The Hiss of the Glades
1
Almost entirely hidden by grotesque banyan trees, the house is one of those Fort Myers properties that looks to have already been felled by nature. The banyans make a maze of the yard with their aerial roots, and I have to turn sideways to move between the largest after I’ve parked the cruiser in the drive.
Whoever this property belongs to, they don’t like visitors.
From the cracked concrete in front of the screen door, I peer back into the yard to see that three massive banyans—each more than five feet in diameter—control the view. A sliver of the Sheriff’s insignia on my car is visible, as well as a small corner of the road.
No sunlight reaches the patch of ground where I’m standing, and it occurs to me that the man who lives in the house could come out with a knife and stab me without anyone knowing it. Nobody walking by would notice, and the trees would swallow up any screams.
It’s an absurd thought, but with the weight of nature in the yard, it feels true.
Up close, though, the house looks well taken care of. The screen door opens easily, without the creak of neglected hinges or springs, and the front area is swept clean. The stucco even looks freshly painted, though there’s no welcome mat or personal touch to give an idea of personality.
With my hand raised to knock, I’m not entirely surprised to hear the sound of a deadlock being shifted, and then the door is opening before I’ve made any move to announce myself. A slice of face glances at me from between the door and the jamb, and I let out a breath I didn’t mean to be holding when the door opens fully.
The man standing beyond the door could be a football player. He’s that large, and the confidence in his stance suggests that my Sheriff’s department uniform doesn’t intimidate him. Of course, it really shouldn’t.
“I tried to call first,” I tell him. “Name’s Juan Vettorello. I’m with the Sheriff’s Department. And you’re Agent Chase Toshoille, I hope.”
The tattoos on the man’s face make it hard to tell, but it looks like he might be squinting at me. Narrowing his eyes, maybe. “Used to be an agent,” he tells me. “You want to come in, I take it?”
“If you can make the time.”
He opens the door wider, stepping back, and gestures me inside into a cramped entryway at the side of a galley kitchen. I take an extra step forward toward a more brightly lit space, and try not to snoop while he closes and locks the door behind me. “Well, go on. Not enough space to walk side by side in here. Head on that way.”
I move further into the house and land in an open-concept living area that looks far cozier than the owner of the house might have suggested. A lazy housecat is sprawled on the back of an L-shaped couch, and there’s an old, gray-snouted dog snoring from a dog bed in the corner. A large-screen TV faces the couch and two recliners, but the place feels comfortable, lived in. The TV’s off, and I notice a book lying face-down on the coffee table by a beer.
Toshoille moves back by me and goes straight to the recliner, sitting down and picking up the beer. “Sit down,” he tells me. “But not near Hawk,” he adds, pointing to the cat. “She’ll wake up and swat you if you bounce her while she’s trying to sleep. Or bite you bloody.”
I eye the cat, and take the other recliner across from the old detective rather than bothering her. The hound puts his head back down, apparently trusting that his master will take care of any threat. “Sorry to bother you. Looks like you were having a relaxing day here.”
“Relaxing enough. You aim to change that, I take it?”
“No, but I do want your help.”
The man waves his beer at me, pointedly. “I’m retired, or I wouldn’t be drinking a beer on a Wednesday afternoon, would I?”
I don’t bother saying that, given the size of this man and the way his hand covers that bottle, he could probably down a six-pack without feeling a buzz. “I’m told you show up to help on the regular. I’d like to know how.”
“How?” The slightest tilt of a lip suggests he might be holding down a smile. “Normally, I drive.”
I offer what I hope looks like a friendly grin. “You know what I mean. You come out of retirement to show up with an occasional thief. You brought in the guy who was setting those fires last summer, and then found that girl who’d been kidnapped before we even knew she was missing.”
“Luck.”
I watch him empty whatever was left of the beer—or, he pretends to. I suspect it was already empty, and that swallow was a show. “You know the everglades in a way nobody else around here does. I’ve lost three different suspects in this region, and I’m told you never did. I’m told you can teach me what I need to know so that I won’t, either.”
The man stands up and moves past me, back to the kitchen. As he walks by, I catch some detail along the tattoo on his forearm, beneath his t-shirt, and realize that the shape covering his arm is a python swallowing up a man. “You want a beer?” he calls from the kitchen.
I should tell him no. This isn’t a man I want to lose my guard around. Instead, I think of what I saw when I chased Brock Josephs into the trees on the edge of I-75 and I tell him yes.
He comes back with two Sam Adams and a piece of jerky that he tosses to the dog, who wakes up in time to catch it in mid-air. “You saw something?” he asks as he sits down.
That was fast. “Something? What makes you say that?”
