Marsh Lights
Jesse Durovey
Cleo saw the frog while pulling weeds in the garden. It was early summer, the air hot and moist, and wild grass and vining plants threatened to choke Uncle Darrell’s harvest of maize and white clover. Her uncle had brought his spade down to uproot a stubborn explosion of crabgrass, and when Cleo grabbed the clumped dirt and roots to throw it in the wheelbarrow, she saw something moving in the upturned soil. She brushed the dirt aside, revealing a frog with bumpy olive skin, its front legs pawing frantically as if trying to swim away. She scooped the frog into her palm and saw where the shovel blade had severed the frog’s hind legs. The pale, blue-veined sinew gleamed in the afternoon sun.
“What you got there, princess?” Uncle Darrell said. He’d been in a terrible mood—worse than usual—since yesterday when he was attacked by an entire nest of hornets by the fence line, and his face and neck were covered with ugly red welts.
Cleo dropped the frog into the pocket of her sack dress, turned to face him, and stood with her hands clasped behind her back.
“I asked you what you got.” Uncle Darrell grabbed her roughly by the shoulder and wrenched open her small, empty fists.
“I don’t have anything, Sir,” Cleo said, trying to keep her chin from trembling as Darrell’s rough hands chafed her skin.
“All right, then,” Uncle Darrell said. “I shouldn’t have been so rough.” He dropped Cleo’s hands and smoothed the frizzy, brown hair that hung over the girl’s thin shoulders. “Why don’t you get a drink of water and check on your mama. She needs her medicine. And tell that brother of yours to get his ass out here.”
“Yes, Sir,” Cleo said.
Cleo stepped carefully through the garden, her head down but her spine straight. When she rounded the corner of the shotgun house, she lifted her eyes and began to run, her bare feet flashing over the brown earth and dying vines of couch grass.
She ran past the backyard, past the window of her mother’s dim and silent bedroom, vaulting over a broken fencepost and into the woods until her toes squished into the gumbo of mud and rotting leaves; she ran until she reached a stand of white spruce, where she slowed, picking her way carefully over a mat of unsteady moss and vegetation.
She stopped by a large white rock at the base of an ancient cairn. The cairn’s surface was so covered with green moss and mud that it formed a hill, a viewing platform for Cleo to survey the marsh, a stage on which to dance with the loose-branched trees. She often climbed the hill to watch the clouds pass over like churning waves.
Cleo had covered the white rock with a mural of charcoal, berry paste, and crushed flowers—a deer treading softly; a line of ants carrying a salamander; a frog with an indigo butterfly perched on its eyeball—an entire procession of bog creatures. At the top of the rock, Cleo had scribbled furiously with her charcoal, leaving an empty disc to represent a full moon.
Cleo squatted down where water and earth joined, the skirt of her dress wet and dripping with mud. She pulled the wounded frog from her pocket and lifted it up to eye level. She extended her index finger and gently stroked the frog from the tip of its nose to its stumpy, vestigial tail. The frog simply sat there, blinking its protruding eyes when her finger drifted too close.
Cleo scraped away a handful of moss at the water’s edge. Peat, hummus, sulfur, and the smells of rotting plants and animals seeped into her nostrils. She scooped up dirt with her hand and placed the wounded frog into the depression, covering its body back over with mud and slimy black moss.
Cleo sat back and rested her hands on her knees, waiting. It wasn’t the first time she’d found a wounded marsh creature in Uncle Darrell’s garden. Her uncle’s tools were cruel and sharp, cutting through wings, tails, and limbs with no regard for their owners. When Uncle Darrell’s tiller had torn through the nest of a short-billed wren, Cleo picked up the entire nest, the fibrous oval mangled and filled with dead fledglings, and she buried it in the marsh by her sacred white rock. When she returned, the small grave was burst open, wriggling with many-legged invertebrates and insects. At first, Cleo was horrified and took them for grave robbers, but a female wren flew down from a tree, probed the wriggling centipedes with her small beak, and coaxed out three chicks, their gossamer beaks convulsing with hunger. From that moment, Cleo knew the marsh contained a magic, as deep and dark and ancient as the land itself.
