Laura Morrison_ComeBackToTheSwamp_EbookFormatting Embedded Cover

by Come Back to the Swamp (retail) (epub)

  “Lady …” Bernice said, watching her in confusion. She backed away a bit more. Why was she not running? “What is up with you?”

  Rebecca’s eyes snapped open. “If you are indeed as opposed as you seem, the swamp will release you. It does know of a potential alternate host.”

  “Huh?”

  “You are not the only one whose mind I opened to the swamp. Not the only one who breathed the concoction. The swamp saw his mind and―”

  “No,” Bernice snapped. “No. Stop talking.” Rebecca was talking about Kevin. Bernice knew it, and she didn’t want to hear it. Back when Rebecca had gotten him with her weird spore concoction, the swamp must have seen into him, too. “No, no, no,” she repeated to drown out the sound of Rebecca talking. She backed to the passenger side door and jiggled the handle. Kevin unlocked it. She threw the door open, jumped in, and slammed it shut.

  Through Kevin’s still open window, Bernice heard Rebecca yell, “The swamp will allow it! You can decide to switch hosts!”

  Insane. No. Not an option.

  Kevin locked the doors again, as Bernice whirled around to look at Rebecca through the back window.

  The old woman was just standing there, smiling a knowing smile.

  “Bernice, what do we do? How do we get out of here? Does your phone have reception?”

  “Start the car.”

  “But the vines―”

  “Start the car,” Bernice cut him off.

  He did so.

  Bernice shut her eyes. She felt the vines wrapped all around the back of the car. She told them to unwrap themselves. It was cool she didn’t have to snap her fingers. That was kinda dorky.

  The vines unwrapped themselves.

  “The vines are off,” she told him. “Go. Go now. Before she makes them go back on.” But she knew Rebecca wasn’t going to try to make the vines trap them again. The vines were just lying in the dirt road, not moving an inch, finally acting like proper vines instead of some freakish witch minions. Bernice felt them all with her mind. Bernice knew Rebecca wouldn’t try anything. Rebecca knew Bernice would make the decision to come back on her own, without any need of convincing.

  Well, Rebecca could know it all she wanted. Bernice was never coming back to Cleary Swamp. Never. The voice could scream at her night and day and she’d never go back. She would adapt. She would ignore it. People adapted to all sorts of horrible circumstances and managed to live at least semi-normal lives.

  As Kevin tore down the dirt road as fast as he could make the car go, Bernice turned and watched as Rebecca melted into the darkness.

  Almost as soon as they’d passed the ‘Thank you for visiting Cleary Swamp’ sign, the voice started to whisper again in her head.

  Come back to the swamp, come back to the swamp.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN:

  SCRABBLE

  Bernice spent her first five days post-swamp in extreme denial. Technically, the first stage of grief. Grief over the perhaps inevitable loss of her life as she knew it, the loss of her dreams, the loss of her identity. Hopefully not the loss of her sanity. But she wasn’t just experiencing denial. Was it possible to experience multiple stages all at once?

  Denial, sure. Easy. The supernatural was supereasy to deny.

  Anger was a given, too. Rebecca had pushed this on her. Bernice was beyond enraged that this had happened to her against her will and that she couldn’t stop it.

  Bargaining was a bit nebulous. Who was there to bargain with? The swamp? She’d begged and pleaded a bit with Rebecca when she’d had the chance, but it seemed like things were sorta set in stone. The swamp was in her brain and that was all there was to it. Maybe she could switch places with Kevin, but that was awful and selfish and mean, and she was not going to do it.

  The fourth step was depression. No problem there. She’d been camped out on Kevin’s couch for the past five nights and days, lying around as much as possible, listening to music and watching TV as loud as possible, while the voice got daily (hourly?) louder, and her life got daily (hourly?) more unlivable. Depression was maybe the easiest of all the stages.

  Come back to the swamp, come back to the swamp.

  Acceptance was the stage she doubted she’d ever reach. Unless she went insane. But then it hardly counted as acceptance, really. Well, she’d find out sooner or later since she was pretty sure she was losing her mind.

