Written by Kira Yates – Summer nights in Louisiana are the only reason that folks are willing to tolerate the insufferable summer heat. When the sun goes down, a sweltering world gives way to a veritable alternate universe. Mother Nature blows a cool wind that ventures through the bayou and into the city streets, lending a refreshing breath of air to the folk hiding from the heat in their homes. Nighttime in Louisiana is a social event, families gussied up in their Sunday best. It is on these streets that they promenade, socializing under the great oak trees, waiting to see and be seen. The stars in the sky glisten as they walk, and the lightning bugs flicker everywhere, living starlight, setting the world aglow. The moon, reigning over its perfect summertime kingdom, rises over the trees and the city.
On foggy nights, however, Louisiana seems to take on a completely different persona. The day fades away, and slow smog begins to develop, a cloud of vapor forming from the water of the swamps in the bayou, seeping into the towns and cities. It turns the bayou swamps into a jungle, transforming every sound, every sight, into a threat of its own. On the nights when low visibility conceals the landscape, often all that can be seen is the light of the moon, an eerie character casting through the gloom, illuminating the hazy world of the outdoors, stirring the wandering minds of children in their beds.
It was on a night such as this that seven-year-old Remy couldn’t sleep. He listened to the piercing silence, broken every so often by the sound of his chest rising and falling, taking every breath with caution, as to not make any sound. He lay awake in his bed, casting his eyes everywhere in the room but the window that contained nothing but endless, petrifying mist. Of course, it was not the murky smog itself that Remy feared, but the macabre characters lying in wait, beyond the window pane.
Remy was too old to believe in folk tales, but as the second hand revolved silently, continuously around the clock, descending further into the night, his thoughts turned to the stories he had heard from his classmates. They were tales that by the light of day seemed almost humorous, but when illuminated by the spectral shadows of the moon, they seemed all too real. Remy was subject to the dark side of Cajun folklore, of black magic and beasts who dwelt in the nightmares of the children in the bayou. The creatures wandered through his mind, each heightening his fear as he stared at the ceiling, the pallid gray in the window shedding a grim light about the room. He began to breathe heavily, his heart beating in two-four time, when a horrifying thread of memory entered his frightened consciousness. He shot upright in his bed, stomach clenching, his entire body turning toward the window: Letiche.
It was a name that had been whispered into the ear of every child in Louisiana. It was said that he was the quintessential toddler, a pink-cheeked cherub with an adoring family. His life, as with most youngsters, was normal, until the night he wandered out of his southern abode, and was immersed into the fog of the bayou. The immense presence of the smog around him obscured the little one’s sight as he crawled ever closer toward the swamp. He wailed for his mother, yelping in short cries of desperation. After a while, a mother did come. However, it was not his. An alligator had mistaken the child for one of her own young, and carried him off into the bayou, where he was raised as a reptile. The magic of the bayou caused him to develop webbed feet and a scaly complexion, morphing what was the toddler into half man, half beast. Letiche remained in the bayou, bobbing in the clouded green waters, swaying in and out of the cypress trees that loomed over the marsh. The memory of his long lost family never left him, and on foggy nights, it was said that he would set out in search for the parents that never came to his aid.
Legend had it that he would wander through the mist into the town, guided towards homes only by the light that shone through the windows. It was under these windows he would watch the children and families in their beds, longing for the life he had once so adored, his mournful eyes transfixed into the loving home that he would never have. It was his eyes, his amber, reptilian eyes, that were the cause of sleepless nights on behalf of the children of Louisiana. Their glow through the fog reminded them of the danger that not only was present, but sought for them, stalking them into their homes, in search for a love that would never be requited.
Terror surged down Remy’s spine in a wave, his eyes cemented to the murky fog of the outside world. It may have been sheer panic, but as he gazed out into the cloud, he saw two eyes, golden and ferocious, staring sharply through the glass into his own. Remy was frozen, looking into the eyes of Letiche, the golden crystal orbs sending both boy and beast into a state of virtual hypnosis. Time stopped. The air lay still, and as Remy looked further into the gaze of the scaled beast, the amber eyes, glowing in feral contempt, suddenly softened, no longer expressing anger, but remorse. Remy watched the melancholy character through the window, sharing a somber moment with a creature with no true home among man nor beast.
The eyes blinked. No longer locked to their elegiac gaze, Remy sprang from his bed, his legs jolting towards the door fearfully in the direction of his mother’s bedroom. He fled to the hallway, his pulse beating in his ears like a war drum. He dashed down the hall, the moonlit fog catching its light on the lace curtains in the hallway which hung over the windows. The southern lace cast a web of shadows over the walls, turning the passageway into a colossal spider’s web.
Remy’s feet hit the oak flooring in thunderous calamity as he took the last three steps toward his mother’s bedroom. Screaming her name, he pounced onto her bed, hugging her tightly. His mother woke with a start, breathing in sharply. Remy babbled his story in a frenzy, his English merging with the language of his Cajun roots, “Maman! Maman! Letiche! I saw him outside my window! Ses yeux! His eyes!”
“There is no Letiche, mon cher, it was only a dream,” his mother replied, still groggy from the sudden awakening.
“But he is real, Maman! He looked at me through the window!” Remy cried, squeezing the woman with all his might.
“Juste un rêve, mon cher, only a dream.” Remy’s mother whispered into the boy’s ear, stroking his hair “Now, va se coucher, go to sleep.”
In the fog sat the amber eyes, retreating from the window into the mist. It was enough, Letiche decided, enough companionship to last for a while. Away he turned from the love of civilization, the love of a mother, and wandered through the dark city streets, passing the faded glow of lamplight in the windows of compassionate homes and affectionate families. Roaming the outskirts of the city, he reached the meeting-place of town and bayou, man and beast. He placed a webbed foot into the swampy waters, creating ripples that flowed out into the expanses of the marsh. Slowly, he descended into the black waters of the nighttime, setting each foot into the foggy wilderness with a little splash.
Fully engulfed in the water, he began to swim into the mists of the bayou, his webbed feet paddling away from the bank. He waded a few paces, and then stopped. He looked back towards the civilized world, that of love and kindness, and saw the street lights glisten through the thick fog. Lingering on this sight, he recalled the smile of his mother, his father, and, if only for a moment, thought about going back. He almost began to pad towards shore, to the beckoning lights of the the city’s outskirts, but as he turned, the last of the windows grew dark, flickering from the golden yellow he longed for to black, like the rest of the world.
It was a new darkness, yet slightly familiar, like a not-so-distant memory. The fog began to clear, and in the sky appeared the stars. Letiche turned toward the southern wild, and with the sound of the wind rustling through the leaves of the cypress trees, he vanished.
Kira Yates is a first year at Mount Holyoke College where she studies religion and English. In her spare time, she cares for her four dogs and attempts to maintain pacifism in their war waged with the UPS guy.