Evergreen
by Chris Horrell
Content Warnings: Brief Mention of Cannibalism, Murder
“My Daddy said he ain’t got no head, but I don’t think that’s true,” I said while I rested against the root of the sprawling live oak that sat out front of our farmhouse as a child. Our only neighbors had a daughter about my age named Samantha, and she sat beside me in the dirt that afternoon, trying as hard as I was to escape the murderous heat of Hamden County, North Carolina.
“Well, what do you think about him, Jack?” She leaned closer, and I could hear the excitement in her voice like lightning crackling.
I felt something stir inside my twelve-year-old chest, unknown and latent, the edge of desire, something that had been reserved for adventures with the boys now beginning to awaken in her presence like the sun just beginning to peak over the pines. “Well, they call him the Swamp Walker, and I reckon that’s just what he is, some old codger that likes living out there.”
Sam looked over her shoulder at the deep woods across the road from my house. In the midst of which was a great and impassable swamp. “But it’s gotta be more than that.” Her green eyes were ablaze and I looked up into the limbs of the live oak, unable to hold the longing I saw reflected in them. The leaves, no bigger than crickets, danced in the soft, warm breeze of that July day.
“Daddy says that when he was a kid, he watched his great uncle, who was never quite right, walk right under this oak tree and out into the woods.” I pointed toward a path at the edge leading into the thick undergrowth. “They all thought he was going on a walk, but he never came back.”
“I bet the Swamp Walker got him.”
“Or he got on a nest of snakes out there.” I raised my eyebrows at her.
“Don’t be such a bore, Jack Clark. Let’s go right now and see what we can find.”
I watched as she pulled her long red hair into a ponytail, but I didn’t move. “Mama’s gonna call me in for lunch soon.”
“Then you can eat it cold.” She grabbed one of my hands, resting behind my head, and pulled me to my feet.
To this day, I regret going, but the feeling inside me that I couldn’t explain at the time welled up at her touch and the desire for adventure in her eyes, and I went.
The mosquitoes attacked as soon as we had broken the tree line. The little blood suckers thrived in the darkness of the tree cover, and I thought they were going to drain us dry as we swatted and slapped going down the trail.
Less than a hundred yards in, it was already impossible to see the road, much less the house, I noticed, looking behind me before I tripped over a root and decided it was best to keep my eyes on the trial.
“You, ok?” Sam asked and touched my shoulder.
“Yeah, I’m alright, but we better be quiet.”
We walked on for a long time with only the birds chirping overhead. At the loud cracking of a stick under my foot, I looked down to discover a large pile of bear scat. I jumped over it and pointed for Sam to look at it. I raised the side of my mouth in concern.
“It's at least three days old, scaredy cat,” she said.
I nodded in resignation. Mr. Latham, her father, had taught her well.
The next time I reached out and touched Sam’s arm, we had been silent for a while, and the forest had gotten darker around us, but that wasn’t my concern. She turned to meet my eyes, and I pointed upward into the trees and then to my ears. Her face slowly registered what I was trying to say, and as it did, it darkened like a chicken that’d been roasted too long. The sounds of birds had disappeared.
I started to gesture her back toward the house, but then a slow clicking sound, not fifty yards away, caught me like a fly in a bug zapper and began to draw me forward. It reminded me of metal hitting wood. My instincts screamed at me that it was unnatural, but I ignored them.
I felt Samantha close beside me as we walked heel to toe along the path, hunched over, trying to be unheard and unseen. We approached a small clearing where the soil changed from dark earth to off-white sand, and the trees shifted from pine to scrub oak before running right into the dark and foul-smelling waters of the swamp.
Sam saw the man before I did and grabbed my arm, wrenching it until I was forced to the ground beside her.
“What?” I scowled at her.