  At least her power to control plants had disappeared beyond the borders of the swamp. She’d been snapping her fingers at Kevin’s philodendron for days with no results.

  And the weird elation had gone―the warm, almost loving feeling of comfort that she felt for no good reason when she was in the swamp. Bernice actually found comfort in the depression that had taken its place. The depression made sense given her circumstances. The elation did not. Not at all. She’d take a negative feeling that made sense over a positive one that was creepy and illogical any day.

  The evening of her fifth day crashing on Kevin’s couch, Bernice was hard at work listening to Queen while concurrently watching one of Kevin’s DVDs of the first season of Space Mantis. If she was going to go insane, why couldn’t she go the kind of insane where she hallucinated Space Mantis forever? Now that was a crazy she could get behind if crazy was coming either way. Come back to the swamp, come back to the swamp. If only she could pick her insanity at a mental illness buffet line instead of just getting handed her crazy by Rebecca at some sort of hellish restaurant where she couldn’t even look at a menu and had to eat whatever the evil waitress brought, maybe at like a gross old roadside diner with deep fried everything. Deep fried roadkill probably. And the evil waitress would force feed it to her. Yes. Bernice’s life was fast becoming force fed, deep-fried roadkill. Rancid, probably. Still with bones and fur on under all the deep-fried breading.

  Moaning, she flopped back onto the couch.

  Kevin walked into the living room. Bernice had not heard the front door open, but that was no surprise since she had the volume of the music and TV up so high. She gave a listless wave at him as he smiled and said a hello she could barely hear. She felt rotten about moping around his living room, blasting music at all hours, eating all his chips, and generally being the worst houseguest ever, but Kevin kept insisting it was fine. He kept saying that if ever a person had a good reason for going off the rails, it was her. He walked over to the couch and flopped down beside her.

  Come back to the swamp, come back to the swamp.

  Bernice hoped Kevin wasn’t too weirded out by her attire. “I hope it’s okay I went through that box marked for donations. The one by the garage door. The thought of going shopping is horrifying.” She looked down at what she was wearing―an old T-shirt for some obscure blues band and comfy pajama pants.

  “No worries,” Kevin said. “You can even help yourself to my actual good clothes. Good thing I’m so scrawny, eh?”

  She smiled. “Who’d have thought we wore the same size?”

  He smiled a now-familiar conflicted, pitying smile that she was only okay with because at least he was pitying her for the right reasons. He understood what was going on. He asked, “How’s things, B? Have a good day?”

  “Yep. As long as your TV’s volume can exceed the volume of the voice, I count it as a good day.”

  He frowned. “Bernice, this is―”

  “I know,” she said, cutting him off before he could specify in what way this situation was pathetic or sad or unsustainable or annoying. She couldn’t hear it. She knew it all already. “I know. Kevin, I don’t know what to do. I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize. We’ll figure something out, B.”

  She sighed, trying to fight off tears.

  Kevin scooted closer and put an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into a hug. “We’ll figure something out.”

  She nodded against his shoulder, though she didn’t believe f
or a second that they’d be able to figure something out, and she knew he didn’t believe it for a second either.

  Kevin cleared his throat. “Uh, B?”

  “Yeah?”

  He sighed. “I gotta tell you something. It’s about a … uh, solution. I think. Maybe.”

  Bernice gave him a questioning look. “What?” Whatever he was going to say, it was clear it wasn’t good.

  “Okay. So here’s the thing, B. You know when we were in the swamp and that vine was strangling me―”

  “Yep,” Bernice replied, “I do recall that.”

  “Um, so. Well. I kinda heard a voice. In my head.”

  Bernice gasped. No. So the swamp really had gotten into him. No.

  “I haven’t heard it again since, so I figured maybe it was just the … ya know, like the strangling doing weird stuff to my brain. Lack of air and all that. But, see, the voice kinda said it wanted me. If you rejected it, it said it’d take me instead.”

