#rugaroo

Milo tried to shake his messy bangs out of his eyes, but didn’t do much but fling water on the books. He gave an annoyed huff and pushed them back from his face with a jerking, halted motion. Glancing at the books, he didn’t think they minded too much. He lifted his foot to move it out of the way of a compilation of Lovecraft as it crawled past the desk he was sitting at and then grimaced at the slimy trail of ink and glittering letters it left behind. He nudged one of the children’s books where he wanted to put his foot and smashed its covers down before it could try to bite him.

Most of them were chirping lightly in whatever dreams books dream, but he always noticed horror couldn’t sleep through a thunderstorm. They tended to swarm around his feet. He didn’t know if it was because they thought it was the perfect time for him to read them or if the lightning had them rattled.

Momentarily distracted by the books, he just barely caught the flicker of light between the cypress trees. His head snapped up and his grip tightened on the rusted knife. He watched as the light flared and died a few times. Finally, the orange glow steadied and a woman ran from behind the trees, leaping across the surface of the water as the storm began to lull.

Milo watched the spirit dance around a flowering branch of honeysuckles that had weathered the storm. She bowed to it, as if courting its favor. That’s all Milo would normally need to know before he curled deep into the hollow of the tree that had broken through the old library. Tonight, he could not wait for her to die in the dawning light.

He checked that his hair was tied back as much as could be reasonably hoped for and rubbed a handful of black powder onto his face. He stood and grabbed his woven moss cloak and threw it over his shoulders, pulling the hood low and pinning it in place to his hair. The floors protested his shifting of positions and then he leaned down and put a finger to his lips and shushed it. “Do you want to lose another librarian?” He whispered close to its rusted nails so he was sure it’d hear but the spirit would not.

Milo felt the library shudder and then he could hear nothing but the dreamy cheeps of the books as the storm broke from its drizzle. The storm still rumbled threateningly, so Milo moved downstairs quickly, muttering prayers in a nonsense language his parents had never taught him, but he was far too superstitious not to do anyway. He silently dipped his feet into the water, slithering in with no more a ripple than a raindrop.

He let just his black eyes settle above the water and then started moving towards the spirit at such a slow pace that she wouldn’t notice him there. He kept the knife in one hand and held out his other hand, palm open, so he could see where he was stepping under the water, easily leaping across gaps and crouching for the shallow swamp. He noticed an alligator making its way towards him and then realize he was there. It did such an abrupt turnabout to flee that the splashing drew the spirit’s attention.

Milo gritted his teeth under the water and breathed in a sharp intake of dank water in frustration. He let his crawl come to a standstill. If there was one thing his kind was good at, it was patience.

The spirit looked around herself, alarmed, for the better part of ten minutes. Unfortunately, Milo had failed to inherit many things from his parents. Spirits had only one night to live and Milo thought it was a personal affront that they’d spend half their lives looking around for anything dangerous at the slightest disturbance. He looked between the spirit and himself, judging the distance.

He narrowed his eyes at it, waving his hand to force a cypress root under his feet so he could get into a comfortable crouch. Then, he leapt and dug his black claws into her fiery heart and his knife into her throat. It hurt, of course it hurt. She bleeted in pain as she collapsed against the bank and smacked him hard across the face with a burning hand.

He took the blow and kept his claws in her heart as she struggled and finally withered into the corpse that she’d rose from. Milo pulled back in disgust from her half-rotted, gaping mouth, quickly cleaning the yellow pus from his hands. He pulled off his moss cloak so he could reach the center of the mound more easily without having to worry about getting dirt in his palm eyes. Then, he swan dived into the water, swimming to the honeysuckles. He dug and picked away at the clump of dirt until he felt a small, wooden box. He pulled it out as the honeysuckles began to rot back into the swamp, grinning like a fool. He peaked into the worn box and spotted a pair of rings and then gave a whoop, pumping his fist in the air and wishing he’d brought a book with him so he would have a reason to tell something how cool he was.

Then, he heard voices.

Milo automatically ducked below the water and then panicked when he remembered he didn’t have his cloak. He resurfaced, coughing and sputtering, trying to get back to the bank. He wheeled back when someone flashed a bright light into his face and fell, landing on his ass halfway on the bank. A woman screamed and the light was dropped, landing right in Milo’s eyes. He covered his face and rolled over, every instinct screaming at him to crawl into the water and bury himself under the sand with the catfish. But also not to drown.

