Sorrow Creek

by Christopher Fulbright

  “But--”

  “It’s evil. There’s something bad attached to it. I don’t know what. I don’t understand it, but something isn’t right.” Max pointed a shaking finger at the stuff on the table.

  Cassi rolled all of the items into the quilt and stuffed the whole mess into the butler’s pantry. She put her cut hand under the water and washed the laceration. Max fumbled around in the cabinet and handed her a bottle of iodine.

  “I’ll take the stuff into town tomorrow and give it to the historical society women. Maybe they know something more about Sorrow Creek. About the things Troy was saying,” Cassi said.

  “About the woman who walks the bayou in the dark of night.”

  “Oh, Max. You make it sound so dramatic.”

  “We’ve got a kitchen haunted by a crying baby – I don’t think there is any reason to create drama, Cassandra. You cut yourself and bleed onto the stuff and the crying stops. Almost like it was silenced by your blood. I’m not crazy. I’m not making this shit up. And for once, you heard it with your own god damn ears. You can’t call me insane this time!” Max’s whole body trembled.

  7.

  “I don’t think it’s so urgent that you need to go right now,” Max said, watching Cassi pack jeans and some blouses in an overnight bag.

  “It’s only for the weekend. I’ll go back to the apartment, take care of the curriculum issue at the university and then come back here. It will be good to check on things at the apartment and I should check the post office box while I’m back in town anyway.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t go right now.” Max didn’t like the sound of his own voice; it had a pleading, whining tone to it. “We still haven’t found Shrimp.”

  “You’ll be okay. Me being gone isn’t going to make Shrimp not show up if he’s going to again.” Cassi smiled and threw a bra into the bag. “Besides, the quiet will do you some good. You should read some books, work on that novel you’ve been picking around on for years, don’t work on anything around here. Leave that for when I come home. Spend some alone time in peace. Take some long walks. Look for the dog.”

  Max sighed. “I thought you thought that I was--”

  “Crazy?”

  Max laughed. “Well, don’t you?”

  “Max, I think we’re all crazy. The crazy students have driven you crazy. The crazy doctor sends you out here to the middle of nowhere to work on a house to help you recover from being crazy. I’m crazy for going along with the whole crazy-ass scheme. It’s all crazy. If you’re crazy, you’ll still be just as crazy when I come home on Monday as you are right now. If I stay home, you’ll still be just as crazy as you would be if I were gone for the weekend back at the apartment. You see, it really doesn’t make any difference.”

  “Okay.”

  “I asked Troy to check in on you when he does his rounds.”

  “Oh, great. Now you have the mailman poking around in my business.”

  “No, I have the only human being who comes out to Sorrow Creek stopping by for a moment to say hello to you when he gives you the mail on one day: Saturday. I thought you might like human contact with me being gone. I’ll be back on Monday. Not a long time.”

  “Oh,” Max said.

  “If you don’t want Troy to stop by and say hello, I can swing by the post office – it’s on my way out of town – and tell him just to leave the mail in the old box because you don’t want to be disturbed.”

  “No, that’s okay. I like Troy. He’s a good guy.”

  “Okay then.” Cassi zipped the bag with a flourish. “I will call you when I get there. I left supper in the fridge for you to warm up.”

  “Thanks, boo.” Max kissed her.

  “Now, behave.” She picked up the bag and lugged it downstairs. Max listened to her open and shut the front door, watched her walk to the carriage house, and, minutes later, watched her car emerge. Cassi saw him standing upstairs in front of the big window pane and honked. He could see her wave as she backed out the car, then turned around and drove the car over the rutty road between the rows of oaks.

  He stood there for awhile, arms crossed around him, watching the birds fly in and out of the oaks at the front of the house. They swept toward the cypress trees lining Sorrow Creek and over to the swamp’s edge. It was hot and the cracked antique birdbath near the old boarded well was a popular landing spot for birds traveling from the oaks to the cypress trees. He let out a loud sigh as he tried to decide what to do with himself in Cassi’s absence.