Toshoille grimaces at me and then drinks from his beer. “You’d have to have seen something for those old goats at the department to send you my way. Guessing they told you I’m crazy before they sent you here.”
“And that you were worth talking to,” I point out. In truth, it took some time for them to point me here. It took me asking, repeatedly, about who ever managed to catch anyone in this state’s damnable sprawls of nature, and then gripping onto the slitted eyes and nervous looks I saw. “They didn’t want to send me here,” I admit, “but it sure sounds like you’re the only one who has any luck when suspects go off the roads.”
“What’d you see?” he asks. His eyes are back on me now. Despite what I told myself I’d do after getting the beer, I take a few gulps.
“It doesn’t matter. Can you help me?”
“If it doesn’t matter, you can leave. You can’t admit what you saw, I’m no good to you. This land has its own way about it, its own rules, and you gotta accept that.” He stands up, scowling. “You wasting my time, Officer? If so, get on out before I throw Hawk on you, prickly end first. You don’t want that.”
The cat’s got his ears perked up with interest, as if he very much wants to be thrown at me ‘prickly end first’—but that’s not why I came here, is it?
“I saw smoke. Wind,” I tell him.
He was about to take a step, but instead he sets his beer down and then sits down himself. “Sounds like a brushfire.”
I know he’s pushing me, and so I push myself to keep going. This is the stuff I haven’t talked to anyone about now—the stuff I was saving for this character.
“Not a brushfire. I’m not new to woods or country. I came down here from Louisiana, and I was good at tracking criminals who walked off into the swamp. I know what I’m doing, Toshoille. But here… I lost a guy off of I-75 last week. A dozen feet into the trees, he disappeared in a rush of wind and smoke. Disappeared. No fire. No storm. Just wind and smoke, and he was gone.”
“Maybe you were drunk,” he says, gesturing with the beer.
“No, sir. Hadn’t had a drop of anything but water ‘n coffee. And before you ask, it was light out, middle of the afternoon, and there was no storm. The guy was just gone.”
“Pythons get up in the trees, and so do cougars.”
“You’re telling me the man got eaten by wildlife while I was ten feet away?” I scoff, and then I force a more direct laugh. There’s a quiet in this house that I don’t like. A seriousness to this man. If he told me that a cougar could sweep men into trees and eat them in a moment’s notice, and did it with a straight face, I’m not so sure I could contradict him. Thinking that, I take another swig of the beer.
“No, but they can dislodge branches, rustle the trees. Scare one man into running faster into the ‘glades and another man into running back to his cruiser. Hard to admit that,” he adds, his eyes on his cat, “but there’s no shame in being afraid of the nature down here. Smart men are, some would say. You want to get lost in the trees and come face to face with a cat that’s ten times the size of that puss on the couch, and twice as hungry and three times as mean? Hawk’s bad enough, she gets a mind to be.”
I watch the cat with him for a minute, as she stretches and eyes the two of us like she owns that couch. Maybe she does. “Hawk’s got her power. Whatever I saw had its power. Something… else. Something involving smoke and wind. Can you help me out or not?”
“You imagined something. You’re welcome to another beer, but I don’t think you know what you’re looking for. You want my advice? You’ll do well to catch criminals before they get to the trees.”
“Brock Josephs was the guy I was after who lost me. The reason someone at the station finally broke down and told me where to find you. You hear of him?”
Toshoille flinched—I saw it. That name meant something to him, whether he wants it to or not, though he doesn’t answer.
“He’s the one who’s been stealing cars from gated communities. I suspect he’s been bribing guards to get him in and out or leave their station, but I haven’t proved it yet. He ran over that girl and her baby over on Tamiami Trail when he was going for the interstate. You saw it on the news. Now, he’s off everyone’s radar, but I’m willing to bet he’s hiding out in the everglades, and I aim to find him.”
“He was drunk when that happened. Yeah, I saw it on the news.”
“Yep. Left a bar, got in a corvette he stole earlier that day, and killed a 26-year-old and her toddler as she was walking him home from the babysitter after getting off work. Next day, I caught up to him in the gated community off of Del Villa. He had a head-start, but I was on him all the way over to 75. He ditched the car when I wasn’t a half-mile behind him, and wasn’t in the trees more’n seconds before me since he tripped getting out of that ‘vette. But he lost me anyway, and I want to know how to keep that from happening again. I’m fit—I should have been able to catch him in those trees and it would’ve been done.”
“But he was gone,” Toshoille finishes for me.
“He was gone.”