He heard another woman shout, “It’s one of them bog witches! Dale, get your ass over here!” He knew it was another woman because the first one hadn’t stopped screaming. Well, Milo had already known he was well and truly fucked, but at least he had verbal confirmation.

Then, Milo realized he’d dropped the box. He was at the point of swearing, but that high-pitched screeching wasn’t doing his mood any favors, so he rolled back over and stood up, snatching up the flashlight and turning it on one terrified woman and another woman gaping at him disbelief. “Will you shut ya fuckin’ mouth, girl? I ain’t need no howler tellin’ all them wingies to come an’ gobble me up,” he hated how thick his deep swamp accent came out, something even other witches laughed about.

She stopped screaming in shock as her friend’s eyes went from saucers to moons. He heard the click of a gun being cocked and cringed more towards the women as a man pointed the barrel of a shotgun at his head. Yeah, Milo was doing really great at hearing danger tonight.

He realized that this might come off as even more threatening than swearing at two women, which Milo was under the impression humans found more offensive than normal cussing, so he took a couple steps back from all of them, holding the flashlight defensively. Well, at least the man hadn’t actually shot him yet, so maybe he could talk his way backwards to his cloak and then swim away. “Uhm,” he started. An extremely eloquent beginning of a plea for mercy.

“Girls, don’t look, ya’ll don’t need to see this,” the man started, staring Milo down over the barrel of the gun. The blonde human, the one who’d said he was a bog witch, shoved his shoulder and started towards Milo in alarm. Her friend grabbed her arm, trying to pull her back.

“Dale, wait,” she shouted, “She talked! Bog witches can’t talk. What if she’s one of those swamp angels?” He saw Dale hesitating, his eyes softening and the gun dipping slightly.

Though, Milo did internally wince at the characterization of bog witches as too dumb to talk. It was the wingies with the problem with words. Also, she seemed to think bog witches could only be women. Still, Milo would take it, his face breaking out into a smile, “I-”

Dale cut him off before he could speak, “Dee, I know they look human, but they ain’t close. Swamp angels don’t look nearly that close to human, they can just imitate speech, like parrots. She ain’t a person either, just look at her. Fuckin’ tall even for a bog witch. Gonna have to take a picture of her to show my buddies.”

Milo swallowed a growl, knowing that wouldn’t help to start clicking at them. Dee cocked an eye at Dale and put a hand on her hip, “It was an oddly specific imitation to tell Milly to, ‘shut her fuckin’ mouth’.” Milly nodded, still staring at Milo with abject horror. “She ain’t some fish for you to brag about,” she went on.

“Yeah,” Milo added, “what she said.”

Now, it was all eyes on him and Milo remembered he was supposed to be backing up to get his cloak. Dale shook his head, "Hear how rough her voice is? She's trying to imitate me."

He glanced over at his cloak and then back at them, smiling nervously, “Would ya’ll have happened to lose a rotter? See, not an imitation.” Dale stared at him in shock and confusion. Milo paused and cleared his throat. “Sorry, I meant a dead body. We call ‘em rotters if someone’s been usin’ ‘em for, uh, somethin’. Dunno why they’d want a spirit all the way,” he paused, thinking, “out here,” he finished more quietly.

In the deeply uncomfortable silence as the humans turned their eyes to each other nervously, Milo remembered he was only a ten minute walk from his burrow. While Milo had to go near humans out of necessity on occasion, such as to collect doll hair and human baby teeth for spells, he lived far deeper than they were typically willing to go.

Whatever they were doing summoning a spirit seemed to overshadow meeting a bog witch who was willing to talk to humans. They were all shouting. “She was over here”, “I told you this was dumb”, “Do you think she found it?”

Milo waved the flashlight at them vaguely to get their attention again, “What are ya’ll doin’ playin’ with necromancy? Don’t ya’ll lay yours in the dirt to sleep?” He had never fully grasped the concept of sentient creatures being dead. All the human books made it seem very sad and troubling, but it was outside his range of understanding as a mostly immortal swamp fiend. After all, he’d just killed a dead human again. Milo, like most bog witches, was vaguely sure humans were just making death up so they had something else to whine about.