Sam pointed, “Over there.” Then I saw him, too. Sitting on a stump in the middle of the sand hill, the man scribbled on a notepad while tapping the sole of his cowboy boot on a fallen log in front of him. He was as skinny as a rail, and though he was young, he wore a long beard like you see on old men. His hair draped down to his shoulders, and the shirt and jeans he had on didn’t look like they’d ever seen a washing machine.
“What do you reckon he’s doing?”
“I don’t know, Jack, but did you see the trees?” I could hear the terror crowning in her voice.
I squinted, not knowing I would soon earn myself some glasses I’d have to wear forever.
“Are those bones?”
“I… I think so. They’re everywhere, all in designs. We better go.”
“Yeah, go slow at first. Then run.” I crawled backward toward the trail, still keeping my eyes on the man and making sure not to hit Sam.
“Now, what’s two little fawns doing coming out here to meet me?” the man said. He stood up and set the notepad down on the stump. I wasn’t sure how he could see us behind the brush, but he was staring right at me.
“Now come on out.” He waved his hand at us, and I moved to stand up.
“No, let’s run, Jack,” Sam begged, pulling my arm, but I wasn’t listening.
“That’s it, good, come on.”
“Who are you?” I stepped from the path's edge and out into the open. I could see the swamp in full now, its dark brown water sitting still except for the occasional bug landing.
“People call me many names, none of which you need to worry about now.”
“Well, I’m Jack Clark, and you’re on my family’s land.”
“I know you’re a Clark. I can smell a Clark a mile away. But she ain’t.” He took a step sideways to get a better view of Samantha, who was shielding herself with my body.
“What’s your name, girl?”
“Uh… Uh Sam.”
“Uh Sam, ok, got a last name?” He took a step closer to us.
Sam didn’t say anything.
“I think we better go,” I said.
“Wait, you can’t go. I haven’t even introduced myself or showed you my home.” He held his arms out in welcome.
“That’s okay. I think my mom’s calling.” I stepped backward. Sam was not ready for it, and I tripped over her, sending us both to the ground. That’s when the stranger moved like a bobcat toward us. He grabbed Samantha's long red hair and pulled her back toward his stump.
I scrambled to my feet. “Let her go,” I said, my voice crackling like a broken violin.
“You come into my home, and I don’t get nothing, boy. Did your mama ever teach you manners?”
“Let her go,” I repeated and took a step forward.
“Ain’t one of your people ever said no to me, boy. She’s mine.”
The sound of finality in his voice seared into me and propelled me into action. I rushed toward him, lowering my shoulder like they’d taught me in pee wee football. I managed to hit him, and all I did was bounce off his stomach, but in his surprise, he let Sam go.
She moved away quickly, but now he had hold of me, and his hand closed around my throat. Sam took a step toward us.
“Go get Daddy,” I said in a strangled rasp. “Go now, get daddy.”
She looked from me, then to the man, and then to the trail, hesitating. Then, finally, she ran like a deer back through the trees and away from the swamp.
Swamps always smell like death. Maybe it’s all the rotting plant matter or the stagnant water, but it's probably a mixture of both. Either way, as I struggled against the man trying to force air in through my nose and down my partially closed windpipe, that’s all I could smell and all I could think about.
“You won’t supposed to come here for a long time,” he said and seemed to be talking as much to himself as he was to me. “The bones all said different.”
“What?”
He proceeded as if he’d forgotten I was there. He maintained his grip on my throat but lessened it enough so I could talk. “Clarks don’t normally come to me until they're old or they've been through the wringer a couple of times. You won’t supposed to be here, but I guess then again you didn’t come on your own. That girl.” He almost spat the last words.
“I don’t know what you're talking about.”
“Of course, you don’t. That mama of yours is probably trying to raise you Christian, keep your heritage from you.”
“What heritage?”
“Can you quit saying what? Do your ears not work? The Clark’s ain’t no more Christian than the Devil. They got ways older, much older.” He let me go then and started to pace back and forth.
