Chapter 1 The Catastrophe
Every year the whole family would go on a vacation at the Lazy River Ranch in the deep Louisana swamps. The cell phones could not even pick up service way out there. Our family lived for places like this. The ranch was way off the grid. Many people do not have a lot of technology in the middle of the swamp. We had some forms of communication that were completely outdated and we had to take advantage of what we could use. Deep in the Louisiana Swampland. This year, Keely and Colby were there with us and we were on what we thought to be a normal family vacation. They were both in College at the time but were off for spring break. The Lazy River Ranch was basically a gator farm and a tourist attraction for hunters. When we were young. My cousins would come and we would tell scary stories on the dock about Gators and Ghosts. Some would tell stories of the Mississippi Swamp monsters although the monsters sounded more like the kind of creature you would think was a werewolf or a Yetti they had very vampire like qualities.
One tale never let me sleep well again. It was about the gators and how they pull their victims under to drown them. I had many dreams that I was running through the swamp and got stuck as the gators were trying to catch me running up on me and snagging my heal in their jaw. I never actually had this happen to me but we did have a pet gator once and we ended up having to let it go back into the wild . This last vacation was one the we will never forget.
We were telling scarey stores all night. They would tell scarey tales about the gators in the water and make comments about the gators and the way they creep up on you. The water was covered in a green algae and it was easy to see if there was an alligator in the water if you were looking for one. One day I was on the sand bar and I was catching some rays when this fish just jumped up high. I looked and I could see a glistening eye across the way it looked like a marble floating on the water. We went fishing that day in the canoe and Devin had got out of the boat, he was in his fishing gear and was stepping across the water on top of some huge rocks. When the water started to have ripples coursing towards us. The swamp began to fill with swarming bugs. The vibrations became more violent and the boat starts to tip from side to side. Then the flood waters came and pushed forth. It's an earthquake here in the south? Tremors kept jolting the boat. The water is accumulating in the bottom of the boat we start to frantically paddle toward the rocks where Devin was trying to get back to the boat. I said, “It must be an earthquake.”
Little did I know that deep below the earth there was lava brewing and the intensity had become too much for the surface of the marsh to contain. The lava pushed through the muck of the swamp floor making the swamp water start to boil like a hot tub. Devin sees this phenomena and leans over to look at the water. All of the sudden he falls in the water face first. He was swimming toward the boat and he grabbed the side of the boat and rolled into the boat. Unfortunately that filled the boat even more full of water and with more weight in the boat the with water. Devin and I had been through a ton of horrific plights in our life but, this in the swamp with bubbling swamp land was nothing I had ever prepared for. I blame it on the fracking but who knows what could have caused this. When Devin got to the boat and stepped into the boat the excess weight brought the boat down so low that it was almost level with the water. So we started bailing out the water and the fish and swamp creatures were flopping around. Then some of the fish came to the surface dead. Dead fish and little bugs floating on the top of the water made us both start paddling. That was a day I thought we would not survive; but just as we were all standing in the boat expecting it to be sucked into the water any moment the vibrations stopped. Every creature in the water was turning, whirling and jumping frantically if they were still alive. We all stood up because we were preparing for the boat to sink with us in it. Then the swamp was still, there was a small pulse and then there was a volcanic eruption not a single massive eruption but a lot of small eruptions. Looked like tiny islands forming in the swamp. Then we started to sit back down and paddle to land we saw that the alligator cage had been torn to pieces and the alligators were getting out.
At this point we realized that land was not the safest place to go, especially since we had not fed the gators yet. So we started paddling toward the house. All I could think about was the structure of the lake house and if it was still strong enough to hold up and keep the alligators out. Just as we are almost there the alligators were coming for us so Devin grabbed a rope and lassoed the dock. The rope was soaking wet so water went all in our eyes and we all started to pull the boat closer to the house. Devin got out first and grabbed the gun off the porch just as the alligators reached the boat he shot it and we all made it safely. I will never forget the smell of cooking swampland. It was like sulfur straight from hell. We were on the dock and pulling the ladder up and Devin lassoed the dead gator and blood from the alligator poured out into the water making the algae and the water blood red. The smell brought more hungry gators toward the house. That night we had gator for dinner. Later that night we were outside on the deck when we saw the first swamp monster that we had ever seen. The monster was 7 feet tall and it was attacked by the swarm of alligators that had been hiding under the house waiting for us to try to leave. I guess it was injured during the earthquake because I could not figure any other reason why this yeti looking thing would come out toward us unless it was hungry. The tales of swamp monsters were usually just to make more money on the tourism business but this was the first time I saw it for myself. We all started taking pictures of this massive swamp monster fighting off the alligators. It picked up one of the gators its giant claws went into the gators neck and it was gusseling the gator blood like it was not big thing. Until it realized it was far outnumbered. When it dove into the water and swam off. I could see the water moving and the bubbles coming up out of the water. Some of the spikes on its back were coming up out of the water like a shark's fin. I put my hand on my heart and looked at Devin he said, “It’s ok”. It is gone and my son Benjamin said, “We could have taken him Dad.” They were not babies anymore, but they were still my babies at heart, no matter what. The swamp house was never the same and it needed to be rebuilt it always leaked and formed huge puddles on the side of the house that was no longer level. We decided to leave the crazy Ranch and call it a night we all jumped into the boat and started paddling out of there. After a long drive we finally we make it home but we are still pretty shook up from the whole experience. We turn on the news and the earthquake had caused some cracking of the roads.
Lots of people were seeing strange lights. Bright lights were thought to be swamp fairies, the men sometimes would say it was our dead loved ones or even God. What is the light being and where did it come from. More importantly where did it go. It disappeared right into thin air. I heard many stores of the lights that come across like some kind of alien but I oftin wondered if it was my Guardian Angel or maybe some other misguided angel just out playing pranks.
