The Serpent River

The car went into the water at 3:17 in the afternoon, and it took them six hours to figure out that no one was coming to get them.

Eli Beauregard knew this because he had the watch. His grandfather's silver pocket watch, stopped at 4:22—the exact moment the car had left the highway and plunged into the swamp. He kept it in his hand now, thumb rubbing the cold metal case, trying to will the hands into moving again. They did not move. Nothing on the island moved the way it used to. Not even time.

"We need to find higher ground," Eli said. It was the third time he had said it. The others were not answering.

Clara Mae Duval sat on a cypress knee with her legs in the water, watching a heron stand motionless in the reeds. She had wrapped her skirt around her waist and rolled her blouse sleeves to the elbows. Her skin was the color of rich earth, dark and warm, and her eyes were the color of the swamp itself—dark, deep, and impossible to read.

"Higher ground is that way," she said, pointing upstream. "But the water's rising. You saw the flood marks on the trees."

"I saw them," Eli said. "That's why I said we need to—"

"I know what you said," Clara Mae interrupted gently. "I'm not stupid, Eli. I'm just tired."

Josiah—Joey to everyone, though he hadn't answered to his given name in fifteen years—sat on a fallen log with his eyes closed. His Cajun accent had thickened since the accident, the way it always did when he was afraid. He hadn't spoken in four hours. Isabelle, his sister, had tried three times. Each time, Joey opened his mouth, closed it, and went back to watching the water.

Walter Price, the Northern boy visiting his aunt in Lafayette, sat on a rock with his arms crossed, staring at the car. The car that belonged to his host's uncle—a man who drank too much and drove too fast and was now somewhere at the bottom of the swamp, probably already being claimed by the alligator that had been circling the sinking vehicle when Eli and the others pulled themselves onto the branch.

"Walter," Isabelle said, "do you think your uncle will be okay?"

Walter's jaw tightened. "My uncle is dead. The car went into the water. He's in the water."

Isabelle flinched. She looked down at her stomach and put a hand there—a gesture so small and unconscious that nobody else noticed. Nobody except Eli. Eli noticed everything. That was his problem.

"Nine years old," Bunny whispered from the edge of the branch. His real name was Percival, but nobody had called him that since kindergarten, when he'd gotten so excited about something that he announced his full name to the class and every other kid in third grade started calling him Bunny. He had a constellation of spots across his cheeks, like a Dalmatian puppy, and eyes that were always wide, always seeing, always terrified.

"It's getting closer," Bunny said.

Eli closed his eyes. "Getting what closer, Bunny?"

"The snake," Bunny said. "The serpent. It's in the river. It's been watching us since we got here."

Clara Mae opened her mouth to say something—probably that there were no serpents in Louisiana swamps, that Bunny was tired and scared and seeing things—but Eli stopped her with a look. He had learned, in the nine years he had known Bunny's family (the Beauregards and the Fontenots had been neighbors since before the Civil War), that Bunny was not crazy. He was just... different. And in the swamp, different might be the most useful thing in the world.

"Show me," Eli said.

Bunny pointed upstream, toward the bend in the river where the cypress trees grew so thick that light barely penetrated the canopy. "There. Just past the bend. Something's moving. But it's not a bird."

Eli looked. Through the maze of trunks and hanging moss, he saw what Bunny saw: a disturbance in the water. Not a current. Not a fish. Something large and deliberate pushing through the surface.

"Alligator," Walter said finally, his voice tight. "Probably a big one."

"Maybe," Eli said. "Or maybe something else."

He didn't believe that. But the word maybe had been living in his chest since the car went into the water, and it wasn't going away. Maybe their uncle was still alive somewhere in the car, drowning slowly. Maybe help was coming and they just couldn't see it. Maybe this island of theirs—the stretch of swamp between two bends in the river—was not as isolated as it seemed. Maybe there were other people here. Other families. Other dangers.

The sun began to set. The light changed from gold to brown to gray, and the swamp transformed. The trees that had been friendly and dappled in the afternoon became dark and menacing. The water that had been still and reflective became an opaque mirror, showing nothing.

That night, they huddled on a small patch of dry ground between two cypress trees. Joey kept his eyes open. Isabelle held his hand. Walter stared at the dark. Clara Mae hummed a low melody Eli didn't recognize—something old, something her grandmother had taught her. Bunny was asleep, or pretending to be. Eli held his grandfather's watch and listened to the sounds of the swamp closing in.

Somewhere in the darkness, something big moved through the water. Not an alligator. Eli was sure of that now. Alligators swam with their bodies mostly submerged and their snouts breaking the surface. This was different. This was larger. And it made a sound—a low, vibrating hum that Eli felt in his chest more than he heard with his ears.

Clara Mae stopped humming. Joey's hand tightened on Isabelle's. Walter stopped breathing for a moment.

The sound came again. Closer.

Eli stood up. He did not know what he planned to do. Stand between the others and whatever was coming? Shout at it? He was sixteen years old and had never in his life faced anything more dangerous than his father's temper. But he stood up anyway, because it was the only thing to do.

The sound stopped.

For a long moment, there was only the sound of water lapping against tree trunks and the occasional croak of a frog. Then, from the darkness across the river, came a voice.

Not a serpent. Not a monster. A human voice. Old. Weak. Calling.

"Help... somebody... help..."

Eli's heart hammered. Someone was alive. Across the river, in the darkness, someone was alive and calling for help.

"We have to go to them," he said.

"We can't," Walter said. "We don't know what's out there."

"It's a person," Eli said. "A person needs help."

"Your uncle might be alive," Clara Mae said quietly. "That could be him."

Eli looked at her. She was right. It could be their uncle. It could be nothing. It could be anything.

But the voice came again. Fainter now. Fainter.

And then it stopped.

Eli stood there in the darkness, his grandfather's watch cold in his hand, listening to the silence where a human voice had been. He knew, with a certainty that settled into his bones like the swamp's cold, that he would spend the rest of his life wondering whether that voice had been real.

Whether anyone on that branch had been real.

Whether the Beauregard family, with its plantations and slaves and silver pocket watches, had ever been anything more than a story the swamp had told itself for a while and then forgotten.

He put the watch back in his pocket. He sat down. He closed his eyes.

And he listened to the serpent river, which did not answer.

Author Note & Copyright: