Dead Men (and Women) Walking Read online

  The lake was, from legends and lore and probably a little bit of urban myth, a place of splendor; grace on Earth; beauty in all its ways. The lake was a crystal blue with blossoming flowers all around it. Sycamore and oak trees stood tall and erect as if they were guarding some hidden treasure. The lake was full of fish. Fish that I guess were bream, bass and probably some of those ugly catfish. I don't know if they had names for the fish back in those days. It doesn't really matter anyway---fish are fish, and if you can catch 'em, be it with a pole and a line or by hand, then it was some good eating. That is, if they are cooked properly.

  I'm babbling, aren't I? I'm sorry. I do that from time to time.

  Well, they say when the sun would set in the evenings its rays would glisten on the surface of the lake. It would look like the sun was sinking right into the water, like one of those greeting cards you could find in those visitors' stations at the borders of every state in the country.

  Even with the lake's beauty and its surrounding woods the main attraction at Lake Coachi was a wishing well. The well was built in 1798, by Samual Coachi. That's where the lake got its name from, as if you couldn't figure that out for yourselves. He built it for his daughter, the lovely Miss Catherine. It was a red clay brick well that stood four feet tall and was easily four feet wide. A wood frame had been built with a pulley attached to the top to make retrieving well from the water easy. A hand crank had been installed on the frame with a rope attached to it. The rope was strung through the pulley's base and had a bucket attached to it. Engraved into the wood at the top of the well were the words "Miss Catherine's Well."

  People came from miles around to see the lake and its well. Often times they would toss coins in the well and make wishes as if some genie was going to pop out and grant them what they wanted. But, from what I understand, the majority of the wishes did come true, though most of the wishes back then were unlike the wishes of today. I'm sure there were no huge house wishes or wishes for a BMW or even a million smackeroos.

  Some people say that old man Coachi somehow or another had the well dug so it actually connected to the lake.

  "That would mean that the water in the well came from the lake," Joey Hilliard once said. If that were the case I wonder if they ever hauled up a fish or two when they pulled that pail up from the well? I don't know but I've always wondered about that---pull up some water for your lady friend and give her a fish dinner in the process.

  The legend tells it that young Miss Catherine and her lover were down at the lake one evening and it seems they got into a little spat. The quarrel led to her slapping him. She turned and began to walk off, or so they say. Lover boy didn't seem to take a liking to that and pushed her to the ground where she hit her head on one of those pearl white rocks by the water's edge. It busted her skull wide open. Killed her dead. That's kind of redundant isn't it? Killed her dead. Yep, that's definitely redundant.

  Seeing his beloved on the ground, dead, with blood gushing from a wound he had given her caused the poor boy to panic. From what they say, he hauled her body to the wishing well and down she went. She probably hit the water with a big splash. Then again, maybe she didn't. Does it really matter?

  He ran. Damn near ran out of his leotards or pants or whatever they called the male's clothing back then.

  The town's people searched for them for a couple of days. They never found her. They never found him, either. They say that someone did find a letter that he had written telling what had happened, leaving out the part of him throwing her into the wishing well. Supposedly it was written in blood. His blood? Some people even say they found a trail of blood starting at the desk where the letter had been found that led to the door of the barn, which was swung wide open. A puddle of blood was on the ground at the entrance. Muddy footprints about the size of a young lady's were trailing away from the barn.

  Did she come back and get him?

  After the couple's disappearance---that's what they all called it, a DISAPPEARANCE---people stopped going to Lake Coachi. They said the water they baled out of the well was a rusty color, the color of mud and blood. The lake's water also started changing from crystal blue into a yucky brown color. Many of the fish died and floated to the top of the lake. They were all a faded red color, almost a blood red. The tall erect guard-like trees began to slump and fall. It was as if the lake and its surroundings had died along with Miss Catherine.

  Not too long after that people started to disappear. Some of them they dismissed because of circumstance. Like the colored slave who escaped his master and ran into the wooded area that surrounded the lake. They never found his master, who chased him into the woods. Well, that's not totally correct---they did find an eyeball, tendons still attached. The townspeople hung the slave right there at the lake, saying he had murdered his master. It's been said that the slave pleaded with the angry mob, telling them a woman did it.

  Two teenage boys disappeared after beating up another boy that was half their size. Police found a bloody shirt that belonged to one of the boys and a shoe that belonged to the other one. His foot was still in the shoe.

  In 1908 an entire family disappeared on a picnic outing. Six people, gone. No trace of 'em anywhere. After that family disappeared they closed the lake off completely. Long wooden fences, not too unlike the privacy fences you see around some folks' yards, were built for the entire two-mile length of the lake. There was only one entrance to the lake, and that was through the gate they had also built.

  Still, in 1942 a man wanted for robbery disappeared in what's now known as Coachi Swamp. "At least we found the money," one police official was quoted as saying. What a compassionate bastard he was.

  In 1957 and again in '59 people disappeared when they went into the swamp through its lone gate---a thirty footer that had pretty much began to rot away by that time. The gate was on a dirt road that would take you closer into Sumter, some twenty-five miles away. They tore up that road and paved a new way into town.

  The last known disappearance was in 1974. The girl was in her late teens. I think her name was Missy. She was pregnant and didn't want the kid. They found her body, but it was mangled awful bad. Her stomach had been completely ripped out. She didn't have to worry about the baby anymore.

  I was 10 then. I thought she had been torn asunder by some wild dogs or something like that. The police never would speculate on what happened to her. I didn't believe in the curse of Coachi Swamp, even though since the first death at the lake over 190 years previous, 67 people in all had disappeared or died there.

  I'm much older now. Not much wiser, but I know the curse is real. The bogey man does exist. And I'm not some crazy truck driver who's had a little too much to drink. I didn't even drink that day. I passed the Breathalyzer and the walk-the-white-line-boy test. It wasn't even a white line---it was yellow.

  I was 27 when it happened. I was not a boy, and sure as the world is round, I was not drunk.

  All I know is what I've been told. And, of course, what I saw. What I saw is what happened to Buster Lennon on that cold December day just before Christmas back in 1991.

  Babbling again, aren't I? That's just like me.

  Buster picked me up on the morning of the 13th. It was a Friday. Friday the 13th. Hot damn, I should have known something then. Why weren't we at work, anyway?

  As I said earlier it was a cold morning---bitter cold. Buster was dressed in army fatigues with a cap on his head that proudly displayed Dale Earnhardt, The Intimidator, and a bright red 5 in the center of it. At the bottom of the hat was the years Earnhardt had won the NASCAR championship: '80, '86, '87, '90, '91.

  I thought it kind of strange though, that he was wearing tennis shoes and not his hiking boots or his galoshes that he wears when we would go fishing out in Wateree.

  "We're going huntin'," Buster told me. "I think I know where the well is."

  "The well?" I asked. I felt my words choking in my throat. I know I didn't hear him right. I thought.

  "Yeah, Johnny. T
HE well. You know? The well that guy stuck that girl in some thousand years ago."

  "You mean Miss Catherine?"

  "Was that her name?" he asked as he looked up toward the sky. "What was his, do you know?"

  What was his name? I couldn't remember it for the life of me.

  We drove from my apartment in Bishopville to the outskirts of the swamp. About a 45-minute drive it was. We drove down the dirt road to the gate in his '77 Chevy pick-up truck. The truck couldn't go any further than the gate. The swamp's weeds and shrubbery had grown over the fence and gate that had been built in nineteen zero and eight. From there we were on foot. It was one hell of a trip to the water's edge---the shrubbery had overrun the entire length from the gate to the water.

  Wait. Wait. I'm getting a little ahead of myself here.

  "Look, Johnny," Buster yelled, excitedly. He was getting out of the truck and pointing to what looked like a rotted out fence post. The shrubs and overgrowth was now gray or brown, either from the winter's cold air or from years of just being dead. Or maybe even both. The only real green that we could see was the kudzu that was growing on the trees that were still alive---though barely.

