The Teche Terror

Fiction by Scott Wagner

Fifteen minutes from the Franklin town square, Gary saw it, sitting in the middle of the railroad track: a knee-high heap of twigs and swamp muck. The hair on the back of his neck rose to attention. He’d seen such a thing before with Pops, many times, but never so close to town.

He stopped and scanned the surrounding area. The asphalt road leading south toward his neighborhood. Acres of rice fields to the east. And to the west, just a hundred yards away, the shadowy, tangled swamps and bottomlands surrounding Bayou Teche.

No movement.

He sniffed the moist, superheated July air and found the usual: mild odors of rotting fish and vegetation, and the hint of salt coming from the Gulf of Mexico only a few dozen miles away. It was midmorning, but already hot enough that his T-shirt stuck to his back and his dark hair was damp beneath his cap. He stepped off the road into the grass and moved toward the tracks.

Just a week ago he would have been headed over to his grandfather’s house to bridge the hours between the morning and evening home-health aides. Over the last year, a series of small strokes had laid Pops pretty low. He could still get around, but he had trouble finding his words now. And for somebody like his grandfather, who loved to talk, that was hard to swallow. 

Gary would fix them both a tuna salad sandwich for lunch, and they’d split a Baby Ruth for dessert. Later, they might listen to a ball game on the radio or take a walk through the neighborhood, Pops leaning heavily on Gary’s shoulder for support. Before he left every day, his grandfather would grip his hand hard and, in a quavering voice, say: “I love you, yeah.”

But Pops was gone now, dead from one last big stroke just a couple of weeks before. The house, the jon boat—almost everything had been sold off. Gary’s Petit Gran had died when he was six. All that was left were his memories of his grandfather—and the creature.

Despite the waves of heat coming off the steel rails of the tracks, he squatted down to get a closer look at the mound. He had to cover his nose to block the stench coming from it, piercing and sweet with the rot of the Teche. Pops had a theory that the creature used the mounds to mark his territory. Gary argued that the smell should have been enough; why would it make the little structures? Up until the end, Pops had insisted that the creature was intelligent. “Maybe it just builds ‘em for the fun of it.”

The structure was about fifteen inches tall, built of alternating tiers of twigs, each at a roughly ninety-degree angle to the one beneath it. With each layer, the twigs became smaller and smaller, giving the little pile a rough, pyramidal shape. Daubs of mud and some yellow, viscous substance had been slathered onto strategic points, maybe to make it more stable.

This looked—and smelled—like the real deal, but kids who lived around the Teche knew enough to fake it. This could be the work of some of the eighth-graders who liked to give Gary crap about the creature. For all he knew, they might be hiding, just waiting to jump out and give him a scare. Afterward they would spread the tale around Franklin, how Gary was crazy like his crazy-cuckoo grandfather, that he was “ate up” with the idea of the creature. And then they’d tell everyone how he jumped and screamed when they surprised him—a real chickenshit.

He reached out, touching the structure reverently. The mud and yellowish goo were still damp, and his index finger tingled after he pulled it away. He wiped his hands on his jeans and bent closer. These twigs had been gnawed, not broken. Gary’s heart tripped a little faster. This was no fake—or some random pile of debris. Someone—some thing—had made it. 

Folks in town had been buzzing lately about pets being killed and gutted. Most shrugged it off as the work of a fox or a bobcat. But a farmer reported that one of his heifers had been dragged off by something. He found it in the nearby woods, half devoured. A pair of oversized footprints led off in the direction of the Teche. Gary thought about what kind of creature could do such a thing and shivered in the morning heat.

He stood up and looked around again. A train would have already come through by this time of the morning. But the little mound of twigs sat undisturbed. Whoever or whatever made this had done it recently.

Talk of the Terror had begun five years before, in 1955, when two local hunters had gotten lost in the swamps surrounding Bayou Teche. After three days, they came out bleeding and babbling about something stalking them. How each morning, they woke to find carcasses of rabbits and possums hanging by a string of intestines from nearby trees. Something no animal would—or could do. Then one night they were attacked. One of the men had his arm nearly torn off. Back in Franklin, the doctors had to amputate. The hunters claimed that whatever it was, it walked on two legs, a humanoid fish creature they dubbed the “Teche Terror.”

When nine-year-old Gary had asked Pops about it, his grandfather had been in the backyard tinkering with an outboard motor. He was retired by then, but he had spent his adult life as a guide in the area. No one knew Bayou Teche better than Arthur Robicheaux.

He looked out from under the bill of his cap, the one he’d been wearing for as long as Gary could remember. Like a baseball cap, but not. No team logo; brown, with orange and ochre stripes running down vertically from the crown.

