Moccasin Hollow
by Walt Hicks

                Gandolf Whitaker had been reported missing for nearly four weeks.   A severely decomposed body had been fished from an isolated cove on Joaquin Lake near Tulloch, Tennessee, nearly fifty cottonmouth water moccasins dangling from the corpse, feeding.  The fingertips were so shriveled and decayed no fingerprints could be pulled.   All the teeth were missing from the flesh-stripped, mishapened skull, so dental records could not be compared.  In spite of those suspicious circumstances, it was generally assumed that the remains were indeed those of Whitaker, and were laid to rest as such in Tulloch Cemetery. 

                  Without question.  Without investigation.  But it was not Whitaker’s corpse.

                  I am Gandolf Whitaker.  I watched them bury someone that was supposed to be me.

                  Joaquin Lake, along with its ravenous population of water moccasins, is well-stocked with largemouth bass.  I had been camping on a long holiday weekend at the cove that leads into what’s commonly referred to as ‘Moc’sin Holler’ around here.  Most folks avoid this cove because of the large moccasin population, but if you keep a good fire going, they’ll generally stay away from you.  It’s also advisable to sleep in an enclosed area like a camper, rather than on the ground, in a tent or sleeping bag.  But that’s where the largemouth hang out, and there’s no better fishing anywhere on the lake. 

                  Of course, there’s the other thing.

                  The Halliard Family ran moonshine through that Holler for more than one hundred years.  When that business started to dry up, they began growing marijuana in the fertile, Federally protected grounds around the lake.  The Halliards have always been backwoods, rarely venturing off their property, except when they would come to town on a supply run.  Usually, items of a horticultural nature.  Not even the DEA will bother with them, even though rumor has it that the Halliards’ annual harvest is one of the biggest in the state.  I’d never crossed their path, but they are said to be well-armed, organized, and just plain mean. 

                  I’ve always been one to keep to myself, anyway.  Tried marriage once, went to college for awhile, got kicked out of the military.  I just seemed to be better off alone.  Besides, what harm could I be, down at the mouth of Moccasin Hollow hauling in the big bass?

                  Anyway, I was standing in the dark green water Saturday morning with my hip waders on, just before sunup.  Had gotten a few nibbles, not much more, when I noticed a cold spot centered on the back of my neck.  You know, that creepy feeling you get like someone’s staring at you.  The hair stood up on my scalp and my skin goose fleshed.  I slowly turned my head around to look.  In the predawn, I could barely make out a figure standing in the trees near the top of a sharp incline.  I saw a pinpoint red glow, and thought I could smell reefer on the cool morning air.  I heard leaves and underbrush shuffle and then the figure was gone.  I thought I caught the scent of something else, too.

                  Something dead.  Dead for a long time.

                  I shook this event off as the product of an overactive imagination, too many Buds and lack of sleep.  But I was surely glad when the sun arose over the same hill across which the eerie figure disappeared. 

                  This unnerving occurrence happened several more times during the day and twice over the course of the night as well.  Once, whoever it was even cleared their throat to let me know they were there.   Then, the mystery guest vanished like some swamp gas apparition - a will o’the wisp on methamphetamine. 

                  I didn’t sleep much Saturday night, and on Sunday morning I had become just curious enough to traipse into the hollow to see what I could see.

                  I knew better.  God help me, I knew better.

                                There was a slightly trampled path through the center of the hollow, covered with just enough foliage that the rich, moist earth below didn’t stick to my Wolverine hiking boots.  I could hear the moccasins slithering through the underbrush, headed toward the lake and feeding time.   I was cautious of them; they ignored me.

                  Just across the rise where I first saw the mysterious figure, a flat plain covered with wheat grass stretched out over some eighty-five to one hundred acres.  To the right was a thick stand of weeping willows and oak trees lining a small creek that fed into Joaquin Lake. 

                  I could feel a presence, more precisely, someone watching me.  Someone creeping just out of my field of vision, footfalls crunching on the ground just out of earshot.   I walked cautiously to the edge of the creek, under an ancient willow.  I laughed out loud, unexpectedly scaring the hell out of myself.

                  A large crop of very healthy marijuana plants stood nearly ready for harvest, stretching out three or four hundred yards amongst the tree stand, protected from prying eyes, particularly from the airborne patrols that the DEA favored.  I took a few steps forward, in awe of the potential multi-million dollar crop waving lazily in the gentle, pot-scented breeze caressing the hilltop.  I stopped abruptly; my heart lurched into my throat.  I froze where I stood.  Something was wrapped around my ankle. 

                  “Wouldn’t move if’n I was you,” a ragged voice from behind me said plaintively. 

