by Bill Russo
Sample Chapter from Swamp Tales: Horrors from the Hockomock Swamp and the Marshes of Cape Cod - available in the Kindle Store for just 99 cents.
The setting: a smoky campfire near a kettle pond in dense Bridgewater Triangle woodlands. Four young men are seated around the glowing logs drinking coffee and swapping tales -swamp tales........
"Well,
as a teacher and a student of this region, I can tell you that for
hundreds of years, this area of Massachusetts has been the site of
thousands of reports of shaggy half-men, half-ape creatures. There
have been dozens of accounts of flying birds that seem to be
prehistoric pterodactyls. They are extinct flying dinosaurs.
Thunder Birds have been spotted. Abnormally large Snakes have been
sighted. Snakes, or serpents I should say, as big around as
telephone poles! For myself, I have never seen anything in these
woods that I cannot explain."
Bobby
Butterfield had been anxious to speak, and jumped in when Markens
cleared his throat, a nervous habit the teacher had - akin to some
people's frequent injection of 'you know' into almost every sentence
they utter.
"I've
been a camper and a counselor here for quite a few years you know. I
have never seen anything like what you guys are describing. But I
will tell you what I did see. And mind you. I have seen it three
times you know! It is just before or just after sunset. It happens
near Rusty Pond, you know where they used to dump old cars and
trucks, and the water has turned a reddish brown."
"Yes
we all know where it is Bobby. What did you see?" asked Mr.
Markens.
"Glowing
trees. Entire trees lit up from the base right to the highest
branch. Not lit up like by a light bulb, but lit only with a faint,
cold glow. They were not even as bright as a fire fly. They looked
like giant versions of those glow sticks that people carry; but not
the bright ones, you know. They looked like dim glow sticks that are
just short of going out. There would be as many as 40 trees, on
either side of the path, shimmering in the darkness with that faint,
spectral light."
"I've
heard of that phenomenon," remarked the history teacher. "There
can be several natural explanations for it."
"Well
Mr. Markens, that doesn't make it any less scary, you know,"
Bobby affirmed coldly.
It
fell to me next, to take up the tales.
"It's
my first year as a Junior Counselor but I have been a camper at Wild
River for four years. Also, my parents house is only a few miles
away. Our land backs right up to the 'High Tees' - that long swath
of land that has the high tension wires that run from Boston to
Providence."
"Hey
Bill, everybody knows about the 'High Tees'," Bobby Butterfield
interjected. "Its a sixty mile green strip that is supposedly
used as an expressway by ghosts and creatures that wander from
Massachusetts to Rhode Island."
"You
are correct Bob. I've never seen anything weird, either in the 'High
Tees' or in the area around the Camp. But I know there's plenty of
bizarre creatures in the swamp. My uncle and my Father have seen
things, but they refuse to go into details. They will only tell me
that they have seen and spoken to some people they called 'wild
men'."
"Really
Bill," an excited Mr. Markens interrupted. "I've never
heard this before. Please go on."
"Well,
I really don't know much. They simply refuse to tell me any more
than I already have told you. My Uncle, walking in the High Tees,
has seen a wild man at least twice. He talked to it. The more I
asked him about it the less he wanted to discuss it. Finally he said
that it was just an old drunk passing through that he spoke with and
he made it a closed subject. The same thing happened when I talked
to my Father. Clearly, they have seen something. Something that
scared them into silence."
"I
know your Father and his brother a little bit," said the school
teacher, "and I don't think there's too much on earth that could
scare either one of them. Their spirit and bravery is well known
around Southeastern Massachusetts. There's another reason why they
will not talk about their experience."
"What
could the reason be?" I asked.
Mr.
Markens thought for a moment, cleared his throat, and moved his
glasses back down to his nose before he spoke.
"They
are both conservationists. Your Dad and Uncle have been against every
building project that's ever been proposed for the Wild River area.
Perhaps they fear that if it were known for certain that there are
half-wild men living in the swamp; it would bring unwanted publicity
that could lead to the capture and destruction of the primitive
creatures."
"You
could be right about that," I admitted, "The both of them
are always rescuing turtles or injured animals and nursing them back
to health before releasing them back into the wild. My Dad always
says that the Wild River area should never be developed."