The two women looked guilty, but Dale looked frustrated. “Her name is Jeanie. She was Dee’s best friend back in high school. Milly and Dee said she was haunting them because she had unfinished business, so of course the most logical thing to do was get some kind of black magic book and try to summon her spirit,” his sarcasm was thick and he shot them both a glare. Milo was impressed how quickly his hostilities had switched.

“Oh,” he replied, “Why did you think that would work? Spirits are dumb. They find some treasure in the water and then they court it and then they die and ya got nothin’ left but an empty dirt chamber to explain to somebody, if you humans really ‘die’,” here, Milo did air quotes and gave them a respectful amount of a suspicious looks.

He went over to the body and pointed at the yellow pus oozing from its cracked jaw. Dale blinked at Milo and glanced behind himself at the girls who shrugged in an equal amount of confusion. He carefully stepped towards where Milo was pointing and looked down, then away quickly as if stung, “Yup, that’s her.”

Milo tried to parse why Dale looked like he was trying not to cry and decided that humans just enjoyed crying. “She got me good on the face before I could crush her heart,” he patted the cheek that had already healed. When Dale’s lip started trembling, Milo patted him awkwardly on the head in a gesture of comfort. He would have patted the human’s shoulder, but that felt more awkward since Milo was so much taller. Dale startled and gave him a bewildered and slightly offended look, so Milo withdrew his hand. The women came over to look, too, but seemed less upset than Dale considering he’d seemed to imply they were closer to this Jeanie.

“Yeah, that’s her alright,” Dee muttered, “Guess she didn’t find them rings. Milly, you have some spare gourds so we can do it again?”

Milly fumbled with a bag and pulled one out. Milo looked between them and shook his head, “You ain’t summonin’ no spirit in my bog. ‘Sides, she had some rings. They mine now.” He frowned at them disapprovingly, then realized he’d just revealed the location of his burrow and growled in frustration, a deep ticking rattle in his throat. The women startled back, eyes wide.

Dale seemed to remember Milo was supposed to be dangerous, re-leveling the gun at him. Milo remembered he didn’t have his cloak on and that death was an actual possibility for him, not just a phase that would hurt for a few days. He glanced down at it again, just out of reach, and back over at Dale nervously, clearing his throat to stop the growl, “Sorry.”

Dale shook his head and waved Milo away from the body, opposite from his cloak. He complied out of the recalled fear, and slight confusion, of death. “Can I just get my cloak, please?”

Dale blinked at him and then the girls turned around from already looking over their dead friend’s body. “Oh yeah, you don’t have one of those moss cloaks. Why I guess it’s weird for a bog witch to wear jeans,” Dee remarked, looking him over as if actually seeing him for the first time.

“What nudists do you have in ya neck of the swamp?” Milo was snipping, but he really hated that they were surprised witches wore clothes and spoke, which they seemed to have gotten over rather quickly in the face of other priorities. He crossed his arms, suddenly self-conscious.

Dee reached forward and took the flashlight back from him, shining it back at Milo. “Huh,” she nodded. “Why do you have stuff all over your face?”

He blinked and rubbed at his face. “It’s just a kind of mud to hide our face better in the water,” he replied. “I forgot I put it on. Seems like a long time ago I hunted that thing down so I could…” Milo trailed off and then looked at the moon to gauge what time it was. “Shit,” he swore. “I gotta go. Ya’ll have to let me go,” he waved his hands vaguely and started to move forward even despite the warning gun wave he got from Dale.

She disagreed that she needed to spend an entire summer on an old plantation with barely functional air conditioning in order to appreciate her family history. Part of her itinerary for the summer was busing the little kid around to various museums. Apparently, Mike was a dork.

Aunt Judy picked her up at the airport, gave her a big hug, and then practically ran off to go to work with Becky's mamal in tow. Mike came out to wave at them leaving and Becky blinked down at the kid.

Race wasn't really an issue for Becky, but she'd expected him to be at least half-black. Yet, he was a blonde blue-eyed white kid. "Uh, hi Mike. I'm your cousin, Becky," she leaned down and held out her hand at him. It wasn't his fault her family had sent her here and she wasn't going to act like it.

