Flash Fiction Friday - The Maw Witch

If you go down by the swamp today...

Georgia in the middle of summer is unbearable at the best of times, but in a rustic cabin by a swamp, it becomes a new version of Hell. Kelly swats horseflies the size of bats away from her face and picks at her clothing, which is pasted to her flesh, held there by sweat.

Night is coming, and a chorus of frogs and critters begin their nighttime song. It is those very sounds that Kelly came to hear, to record, and to hopefully create something new. Her YouTube channel had taken off quickly, the money rolling in after just a few short months. People loved her narrations of scary stories, all underscored with nature sounds captured in the locations where her tales took place.

Kelly looked out at the swamp, catching movement on the water, which was bathed in an orange glow from the setting sun. She wondered what creatures lurked beneath the swampy water, and if the story of the Maw Witch was true. As much as she loved urban legends and tales of the weird, Kelly was sure that most were nothing more than cautionary tales designed to scare kids into behaving or going to bed at a decent hour.

As the sounds grew louder, Kelly began to capture the sounds on her digital recorder. The cacophony of sounds settled into a natural rhythm, and she found herself beginning to relax. Kelly began to think about how she might tell the story. Urban legend told of a local woman who many believed to be a witch. When children began to go missing, the locals pinned the blame on her, taking the old hag to the swamp, where she was drowned, all while screaming bloody murder.

With her subscriber base growing, Kelly felt the need to up the ante and began thinking of ways to make the details more graphic than the rather banal urban legend. That was when the first scream echoed over and across the swamp. She froze for a moment, noticing that all other sounds had ceased. The swamp was still, as though every living thing had fled at the sound of the scream.

With a shake of her head, Kelly stopped the recorder and rewound, listening to what she had captured. Even though she knew it was coming, the shrieking wail still spooked her. She stood quickly, knocking over her chair, and rushed inside, feeling somehow safer behind a door that was close to coming off its hinges.

The scream came again, louder this time. “It’s not a damn witch, Kelly. They don’t exist,” she spoke aloud, not believing her own words. She flipped through her mental Rolodex, trying to land on a sound from nature that she had heard before that could explain the screams. She came up empty.

Deciding it was time to leave, Kelly grabbed her stuff, which she had yet to unpack, and headed for her car. As she headed for her vehicle, she made the mistake of looking out in the direction of the swamp.

The woman shuffled forward, her ragged clothes hanging from her like strips of flayed flesh. Her arms were long and thin, the hands at the end massive and hooked, like the talons of an eagle. Her face, though, was the worst. Her mouth was wide‑open, as though her jaw had come unhinged. Her nose was nothing more than a pair of sunken holes, while her eyes glowed a dull white, like the moon viewed behind thin clouds.

Kelly felt her legs buckle, but she somehow managed to stay upright long enough to get her stuff, and herself, into the car. The engine mercifully started first time, and she floored the gas pedal, leaving the scene at high speed.

Catching her breath, Kelly glanced in the rearview mirror and caught her final look of the Maw Witch. The hag had her head up to the sky, her screams now out of reach. Before the image faded out of view, Kelly saw spectral figures merge from within the cabin, grabbing hold of the witch and pulling her, kicking and screaming, back into the swamp.