The Bonebound
The priestesses warn me of the Drowned Choir and the Moss Man. They beg me not to enter the swamps alone. One of them grabs my arm as I leave. I look down at her, she is afraid, “And if you see a lantern,” she whispers, “don’t follow it.” I smirk at her, this is a good story and I intend to report on it, “Anything else?” I ask. The room tightens. A few exchange uneasy glances, “The Bonebound.” The others hush her instantly, as if the name might invite something listening just outside the door. They tell me he isn’t a myth. They say that swamp elders spoke of him the way old fishermen speak of storms. A king who stitches his servants from the dead. Even the Rougarou, they say, steer wide of his hovel. Still, I won’t turn back, not now. I followed the slow, half-heard whispers of the marsh until the air thinned into bitter cold. Water stilled beneath the reeds. It is so quite, I don’t even hear the frog’s croak. That’s when it came. A shape rose from the wet gray haze, impossibly tall with shoulders bowed beneath its own crooked mass. A nightmare of rootlike limbs, knotted and slick with moss muck. Its skin is stretched thin and clear over a restless tangle of clicking bones that shift and crawl. Where a face should have been was only ruin: cracked skulls fused into one warped mask. I can see leeches thread through the seams. Their dark mouths pulsed, and they whisper my name. I can feel it, something… drawing me in. In one hand it holds a staff made of spines and in the other, it holds a vision of everything I have always wanted. The swamp bends to it. I can feel it. The murk heaves upward; and decayed hands claw through the mud, I know I should resist them, I know I should have listened but they grab at me and I want them to. The Bonebound reaches for me. Its voice drags across the air. I can hear it on the wind, I can hear it in the hum of insect wings and in the ribbits of toads.
But it was the chorus from its chest, that enticed me so. The many skulls bound there, singing to me, just like my mother used to. I am so happy I came.