He took her hand and shook it lightly. "Hi," his voice sounded shy and he withdrew his hand to put it back around the book he was holding.

"Were you reading that with mamal while your ma picked me up from the airport?" She picked up her suitcases and started to head inside while Mike held the door open for her. He nodded. "She's good at funny voices, huh?"

Mike laughed, "She makes Huck Finn sound like my friend Gabe who lives in the bayou." Becky grinned, not surprised Mike was growing up on Huck Finn like she did when mamal and papal had moved to California to help her parents out. Now that Becky thought about it, she was glad she would be near mamal all summer. She could try to teach Mike all the stuff papal wasn't around to teach him.

"Say, you got any BB guns?" She asked, setting her suitcase down in the room with a cute, hand-made sign with her name on the door. It was a pink floral room with a nice canopy bed that looked out on the swamp.

"Uhm. Papal left us a bunch, but ma said I'm not allowed to play with them without anyone around," he scratched at his ear and looked away. Becky noticed a little nick on his ear.

"Well, I'm around. Why don't we go shoot some cans before it gets too hot and mamal gets back with your ma? She hates the noise, used to cuss at papal about it," she laughed and started to head back downstairs. She noticed the gun safe towards the back and dialed in the numbers her papal had used for everything, opening with a snap.

Mike followed after her and set the book on a table, "I can't imagine mamal swearing, she washed my mouth out with soap because I said 'hell' once," he frowned at Becky in disbelief. She took out two little BB guns and closed the safe back up, there were real guns in there too.

"Well, I guess it wasn't so much as cussing, but you know, cussing for mamal. Like, 'bless your sweet tender heart, Matthew Smith' or 'may God bless you with some sense, Matthew Smith'," she headed out the back with a plastic tub of the can recycling. She headed over to the fence that separated the swamp from the rest of the yard and set the cans along it.

Mike stayed farther up in the yard with the BB guns as she walked past. She looked around and found some ear muffs, putting one on Mike and then herself. He held out the gun in a way that said he knew how to shoot. She gestured for him to go first and readied herself.

After a couple of shots, he managed to send the can tumbling and Becky shot it out of the air. She grinned down at Mike's shocked, but impressed face. "Papal taught me how to do that," she nodded.

They spent the rest of the afternoon shooting cans and Becky teaching Mike trick shots to impress his friends. She'd be lying to say she hadn't had fun. As dusk started to sweep away the sun, she and Mike headed down to the fence to put the cans back into the recycling bin. "Nice shooting, Tex," she motioned to the cans that had been shot to pieces.

"Thanks. Becky, do you think ma is on her way--?" Mike started to ask before something grabbed his ankle. His question devolved into a scream as he tried to tug it free. Becky reacted before she'd processed what was grabbing him, jerking him free and away from the fence. They tumbled backwards and Becky grunted as her back hit the ground. Mike tried to curl away from her and just ended up knocking the wind out of her with a knee.

"Ow, ow!" She complained, looking over to what had grabbed him. She didn't quite understand why there was a severed hand laying there. Then, she realized the hand was coming out of the ground and, whatever it was, was starting to dig itself out. She scrambled to get up and hauled Mike with her towards the house. She slammed and locked it behind herself. "Mike, call your ma right now!" She shouted and practically threw her cell phone at him.

He caught it and frantically dialed the number, walking away as Becky turned to look at whatever was coming out of the yard. A creature with long limbs and winglike appendages. Becky got a gun from the safe and waited to see what it'd do. She heard Mike calling again, having reached the voice mail.

"Re-ebec-ca," the creature cried as it shambled up the yard. Becky had heard enough stories of swamp monsters and hodigs to keep the gun aimed and steady as she cracked the door open.

"Get off my property, you demon! You are not welcome here," she snarled.

It kept coming, taking in a deep wheezing sigh, "Do-o not b-e fright-en-ed, my ch-ild. I am an an-gel of the Lo-ord," it sounded like every syllable hurt it to speak, but it was starting to glow.

Becky cocked her gun, "I have never heard of no angel coming out of somebody's yard."

It gave another, deep wheezing sigh, "As-sk the ch-ild mo-ons-ter." Becky gave it a speculative eye.

"Mike!" She shouted, not turning around and keeping the gun aimed. "Let's humor it. Do you know what in the hell this thing is?"

