Debbie Herbert - Bayou Shadow Hunter

Melodic patterns had called to her since kindergarten when a teacher handed out metal triangles and wands. She’d pinged the base, and the ringing vibration had shivered down her spine. A living pulse that had been a first clue of her gift, her curse, her fate. Other kids had banged away on the triangles until the pureness of the music changed to an unbearable din, and she’d run out of the classroom.

She’d been running ever since.

But tonight’s high-pitched bell notes made her feet itch to dance and throw her arms open to embrace the night. It had a certain symmetry and lyrical quality that charmed. It drew her, tugged at her soul...

Annie opened her eyes. More than a dozen orbs of light danced in the distant darkness. They were a rainbow of colors and sizes and varied in brightness.

That was where the music came from.

They called her, beckoned her to draw near. She rose unsteadily to her feet, light-headed with awe, and slowly stepped away from the cottage. The lights bobbed and darted behind and between the oaks. All at once, the orbs disappeared, as if someone had turned off a switch. Annie ran toward the woods. For once she ran to the music instead of away from its source.

Wait for me. Don’t leave me behind.

As if hearing the unspoken words, a bluish-green orb flashed. A spectacular, southern aurora borealis. It was the first, lone light she’d seen from the bedroom window, as distinctive and individual as a human form. She ran across the yard, plunged into the woods, down a narrow trail littered with pinecones and broken twigs. Black night, thick with heat, pressed around her body, yet she stumbled forward, ever deeper. More lights bobbled ahead, just beyond reach. Mosquitoes buzzed her ears and nipped her arms and chest. The sulfur smell of swampland grew more pungent and sharp.

Annie didn’t care. The blue light glowed like a lantern against the darkness, and the crystalline notes played from its burning core. Low-lying branches scraped her arms and face, and her legs grew wooden with exhaustion as on she walked, following ever deeper.

A clearing opened onto a muddy bank, and Annie pulled up short at the sight of a brackish pond. Mud gooshed over her sandals and between her toes. The slimy sensation worked like a face slap. Blackness shadowed the night as a cloud passed over the moon, and the glowing orbs vanished once more. The music stopped, and silence gathered, dense and foreboding.

“Umm...hello? Anybody out there?” She didn’t know whether she felt more foolish or frightened. She lifted one foot out of the goo and almost lost a sandal. “Terrific. This is just great.”

Screeching erupted—as if a parliament of enraged owls or a volt of vultures were descending on her for interloping on their territory. Annie clamped hands over ears and squeezed her fingertips over the ear canals, but the noise and pressure felt like a bomber plane taking off inside her brain. Turning blindly, she ran, desperate to escape the sound attack.

What the hell is this? Where is it coming from? It was like a combination of an animal screech, a howl of pain, shattering glass and a jarring, jumbled chorus of dissonant chords, as if someone were banging an untuned piano.

Silence crashed the darkness. Annie leaned her back against an oak tree and hunched down, panting. Relieved the noise had stopped but expecting it to return any moment, her body was coiled and tense. She grimaced at the stitch in her side and tried to regulate her breathing to a slower pace. Calm down. Think.

She tilted her head upward, rough bark grazing her scalp. The moon glowed, laced with a web of black thread from the treetops. The sky held a thin promise of dawn, evidenced only by a violet-hued line in the east that graduated to black by degrees.

Great. So she knew where east lay. But that was the extent of her internal compass. And it didn’t help her figure out how to get back to the cottage. Best to stay right where she was and wait for daylight. If she was lucky, someone, maybe a hunter, would be along, or she would recognize some landmark once the sun emerged.

How could she have been so stupid as to trot off at night into the bayou after a will-o’-the-wisp or whatever that light was? She shuddered. Focus. Right now there were rattlers and water moccasins and gators to worry about. And who knew what other cursed creatures roamed the land.

She swatted at a mosquito nipping her arm. Hmm. Could snakes climb trees? A glance upward revealed that seeking higher ground was a non-option. The nearest limb was several feet above her standing height. When she recouped her strength, perhaps she should search for a stone or stick just in case...

“Help me!”

The deep baritone voice rumbled along her spine.

Annie scrambled to her feet and searched the shadows. “Who’s there?”

Silence. Okay, she was going to be that person in the headline news who was lost in the woods and found days later, a nutcase raving about swamp monsters and Big Foot and saying she’d been carted away by aliens on their UFO.

Nothing’s out there.

“Please.”

The anguish in that word was too tortured not to be real. Annie shivered despite the heat and sweat coating her body. Ignoring someone else’s pain went against all her healing instincts. “Where are you? Who are you?”

An orb manifested not ten feet from where she stood. No warning, no gathering of light, no sound. One second before loomed a dark void, and in a clock’s single tick, the orb absorbed the space.

The blue-green light swirled and pulsed like a breathing, living thing. The same orb she’d seen first from her bedroom window.

So the question was no longer where or who but “What are you?” she whispered.

“The shadows trapped me.”

The voice rumbled in her gut, vibrating in her being. “You’re...trapped in the light?” she asked haltingly.

“My heart beats within. Look.”

At the core of the blue light shone a concentrated mass of teal that swelled and contracted. In, out, in, out, pulsing with the cosmic rhythm of life.

A heart.

Not the flowers-and-lace, cupid sort drawn by five-year-olds, but the it’s-alive-and-it’s-real-and-it-beats kind. Annie’s breath hitched, and she took an unsteady step backward. She couldn’t stop staring at the fist-sized gelatinous mass of muscle that pumped and wobbled.

“I need out,” the low-timbered voice pleaded. “Help me get out.”

She shook her head violently, her own heart pounding a song of fear. “I don’t know how.” And even if she did, no way was she freeing...whatever it was. Not until she knew its true nature.

“My name is Bo,” it said. “Find Tombi and tell him I live. He’s in grave danger. Trust no one within the circle. I was betrayed. And if he was ever my true friend, he needs to find that betrayer. I can’t be released until then.”

“I don’t know this Tombi person,” she protested.

“He’s coming now. Tell him to beware.”

Annie swung her head in all directions but saw and sensed nothing in the shadows. “Why don’t you tell him yourself?”

“He can’t hear me, witch. No one ever has but you.”

“Oh,” she breathed. “That’s why you brought me here.” It...Bo...either knew her grandma or of her reputation. “I think you want my grandmother, not me. I’m only here on a visit and—”

“Warn him.”

The light shifted, swirling in individuated sparkles and growing smaller, denser.

“Wait,” she called out sharply. “Where are you going?”