"He's
right about that, of course", agreed Mr. Markens, "because
the 60,000 acres of swampland around us, act as a Rhode Island-sized
sponge. The swamp swabs up excess rain and moisture from storms and
stores it, so that we never experience flooding or flood damage in
our towns. If there's too much development, the sponge won't be big
enough to stop the torrents of water during hurricanes and such.
Massachusetts could literally sink into the Atlantic Ocean!"
The
moon was more than half full and cast a decent amount of light on our
camping spot. Mr. Markens threw some more wood on the fire while
Freddy Simpson placed an old aluminum coffee pot on a patch of hot
coals.
"If
we are going to be sharing some more ghost stories, I'd like a cup of
hot coffee," Freddy said after setting the pot down. "Mr.
Markens, you're the history guy. How about telling us a story about
this place from back in the day?"
"Well
Freddy, I am pretty much of a skeptic about this area that is called
'The Bridgewater Triangle', but there is one scary story that took
place not 200 yards from where we are, over a hundred years ago.
As
you guys know, there was an iron works right here where we are, in
Southeastern, Massachusetts. It was the first in the nation. The
melting furnace was first lit around 1700 and ran non stop for over
200 years.
Back
around 1850, the man who had managed the iron works for more than 20
years died suddenly in his house, which stood very near to the spot
of our campfire.
His
name was John Alderson and he was a very successful businessman,
which is to say that he greatly underpaid his workers and skimped on
everything in a never ending quest for higher profits. Now
gentlemen, let the record show that there was nothing extra-ordinary
about his death. It was the natural death of a man well over 70, who
chose to continue working right up to his last breath. In fact, his
foreman was working with him when he died.
They
were looking at plans for the construction of a steeple for a new
Methodist Church in the town of Plymouth.
With
the victim laid out on his own bed, the Doctor and the foreman were
speaking about the funeral arrangements and other details surrounding
the death.
"Well
Doctor. We were figuring out what is was going to cost us to
fabricate this new Plymouth job, when all of a sudden Mr. Alderson's
head just jerked upwards. His eyes bulged and he tried to breathe,
but wasn't able too. Then he collapsed. I saddled up a horse and
came and got you."
"You
did the right thing Mr. Phipps. It certainly looks like age just
caught up with old Alderson. He could have had a bad heart. I
wouldn't know because he never came in to the office for medical
advice. I don't believe he thought much of medicine. He certainly
was slow in paying the bills every time I had to patch up any of your
men who got hurt on the job."
"It
was nothing personal Doc. He just hated spending money. The old guy
was just plain cheap. He squeezed us on everything. We had to make
our tools last twice as long as they should. We had to save every
piece of scrap metal from every job and put it in a big 'boneyard'
out behind the works. Then, when we'd get a job, Alderson would
make me go out and search the scrap to see how much of it would be of
use in the new job."
"Well
I guess that makes sense Phipps. Why buy new stock if you have old
stock you can use?"
"It
makes sense only on the surface Doc. I would sometimes have to spend
a whole day out in the boneyard piecing together junk scraps that we
call 'drops', to make a beam! Most of the buildings in the
Commonwealth have main beams that were cobbled together with old junk
scraps. There's no telling when a serious accident could happen.
The State House in Boston could fall down tomorrow because of the
shoddy materials we used when we built it."
"Well
it does sound pretty bad when you phrase it that way Phipps. At any
rate, I will be back in the morning to take care of the body and
finish making my report. By the way, someone has to stay with the
body."
"Well
Doctor, sitting up with the dead is usually left up to a family
member or a loved one."
"Mr.
Phipps you are correct. As far as I know, old Alderson had no family
and nobody he loved; and certainly nobody who loved him. But it's
tradition, somebody has to sit up with the dead. You do it tonight
and I will have some folks from the Iron Works come in to take over
for you early in the morning."
The
doctor prepared to leave. Slowly he took off his rubber gloves.
Phipps watched in fascination as he removed the cold and clammy
things that felt like the touch of death.
"Why
do my gloves interest you so?"
"We
use gloves in our work too, Doctor. In fact, you treated a man
recently who was badly burned because he didn't have any gloves."
"Yes,
young Walter Smith foolishly was working his cutting torch without
his gloves. I told him to always put his gloves on before doing any
work with heating elements."
