silent waters

The small ship floated listlessly in the still waters. And arm was draped limply over the side, and there was blood trickling from the fingers. This person was dead or near it. a bird had landed on the head of the body, and was pecking at a spot on the top of its head, and blood had begun to spatter from the point of impact. Jim savers pulled his gun from its pouch and pointed it in the air. He waited for a moment, unsure if he should pull the trigger, who knew what was hiding in the surrounding waters? But in the end he decided thathe couldn't stand the sound of that pecking. The hard thud against the head of the body as the beak penetrated flesh and wittled away at bone affected him on a visceral level making him cringe every time it happened. And the silence of these waters only made things worse. The echoe of the thwacking of that beak seemed to travel for miles then reverberate back from all directions as though returning to attack jim from every angle. Finally the sound was too much, and he aimed the gun and pulled the trigger. The bird disapeared in a cloud of blood and feathers, and landed heavily in the water here soon enough something belodw the surface snatched it and dragged it below. For a moment there was nothing but the echoe of the gunshot, then there was silence. The boat floated for a moment or two as he listlened to the silence turn from peaceful to haunting. It seemed there was no respite from the disturbing nature of this place. but then as he tried to fill his mind with something, anything, to replace that silence, there came sounds from the fog cloaked surroundings that made him wish for silence once again. It began as a Whisper, the soft movement of water, as something down below made itself known. At first he coudn't tell here it as coming from. It would stop for a moment then start again,. Just hen he turned to see if something was in the waters behind him, the sound would stop or move away too fast for him to get a glimpse of what had been hehind him. soon enough, the turning left him feeling dazed, and he had to stop to keep himself from feeling dizzy, so he stopped turning and just stood there for a moment. The wave continued making noice, but then fell silent as though whatever had been making it realized he was onto it. He stood there waitingfor the sound to return training his ears for hat had to still be around him. But the sound refused to repeat. He released a sigh, releiving the pressure that had built up within him. He lowered the gun, releasing his finger from the trigger, and wiping the seat from his bro with his sleave, then he was falling forward as simething beneath him nudged the boat hard. He fell forard, catching himself with his hands on the side of the boat just barely stopping himself from going over. He felt his heels raising off the groun, qnd flexed his toes to stop his forward momentum just trying managing to keep his feet on the ground, and the boat began to tip back in the oposite direction, and he corrected his posture to synchronize his movements with the swaying of the boat. He leanec back from the edge. Looking don he realized he must have dropped his gun in his haste to grab the raid. He looked around franticly trying to locate it. He knew that the thing under the shoip was stil out there., He could heat it oving around out there somwhere. Turning he saw that the gun hd slid across the deck in the comiotion, and it now lay very close to the edge of the ship and moving closer each time the ship move. Without thinkning he lunged toward the gun reaching out it as its barrell slid out over the open water. he fell akwardly toward the gun reaching desperately with grasping fingers, then a hand reached up out of the water an gripped the barrell of the gun. and as the gun was plled off the deck, a monsterous head cae up out fo the water, its big wide mouth opening to reveal twin ros of short spiky teeth. It chompt\ed down as it passed the gun into its mouth then yanked the gun out the barrell bent and broken and groed as it looked face to face at jim coulhoon who had fallen down onto his belly with his hand still outreached.. Jim cfried out, puling his hand backwards andholding it protetively as he backed up from the edge, his eyes locked on the creature as it gripped the side of the ship with one arm then two, pulling itself up and revealing 2 more sets o f hands that pulled it further up on deck trailed all the while by a long thick serpentine tail. It shook its fins and scaes as it stood before him, making itself bigger as the scales puffed out like spikes, and the things 4 strange bulbous eyes fell again upon jim who was now scooting backwards ike a crab until his back met the back of the boat. He threw himself to the side as the creature sped toards him narrowly evading a sharp claw to the face. The sharp appendage instead caught him in the shoulder pinning him akardly to the wood. Franticly he slammed his fist into the arm of the hand that had him pinned, but to no avail. in a panic, he desparately looked around for something to free himself with, and as another of the creature's hands clamped itself arpund his neck, he saw it, a hook he used for hooking fish out of the water lay against a all over by a leather wrapped set of gutting utensils that he used to gut the fish. Reaching blindly to the side, he was just able to reach it witoh the tip of his finger. He tapped it a couple of times as he felt his air grow tighter in his chest, and his vertibre pull against one another to indicate that this creature was actually trying to pull his head off. His desperation increased, and with one final effort, his finger tapped the long handled hook and it fell towards him. He gripped it ith renewed ctrength as he felt his salvation at hand but then as he lifted it to bury in the creature's arm, he felt his head detatch and something break in his next. He felt a disconnect from his body as his vision suddenly spun wildly. He new in a detached sense that he had been beheaded. then there was a vibration as his head landed on the deck and he blinked a final few times as he atched the monsterous creature devour his body. It was only after the thing had finished with its meal and the puddle of blood had spread across deck so that it was nearly touching his severed head that he lost consciousness.

