The fifth coffee of the night was burning a hole in the pit of my stomach. Mud had leaked into my shoes and I was trying hard not to imagine what kind of parasites were soaking into my socks. The smell was overwhelming. My brother whined incessantly behind me. Sounded worse than the mosquitos.
Death. Death, decay, and stagnant water. I’m sure all swamps smell that way but this was my first and it was curling my nose hairs.
I slapped vainly at another mosquito and looked at our guide. Frederick was grim and silent, jaw tight and mouth a thin gray line.
He didn’t want to be here but I hadn’t given him much choice. Between the dirt I had on him and what we were paying his back was against the wall. I had no illusions that he’d be dipping out the second shit hit the fan- but we weren’t looking for a bodyguard, just a guide. It was just his bad luck he’d grown up around this swamp.
“Do you hear that?” He stopped so suddenly I almost walked into him.
I froze and listened intently. In the distance I could begin to make out something different about the croaking of the toads. No longer ambient- it had begun to sound like words.
“Yes.” I nodded, pulling my feet out of the mud and moving around him, “We can find our way from here.”
I didn’t need to tell him twice. He turned around and started back, jerking his thumb at the half submerged raft at the end of the earthen pier- so far in the distance I could barely make it out around the trees and moss. I wasn’t surprised that it was only a raft when I got to it. There were no boats out here. Nothing with a motor. Nothing that could make enough sound to disturb the toads.
Or attract the attention of the other things.
I climbed onto it without looking back, feeling it rock behind me as my brother climbed on after. Frederick wouldn’t be waiting for us. That was fine. He’d shown me the hidden markers- just me. I found that weird in hindsight, but in the end it didn’t matter. I knew I could find my way back.
Our way back. Not that I cared, personally.
We were here for answers. That was all I wanted. All I’d been working for. Everything else had ceased to matter. I’d quit my job, sold my belongings, ended whatever relationships I still had outside of my brother. Nothing mattered to me more than knowing.
The setting pole was damp and slippery with patches of lichen. I had to struggle to keep a grip on it when I pushed away from the shore. My breath was growing labored by the time I could make out the words echoing out of the reeds.
No! Why?! Please!
Every word was guttural and distorted and yet unique in tone and voice. They were words but distinctly toad-like- just like the speakers. The toads themselves. I say toads because I don’t have a better word for them, but they were-
Not.
They were not toads. They had dim light bulb eyes that pinned me as I drifted past. I tried not to let them distract me. I was listening.
“Anthony? What are you doing here?” I finally heard her voice- coming from a stand of trees on my right. I froze with my hands twisted around the pole, breath caught in my chest, heart locked in a vice.
“What is it, baby?”
Anthony, my parent’s golden child. Anthony who had always gotten everything he wanted- Anthony who was supposed to be at work that day. Anthony who supposedly had a rock solid alibi.
Anthony who’d stood by and watched me struggle to make sense out of the senseless. Anthony who’d supported me when I quit my job and broke up with my girlfriend to have more time to hunt for their killer.
Anthony who was behind me right that moment.
I started to shake so violently that I lost my grip on the pole. It slipped away from me and landed in the murky water with a slap. I dropped to my knees afterwards and locked eyes with the white-eyed toad sitting on a moss covered stump.
“Anthony?” It croaked.
“Anthony? What’ve you done?!” Another toad joined it. Together they stared into my soul.
I could see his reflection rising behind me on the scummy water.
It broke when the first toad leaped from the sand bar with a splash. The ripples of the second shattered it beyond all recognition.
“AnTHonY?” I closed my eyes and listened to the distorted echo of my mother’s voice, “WhAT’Re YoU DoInG HeRE?”
“Bye Billy.” I heard the gun cock and knew there was nothing I could do about it anyway- so I pitched forward into the water. I passed something else on the way in. Something with gray-green skin and flowing hair. As I sunk toward the bottom I saw another swimming up past me.
It looked like my dad. Like a grotesque, misshapen version of my dad with mottled skin and milky eyes.
I’ve never known terror like I did in that second, realizing what I was in the water with. Where I was. When I looked I saw them all around me- gray, mottled things with vacant, knowing eyes. Suddenly I DID care if I lived. I wanted to live- if only so I didn’t die HERE, in this way, among them.
They looked so hungry.
I kicked toward the surface, little bubbles of air escaping me as I pushed back towards the raft. It was rocking violently. I looked down as it reached it, grabbing the edge and hauling myself up just as I saw graying hands reaching up to where my ankles had just been. I think I must have flown. I got up with no memory of pulling myself- instead I spilled across the boards with a stifled gasp and jerked around, looking for my brother.
He was gone. I didn’t have to wonder if he’d be back. The water was frothing and bubbling a few feet away. I watched it turn from brackish gray to purply-red to a grayish pink and huddled in the center of the raft, unable to choose between that and the edges of the raft.
Eventually the geyser calmed. No hands exploded in my periphery. The raft settled and the waters grew calm.
I put my head down on the raft and inhaled as quietly as I could, choking on all I’d just seen. A soft splash reeled me right back up again, mortal dread clenching in my chest.
But it was just the pole. Held aloft in a bloated, decaying hand like the sword excalibur. It stayed there until I reached out hesitantly and took the very end- then opened, supporting it long enough for me to draw it back without another splash.
I looked down into the blank eyes of my father- just a few inches away, beneath a blanket of stained algae and dyed water.
It was still there when I pulled back and got to my feet, applying the pole and directing myself back toward the shore.
It took my hours to gather myself enough to find my way back. I was right that Fredrick wasn’t waiting for me, but he had left the pair of dirt bikes- which was more than I’d expected. There was only one key though. I picked it up with a trembling hand and stared at it for a while.
In the distance I could hear them calling. There was a new voice among them.
”Bye Billy.”
Bye. bYE. ByE.