“Teche Terror, you say?” Pops rolled his eyes and rubbed his stubbly chin. “Is that what those two idjits are calling it?”

“Yeah,” Gary said, eyes wide. “They say Mr. Arceneaux is taking a bunch of hunters out to find the thing and—and kill it. Are you going too?”

Pops sat back on his heels, frowning. “Who you think you’re talking to, Boo? Why would I have anything to do with that man? The kind of fella who hunts and butchers things like it was his God-given right? Somebody who’ll do anything for a dollar?”

Gary hung his head meekly. “I know … but the thing’s dangerous. It nearly ate that man’s arm off.”

 “And why do you think that is? I bet my lucky hat”—he took it off and shook it at Gary—“what they’re not saying is that they were trying to shoot it when it jumped ‘em. And that name. The Terror.” He blew out a puff of air. “Stupid. You call something the “Terror,” you gonna be scared of it, no? I always just called it the “creature.”

“Wait,” Gary said. “What do you mean? Have you seen it?”

“Yep,” Pops said, poking his lower lip out and sticking his face closer to the engine. He nudged at something with his screwdriver, then tilted his hat back on his head and looked at Gary. “Well, just a quick look … a long time ago. Been keeping an eye out for him—it—ever since.”

Pops took a swig of his PBR. “Back then, I was still new to the business. Cocky.  Thought I really knew the Teche. Got turned around. Spent a couple of days going in circles. No food, except for one Baby Ruth. No fresh water. I was getting a little worried and then …”

“What happened? The Terror—I mean the Creature, did it …”

Pops nodded. “That first morning, I woke up and found a little heap of … something near my camp. It was a mix of all kinds of stuff: sticks, leaves ... all glued together with mud and this gooey yellow stuff.  And the stink.” Pops waved his hand in front of his nose. “It was like something took the Teche and all its rot, and wrung it into that little pile.

“When I looked around, I found another one. Then another. It was just a gut feeling, but I was pretty damn lost, so I followed them little piles. I still wasn’t sure I was going in the right direction, but … I could definitely feel something watching me.

 “The next night, I woke up in the wee hours. I knew something was there. The moon was out, and I looked over and saw this thing. It walked on two legs, but I’m telling you, Boo, it wasn’t no person. It was tall, you know, with slick skin, like a frog. Black or dark green. And it stunk just like them little piles.”

Gary leaned forward. “Yeah. Those hunters said the thing smelled real bad.”

“I’d set my hat and my Baby Ruth a few feet away from where I was sleeping. And while I’m watching, the thing squats down, snatches the candy bar, quick as you like. Sniffs it. Then holds up my hat and smells it too. Then—and I swear on a stack of Bibles—it turns and looks at me. I can’t see much but the eyes. They were yellow, with an up-and-down slit, like a lizard.”

But it wasn’t like … like some animal looking at you. This thing, its eyes … they were smart. And it felt like”—Pops stared off across the yard—“like it was inside my head or something, looking straight in on me, you know?” Gary didn’t know, but it gave him the shivers anyway.

Pops finished off his beer and burped. “Next morning, I kept following them little piles, and I was out by the afternoon.”

“The Creature,” Gary whispered. “It saved you.”

 “Yep,” Pops said, taking off his hat and scratching his balding head. “Don’t know why, but it did.”

After that, looking for The Teche Terror became a shared quest for both of them. They never actually saw the creature, but for Gary, the search came to define his relationship with his grandfather.

* * *

Gary took off the brown, striped cap and fanned his face. It still smelled like Pops, like old sweat and engine oil. Kids around the neighborhood had been giving him grief about it, but he didn’t care. The same way he didn’t care that the Baby Ruth in his shirt pocket would be melted in its wrapper by now.

With the funeral over and done, it felt like life was just moving on without Pops. Like nothing had changed. But everything had changed for Gary. He felt like he was falling--and still waiting to land.

He had been spending his afternoons with his grandfather since he was a little kid— “knee high to a puddle duck,” Pops would say. He’d either walk over straight after school or, during summer vacation, drop in after lunch and stay until bedtime. Nobody at Gary’s house ever seemed to care either way. 

A scream split the humid morning air. A woman. High and shrill—a real horror movie scream—coming from a cypress grove about two hundred yards west of him. Gary got to his feet, waved away a cloud of gnats, and peered out toward where the sound had come from. Red foxes lived around the Teche. He knew their calls could sound a lot like a human scream. 

Then another scream erupted from the same area.