As Cleo watched the wounded frog, she heard the wind whisper through the treetops, a low and constant roar. She closed her eyes, felt the breeze tousle her hair. In these moments, she often thought that the bog was trying to communicate with her, speaking mysteries in a language she could not understand. Gooseflesh tingled her arms, and when she opened her eyes, dozens of butterflies and fuzzy moths fluttered about her head and landed on the partially buried frog, their wings flapping lazily. She smiled.
“I’ll be back later,” Cleo said to the frog’s blinking eyes, barely visible through the kaleidoscope of chitinous wings. Then she ran back to the house.
Cleo walked in the back door to find her brother, Tad, in the kitchen, eating cold oatmeal out of a ceramic bowl and staring at his reflection in the broken television on the counter. She grabbed a small, green apple from the kitchen table and worried at the knobby thing with her teeth.
“You check on Mama?” Tad asked.
“I’m about to,” Cleo said. “Sir wants your help in the garden.”
“Why do you call him that, Cleo?” Tad said.
“He told me to call him Sir.”
“But he’s not here,” Tad said. “Why not call him something he really deserves?”
“Like what?”
Tad dropped his spoon into his bowl with a squish and a clatter. “How about asshole, dickhead, or shit-stain?”
Cleo laughed, covering her mouth with a hand bordered by five crescent-moons of grime. Tad could make her laugh even at his most sullen, a mood that became more persistent as his frame grew, long and lank as the cattails that bordered the marsh. Uncle Darrell took Tad’s growth as a challenge, finding any excuse he could to grab the boy by the nape of his neck and whip him with a hazel switch until Tad’s skin split open. Uncle Darrell’s finest crops were fear and hatred, and Cleo felt his presence in nearly every corner of their little house.
The back door crashed open. “Boy!”
Uncle Darrell stomped into the kitchen, a hazel switch clenched in his fist. “You’re supposed to be weeding that garden. What’s taking you so damn long?”
Cleo backed into the corner, trying not to be seen. Tad gripped the edge of the Formica table, daring to meet their uncle’s frenzied face.
“Cleo just—”
Uncle Darrell’s palm caught Tad on the ear, sending him sprawling backward over his chair and his bowl banging to the floor, oatmeal shooting across the kitchen with arterial force. Cleo wanted to stay and protect her brother, to untangle Uncle Darrell’s vice-like fingers from Tad’s long, dark hair. But Uncle Darrell twisted the boy’s arm behind his back and slammed him against the counter, and Cleo’s willpower crumbled. She sprinted out of the room with her heart beating her betrayal in horrifying rhythm: cow-ward, cow-ward, cow-ward.
In her mother’s bedroom, it was dark and cool, the window covered with an old Army-issued blanket, its edges ragged and moth-eaten. An oscillating metal fan turned sluggishly on top of a squat, cat-pawed dresser. Cleo closed the door, the sounds of flesh-on-flesh, of furniture jostled and joints twisted, fading into background noise. Her mother lay mired in blankness and bedclothes. Cleo sat on the bed and watched her mother sleep in a narrow band of light emanating from the window, remembering her as beautiful once, her hair full and thick as a lion’s mane, her eyes flashing. Now she looked so limp and listless—never speaking, mostly sleeping. Even when her eyes were open, they only seemed to stare into empty space.
Cleo retrieved a brown glass bottle from the top of the dresser. She opened the bottle and immediately grimaced, pinching her nose between thumb and forefinger. The chalky, off-white tablets inside the bottle smelled terrible—harsh and synthetic. Mama’s medicine, which Cleo gave to her every morning after breakfast. Darrell said Mama needed it to stay healthy, since she couldn’t get out of bed on her own, and didn’t Cleo want her mama to stay healthy? She selected a tablet, pushed gently on her mother’s chin, and dropped the pill inside her mouth, where it would dissolve.
