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I stop Texas
after Lorelei troubled my waters. Ten, fifteen years in the past. I drove to New Orleans, then Biloxi and Kansas Metropolis, wherever there was nine-ball motion. If I discovered a motor court docket laid out like a horseshoe, I’d lease a room for per week. A month if the pool corridor had Gold Crown tables, longer but if I met a pleasant waitress. I’d been hustling in Knoxville for a yr earlier than Jesse Vodinh kicked in my door on the Sundown Motel and accused me of throwing video games. Jesse was a stake horse with a shaved head and an affinity for butterfly knives. I used to be alone once more, on the plum-colored carpet, when my father advised me that he’d seen Lorelei haunting our bayou. I hadn’t heard his voice in a decade, possibly extra. My ears had been buzzing. Jesse had rung my bell earlier than flicking open his knife.
“Haunting?” I requested my father.
“Searching,” he stated. “For them skulls.”
He meant to warn me off however may as effectively have stated, Come on house, son. You been gone lengthy sufficient.
—
My father
was from the Louisiana aspect of Caddo Lake and afraid of witches. He believed that any cat, if allowed in the home, would suck your breath clear out. A unfastened hog was somebody below a spell. Or an indication an inheritor had died and the household didn’t know.
He moved to Unsure, Texas, with my mom, although she quickly left him for a tent preacher. I stored pondering we’d transfer, and he stored pondering she’d come again. We had been each incorrect. My father took work as a information on our bayou, exhibiting oil-men the place to fish for bluegill and operating swamp excursions for his or her households. If he noticed a white owl, he’d minimize the tour quick. If the ghost lights had been firing, he’d inform the story of Feu Follet. My father’s voice was quicksand.
—
Unsure, Texas
is the place you wind up in case you’re misplaced. Or goal to be. Cabins and bars and church buildings. Outdated Guthrie and Wanda personal their bait stand and lease out canoes. Guthrie says, The city’s known as Unsure as a result of Caddo Lake spans the Louisiana and Texas border, making the city limits unattainable to map. Wanda says, The unique township utility had a field asking for a reputation and whoever filed the paperwork didn’t know what to place, so they simply wrote Unsure. Guthrie says, Actually ain’t no person is aware of why.
Once I bought again, I requested Guthrie in the event that they’d seen Lorelei. Wanda stated, Somebody stole one other rental canoe two nights earlier than. Guthrie stated, I assumed it was three nights. Wanda stated, Who cares—gone is gone.
—
Lorelei had a barbed wire coronary heart
tattooed on her shin. A crescent moon on her knuckle. She spent days gathering feathers and bones and skulls from the swamp. She organized them in sacred shapes, normal them into jewellery. Once we began up, one in every of us would say, “Swamp’s simple to get misplaced in,” and we’d meet within the backwater. Together with her, in these sepulchral bogs, the world fell away, and he or she taught me how a lot I didn’t know. We at all times appeared on the sting of one thing harmful and irrevocable—love, say, or being caught. As soon as, we occurred upon a copperhead skeleton so pristine it might need been carved from alabaster. One other time, within the black mud of Potter’s Level, we discovered a sharply bowled bone that she recognized as a pelvis. She took it house and stored keys in it, unfastened change.
—
A ghost gentle
can be known as a corpse candle—a luminescent sphere simply above the swamp. You’ll be able to go a lifetime and not using a glimpse, then one night time the water shall be ablaze. It hovers, darts, disappears. It may be as imply as a cottonmouth, as mischievous as a toddler. The nearer you get, the farther the sunshine recedes. A lantern flickering throughout a darkish subject, a porch lamp burning for somebody who isn’t coming house.
—
From above
Caddo Lake appears to be like like a horse galloping westward. The bayou channels are thick with bald cypress, gnarled and twisted and centuries previous, and Spanish moss shrouds their limbs like shoals of silver fog. Salvinia is choking the swamp. It suffocates the whole lot beneath the floor and blots out the solar. Guthrie thinks any person purchased it for his or her aquarium, bought sick of it smothering their fish, and hucked it into the lake. Wanda says, That weed needs to show Caddo right into a prairie. Guthrie says, That’ll be the tip of us.