He glanced back at the little pile of mud and sticks, then stared off into the gloom of the Teche. He licked his lips, then stepped off the tracks onto boggy ground that shortly became a soup of mud and stagnant water and saw grass. He moved quickly, but carefully. He had learned from Pops long ago that in the swamp, water and land shared an uneasy coexistence. What appeared to be dry ground could, with a few more strides, have you in water over your head. And where there was water in these swamps, there were most likely gators.

Over the years, Pops had instilled in Gary a healthy respect for alligators. They were faster than you thought, even on land. And once they had their jaws around you … well, you could just forget about it.

When he finally reached the grove, sneakers sopping, he found a group of more than twenty people, some sitting, some standing together in a boggy clearing. Bulging cypress trunks surrounded them, continuing a dozen yards until solid ground gave way to the placid, algae-covered waters of a small bayou.

All eyes were on something happening in front of them, so they didn’t notice as Gary walked closer, then stopped, and stumbled backward in shock. All the attention, his included, centered on two figures in a small clearing. One a pretty, young woman in a yellow dress. The other figure was a tall … creature. Over six feet and slender, its sleek black skin wet and glistening in the shade of the cypress. The creature carried the woman in outstretched arms that ended in webbed talons. Its long feet widened at the toes, like flippers.

Shock and fear—tinged with elation—mingled and surged in Gary’s brain. Emotions powerful enough to briefly override his rational thinking. Over the years, he had never actually seen the creature, but the thing he was looking at right now resembled exactly what he had always imagined The Terror looked like. Imagination aided, of course, by posters for monster movies like Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Only seconds passed before Gary understood what he was seeing. He inched closer until he stood, still unnoticed, only a dozen feet from the “creature” and its captive. Bright lights on tall stands loomed over the scene. Electrical cables snaked over and around cypress knees, some as high as a foot above the ground. Generators rumbled somewhere off in the trees. A bored-looking guy stood nearby holding a long pole with a microphone over the actors. Nearest the action, a short, stocky man wearing a Panama hat squatted, framing the scene with both hands. His camp chair was stenciled: “GILL-GAMESH: the motion picture” and “DIRECTOR.” In front of him, a skinny guy peered through a bulky camera aimed at the actors. 

“No, Steve,” the director said, “you have to keep your arms from shaking like that. Remember, you’re supposed to be a powerful amphibious creature, a thing out of time and place. She should weigh nothing to you.”

A voice, muffled by the latex mask, came from the creature. “Yeah, that’d be great, Bruce… if I was really this thing … and I wasn’t boiling in a rubber suit … and if Darla here wasn’t such a porker.”

“What?” the actress said. She reached up and slapped at the creature. He staggered, arms shifting, then dropped her. She hit the ground with a squelching sound, her skirt hitching up. She jerked it down over her pale legs, hair and face and dress splattered with mud. “Goddamit, Steve,” she shouted up at the creature.

Bruce hung his head, then shouted, “Okay, everybody take fifteen. Darla, you get yourself cleaned up, honey, and we’ll try again.”

Darla shook her head and muttered under her breath. A crewmember walked over with a tiny, black poodle on a leash. The dog yipped at Darla. She scooped it up and stalked toward three small trailers parked near the road. The crew began milling around, lighting up cigarettes and inspecting the lights and cables.

As he took in the activity, Gary noticed a familiar figure standing among the crew—a tall, hulking Cajun man with an eyepatch. An outrageously long knife hung at his belt, and a rifle was slung over his shoulder. But the thing that caught Gary’s eye—and turned his stomach—were the miniature trophies strung on a thong around the man’s neck. An assortment of bleached bones and animal parts. Feet and flippers and paws, blackened and shriveled. There was even the skull of a baby nutria, the leather thong running right through the eyeholes.

Gator Arceneaux.

Ever since news of the Teche Terror, there’d been a boom in guides leading hunters and thrill seekers looking for the creature, pushing deeper and deeper into the swamps around Bayou Teche. In the last few years, Pops had spoken out against this trend, arguing to anyone who would listen that the creature should be left alone, and definitely not hunted. 

 Arceneaux, the most outrageous and successful of the bunch, ran counter to everything Pops believed in. He specialized in a particular kind of wanton killing that appealed to lowlife hunters. He was best known for his so-called “Terror Tours,” in which he led gullible tourists out to get a glimpse of the fish man. He even offered cash rewards to anyone who brought him information about sightings.

Gator. A ridiculous name, but the trapper had stuck with it all these years. Claimed it got him more business than using his given name, Gilbert. He had even concocted some story about losing his eye in an epic tussle with a gator.

It had been less than a year ago, when Gary and Pops had run into Arceneaux. It was a Saturday morning in late September, the air smelling of jasmine and a train horn blaring somewhere off in the distance. They were in Franklin picking up a new carburetor for the outboard motor. Gary heard Arceneaux before they saw him. He and another guide were standing a dozen yards down the sidewalk, talking and laughing. 