Cleo reached out and brushed the hair out of her mother’s eyes. Her mother stirred, her arms and legs shifting beneath the covers, and then she was still. Cleo watched her mother’s chest rise and fall, soothed by the sounds of her breathing, soft and steady as the marsh winds. She slouched down to the floor, to the pallet of blankets she lay on every night. She wished for a magic strong enough to wake her mother, for an enchanted bottle to catch the breeze and fill her mother’s lungs with new life. Her mother’s hand slipped off the edge of the mattress, landing on Cleo’s trembling shoulders. The little girl grabbed her mother’s supple fingers, clutched them to her cheek and cried.
Later, after Darrell went to sleep, drunk and filthy in the only other bedroom, Cleo crept out of her mother’s room and stepped onto the cold kitchen tile. A choir of crickets and bullfrogs serenaded the swampland. The storm door was latched, and a breeze drifted in through the screen, filling the house with the heavy scent of rain. Out the window, the sky was plum-colored, and the bruised clouds cloaked the flora in dark shadows. Through the distant trees, marsh lights danced like a coterie of witches.
Tad lay by the door on his creaking Army-issue cot, holding a towel filled with melting ice against his eye. “What do you want?” he said.
Cleo sat on the floor beside the cot, resting her chin on the telescoping aluminum frame. “I want a story.”
He sighed. “You’re the one who’s always reading. You should be telling me stories.”
“Nuh-uh. I like the stories about the old days best.”
“Oh, so I’m old now?” he said and poked her shoulder.
“You’re old enough to remember what things used to be like,” Cleo said.
Tad turned to face her. His uninjured eye reflected the light from the back porch, and Cleo saw the small, furry wings of moths mirrored in his watery pupil. “Okay,” he said, “I’ve got a story.”
Cleo laced her hands beneath her chin, settling onto her crisscrossed legs.
“There was once a great temple,” Tad began, “and a beautiful priestess lived there with her children, a boy and a girl.”
“A prince and a princess?” Cleo asked, her shoulders stiffening.
Tad laced his fingers beneath his head and stared at the ceiling. “Of course not. They were acolytes.”
“Alca-whats?”
“They’re like priests-in-training,” Tad said. “’Cause, you see, the priestess’s husband, a kind and powerful priest, died years before—the temple’s enemies tricked him and killed him just after their daughter was born. Before he died, he built a giant moat to—”
“What’s a moat?”
“It’s like a river that goes around a building and keeps out bad guys,” Tad said.
“Can it be a bog instead?”
“Sure, but only if you stop yapping and let me tell the story.”
Cleo put her fingers to her lips, mimed a zipping and locking motion, and threw away the key.
“All right,” Tad said. “Now, where was I? That’s right, the bog.” He cleared his throat. “The priest used magic to turn the land into a bog. He knew that if the family protected the bog, the bog would protect his family. But the priestess’s wicked brother knew that there was magic in the bog. ‘Cause, you see, the priestess loved her children and that’s where the magic came from.”
“The priestess’s brother moved himself into the temple. He couldn’t understand the magic of the bog, and he started digging up the land, looking for it so he could steal it for himself. Everywhere he dug, the bog shrank back, and the land dried up. The creatures—the bugs, frogs, and snakes—attacked him whenever he went into the marsh. But even with all this magic, his spirit poisoned the ground.”
“One day, the wicked brother thought to himself that, since the priestess loved her children so, then they must be the source of the magic. He tried to make the children his slaves, which angered the priestess. She told the wicked brother to leave and never come back, but her brother was crafty, and he poisoned her, stealing her voice and her spirit.”
“The wicked brother rules the temple, now. And, every night, the creatures of the bog sing to the queen, asking her to wake up and chase the evil brother away.” Tad turned toward Cleo, his face a wooden mask in the twilight. “The end.”
Cleo’s mouth gaped open. “But that can’t be the end. What about the acolytes? What about the girl and the boy?”