Feral donkeys graze in a copse of cottonwood. The branches of a crape myrtle bloom with cobalt-blue bottles. A poacher had moved into Lorelei’s previous cabin, and a useless gator hung from a rope in a hickory out entrance.
—
Enjoying the ghost
is a lonesome sport of pocket billiards. You rack the balls and break, then place the cue ball wherever on the desk in your first shot. Miss after that, even as soon as, and also you lose. The ghost by no means misses.
A number of days earlier than Jesse discovered me on the Sundown, I used to be racking the balls and explaining the sport to a waitress. Her hair was bleached, and he or she was sporting fringed boots. I hoped she may show pleasant. I stated it’s like solitaire, and he or she stated solitaire was known as persistence. Witches learn the sport like tarot playing cards and advised fortunes.
“I didn’t suppose individuals from Tennessee believed in witches,” I stated.
“I wouldn’t know,” the waitress stated. “I’m not from right here.”
“I’m out to make a fortune, not inform one,” I stated.
She slipped a pen from behind her ear, scratched her handle onto a serviette, sank it within the nook pocket.
—
Feu Follet
is one other title for ghost gentle. The Cajun fairy. My father believed she toyed with fishermen for sport. Guthrie says, It’s the burning soul of an unbaptized youngster. Wanda says, That’s pure horseshit. She was despatched again by God, meant to be doing penance however turned spiteful. Feu Follet makes people consider they will catch her, will get them so disoriented within the bathroom they by no means come out. Guthrie says, What makes you so positive she’s a lady? Wanda says, She’s a fairy, ain’t she? Apart from, it’s solely males who go lacking—males and my canoes. Guthrie says, Possibly males are simply stupider. Wanda says, I can shake fingers with that.
Once we noticed the pelvis within the black mud of Potter’s Level, Lorelei stated, “Feu Follet strikes once more.”
—
The waitress
lived in a shotgun shack together with her boyfriend. He shook my hand with out squeezing and stated, “Name me Darkness.”
—
The bottle tree
was on the previous Guillot homestead. Guillot believed any evil approaching the home after darkish could be enchanted by the cobalt glass. Spirits slid inside and had been trapped, then seared by the dawn. When breezes got here by means of the marsh, the bottles whistled—the final track of the depraved.
The sky was purpling with nightfall when I discovered Lorelei admiring the bottles. Her again stayed to me. She touched one bottle, then one other, like a toddler hanging ornaments. With out turning, she stated, “I assumed you had been in Knoxville.”
“My father stated you’d come house,” I stated.
She twisted to fulfill my eyes, bemused, as if she’d caught me mendacity. Turning again, she stated, “Your daddy by no means preferred me.”
“He preferred you a lot,” I stated. “He didn’t such as you being married.”
“I’m not married now,” she stated.
“Wanda thinks you stole a canoe.”
“I simply minimize it unfastened,” she stated. “That’s not stealing.”
A barred owl known as from the shadows. Lorelei pivoted to face me. Her gaze appeared a reckoning, like my virtues and trespasses had been being weighed towards each other.
“Swamp’s simple to get misplaced in,” she stated.
“Sure,” I stated.
—
Darkness
wore a starched white shirt, black suspenders. The devoutly dressed hustler. The waitress had marked Jesse Vodinh way back—he flashed his jellyroll each time he paid for a drink—in order that they’d been on the lookout for somebody to assist minimize him up. The plan went like this: Darkness would discover me taking part in the ghost and make a present of difficult me to a race to twenty. I’d settle for, however when he wagered 5 giant, I’d say that was too wealthy for my blood. We’d be certain Jesse overheard, realizing he’d supply to stake me for a proportion. Darkness and I might maintain the race tight, however he’d draw back on the finish and depart with Jesse’s money. On my manner out of Knoxville, I’d cease by the shotgun shack for my half. It ought to’ve labored.
