There is a place deep in the bayous of Louisiana where people go to disappear. Grandmère had told him the stories. The widower who'd followed the fifollets into the black water under a moonless sky, having seen his wife's smile in the dancing lights. The men from out of state with more expensive gear than sense. They'd greedily wandered into the dead, silent backwater shallows. Trapped in narrow veins clogged with weeds, coolers full of fish but unable to find their way, they'd lost their minds. And the rougarou, with its mixed up body, man and dog stitched together, lurching through the still curtains of Spanish moss where porch lights wouldn't reach.
The bayou was an old place, she used to tell Andre, and old places had old souls. The bayou kept its secrets close.
The three of them had started down I-49 at the crack of a red dawn, crammed sullen and sunken-eyed into the KSHG-TV van with the show decal on the side. No amount of coffee could keep Pete awake; he called shotgun but fell asleep with the map open on his lap, still smelling like yesterday's booze. The new cameraman, Clancy Javis, sat stretched out in the back with the equipment, fiddling with a camera. Polaroids for some undergraduate photography class. On the way out of Shreveport, he'd attempted fraternization with Pete for all of five minutes before giving up in bafflement.
Andre couldn't fault the kid for trying. "Don't mind him. Long night, you know. He's always like that," he'd offered, only to earn a glare from Pete. They drove in silence after that.
They reached Theriot a little after one. A trim little blue and white diner sat atop stilts at the outskirts of town. When Andre pulled the door open, it stirred the warm smell of coffee and frying seafood, and rustled leaflets tacked to the wall—more than two dozen faces smiling from missing persons posters as they slouched past to find a seat.
They ordered po'boys—real po'boys, on French bread, a crisp golden crackle to the crust that hugged a soft white heart. Gravy squeezed out on the first bite, subtly flavored and flecked with tender roast beef debris.
On the eve of their move to Missouri, Andre had run away from home. He didn't have a plan. It was just him and his bike and his bag of books, and he rode through the dark roads, a cool night wind in his hair. His wandering led him to the light outside Grandmère's house. He still remembered seeing her on the porch, waiting in her rocking chair like she'd somehow known. She made him go back home, but not before making him one last roast beef po'boy. They sat together in her little house, in that kitchen that was all spices and cigarettes, and he'd eaten that po'boy, wishing the last bite would never come.
Louisiana cooking had a way of soothing the soul. By the time the waitress came back around to their table, Clancy had brightened up considerably, and even Pete seemed to have mellowed some. Their cozy nook had a view of the trees across the water, and the steely patches of swamp marking the sprawl of Bayou Dularge. The clouds broke briefly, and the water brightened to an oily gloss.
The waitress jotted down Clancy's sweet potato pie, asked, "So, what brings you to Dularge? Come to fish?"
"We're filming a production," Pete said, and her eyes lit up.
"You're filmmakers?"
"Television," Andre said quickly. "We've got a show on KSHG. Sewer Gators." When she only smiled uncertainly, he added, "We focus on local Louisiana legends. Paranormal phenomena—"
"You're ghost hunters," she finished for him. He heard Pete snort softly. She looked around at the three of them, finally settling on Pete. She looked him up and down, taking in his getup. "That make you Agent Mulder?"
Pete smiled. "At your service."
"Catch any monsters lately?"
"We're working on it."
"Well, you won't find any X-Files here," she said. "The only excitement we get around here is when tourists get stranded at low tide."
"Actually," Andre said, "we're trying to get to Dulvey. This is Dulvey Parish, right?"
"No, we're still in Terrebonne. Did you say Dulvey?" After a pause, she said, "You'll wanna talk to Captain Dubois. He's a hundred and fifty or something. Been up every lake and bayou all along the coast. If anybody knows the way to Dulvey, it'll be him." She nodded to the end of the diner, where an old man sat by himself in the corner, nursing a beer.
The captain barely looked up at Andre's approach, only motioned for him to take a seat. With a face more rocky landscape than wrinkles, he looked about a hundred and fifty years old, but muscles stood out sinewy under his tanned skin, and his eyes were bright.
"Suppose Maggie from the tackleshop sent you." He speared Andre with a sharp look, adding with a jerk of his chin, "Your friends back there. The suit won't last a minute, and the other one looks like a stiff breeze'd knock him down. You're new to Dularge, so let me give you a word of advice. Sit the afternoon out. There's a storm coming, and I ain't gonna be the one to haul your sorry asses out when—not if—you get caught in that mess. The fish can wait."