“They’re on their own now, Cleo,” Tad said and rolled over to face the wall. “Now go to bed before Darrell wakes up.”
Reluctantly, Cleo stood to leave, but the chorus outside beckoned her, and she walked to the storm door, gazing out into the night. The moon was nearly full, but a thin filigree of clouds made its light hazy and dim. Cleo played her fingers over the ratty metal screen, poking idly at a ragged hole in the thin metal grid. She wished that there was more light, or that she possessed the courage to venture out into the night and check on her wounded frog. She glanced back at Tad, burrowed deep in his blankets, and she wished that some of the bog’s magic would seep in through the screen door and fill her brother with hope. She lingered a few moments longer, watching Tad’s chest rise and fall, then she padded back to her mother’s bedroom to sleep.
Tad had a paper route, which he started every morning before the sun came up. Not many people lived in their little hollow, the houses few and far apart. He would wake up before first light and ride his bike eight miles to the Chronicle’s small office, where he filled his canvas sack with newspapers. Cleo hated to be in the house with only her unspeaking mother and her uncle, the shit-stain, to keep her company.
That morning, after breakfast—always oatmeal or cream of wheat cooked by Cleo—Uncle Darrell asked her to sit on his lap. He was dressed in stained overalls and scuffed work boots, his undershirt grimy with crusted sweat. He pulled Cleo onto his thigh and stroked her hair and told her what a good girl she was. He smelled rancid, like spoiled milk or sour mash, and his sandpaper beard sent a shiver through Cleo’s shoulders when it brushed the downy hairs on the back of her neck. All the while, her heart thundered, and her muscles hummed with a manic energy when Uncle Darrell placed a hand as rough and knurled as a cow’s hoof on her leg. She shut her eyes tight, wondering if this was what the frog felt before her uncle’s shovel sheared off its hind legs.
That was when Tad came through the back door, sweaty and huffing from his bike ride. He eyed Darrell and Cleo, his eyes, one purple and knotted, narrowed into slits.
“I brought home your paper, Cleo,” Tad said, his voice strained and cracking.
Cleo moved to jump to her feet, but Uncle Darrell held her in place for a moment.
“It’s about time you got home,” Uncle Darrell said. “Now get some breakfast, ‘cause I need you to bring some peat back to the house and fertilize the garden.” Then he released Cleo, slurped the last of his coffee and walked out the door.
Cleo walked over to Tad, who stood with one hand clutching his canvas sack. She could see Uncle Darrell in the garden, a tank of insecticide strapped to his back as he walked from row to row, spraying death on the beetles and locusts there. Tad was staring at the big man, his eyes dark and clouded. When Cleo tapped his shoulder, Tad startled, his hands balling into fists.
“Sorry, Cleo,” he said. “What do you need?”
“My newspaper, please,” Cleo said, rocking on her bare heels.
“Oh,” he said, digging a solitary newspaper out of his sack, “here you go.”
Cleo took the paper and began spreading the different sections onto the tabletop. But, out of the corner of her eye, she could still see Tad staring out at Darrell. The look on her brother’s face scared her. He was often surly, but never hateful.
“I’m going to kill him,” Tad said, his voice so quiet that Cleo could barely make out his words beneath the rustling newspaper.
After she read the paper, Cleo followed Tad into the bog. She knew the bog well, navigating through brush and around standing water with carefree ease—as if she herself were a bog creature. Cleo walked beneath a canopy of willow trees, letting their long hair tickle her ears as she listened to the rattling timbre of the cicadas. When she found Tad, her brother was covered from head to toe in muck, strings of moss and vine tangled in his long black hair. He grappled with the spade, hefting huge chunks of peat into the wheelbarrow.
“Hey, Cleo,” Tad said. “You read your paper?”
Cleo nodded, digging her perpetually naked toes into the slime at her feet, listening to the soft gurgle of mud.
“What’s going on in the world?” Tad asked.