The man drinks down what’s left of his beer, and then he freezes for a moment, as if whatever he’s thinking of is too much to allow for him to consider anything else. When his eyes turn back to me, they look more interested than they did earlier, and I have to fight the urge to flee the house right there, before he can say anything else. It was the oldest officer who told me where to find this guy—an officer with one foot in the cardiac ward at the hospital and the other on a boat he probably got out of the impound lot. Someone without a lot of morals or particular care for fellow officers. Someone who I wouldn’t have expected to help me.
It occurs to me now that maybe the other officers were helping me by keeping their mouths shut.
“I know what you’re talking about. The smoke and the wind. I saw it, too, a few times. And then I asked someone else to let me see into the everglades and banyans and mudflats and mangroves in just the way you’re asking me now. And now I live alone, and sometimes I catch men even though I’m retired. Because I have to. I’m driven to. I’m tied to this land and its people, to help justice along. And I can’t leave. I’ll probably live here till I keel over and those damn banyans swallow me up or Hawk and Ferret eat me.”
The dog’s head perks up, and I realize this giant of a man named his giant of a dog after a tiny weasel.
“You want that?” he asks. “Or you want the freedom to really retire and go back to Louisiana whenever you decide?”
“You…” I catch whatever I was about to say in my throat. “You act like I’m selling my soul to the devil if I tell you I want a better understanding of this part of the state.”
“Not the devil. Justice, maybe. You want to think of it like that.”
I take a swig of the beer, finishing it as I try to read between the lines. “I’m a Sheriff’s deputy. I already sold my soul to justice, Agent Toshoille.”
Toshoille looks at me again, and then some decision moves across his face. “Call me Chase. Lemme hit the head and then we’ll go. You make yourself useful—there’s a backpack cooler under the sink. Pack up the bottled water in the fridge and all the beers you see there. I’m driving.”
2
A half-mile into the trees, there’s a part of my brain that feels paranoid this retired agent in front of me could just disappear and leave me in his dust, and I’d be a goner. Thinking that, I stick closer to his heels, and I only stop for a moment’s rest when he does.
“You’re Spanish,” he comments over his shoulder. “That might help.”
“Help?”
He keeps walking, striking down a portion of a particularly mangy mangrove with the machete he’s carrying. To clear branches and snakes, he said. He hasn’t said much else, in fact.
“But yeah, I am,” I tell him. “Came down here to Florida because I’ve got some cousins newly over from Puerto Rico. My parents are all I’ve got up in Louisiana, but they travel a lot. Not much to hold me there, and the cousins down here can use the support. Young kids ‘n all.”
Chase gives something like a shrug and veers left, and I follow him. “You ain’t gonna wanna relocate any time soon?” he asks.
“No time soon,” I agree.
He grunts, and then he stops. “We’re here.”
What this man has called ‘here’ isn’t more than a muddy clearing that’s got more mud in it than life. Mangroves make a wall on one side, and I’m guessing there’s water and gators on their other side. In front of me, it’s mostly downed logs, tree-shaded mud and sand, and trees and plants that I probably ought to be able to identify, but can’t. I’m positive there’s quicksand scattered through the area, and the sand flats ahead of us look like likely areas for it.
“Take a seat,” Chase tells me, and tosses me a beer from the pack he’s just opened.
I catch it and sit on a log diagonal to where he is, gazing around the area warily. It’s late afternoon, and it’ll be dark by the time we get back to the road even if we head back now—which we obviously aren’t doing. “You gonna know how to get out of here, come night?” I ask.
“Don’t worry about that. Just drink. You want a water, too?”
I nod, and catch that while sipping at the beer.
I don’t know how long we’ve sat in the clearing, mostly still and silent, when something shifts the log I’m resting my ass on. I drop the water bottle to the ground and turn to face the path with my gun in hand... but there’s nothing there.
“Put the gun away and pick up that trash or this trip’ll be for nothing,” Chase comments. He swallows whatever was left of his own beer and reaches out his hand for my empties—water bottle and beer can—and I’ve done as instructed before it occurs to me to do otherwise. “And keep your ass where it is on that log,” he adds.
There’s a rustling in the air now—a movement to the trees and even the sand around us, though I can’t lay my eye on its source. Chase looks at peace, weirdly so, and I decide now’s not the time to break the silence. Whatever we came out here for, it’s about to become clear.
“You found a replacement,” a voice whispers. The ‘s’ was drawn out, the end syllables of each consonant-ending word clipped, and I have to clench my muscles to keep from turning to seek it out in the trees. Something tells me I wouldn’t find it, so I focus on the sound. There was a vague accent to it—Brazilian, maybe, I think. From that part of the world, at least.
“If you approve him,” Chase drawls slowly, raking his eyes over me in a way that suggests he’s both pleased and concerned. “He says he’s already sold his soul to justice, so this may just be a formality.”