Andre watched him tear a piece of bread and swipe up the remnants of his bisque. "We're not going fishing. We're looking to get to Dulvey Parish."
"Dulvey?" The captain leaned back to look at him. Something in his voice had changed. His words dripped out slow. "Now, what would you want with a place like that? That's no place for the living."
In spite of himself, Andre felt a prickle. The diner looked different; the sun had been blotted out again. Behind him, he could hear the waitress talking to Pete and Clancy, but he couldn't make out the words. Just white noise. The captain stared at him, the remains of his meal forgotten between them.
"You've been to Dulvey?" Andre asked.
"Not for some time," the captain said. "Used to be some fishing communities out on Bayou Toctoc. That's what folks called Dulvey, even if it wasn't a town as such. They had a church. Even a few plantations left over from the old days. They used to come into town all the time, with crawfish and trout for the coop. Then, a few years ago, fewer and fewer of 'em came back."
"What happened?"
"Floods happened. Every storm that came up the gulf took a bit of Dulvey with it. The bayou got eaten up piece by piece by the water. Those were some bad days. Bad things happening to good people. Those who could left. Not too many people willingly stayed. I hear the bayou came up around the church, but the preacher stuck to his guns. Not sure if that's a mark of faith or madness."
"If I wanted to get to Dulvey…" Andre began.
The captain shook his head. "No one in their right mind goes into Bayou Toctoc. Water's shallow, never been dredged. The whole place is filled with rotten wood and weeds. The captains all steer clear of the place."
"What about getting there by boat?"
The captain's eyes narrowed. "Were you listening to me, boy? This ain't Texas, or Missouri. This is the bayou. The bayou changes on you. Not just from one year to another. When the sun sets, everything looks different. People go missing in the bayou. People make stupid mistakes in the bayou, and they die from those mistakes. This ain't a game, understand me?"
Andre was suddenly reminded of Grandmère's stories. He tried to make his tone placating, but held firm. "We just wanna take a quick look around. In and out. Straightforward. We're not gonna stay past nightfall."
The captain glared, but relented. "I reckon I'll never understand," he said as Andre got a notepad out to write down directions to the church. "What the hell are you looking for in Dulvey, son?"
Beneath a bruised sky, the narrow road twisted through the trees. There were no signs, only battered mailboxes and driveways hidden among the shrubs. Sumac blurred by, berries a deep poison red. With every passing hundred yards, the woods seemed to press in tighter, and branches clawed at the roof of the van, making Clancy jump.
Twice, they were forced to double back in reverse when the road ended in a wall of twisted branches. What was supposed to take twenty minutes turned into an hour. Andre drove at an unbearable crawl, leaning over the steering wheel. Even so, the suspension rocked and groaned over patches of sunken asphalt.
They finally came to a break in the trees, where a sign advertised gas, but the gas station roof buckled inward, and the lot was deserted and covered in weeds. Every inch of the place had faded and peeled, marked by rot. An old man sat in the shelter of the entrance with a lumpy yellow dog by his feet.
Andre got down to ask for directions, and the others followed, eager to stretch their legs. Both were sweating visibly in spite of the A/C. The air was heavy, and clotted in the lungs with each breath, thick and quiet with decay. When the wind picked up, it had a strange upward pull, and made the treetops murmur.
It was going to rain, the old man said in a sleepy voice. The big yellow dog lay puddled on the ground downwind of a rusty fan. If it weren't for the brief flickers of its eyebrows, blinking flies from its rheumy eyes, it could've been dead. The pair looked like old taxidermy, faded out in the sun.
When Andre introduced himself in his halting French as Doucet, borrowing Grandmère's name, the old man seemed to revive. He gave a wide, gummy grin, beckoned him over with a gnarled hand, saying, "Come see, come see."
Overjoyed to have company, he offered Andre ancient pralines and cream soda and a place to sit by him in the shade with the fan. He had years' worth of words bottled up in his frail body, stories about places no longer on any map, jokes told by people long dead. When Andre asked about Dulvey and the old church, he started talking about the town, but quickly drifted into rambling anecdotes in his thick, sleepy mix of French and English Andre could only half understand.
Over by the van, Pete and Clancy stood around and chatted. Pete said something, gesturing with his hands, and Clancy smiled and nodded. The lines of their bodies were loose and relaxed.
