Marcus Cole's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Marcus woke at first light and found the swamp changed. The path he had crossed before was gone. Brown water covered it, wide and still, hiding every root and stone. He walked the edge and his boots sank to the ankle. Somewhere out there, the plantation house waited, and the thing inside it waited too. He could not reach it on foot. And he could not stay here. The clean footage was behind that door, but the door was now across a flood. Dakota came up beside him, chewing a strip of jerky. He looked at the water and shook his head. "Rose overnight," he said. "Happens fast out here. You cross that on foot, you feed the gators." He nodded toward the trees. "The thing knows you're stuck. It likes you stuck." "Then I need a boat," Marcus said. Dakota spat. "There's one man. He'll take your money. He won't like the destination." He led Marcus to a leaning dock where a skinny man sat gutting a fish. His overalls were caked with mud. A greasy ball cap read Evinrude. He grinned up at them with no teeth at all. Behind him floated a flat wooden boat, a small motor bolted to the stern. "Cooter Mudge," Dakota said flatly. The name landed like a warning. Cooter wiped his blade on his knee. "Flatboat's for hire," he said. "Where you headed, ghost boy?" He read the skulls on Marcus's shirt and cackled. "The old plantation house," Marcus said. The grin dropped. Cooter set the fish down slow. "No," he said. "I fish these waters twenty years. I don't go near that house. Nobody comes back from there." Marcus pulled out his cash and laid it on the plank. Then he added more. Cooter's eyes tracked every bill. "Double," Marcus said. "You drop me at the porch. You don't have to step off the boat." Cooter looked at the money, then at the flood, then at Dakota. Dakota said nothing. His silence was the loudest thing on the dock. "Drop and go," Cooter said finally. He grabbed the cash. "I ain't waitin'. Once you're off, I'm gone. You don't call me back." They climbed into the flatboat. The motor coughed, then caught. Cooter steered them over the drowned path, through reeds that scraped the hull. The plantation house rose out of the water ahead, gray and sagging, its black doorway open. Cooter cut the engine. The boat drifted against the rotten porch. "Out," he said. "Now." Marcus stepped onto the boards. They held. He turned to say something, but Cooter already had the motor screaming. The flatboat spun and shrank into the reeds. The sound faded. Then it was gone. Marcus stood alone on the porch. The flood had trapped him on the wrong side, right where the house wanted him. His only ride out had just left. Behind him, the open door breathed cold air across his neck.