Swamp Tales

by Bill Russo

The group fell silent as the new voice intruded into the circle. A tall, gaunt figure pushed his way through the dense brush and walked towards the fire.

  He was an older man with a shock of white hair that fell to his shoulders. Holding a thick walking stick in one hand, he hugged a 40 ounce Colt 45 Malt liquor with the other.

  He was trailed by a large dog with rounded ears that stood straight up and a rough shaggy coat. His eyes glowed reddish orange. The dog, or perhaps it was a wolf, padded along on huge paws as big as men's winter boots.

  The man was Joe Santini himself. The wolf-dog was his canine friend Rip. Santini is a legend among those who know the Hockomock Swamp. An expert farmer, hunter, trapper and fisherman as well as a successful inventor, his skills had brought him considerable wealth and the means to transform his acreage into a wildlife preserve and sanctuary.

  As a taxidermist, his expertise was unmatched and he was able to demand, and get, exorbitant fees for his work. He was just as likely, however, to charge no fee at all - if he mounted a fish or a bird for a friend or for one of the many young men in the area who worked part time for him.

  "I hope you guys don't mind, but Rip and I have been listening to you for some time. Freddy, when you started to tell about some of the things that I told you, I thought perhaps everyone would like to hear these things directly from me," Santini said with a confident smile.

  Joe sat down at the fire and Rip squeezed in beside him. Bill Ricci heaved a half-dozen good sized logs into the pit and in a moment, a roaring blaze illuminated the faces of the man and the dog. Rip's eyes had that scary ‘lightbulb look’, common to dogs and creatures of the night. But the wolf-dog’s eyes glowed blood red, instead of the customary yellow. All four of the campers noticed, but nobody mentioned it.

  “I’ll share you a story about the Hockomock Swamp,” Joe said, as he took a long pull from his 40 ounce Colt 45 Malt Liquor. He took something from a shirt pocket and flipped it to his canine buddy who snatched it from the air in a flash. When Rip’s huge, powerful jaws clamped down on whatever bit of food Joe threw; the noise cracked the silence of the night like the slamming of a car door.

  The four young men who had been joined by Santini and Rip, huddled closer to the fire. Nobody said anything, but they all felt that the temperature had fallen about ten degrees in the short space of a minute since Santini had unexpectedly dropped in.

  “I’ve seen things in this swamp. I have seen things that nobody else has seen,” Joe said. “Mr. Markens, you told a story about a guy getting scared to death near the old iron works and you thought that it was just rubber gloves that frightened him to death. Maybe it was; but I can tell you true, that there are haunts here. Lots of them and they’re real enough to scare even old fearless Rip.

  “I will have to admit that I have never seen any Bigfoot creatures or even pint sized Littlefoot creatures like that man in the Bridgewater Triangle movie saw. But I’ve been in their lairs and I’ve seen the clumps of hair left behind by them.”

  “What do you mean clumps of hair?” asked Bill Ricci.

  “Just that Billy. Over on the other side of my fishing lake, I saw areas where a few rough lean-tos were built from fallen logs and branches. When I checked inside there were piles of hair everywhere. I picked up one huge clump that was as big enough to fill a trash can. I stretched out some of the hairs to see how long they were. Many of them were over five feet! I think that they probably shedded it in the summer to keep cool. It almost looked like they had saved it to use for pillows.

  “Behind the lean-tos was a foot high mound of fish bones. I had noticed that fish were getting very scarce in the pond and I figured that a group of otters must have moved in. You know one lone otter will eat between five and ten pounds of fish a day. A group of ‘em can clean out a fish pond in a single season. So I circled the pond looking to get those damn otters. I had my rifle and my revolver with me. But there were no otters. The creatures that left those piles of hair? I will give you twenty to one odds that they were Bigfoot people.

  “I wouldn’t mind meeting up with Bigfoot. There are lots of creatures in these woods far scarier than Bigfoot and the story I am going to tell you now is about two of them.

  “As you four guys know, I own hundreds of acres of woodland and swampland here at the edge of the Hockomock Swamp. I bought my first section over 40 years ago and I have been buying up land ever since, whenever I get the opportunity to do so.

  I have kept the property in its natural shape except for the house, my garden and a few outbuildings. I almost never leave my land. I’m mostly self sufficient what with my garden, my hunting, a flock of chickens and such. What I can’t grow or hunt, I have delivered if I need it.