                  I did as admonished.  Sweat trickled into my eyes, blurring my agitated vision.  I slowly glanced down toward my feet.

                  “Trip wire, friend.  Bouncin’ Betty.  Blow yer frickin’ nuts off.  Hold still, an’ I get you out of it.  Move, and you’ll kill both of us.”

                  “Don’t worry.  I won’t move,” I said, trying to sound assured.  I sounded more like a thirteen-year-old going through puberty.

                  Gently, two hands widened the black wire constricting my ankle.   Gingerly, I extricated my numbed foot.   Judging from the smell, at first I thought I had shit myself. Instead, it was the unmistakable stench of something dead, the fetid putrescence mixing nauseatingly with the sickly-sweet scent of some very good dope.

                  “There yuh go.  Almost fucked yerself up good, though.  Just what the hell do yuh think yer a-doin’ up here on our land, anyhow?”

                  I started to grovel and throw myself on the mercy of one of the Halliard clan, but then I made the mistake of turning to face him – it -- whatever.

                  I heard myself simultaneously laugh, belch, fart, snort, and sobbingly screech like a little girl.  I pissed myself, my knees buckled and I collapsed onto the soft, rich ground. 

                  I had been saved by a walking, shambling corpse.  A very well dressed one, at that. 

                  The world flashed a cold blue white, then the lights went out.   When I came to, I had been propped up against the gnarled trunk of an old oak tree, overlooking the expanse of cannabis plants.   My cadaverous savior was sitting against an adjacent tree, smoking an unfiltered Chesterfield.  Smoke oozed from various places through his broken, decayed flesh, and enveloped his skull like a shroud.  The front of my jeans were cold and wet.

                  “Damn, son.  Thought yuh was gonna set off that Betty fer shure when yuh kegged out like that.  Coulda killed one of us.”  I could clearly see the blanched white of his masticulating jawbone as he spoke.  There was a thick thatch of black hair on the top of his skull, what remained of the flesh drawn in gradients from the bone.  Like me, he seemed to favor Eddie Bauer outdoor gear.

                  I could feel my mouth move, but nothing came out but a squeal.  I wanted to get up to run, but I was paralyzed.

                “Yeah, I reckon I do look a damn sight.  My name’s Rodney Halliard.  Yuh a Whitaker, aincha?”

                  My shock-addled brain searched frantically for the name Rodney Halliard.  Rodney . . . ?

                  Son of Howard and Martha.  Born late 40's.  KIA, Viet Nam, 1967.

                  Killed.  In. Action.  Dead.  Not possible.   Not fucking possible.  I started crying.

                Rodney grunted.  “Ain’t no shame in that.  I’ve cried a lot over the years myself, believe that shit.  Y’know, we related – distant – cousins, I think.  You’re Gandolf -- Gandy -- right?  Don’t worry man, I ain’t aimin’ to hurtcha.”

                  I gurgled like a gassy newborn and nodded.  I still couldn’t talk.

                  “Guess yuh wonderin’ how the hell I come to be here.”  

                  I nodded again.  Drooled on myself a little and barked a hysterical laugh.  I think.

                  “Damn.  Well, I joined the Army on my eighteenth birthday.  Them days, they drafted white trash first ‘round here anyhow.  Got trained up fer the Infantry in just a month, and got shipped over.   Cannon fodder, I guess you’d say.   But I was one patriotic sumbitch, my old man served in WW 2, was a big fuckin’ hero and shit.”

                Rodney looked heavenward, reminiscing.  He appeared strangely as though he were permanently winking; the lid and flesh from his right eye were completely missing, a pale lip of skin hung at half-mast over his left eye.  Both orbs were yellow like milk gone sour, with nearly the same consistency.  One brilliant blue iris swivelled back down to regard me.

                “Anywho, once I was over there proper, I found out just how much horseshit all that flaggin’ wavin’ ballyho was.  Ever’body over there cared about just one thing – gettin’ the fuck out of there alive.   After while, was all I cared ‘bout too.”  Rodney retrieved a fat doobe from his immaculately pressed shirt pocket.  He ran it under what was left of his nose and inhaled deeply.  “This helped,” he grinned.   He took out a dented Zippo lighter and fired up.  The rich scent of the weed cut the stench of corruption. 

                  “Hit?”  He offered after he drew in a deep inhalation.  How he managed to take a drag with those partial lips was a mystery to me.

                I shook my head so hard my teeth rattled.  Rodney shrugged and took another blast.  His tongue expertly coiled between the joint and his lower teeth, taking the place of his bottom lip.  Thick smoke drooled between his yellowed teeth.  Also, from his mishapened nose, his ear canal openings, and evidently a hole somewhere in his chest.   I shuddered and the world swam crazily.