The rustling in the trees becomes more centered, and a branch bends above me, as if reaching down to brush my shoulder. “Your intentions are pure,” the voice comments, and the accent is more pronounced now. “But you are not from here. My warriors normally come from the land they agree to protect. Tell me why I should make an exception.” Again, the ‘s’ sounds are drawn out, lingering in the air. I still can’t place the accent or locate a person for the voice.
I stand up, thinking that I ought to look the part if this glades-dweller wants a warrior, however strange this is. “I’ve got family here. I’m not going anywhere,” I say loudly. That’s what Chase has been pushing to know, so I’m guessing it’s what the voice needs to hear. “And I keep losing people in these parts of the state—people who’ve done bad things. Chase seems to think you can help me with that.”
The rustling seems to be circling the clearing, and I glance over to Chase. He’s got his eyes narrowed on me, and they nearly glow against his tattooed skin. “You run now,” he tells me, “I might have some trouble finding you if that’s what he wants, so I suggest you brace yourself.”
There’s no time to think about what he’s just said.
When I stood, I stepped away from the tree, and suddenly I’m aware of something large and soft and firm flopping overtop of it, landing against the back of my legs and rustling by my jeans’ legs. I twitch sideways and look down and to the side, and that’s when I see it. Stretching along one whole side of the clearing, and running between me and the tree, there’s what looks like a thirty-foot length of deep green fabric, like rolled up carpet—but it’s moving, slithering like a snake even though it looks soft. I blink, hard, and then look around me.
Whatever this is, it’s longer than a snake, and when I crouch down, I see that it’s actually feathered, which makes not a damn lick of sense. “What—” I begin, but then there’s a tail end to it, and I can feel the warmth of it as it wraps lightly around my legs. Not hard enough that I have to bring together my feet, but a few coils—ten inches thick, each one—land around my braced, booted feet as if they’re rubber tires. But they’re feathered, verdant green coils of what must be some monstrous creature, not tires, and somehow, from Chase’s unsurprised expression, I know it’s the head of these coils that’s been talking to us.
“Sit,” it commands, and a shift of the coils against the back of my legs sends me falling back to the log I rose from.
When I look up again, I see the head of the thing coming at me from across the clearing, and I don’t have time or mind or inclination to think about how long that makes it. The body is green, but it gets blue near the head weaving toward me in the air, and this head is like none I’ve ever seen. A mix of hawk and man if I had to describe it, but with a beak that could break me if it had a mind to. The beak alone is half my size, rimmed in silver that sparkles even in the dim light slipping through the trees.
“Officer Juan Vettorello, this is Quetzalcoatl, keeper of the justice and the lands in these parts, the Feathered Serpent.” Chase cracks open another beer. “Quetzalcoatl, I give you Juan, over-eager Sheriff’s deputy who’s ripe to take my place.”
The snake-bird-monster’s head comes to a stop a few feet from me, and I realize that what I took to be a beak is more of a snake’s snout, but elongated and pointed and smooth with scales bleeding out of the feathers covering the rest of its body. There’s a greyish sandy color to the lower portion of it, to its belly, but its head is otherwise blue, and that blue fades into the vibrant gray and silver I was focused on a few moments ago. If Chase hadn’t said this was a god, I’d already have guessed it.
“You’re Aztec,” I breathe out. “You don’t…you aren’t from here, either.” I was about to say it didn’t belong here, and I’m thankful I caught the instinct. If ever a creature belonged in the everglades and this land that’s ripe with non-indigenous creatures, it was this one.
“I was,” it hisses at me, gruff, and it lowers its head so that its cat-marble eyes are at eye-level to mine. “And then I wasn’t.”
“Quetzalcoatl left the South American continent to explore. When it returned, its people had mostly been demolished,” Chase informs me. He stands up and puts another beer in my hand, and I drink it down without a thought to holding onto sobriety. “He used to keep the people of that land safe, but he came back here to the land that seemed to need him most and where he felt most at home. He ranges back to South America at times, and there are a still a few small groups there who worship him, but he tells me he prefers these lands now. Somehow, he says they’re wilder.”
Chase opens another beer while I try to find my voice, and then he continues before I do.
“I’ve been one of his so-called warriors for a few decades now. You take my place, maybe I’ll finally go take a look at the land he comes from, see if he’s right that these lands are wilder, but you can generally find him here now. Least-wise, he’ll be here when you need him to be.”
“And I am here now, of this world,” the monster—the god, I remind myself—finishes for him. “You may learn someday that not being known is better than being largely forgotten. So, yes, I take care of the people of this land, and the jungles and wild areas here are my domain.”
I swallow, making myself meet the beast’s cat-like snake eye. “But you must have some agreement with Chase.”