  At the north corner of my property is the remains of that old ironworks that Mr. Markens told you about. On the southern edge running to the west side is the state highway. Have any of you ever seen the western boundary.”

  “I’ve seen it,” said Bill Ricci. There was a forest fire or something there. It’s mostly grown back now but you can still see a lot of the hulks of the burned trees.”

  “There was a fire there Bill and that’s part of the story. At one time on that western edge there was a two story cottage. I lived in the home after I bought the property from a sick old Indian. He was named Marcus ‘Full Moon’ Shortsleeves of the Wampanoag tribe.

  Back then, there were only a few full time residents in the area. People used to come here for the summer. There were no homes close to my land. A few miles away, at ‘The Nip”, there were hundreds of seasonal properties.

  I was not quite the recluse back then that I am now. I used to party with and swim with a group of summer friends. We would have picnics, pitch horse shoes, and ply the waters with rowboats, canoes and sailboats.

 

  On Labor Day every year we’d stack old wooden barrels 20 or 30 high and have a giant farewell bonfire and cookout. The nights would be getting cool and the heat from those bonfires was intense. People would come from as far away as Brockton, Fall River and Providence to see the blaze.

  By the next afternoon, everyone was gone and I would be all alone in my large cottage at the edge of my pond. Over the years I grew to love my solitude even more than the party time with friends; so gradually I stopped going to the summer gatherings and I remained at home by myself.

  The dwelling that I lived in, was on the property when I bought it. At one time, it may have belonged to one of the owners of the ironworks. A cottage in name only, it was a lovely, well built structure of several thousand square feet.

  The upper floor had six good sized rooms. Originally they were all used as bedrooms. Because I lived by myself, I converted two of the rooms. One I made into an office and the other to a library for my book collection.

  The downstairs was one huge uninterrupted great room. It was a combination area which served as living room, dining room, and kitchen. Since the home was far from the street where the telephone and electric wires ran, there was no electricity and no phone.

  That suited me fine. I had candles glowing in the Great Room and a roaring fire was always blazing in the king sized hearth. The fireplace was fashioned not from puny brick, but bulky granite blocks. Much of the exterior of the house was stone, giving the cottage the appearance of a medieval castle.

  A winding staircase of ornamental metal, led from the Great Room to the second floor. From the kitchen area there was a second stairwell, this one of wood that also went to the second floor bedrooms and then continued up to a commodious attic that had eight smaller rooms, each with a tiny triangular window.

  Those quarters may have been used by the servants or perhaps as guest rooms. Antique chamber pots were under each bed – more than one of which contained the desiccated remains of what the product was intended to contain.

  My sleeping room was on the right hand side of the house, facing the pond. The ro
om afforded me the first rays of the morning sun so that it was warm on a chilly morning and shaded on a hot afternoon or early evening.

  Though it was far too big for me, I did love the house.

  In the autumn mornings before the onset of the cold weather, I would load my fishing gear into an old flat bottomed dory and push off from my little dock and row to a weather whitened log that had fallen long ago in a Northeast Gale. After it toppled, the old Maple Tree found a new life as a foot bridge, spanning some 20 yards in a gentle incline from the shore into the clear water of the pond.

  The naked arms of that sun-bleached log dipped underwater and made comfortable little homes for the plump trout that swam there in great quantities. In less than an hour I was almost always able to fill my creel. On the rare occasions the trout did not respond to whatever I was offering on my hooks, the pickerel were only too eager to volunteer for breakfast duty. I accepted them willingly enough, though they required a bit more preparation than the trout.

  Shortly after I moved in, I noticed the doors of a bulkhead in the backyard, almost entirely obscured by vines and other scrub growth. A few minutes hacking with my scythe soon exposed the handles.

  Perspiring from my bit of exercise I was pleasantly surprised by a blast of frosty air when I freed the heavy wooden doors. They led to an underground larder that was nearly as cold as a refrigerator, even in the summertime.

  The larder was soon stocked with fruits and vegetables from my garden. The cooling properties were so good that I could even safely store my fish for a few days, without the bother of salting or drying them.

  What with taking care of the property, my gardens, and my journals – which I kept every day – my life in the swamp was busy and fulfilling.