                  “Suit yerself.  Anyway, most of us decided that we’d just lay low and try ‘n stay alive.  Unfortunately, the gooks had a different take on that.  Whenever they come at us, they just kept comin’ and comin’ and comin’.  You’d kill their front line, and the one’s behind ‘em would just step over the corpses and keep comin’ atcha.  Crazy fuckin’ bastards.

                  “Fin’lly, I just decided, by God, I’d kill ever’ motherfuckin’ one of ‘em, if’n that’s what it took.  My outfit got that rep over there, and soon the Cong put a bounty on us.   I reckon we killed a gawddammn couple platoons o’them little yeller hellions, before they fin’lly ambushed us over by Quang Tre provence in early ‘67.”

                 Rodney swallowed hard, and to my mind-numbing horror, I could see his larynx peeking through a hole in his neck.  Tears squirted across his right eyeball from an exposed tear duct.  He was wringing his hands, and I noticed that the pale flesh was nearly translucent, and I could see a dark black liquid crawling languidly through the veins.  He laughed gruffly, and I thought sure the larynx was going to launch itself into my lap.

                  “Found out later that our own people set us up.  Fer money.  Sides, the hot shit brass was scared of us, too.  Couple more outfits like mine, we mighta won that fuckin’ war.  But they didn’t wanna win the gawddamn thang no how.  Anyway, the VC was comin’ from ever’where.  We kept killin’ and killin’ and they kept comin’.  I seen my guys fallin’ all around me, blowed all tah shit.  Used up all mah ammo, so I started cuttin’ with my bayonet.  I was covered in blood and guts, but somehow still alive.    Got real clear, real quick they was plannin’ on takin’ me alive. 

                “I’d heared what kinda shit they’d do to ya, if’n they took ya livin’.  Cut yer dick off, stuff it in yer mouth, sew it shut.  Stick a glass rod up there, hit it with a rubber mallet.  Buttfuck ya with a bamboo pole, then pierce yer skin with it, getcha infected.  Shit like that.

                  “They could do what the fuck they wanted with my cold, dead corpse, but wadn’t no damn way they‘s gonna take me alive.  Don’t know how many I killed; all’s I know is, I used ever’ last round of ammo, ceptin’ fer one.  In my ol’ .45 side arm.  I waited til a bunch of ‘em got in on me, then I shot myself in the heart.  Last thang I saw as I’s goin’ down was the disappointed look on the faces of them little yeller assholes.”  Rodney chuckled and took a deep drag of the doobe.  He offered and I nodded tentatively. 

                  The weed was superior; some most excellent hybrid of Columbian and Mexican, I guessed.  Some of the shock dissipated, much of the tension oozed from my rigid body. 

                  “Jesus,” I croaked.  “You really are fucking dead!”

                  Rodney grunted.  “Well, hellfire, he speaks!  

                  “You gotta be wonderin’ – how, why?  Me too.  Lemme finish, maybe it’ll make some sense to you.  Even if’n it never really has to me.

                  “I woke up in the Tulloch Funeral Home, in a steel casket.   Scared the livin’ fuck out of me, gotta tell yuh.  Couldn’t really remember too much at first, ‘cept blowin’ that big hole in the middle of my chest, and goin’ down into the bloody swamp water.  I hollered, ‘Hey, let me the fuck outta here!’  First thang I seen was my ol’ man’s face when he opened the casket.  Looked like he didn’t know whether to shit or go blind!   He got me out of the casket and looked at me like it was the first time he ever seen me.  When he got over the shock, he told me that we’d have to keep this whole thang a secret.  Said he’d seen some shit like this happen back in the Big One.  Said there’s some folks are s’posed to stay dead, but fer some reason or the other, they come back. 

                  “So, they buried an empty coffin, and I went to work fer mah dad.  It was my idear to switch crops when the ‘shine bid’ness went south.  Makin’ some pretty good green, Gandy, gotta tell ya.   Fer a lot of years, I looked mostly like I did when I shot mahself.   Only been the last few years I started lookin’ like – “ the remnants of his face contorted painfully –  “this.”  

                  Rodney paced back and forth as he continued.  “It took awhile, but I started ‘memberin’ some other shit that happened before I’s found and shipped home.  It’d been night and I could remember a big bonfire in the middle of the jungle, surrounded by about a million snakes – over there it was them damn adders and vipers – all writhin’ around like they’s crazy.  Somethin’ huge was in the shadows just outside the firelight, somethin’ called itself Tch’e Yeou.  Said it was quite impressed with our little war.  It said that it was the one invented weapons right around the time man first crawled out of the oceans.  Well, it din’t actually say nothin’, but I could tell what it meant all the same. Sorta like it was talkin’ in my head.   Whenever it moved, the earth shook.

