Swamp Children

Virginia ghost story about two kids who investigate a mysterious campfire across an eerie swamp one night. You know this ain’t gonna end well. Written by Tushar

My cousin, Ben, had a lake­side cabin where he and his par­ents would spend their va­ca­tions. I was al­ways jeal­ous of my cousin when he came back with sto­ries about his ad­ven­tures in the woods and on the lake, so I was ec­sta­tic when his fam­ily in­vited us to join them that sum­mer in Virginia.

We stayed up late our first night there, sit­ting around a camp­fire and roast­ing marsh­mal­lows. Our par­ents caught up on each other’s lives while Ben and I swapped ghost sto­ries.

A sound caught my at­ten­tion as it drifted over the lake, like laugh­ter from far off. I looked over my shoul­der, across the dark ex­panse, and saw the tiny flick­er­ing light of a fire on the far shore. I had imag­ined my cousin’s cot­tage as a se­cluded re­treat, but then I re­al­ized such a pic­turesque lo­ca­tion was sure to at­tract other rich fam­i­lies who would build their own lake­side cab­ins and enjoy their own camp­fires each night.

“Your turn.”

“Huh?” I replied stu­pidly. Ben had fin­ished his story, and I had missed the ter­ri­fy­ing punch­line. I thought about it for a sec­ond, then began my own ghostly tale.

The next morn­ing, I stepped out onto the deck and gazed out across the peace­ful water. I re­mem­bered the laugh­ter from the pre­vi­ous night, and turned to­wards where I re­called see­ing the light of the camp­fire, hop­ing to catch a glimpse of an­other cabin. I scanned the far shore for sev­eral min­utes be­fore my cousin joined me.

“Where’s the other cabin?” I asked him.

“Well,” he said, “there are a few down that way—” He pointed to­wards the north end of the lake. “You can’t see them from here, though. I think there might be one at the south end too.”

“What about di­rectly across from here?”

Ben stared out in the di­rec­tion I was point­ing. “No, there’s noth­ing over there. It’s all swamp­land that way.”

“Huh,” I grunted, try­ing not to sound too sur­prised. What had I seen last night? I had heard of swamp lights be­fore—a nat­ural re­ac­tion when gases were re­leased into the air—but what about the laugh­ter? What had I heard? I de­cided to tell my cousin about it.

“Are you sure it was laugh­ter?” he asked. “It could’ve been an­i­mals. Rac­coons, you know…

Had that been all? I could not be sure if it was just my brain try­ing to make sense of things, but think­ing back the sounds had seemed a bit off, less than human.

“We could go check it out today, if you want,” my cousin said. “Our dads said they wanted to go fish­ing, but we can use the old row­boat.”

“Sure,” I agreed.

The water sloshed lethar­gi­cally against the side of our lit­tle boat as I dipped the oars in and out of the murk. I imag­ined, even when the wind ripped across the open water of the lake, that this cor­ner re­mained still, and that the wet slap­ping against our bow was the swamp’s out­rage at our pres­ence.

“Look at that,” Ben pointed. Two sickly trees grew out of the water, and wedged be­tween the pair of rot­ting stumps was a ru­ined old row­boat. The hull was de­cayed be­yond hope, up­ended so it formed a canopy over the dark water, and I imag­ined all man­ner of frogs, snakes, and other slimy things mak­ing their soggy nests un­der­neath its pro­tec­tive dome.

“Do you think they drowned?” I asked, won­der­ing at the fate of the row­boat’s own­ers.

“Who knows,” my cousin an­swered. “Prob­a­bly.”

Some­thing splashed un­der­neath our boat, and I tried not to imag­ine what it might have been.

Ben took over the row­ing once we were under the trees, and he guided our lit­tle ves­sel through the maze of moss-cov­ered trunks until our stom­achs began to growl from hunger.

“I’ve never ac­tu­ally been here be­fore.”

I looked at my cousin, sur­prised, as we dug out the sand­wiches his mom had made for us.

“When we were younger, Uncle would tell us sto­ries about it, try­ing to scare us. I al­ways pre­tended to be brave, but I guess the sto­ries worked, be­cause when­ever we came out in the boat, I would tell my dad not to get too close to this place.”

“What kind of sto­ries?” I asked.