  And yet, as time went by, I found that I was not sleeping as well as before. I would awaken in the middle of the night and listen. I was not sure what I was listening for, but I felt certain that I needed to be listening for something.”

  Joe Santini paused and took a deep breath. He put his hand on his forehead as if he were checking to see if he had a fever. He patted Rip and gave the great wolf-dog another scrap of something from his pocket and then he continued……

  “Now you gentlemen sitting around the campfire - Mr. Markens, Bill, Freddie, and Bobby; please understand that I love being alone. I am not afraid of solitude. I have half a dozen rifles and pistols and I know how to use them. In order for this story to make any sense, you have to believe me when I say that I love being by myself. I am not afraid of being alone!

  But I wasn’t sleeping well. As I told you, almost every night I would wake up after dreaming that I needed to wake up to listen for something. My dream never revealed what I was supposed to be listening for.

 

  As each new sunset came and darkness swallowed my house, there was never enough light inside. I stacked up wood six feet high in my hearth. Bundling banks of candles together, I had three dozen burning at a time. It was still too dark.

  My spacious and breezy bedroom seemed to become tiny. The air which once flowed freely from my two large windows had slowed down and stopped. The wind offered not even a whisper of a breeze. The smoke from the candles went straight up to the ceiling as there was not even a tiny draft to make the fumes wiggle away from the wicks.

  My own breath also threatened to cease. My throat seemed to be paralyzed. I could not swallow. I was unable to force my lungs to compress. Even my tongue had been stilled by some unseen and evil power.

  Every morning at two or three a.m. when I awoke, I was forced to scramble down the spiral metal stairs to the Great Room. There, I could breathe again. My tongue was loosed and began to wag once more. I was able to swallow the mouthful of phlegm that I had been choking on. My heart stopped racing and my respiration slowed to normal.

  The next day, before sunset I dragged my bed down the ornamental stairs and set it up near the dining table. Feeling hungry for the first time in a week, I went to the larder and selected a pepper, an onion, one tomato, a head of lettuce, some cheese and some fish. I cooked and ate a double portion of food.

  Exhausted, I laid down on the bed and fell asleep just as the grandfather clock standing guard by the dining table, chimed eight times. Twelve hours later, as the clock again chimed eight times, I awoke.

  I opened my mouth and peered into a mirror to see if my tongue was moving. It was. I was breathing normally. My universe had righted itself and everything was fine.

  Retiring at the stroke of nine the next evening, I found myself awake when the grandfather clock clanged eleven bells. I made a sandwich and had a glass of milk. I tried to read in the light of fourteen candles. I was cold. Though the day had been warm, I was shivering.

  The night was still. The birds had ceased chattering. The drone of the crickets, cicadas, bullfrogs, and the cries of the wolves and coyotes stopped. It got even colder. There was not a single sound except for some slight rhythmic vibrations floating through the open window. They seemed to be coming from the nearby boat dock.

  I heard the sound of oars being pulled from their locks and placed across the seats of a small boat. I heard the soft thud of a tiny vessel bumping up against the automobile tires that I affixed to the sides of the dock.

  Shivering, I rose from my bed and stole over to the cupboard where I had a rifle and two boxes of ammunition. I was frozen both by temperature and fear. To help stop the shaking I went to a closet and took out a heavy black robe and put it on. The long black garment had an oversized hood which I pulled up until it fully covered my head, leaving only a peering space in front of my watery eyes.

  There was a full moon that cursed night and an eerie, frosty light streamed into the house through the windows on all four sides of the Great Room. Outside it was as bright as the morning twilight though the clock lacked only a few more minutes before it would strike twelve loud gongs.

  From my stand near the open window I saw two, no three, figures emerge from the boat which turned out not to be a dory as I first thought, but a large dugout canoe fashioned from giant birch trees such as were plentiful in this land 400 years ago.

  The unholy trio that departed the dugout ranged in size from massive to diminutive and they traversed the walk-way from the dock to my front door in order of their size.

  As they drew within 20 feet of the cottage entrance, I got my first clear look at the leader. He was over seven feet tall but had the stance of a nine footer counting his full war bonnet. Made from eagle feathers, the giant man’s headdress displayed a grisly string of scalps – coup taken in battles to the death. Worse yet, one of the scalps was fresh and bloody.

