Rooted in Time

Cypress trees sped past on both sides of the truck. Its old tires bounced over the dirt road as a symphony of rattling beer bottles sang from the backseat.

Silas looked over at Beau. His friend, older than him by a few years, was drinking a warmed-over beer as he steered his beloved rust box between the trees. Beau didn’t take his eyes from the winding road, not for a second, but he noticed Silas’ expression all the same.

“I don’t want to hear any second thoughts from you,” he said, draining the last of the beer and tossing it in back.

“What if she’s home?”

“Home?” Beau scoffed. “Nobody’s seen her in months, she’s likely already croaked.” Beau turned to look at him, his graying beard forming a devilish grin. “You ever seen a dead body?”

Silas looked away. He didn’t like to think about that. “I’m just saying, there are other ways of making dough,” he said. “You know Jacob Landry, works out in Slidell? He says he knows where they keep the keys to the lot. Says we could clear out every damn car in the place in one night and be gone before they knew what hit ‘em.”

“If you want to rot in a cell, you keep listening to what Jacob Landry has to say,” Beau proclaimed. “Stick with me, you’ll wind up somewhere a hell of a lot more comfortable.”

“Yeah,” Silas grumbled under his breath, “a pine box.”

Silas had heard the rumors about old Mam Delphine. The ancient woman was said to be a root worker—a practitioner of hoodoo and swamp magic—who’d lived in the area for untold decades. Folks went out of their way to avoid her rundown shack, out there in the middle of the swamp. And here they were, heading right for it like two mosquitoes to an electric lamp.

The problem was, Beau had heard another rumor making the rounds—that Mam Delphine was hoarding something worth more money than either of them had seen in their lifetimes. Something like pirate’s treasure.

Stories of pirates were nothing new in Honey Island Swamp. The infamous Pierre Rameau himself had been known to kick around the area, stashing his stolen gold wherever he could, and most of it was still yet to be found. Recently, though, whispers had been going around that Delphine was sitting on a cache she’d dug up somewhere near her shack, where treasure hunters never dared venture. Only God knew how she’d found it, whether by patient hunting or more supernatural means, but now that she had, all she’d done was stash it under the floorboards and sit on it. The old woman hadn’t been seen coming or going from her shack in months. Most folks figured she’d finally kicked the bucket, but a few of them thought it only proved the theory.

For the first time in her long and lonesome life, Mam Delphine had something worth taking. And once Beau had made up his mind to take it, it was only a matter of time before he dragged Silas along for the ride.

With the sun finally dipping below the cypresses, Beau parked his truck just off the road, behind a tangle of bushes large enough to hide it. They jumped out in their waders and boots, checking that they couldn’t be seen from the road. Before they left the truck behind, Beau ducked into the back and reemerged with something made of gray metal that he quickly tucked into his waistband before shutting the door. He’d only taken a few steps when Silas grabbed him by the shoulder and stopped him where he stood.

“You said no guns.”

Beau swiped his hand away, annoyed. “I said you didn’t need to bring one. I didn’t say nothin’ about me.”

“I’m not going to jail, Beau. Not for this, and not for you.”

Beau chuckled. “You ain’t doin’ this for me. You want out of this sewer of a town even more than I do, that’s why I asked you along. That and you know your way around this swamp better than anyone.” Beau shoved his finger into Silas’ chest, poking him to enunciate each word. “You’re the bloodhound. I’m the hunter. You do your job, and I’ll do mine. What do you say?”

Silas swallowed, sweat trickling down his back. He had half a mind to break Beau’s nose, take the keys to his truck, and leave him stranded on the side of the dirt road. But he also knew that Beau had a half a foot on him, and at least sixty pounds. If he didn’t knock the guy out in one hit, he would lose the fight, and he didn’t trust Beau to stop punching when the other guy went down.

Beau suddenly belted out a laugh so loud it made Silas flinch. “You need to relax, kid. I’m joking. The gun’s only for the gators.” He slapped Silas playfully on the cheek before walking toward the water. “You comin’ or not?”

Silas fought with himself a bit, but he followed.

The noise of the swamp grew louder as they walked closer, a chaotic mixture of buzzing and croaking and hooting. Silas entered first, climbing through the tangled, reddish roots of mangroves along the shore, before stepping down into the murky water.