The thing glances to him without moving its head. “Chase has been a strong warrior—a worthy one. He’ll be free of this land if he wishes to be, should you take his place. If you can pass a test, I’ll transfer the agreement to you. I purified myself before serving my people. Are you brave enough to do the same?”
The question hangs between us, with the only sounds being the rustling feathers of Quetazlcoatl’s huge body and the opening of another bottle of beer, as if Chase is watching a show instead of watching me decide our futures. I think of the wind and smoke I’ve seen in these lands, and the stories I’ve heard about Chase. This isn’t about one case, but then again, it never was. I want to catch Josephs, but I also want to catch everyone like him who tries to use the glades as an escape. I want to be the guy who other officers look to when it comes to tracking this land—even if maybe I wouldn’t have thought that possible until now.
Quetzalcoatl’s head dips in the air, as if swimming in the wind, and hisses—sounding fully like a giant monster of a snake for the first time since we entered this clearing. “You’re considering the proposition. Chase didn’t hesitate.”
Twisting the cap from a water bottle, Chase grunts. “Chase didn’t think, is how I’d put it. Maybe this one’s smarter than I was.”
There’s a shifting, a rippling in the sand ahead of me, and then what looks to be a stone coffin is rising from the sand, unearthly and ungodly and dark.
One of the god’s coils slithers soft against my leg, exerting only enough pressure to make me shift my legs toward the log—telling me its strength. “I spent three days buried. I’ll ask of you for three hours.”
I look at Chase, and he only shrugs. “You can run one way, or you can run the other,” he tells me. “Forward, or forget all of this. You wouldn’t be the first, though you’re the first I’ve brought out here. Thought you might just have the stomach for it, I guess, but I’ve been wrong before—outside of these glades, that is.”
“Outside only,” Quetzalcoatl offers, in something close enough to a whisper that it sounds a little more human. “Now, Juan, where do you fall here?”
Whatever I was about to say, I swallow it down. I think of the men who’ve lost me on the edge of these glades, and that any one of them might kill more people and then escape into these wilds again. And then I look at Chase, who must have survived this test at some distant point in the past. And then I stand up again, and I take a step toward the coffin.
Quetzalcoatl hisses in something like approval, and the lid of the stone coffin shifts sideways. Inside, I see a bed of grass and canteens set off to the side. “Water and whiskey for the hours,” it tells me. “I thought Chase might bring someone soon. Are you able? Ready? Loyal enough to the people of this land?”
I look back to the god, standing there beside the coffin in sand that I feel sucking at my boots, begging to suck me down. “If I do this, what happens after?”
The snake of a god shifts back and forth in what might be a dance or might be a shrug, or might be a gesture that it’s considering striking out and eating me. “You are able to catch bad men who seek to hide in these lands. And when I summon you to seek justice for people of this land who need you, you do.”
I hear Chase guffaw from the side, and look back over my shoulder to him. “You’ll seek your justice,” he tells me. “Quetzalcoatl will seek his. When someone is wronged, you’ll fix the problem. That might mean finding a child’s bike after it was stolen, or that might mean delivering to this god a thief or a rapist. Fairness, justice, loyalty.”
“All for the best of the people of this land,” the god says, above it all. “I’ll ask nothing of you that is not just. But when I call you, you’ll come. And whether I am here or elsewhere, you will be a warrior for me, for this land, for these people here. Whatever we all require.”
“Quetzalcoatl called me to retrieve that kidnapped child who was kept here,” Chase adds, more quietly.
“And then I ate the kidnapper, sour as he was,” the god tells me. “Can you live with that?”
This god isn’t looking for words from me, but actions. I can see it in the tilt of the god’s head and the squint of its expression. I think of the smoke and the wind I lost that man to, again. And I think of that murdered mother and her child. And then I step into the coffin and sit down. It’s deep enough that I recline halfway down against the head of it, and my head is beneath the lip of the thing.
Above me, the lid slides closed as I hear Chase and the god echo each other in saying it’ll be three hours. Around me, darkness coalesces, and I catch my breath in my gut as I hear the sucking of the sand around the coffin, taking it back down to wherever it came from.
I half-expect sand to seep into the side, but the air around me is still, and finally the coffin stops moving, and I sense more than feel the sand settling around my little stone tomb, heavy and still and on all sides of me. When I reach out my hand for a canteen, I unscrew the cap numbly and bring it to my nose. It’s got whiskey in it, and I take a deep sip, closing my eyes as I do.
Something in the grass at my leg shifts, and I hear what I have to take to be a sort of hiss of approval before a snake glides against my leg, and then settles in a loose coil against my ankle. I take another sip of whiskey, and feel another snake settle against my other hip. There’s a weight to them, a thickness, and I guess they’re baby pythons, or perhaps black racers.
