by Wile E Young
He drove the nail through the mojo bag and the gigantic Deep Folk groaned and stiffened, his warbling gasps silencing. Its hands went to its chest and it clawed over its heart. A dark smudge spread beneath the scales and bits of mercury and blood ran out from the cracks. A long wailing moan erupted from its throat along with a torrent of bright red blood that splashed across the deck, Luc worked the nail deeper.
The primordial Deep Folk chieftain fell with a groan, crashing through the houseboat’s living quarters like a falling tree and lying still with a pitiful groan.
I grinned in victory. We’d won… I couldn’t believe it.
Luc sank to his knees with a groan, lying against the deck even as the bow slipped beneath the water.
“Gotta get out of here, Grady…”
Lincoln appeared, standing waist deep in the water next to me; blood was beginning to leak out of his gills as he took shallow agonized breaths.
He reached out and placed his gnarled webbed hand on my chest.
“Grampa… I’m… sorry.”
His voice was like a rumbling wave, and each word sounded unnatural coming off his tongue. I didn’t think he would be speaking much English out of that monstrous mouth for much longer. He didn’t look remotely human anymore, but his eyes, those dark pupils displayed an understanding... memories.
“Why?” I croaked out.
Luc crawled across the deck and flopped next to us in his exhaustion “Your mojo bag… when you called the magic it knocked some things about in his head.”
The Cajun man smiled at Lincoln. “Brought some memories back up, didn’t it?”
He tried to return the smile, his mouth twitching as he tried to form an expression it wasn’t capable of making.
“The spell will wear off eventually; just like the fog is going to come rumbling back into your mind… you have to keep the bastards down there until I’m done, Lincoln.”
My grandson grasped at his gills, each one bleeding heavily “Can’t… stay…”
I felt fresh tears at my eyes, and they had nothing to do from pain.
Luc shook his head. “By the time what they’ve done to you comes rolling back, you won’t remember you wanted to, just like they won’t remember your help in killing…” The three of us glanced at the massive corpse behind us.
“Can you do that for us, Lincoln?”
The double eyelids blinked, then he nodded.
Luc nodded as well. “Good, then I’ll get to my working.”
Maybe he knew that I wanted to tell him goodbye, maybe he told the truth… either way he rose and left me with my grandson at the edge of the boat separated by railing and water.
“I love you, boy.”
I said it suddenly. Wasn’t sure if I even meant it, but it was out there all the same. I’d known him for a week and seen him transform from a babe to a man to a monster.
He was still my blood.
The webbed hand grasped mine and made my skin roil. “Take… care… of…”
His lips couldn’t form the last word and I saw his face twist in rage before he released me and dived back under the water.
Barely left a ripple on the surface.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Whatever magic Luc worked didn’t have any immediate effect. Told me that he had sealed the entrances to the Cradle and that he was sure the Deep Folk were trapped beneath the lake for good.
Had my doubts on that; how could he be sure that he had gotten them all? Chock it up to magic hadn’t made much sense to me before, so I didn’t expect it to begin now.
We found Desmond washed up on the shore. Poor boy had been mangled beyond all belief. His face had a mess of gashes running across them. One of his eyes dangled uselessly from its socket and he was missing arm at the elbow. Besides that he was mostly intact and to my shock was breathing.
We hauled him out of the water, no easy task considering my cracked ribs and every breath was like agony.
Luc waded back out to the wreck of the game warden ship and began fishing around underneath for the radio. Put out a call for help, and was still doing at it when my age caught up with me and I passed out.
****
Woke up in the hospital. Could barely see anything and when I did get answers they were always things like, “We’ll know more after we run a few tests.”
Apparently, the diagnosis wasn’t all too great.
Mercury poisoning, advanced.
Didn’t have to tell them where I thought I had gotten it from Didn’t want to think back to those memories.