  He pulled out a long machete from behind the seat of the truck. He walked over to the gate and carefully unsheathed the machete. He raised his arm high above his head. In a clean swipe of his arm, he brought the blade down on the greenery that was clinging to the gate's old fence post. It made a loud 'thud' as blade hit plant and wooden post. He continued to cut away at the plants on the gate until he had managed to clear away enough of them so he could get a hold of the gate.

  "Give me a hand, Johnny," he said as he dropped the machete to the ground. He grabbed a pair of work gloves out of one of his pockets and tossed them to me. "Put these on."

  "Buster, this is posted land," I said. "We could get into all sorts of trouble."

  "Ahh. . . come on," he countered. "Where's your sense of adventure, Johnny?"

  I left it back at my apartment, I thought to myself. I lost it the moment you mentioned the well.

  My hesitation was enough to get a look from Buster.

  "Just give me a hand," he said. He sounded very agitated.

  I pulled on the work gloves and together we pulled on the gate. At first we couldn't get it to move, but after Buster had cut away some hidden vines we were able to pull it free. The gate dragged on the ground as we pulled on it. There was no way we would be able to put it back in place on the way out.

  As I pulled my work gloves off and stuffed them into my back pocket Buster went back to work with his machete. He was beginning to clear a path with amazing quickness.

  "Buster," I said as he hacked at the dead plants. "Buster? I don't like this. We shouldn't be here."

  By the time I was able to get the words out of my mouth Buster was too far from me to hear what I was saying. Not that it would have really mattered anyway. He was hacking away at the plants, clearing a path big enough for three people to walk side by side through and still have a little room on both sides of the end people. He looked like he was running as he swung the machete down, back and forth. The Mad Machete Man from Bishopville whacking at the plants with absolutely no mercy. All he had to do was laugh and he really would have seemed maniacal.

  "Come on, John," he yelled back. His voice was faint.

  That's when I realized I had gotten back in the truck and closed my door shut. For a moment I wasn't really sure I had ever gotten out, much less helped Buster move the gate.

  "Aaah. . . shee-it!" Buster yelled.

  I had gotten out of the truck and had been headed toward the path when I heard Buster's scream. I almost dropped a load in my undies when I heard that scream. I froze. I was scared.

  "Bu. . . Buster?" I asked, quietly. I walked slowly through the area that Buster had cut with his machete. All the limbs that he had cut were dead and lying in his wake. Graying moss hung off of dead tree limbs; dead vines clung to the trees and hung off of foot thick branches from those slumping trees. Kudzu plants were all over the trees.

  Abraham. That was his name. Miss Catherine's lover's name was Abraham. Same as Lincoln and that guy in the Bible whose people were to be given to the Promised Land. Nice fellow that Abraham was.

  Babble. . . babble. . .

  "Buster?" I yelled as I began to run to find him.

  "What?" Buster's voice came back. I stopped running. Buster sounded irritated.

  "Where are you?" I called out, sheepishly. A shameful feeling it was at being scared of hearing him scream.

  "Over here."

  I walked, slowly at first then quickened my pace. I was trying to keep the fear of being in this dead swamp where 67 other people had met their demise from getting to me. I certainly didn't want to look like I was afraid to be there in front of Buster. The teasing would never end if he knew exactly how I felt about the place.

  Buster, as far as I could tell, wasn't afraid of anything. He always reminded me of that bulldog in those old Warner Brothers™ cartoons. He was the bulldog who wore the brown derby and the red sweater. What was his name? Butch?

  I was more like the little Chihuahua that seemed to always be bothering good ole, tough ole Butch.

  "What you doing, Butch?" the Chihuahua would ask as he bounded from side to side, dancing around Butch as he walked along the street. "You gonna pound some cat, huh, Butch? Can I go, too, huh, Butch?"

  "Ahh. . . Shut-up," the bulldog would always say right after he backhanded the Chihuahua across the room or the yard or even the street.

  "Yeah, yeah, sure Butch," the little Chihuahua would say then look toward the camera, as if he were real, and say, "That's Butch. He's my hero. He's not afraid of anything."

  "Buster? Buster? What you doing, Buster? Going to go see your girl, huh, Buster? Going down to the arcade, huh, Buster? Can I go too, huh, Buster?"