Tests. The voice echoes in my head, godlike, and it’s a proof that all of this is realer than anything else I’ve ever known. I guard the nature of this world, and I guard the people. You’ll do the same. Consider that, sitting there, and if you accept it, you’ll rise and you’ll be my new warrior, and we’ll help each other.
“We’ll help each other,” I agree. “For justice and for this land and for these people. I’ll accept it, Quetzalcoatl.”
The coffin ripples around me, in a sort of up-down movement as if a wave of sand has just run beneath it, and I take another sip of the whiskey as one of the snakes settles closer, resting against me. The blackness is all-encompassing, but I force myself to relax into it, letting myself settle into the grass and grow warmer from the alcohol as time passes.
When it shifts again, I know somehow that the three hours has passed by in what felt both longer and shorter. There’s a new strength in my bones, which feel heavier, and I realize it wasn’t just whiskey which I drank, but some particular gift from this god.
I know, when I reach the surface, that Chase will be gone. That odd little house kept by banyan trees will be mine to fill or use as I see fit, and I’ll hear this god when he wants me to hear him, but I’ll have no trouble getting on or off this land, into or out of the trees and the mangroves and the waters. I’ll know this land because I’ll be partly of it and with it—Quetzalcoatl’s newly minted warrior, as the god said.
I think of Chase’s arm—of the snake devouring the man—and I smile.
Almost entirely hidden by grotesque banyan trees, the house is one of those Fort Myers properties that looks to have already been felled by nature. The banyans make a maze of the yard with their aerial roots, and I have to turn sideways to move between the largest after I’ve parked the cruiser in the drive.
Whoever this property belongs to, they don’t like visitors.
From the cracked concrete in front of the screen door, I peer back into the yard to see that three massive banyans—each more than five feet in diameter—control the view. A sliver of the Sheriff’s insignia on my car is visible, as well as a small corner of the road.
No sunlight reaches the patch of ground where I’m standing, and it occurs to me that the man who lives in the house could come out with a knife and stab me without anyone knowing it. Nobody walking by would notice, and the trees would swallow up any screams.
It’s an absurd thought, but with the weight of nature in the yard, it feels true.
Up close, though, the house looks well taken care of. The screen door opens easily, without the creak of neglected hinges or springs, and the front area is swept clean. The stucco even looks freshly painted, though there’s no welcome mat or personal touch to give an idea of personality.
With my hand raised to knock, I’m not entirely surprised to hear the sound of a deadlock being shifted, and then the door is opening before I’ve made any move to announce myself. A slice of face glances at me from between the door and the jamb, and I let out a breath I didn’t mean to be holding when the door opens fully.
The man standing beyond the door could be a football player. He’s that large, and the confidence in his stance suggests that my Sheriff’s department uniform doesn’t intimidate him. Of course, it really shouldn’t.
“I tried to call first,” I tell him. “Name’s Juan Vettorello. I’m with the Sheriff’s Department. And you’re Agent Chase Toshoille, I hope.”
The tattoos on the man’s face make it hard to tell, but it looks like he might be squinting at me. Narrowing his eyes, maybe. “Used to be an agent,” he tells me. “You want to come in, I take it?”
“If you can make the time.”
He opens the door wider, stepping back, and gestures me inside into a cramped entryway at the side of a galley kitchen. I take an extra step forward toward a more brightly lit space, and try not to snoop while he closes and locks the door behind me. “Well, go on. Not enough space to walk side by side in here. Head on that way.”
I move further into the house and land in an open-concept living area that looks far cozier than the owner of the house might have suggested. A lazy housecat is sprawled on the back of an L-shaped couch, and there’s an old, gray-snouted dog snoring from a dog bed in the corner. A large-screen TV faces the couch and two recliners, but the place feels comfortable, lived in. The TV’s off, and I notice a book lying face-down on the coffee table by a beer.
Toshoille moves back by me and goes straight to the recliner, sitting down and picking up the beer. “Sit down,” he tells me. “But not near Hawk,” he adds, pointing to the cat. “She’ll wake up and swat you if you bounce her while she’s trying to sleep. Or bite you bloody.”
I eye the cat, and take the other recliner across from the old detective rather than bothering her. The hound puts his head back down, apparently trusting that his master will take care of any threat. “Sorry to bother you. Looks like you were having a relaxing day here.”
“Relaxing enough. You aim to change that, I take it?”
“No, but I do want your help.”
The man waves his beer at me, pointedly. “I’m retired, or I wouldn’t be drinking a beer on a Wednesday afternoon, would I?”