“They found a body in a bog a bit like ours,” Cleo said brightly.
“A body?” Tad said.
“A dead body.”
“I figured as much,” Tad said, a blue vein straining from his temple as he slapped another load of peat into the wheelbarrow.
“The article said that hundreds of years ago, people used to leave offerings to the spirits and dainties that lived in the bog.”
He stopped digging. “Dainties?”
“Yeah, dainties,” she said. “The people would pray to them.”
Tad grinned and speared the shovel into the bog. “I think you mean ‘deities.’ It’s another word that means ‘god.’”
“I know what it means,” she said and stuck her tongue out. “Anyways, they used to leave all sorts of things as offerings to the deities. Sometimes, they’d walk people out into the bogs and they’d hit them over the head and leave them as a sacrifice.” She smiled, pleased with herself.
“You don’t say,” Tad said.
“They said there’s stuff in bogs that keeps the bodies from rotting like they normally would, and it turns their skins all dark and leathery,” Cleo said. “And their bones dissolve so they’re all wiggly.” She shook her arms loosely from the shoulders to demonstrate. Tad grinned, stabbing his shovel into the peat and shaking his arms and legs until Cleo collapsed against a tree in a fit of laughter.
“Be careful,” Tad said. “You spend so much time in this bog that your bones might turn into jelly too.”
Cleo smiled. She wondered what it would be like to live without a skeleton. Would she be able to crawl or would she be stuck somewhere like a deflated balloon? Like her mother? The article hadn’t said how long it took bones to liquify, only that the body they found had likely been there for hundreds of years. She wondered if frog bones would dissolve in the bog and if it would happen faster because their bones were so much smaller.
“My frog!” she cried and ran down the path, heading for the hill that overshadowed her white rock.
At the white rock, she clenched her feet to keep her balance on the quaking ground. A heron startled, hopping on its long legs and flapping its wings until it awkwardly took flight. Cleo fell to her hands and knees, scrabbling in the moss and muck for the small eyes she’d left protruding from the bog.
Nothing.
She kneeled on the ground and closed her eyes. The breeze sang through the dark trees and her tangled hair. Cleo’s heart filled with emotions she didn’t understand, and she spread her arms and felt the wind prickle the soft skin between her fingers. She knew that if she just kept her eyes closed and said the right words, like a magic spell—no, like a prayer—then the marsh would hear her and tell her its secrets, and she would be able to speak with the creatures that called it home.
But Cleo didn’t know any prayers.
Cleo sighed. Then she opened her eyes and saw the largest frog she’d ever seen, sitting proudly on top of her painted rock. Its body was squat and green and as big as a barn cat, its pale belly swollen with water. Cleo put her hands over her mouth, then dropped them, crawling closer.
“Is it you?” she asked. “Are you my frog?”
The frog stomped its front legs, turning to face the crouching girl. Cleo knew the bog was special, that an ancient power dwelled amid the mud and reeds. She believed that her frog would be healed, but she never thought it would turn into this—a king among amphibians. Cleo reached for the frog, clutching it to her chest and watching as its throat expanded and contracted with each breath. She placed the frog gently into the pocket of her sack dress.
Cleo improvised a basket from the skirt of her dress and filled it with mud and peat, the blinking frog resting in the muck like royalty. She shuffled back to the house, the ground beneath her bare feet quivering like jelly. The sun was setting by the time Cleo caught sight of the shotgun house, and the clouds were as fine and soft as pink lace. She stork-stepped over the broken fence, muck sloshing over her fingers and into the brown grass. Darrell was deeper in the garden, digging by the hazel tree that bordered the fence. He chopped the shovel into the ground again and again.
Cleo slipped through the back door, oblivious to the trail of slime and decaying leaves she left in her wake. She stepped into the darkness of her mother’s room and sat on the bed, her dress cold and wet on her bare legs. Her mother was lying motionless, but her eyes were open and staring at the ceiling.
“Mama,” Cleo said, “I brought something to help. I hope it will help.”