I rubbed my neck, and I should have run, but I found myself watching him walk. It was mesmerizing. “Can you explain what you mean by these older ways the Clarks have?”
“Ah, you can say other words than what. Good for you. Don’t you see it? It’s written right here.” He pointed all around us at the symbols in bone hanging from and attached to the scrub oaks.
As I looked further, I saw not only symbols in bone but pictures carved in the tree bark. There were snakes eating their tails, flowers, birds on fire, and a weird cross with a circle over it.
“I don’t recognize any of it.” I walked around to examine them.
“Course you don’t. I knew when your daddy married that churchy woman, she’d try to rid you of it.”
“You know my daddy.” My mouth may as well have been in the dirt.
“Shut them lips, boy, and yes, I do in a way.”
“And what ways that?”
“Well, aren’t you full of questions? Guess you need to know. How should I explain this? You ain’t really you.” He walked over to the weird cross symbol and stroked it.
“Of course I’m me.” I took a step closer to see what he was doing.
“That’s where you’re ignorant. See, your family decided long ago that they didn’t want to just die, scared of Hell, I reckon. Anyway, they made a deal with all the evil spirits that haunt these swamps, that they’d come to me and give up their life to be reborn again at the end of their days. You are you, but the spirit of your grandfather lives in there.” He rushed toward me, making me jump backward, and put a finger to my chest right where my heart was about to run away. “He came to me before you were born, and now he is in there. Gets to live your life with you until you meld and you realize the need to take your own walk into the swamp.”
Alarm bells rang in my head. While everything he said was interesting, it was also everything the preacher and my mama had always warned me about. “I… I better be going.”
“That’s where you’re wrong again. You’re here early, but I think that still means you need to go through the process.” He grabbed a small leather pouch from beside his stump and shook it before dumping it into the sandy soil. “Ah, yes, the bones say you gotta go through it.”
“Who are you?” I inched my way toward the trail.
His eyes locked on me like a wolf’s, and he rose and followed. “The dumb rednecks around here call me the Swamp Walker, but that ain't who I am. I’m not just some h’aint that walks around. That’d be too simple.”
“And what do you have to do for the procedure?”
He let out a hoarse laugh. “The procedure. Why don’t you ask your grandfather?” He pointed to the bone symbols behind him. “I ate him and hung him up same as your uncle.”
He lunged for me, but I was already running back down the trail. I could feel him close behind me. The only sound was the crunching of our footsteps until he suddenly disappeared.
I didn’t dare look back, though, until I ran smack into the broad chest of my father, and it sent me sprawling backward.
“Jack, what’s going on?” he said and reached down to help me get to my feet.
“A man back there tried to get us,” I said breathlessly.
My father brandished his shotgun. “That’s what Sam said.” At that exact moment, she ran up beside my father, panting.
“I thought I told you to stay at the house,” he said.
“I had to help.” She pushed her long red hair back past her face.
“Come on then.” My father strode ahead until we reached the clearing by the swamp's edge.
I gasped. Everything was gone.
“What did y’all see again? There’s nothing here.”
“But… but it was all here—the man, bones, and carvings,” I said.
“I get it. When I was a kid, my imagination got away from me, too. Ain’t nothing in this swamp but trouble anyway. Let’s go home.”
“It was all here, like I said,” Sam protested.
“I know it feels that way, girl, but it's lunch. I’m going home.” He patted Sam on the head and started walking back down the trail.
I wondered if he knew and wasn’t telling me. I started to follow Sam, who was already trudging after my dad, when I took a second look at the old stump the Green Man had been sitting on. I rushed to grab the piece of paper, and when I had it, I realized I was staring back at me. Captioned under my picture were the words: “See you soon.”
Chris Horrell (he/him) is an emerging author, and when he isn’t wrangling his three children, you can probably find him reading or writing. Chris lives in New Hampshire with his family but is originally from North Carolina, and most of his stories are set there.