Decatur Psalm

It’s a gothic, grotesque, ghastly thing, its exoskeleton the bright burgundy of a nosebleed, bleached, broken, bandaged with boards, barely standing on those spider-leg stilts stuck in the swamp, a storm of sandflies swirling around the structure. Benedetta and Patricia Andre open its door, hoping to find their missing sister, Jaslena, inside.

“I don’t want to do this anymore” was the last thing they heard from her.

Two days after anybody heard from her, their mother filed a police report for the 21-year-old Jaslena. An unsuccessful week later, Benedetta and Patricia found a little black book with some vile and verboten notes in Jaslena’s bedroom. They couldn’t show these notes to the authorities, so Benedetta and Patricia decided to endanger themselves by searching for their sister on their own.

Thus they floated aimlessly in a canoe on the shadowy swamp miles and miles away from home. They made sure to pick a sunny morning to calm their nerves on this mission, but, covered by the canopy and clouds, Benedetta and Patricia struggled to keep their spirits high in the dark of the day. They’ve never been on the water, let alone operate a canoe to navigate a swamp.

On either side of them were curtains of trees with just enough space in between them for something to hide but not enough for the sisters to escape from this path so conveniently prepared for them. Who could blame them if they felt like they’re stumbling into a trap?

“What that goddamn book say?” Patricia grumbled from the back. “Where the hell we goin’?”

Benedetta, though the youngest of the Andre sisters, is a bit braver than her eldest sister, but, based on Jaslena’s little black book, not quite as courageous as the middle child. “The stilt house with the red walls. Thirty miles south from the mouth of the swamp.”

“What stilt house—I don’t see no houses.”

“Thirty miles from the entrance.”

“How far’d we go?”

“It’s only been ten minutes.”

“God. Damn this place. So hot.”

Suspicion seeped in. It was too quiet, especially for nature. Benedetta broke the silence.

“This place is so scary—”

“—so scary! Right? I’m so scared.” Cautiously, Patricia jerked her head at the sky, or what cracks of it she can see; she couldn’t bring herself to look down in the water. There’s nothing scarier than seeing something that’s not supposed to be there. “You think there’s gators in here?”

“How am I supposed to know?”

“What you mean, How you supposed to know? Didn’t you look anything up before you dragged us out here?”

“I didn’t have time to go to a library, Patty.”

“Okay,” Patricia declared, “let’s turn around. We in way over our heads here. Mom’ll kill me if I let us die in this goddamned water cemetery.”

“But what about Jazzy—”

“We’ll help the police find her. Ain’t no way we’re making life harder for anyone if something happens to us, too. Just let the police deal with it. We’ll show them the book—”

“We can’t.”

“Benny, listen to me. It’s better she be alive and go on trial or whatever for what she wrote in this goddamn book than us killing ourselves and not finding her because we don’t know what we’re doing! Let’s turn around!”

Without waiting for agreement from her sister, Patricia began paddling ferociously on her left side in thrashing, jagged movements.

“It’s not turning,” Benedetta coldly remarked after what felt like fifteen minutes.

“I’m tryin’! I’m doing the J strokes and the C strokes! Just like the internet showed me!”

“Okay, wait. Let’s just—turn around, face the other way, and go back normally.”

As suggested, the sisters swivelled, and carefully so—“I don’t wanna fall and see or touch whatever’s in there,” Patricia said–to face the other way, but when they paddled, the canoe didn’t move forward.

Frustrated, Patricia sobbed, “What the hell!” She slumped and pivoted back to her original position. “We ain’t got no other choice.”

Stoically, Benedetta nodded, and back in search of the red-walled stilt house they went.

It was getting dark, even though what little remained of the turquoise sky suggested it wasn’t yet noon. The trees were getting sparser but the hanging foliage fuller. Patricia paddled, keeping her head straight—

A snap and a swoosh in her periphery.

“What was that?!” Patricia violently turned around.

“Whoa! You almost—” exclaimed Benedetta.

“I saw something.” She lingered in the spot, waiting, bracing herself to face whatever demon or creature she just saw.

None cane, so she slowly began to face forward. But as she did so, she saw something else that stopped her heart.

A face in a tree.

Startled, Patricia gasped and looked away.

A face in a tree?

When her pulse calmed a little, she looked back at it.

A face in a tree. At the bottom of a nearby trunk, just above the water, was a chimpanzee’s awakened head, staring, unblinkingly.

“Benny. Benny! Do you see this? Is that someone’s face?”

Squinting towards the direction of Patricia’s pointing finger, Benedetta assured, “Whoa. That looks like a face. Like a monkey—okay. We’re freaking ourselves out. Let’s just keep...”

What seemed like an hour went by. The swamp seemed to spread for more space. The trees and clouds thinned. Patricia exhaled a handful of heavy heartbeats.

“I see it!” Benedetta screamed.

“Thank god.” Patricia rested her eyes in relief, which lasted only fleetingly, because when she opened her eyes again, she saw a jagged spine floating alongside the canoe. Is it—wait—is it?.

Unable to move, she didn’t make a sound, and instead watched, from the edge of her eye and with her blood frozen, the sawtooth shape floating along with the boat.

But then Benedetta’s paddle dispersed it, and Patricia realized what she thought was an alligator must have just been the fringes of leafy shadow at the mouth of the canopy.