  She had given him some excellent suggestions, but his mind seemed too restless to focus on reading a book, and there was no way he’d be able to create anything on the novel even if he wanted to drag out his laptop and tool around with the file. They had no television out here. He decided to start with sweeping the outside porch and fixing the leaking pipe in the bedroom sink. The bathroom in the master suite had been cobbled together from a linen closet and a cedar closet sometime in the middle of the Victorian period. The toilet didn’t sit quite flush to the floor and the white sink – not from the original bathroom-- was installed at a slight angle on the wall sometime in the 1920s. They really needed to gut the whole damn thing and start over, but for now, he kept it all running with his trusty wrench and a lot of duct tape.

  His idea of an hour job quickly escalated to a six-hour drudgery when he discovered the pipe was rusted through, thought he could patch it, made the hole worse, and ended up driving into town to the one hardware store there (that had been in the same wood-floored, high ceiling turn-of-the-century building since, well, the turn-of-the-century) to pray to god they had a piece of piping identical or similar enough in material and measurements to fix the sink. While he was there he asked after Shrimp, but no one had seen him or a dog matching his description. A few of the old-timers made the morbid suggestion that if he hadn’t come home by now, he might have ended up as some gator’s lunch living as close to the water as they did.

  When he finally got back home, fixed the pipe, cleaned up the mess, took a shower, and shuffled downstairs to warm up the dinner Cassi left for him in the fridge, it was dark outside and the frogs were chirping with their usual nighttime gusto.

  He’d picked up a few magazines and a candy bar while in town, so after he cleaned the dinner dishes, he climbed into bed to read mind-numbing, no-thought-required news about celebrities and celebrity-wannabes who had earned some sort of fame by doing nothing but being rich and making drama out of vapid lives. He was more tired than he originally believed, and ended up putting the magazines and candy wrapper on the night table and calling it a night early enough to put him in the “old as shit” category. His students would refer to him as a vieux. Maybe he was. He felt like a crazy old man a lot lately. Sometimes he felt like the whole world was caving in on him. Out of control. Somehow behind. Like everything was slipping from his grasp and he could do nothing to slow it down or make it stop. He didn’t like the feeling and he didn’t like how it made him act. He also didn’t like how it affected his work, his thoughts, or his relationship with Cassandra. But, tonight he was too tired to turn all that shit over in his brain for any lengthy amount of time. He was tired of having conversations with himself and never arriving at any useful conclusions.

  His slumber was uneventful until he felt a hand brushing the hair from his face. Max smiled. Cassi must have decided to come home early. Maybe she just picked up the paperwork at the dean’s office and turned right around and drove back home.

  He reached for the soft hand, eyes still closed, and pulled the fingers to his lips. There was a clove-ish perfume there, not the soft Lily of the Valley that Cassi wore. Sensing something not quite right, Max opened his eyes and then choked back a scream of surprise.

  It was the mulatto woman. She was straddling him, long smooth legs bent beneath her on each side of his naked torso, her long wavy hair snaking over her shoulders and bare breasts exposed by the ripped neckline of her dress. Her arms were thin, near skeletal, and her hand was clutched in hi
s, fingers still brushing his lips where he pulled them in his half-slumbered state. He thrust her hand away, the sheer shock of the revelation of who was touching him almost more than his rationale could bear.

  She was beautiful, with fine chiseled features that could have been those of a master sculptor’s marble statue. He couldn’t take his eyes from her full lips or her deep brown eyes, as dark and brown as the waters of the bayou.

  “Who are you?” he asked, his voice rough from sleep.

  “Name’s Magdalena, but chu-no dat,” she cooed, and swished her fingertips around on his naked chest, making invisible gentle swirling patterns.

  “I--” Max started, but she leaned down and planted her full lips on his and cupped his chin with her small hands, pulling him into the kiss.

  “Sssh, now, I didn’t come here to be talkin’. I come for da lovin’.”

  He could hear beating drums somewhere in the distance. With every thump, thump of the drum, the bed reverberated with the rhythm. Magdalena swayed above him, her arms slowly twisting above her head and her lithe body undulated with the primitive pounding. He stared at her partly in horror, and partly with burning lust. His head throbbed like he was on the tail end of a heavy drunk. The room swirled as if covered with a mist, muting the colors, softening the outlines of shapes so that everything took on a watercolor blur.