“I guess you couldn’t re­ally call them ghost sto­ries, not re­ally, but…scary sto­ries. The gist was that chil­dren who got lost in the swamp were cursed to live there for­ever, trans­formed into some­thing not quite human. Uncle said that at night you could hear them, and if you weren’t care­ful they’d lure you into the swamp, and you’d be­come one of them, lost for­ever. When­ever we’d hear a strange noise from across the lake, Uncle would say ‘The swamp chil­dren are play­ing.’ Of course, it would re­ally just be rac­coons fight­ing.”

I fin­ished my sand­wich, all ex­cept the crust, which I crum­pled up and dropped into the water. I peered over the edge of the boat, try­ing to fol­low the re­mains of my lunch as it sank into my re­flec­tion. My grimy twin stared back up at me, al­most tak­ing de­light in block­ing my view, nearly smirk­ing as I tried to make out the bot­tom. “Do you think there’s any truth to those sto­ries? You think some kids did get lost here?”

“It’s pos­si­ble,” Ben replied. “Maybe that ru­ined row­boat be­longed to them. More than likely they drowned, like you said ear­lier.”

I con­tin­ued watch­ing my re­flec­tion as it danced in the rip­ples below. It smiled a big, mis­chie­vous grin, and its arms slowly reached up, threat­en­ing to break the placid sur­face.

“Watch it!” Ben warned, yank­ing me back. “You nearly fell in!”

“What?” I replied stu­pidly. “I thought…nev­er­mind.”

Our lunches fin­ished, my cousin turned the boat around, and we began row­ing for home.

A cool breeze rus­tled the leaves over­head, and Ben looked wor­ried. “It’s the evening draft,” he said. “Comes every night just be­fore dusk. We should’ve been out into open water by now.”

A cold fist squeezed my chest at the re­al­iza­tion that we were lost. I tossed my head back and forth, try­ing to catch a glimpse of open sky, but there was noth­ing but wa­ter-logged trees, draped in vines and moss, as far as I could see.

With a dull clunk, our boat shud­dered to a halt. “What was that?” I asked.

“We hit some­thing.” Ben prod­ded under the water with an oar. “Feels like a rot­ten log. This isn’t good. Here.” He handed me the other oar. “Help me push, see if we can get free.”

I thrust my oar under the boat, and al­most in­stantly felt it dig into some­thing soft. “Are you sure that’s a log?” I asked. “It’s aw­fully squishy.”

“It’s got to be,” my cousin replied, rock­ing back and forth in an at­tempt to shake the boat loose.

Sud­denly, with a soft splash, we were free. The un­ex­pected move­ment threw me off bal­ance, and I grabbed onto the edge of the boat, sav­ing my­self from being tossed over­board. In my panic, how­ever, the oar slipped from my fin­gers and landed in the water. With­out think­ing, I reached out to grab it, mo­men­tar­ily dip­ping my hand be­neath the sur­face. My fin­gers wrapped around the wood, grimy from the swamp water, and an­other hand, slimy and bloated, wrapped around mine.

I yelled out in shock, re­coil­ing from the water and bump­ing into my cousin who, with a shout, tum­bled over­board. I was alarmed at first, but be­fore I could even catch my breath, Ben’s head popped back up with a gri­mace.

“This water tastes awful. You need to be more care­ful.”

“Sorry,” I apol­o­gized breath­lessly. “You al­right?”

“Yeah. It’s not too deep, ac­tu­ally. I can stand.”

I helped him climb back into the boat, where he sat shiv­er­ing. “I’m re­ally sorry,” I apol­o­gized again. “When I reached in to get the oar, some­thing grabbed me.”

“It was prob­a­bly just a fish. We have big­ger things to worry about, any­way. It’s get­ting dark.”

In­deed it was. Under the trees, night­fall was ac­cel­er­ated. Al­ready, the bright greens and browns of the swamp were be­gin­ning to bleed to­gether into a muddy gray. “What are we going to do?” I asked.

“Prob­a­bly just wait here. I wouldn’t be sur­prised if our par­ents have started search­ing for us al­ready.”

And so we waited. Be­fore long it was com­pletely dark. The tiny traces of moon­light that man­aged some­how to find their way down into the swamp were hardly enough to see by, and we were sur­rounded by vague dark shapes.

