Poison Tongue Read Free

who passed by us smiled at me or nodded an acknowledgment. Malcome was a small town, and almost everyone knew everyone. It was the kind of town where folks knew each other on a first-name basis and constantly called upon their neighbors for small favors. Since I kept to myself, I didn’t pay much attention to many of the Malcome townsfolk, and in turn I was given the same courtesy.
    The town of Malcome, if one could even call it a town, was southwest from Baton Rouge. The town bordered onto a bayou that was so vast most folks thought the bayou itself might’ve been larger than the town as a whole. People thought our town was defined by that bayou—everyone from around here knew about it and knew to steer clear. More than once someone had gone missing into those deep, dismal waters of the swamp.
    Children around town liked to tell tales about beasts living in the swamp. They spoke of monsters, with long, spindly fingers dripping with acid and decay, that would reach out from the pits and grab hold of whatever they could find. Others talked of demons and curses or people half-dead, living just beneath the surface of the waters, watching, waiting to tear the gentle flesh off passersby.
    At twenty-two I should’ve been too old to believe in tales of monsters and half-dead people living in the swamp. But I knew something about that swamp wasn’t right.
    A memory of the time I’d wandered into the swamp popped into my head. I was only a young boy then, but I hadn’t been able to help myself. I had wanted to touch the hanging reeds from the heavy tree branches, feel the muck and grime that floated on the surface of the water against my fingertips. I hadn’t known any better, hadn’t known to ignore the way that kind of evil called to my young heart. Because it did call to me, ever since before I could remember. It howled my name, and I so badly wanted to reply.
    The moment I had dipped my small hand into that black, black water, my vision went white. Static filled my ears, so high-pitched and piercing it had stung. It rang out a high-pitched howl like a tortured cry from a creature of hell. And then there was nothing. Nothing I could see, nothing I could hear, nothing I could smell or taste. But I felt it, that internal fullness, that heavy happiness. It was a desire like nothing else. More than an itch that had been scratched.
    I was whole. I was happy. I was in love with this new, endless darkness.
    The next thing I knew, I awoke on a dirt path a few hundred meters away from the bayou. My young body ached, my throat had been dry, and tears had pooled at the corners of my eyes.
    Ward’s worried face lingered above me. I blinked at him and asked, “What happened?”
    “Your body went slack the moment you touched the water. You doubled over, as though you were in pain,” Ward replied. “It was like you had become boneless.”
    I’d looked past Ward, into the cerulean-filtered sky. “I felt something.”
    “What did you feel?” he asked. Even then I’d known Ward wouldn’t ask me what I saw. Visions would lie to me, feelings would not.
    “Something wicked. Something dark. Something lovely.”
    His brow furrowed. “Then we must stay away from the swamp, Levi.”
    “It calls to me. Sometimes so loudly, it hurts. I ache for it. I ache to feel the depths of the water up to my waist, to stare into the black abyss on the other side.”
    “Never.” Ward grabbed my shoulders and pulled me up into a sitting position. His dark eyes searched mine for a promise I couldn’t ever give him. “Tell me never again, Levi. It is evil. It is wrong. I can feel it.”
    “But I want it, Ward,” I said in a shuddered breath. Even then I could hear it singing to me. “I want the darkness.”
    “You cannot want darkness, Levi. It will never want you back. It will slip through your fingers like mercury.”
    Since then, every time I’d heard the evil of the swamp waters calling to me, I’d remembered Ward’s words, remembered the