  She reached to her dress, already threadbare and thin, and shredded it from her, throwing it to the floor beside the bed. Her full breasts bounced with each drumbeat, and the blankets on the bed seemed to pull away on their own accord.

  Her caramel-colored legs entwined with his and the flutter of her hair over him, above him, around him created the feeling of being beneath a veil, isolated with this passionate, virile creature that emanated sexuality.

  The moon lit up the room in a wash of diamond white light. Her shadow rose and fell on the black walls, as she lowered herself onto his erect member. She moved as if he were spellbound, transfixed, mesmerized. He couldn’t look away, he couldn’t move. He only lay on the bed, his fingers locked in hers, his heart pounding as she threw back her head and laughed, laughed the way she did that first night he saw her on the swamp’s edge: musical, tinkling, girlish and full of life.

  She panted harder and chanted softly in a mixture of bastard French and ancient cunjas – just like Troy had warned Cassandra. The words unfurled like satin ribbons from her mouth, caressing his ears, calming him, and yet the wild ride of her moist parts burned his rigid shaft with a furious passion the likes of which he’d never experienced. She rode him hard and fast like some crazed succubus-jockey would ride a champion racehorse. He felt her wetness as she slid up and down him – crooning his name, and the names of other men he assumed had loved her long before he came into the picture.

  The drums grew softer, and the weight of her seemed lighter. Her breath smelled like vanilla, sweet and tingling. She whispered in his ear, licking the lobe. “You were mine befo you came here. I called you to my awms befo you even knew my awms could holt you. Love me. Love me fo-eva. Don’t eva go--” her words trailed into the mists of sleep, and Max rolled over, the sweat from their union still slicking his brow.

  Silence enveloped the room.

  Max woke up.

  The frogs weren’t croaking. The cicadas and crickets had ceased their chirps. These unnatural silences in nature’s chorus were enough to spur his mind into waking him. The memory of Magdalena riding him, writhing and flailing above him, came flooding back, and he ran a hand through his hair. He sighed heavily, and realized he just had a very foolish dream.

  “Good grief. Wife’s gone one night and I’m like some horny fifteen-year-old boy dreaming about poking some hot young thing!” He exhaled and rolled over onto his side, his face to Cassi’s pillow.

  “Fuck!” he shrieked and leapt from the bed, pulling the sheets and comforter with him. “Shit! Shit!” he cursed, loudly, pacing the floor beside his side of the bed. He wrung the fabric of the bed linens in his hands as he stared at the butchered, shredded pillow beside his. Feathers floated over the air onto the floor, and whirled around on the bed with each breeze.

  Stuck in his wife’s pillow was the rusty knife from the summer kitchen.

  “It wasn’t a dream, damn it, it wasn’t a dream!” Max grasped the hair on each side of his head, pulling it as if the pain inflicted upon himself would somehow rouse him from a dreaded nightmare, would somehow make everything that his eyes beheld melt into the shadows of dreamland, but that didn’t happen. “I’m going crazy. I’m just going fucking crazy. That’s it. That’s what’s happening. That’s it. The doc’s right. There’s no goin’ back now. It’s done. I’ve finally gone over the god damn edge.”

  Max stared at the knife stuck in the center of Cassi’s pillow, at the knife that had cut her hand and drawn her blood. That knife could have been stuck in his chest, could have slit his throat or cut his still-beating heart from his breast the way Voodoo queens carve pumping hearts from the chests of their sacrificial victims to offer to their dark masters. He could have become the chicken in some Voodoo rite. He touched his chest to verify there was no gaping, jagged, bleeding hole, that the organ sustaining his life was, in fact, still intact within his chest. He exhaled in relief. And then, he noticed the muddy footprints leading from the room.

  Muddy from the brown-black swamp.

  8.

  Max grabbed his robe and ran from the room, tying it as he went. His feet were bare and he slipped on the mud tracked over the hard wood floor. The prints led him downstairs and outside through the back door. They disappeared when the brick steps met green grass.