“Do you smell that?” My cousin’s voice, trem­bling as he shiv­ered in his wet clothes, star­tled me. I sniffed the air. A rot­ten odor as­saulted my nos­trils, faint at first, but steadily grow­ing stronger.

“Yeah. What do you think it is?”

“Swamps smell some­times, I guess.”

Some­where in the dark­ness, leaves rus­tled, fol­lowed by a tremen­dous splash.

“What kind of an­i­mals live here?” I asked, fail­ing in mask­ing the fear in my voice.

“Bears, deer. But they wouldn’t hang out here. They def­i­nitely wouldn’t go in the water.”

A steady, rhyth­mic slosh­ing started up, grow­ing louder, like some­thing walk­ing through the water to­wards us.

“It’s prob­a­bly just a boat wake from out on the lake,” Ben said.

“Who would be out on the lake at this hour?”

The slosh­ing stopped a few feet from us, al­though we still could not see any­thing, and then some­thing thumped hard against the side of our boat. I inched away from the noise, and I could hear Ben doing the same. The row­boat tilted dan­ger­ously as our weight shifted.

The thump­ing con­tin­ued, again and again, like a fist on the wooden hull, pound­ing re­lent­lessly. Sud­denly, it was joined by an­other, on the other side of the boat where my cousin and I cow­ered. We scram­bled to the cen­ter, as far from ei­ther side as pos­si­ble, feel­ing the boat shud­der under the as­sault of the un­seen hands. A few more joined in, and a few more again, until we were com­pletely sur­rounded.

And then we heard laugh­ter. It came from all around, like count­less lit­tle chil­dren mock­ing us.

A bright light sud­denly ex­ploded to one side, and the noises abruptly stopped. In the or­ange flick­er­ing glow, we could see our sur­round­ings. The water was per­fectly still, like a layer of black-coated glass, and not ten feet away from us was the shore. There, hov­er­ing above the ground, was a blaz­ing fire.

“That looks warm.”

I glanced over at my cousin, who was shiv­er­ing vi­o­lently in his wet clothes. “Is it real?” I won­dered out loud.

“Who cares,” Ben replied, grab­bing the oars and start­ing to row. “I’m freez­ing!”

Our boat slid gen­tly onto the shore, and be­fore I could stop him, my cousin jumped out and ran to the fire. Be­fore my very eyes, his sil­hou­ette blurred, and be­fore long he was lost in the glare.

“Ben!” I tried call­ing out to him, un­cer­tain whether or not I should fol­low. “Ben!”

An­other voice an­swered me, not Ben’s, from the op­po­site di­rec­tion.

The scene was plunged into dark­ness. The fire, as if star­tled by the voice, had gone out. A smaller light ap­peared, bob­bing up and down as it grew closer and brighter. A flash­light.

“Son, is that you?”

“Dad?”

“Son, are you al­right? Every­one’s been wor­ried sick. We’ve got to get you back.”

“Wait,” I protested as he started to help me into his boat, “what about Ben?”

“It’s al­right,” my dad said. “We al­ready found him.”

“What?” I replied, look­ing back at where the strange fire had been with a con­fused look on my face. “But—”

“I know,” my dad in­ter­rupted. “His body floated back to the sur­face. That’s how we found him.”

“What?” Some­where in the back of my mind I un­der­stood the words that he was say­ing, but I could not make sense of them. “What are you talk­ing about?”

“Ben fell over­board, don’t you re­mem­ber?”

“Yeah, but…” I looked again at the dark shore­line where the mys­te­ri­ous blaze had been only min­utes ago. “He’s not…”

“Come on, son, let’s get you back to the cabin.”

I will never be able to for­get that sight. There was Ben, laid out on the kitchen table with his eyes closed. He was sop­ping wet, and his skin was a nau­se­at­ing shade of pale green. I still wanted to deny it, but how could I with his drowned corpse lying there in front of me?

I had no ex­pla­na­tion for what hap­pened. When Ben’s par­ents asked me about it, I sim­ply said he had fallen over­board, and that the row­boat had drifted away when it got dark. That was what they ex­pected to hear. It was what I told my­self over and over again, and what part of me wanted to be­lieve. I wanted to for­get our foray into the swamp, along with all its strange sights and sounds and feel­ings, but to this day I can­not seem to put it from my mind. When­ever I go near a pond or lake or soggy wood­land, I swear I can hear laugh­ter.

-THE END-