  Bernice blinked. She shook her head. “No.” All that stuff Rebecca had said after Kevin had been attacked by the vine came back to her. The stuff about Kevin being an alternate host if Bernice really was so dead set against the swamp. The swamp had told Kevin the same thing it had told Rebecca.

  “You know anything about that?” Kevin asked.

  “No. No, I do not. And that’s insane. I think you’re right. It was just lack of air to your brain.”

  “But―”

  “Kevin, no. Don’t be an idiot. You were in the swamp when you heard the voice in your head, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, see, that’s proof it wasn’t the swamp. I only hear the voice when I’m not in the swamp.”

  “Um. Doesn’t Rebecca hear the voice when she’s in the swamp? It must communicate with her―”

  “Just stop it. You’re not going to―”

  “Bernice, my life is already destroyed. The murder thing, dropping out of school, quitting my music. Everything’s a mess.”

  “You can fix it. Just because things are messy for you now doesn’t mean you need to go turn into some mad, mud-coated swamp lunatic. You can fix your life up just fine, Kevin.”

  “But you can fix yours, too―”

  “Shut up. I’ve destroyed your life enough, Kevin. I’m not destroying it more.”

  “Bernice,” he said, “you have not destroyed―”

  “Yes I have. It started the moment I took you to the swamp that first time, and it’s gotten worse and worse ever since.”

  “Bernice―”

  She turned to him and stared him down. “Kevin. We will not talk about this anymore. Listen. Fine. You’re right. You are right that the swamp has decided you could be an alternate host. Yes. Rebecca told me that night. I know it. But here’s the thing, Kevin. She also told me it was my decision to make. And I’m never going to make that decision. So you can just shut up about it.” She leaned back against his arm, shaking.

  He cleared his throat, and opened his mouth to speak.

  “Shut up.”

  He nodded.

  They sat in awkward silence for a bit listening to Freddy Mercury. She wished she was a champion, but it was more likely that she was going to bite the dust. Much more likely.

  After a bit, Kevin said over the music, “A storm’s gonna be rolling in tonight. I’m going to just go make sure all the windows are shut. When I’m back, wanna play a game?” Every night, they’d been playing board games late into the night until Bernice was too tired to keep her eyes open. It was great distraction from the voice. At least in her dreams there was no voice. But her dreams were all of the swamp. Super soothing, beautiful, vivid dreams of nature. Birds singing, gentle breezes blowing, baby ducks paddling along in the water behind their mother.

  She hated the dreams more than she had ever hated her worst nightmare. She knew the dreams were just the swamp trying to convince her to return.

  “Sure,” she mumbled. “Scrabble?” Kevin was almost as good at Scrabble as she was. The challenge was nice. If she went to the swamp (which she wasn’t going to do) there would certainly be no more Scrabble. Rebecca probably wouldn’t want to scratch word games in the mud, and the swamp most certainly wouldn’t. Even though it probably could if it wanted to.

  “Sure. Scrabble it is.” He gave her shoulders a reassuring sort of squeeze, then got up to check the windows.

  She felt sick. Kevin was so nice. If this insanity got him in trouble again she’d never forgive herself. She hated that he now knew he was an alternate host. She could just see him trying to be a hero and going to the swamp behind her back to offer himself up. “Oh!” Bernice said to his back. “How did your meeting go?” Kevin had, at Bernice’s near-begging insistence, set up a meeting with Professor Zimmer about getting back into the program.

  Kevin stopped and turned. “It went good! Looks like I’m probably gonna be back in next semester if I get the right paperwork done and get some references.” He paused and added, “Uh, she wanted me to tell you hi from her.”

  “Oh, yeah. Tell her hi from me next time you see her.” Bernice didn’t really want to think about Professor Zimmer and the school and the direction her life could have taken if all this hadn’t happened. “Anyway. That’s awesome. Congratulations, Kevin.”

  He grinned. “Yeah, thanks for pushing me to go on and talk to her.” He turned and walked off.

  Come back to the swamp, come back to the swamp.