The waders and boots kept his legs and feet dry, but he could still feel the cold and the muck in every step. Beau joined him, and together they moved south, the cacophony of frogs and insects echoing off the trees. It was so loud that Silas felt dizzy. The stink of mud, the damp taste of decay in the back of his throat, it’d been years since he’d set foot in the swamp, and his tolerance for it had worn off; an old addict, returning to the habit.

“You know which way you’re going?” Beau asked, trailing a few feet behind. Silas nodded wordlessly, then craned his neck to see the Cypress trees towering over them. They were giants, the moss hanging from their branches swaying gently in the breeze like wedding veils.

The pair pushed through sharp-edged blades of saw grass that rose from the shallow waters. The grass provided too much cover for Silas’ tastes, too many places to hide. Occasional splashes caused him to jump as he scanned the swamp’s surface for telltale signs of predators on the hunt. After a few minutes, the incessant buzzing of insects was broken by Beau’s voice.

“Hey. You ever see her?”

“Who?” Silas asked, slapping at an itch on his neck. He came back with a mangled mosquito mixed with his own blood.

“Delphine. The wicked witch herself.”

Silas threw an annoyed look over his shoulder. “Shut up with that. She’s no witch.”

“Hell, my granddaddy told me stories about her. How old you reckon she is by now?”

Silas shook his head. “Don’t know, don’t care. Anyway, I thought you said she’d be dead.”

“Well, if she wasn’t before, she will be now.”

Silas said nothing.

“I ain’t saying I’ll do the job myself, just that her heart’ll give out when she sees us- if it hasn’t already.”

The old trees, their knobby knees jutting up from the water’s surface, groaned and creaked as they swayed in the breeze. An owl hooted in the distance, a sound that hung on the air like an unanswered question.

Soon night fell, and the sunlight died. The pair took out their flashlights and continued through the stinking swamp, Silas navigating them toward where the old woman’s shack was supposed to be. With each step through the knee-high water, Silas resisted the urge to turn back. Every frog croak and animal cry sounded like a warning. He knew Beau had to be feeling the same thing deep down—any sane person would—but Beau wasn’t the type to show it. He was either the bravest man Silas had ever met, or the dumbest, and most days he couldn’t tell the two apart.

His mind drifted back to when he was young, angling for catfish with his father in their aluminum boat. How he would watch the sunlight filtering through the swamp’s canopy, the boat leaving ripples in its wake. How his father pointed out hidden gator nests nestled among the reeds. How he identified the calls of birds echoing through the trees.

Then, how everything changed after his mother’s funeral. How they argued and fought. How their last fishing trip ended in water clouded dark with-

Something moved past him in the water. Silas was pulled from the memory by the feeling of water rushing through his legs.

“Did you feel that?” he asked, thrown off-balance. Whatever was down there was big enough to make him lose his footing.

“Feel what?”

“Something in the water!” Silas shone his flashlight into the murky water, but it did nothing to illuminate whatever hid below. Beau shone his light around as well, trying to catch sight of ripples in the water, but other than themselves moving it around, the water was deathly still.

“You sure?” Beau asked. Silas wanted to shout that yes, he was sure, but the truth was he couldn’t say for certain. There were good reasons he didn’t come out to the swamp anymore, one of which being he couldn’t trust himself to keep his wits about him.

“Just … be careful,” Silas conceded. “Keep a lookout for movement.”

Beau scoffed. “Like I ever stopped.”

Silas took a deep breath of heavy air, trying to calm his nerves. He wasn’t sure about what he’d felt in the water, what it could be, if it was anything at all, but he knew standing around waiting for it to come back wasn’t a good idea. Just as he was about to move again, however, he spotted it in the distance.

The overgrowth of twisting vines and brush was so dense, one could almost miss the shack at first glance. It was an ancient thing, barely standing, like an old growth long since dead and dried up. A platform of rotted wood barely kept the shack above water, with a collapsing dock leading up to the door.

Silas felt a pang of guilt for bringing Beau and his gun right to the old woman. He considered leading him in a different direction, pretending he couldn’t find it. But before he could say anything, Beau whistled in that way he did when he was excited.

“Easy pickings,” Beau said, slapping Silas on the back, and trudged past him through the water.

They approached the shack slowly, listening under the din of insects for signs of life. When they were sure they’d heard none, they pulled themselves up onto the deck and stalked quietly to the shack.