Cleo listened, but she only heard her mother’s soft breathing. She dipped her hand into the muck she carried and spread it on her mother’s brow. Her mother’s head listed on the pillow, which was stained dark from the oil in her hair. Her eyes settled on Cleo, and the thin line of her mouth twitched, her cheek dimpled.
Cleo placed the frog on her mother’s chest. As the frog watched, Cleo began to spread a thick layer of mud over her mother’s cheeks, her neck, and her bare arms and shoulders. She dabbed soft fingers beneath her mother’s eyes, behind her ears, until every inch of her mother’s exposed skin was covered. Tears filled Cleo’s eyes, and she fell to her knees, her filthy hands clasping her mother’s. She didn’t know how much magic the bog possessed—or even if it could reach all the way to their little shack—but she knew that she needed to try.
“Please, Mama,” Cleo said, “please, wake up.”
The door creaked open behind her. “Cleo, did you give your mama her—what the hell?” Uncle Darrell said.
Cleo whirled and scuttled against the dresser, her hands raised in surrender. “I didn’t mean to, Sir! Please—I’m sorry.”
Uncle Darrell grabbed Cleo’s arm, but she pulled away, her bare feet slipping on the soiled wood floor. She grabbed the blanket to keep her balance, but it slipped off the bed and knocked the frog onto the ground. The frog took a hop toward Darrell’s booted feet, and the big man stomped hard. His dull black boot flattened the frog, viscera spattering on the bed, the dresser, and Cleo’s legs.
Cleo screamed.
Uncle Darrell pulled the girl from the house, his hand tangled in her thick hair. She cried out, but he kept pulling her toward the hazel tree that grew along the fence. Cleo knew what would come next—she’d seen it happen to her brother enough times. She would feel the supple limb of a hazel switch—just another tool in Uncle Darrell’s arsenal—tearing into her skin, sowing pain and reaping fear. When they reached the tree, Darrell threw Cleo to the ground and screamed a string of spittle into her face.
“Pick one!”
Cleo sobbed, her vision blurred, but she hung limply to a thick branch of the hazel tree.
“That’s the one?” he said and, when she nodded, he pulled out a pocket knife with a boar-tusk handle and proceeded to slice away the wispy leaves and branches.
A blur of dirt and skin crashed into Darrell from behind. Tad, filthy and shirtless, plowed into Darrell at a full sprint and sent the older man sprawling headfirst over the wooden fence. Tad brushed the filthy hair out of his eyes and helped Cleo to her feet.
“You okay?” Tad said breathlessly, his bare chest covered with a sheen of dirt and sweat.
Cleo nodded, her fingers digging into Tad’s arm.
Darrell scrambled to his feet, cursing and dragging one leg awkwardly in the dirt. The bone-handled knife had stabbed him in the fall and was now protruding from his thigh, a dark red circle spreading on his canvas pants.
Darrell limped toward the children and grabbed the shovel that he’d left leaning against the fence. He took a wild swing, the shovel’s heavy blade missing and gouging into one of the wooden posts. “I’ll fucking kill you!” he shrieked, his eyes red-rimmed and unfocused.
The children ran together, vaulting over the broken fence and into the darkening swamp. The light of the full moon seeped through the trees, dim and disorienting. They fought to see the forest floor in the half-light, tripping over exposed roots and splashing through deep puddles of water. Darrell crashed after them, seemingly unaffected by the knife buried in his leg, his cries vile and animalistic. Cleo could feel his rage sending a tremor through the night air. She looked over her shoulder, trying to gauge if they were outdistancing the crazed man. That brief lapse in attention from her footing was all it took. She didn’t see the tangled cypress root against the shadowy foreground—her foot caught and both children went sprawling in an explosion of mud and leaves. They tumbled into a clearing, the moon’s light covering the marsh in a soft blue glow.