“I shoulda never opened that little black book,” Patricia told her sister. “Got me paranoid and hallucinating freaky animals and that kinda sh—.”

Benedetta concurred. “Some weird stuff in there. ‘Never bet against the rising sun.’ Sounds like a cult.”

“Crake-goddamn-University, man. All for 20k—”

“On top of a full-ride scholarship—”

“Worth being missing?”

“Patty, I’m sure she didn’t know she’d be going missing.”

“So why she tell us, ‘I don’t wanna do this anymore,’ huh? Swear to god, Benny, if we show the police this book, we can say Crake made her do it. Made her go crazy.”

“Don’t take out your anger on her because she wanted to do something with her life.”

“What’s that’s supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Just—don’t blame the oryx for being poached.”

“Don’t do what to the what now?”

“Don’t blame Jazzy for going missing!”

“Don’t do that. Don’t twist my words.”

“Did you or did you not just say that she’s missing because she chose to take an extra $20,000.00 to do her Master’s degree? At Crake, too. Crake!”

“Crake! Crake! Crake! Y’all and y’all degrees and universities and y’all education. She coulda made six-figures with the degree she just got. Why she throw that away for 20k and a Master’s degree? Y’all could be making money instead of spending it on an education that doesn’t even teach you if there are gators in the swamp.”

“Yeah, okay, but you’re not in school and you’re not making money, so…”

Hurt, Patricia stopped contributing to the conversation for a while. And for this little while, the hurt outweighed her fear of the swamp, even what little determination she had to find her sister.

“When did the—what time is it?” Suddenly, Benedetta noticed that the sky was painted a hellish, warning orange. She somehow missed the change in colour. Benedetta looked at her digital wristwatch. “Seven o’clock—impossible—”

Still a little bitter at her youngest sister’s apparent disrespect towards her, Patricia didn’t answer at first.

“Patty, there’s something wrong,” Benedetta called. “What time does your watch say?”

“Seven-twelve. Nah, this thing broken. No way it’s still only seven.”

“Patty, we left the house at seven-thirty. My watch says seven-twelve, too.”

“What the hell...how—”

Silently, scared, suspicious of something supernatural or psychotic, the sisters continued canoeing until they reached the dock of the red stilt house haunting, hulking, sulking over the swamp.

Without a hitch, the sisters steered the canoe to its docking place and tied the dock’s mossy rope onto the canoe.

“What you think is up there?” whispered Patricia shakily.

“Some Jurassic Park 2-type of stuff, probably. Hopefully.”

“I ain’t seen it yet. It on VHS yet?”

“If we make it back it one piece—”

“Don’t say that!”

“—I’ll take you to the theatres to watch it.”

They climbed out of the canoe and up the ladder, their hands stained from the crimson crust on the rungs.

“Man, it stinks!” groaned Patricia the closer they got to the top. “I’ma throw up!”

“What is that smell?” Benedetta retched from above her sister.

She finds out as soon as she gently shoved the crooked makeshift wooden door. It’s not clear whether the stench or the sight inside that makes Benedetta turn away and vomit.

“No, what is it? I don’t wanna look!” Patricia recoils, covering her eyes.

Bawling uncontrollably, Benedetta is unable to answer. Or get up.

“Benny, for real. What is it?”

Vomit.

“Is Jazzy in there? Did you see her?”

Sobbing.

“Benny, please tell me she’s not in there and she’s like—I can’t even think about it—Benny!”

Shaking.

“Benny, come on.” Patricia tries to help her sister up. “We seen enough. We got our answer. Come on. Can you go down the lad—”

Creak.

From inside.

That was a footstep Patricia just felt press on the ground, too.

Instinctively, Patricia turns towards the noise.

The door is wide open.

On the floor, laying neatly next to each other in a row, are bodies. Human bodies.

With animal heads. Pig, cow, sheep, goat, gator—

“Oh, god—let’s go. There’s someone in there. Go! Go!” Patricia scrambles down the ladder. “Benny! Come!”

Once in the canoe, they untie the rope, which trembles from the footsteps vibrating above. They hope this is a nightmare. They hope and pray to God that this is just a nightmare.

Adrenaline-fuelled, the sisters stroke through the water like a horse running from a fire. Whether they’re too focused on making it home or they’re still stunned by the horror inside the silt house, they travel with such velocity that what took them half-an-hour earlier now takes a minute. Before they know it, they’re at the mouth of the lagoon, about to enter the tunnel of trees that leads them to sweet, safe ground.

“Benny!” Patricia hears a young woman’s voice from behind her.

Bones chilled and heart stopped, Patricia dares not look back, but, then, her paddle gets stuck, as if someone submerged in the swamp is grabbing it still. She has to look now, if only to free her paddle.

So she does.

A face stares back at her from under the surface.

She gasps and yanks the paddle from out of the water. The face ripples along with the waves.

Patricia sighs. It’s just her reflection. The canoe floats along a few inches with only one sister paddling.

“Benny!” the distant voice calls again.

Reassured now, if only slightly, that her mind has been playing tricks on her this entire day, Patricia looks back at the red-walled stilt house, just to ensure that her sister isn’t there. Just to prove herself right.

And she is. There is no person at the red-walled stilt house.

But, a few inches back, in the same spot she last saw it, the face in the water—Jaslena’s face—is still there.