"He
didn't have any gloves, Doc. He wore out his pair. When he tried to
get new ones from the stockroom, he was told that under Alderson's
orders, he could not have a new pair for six more weeks. I told you
Alderson shorted us on everything. I can't say that I am sad he's
gone. If they give me his job, things will change around here. We
might not make as much money, but the men will be safer and happier."
"I
am sorry to hear about this, Phipps. I hope you do get to take over
his job. Well, I am off now. Will you be okay until about 8:00
A.M.? I will have people in by then to relieve you."
"Yes.
Sure. I'll sit up with the dead guy and I'll write up a new
estimate for this steeple job in Plymouth. I will make sure that at
least this job, will be done right."
The
doctor departed and Charles Phipps sat down in one of the two chairs
in the small home of the late John Alderson.
"He
wasn't just stingy with us at work, he was even cheap with himself,"
Phipps said aloud. "Look at this dump. He was the head of a
business that has hundreds of workers. The company does work all
over the Commonwealth and yet the guy lived in a one room house. Two
wooden chairs. A small table. A little bit of a couch, A tiny twin
bed. A desk. A Dresser. A closet full of identical cheap black
suits. That's it. That's all that he had.
He
glanced
casually at the formless, sheeted hulk on the bed opposite him, and
began to study the steeple plans by the light of the dim lamp which
stood on the rough table.
Still
talking aloud, though he was alone in the minuscule dwelling, he
said, "Well Alderson, tonight you are in the best mood ever.
There's no groaning, no complaining, and you have not once told me
that I am wasting the company's money. I have to say that death
certainly does become you, you old goat!"
Outside,
a black darkness raced in, obliterating the path, the tree line, and
even the sky from Phipps' vantage point at a dirty windowsill. In
the dim light of the lamp, he found that it was a strain on his eyes
to try to do any more work, so he folded up the plans and set his
arms down on the bare table to act as a pillow for his head. Before
he closed his weary eyes he looked across the room at Alderson. He
had worked with the man for more than 20 years and not once did
Alderson have a visitor or a friend. He took no holidays and spent
every day, including Sundays, working in his office on the second
floor of the main building of the iron works.
Out
of doors, the wind had picked up and was shearing branches from the
sheltering pines and tossing them at the little hovel. With a thud,
a freshly severed limb struck the door of the house. Charles Phipps
jerked his head towards the door with a start and settled back after
he realized the noise was just a windswept branch.
Out
of the corner of his eye, he noticed something. By the door, on a
frail looking three legged table, was the doctor's bag.
"I
wonder if the Doc left any medicine in that case?."
Phipps
rose from his chair, rubbed his eyes, and then was delighted to find
a nearly full bottle of brandy among the bandages, scissors, scalpels
and such. He drank liberally and straight from the bottle. The
Doctor certainly wouldn't mind him having the brandy, he assured
himself. He was, after all, doing him a great favor by sitting up
with the dead.
There
was a detective magazine in the Doctor's bag, so Charles Phipps
turned up the lamp and began reading. After a time, he looked up
from the literature and his eyes fell upon the bed with its silent
occupant. He was startled, involuntarily; as if he had for a moment,
forgotten the presence of the corpse, and was unpleasantly reminded
of it.
Later,
he realized that every time he looked up from the magazine, he would
peer over at the dead man, and each time, he had a momentary fright;
as though he were seeing him 'laid out' for the first time.
The
fright was light and instinctive, but he felt angry at himself.
The
wind died down to a whisper before evaporating into nothing. There
were no hooting owls, no croaking frogs, no buzzing crickets. He
realized that utter and deadening silence had cloaked both the house
and the night.
Phipps shook himself as if to rid his mind of wild speculations, and went back to his reading. A sudden rogue gust of wind whipped through the window, in which the light in the lamp flickered and went out suddenly. Phipps, cursing softly, groped in the darkness for matches, burning his fingers on the lamp chimney. He struck a match, relighted the lamp, and glancing over at the bed, got a horrible shock.
Alderson's face stared blindly at him, the dead eyes wide and blank, framed in the gnarled gray features. Even as Phipps instinctively shuddered, his reason explained the apparent phenomenon: the sheet that covered the corpse had been carelessly thrown across the face by the Doctor and the
sudden puff of wind had simply tossed it aside.