This was before the first stroke, but bad knees and arthritic hips still kept Pops from moving too fast. Gary tried to hurry him away, but before they got far, Arceneaux’s voice found them. “Ho there, Robicheaux!” He dragged out Pops’ last name, elongating each syllable. People on the sidewalk stopped and were watching now, whispering.

Pops paused. “Come on,” Gary whispered. “Just ignore him.” He and Pops might joke about the stupid name the trapper had taken on, but Gary knew that you didn’t tangle with him if you didn’t have to. When they started walking again, Arceneaux shouted, “Yeah, keep walking, you old fool!”

He slapped the side of a public mailbox, and it rang out with a metallic twang! Gary flinched at the sound. “Go on now,” he brayed. “Hide in your house. Let the real men take care of The Terror.”  When Gary glanced back, Arceneaux was twirling his index finger near his head and grinning at the other guide.

Pops pulled away. Gary watched as he straightened his bent frame and strode down the sidewalk. Gary knew how much effort that took. Pops stopped in front of Arceneaux and looked up at the taller, younger man. “You got something to say to me?”

Arceneaux grinned. “Done said it, old man. You a joke. You know that, yeah? Your own fault. All your talk about protecting that thing. ‘Leave it alone,’ you say.”

“You know your problem, Gilbert?” Pops said. “You got no respect.”

“For you?” Arceneaux sneered. “No, old man --”

Pops blew out a breath, exasperated. “Not me. For the Teche. You just kill for the sake of killing. What you gonna do when that thing you’re huntin’ comes for you?”

Arceneaux grunted. “Let it come. I’ll be ready. I ain’t scared like some.”

“Shut up,” Gary said, standing beside Pops now. “He’s not scared.” 

Arceneaux stepped forward and squeezed Gary’s chin. Gary tried to pull away, but the grip tightened. “Best keep your mouth shut, boy. Unless you ready to back it up.” Arceneaux’s long nails dug into Gary’s cheek; his fingers smelled of fish guts. “Ain’t too little to get your ass whipped.”

Pops reached out and grabbed the pinky on Arceneaux’s free hand and bent it back. The tall man’s eyes went round, his mouth gaping. Pops kept pushing. Arceneaux grunted and let go of Gary’s chin. He glared down at Pops, but didn’t say anything. Probably didn’t want to draw any more attention to the fact that an old man had gotten the best of him.

Pops nudged Gary’s arm. As they walked away, he said, “Men like that, they just wanna burn the whole world down. They just don’t care.” He glanced at Gary. “One day I’ll be gone, Boo, and it’ll be up to you. You’ll have to decide how to deal with their kind.”

From across the movie set, Arceneaux caught Gary’s eye and ambled over. He grinned, revealing oversized incisors. “I know you. You’re old man Robicheaux’s grandson.” He ran the long yellow nail of his index finger over the skull of the nutria hanging from his neck. It made a scritching sound. “Too bad he took to shooting off his mouth before he croaked.” 

Gary bit back a response. He wasn’t going to discuss Pops with this lowlife. Looking Arceneaux in the eye, he said, “You still running those stupid Terror Tours?”

Arceneaux cackled. “You’re just sour cause you and your grandpappy never turned up anything.”

“Neither have you.”

 Arceneaux grunted and gave a sly grin. “Yeah, but my luck’s turning. You heard the talk around town. All of us looking for it—we flushed it out. I’m real close. I can feel it.” He touched the shrunken trophies on his necklace like Petit Gran used to finger her rosary beads. “And when I do find it, I’m gonna kill it, gut it, and mount it. And that, my little friend, will make me. I’ll have news folks from all over down here in St. Mary Parish wanting to talk to me. Gonna be big, big business for ole Gator. You wait, they might gonna give me my own television program.”

Just then, a man with a crew cut and horn-rimmed glasses stepped up to Gary. His round face was red and shiny with sweat, his short-sleeved shirt soaked at the armpits. “Hey,” he said, “you can’t be here. Go on, scram.” He began leading Gary in the direction of the railroad tracks.

 “But …” Gary said. 

Before they got far, someone yelled, and Gary heard the buzz of voices. He and the man both turned to see the creature—Steve—stumbling back from a big cypress holding one hand to his forehead. “Christ,” he shouted, his voice high and piercing, almost a shriek. “My head.” Using both hands, he began tugging at the back of his neck. 

“No, no! Steve—don’t,” Bruce said. “We’ll lose another hour in makeup if you take it off. We’re already a day behind …” His shoulders slumped when he saw the mask hanging limply from Steve’s hand.