  Obviously a once important chief, the fighting man had his face painted in war colors – one side was blood red and the other half of his visage; from the middle of his nose to his ear was painted midnight black. A large scalping knife was clutched in his right hand while his left held what looked to be an amulet made from a tooth – perhaps from a bear.

  The second in line was half the size of the leader. Old, shrunken and bent over; he jabbed a walking stick in front of him, poking the ground as he plodded along in the manner of a blind person. He wore no chief’s ornaments, being dressed only in ragged dungarees and a much patched denim shirt.

  As they neared the knob of my front door I realized that the third shape, the smallest of all, was actually being dragged at the end of a rope by the old shrunken man – although how he had the strength to drag a person I cannot explain.

  I realized too, that the third figure was actually not as small as he had seemed. The lack of size was due to the fact that they had folded the body like a pretzel. I said body because I could tell that the unfortunate creature being dragged was dead.

  The unholy parade entered into the Great Room, though my door has been locked and barred. Slowly and silently they traipsed to the middle of the room and stopped. They were not fifteen f
eet away from me. Surely they could see me, I thought.

  Fear, by now, had overtaken me. I was frozen by it, unable to move even a finger or a toe. That cowardice probably saved my life - that and the black robe. Due to the voluminous and shapeless draping, I was invisible to the ghostly figures. I appeared to be nothing more than a mound of dirty laundry; a pile of old linens and blankets.

  My eyes alone were not welded shut. I found that I could shift my gaze and see the details of my intruders. The first I have already described. He could have been any of the powerful historical legendary native leaders from Massasoit to Geronimo.

  The second face, in the light of the full moon, seemed familiar. Full moon. Full moon? Full Moon?

  I kept tossing the words around in my mind and then I remembered. Marcus ‘Full Moon’ Shortsleeves - the man from whom I had obtained the property. He had a face as round as a full moon, and that was how he had acquired his name.

  It was him, but for the blindness.

  Except that he could no longer see, I was certain that it was ‘Full Moon’ Shortsleeves returning to kill me.

  Why would he want to murder me, you might ask?

  I cheated him! He was old and infirm. I remembered too, that his eyesight was failing when I approached him about taking over his land.

  I convinced him that his property was worthless and gave him just enough money to leave the Town of Raynham and go live with his tribe on a reservation on Cape Cod.

  Immobilized by my shock and fear, I could not look upon the third person - the lifeless lump being hauled by ‘Full Moon’ Shortsleeves.

  “My great, great, grandson, let us go now to the bedroom on the second floor and finish the work we have come for.”

  It was the massive warrior who spoke. The words flowed from that painted young face. He was speaking to the wizened old man who I cheated and the youth called the ancient one, grandson!

  If there had been any doubt at all about the spectral qualities of these intruders; there was no uncertainty after that.

  From beneath the folds of my black robe I peered over at the front door which they had left open. I yearned to make a run for it, but still could not move; so I resigned myself to whatever was in store for me. I could not fight. I would be fowl to their hawk.

  After the giant spoke, the ghastly parade began inching towards the metal stairs. Creeping along in a halting pace they started to ascend the iron treads, dragging the body along behind.

  After what seemed like a full hour they reached the top. The Grandfather Clock by the dining table struck. One chime. A second. Then no more. It was two hours past midnight.

  The wraiths made straight for my bedroom which I had so fortunately abandoned. Angry shouts emanated from upstairs when the specters realized that the sleeping prey they anticipated was not in the room.

  Mournfully, the apparitions marched back down the stairs with a rhythmic thumping trailing behind them as the body banged its way from stair to stair.

  “It is not right to steal an old man’s land,” moaned the spirit who looked like ‘Full Moon’ Shortsleeves.

  The phantoms stopped and I finally did venture to look upon the lifeless, misshapen form that was being dragged. Its throat had been slit. It had been scalped and then crushed double by the great strength of the giant Chief, before being trussed up like meat for an oven.

  I glanced at the face of the wretch and my heart stopped for a full second when I saw that the bloody corpse was me!

  I remember nothing else of the ordeal. I awoke to rays of sunshine slowly warming the cold stones of the floor of the Great Room where I lay shivering, and grasping my long black robe.

  After four or five cups of coffee sweetened with sugar and strengthened with a few ounces of Jack Daniels; I was fairly convinced that the whole matter was nothing but a bad dream.

  There was no evidence that I had been attacked. No blood was spattered on the floor or the stairs. The huge chief had not left a knife behind, or even a feather.