  “Damn it!” he shouted, bounded up the steps, back into the kitchen and retrieved a large camping lantern from under the sink. He ran back outside.

  He could hear Magdalena chanting and knew she was following Sorrow Creek to the swamp. Her foggy outline appeared as a dark shadow figure ahead of him, weaving in and out of ancient trees with roots sunk deep into the boggy swamp bottom. His feet slurped and slid in the mud, sucking around his ankles. He prayed there were no rusty nails or old can lids hidden in the sticky mud to slice and cut him.

  Magdalena turned around, facing him. She beckoned him with outstretched arms, laughing and giggling in her manner. Max prayed to god that he would wake up, that all of this was some hideous nightmare after all, but that didn’t happen. Instead, he continued following her so he could get some answers to the thousand questions reverberating in his head.

  She twirled in a circle, naked as the day she was born, her skin glowing in the scant slivers of moon rays breaking the darkness.

  “Who are you?” he yelled at her. “What the hell do you want?”

  Laughter.

  “Why don’t you go away and leave me alone instead of sneaking around my property all night? My wife thinks I’m crazy because of you.” Max’s voice was angry, frustrated, perplexed.

  Magdalena stopped dancing and twirling and placed her hands on her curvy hips. She motioned to him with a wagging finger. “I be your good time, your passion. I be fire dat makes your man parts burn. I be your hottest desire, da love you crave. Come to me, my beautiful man, I will tell you who it is I be.”

  Max walked closer, holding the lantern in front of him to light the way. He stepped cautiously, mindful of sinkholes and sudden drop-offs that could send him plunging into the murky depths of the swamp.

  “You are da curious man, yes you be. Magdalena likes her man curious.” She chuckled and pushed her hair behind her shoulders, away from her face. She began to shimmy and writhe, singing, chanting, clapping her hands above her head and twisting her naked body in some sort of ritualistic dance routine. Max stopped where he was, mud lapping his shins, and just watched her. What the hell was she doing now?

  The drums began to thump again, somewhere out in the swamp, somewhere out in the foul stench rolling over the water and wafting over the land that was criss-crossed by Sorrow Creek. Voodoo drums played by some mystical, i
nvisible force, a dark force aiding her in her quest. She chanted as she lulled her head from side to side, her hips rotated, swayed as her feet danced somewhere down in the thick enveloping mud.

  She backed closer to the swamp’s edge.

  “Don’t get too close--”

  “Or I be fallin’ in?” she said, laughing. “You worry too much, Max. You make da miserie from dat which ain’t got none. Come here an’ I tell you who I be and why I’m here, always dancing near Sorrow Creek.” She flapped her arms like a bird, somewhat comically, but then gracefully waved them to one side and then the other like a ghostly hula dancer.

  Max approached her and stood directly before her, waiting for her story, for her explanations.

  Magdalena suddenly doubled over, clutching her abdomen. She shrieked. Her hair seemed to move on its own, curling and unfurling like Medusa’s snaky tresses. It grew blacker than before, thicker, with a serpentine slither and when she threw back her head her creamed-coffee features grew black like the mud of the swamp. Jagged teeth jammed her pink gums, protruding from her lips. A long gray tongue darted from between the broken teeth – tasting the air around her.

  Max stepped backward, trying not to slip in the slimy mud.

  Stretching long arms with twisted ebony talons, Magdalena jerked and spasmed, her body elongating before him into some too long, too thin, leather-covered skeleton – terribly deformed but all too human. Her arms reached forward, gathering Max, yanking him from his feet and smothering him to her putrid, sagging teats.

  Max struggled against her. He hit her with his fists and kicked her with his muck-covered feet, but she was too strong. She reeked like the foulest stench of the swamp and her breath – only earlier sweet like vanilla -- hung around him in a cloud of stink that was too thick to be dispersed.

  A distorted, gravelly laugh forced itself up from her gut, and reverberated in Max’s ears. Her eyes shone white in the light of the moon, two ghastly orbs rolling around taking in the scenery around her. She tucked Max under one armpit like a sack of flour and lurched to the shoreline of the swamp, long spindly legs unsteady in the mud.