The actor had his other hand to his forehead again, his blonde hair sweaty and standing up all over his head. “Screw that!” He was panting. “I keep tripping over these flippers, and I can’t see a damn thing with that stupid mask on.” He rubbed at his head. “I think I might have a concussion.”

“Go on,” Bruce said, sounding defeated. “Crank the AC down in your trailer and let Joe take a look at your head. And go ahead and try one of the other Gil-Gamesh suits the costume guy gave us. Maybe one of them will work better.” He turned, searching the half dozen men and women moving around the clearing. His eyes lit on the man still clutching Gary’s arm.

“There you are, Joe,” he said, then noticed Gary. “What’s going on?”

Joe shook his head. “Nothing. Just some kid who snuck onto the set.”

Bruce took off his hat and wiped his sweaty brow with the back of his hand. “Okay. Get rid of him and go take a look at Steve’s head.” He scoffed. “Actors.” 

He started to turn around, then stopped. “Hold on a second.” He gave Gary a studied look. “How’d you like a job? No pay,” he followed up quickly. “But you get to hang around and see how a movie is made.” He glanced back at a commotion in the clearing. Steve had tripped and was on his back, cursing and yelling something about suing the film company.  “And, uh … I need you to start now.”

Gill-Gamesh? The movie was clearly a knockoff of Creature from the Black Lagoon. And if Creature had been a B movie, then this one was destined to be a C. But Gary didn’t care if this was an F movie. If the Terror was nearby, he needed to be here.

He owed that much to Pops.

“I’ll take the job,” Gary said. “What do I do?”

 “You saw what happened over there,” Bruce said. “Steve’s having trouble seeing through the eye holes in that mask.” He scowled. “The costume designer covered them in plastic too dark to see through. You’re going to get him into one of the optional creature suits. Then make sure he stays happy; that he gets around without running into stuff and hurting himself. And without taking that damn mask off. Got it?”

The crack of a gunshot rang through the clearing. Then another. Gary turned to see Arceneaux, just a dozen yards away, rifle aimed at something out in the swamp. Members of the crew stared at him, eyes wide.

“Jesus Christ, man!” Bruce shouted. “Are you nuts?”

Ignoring the director, Arceneaux gave Gary a crazed grin. “I told you. Told you my luck was turning.” Then, slinging his rifle over his shoulder, he ran off into the trees toward the road.

“Fucking lunatic,” Bruce said, putting his hand to his head. “Like I need more trouble. I hired him to wrangle alligators, but all he’s done is spook the crew. Talking about some fish man that supposedly lives out here. He’s got the crew jumping at shadows. I mean, we’re shooting a movie about a goddam fish creature.” He massaged his temples. “I just pray to god he doesn’t shoot Steve while he’s in the costume.” 

Thunder rumbled in the distance. Dark clouds were stacking over the Gulf in the south, and Gary could smell the rain in the air. “Jesus,” Bruce muttered, looking up at the sky. 

Just then, a piercing shriek came from the trailers. A male voice. Bruce closed his eyes. “Fucking Steve. What now?” 

He waved Gary off. “Go on, kid. See what happened. But just be sure and have Gill-Gamesh on the set, happy and with his mask on in ten. If we hurry, we might get this scene done before the rain.”

Gary walked toward the trailers, passing wary-eyed crewmembers whispering and pointing into the trees. There was no sign of Arceneaux, but a few seconds later, another rifle shot. Was it just the hunter’s wishful thinking, or had he actually seen the creature?

A few months before the first stroke, Gary and Pops had been out in the jon boat, checking out the latest sighting of the creature. Pops killed the outboard, and they floated silently among the swollen trunks of water tupelos, Spanish moss dangling from the branches.

Not for the first time, Gary asked Pops why he was still so determined to find the creature, what he was going to do if he found it. “For some reason, that thing decided to help me,” Pops had said. “Forty-some-odd years later and I still dream about those eyes on me … inside me.” He trailed a finger in the brown water of the Teche. 

“But it’s more than that,” he said, gazing out at the swamp. “I spent my whole life trying to teach folks to love the Teche, to respect it.” He shook his head. “I’m not saying this thing’s not dangerous. It is.” He looked at Gary. “You ever see it, you run, hear?”

He took his hand from the water and wiped it on his pants. “Men like Arceneaux get the chance, they’ll just kill it. I can’t sit by and let that happen. Even if … whatever it is didn’t help me … it’s something you oughta protect, not destroy.”

