The lumbering steps of the man behind her instantly coming at her call was the only thing reassuring about the sight before her. Light from the sedan spilled onto the road from the passenger rear door. The car was empty and Danny was gone. Maddie shook herself from her numbing shock and ran forward looking around the car and under it and then away from the vehicle but where was there to go? They were only about thirty feet away he would have seen, he would have heard-.
He was coldly calm, analytical as he scanned the quiet trees. There was nothing to hear. The animals, the cries of frogs and reptiles and the buzz of insects, it had all stopped. The sudden movement to her left was Jack scrambling to tear the camera off the tripod and hold it to his eye. Another beat passed and the whine of technology comforted her. The words were hushed and soft but not gentle. The urgency lining his voice was anything but gentle and it scared her. Jack flew forward faster than what he should have been able to with his large body but it flew and crashed through the swamp and Maddie Fenton found herself right on his heels.
Twigs and rotted bark caught on her suit, mud threatened to suck her down but she and Jack were fueled by adrenaline as they raced toward the direction of that single flash of white.
Her husband stopped suddenly raising the camera again and scanned it steadily in a long sweep and she looked out into the darkness unable to see, her eyes trying to account for the darkness as her heart threatened to beat out of her chest. An apparition, a shape that was humanoid but too tall, too large and not quite shaped right walked through the swamp glowing behind the trees as it marched silently. Behind it, the ghost, the monster dragged Danny by the hand, his own body so tiny, her son so tiny in comparison to the thing that led him into water that was getting deeper.
She ran forward but in the muck she found the swamp sucking her in, her weight too much for the ground to support her as it started to slope into the murky water. If Danny went under here then they would never find him. There would be no trace of him disappearing if that ghost finished its deed.
Danny was starting to bounce as his little sneakers must have been scrambling for purchase on unseen rocks and wood that had yet to decompose and the icy cold water rose around his shoulders.
Maddie screamed back at herself and her son. They moved and moved but Jack was slowing down. Maddie leaned forward into the water and started to swim regardless of the debris slicing through her suit and stinging her face. They were falling behind as the monster led their boy away into the water. A rusalka, a kelpie, some kind of voughas or maybe just an angry spirit that wanted her son. They fought further but the panic grew as they heard the sputter of water entering a little mouth, a splash of panic and uncoordinated hands that found no support because he was just too far away and then nothing.
The silence returned and the glow of the specter faded. They screamed again, agitating the water making it murky and thicker as the two of them bound through the swamp to where they last saw their son. Maddie sobbed and spread her arms hitting her fingers on splintered wood and wads of wet moss but nothing solid like her boy. It had only been seconds that Danny was under, but it felt like hours. Maddie reached again stepping forward and almost tripped on something hard but yielding and startling warm even against her boot.
Jack threw himself down into the water in a dive shoulder first at her feet and she felt the movement of the water against her sloshing and biting cold until it settled thick and smoothing out at the top. That single heartbeat was something that she would remember for the rest of her life. A gasp came next and choked sobs and there in front of her, missing one blink, and there the next, the two most important men in her life materialized before her eyes.
Dripping wet and coughing breathing in the thick and rotting air was her husband and her baby boy and she shook releasing a sob herself. She looked behind them then behind her and opened her arms covering Danny who cried in their arms as they barricaded themselves around him. They whispered reassurances at him, at each other, but nothing seemed sufficient. The only thing they could do was start the agonizingly slow wade back to the road.
It took almost twenty minutes to get back compared to the moments it felt like to break into the swamp. By the time the hard, crumbling pavement was under her boots, stale adrenaline was the only thing keeping her upright.
They were all covered in mud and dirt and who knew what else. Their equipment blinked and Maddie very carefully took Danny in her arms like he was the most precious thing in the world. She sat in the car until the bugs started to swarm again, attracted to the fresh smell of sweat and blood. The frogs started bellowing in the dark and Jack stood in front of them a barrier and a tower of strength, a strength that she felt fading from her sore body.
As nature returned and restored itself, Maddie got out leaving Danny sleeping in his car seat filthy with a streak of tears as the only clean spot on his face. They kept their backs to the car as they dismantled the equipment.
After having just returned from Maine, where they attended the wedding of Brian Niggles, Ms. Snyder's grandson, and Laura Sisco, the entire clan -- including Ms.
Snyder's daughters, Lisa Niggles and Shelly Schaffer, their husbands Charlie Niggles and Al Schaffer, and their children, Steven and Jimmy Niggles, and Alexa and Nick Shaffer -- immediately got to work preparing and delivering food to more than families between Montauk and Bridgehampton. They delivered more than 1, quarts of soup, and hundreds of pounds of produce, said Ms. Snyder, who described the effort as "a labor of love from a family that cares. Thank you for reading. While he is part human, chosen to become the Avatar of the Green, his tribe are all plant, created from the Green in his image.
Ram V and Perkins craft an original tale in Swamp Thing lore with Future State , though they plant the seeds of coming events within the very first issue. But their creation also hints at what may be possible for life on Earth in this bold new era. Paul is an avid reader and writer. He has won awards for his playwriting.
At the University of Florida, he studied the cultural impact of film and comics in addition to his education in history.
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