Eternal Love

Tainted Waters

"Baby, this is our dream!" Mark grinned as they bounced along the dirt road in their dusty pickup.
"Just think - our own little cottage right on the bayou."

Allie smiled back, though she felt a trickle of apprehension as they pulled up to the creaky old house. Mark was right, this place was perfect - remote, romantic, surrounded by nature.

So why did those shadows under the porch look so menacing?

Allie shook off the thought as Mark led her inside. That night they cuddled on the porch, drinking wine and listening to the croaks and splashes from the nearby swamp. Their first night in their new home should have been idyllic. But neither slept well, stirred from uneasy dreams again and again by strange noises outside.

The next morning, an unnatural fog clung to the muddy water. And the once lazy crocodiles now swam in agitated circles near the banks. Strangest of all, the bayou was covered in an ominous blue-green algae that seemed to have appeared overnight.

"What in tarnation is that stuff?" Mark exclaimed, peering out from the porch. 

Allie shuddered. "It looks...unnatural. This place is starting to give me the creeps."

Mark forced a laugh. "Aw, you're just spooked 'cause this place is so isolated." But his eyes betrayed his own flicker of doubt.

Over the next week, a sense of dread settled over the remote cottage. The bayou churned and bubbled, choked with the strange algae as animals sickened and died. At night, an unnatural fog would roll in, blanketing the house in an icy chill.

Allie started having vivid nightmares, bolting upright and gasping for breath.

"There are...things in that fog," she stammered, wild-eyed.
"Faces floating outside, staring in at us..." 

Mark tried to soothe her. "You've just been stressed, baby. Once we settle in you'll feel right at home." But he too felt unnerved, as if they were interlopers somewhere they didn't belong.

The final straw came days later, when Allie saw a gnarled old man leering at her from across the mist-covered bayou before limping away into the fog. When she described his wizened features to the shopkeeper in town, the woman blanched. 

"That's old Claude. But he passed years ago!" Crossing herself, she leaned closer.
"Folks say this bayou is cursed, haunted by wraiths of the dead."

That night, neither slept, listening to the angry thrashing of the crocodiles outside. When the cold fog seeped under the door, Allie screamed as ghostly shapes drifted past the windows. At dawn, exhausted and trembling, they packed up the pickup, desperate to escape this cursed place.

As they lumbered down the dirt road away from the cottage, Allie took one last look in the rearview mirror.

She froze.

There in the bedroom window loomed a deathly pale face with sunken eyes. Its dead gaze bored into hers as it pressed a rotted hand against the glass.

Allie shrieked—and the pickup careened off the road, crashing into the swamp in a splintering crunch of metal and glass. Blood poured from her forehead as she kicked desperately against the dashboard pressing her into muddy water flooding the cab.

She had almost wriggled free when she felt long, scaly arms embrace her legs, dragging her into the black depths. Allie's screams gurgled into silence. 

Inside the cottage, the ghostly face in the window smiled, its empty eyes glowing red. It glided outside to where Mark flailed weakly in the bloody water. As it embraced him with spectral arms, he knew then the real curse of this place - the swamp did not haunt the souls.

The souls haunted the swamp, waiting for more victims to add to the deluge.