  I went ahead with a business deal that I had in the works for some time. I was selling off part of the property that I had obtained from the old Indian - a dozen acres across the highway, not connected to the hundreds of acres of woods and swamp that I am preserving.

  A builder offered me a million dollars cash for the 12 acres. They were to be used for the development of several mansions for the rich sports figures who had begun to settle in Southeastern Massachusetts following the Boston Patriots decision to leave the city in favor of the town of Foxboro. Their new football stadium was just a few minutes’ drive from my purloined land.

  After I closed the sale and banked the cash, I finally felt good enough to move my bed back to my old room on the second floor. Naturally, the very first night back in the room; I had the dream again. And every night from then on, I was haunted by the unholy three. In later variations of the dream, I was still alive even though my throat was slit. Still alive was I - though I had been scalped, had been bent in half, and was being dragged up the metal stairs.

  One night as I lay cowering before the apparitions, the bloody trussed up me, spoke to the other me who still had his scalp.

  “Joe. We cheated the old man,” he gurgled with bloody bubbles floating from his lips. “We will never be free of the ghosts until you make it right.”

  As always, in the morning my liquor-fortified coffee made the dreams, just that – dreams. Bad dreams! That’s all they are, I said.

  As I dressed for an appointment with my banker one morning, I reached for my shoe and found that there was something in it.

  It was a scalping knife exactly like the one the big Chief wielded. It had apparently been dropped by the towering warrior during the night’s ‘dream’.

  I kept my appointment with my banker and told him to find old Marcus ‘Full Moon’ Shortsleeves and give him the million dollars.

  “Tell him a distant relative died and left him the money. Tell him he won the lottery. I don’t care what you say to him. Just give the money to ‘Full Moon’ Shortsleeves!”

  The banker reported back to me within a week saying that he had found the old fellow in the reservation and had awarded him the proceeds of the estate of an overseas uncle he didn’t even know he had. The estate amounted to one million dollars in cash.

  A month later I had an eye exam with a specialist in Mashpee, in the middle of Cape Cod. As I was waiting to see the doctor, a well dressed old man, with a much younger man – probably his grandson – was leaving the office.

  The old man was smiling and chatting about how lucky he was to have had a windfall that gave him the means to have his expensive eye operation. His cataracts were gone and his blindness had left with them. The old gentleman looked familiar. He had a face as round as a full moon.

  When the old man and the very tall young man passed by my seat in the waiting room, they paused briefly.

  The moon faced man looked at me and said woodenly, “It’s not nice to steal an old man’s land.” He left the office without another word.

  When I went home I took five gallons of gasoline and three bales of hay and spread both through the cottage. I touched a match to a gas soaked clump of hay by the front door and left; not even bothering to look at the expanding inferno.

  When I returned the next day, the house had burned to the ground, scattering the stone work over half an acre. The blaze had worked its way to the pond where it burned itself out.

  As the last embers of that devastation stopped smoking and cooled, so went the horrors of my frightmares – if dreams they were!

  Since that day, I have tried to live an honest life in business and I am happy to say that I have not had a single visit from the moon faced old man and his giant grandfather. I also have not seen visions of myself with a slit throat and a missing scalp.”

  Joe Santini ran his hand through his long white hair, as if checking to see that it wa
s still there. He plucked something from his pocket and tossed it to Rip whose eyes shone blood red. The wolf-dog opened his ratchet jaws and quickly clamped down on the morsel with a sound like an axe thudding into a chopping block

  “That’s a pretty scary story Joe,” said Bobby Butterworth. The others nodded in agreement. “Do you think that it was a dream or did they really come after you?”

  Joe didn’t answer. Instead he withdrew something from his shirt and as quick as a flash of lightning he threw the object at a log in front of the fire. A long, sharp knife speared its way into the wood and buried itself halfway up to the hilt.

  “It’s a scalping knife!” exclaimed Bill Ricci.

  -0-

  For a long moment no one spoke. The four camp councilors just stared at the hilt of the blade. At length Rip rose silently from his spot next to Joe Santini and padded his way around the campfire toward the weapon. The great wolf-dog focused his glowing eyes on the shiny shape buried in the seasoned log. Quickly, he opened his toothy mouth and clamped down on the handle. Shrugging his bulky skull, the beast ripped the blade from the wood.