Yet there was something grisly about the thing, something fearsomely
suggestive; as if, in the masking darkness, a dead hand had cast aside the sheet, just as if the corpse were about to rise....
Phipps, an imaginative man, shrugged his shoulders at these
ghastly thoughts and crossed the room to replace the sheet. The dead
eyes seemed to stare malevolently, with an evilness that transcended
the dead man in life. The workings of a vivid imagination, Phipps knew, and he re-covered the gray face, shrinking as his hand chanced to touch the
cold flesh--slick and clammy, the touch of death. He shuddered with the natural revulsion that the living have for the dead, and went back to his
chair and magazine.
"Settle down Charlie," he instructed himself, yawning as the night began to turn towards morning. "I think I'll just lay down on that skimpy little
couch over there and get some rest."
"Now I might fall asleep, but I will leave the light burning. It's not because I'm afraid; it's just that it is the custom to leave the lights burning for the
dead," he bravely told himself.
He did not want to admit, even to himself, that he realized that he had a
deep dislike of the thought of lying in the darkness with the corpse of Alderson.
He dozed, awoke with a start and looked at the sheeted form on the bed. Silence reigned over the house, and outside it was very dark.
The hour was approaching midnight, the worst time of all for a man with a fragile mind. He stared again at the bed where the body lay and found himself more disturbed than ever by the sight of his sheeted former boss.
A bizarre idea formed in his mind, and grew, that beneath the
sheet, the mere lifeless body had become a strange, monstrous thing, a
hideous, conscious being, that watched him with eyes which burned
through the fabric of the cloth. This thought of course; he explained to
himself by the legends of vampires, undead ghosts and such. The fears;
attributes with which the living have cloaked the dead for countless ages,
since primitive man first recognized in death something horrid and apart
from life. Man feared death, thought Phipps, and some of this fear of death took hold on the dead so that they, too, were feared. And the sight of the dead
engendered grisly thoughts, gave rise to dim fears of hereditary
memory, lurking back in the dark corners of the brain.
At any rate, that silent, hidden thing was getting on his nerves.
He thought of uncovering the face, on the principle that familiarity
breeds contempt. The sight of the features, calm and still in death,
would banish, he thought, all such wild conjectures as were haunting
him in spite of himself. But the thought of those dead eyes staring in
the lamplight was intolerable; so at last he blew out the light and
lay down. This fear had been stealing upon him so insidiously and
gradually that he had not been aware of its growth.
With the extinguishing of the light, however, and the blotting out
of the sight of the corpse, things assumed their true character and
proportions, and he fell asleep almost instantly, on his lips a faint smile for his previous folly.
He awakened suddenly. How long he had been asleep he did not know.
He sat up, his pulse pounding frantically, the cold sweat beading his
forehead. He knew instantly where he was, remembered the other
occupant of the room. But what had awakened him? A dream - yes, now
he remembered - a hideous dream in which the dead man had risen from
the
bed and stalked stiffly across the room with eyes of fire and a horrid
leer frozen on his gray lips. Phipps had seemed to lie motionless,
helpless; then as the corpse reached out with a gnarled and horrible hand, he had awakened.
He strained to see something. Anything. But the room was all blackness and outside was so dark that no gleam of light came through the
window. He reached a shaking hand toward the lamp, then recoiled as if
from a hidden snake. Sitting here in the dark with a fiendish corpse
was bad enough, but he dared not light the lamp, for fear that his
reason would be snuffed out like a candle at what he might see.
Horror, stark and unreasoning, had full possession of his soul; he no
longer questioned the instinctive fears that rose in him. All those
legends he had heard came back to him and brought a belief in them.
Death was a hideous thing, a brain-shattering horror, imbuing lifeless
men with a horrid malevolence. Alderson in his life had been simply
a cheap and selfish man; now, in death, he was a terror, a monster, a fiend
lurking in the shadows of fear, ready to leap on mankind with talons
dipped deep in violent insanity.
