared before, but he had a look of terror on his face that sent shivers down my spine. He told me we had to leave and grabbed my hand. As I looked back I saw a dark silhouette of a man in a canoe in the distance. I never forgot that day. I asked my grandpa what happened and he just told me to run home as quick as I could if I ever heard that whistling again. My grandpa passed away a year later and I never got to bring it up to him again.
Years went by and I was 12 years old at this point. Me and my best friend Elijah who was also my neighbour, were always up to something. One warm summers day we decided to go fishing on the Bayou using his dad’s old aluminum row boat. We left in the afternoon and headed for our favourite fishing hole. I still can’t express the beauty of that place with words. It’s an ancient place with a certain kind of magic in the air. We had a pretty good day and caught a good amount of fish. We had been fishing for a couple of hours and the sun was starting to set. We were getting ready to leave when we heard it.
That whistling… He was whistling the same three note tune I had heard years earlier. My heart stopped for a second as I felt a terror in my chest I couldn’t explain. Something about that whistling was menacing. Elijah didn’t seem phased, he looked over to where the noise was coming from. “I wonder who that is” Elijah said. He looked at me and saw the frightened expression on my face. “What’s wrong” he asked. I tried to speak but nothing came out at first. “W-we should go” I stuttered. As I said that he appeared from around a corner. There was a man wearing a black, wide brimmed hat in the shadows. “Hey, any luck today” Elijah shouted at him. There was no reply. The man tilted his head in our direction. He continued whistling and kept on paddling toward us. “Elijah we have to go” I pleaded. An uneasy look came across Elijah’s face and he looked at me for a second. We began to paddle back as the strange man kept on our trail. He kept a distance but continued to follow us through the winding passages of the Bayou. Every time we thought he was gone he would appear from behind a corner or a large tree and continued to whistle the whole time. I tried to get a look at his face but he was slightly too far a way and it was slightly too dark for me to get a clear view.
Eventually we lost him and the whistling faded away. We made it to the shore and headed for home as quickly as we could, constantly looking behind us through the moss covered trees to see if he was following us. When we got back home I told Elijah the story about the walk with my grandpa and he was pretty spooked. Elijah explained to me why he looked so uneasy all of a sudden right before we left. “I don’t think that was a man. I thought I saw his face for a second and it just didn’t look right”. That night I could hardly get sleep, something about the situation just felt so off. There was something sinister about that man, I could feel it but I couldn’t explain it. I kept imagining I was hearing the whistling coming from outside of my open window.
The next day I woke up late in the afternoon after falling asleep late due to a night of tossing and turning. When I got up I headed to Elijah’s house only to find him waiting outside for me. “I found something” he said. He pulled something out of his pocket. It was a tooth, a human tooth. ‘Where did you find that’ I asked. He told me he had gone into the Bayou early in the morning and found that man’s empty canoe beside the water. There was a burlap sack in the canoe. Elijah crept over to the canoe and took a look inside the bag. “Why on earth would you do that” I asked. “I had to know what he was hiding in there” he replied. I shook my head in disproval as he continued his story. He told me when he looked inside of the sack he found bones, human bones… He said he knew no one would believe him so he took a tooth back as proof. “What is wrong with you, you could’ve ended up in that bag Elijah” I said, shocked. “I told my dad and we’re bringing the sherif out there this evening to show him”. I felt a little bit better but still not completely assured. Later that day the three of them looked for the canoe but when they got there the canoe was gone, along with the bones. Elijah’s dad was mad at him and assumed he made the whole thing up.
The next morning I went to Elijah’s house to find him. His mom answered the door but looked confused when I asked to see him. “I thought he was with you” his mom said. Apparently when his family woke up he was gone. I waited outside for him the whole day calling his name. The day ended and Elijah was still nowhere to be found. I thought back to the night before. I had a terrible nightmare and heard that whistling in my dream. Had it been a dream though? Search parties combed the woods that surrounded the Bayou, dogs were bought out but nothing ever led to any leads. I went out myself to look for him the day his mom first told me he wasn’t home but I’m still ashamed to admit that I was too frightened to go past the spot where he told me the canoe was and I gave up halfway. I knew all of the spots he loved to go but couldn’t bring myself to look because I was too frightened. Weeks went by and there was no trace of him. Sometimes I would get mad at him for grabbing that damned tooth. Maybe that’s what caused this, maybe that man came back to get it.
Years went by but I never forgot about what happened. I tell my kids stories about Elijah all of the time but I’ve never told them or my wife what happened to him. When I moved to Chicago I left that life behind me but never forgot the lessons I learned. Why is this relevant now? Well, the other day something happened and I don’t know what to make of it. A few days ago we decided we were going to go camping as a family. We left for rural Illinois and found a nice campground. I felt like I was in my element, I was teaching my kids the things my grandpa and dad taught me when I was a boy. It was an amazing trip up until last night. I had gotten a campfire going in a beautiful spot right beside the lake.
An all too familiar sound broke the silence. I heard that damned whistling, the same exact three notes I had heard when I was a boy. My blood ran cold. My family didn’t really seem to notice at first but they could tell something was off with me. “We have to go” I said coldly. They were reasonably upset and kept asking me why. I didn’t tell them why. We packed everything up quickly and I started the car. We were taking off when my 5 year old daughter’s voice piped up from the back seat. “That man in the water was wearing a funny hat”. I could see his damn silhouette in the rearview mirror. I’m writing this now because I want some answers, the answers I never got from my grandpa. The answers I never got about my friend’s disappearance. How is it possible that this same man or whatever the hell it is followed me 12 and a half hours away and across multiple states over a span of almost 30 years. What does he want and what does this all mean? Our trip was abruptly ended and my family is still very upset with me but it doesn’t matter. It’s for their own good. I still hear that whistle at night sometimes even though I know it’s in my head. I’ll keep you guys updated on what happens next. I pray I never hear that dreaded whistling again. If anyone has had a similar story or knows anything else about this let me know right away.