Beau tried to get a look inside, but the moonlight barely penetrated the grime-coated windows.

“Seems like no one’s home,” Beau said, flashing a woolly grin. He tried the door but found it locked. Then he surprised Silas by taking a step back and kicking it in, the rotted wood exploding inward in a cloud of splinters and dead termites.

A wave of stale air, thick with mildew and unidentifiable smells, assaulted their noses. Silas thought of those Egyptian tombs being opened on television, the ones full of molds and ancient curses.

“Beau,” Silas said. “I’m not so sure I can-”

“Listen to me,” Beau cut him off. “You want to be stuck in this town forever?” His face was knotted with rage, a look Silas had never seen on his friend, like a starved animal guarding its kill. He couldn’t remember what good he’d ever seen in Beau, or if he’d just seen what he wanted to see.

Looking between Beau and the open threshold behind him, Silas shook his head. “No, I guess I don’t,” he admitted.

Beau’s angry face turned into a sickly smile. “Then let’s go in there and get what’s ours.”

As they stepped inside, shining their flashlights ahead of them, the thick stench of decay became more intense. It was a stink worse than death. The shack seemed abandoned, with sunken furniture and debris littering the single room. Vines had slowly crept in through a broken window and spread across the walls to reclaim the space.

The thickest of the vines and branches had entirely overtaken the furthest corner, forming a tangle so thick it hid whatever was underneath.

“This looks promising,” Beau said eagerly. He took a few steps forward, training his flashlight on the tangled mass. Silas tried to stop him, but he’d seen it too late: a gnarled hand, pale and veined like a spiderweb, was frozen stiff at the center of the vines.

Beau shrieked, scrambling back and nearly knocking Silas backward through the open door. Silas shone his flashlight on it to get a better look at the stiffened claw aimed at them.

An old woman was half-merged into the wicker-like growth, her body grotesquely transformed over the decades. She appeared to have been dead a long time, long enough for nature to reclaim not just her shack but her body as well. Greenbrier vines had grown into her skin, their thorny stems wrapped around her stomach and chest. Heart-shaped leaves trailed down her ears and nostrils and disappeared inside.

Having regained himself, Beau shook the dust off. “I told you she croaked,” he joked with a nervous laugh.

Delphine’s gaze shifted suddenly, fixing them with milk-white eyes.

“Sweet Jesus,” Silas whispered. Beau said nothing, his throat too dry to form the words. And then, to both men’s horror, they watched as her mummified lips split open to speak.

“What are their names?” she asked, her dry, raspy voice sending a chill through them.

Beau and Silas glanced at each other, silent. Then Beau, trying to hide the panic in his voice, said, “Just two strangers, come to check on you.”

“This one lies,” she whispered in reply. She stirred, aggravated.

Silas quickly stepped forward. “To be honest, ma’am, we heard rumors. Stories about something you’re keeping secret. Something valuable.” Beau shoved him, trying to shut him up, but a strange smile spread across Delphine’s ancient face, etched in wrinkles and dried stems.

“This one speaks the truth,” Delphine croaked. “They seek it, seek what I guard.”

Beau’s eyes grew in his skull, excited that the rumors were true. That she really had found something out there in the muck.

“My apologies for the lie,” he said, trying to sound polite. And yet he had one hand rested on the gun tucked in his belt. “I wasn’t sure how agreeable you’d be. Some folks get spooked by a face like mine.” He paused, taking in the sight of her. “Would you be willin’ to share your find with us? We could sell it for you and split the money, of course, any way you say’s fair.”

Silas knew Beau better than that. If he walked away with his prize, Mam Delphine would never see him again. Even if she did, he would make sure she was committed, locked up for being delusional. Silas was about to tell Beau they needed to leave, maybe even knock him out and drag him away if need be.

“It is beyond value,” she replied simply.

Beau looked back at Silas. Silas shook his head, warning his friend not to continue. A tight smile flashed across Beau’s face as he pulled the gun from his waistband and showed it to the woman.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to check on that myself.”

The moment the words left Beau’s lips, the shack shuddered around them. An impossibly low sound came from beneath the floorboards, like the shifting of ancient bedrock, and the air became thick and heavy.

Mam Delphine cackled, a sound like dry leaves scraping earth. The wicker shapes shifted and contorted around her. “They think I guard it from them, and not the other way around.”

