atthedrivein

The Swamp Men by ~deadkennedys94 on deviantART

SWAMP MEN

It was a sort of half raft half canoe with this pole sticking straight up at the back of it. Hanging from the pole was an old oil lamp that wasn't lit. Not that it needed to be. In fact, I didn't think we would need it at all. I was another beautiful day in sunny Florida. Anyways, the whole boat was made of wood and looked as if the guy had made it himself. It also appeared to have been painted a light blue colour at one point, but the paint was almost gone by the time we arrived.
The guy with the boat - hea was this real old fat bearded back-woods redneck type. He had on overalls over a worn out looking red plaid shirt. He was also wearing one of those old straw hats and beat up rubber boots that nearly went up past his knees.The guy was a real caricature. But he was nice enough, even though he got real grim once we told him what we were there for.
What we were there for was this - we were reporters and we were reporting on a story about some voodoo cult down here in the swamplands that had apparently been murdering people for god knows what kind of sick rituals. Now we were'nt no fools, well, at least we didn't think we were. We were'nt just gonna walk up to one of those witch doctors and ask him to chat. No, we were just in there to take some photogrpahs of the swamplands where these people were supposed to be living.
Nevertheless, the old man didn't like it one bit, but he agreed to take us in there anyways. We all got in the boat. That's me, the photographer, and a guide we had with us who knew knew a lot about the swamp and about the voodoo culture and was also our protection should anything go wrong. This was along with the old man captaining the raft.
We set off, the old man pushing the boat through the water with this long pole he had. The trees and plants grew thicker and I began to realise why we had brought the lamp. As the trees grew more numerous, it quickly grew darker. Soon, it was almost black, save for the light from the lamp that the old man had lit with a rusty old Zippo. The light from the oil lamp was dim, but the photographer had a flash on his camera and was able to continue shooting in the darkness.
The deeper we went into the swamp, the stranger and more disturbing the scenery became. At the start of our ride, some trees were dead and some covered all over with moss. I was even a bit frightened then. But upon reaching further into the thick vegetation, I was even more frightened by the weirdly sinister serpintine pattern in which the vines seem to crawl up the trees and then fall and dangle from the branches above our heads.
Despite the foreboding atmostphere, the photographer assured me that he was getting great footage and I had to admit that the notes I was taking with my tape recorder would surely make for a chilling article.
Perhaps too chilling, I thought as my eyes widened in horror and my mouth fell open speechless. From one enormous, moss covered tree trunk hung the mutilated head of a huge alligator. Half of the scaly skin had been ripped from it's face and it's little eye sockets were empty and covered in dried blood. It's monstrous jaw was hanging sort of half-open and I could see that the voodoo cult ( who I immediately assumed was responsible for this ) had drivin a large metal spike through the alligator's tongue and throught eh bottom of it's mouth and into the tree. I knew that this beast's decapitated head must have been some kind of warning for outsiders to keep away or at least a way for them to mark their territory. Our guide confirmed this. He also said that many of the pagan cults and tribes of natives around these parts worshipped the alligators, either as gods or as evil spirits or mosters with conciously malevolent intentions. I supposed this group would be one of the latter, as they had mutilated and desecrated the animal to an extent too great for it to give the impression that these savages consider it holy or sacred.
The photographer took many pictures of the alligator head and I have a frighteningly detailed, if a bit frantic, description of the scene. After we had spent a few minutes observing and taking notes and photographs, the old man pushed forward with his stick against the swamp bed and we got going again.
There were no more surprises for a while. We were going especially slow by then, as the trees and vegetation got thicker and thicker. Much more frequently than would be even the least bit comfortable we found ourselves pushing aside vines, branches and huge leaves and getting caught in thorn bushes and the giant roots that stick out of the water like giant wooden, moss covered tentacles reaching out from the bottom og the trees under ground and intertwining with all the other crawling foliage.