She felt Mike stepping up behind her and hesitating. "Uhm. Yeah," he sounded nervous, "She's an angel. I think she said her name was Lailah once." At this, Becky paused.

"What do you want with us if you're an angel?" Becky asked. She'd still kept her gun on it, not sure if this thing was lying yet.

"The ch-ild mo-ons-ter," it atoned.

"I'm not giving you my little cousin," she said firmly.

"Pl-ea-se. He is-s wha-at yo-our ki-ind ca-all ru-ga-roo," it went on with its wheezing. "Yo-our ki-ind-red wi-ill le-et him gro-ow," it groaned.

Becky thought for a minute and then she shot it in what she assumed was its head, the kick knocking her back into Mike who gave a little "oomph". She wasn't actually sure if bullets worked on angels. The creature cried and collapsed in on itself, turning into a ball of something that looked slimy. "Mike, go to your room," she turned around and he looked heart-broken.

"Please! Ma was going to tell you! I'm good, I'm not hurting no one," he was starting to cry.

Becky sighed, looking at the ceiling, and wondered if she asked for the Lord's mercy, he would still deliver after she shot one of his angels. "I just wanna think and ask your ma some stuff. Just go to bed, okay?"

He opened his mouth to argue, but Becky cut him off, "If I'm going to be babysitting you, you listen to me, boy." He started crying and fled to his room. Becky deflated a little and almost started to put the gun away, but decided not to. She sat on the porch with it in her lap until Aunt Judy's car came up the drive.

Her Aunt Judy emerged with bags of fast food with mamal on the other side, grinning at Becky until she saw the gun. She dropped the bags and ran up while Becky heard her mamal complain and start picking it up.

"What happened?! Becky, where's Mike?!" Aunt Judy's voice was frantic, she put her hands on both of Becky's shoulders and squeezed.

"I sent him to bed after I put a bullet in one of Lord God's angels. Aunt Judy, why the hell did you take in a rugarou?" Becky glared up at her aunt, refusing to be intimidated.

Her aunt's face collapsed into gratitude. "Oh thank God, oh thank God," she murmured.

Her mamal snorted as she came up behind Aunt judy, still holding all the bags of food, setting them inside the porch and closing the screen door to keep the bugs out. "Girl, you should be thanking the devil instead if it's about your child," her mamal said evenly. Becky held back a laugh at her aunt's expense as she wilted onto the porch swing next to Becky, hand to her forward.

"Aunt Judy, please answer my question," Becky said quietly, "If I don't know, I'll tell my ma."

Her Aunt Judy looked off to the side, at the swamp. "We shoot his kind all the time out here. Dumb things that crawl around the swamp water. Don't kill 'em, ain't worth killing 'em. You shoot at 'em and they get back," she sighed. "I kind of feel for them, ya know? They don't really hurt nothin'. One day, this rugarou witch came up out of the swamp and didn't get back when I shot at her. She pulled this little baby out from her moss cloak and handed it over to me. She said she'd be back and pointed to the swamp and made gun noises."

Aunt Judy paused and looked over at Becky. "You get redneck boys who go out there and shoot a bunch just for laughs. At least scare them up so the angels find them and eat them," she sighed. "His real mama never came back, so I just had this baby I was taking care of. He was exactly like a human baby and..." She trailed off.

"I told your mamal and she shouted at me, then she said it might be alright if we get him baptized. Since he was still young, I went down to the hospital and said I'd had him at home. They were skeptical because he's white, but things happen. We got him baptized next Sunday after we explained it to the priest. He said no creature is born evil, but we might be pushin' it." She laughed and Becky did, too.

Her mamal headed inside with dinner and Becky could hear her yelling at Mike to come downstairs and eat. "He's a sweet kid. He knows he's a rugarou and I seen him make moss move around by just thinking about it, but he's not some monster, Becky. He's my son and this is the only life he's ever known," her voice had turned pleading and she took Becky's hands, "I wanted you and my sister to meet him first, know what a good kid he was before I told you."

Becky sighed. "Alright, alright, I get it. I won't tell ma. But," she held up a finger, "You buy me and Mike a pass to the pool so I can meet a lifeguard and give me a couple nights to go on dates. You don't tell my ma, I won't tell my ma."