I don’t bother saying that, given the size of this man and the way his hand covers that bottle, he could probably down a six-pack without feeling a buzz. “I’m told you show up to help on the regular. I’d like to know how.”
“How?” The slightest tilt of a lip suggests he might be holding down a smile. “Normally, I drive.”
I offer what I hope looks like a friendly grin. “You know what I mean. You come out of retirement to show up with an occasional thief. You brought in the guy who was setting those fires last summer, and then found that girl who’d been kidnapped before we even knew she was missing.”
“Luck.”
I watch him empty whatever was left of the beer—or, he pretends to. I suspect it was already empty, and that swallow was a show. “You know the everglades in a way nobody else around here does. I’ve lost three different suspects in this region, and I’m told you never did. I’m told you can teach me what I need to know so that I won’t, either.”
The man stands up and moves past me, back to the kitchen. As he walks by, I catch some detail along the tattoo on his forearm, beneath his t-shirt, and realize that the shape covering his arm is a python swallowing up a man. “You want a beer?” he calls from the kitchen.
I should tell him no. This isn’t a man I want to lose my guard around. Instead, I think of what I saw when I chased Brock Josephs into the trees on the edge of I-75 and I tell him yes.
He comes back with two Sam Adams and a piece of jerky that he tosses to the dog, who wakes up in time to catch it in mid-air. “You saw something?” he asks as he sits down.
That was fast. “Something? What makes you say that?”
Toshoille grimaces at me and then drinks from his beer. “You’d have to have seen something for those old goats at the department to send you my way. Guessing they told you I’m crazy before they sent you here.”
“And that you were worth talking to,” I point out. In truth, it took some time for them to point me here. It took me asking, repeatedly, about who ever managed to catch anyone in this state’s damnable sprawls of nature, and then gripping onto the slitted eyes and nervous looks I saw. “They didn’t want to send me here,” I admit, “but it sure sounds like you’re the only one who has any luck when suspects go off the roads.”
“What’d you see?” he asks. His eyes are back on me now. Despite what I told myself I’d do after getting the beer, I take a few gulps.
“It doesn’t matter. Can you help me?”
“If it doesn’t matter, you can leave. You can’t admit what you saw, I’m no good to you. This land has its own way about it, its own rules, and you gotta accept that.” He stands up, scowling. “You wasting my time, Officer? If so, get on out before I throw Hawk on you, prickly end first. You don’t want that.”
The cat’s got his ears perked up with interest, as if he very much wants to be thrown at me ‘prickly end first’—but that’s not why I came here, is it?
“I saw smoke. Wind,” I tell him.
He was about to take a step, but instead he sets his beer down and then sits down himself. “Sounds like a brushfire.”
I know he’s pushing me, and so I push myself to keep going. This is the stuff I haven’t talked to anyone about now—the stuff I was saving for this character.
“Not a brushfire. I’m not new to woods or country. I came down here from Louisiana, and I was good at tracking criminals who walked off into the swamp. I know what I’m doing, Toshoille. But here… I lost a guy off of I-75 last week. A dozen feet into the trees, he disappeared in a rush of wind and smoke. Disappeared. No fire. No storm. Just wind and smoke, and he was gone.”
“Maybe you were drunk,” he says, gesturing with the beer.
“No, sir. Hadn’t had a drop of anything but water ‘n coffee. And before you ask, it was light out, middle of the afternoon, and there was no storm. The guy was just gone.”
“Pythons get up in the trees, and so do cougars.”
“You’re telling me the man got eaten by wildlife while I was ten feet away?” I scoff, and then I force a more direct laugh. There’s a quiet in this house that I don’t like. A seriousness to this man. If he told me that a cougar could sweep men into trees and eat them in a moment’s notice, and did it with a straight face, I’m not so sure I could contradict him. Thinking that, I take another swig of the beer.
“No, but they can dislodge branches, rustle the trees. Scare one man into running faster into the ‘glades and another man into running back to his cruiser. Hard to admit that,” he adds, his eyes on his cat, “but there’s no shame in being afraid of the nature down here. Smart men are, some would say. You want to get lost in the trees and come face to face with a cat that’s ten times the size of that puss on the couch, and twice as hungry and three times as mean? Hawk’s bad enough, she gets a mind to be.”
I watch the cat with him for a minute, as she stretches and eyes the two of us like she owns that couch. Maybe she does. “Hawk’s got her power. Whatever I saw had its power. Something… else. Something involving smoke and wind. Can you help me out or not?”
“You imagined something. You’re welcome to another beer, but I don’t think you know what you’re looking for. You want my advice? You’ll do well to catch criminals before they get to the trees.”