Phipps sat there, his blood freezing, and fought out his silent
battle. Faint glimmerings of reason had begun to touch his fright when
a soft, stealthy sound again froze him. He did not recognize it as the
whisper of the night wind across the windowsill. His frenzied fancy
knew it only as the tread of death and horror. He sprang from the
couch, then stood undecided. Escape was in his mind but he was too
dazed to even try to formulate a plan of escape. Even his sense of
direction was gone. Fear had so stifled his bran, that he was not
able to think consciously. The blackness spread in long waves about
him and its darkness and void entered into his brain. His motions,
such as they were, were instinctive. He seemed shackled with mighty
chains and his limbs responded sluggishly. He was in a state of pure panic.
A terrible horror grew up in him and reared its grisly shape, that
the dead man was behind him, was sneaking up on him from the rear. He
no longer thought of lighting the lamp; he no longer thought of
anything. Fear filled his whole being; there was room for nothing
else.
He backed slowly away in the darkness, hands behind him,
instinctively feeling the way. With a terrific effort he partly shook
the clinging mists of horror from him, and, the cold sweat, clammy upon
his body, fought to orient himself. He found the bottle and drained the last of the brandy, then hurled the empty container at the wall. It crashed and broke into many pieces.
He could see nothing. But the bed was across the room, in front of him.
He was backing away from it. That was where the dead man was lying,
according to all rules of nature; if the thing were, as he felt, behind him,
then the old tales were true: death did implant in lifeless bodies an unearthly animation. Dead men do walk! Dead men do roam the shadows to
work their ghastly and evil will upon the living.
These conclusions he did not reach by any reasoning process; they
leaped full-grown into his terror-dazed brain. He worked his way
slowly backward, groping, clinging to the thought that the dead man
must be in front of him.
Then his hands, which he had been holding behind him, encountered something--something slick, cold and clammy - like the touch of death. A
scream shook the echoes, followed by the crash of a falling body.
The next morning the doctor and some of the workers came to the house of death. They found two corpses. John Alderson's sheeted body lay motionless upon the bed, and across the room lay the body of Charles Phipps, next to the rickety three legged table where the Doctor had left his bag and his gloves.
His rubber gloves - slick and clammy to the touch. Like the touch of a hand groping in the dark. A hand of one fleeing from his own fear. Rubber gloves, slick and clammy and cold. Like the touch of death!.
The End
The history teacher, Mr. Markens, stood up as he neared the finish of the story and tried to make it as eerie as possible, but to his chagrin, the boys were not pleased.
"Look Mr. Markens," Freddy Simpson said, "you are camping out in a
swamp where Bigfoot is almost as common as complaints about Cape Cod traffic jams and you give us a lame story like that....."
"We appreciate that it's probably a good historical story, but it's not
paranormal, it's just lame," Bobby Butterfield added. "Don't you know any good stories."
"Well guys, like I said, I don't believe in The Bridgewater Triangle. I think that all the stories have explanations. Just like in the story I told you, if
you look deep enough you will always find a pair of rubber gloves."
"Look Mr. Markens," I said. "You don't have to believe it, for it to be a
good story. Some of the greatest stories ever written are not credible, but
they are interesting. I think you have got better stories in you than that Rubber Gloves story."
"Well Bill," he replied, "Thanks, I guess, for that lukewarm vote of confidence. I do have a really weird paranormal type story. But it didn't happen here. It happened in Cape Cod. Do you guys want to hear it?"
Nobody answered for a minute. Simpson got himself another cup of
coffee. Butterfield fetched a few logs and threw a couple on the fire. Markens looked like a little kid that was trying unsuccessfully to get picked for a sandlot baseball game."
I took pity on him.
"Sure, Mr. Markens. We will listen. But Jazz it Up. Will yah?"
"Okay Bill, here goes. Oh Freddy, is there anymore coffee? I'm going to
need one. You won't need one. This story will keep you guys awake."
The history teacher, as per his habit, cleared his throat, slid his glasses
back into his black hair and finally began. He told us of an unfortunate
creature named Jimmy Catfish and a Cape Cod lake that none of us had
ever heard of, even though our families are frequent Cape Cod visitors.
I am not sure to this day, if the lake actually exists and if the story is true, but Markens said it does and it is: and he's a pretty straight laced guy.
Here is the tale as he told it to us...........
Chapter
Two: Codfresh Lake