What little light that had shone through the green and brown that blanketed the area was gone and I realised that the sun had set, and that day in sunny Florida had turned to a black night deep in the swamp. A swamp occupied by a murderous and quite possibly cannibalistic voodoo cult. What if we were somehow capture? What sort of brutally savage torture devices would they use on us as part of their grotesque daemonic ritual sacrifices? What kind of cruel potions would their unholy witch doctores cook up for us?
I was ovewhelmed with fear. I looked over at the photographer and he seemed to be in the same mind set as me. We both understood that our assignment was becoming more life-endangering with every inch we vuntured deeper into the swamp. I then looked over at the guide, and then at the boat man. They were both looking surprisingly calm. I suppose that calmed me down a bit. These men knew this land better than my photographer and I ever would. They didn't sense any danger, or at least not enough to be vocal about it. Despite this, I was still very unsettled and asked the old man if he would kindly take us back. He inquired as to why I wanted to leave, which I found truly bizarre and honestly a bit rude. What could it possible matter to him why I wasnted out of the swamp? We had some good material - not nearly enough for a full artivle, but I though we might do some interviews with the locals and get some pictures of places around town connected to the story - and I tried to tell this to the old man. He sensed the fear in my voice and in my body language . Looking back I guess it was obvious. Now knowing the real reason for my insistence that we make our way back out of the swamp, he assured me that we were in no danger and that the cult almost exclusively targeted young caucasian girls. The photograpger and I were bot men and while I was caucasian, he was half-native american and had rather dark skin. Later in the night, it dawned on me that while the boat man said that we were not the types that got targetted. I had never actually gotten around the reading the police reports. I had no idea if what the old man was saying was true. At the time though, his assurance was comforting and I decided that it might be okay if we kept going forward for a while.
So dark was it deep in the Florida swampland that nowhere where the oil lamp's light didn't reach could be seen at all. Every once in a while there would be a giant white flash and everything would be visible for a split second as the photographer took a picture of a perticularly haunting deformity in one of the trees or of some odd and exotic plant or animal. Once or twice, I thought I saw the form of a man, but I told myself that I was just letting the fear make me paranoid and didn't make any more demands to be brought back to civilization.
Then there was a certain tenseness that I felt. I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was, but it was sort of like I was expecting something like a sound or perhaps the appearance of some of the voodoo cult members.
Then it happened. In the distance- deep enough in the tangle of vine and tree and plant that I would never have thought it possible - I began to hear the savage, hypnotic rhythm of the primal drum beats and the chants in strange, obscure and perhaps near-dead african native tongues. It was so horribly ominous and tribal that the fear of capture and torture that I felt before came back quickly and with increased intensity.
Then, we saw the light from a great fire twenty feet high far off in the distance. My photographer took a few pictures but I stopped him, warning him that the flash could alert the savages.
We were so deep in the swamp that it was truly impossible to continure on the raft. I wondered what we could do. Perhaps we could climb across the roots and the little mounds of land sticking out of the water for a little bit until we could get a better view. We would then maybe get a few shots with the night-vision filter and I would record a description of the ceremony. The guide thought that the idea was dangerous and altogether foolish, but said that it would be okay as long as we knew that they would not try to rescue use if we got captured. As we only panned on getting a little bit closer, we figured that the worst thing likely to happen would be that we would get a little we or perhaps lightly injured.
The photographer and I climbed carefully out of the raft and on to a large, sturdy looking tree root. From that we climbed over another root, a log, a mound of dirt and grass and then on to an even larger root on which we both sat.
Now quite clese to the chanting natives, we both noticed a horrible stink. We weren't sure what it was, but agreed that it was surely something sinister.
He took a few pictures with the night vision filter, then gave me the camera which had a zoom funtion to use to observe the goings on as the cheap pair of binoculars I had brought with me would be useless in this light.
About fourty of them stood and danced and round the huge flame. They wore animal skin loin cloths and large amounts of jewelry and decorations made from interesting looking stones, featers and quite disturbingly what looked like the bones from human fingers.