Jamie hated these. He had been out to the deep swamps several times since he took the job as sherrif, ad it had always unnerved him. Things were so wild out here in these deep samps, that seeig dead humans seemed to be more unnatural here. Like they were the trespassing dead. Pulling his jacket tight around himself he shivered. This was no time to be getting super stitious. He needed to focus. to eitherr side of the boat the trees were thick and densely clustered. Anything could have hidden within them. Then for a moment just the swiftest of seconds, he could see a face looking out from the trees.

"Hold up chester"

He called out to the driver of the little boat. He felt the boat slo as chester lowered the throttle. Then they were backing up slowly as the boat as pushed into reverse until carl paulson called out,

"that's good."

As the boat stopped, carl looked between the treess coming up out of the swamp water.

"hat is that"

Now he could see it more clearly. It had definitely been a face he had seen. But the skull on which peices of fur covered flesh still hun, was not that of a human. At first he didn't know hat it was. It looked more like a tree at this point. A tree with twisted limbsb but a tree nonetheless That was because the bones of the moose were so large that the moss hanging off the rib cage looked almost like leeves. And looking aroubnd he sa a fe other corpses lowerr din and sunken deeper in the water. One was a bore for sure. The other he wasn't sure. But he wasn't too driven to find ot hat they were.

"Aright chester. You can keep going."

Afgter a few moments the boat started up again and soon enough the trees were blurring together as the speed ramped up increasingly hgher.

And those first few skeitons were not the ast. Several more macabre sentinals stared out from between the trees ith more frequency than should have been the case. Neverbefore had he seen so many corpses in the water. Looking over at chester he could see that his stalwart driver had noticed this as well.

For eeks samantha ritter had been calling into their offices about how he husband hadn't come home in weeks. Jim was a dunk so no one had thought of it, but now, looking around him and seeing all these dead bodies,he thought that maybe old Jim Ritter really had been gone a whil.

Jim was nototrious for fishing dead bodies out of the swamp. No one knew entirely what he did ith these. Rumors and urban legends abounded about what Jim Ritter did with the bodies, but all agreed that it was him that was responsible for keeping the swamps free of rotting flesh. The samps beoing this congested was an ominous sign. Then pushing some swamp moss out of his line of sight, he saw that a cluster of boats floated in a clearing between some trees. In every single one was a macabre sight. He couldn't see everything with vivid detail, but he could see enough to kno that Jim Ritter asn't the ony body they would find on this day, and that none of these individuals had met a good end. Floating out into the clearing as a surreal experience. It asn't as though he had never seen a dead body before. He had just never come upon a murder scene while floating. In the boat that floated cose to where he and chester sat in the boat, a limp body as hanging over the side of a small fishing boat, but its forarms and necks were gone. Torn apart by small fish looking for a morsel most likely. The other boats in the clearing floated listlessly as tey were jossled by the movements of the paddle boat that carl and chester rode in. All the bodies had only one thing in common, they ere all missing thier heads.





but it was in the water near the shore that he sa the first thing that truey gave him a start. At first he thought it was just a twisted tree with strange roots, and the way that the moss hung off the bones, it was a wonder that the had seen it at all.




In the distance there grew a creak as of the wood of a ship bending and flexing with its movements. And as the thing broke through the mist, the dead things abourd made thier own sounds.