He put his hand on the back of Gary’s neck and squeezed. “What am I going to do if I find the creature?” He shrugged. “I’m an old man. Probably losing what’s left of my mind, but I have this notion that I can maybe communicate with it. Warn it about Arceneaux and the others like him.” Gary’s expression must have given him away because Pops just grinned and said: “Yeah, I know. Your old Pops is probably touched in the head, but you’ll stick with me, won’t you, Boo?”

* * *

Steve’s trailer sat a good seventy yards from the set, right at the edge of the grove. Away from the chatter of the crew, the sounds of the swamp quickly took over: crickets, frogs, and the occasional squawk of a cormorant. Halfway there, Gary heard a splash and saw the gray-green tail of an alligator disappear into the bayou. He shook his head. It was a wonder Darla’s little dog hadn’t been gobbled up already.

He knocked on the door of the trailer. His finger, where he’d touched the little mound, still tingled. He rubbed it against his jeans and knocked again; no response. He pushed the door open a crack and said, “Hey …Steve. I’m—my name is Gary. Bruce hired me to help you get around the set. Steve?”

He went inside. The curtains were open, but the gloom brought by the coming storm left the trailer filled with shadows. He took a few steps. Yellow eyes glinted at him in the low light. As he backpedaled, he fumbled for the light switch. 

Three creature suits dangled from a wheeled rack in the corner of the trailer. The extras Bruce had mentioned. They were like the one Steve had been wearing, except for the masks. The one in front had bigger eye holes and vertical slits for nostrils. Gary shook his head, embarrassed for himself, and looked around. There were clothes on the floor and dishes stacked in the sink. 

But no Steve.

Outside, Gary walked around the trailer calling the actor’s name. Rain began to fall, hard now. The storm had arrived, dropping buckets. In a few seconds, he was soaked. He moved out further into the trees, his eyes searching the dense undergrowth. Then he saw him, about twenty yards away. Tall and sleek—unmistakable—Steve in the monster suit. But moving with a limp. 

Thunder boomed and Gary, on edge now, flinched at the sound. He called out, “Hey, Steve, I’m--” He tripped on something and landed sprawling on the boggy ground. When he reached out, his fingers touched still-warm flesh. He scrambled to his feet.

Steve was still wearing the Gil-Gamesh costume, but without the mask. Something had shredded the suit from his chest to his throat, leaving a mangled mess of blood and torn flesh. Something pale showed inside the wound. Maybe his esophagus … or his spine. Blood coated his chest and arms, and stained the ground below. And there was something else, a film of off-yellow slime, thick and viscous, covering most of Steve’s body. Gary’s stomach heaved, and he vomited up his breakfast.

He wiped his mouth with the back of one trembling hand. The mound on the tracks, Arceneaux’s sighting … and now this. It had to be the Terror. Gary’s heart hammered in his ears. Before, Pops had always been on the search with him, a reassuring presence. But his grandfather was gone; Gary was alone now. In his panic, he had trouble remembering why in hell he’d wanted to find this thing. He glanced back over at the body and felt his stomach flip again. He could end up like … that.

Frantic, he got up, prepared to run back toward the set, to get as far away as fast as he could. Then he remembered the figure in the suit. Wait—if Steve was dead … who was in the Gill-Gamesh costume?

He turned. The figure in the suit stood only a few feet away, hunched and unsteady on its feet. “Hey,” Gary said. “Are you—are you Steve’s backup or something …” His voice shook, and he pointed at the body.  “Look, Steve. He’s—he’s dead. Something attacked him. We’ve got to get help or warn everybody--”

He stopped, studying the figure. The Gil-Gamesh mask was similar to the one he’d seen in the trailer. It had the flat nose and slit-like nostrils, but also delicate-looking gills on either side of the nose. Then he noticed that there were no colored lenses covering the eye holes.

Because they weren’t eye holes.

Gary smelled it then. Dank and decaying. A hint of underlying brine. Yellow-green eyes—slit-pupiled lizard eyes—peered at him, pinning him where he stood. A transparent membrane slid down and then up over them.

The Terror. Pops’ creature. The one they’d been hunting for years. Standing in front of him.

Before he could backpedal away, the creature grabbed him by both arms and dragged him closer. It lifted him high enough that his feet dangled above the ground, their eyes only inches apart. 

The smell was all around him now. A thick, reeking putrescence. His stomach contracted, and he gagged.

The creature let go of him and reared back with one arm. Gary’s eyes closed involuntarily, waiting for the killing blow. Instead, the creature paused. It snatched Pops’ cap off his head. When Gary opened his eyes, it was holding the cap close to its nostrils, its yellow-green eyes never leaving his. At first, Gary was terrified, then mesmerized, lost in the thing’s pupils, black as the night sky in the Teche.