Then, Pete looked over. He caught Andre's eye and made a little helicoptering gesture with one finger—wrap it up. Andre gestured back—five more minutes—and Pete acknowledged him with a nod.
There was a girl from Dulvey, the old Cajun said. Back in the old days, before the bayou swelled and sank Dulvey under the water. An unremarkable girl everyone had seen but no one knew, but on the day she went missing, her mother was found unconscious, fainted dead away on the floor in their home. When she came to, she insisted she'd gone to wake her daughter only to find something else in her bed, something with the face of a dog.
For months afterwards, people in Dulvey saw things at night. Strange things, unexplainable things. Mutilated animals were left on porches. Bone chimes in trees and inhuman howling. A ragged, dirty child that, when spotted, galloped away on all fours in a blur of tangled limbs. Some said it was a letiche, a vengeful spirit. Others blamed mass hysteria.
Finally, the missing girl's body was found washed up on shore, but there was something very wrong about it, they said. She was given a quiet burial beneath a tree, and within a year, the tree had died. The grass turned gray. Where she was buried, nothing grew.
The old man fell silent, his eyes dull, his skin like paper. Andre shivered. The wind had changed, and he could smell the rain coming. The dark weight of damp and decaying vegetation had grown stronger. Beyond the rotting trees, the clouds moved fast in a timelapse of light and greenish shadow.
Pete shouted something. Andre looked up, but Pete wasn't even looking his way. He was jabbing an accusing finger at Clancy, and Clancy batted his hand away. Clancy wasn't smiling anymore. He looked confused and angry.
Andre quickly said goodbye and jogged back across the lot to the van. Sunken in his chair, the old man didn't move or speak, his cloudy eyes fixed on something only he could see.
"I just— I don't get it. I was just saying it's unfair, that's all. What they pulled— it was a dick move. I'm on your fucking side, man—"
Pete cut him off. "Look, look. When I need a completely useless fucking opinion, Clancy, I'll be sure to ask you, okay? Until that day comes—"
"You don't have to be a fucking asshole. I was just—"
"Until that day comes, you just do your fucking job. Last I checked, you're the cameraman. You're being paid to man the camera, not run your fucking mouth, so do your fucking job right, and keep your mouth shut." He turned to Andre, cutting Clancy out of the conversation. "You done? Good. Let's go."
They swapped seats so Pete was driving. As they settled in, Pete adjusted his mirrors and asked, "How far to Dulvey?"
"I'm not sure," Andre admitted. "It can't be too far."
"What'd the old man say?"
"He didn't say."
"Fuck's sake."
"Just follow the road. If we don't find anything, we'll double back."
Pete let out a frustrated sound, but inched the van along the road. "Are you shitting me right now? We drag ourselves straight through the ass end of the sticks, and for what? Dulvey, Terrier, whatever the fuck— it's all bumfuck nowhere. You think any of those idiot tinfoilers watching the show know the difference? Nobody cares what backwater shithole the episode's filmed at."
"Eyes on the road, Pete."
"You ask me, we should go back to that other place and fudge it. Find some old house, do a walkthrough, interview a couple hicks, add sounds in post. I mean, let's face it. There'll be no ghost—never is. Are we even going the right way?"
"Hey, this isn't ideal for any of us," Clancy said from the back seat. "I'm probably gonna end up spending my twentieth in the fucking bayou with you guys, but you won't hear me complain."
Pete ignored him. "Andre, do you know where we're going? Do you know the way?"
"Just drive," Andre said.
"Andre."
Andre hesitated. "I'm sorry," he said, and Pete let out an angry groan. "I thought it was gonna be straightforward. I should've done more research before we left. I made a mistake."
"Un-fucking-believable. Were you planning on sharing this little detail with the rest of the class? You know— Hey Pete, let's take a six hour drive out to the middle of nowhere to film at a location that may or may not even fucking exist. Where is it, you ask? I don't know, I'm a fucking moron who forgot how to do his basic fucking job."
Andre didn't say anything. The only thing to do at this point was let him blow off the steam.
"Lay off him, man," Clancy said.
Pete twisted in his seat and snapped, "Was I talking to you? Did I ask your fucking opinion, Clancy?"
There was a pause, then Clancy said calmly, "Pull over."
He started rustling around for his stuff, jamming his camera and polaroids back into his backpack, and when Pete stopped the van, Clancy said to Andre, "I'm sorry, man. I've got this headache all of a sudden, and— I'm gonna go sleep it off. You've got my pager."