                  “Anyhow, it said it admired me and that I would from now on be the manifestation of Gui Xiann, a demon made up of the souls of suicides.  It said that’s what the snakes was – reincarnated suicides.  Last thang I remember is the snakes crawlin’ over me like a slimy quilt.  Next thang I knew, I’s in the damn coffin.  Did all that shit really happen, or was it a dream?  Beats hell outta me, but how else can you explain this?”

                  I eased up the rough tree trunk on wobbly legs and ran a trembling hand through my sweat drenched hair.  “What’s happening to you?”

                  Rodney grinned and the diaphanous flesh stretched agonizingly thin across his jawbone.  “Not sure.   Guess ol’ age’s catchin’ up with this here body.”

                  That statement was filled with uneasy portent. 

                  “Did bring somethin’ back with me from Nam, though,” he said, unsnapping the pearl buttons on his shirt.  He exposed the mottled gray and black flesh on his chest and the ragged, rotted hole in the center.  A half dozen maggots writhed workmanlike in the old wound, and Rodney brushed them away, annoyed.  “Little beggars.  Really gets ripe in the summer months.”

                  “Wha – what are you gonna do to me?” I asked, bile rising up into my throat, an unwelcome tide.

                  Rodney shrugged, tufts of hair relinquishing their tenuous grip on his dead scalp.    “Like I said, ‘nothin’‘.  This ol’ body’s bout had the lick.  Needs replaced.   We kin, figured you’d do just fine.”

                  I tripped over a gnarled root and fell hard to the ground.   “You said – you said – “ I stammered.

                  The toothy, death mask grin was ironic.  “I can’t do it.  It has to be you.  It has to be a suicide.”

                  The weight of his confidence was suffocating.  How could he be so sure?  “I won’t do it, I won’t!” I said, a defiant child.

                  Rodney reached beneath his new tan barn coat and produced a well-oiled, though ancient .45 automatic pistol.  “Oh, I think you will.”

                  He handed the butt of the gun to me.  I snatched it away and pointed it at his horrific face. Rodney laughed. “Already dead, slick.”  I felt absurdly like Deputy Barney Fife, and hoped like hell Sheriff Andy had loaded my one round into the pistol.

                  I fired a round point blank, and half of the head disintegrated into a spray of bone, brain, blood and black hair.  When the smoke cleared, the half a head shook slowly.  One eye looked at me disapprovingly.  “Nice shot.  But don’t do that again.”

                  The pistol went flaccid in my hand, but I spat truculently, “I’M NOT FUCKING KILLING MYSELF, ASSHOLE!”

                  “Suit yerself,” Rodney said calmly, coagulated gore oozing down the side of his face.  “Course, I can always head into town tonight and rape your mom and sisters.”  He shrugged.

The ruined visage grinned when he saw me steal a glance at his crotch.  “Oh yeah, it still works.  Real damn good. Course, I shoot off shit that looks like used motor oil.”

                  I dropped the gun, sank to my knees and vomited, to the maniacal guffawing of Rodney Halliard, the Gui Xiann, or maybe some unnatural combination thereof.   Mercilessly, mental images flooded before me, hideous parodies of adult films.  My mother and sisters, blank faces and drooling mouths reflecting minds gone, rocking listlessly back and forth beneath the ruthless sexual onslaught of a human/demon hybrid.  His rotted flanks endlessly pumping, a violent piston engine redlining on some perverse ecstacy.  Before my mental Rodney could climax his black, viscous cum, I forced myself to my feet.  I stared into the remaining unblinking eye, and shoved the .45 into my mouth.  The barrel was still hot and it scalded my tongue. 

                  The head shook, the ruined lips mouthed,  “no.”   A rotting hand gently encircled my gun hand, lowered the pistol to the center of my chest.    “Better,” the thing said, and the breath of eternal corruption washed over me. 

                  The .45 exploded, and I felt punched hard in the chest.  The recoil sent the pistol tumbling in slow motion into the underbrush.  Rodney’s iniquitous tongue lolled out of the decayed mouth in dark pleasure.  He licked my face – the gesture felt like a cat’s tongue, and smelled of a slaughter house – and that was when the cold blackness welcomed me.

 ***

                  I love fishing, I guess I told you that.  I get to do that as often as I want nowadays.  I am pretty much the guardian of Moccasin Hollow, now.  My new family tends the crop and I keep interlopers away.   But it doesn’t get lonely.  Despite what you might think, the cottonmouth water moccasins who assist me are actually excellent company. 

                And there are more of them every day. 

©2001 Walt Hicks