With a sickening crack a maw opened in the rotten floorboards beneath Beau. He screamed as he plunged into the darkness below, limbs flailing, unable to fire off a single shot. Like that, he was gone. Silas lunged to the side, narrowly avoiding the gaping hole as splintered wood exploded. He landed hard, the impact knocking the wind out of him.

As he scrambled on his knees back to the exit, toward safety and the moonlight, the unearthly sound grew louder in his ears until it was all he could hear, the pressure threatening to rupture his eardrums.

Behind him an obsidian mass emerged from beneath the trembling shack, rising from the hole in the floor and rapidly expanding outward. Countless fractal patterns writhed across its oily surface in impossible shades of purple and black. Mam Delphine stared in reverence as it moved and pulled and shifted in all directions, most of all toward Silas.

Just as he reached the doorway, it made contact with his leg. His nerves came alive with eons of pain and destruction, a sensation like nothing he could have imagined. He felt his mind turn in on itself and expand outward, tearing apart piece by piece and moment by moment. And then, quick as it had started, the feeling was gone, replaced by the purest darkness he’d ever known.

Silas blinked the wetness from his eyes. He was standing beneath the cypress trees, forgetting how he’d gotten there. The sounds of the swamp closed in around him - the distant croaks of frogs, the rustle of leaves in the breeze. It was a beautiful day in Honey Island Swamp, a good one for fishing. If only it hadn’t been ruined.

The arguments with his father were growing angrier, more violent, and this one had been the worst of them all. He’d left his father behind in the boat and climbed onto solid ground, going for a walk to clear his head. He tried to shake off the bitterness but it clung to him like humidity.

He walked on, trudging through the muddy soil with his heart heavy in his chest. As he wandered deeper into the shadows, Silas tried to push away the anger and focus instead on the odd beauty of the swamp around him.

But then a scream pierced the air like a knife, and Silas froze. He knew for certain which way it had come from. It was the way he’d come, the direction of the boat.

From his father.

Silas broke into a run, feet pounding wet earth as he raced back towards the boat. He burst through the undergrowth and stumbled into the clearing where the boat lay moored, but what he saw there brought him to a staggering halt.

His father lay sprawled on the ground next to the water, his face in agony as he clutched at the stump where his arm had been. Blood pooled beneath him, staining the earth red. Silas’ stomach flipped as he rushed forward and dropped to his knees by his father’s side.

“Dad!” he cried, his voice breaking. “What happened?!”

His father could only groan in response, his eyes wide with pain. Silas’ hands trembled as he lay them on his father’s remaining hand, the warmth of his blood soaking into his skin.

And then he heard it, the unmistakable thrash of a gator moving through the water. Fear gripped him as he looked up, his eyes scanning for any sign of the creature- but it was already too late.

The gator lunged out of the water with impossible speed, its jaws snapping shut around Silas’ father with a sickening crunch. Silas screamed in terror as his father’s hand was pulled out of his. The man was dragged away from him and into the water, the last flash of his face a mask of terror.

Just as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. The gator disappeared beneath the surface, leaving behind ripples in its wake. Silas found himself alone in the clearing, his father’s blood staining his hands as he struggled to make sense of what had just happened.

As he knelt there, lost in disbelief, the sounds of the swamp grew quiet as if muted, drained of their power, and so too did the color of the sky, the movement of the trees, until all was dark and dead.

Silas watched the last of his memories drain away, devoured by the black cloud Delphine watched over. What stayed behind was a cold hollow in his heart; the feeling of pain taken away, leaving only a shell, a container. It was a feeling he’d never asked for, if only because he didn’t know he could.

“It has eaten. It sleeps now,” the ancient crone said from the corner, her voice softer.

Seated at the edge of the massive hole in the floorboards, the obsidian mass undulating before him, Silas felt a sensation in his hands like fire ants. He looked down lazily to find his hands growing thick, purple veins that joined with the vines and roots webbed across the floor. He tried vaguely to move, to lift his hands, but was rooted to the spot. His thoughts, his fears, all those rambling noises, began to fade, until only a single thought remained, simple and pure.

“He joins her,” Silas said. “He watches.”

The obsidian mass contracted back into itself, disappearing into the hole from where it came and healing the wood as it went. Only the song of the frogs remained, the insects trilling in the air, the cypress trees swaying in the breath of the night. The wicker shapes stilled and with them Silas and Delphine. They watched over it, together, and waited.