"It's a long walk back," Andre said.
"I'll take my chances," Clancy said. He hopped out and stood at the side of the road for a moment, then started back down the road in the direction of the old gas station at a steady clip, shoulders hunched.
Pete watched him go. "Son of a… Can you believe this— Andre, you're just gonna let him walk off like that?"
"You wanna double back and give him a lift back to town?"
Pete didn't answer. He squinted up through the tree cover at the swelling thunderhead, bruised and heavy with rain. "What a fucking dumbass. Where do they finds these fucking amateurs?" He glanced over, saw Andre looking at him, and put the van back into gear and drove on. "Fuck it, we don't need him. He wants to run into hillbilly cannibals out here, that's his call. Not our problem."
The radio signal fizzled out when the van took a sharp turn, drowning CCR in static. The trees rocked in a howl of wind, tearing leaves from branches. Fat drops burst against the windshield.
Andre fiddled with the knob. There was nothing but a whitewater roar all up and down the band, broken only by short snippets of sound: a preacher, a distorted, wailing choir. The only intelligible station was 97.7 FM, and the DJ spoke in a clear, whispered monotone through the fuzz of static and rain. He sounded like he was grinning, enunciating through his teeth, his cadence too regular.
"—on the slide guitar, playing that delta blues classic, Death Letter. And you're listening to WSTA, 97.7 FM. The voice of the bayou."
"Turn it off," Pete said with a grimace. "Or go back to the religious station. Jesus."
"Hang on," Andre said.
"We received a letter from one of our listeners. He told us he was canoeing on a little bayou last week when he encountered the A-tisket Whistler. Quote, 'I turned tail and sped back up that bayou like the devil himself was on my tail.'" The DJ laughed. It sounded metallic. "Let me tell you, folks, when you're out on that flat, calm water and you start hearing a whistling coming from the shore among the cypress trees, calling for you, it's probably not a good idea to investigate the sound. As the saying goes, 'A-tisket, a-tasket, he'll put you in a casket'—"
Pete reached for the radio, fumbling for a moment before hitting the power switch.
The van lurched violently and went offroad. Pete stood on the brakes, but the van was tipping, nosing down, and then it slid tractionless and cut into the tall grass in a crackle of snapping twigs, and stopped with a bang against a tree.
"Oh, shit," Pete said. He shot Andre a startled look. "You okay?" He tried to reverse, but the van wouldn't budge. He tried again, pressing down harder. Nothing.
"Stop," Andre said. "You're sinking us deeper. Let me take a look."
Pete didn't look at him. "I don't get it. I was going straight. I was going straight, and the road was just gone."
"Wait here," Andre said, and hopped out of the van.
Thunder split the sky overhead. Even under the trees, he was drenched within moments. Spongy mud sucked at his shoes with each step. The bumper was fine, but the front tires had gone in. He wiped water out of his face and looked back up to the road. Cloudy water seeped down into the hollow, puddling around the van.
Under the downpour, they dragged the floor mats out and built a bridge for the front wheels. Pete managed to take the van back by a few inches before it sank back in, leaving furrows that instantly filled with water. The rain battered at them in heavy sheets, and the wind forced them to shout as they tried to shore up the makeshift bridge with wood.
"There's too much water," Pete said when they retreated back to the van. He was silent for a moment, looking helplessly angry, then smacked the steering wheel. "Fuck. Fuck this fucking rain."
A drop ran down the side of Andre's face. He swiped it off. "At least no one's hurt."
They sat in silence and shivered for a minute, listening to the storm. It looked like the sickly green sky had broken, but the interior of the van dulled the noise to a muffled roar.
"We need to get out of here," Pete said. "What the hell do we do? Can we call someone? Will they even be able to find us out here?"
"There was a mailbox back there. We can hike back, figure out where we are. Call from there. Maybe get some help."
"That mailbox was a fucking mile back."
"If a flash flood hits, we can't be down here." And neither could the equipment, but Andre didn't rub it in.
Pete went quiet. He stared out the blurry windshield, then said, "If this gets back to Shreveport, just tell them— tell them it was me. But if fucking Clancy asks—"
Andre suddenly felt the urge to smile, but it quickly went away. "It was an accident."
Pete nodded, though he still didn't look over. His way of saying thank you. Or sorry. Maybe both. When he did speak, some of the stress had gone out of his voice. "Yeah, okay. Let's go."