A few of them wore intricate head dresses made from the huge skulls of some type of large animal adorned with black feathers of varying sizes.
The use of bone in their dess was very off-putting. I recognized it as a well known practice among many native cultures, but had never actually seen this type of thing outside of museams and pictures.
About four, maybe five, of them had great big African drums that they were beating on, while at least twenty danced around the fire and chanted in their unrecognizable language.
It was all very frightful and I sat there looking on them with my tape recorder running, giving descriptions of their chants and dances and other habits. My photographer wanted to take some more pictures, as the dance had changed and the ones wearing the head dresses seemed to be preparing for something. Then, just as I was about to hand the camera to him, I cought a glimpse of what was in the fire, and what was the source of the stink tearing up my nostrils.
Burning in the fire were three charred human corpses. This was too horrible for me, and I convinced the photographer to give up on getting any more shots. All I cared about then was getting the hell out of there.
We made our way back across the roots and logs as quickly as we could, and soon reached the raft.
The empty raft. Where the two had gone, I didn't know. Maybe the crazed cannibal natives had captured them and were about to cook them up right now. Would that mean that perhaps they knew about us? No, I thought, how could they?
We didn't bother waiting in the hopes that they would return. The pole that the old man had was still there so I took it, got in the raft with the photographer, and pushed off. Pushing the boat forward was a lot harder than the boat man had made it look. The ground under all that water was soo muddy that I nearly lost the pole four times. Then, finally, I did. The pole was stuck firmly in the muck. I yanked on it as hard as I could over and over util it at last came loose. But I fell back and the pole went flying into the water. I screamed in frustration, then immediately regretted that I did. This was because the drumming in the distance suddenly ceased.
We knew that we wouldn't be able to find the pole in all the mud and in the dark, so neither of us bothered to look. We also knew that there were no branches in sight that were sturdy enough and light enough to use. We had to get out of there on foot.
This would not be easy. We would have to travel through about a mile of thick swampland with nearly no light to see where we were going. So we started off in what we thought was roughly the opposite of the way we were going and climbed over the roots and logs and mud as quickly as we could without falling.
But I went too fast. I lost my footing, tripped and hit my head.
I didn't dream. Then, a splash of water over my head awoke me. The guide that had been taked from or abandoned the raft driven my the overall wearing redneck was standing over me with a bucket. The redneck wasn't with him and neither was the photographer. Perhaps they got away?
My guide didn't offer to pick me up, and when I tried to get up by myself I found that my wrists and my ankles had both been tied together. For a minute I was stunned, I didn't fully realise what was happening. Suddenly, a thought arose in my head. Could the guide who knew so much about the swamp and the voodoo culture perhaps know so much because he himself is a member?
The more I thought about it, the more it made sense, and the more I realised that I was in quite a bit of trouble.
I was dragged over to the raft. He had another long wooden pole and had presumeably pushed the boat down here and found me. And for a minute I actually accepted that I was going to be murdered, but he started to push the raft along and after a while I realised that he was taking me out of the swamp and not back to the voodoo gathering.
I didn't know what to think of it, but I was, for the moment, relieved. I lied there, tied up, for almost an hour as this guide or voodooist or whoever he was pushed the boat out of the swamp.
The raft suddenly stopped and a minute later the guide pulled me out of the raft and on to the grass. Further from the water, on a dirt road was an old station wagon. I was then put in the back seat of the car, where a blanker was placed over me in order to conceal me.
So he drove while I just layed there and stared at the floor mat and that's where I stayed for about an hour and a half.
He kept the blanket over me and dragged me into a bilding. I was thinking that it was about sun up. It felt like a good thing, but for what exact reason I couldn't determine. If I was going to be part of some type of voodoo ritual slaying, the time of day probably wouldn't be of any importance.
The buiding was just an averange looking surburban home. It was probably the guy's house.
He didn't take my tape recorder away. I guess he missed it. He's gone right now, but I'm tied up too tight to get out. I wonder what will happen to me.