Then Darrell was upon them, his breath wheezy and ragged. Cleo cowered in horror as Uncle Darrell speared his shovel into the ground and straddled Tad’s chest. He punched the boy in the mouth and nose, cutting his knuckles on Tad’s teeth. His fingers tore at Tad’s throat, ignoring the boy’s hopeless struggles.
Cleo sobbed. She had hoped that the bog’s magic would keep them safe, but now she felt helpless and naive. Cleo scrambled backward, splashing through the filthy water. Her palms scraped against rough stone, and she turned to see her sacred white rock glowing in the moonlight, her sketches standing out in sharp contrast. She felt the first swellings of hope. The bog had led her here; she was sure of it.
Cleo walked behind her uncle, pulled the shovel out of the ground and hefted it in both hands. It felt heavy and awkward in her grasp, but she couldn’t let that stop her—Tad needed her. Cleo aimed at Darrell’s head and swung the shovel with all the strength she could muster. It was a clumsy blow, but the sharp, metal blade lacerated the skin at the base of Darrel’s neck. He bellowed like a wounded ox, stumbling in the mud as Tad, now free, sputtered and coughed.
Cleo dropped the shovel and pulled Tad to his feet. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Tad spit out a mouthful of blood and his legs nearly gave out. “I’m not sure,” he said.
Uncle Darrell groaned and reached for the shovel. He rolled to his knees and stood, using the spade as a crutch. His overalls were dirty and torn, and his face was covered in a mask of black blood, his eyes shining like dead stars. In the moon’s eerie light, their uncle didn’t even look human. Tad and Cleo ran, stumbling up the hill which overlooked the white rock. They climbed and climbed, but even at its summit, it wasn’t enough to keep them from Darrell. They pressed together, their feet edging along the cliff, Cleo’s white rock thirty feet below. Darrell, blood trickling from his scalp, stood before them with the shovel hanging loosely from his hands.
Darrell smiled a grim little smile, raised the shovel in both hands and staggered toward the children.
“Close your eyes, Cleo,” Tad said, and they held each other, listening to Darrell’s boots squelching closer. Somewhere nearby, an owl screeched, its call echoing in the coolness. The air felt thick, almost tangible, and Cleo shivered as she felt the first prickles of gooseflesh on her arms.
“I’m scared, Tad.”
“It’s going to be okay, Cleo,” he said, his voice quavering. “I promise.”
“Mama,” Cleo breathed, her fingernails digging into Tad’s arm.
The footsteps stopped, but no shovel sliced the air. Instead, they heard the wind gusting, carrying the sounds of singing, the voices of a million marsh creatures joining together in a chorus.
They opened their eyes.
Darrell’s back was to them, his arms slack, still holding onto the shovel. All around them, the bog was moving, but it wasn’t just the quaking of the peat. No, the ground itself was crawling as frogs, toads, snakes, centipedes, and locusts marched on, the rattle of their barbed legs and membranous wings keeping rhythm like the thunder of war drums. They swarmed up the hill, encircling Darrell in a narrowing lasso of bodies. Dragonflies and blackbirds swooped and volplaned at Darrell’s head, and he tried to swat them away with the shovel.
He retreated from the marsh creatures, backing up to the edge of the cliff. Cleo and Tad huddled on the ground as all manner of insects and amphibians crowded around them, heading straight toward Darrell. The children watched as Darrell stabbed at the ground with his spade, shearing a toad in half, smashing a coil of centipedes into paste. They watched as the bog crept ever upward, encasing Darrell in a cocoon of flesh, mud, and feathers. They watched as he stumbled, lost his footing on the rocky cliff, and fell headfirst onto the white rock below. They watched as his body, limp and heavy as a sandbag, slid off the rock and into the bog, breaking through the surface layer of moss, where earth and water would leech all the hardness and cruelty from his bones.
Cleo and Tad sat in silence, huddled together, as the bog creatures slowly departed, marching back into the depths of the swamp. The full moon cast a soft glow, and a damp breeze blew against Cleo’s hair. In the distance, Cleo thought she heard her mother calling them home.