Probably no more than twenty seconds passed, but in that time Gary understood. How, he couldn’t say. The thoughts just appeared there in his head, incidents—like beads on a string. The creature driven further and further from its home by hunters. Then pain when one of Arceneaux’s earlier shots connected, injuring it. The hunter closing in, but losing the trail. The killing of Steve. No premeditation, simply a primal reaction. Then Gary, or … not Gary, but the Baby Ruth in his pocket. And the cap. The smell of Pops. A connection made long ago. The creature remembering him after all these years. 

Those memories blossomed into images in Gary’s head, a mysterious merging of the creature and Pops. The mental link had remained long after their first meeting. 

He saw Arthur Robicheaux as a young man, lost in the swamps, then in later years with and without Gary. But he was also in Pops’ thoughts: experiencing first-hand his grandfather’s love for the Teche—and for this grandson. A two-way connection with the creature—now expanded to include Gary. It was the closest he had felt to Pops since those last moments in the hospital, his grandfather squeezing his hand and mouthing the words: Love you … yeah.

The creature released him, and Gary stumbled backward, crying and drunk with the visions of Pops. Grief and remembered happiness—his life with his grandfather—mingled with the thoughts of an alien, intelligent mind. His tears joined the rain streaming down his face, the surrounding trees lost in a gray shroud.

Pops had taught him that thousands of years ago, the Mississippi River ran where Bayou Teche was now. Since that time, the big river’s course had changed, but what forms of life might have been left behind?

Gary stared down at his trembling hands. His finger, the same one that had been tingling, now burned.

The yellow goo. Maybe it contained some chemical, like those magic mushrooms that people sometimes hunted for in the swamp. The ones that gave you visions. What if the goo let the creature get inside your head? Pops said he had touched the stuff when he saw the creature years before …

Steve’s mangled body lay feet away, a blunt reminder that the creature would do what it had to to survive. Even injured, it was clearly dangerous.

Gary could escape; he thought the creature would allow it, or he could do something, do what Pops couldn’t do now. He looked up, locking eyes with the creature, not knowing if it would understand. It stood motionless for a few seconds, then handed Pops’ cap back to Gary.

Minutes later, they were slowly walking west, deeper into the swamp, the thunderstorm still raging. Gary felt a little woozy and--if he was honest--not quite himself. Maybe because he had just been inside the head of a swamp creature?

They’d have to pass near the set, but hopefully the rain would help hide them. His sneakers squelched into the now-saturated ground, an occasional lightning flash lighting up the blue-black skies. The creature limped along, leaning on him, the webbed, taloned hand pressing down on his shoulder. So much like when he and Pops made their walks through the neighborhood near the end. 

Except, he kept reminding himself, this was not Pops. No matter how smart it seemed, the creature was not human. But—and Gary could not ignore this—it held a precious piece of Gary’s grandfather in its alien mind. 

Just when he thought they might be able to pass unnoticed, Darla’s poodle appeared in the downpour. The little dog, soaked and shivering, paused and sniffed the air. It let out a low growl.

“It’s okay, fella,” Gary whispered. “Nothing to--”

The dog erupted with a barrage of high-pitched barks. The grip on Gary’s shoulder tightened. 

Bruce and the other crew members were sheltering under a big tent. He saw Gary and called out, “Hey, kid. Forget about it. We can’t do anything in this storm.” 

Arceneaux was standing outside the tent, oblivious to the rain, looking on suspiciously. As rain roiled the waters of the bayou just a few feet away, Gary scrambled to come up with a new plan. He could feel the tension in the creature’s touch. He had no idea what might set it off, trigger its fight-o-flight reflexes. He wanted to help it, but he also didn’t want anyone else to get hurt. Bruce was distracted now, talking to the cameraman. But Arceneaux’s eyes never left Gary and his companion.

The dog kept barking, spinning and dancing a few feet in front of them. If they got too close, someone would notice the stench, recognize that this was not a man in a costume.

Abruptly, Arceneaux separated himself from the crew and strode toward them, his rifle resting in the crook of his arm. He stopped a dozen feet from Gary and the creature, and raised his nose in the air like some bloodhound on the trail. He sniffed.

“Notice your friend there is limping. He hurt?” Arceneaux sampled the damp air again and narrowed his eyes. He gestured with his rifle. “Step away now. Slow and easy.”

“What now?” Bruce said, rain dripping from the brim of his Panama hat.

Arceneaux nodded toward the creature. “That’s The Teche Terror. Standing right there.”

“Oh, come on,” Bruce said. He stepped closer. “Steve, will you say something so this idiot will shut up about this?”