Desmond recovered as far as Luc told me. Mangled for sure, but Davis offered him a job down at Shady Glade in lieu of his continued work at the Fish and Wildlife office.
And he told me that it was just a matter of weeks until I was going to go bugshit and begin seeing things.
If I told them what had been happening the past few days, I’m sure they would have thought that it had already begun.
Hell, how was I to know it hadn’t?
Luc checked me out of the hospital. They had recommended me go to an old folks’ home until the end, but I told them to shove their own dicks where the sun didn’t shine. The hoodoo man promised to take care of me until the time came.
I’d been in the hospital for about a week but apparently there had been nary a peep from the Deep Folk. I didn’t think much of it… the thought of my last kin trapped down beneath the lake in that den of monsters didn’t fill me with happy thoughts.
By the fifth day at home I couldn’t walk anymore. My muscles just couldn’t lift me out of my chair. Luc came down and helped me shit, helped me eat, helped me do just about everything that needed to be done.
Misty Carter, Davis and Helen, Desmond, old Mose William… all of them skirted in and out of the house, none of them speaking much and just shooting the shit like I wasn’t dying, like the river hadn’t flood, like monsters didn’t exist…
****
Had been home for two weeks and I was starting to pray for death. Could barely speak a fucking sentence now and I can’t feel my hands and feet.
Death was coming. Breathing was beginning to become a pain in the ass. Had been seeing Renee too.
Told Luc just to take whatever he wanted, sell the house and make some money. Wrote it down with what little strength I had left. Good riddance: I was tired of looking at all of this.
Not that there was much money to be had. The flood had washed up inside and ruined a good bit of the house and what little possessions I had.
Luc left me out on my back porch in a rocking chair so I could look at the river and feel the breeze on my face with a good breakfast of eggs and bacon.
It was a good clear day, not a cloud in the sky.
Watching the river run was about the only thing that brought me peace these days. mesmerized me and kept the voices and Renee from saying much too me until I fell back into a nice sleep.
Luc had run back up to his house to get some things. Apparently magic can do a lot, but healing requires ingredients and sacrifices we didn’t possess and weren’t willing to make.
Still, he was trying to soothe me the best way he could. Couldn’t hold that against him.
A dead alligator bubbled to the surface, its glassy eyes staring at nothing, belly slit from neck to groin and its insides hollowed out.
Fifteen-footer if I had ever laid my eyes on one. I knew it was the one that I had hunted just a scant three weeks ago.
A solitary member of the Deep Folk appeared out of the river, dripping wet and carrying a wicked looking trident, the serrated metal tips of the weapon undoubtedly built from sunken boat hulls.
Luc had said that the spell would wear off but had also been confident in his sealing of the Cradle entrances.
Damn arrogant boy.
The monster hauled the alligator behind him, dragging the massive carcass as easily as a toy wagon.
I knew it was Lincoln, knew there wasn’t a mind left in that head just savagery. Seven feet tall with
no deformities, my grandson had become quite the specimen, he’d already ritually scarred himself, the fishing hooks piercing his skin in various places, lures hanging off of them like symbols of victory.
Wasn’t going to beg or plead. The trident piercing my gut was going to feel like sweet release next to the hell I’d been living in.
I fixed my grandson with a withering gaze as he dropped the carcass next to me, planting the trident, and grinning wickedly.
His teeth were sharp. A tattoo had been applied to his face, symbol I didn’t recognize.
He opened his mouth to speak and his voice came out in a sharp croaking rasp.
“Take… care… of… you!”
He gripped me with a massive hand and hauled me out of the chair. I slapped at that massively muscled arm.
Terror filled my chest as I gurgled a cry for help that came out as bubbling slobber. He opened the alligator carcass and with a last gurgling cry he stuffed me into the rancid reptilian darkness.
Felt him lift the body and I jostled around, trying to breathe.
Didn’t begin screaming until I felt the water splash inside.
* * *
[AD1]Confusing… he just said that light was coming through the window.