  Ka-pow. Ka-thump.

  "Ahh. . . shut-up."

  "Yeah. . . yeah, sure, Buster."

  I half walked, half ran to where Buster was standing. The Chihuahua was fresh in my mind. He was hacking away at a tall, bushy thicket. Kudzu dangled off of it, along with dead thistles and thorns and vines. There must have been over a hundred years worth of dead plants that made up that thicket.

  "What yah....what yah doing, Buster?" I asked, tentatively, and somewhat out of breath. The little Chihuahua was waiting to get the backhand.

  "I think I found it," he said. Again, he was excited.

  "Found it?"

  "Yeah, the well," he said flatly as he rolled his eyes at me. Sweat poured off of him.

  "The well?" I asked, dumbfounded.

  Buster looked at me with disgust on his face. "Damn it, man, what's wrong with you today?"

  "The curse, man," I said, immediately and without thinking. "We shouldn't be here." I felt like I was pleading with him.

  Buster threw his machete to the ground. I knew I had said the wrong thing. What was I supposed to say, anyway? I was scared.

  "Stay here," he said. He walked away and back up the path he had cut. I was actually glad he walked away. It was better then the ranting and raving he could have done.

  I sat on a rotting stump while I waited. A spider the size of a quarter crawled out of a hole at the bottom of the stump. He was a wood brown with black lines that traced his body. He was the perfect color for his surroundings. He stopped and turned in my direction as if he were looking at me. I guess he didn't like me sitting on his house. I brushed my foot at him and he scampered off under some leaves.

  It seemed like Buster was gone for a long while---too long. Eternity seemed to pass me by, but by my watch it had only been less than ten minutes. I jumped when he called my name.

  "Johnny?"

  "What?" I answered as I jumped from my seat on the stump.

  Buster laughed at the way he had startled me. "Why are you so nervous, man? We're all alone, Johnny. Ain't nobody here, 'cept you and me."

  This did nothing to comfort me.

  Bus
ter had two six packs of beer in his hand---Miller Lite, I believe they were. They had been in the back of the truck in an old blue cooler filled with ice. He pulled one of the beers off of the template and tossed it to me.

  "No, thanks," I said as I caught the can just shy of hitting me in the face. I set it down on my spider friend's house. Leave it for the spider, I thought. He might want a drink later.

  Buster rolled his eyes again. He pulled one of the beers off of the template for himself and opened it up. He took a few gulps and looked at me.

  "What?" he asked, disgustedly.

  "What?" I repeated. Here it comes, I thought.

  "What? What's your deal, Johnny?"

  "Buster, this place is cursed. I don't. . ."

  "Cursed?" Buster interrupted. "You're worried about a bunch of BS legends? They tell these stories to keep people out of this swamp---they're not real."

  "People have disappeared out here, Buster."

  Once again Buster interrupted me.

  "People disappear all the time, Johnny. The only difference is they've found a few bodies back here. Hell, have they really found any bodies or is that just some mumbo-jumbo they made up also? And all that bull crap about that woman---that Catherine chick---is just a stupid story."

  Buster picked up his machete and looked at me.

  "Are you going to help me or not?" he asked.

  Wow, I thought. He didn't go off near as bad as usual.

  "Yeah, sure, Buster," I said.

  That's Buster. He's my hero.

  Ka-pow. Ka-thump.

  Ahh. . . shut-up.

  I pulled the pair of work gloves out of the back pocket of my old blue jeans and put them on. I pulled the dead branches and thorns away as Buster cut them down. We must have worked a solid two hours before Buster's machete hit something other than plants.

  -Clank-

  The sound of steel hitting brick stopped us both. We looked at each other and then we started pulling branches in a fevered pace.

  I have to admit I was getting excited, myself, as we cleaned around the base of the well. We stood back and looked at what was left of the 200 year old well. It stood about waist high on me and was still in pretty good shape. It was a good four feet in diameter. The only thing that was missing was its wood frame that had held the pulley and crank. Other than that it looked as if all of the bricks were in place with very little deterioration.