Gary’s shoulder ached where the taloned hand dug into his shoulder. The creature was practically vibrating with energy.

Bruce stumbled backward, eyes wide, his nose turned up. “God … what?”

Arceneaux took a step forward. “I said back away from it, boy.”

Gary surprised himself by moving in front of the creature. It shifted its grip, but didn’t take its hand from his shoulder. What exactly was it that was touching him? This alien, possibly ancient thing leaning on him.

It wasn’t important. The creature had been in Gary’s head—or he had been in its head. He wasn’t sure which, and it didn’t matter to him. This bright piece of Pops resided somewhere inside it. And it had shared it with Gary.

He couldn’t let Arceneaux kill it.

“It’s not dangerous,” he said.

Arceneaux raised an eyebrow. “So, where’s Steve then?”

He glared at Arceneaux. “What would you do if somebody was trying to kill you?”

Arceneaux raised the rifle. “Don’t matter. It’s an animal—a damn weird, dangerous animal.” He grinned. “And after I kill it, ole Gator is gonna be famous. Now step away.”

“Do what he says, kid,” Bruce said. The crewmembers under the tarp were murmuring now. They saw Arceneaux pointing the gun at Gary. Someone yelled, “Who’s in the suit? Where’s Steve?”

Arceneaux said, “Move—now!”

At that moment, the grip on Gary’s shoulder relaxed. The creature went absolutely still, and Gary was suddenly back in its head. He felt it searching, tendrils of intention probing the area for something … 

The smell had worked its way up inside Gary’s nostrils, filling his head with the essence of the Teche. The dog was going crazy. People yelling and pointing, tripping over each other to get a clear view. Every nerve in his body sang.

 Then out of the corner of his eye, he detected movement from the bank of the bayou. A sinuous, gray-green form burst from the water. The gator roared, a low, throaty sound that scraped at the back of Gary’s skull. Screams came from under the tent as people scattered. There were crew members closer, but the alligator ignored them, charging past them and straight at Arceneaux.

The hunter squeezed off a shot, but missed. He managed to avoid the gator’s first lunge, dancing backward with surprising agility. The gator, probably fifteen feet long, snapped its jaws in frustration. Arceneaux brought the rifle to his shoulder, shot again. The bullet found the gator, but it kept coming, backing him against the bole of a cypress. 

The cameraman grabbed a tree branch and moved toward Arceneaux. Gary stepped forward to help, but the creature’s grip on his shoulder intensified. Two more gators erupted from the bayou, going straight for the hunter. 

Arceneaux’s eyes went wide when he saw them. Backpedaling, he tripped over a cypress knee and went down. One of the gators seized his leg. He screamed, clubbing at it with the butt of his rifle, blood spreading across his pant leg.  The two other gators moved in. Arceneaux’s screams joined those of the onlookers. He dropped the rifle. The gators dragged him, still kicking, toward the bayou. 

Gary’s last image of Arceneaux was of the hunter being pulled into the water, clawing at the soggy bank, his last scream cut short as the biggest gator rolled him under the surface.

Disbelieving voices of the crew filled the air; some were sobbing. Gary’s pulse throbbed in his neck. When he finally pulled his eyes away from the bayou, he realized that the creature was no longer standing beside him. He searched the area and saw it limping away into the swamp.

The first emotion he felt was relief, quickly followed by heartache—unexpected, but intense. The word “no” formed on his lips. For the last two weeks there had been a Pops-shaped hole in his life, but when he’d been linked to the creature’s mind, it was almost like his grandfather was back with him again.

He tried to be sensible about it. The creature had killed an innocent man. Maybe Arceneaux deserved what had happened to him, but poor Steve had been no threat at all, just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Then Gary noticed it; he put his hand to his head. The cap—Pops’ cap. It was gone. He squinted into the distance. The creature was disappearing into the trees, but Gary could just make it out—the striped cap, clutched in its taloned hand.

In the years that followed, those images of Pops gleaned from the creature, spanning decades of his life, didn’t fade. They remained in Gary’s mind, vivid beyond any fuzzy human memories. They couldn’t replace his grandfather, but over his long life he would return to them again and again.

The smell of the creature—that ripe, verdant odor of the swamp—also never quite left Gary. It lingered in his nostrils until the day he died. A reminder of the Teche even when he wasn’t working as a guide, carrying on Pops’ work. People would marvel that he seemed to know exactly where to find the best spots with the most animals. He would just shrug and credit it all to Pops.

But that wasn’t entirely true.

Alone in his bed at night, he would often wonder if others could smell the Teche on him, if that was why he never married, never could get close to anyone.

Then his index finger would tingle and burn, and he would know that wasn’t the reason at all.