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In the swamp where the black reeds sway, no soul dared wander at close of day. The water whispered beneath the moon, a dreadful, hungry, ancient tune. The cypress trees with their fingers thin reached through the mist like skeletal skin. And hidden deep in the murky mire, lurked eyes that glimmered like dying fire.
Old Mama June from the village near, had warned the children year after year: "Beware the path where the willows bend, for the swamp has mouths that never end."
But Young Thomas laughed at the tales of dread. "The dead are dead," the boy said. With a bright lantern and a hunter's knife, he stepped into the marsh at night. The frogs fell silent. The insects ceased. The humid air grew cold at least. His lantern flickered a ghostly green, illuminating a ghastly scene.
Footprints appeared in the soggy clay, though no one living had passed that way. They led him deeper through twisted roots,where the mud swallowed his heavy boots. Then came a humming, soft and low, like lullabies from long ago. A woman's voice called through the haze: "Come closer, child, I've lost my way." He followed sound instead of sense, through curtains of moss and broken fence, until he found on a mound of stone, a cradle rocking all alone.
Inside, no infant softly slept, but bones that rattled, cracked, and wept. Two hollow sockets fixed on his face, as laughter echoed through the place. The water churned with a sickening splash, dark figures rose in a dreadful mass. Their skin hung loose, their fingers long, yet from their lips came a mother's song.
Young Thomas turned with a desperate cry, but the swamp had changed beneath the sky. The pathways vanished, the reeds grew tall, and shadows danced in a ghastly hall. They caught his ankles beneath the tide, cold hands that pulled from every side. His lantern sank in the black lagoon, its final glow consumed too soon.
At dawn, the villagers searched in vain, through hanging moss and drizzling rain. They found his knife near an old oak stump, half-buried deep in a mound of clump. Yet when the fog descends each night, some claim to glimpse a wandering light. And hear a young man's trembling plea, drift through the swamp eternally: "If you should hear a woman sing, do not pursue the voice she brings. For in these waters, dark and deep, the swamp collects the souls it keeps."
Written by : Notanai
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