—
Ultimately
we stole one in every of Wanda’s canoes and rowed into the swamp. We knocked into cypress knees, threaded by means of their corded trunks. A flock of white egrets stood so shut collectively they could have been a mirrored moon. The night time was oil black and smeared with stars.
“What occurred in Knoxville?” Lorelei requested from the bow.
“I wore out my welcome,” I stated.
“I used to be planning to go to you,” she stated. She was mendacity, and I used to be flattered. She dipped her hand into the lake and dragged the floor, water furrowing between her fingertips. “You saved me a visit.”
“You’ve at all times been affected person,” I stated.
“Tyler,” she stated. “I’m positive sorry about your daddy.”
I leaned into the oars, then once more, more durable. We displaced swaths of lily pads—lotus flowers swaying as if brushed by an unseen hand.
“How’d you understand?” I requested.
“You stated he’d advised you I used to be again,” she stated.
“He did,” I stated.
“That’s how,” she stated.
—
After
Jesse accused me of throwing the race, he went into my toilet and washed his knife. The music of operating water, the metallic scent of spilled blood. I lay on the plum-colored carpet, listening to my useless father’s voice. Jesse killed the lights earlier than he left, closed the door behind him. Come on house, son.
—
The swamp
narrowed. The cypresses closed in. Ragged curtains of moss fashioned an extended tunnel. Water folded over the oars like bolts of fabric.
I stated, “So that you’re—”
“Right here,” she minimize me off. “I’m right here. With you.”
“And my father?”
“He’s round someplace,” she stated.
“So then I’m—”
“Proper the place you’re meant to be,” she stated. “Misplaced within the swamp.”
“I don’t perceive,” I stated.
“I do know,” she stated, like an apology.
Behind Lorelei, the lake laid declare to the horizon. My bearings had been gone. We might have drifted out of Texas and into Louisiana or some darkish province rinsed of time and border, of names and different lies.
—
Past
the cypress brakes, the swamp opened, and we crossed into glassy water. We floated by means of stars mirrored on the floor. They undulated, then returned to their inauspicious stations.
Within the distance, a flickering ember. A candle lit for the useless. On the wind, the scent of a struck match.
“Feu Follet,” I stated.
“Strikes once more,” Lorelei stated.
—
I reached for her hand
and he or she was gone. Or she had by no means been there in any respect. Or I hadn’t. My imaginative and prescient tunneled, and the distant ember flared, as if being coaxed to flame. I felt sure it could snuff out, and with it, my life. Okay, I assumed. Okay, I’m prepared. Then, without delay and in every single place, the lake was nothing however spectral gentle. The balls rolled and unfold, caroming off one another. I used to be terrified. I used to be fearless. Once I dove in, I made no splash. The water cradled my physique like a sleeping youngster, lowered me to the endlessly forgiving silt.
Above, the lake burned, and within the twisting colours, I learn a fortune: the useless gator slips its noose and crawls below the porch to await the poacher’s ankles, his knees, his throat, then returns to its ancestral waters, sated and sumptuous. The lake rises. It spits out our bitter bones, rids itself of each parasite and poison. A white owl flies from the mossy veil. The bottles sing and fall silent. Wanda locates her canoes. She says, Some child probably performed a prank. Guthrie says, I may not have tied them good, I don’t know, it’s a thriller. Then Wanda hears noise within the brush and says, What’s that? Guthrie says, A thriller? It’s a query that ain’t but been solved. Wanda says, No, dummy, what’s that noise? Guthrie cocks his head, listens. That? he says. That’s only a hog rooting round for supper. Wanda says, Ain’t that imagined to imply one thing, a unfastened hog? Guthrie says, It means somebody must patch a fence. Wanda says, No, there’s extra to it, an previous lesson or reality, one thing we’re absolutely lacking.
Corpus Christi native Bret Anthony Johnston is the writer of the novel Bear in mind Me Like This and the director of the Michener Middle For Writers on the College of Texas at Austin.
This story is printed in collaboration with Texas Month-to-month journal. It’ll seem within the photographer Keith Carter’s e book Ghostlight (UT Press, November 2022).
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