  Bernice gritted her teeth. This had to stop. She could not adapt. It was getting harder, not easier. Louder and louder and louder. The thing that she hated most of all (At least, maybe most of all. It was so hard to pick what she hated most about her situation) was that she found herself looking forward to sleep―leaving her real life behind with all its confusion and stress and fear and the stupid, stupid voice, and surrendering to sleep and the peaceful swamp dreams. This was, of course, the swamp’s plan. She could feel it convincing her to return. She could feel the swamp implying that only in the swamp would she have the peace she so desperately needed. She was starting to dread her waking life intensely. It was a horrible feeling.

  #

  Bernice woke with a start. A huge crash of thunder had woken her. Her dream had been entrancing―insects had been humming drowsily in the background, and she’d been lying in the moss watching a spider spin a web in an alder above her head. The sun had been warm, the breeze had been soothing, everything had been beautiful. But, of course, the moment Bernice woke the voice started up again. Come back to the swamp, come back to the swamp.

  And there was no background noise to block it out.

  Where was the background noise?

  She felt a stab of rage. Had Kevin turned off the TV before he’d gone to bed?

  She threw off the blanket Kevin must have put over her after the Scrabble games had knocked her out, then she sat and fumbled around in the dark for the remote control. It was usually on the coffee table. Where was it? Why was it so dark? She looked at the screen of her phone, which was also on the coffee table. A bit past 9 a.m.

  Over the sound of rain on the windowpanes and the voice in her head, Bernice heard Kevin trotting down the stairs. Weird. He was usually at work by 8. She turned toward the hallway. Lightning flashed as Kevin walked into the room. “Hey, B. Power’s out,” he announced. In a second flash of lightning, she caught his anxious expression. He knew what this meant in regard to the voice.

  “Why aren’t you at work?” she asked as she searched frantically for the remote control.

  “Not going in today.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Is it because of me?” she asked, feeling guilt wash over her. Was he skipping work to look after her? Again?

  “Remote’s lost?” Kevin asked, not answering her question.

  “Yes. Help me l
ook.”

  He began to search. “You tried my headphones with your phone?”

  “They don’t go loud enough anymore,” she said, cringing at how positively unhinged her voice sounded, all shrill and panicked.

  “Um, even if we find the remote, the power is, uh, out …” he pointed out.

  She halted in her frenzied search. “Oh. Yeah.”

  “Wanna go for a drive? We can turn up the radio.”

  She was on her feet in an instant, heading toward the garage. Kevin followed.

  Bernice put her hands to her temples and scrunched her eyes shut. She stumbled as she walked through the kitchen, and ran into the kitchen table, reeling from the impact.

  “Bernice, you okay?” Kevin questioned, grabbing her by the elbow and helping her stumble along toward the garage.

  She shook her head, and a whimper escaped her lips. “Kevin … I can’t do this anymore.”

  “Come on,” he said, his voice thick with worry. “Come on, B. Let’s just get you in the car and turn up the music. The music and the rain on the car and all that … it’ll help.”

  Temporarily, maybe. Maybe. But even if it could be drowned out, it wouldn’t be able to be for much longer. Two or three days, tops, at the rate at which the volume had been increasing.

  Bernice kept her eyes squeezed shut, and let Kevin guide her to the car. He opened the door and helped her in, then got into the driver’s seat, turned on the car, cranked up the radio, and set out. She wasn’t sure how long they drove. She was vaguely aware that rain was pounding the roof of the car so hard that it felt dangerous to be driving. “Is this safe?” she asked Kevin.

  “Sure. I’m going slow. No one’s on the road.”

  She slipped into a daze. Not sleep, though. Sleep would have been nice. Peaceful. This was just a haze of come back to the swamp, come back to the swamp and horrible 90’s pop, punctuated with weight loss commercials and pathetic DJ banter. After who knows how long, she heard herself say, “Kevin. Drive me to the swamp.”

  “No way, Bernice. No.”

  “I can’t take this anymore.”