“Brock Josephs was the guy I was after who lost me. The reason someone at the station finally broke down and told me where to find you. You hear of him?”
Toshoille flinched—I saw it. That name meant something to him, whether he wants it to or not, though he doesn’t answer.
“He’s the one who’s been stealing cars from gated communities. I suspect he’s been bribing guards to get him in and out or leave their station, but I haven’t proved it yet. He ran over that girl and her baby over on Tamiami Trail when he was going for the interstate. You saw it on the news. Now, he’s off everyone’s radar, but I’m willing to bet he’s hiding out in the everglades, and I aim to find him.”
“He was drunk when that happened. Yeah, I saw it on the news.”
“Yep. Left a bar, got in a corvette he stole earlier that day, and killed a 26-year-old and her toddler as she was walking him home from the babysitter after getting off work. Next day, I caught up to him in the gated community off of Del Villa. He had a head-start, but I was on him all the way over to 75. He ditched the car when I wasn’t a half-mile behind him, and wasn’t in the trees more’n seconds before me since he tripped getting out of that ‘vette. But he lost me anyway, and I want to know how to keep that from happening again. I’m fit—I should have been able to catch him in those trees and it would’ve been done.”
“But he was gone,” Toshoille finishes for me.
“He was gone.”
The man drinks down what’s left of his beer, and then he freezes for a moment, as if whatever he’s thinking of is too much to allow for him to consider anything else. When his eyes turn back to me, they look more interested than they did earlier, and I have to fight the urge to flee the house right there, before he can say anything else. It was the oldest officer who told me where to find this guy—an officer with one foot in the cardiac ward at the hospital and the other on a boat he probably got out of the impound lot. Someone without a lot of morals or particular care for fellow officers. Someone who I wouldn’t have expected to help me.
It occurs to me now that maybe the other officers were helping me by keeping their mouths shut.
“I know what you’re talking about. The smoke and the wind. I saw it, too, a few times. And then I asked someone else to let me see into the everglades and banyans and mudflats and mangroves in just the way you’re asking me now. And now I live alone, and sometimes I catch men even though I’m retired. Because I have to. I’m driven to. I’m tied to this land and its people, to help justice along. And I can’t leave. I’ll probably live here till I keel over and those damn banyans swallow me up or Hawk and Ferret eat me.”
The dog’s head perks up, and I realize this giant of a man named his giant of a dog after a tiny weasel.
“You want that?” he asks. “Or you want the freedom to really retire and go back to Louisiana whenever you decide?”
“You…” I catch whatever I was about to say in my throat. “You act like I’m selling my soul to the devil if I tell you I want a better understanding of this part of the state.”
“Not the devil. Justice, maybe. You want to think of it like that.”
I take a swig of the beer, finishing it as I try to read between the lines. “I’m a Sheriff’s deputy. I already sold my soul to justice, Agent Toshoille.”
Toshoille looks at me again, and then some decision moves across his face. “Call me Chase. Lemme hit the head and then we’ll go. You make yourself useful—there’s a backpack cooler under the sink. Pack up the bottled water in the fridge and all the beers you see there. I’m driving.”
2
A half-mile into the trees, there’s a part of my brain that feels paranoid this retired agent in front of me could just disappear and leave me in his dust, and I’d be a goner. Thinking that, I stick closer to his heels, and I only stop for a moment’s rest when he does.
“You’re Spanish,” he comments over his shoulder. “That might help.”
“Help?”
He keeps walking, striking down a portion of a particularly mangy mangrove with the machete he’s carrying. To clear branches and snakes, he said. He hasn’t said much else, in fact.
“But yeah, I am,” I tell him. “Came down here to Florida because I’ve got some cousins newly over from Puerto Rico. My parents are all I’ve got up in Louisiana, but they travel a lot. Not much to hold me there, and the cousins down here can use the support. Young kids ‘n all.”
Chase gives something like a shrug and veers left, and I follow him. “You ain’t gonna wanna relocate any time soon?” he asks.
“No time soon,” I agree.
He grunts, and then he stops. “We’re here.”
What this man has called ‘here’ isn’t more than a muddy clearing that’s got more mud in it than life. Mangroves make a wall on one side, and I’m guessing there’s water and gators on their other side. In front of me, it’s mostly downed logs, tree-shaded mud and sand, and trees and plants that I probably ought to be able to identify, but can’t. I’m positive there’s quicksand scattered through the area, and the sand flats ahead of us look like likely areas for it.
“Take a seat,” Chase tells me, and tosses me a beer from the pack he’s just opened.
I catch it and sit on a log diagonal to where he is, gazing around the area warily. It’s late afternoon, and it’ll be dark by the time we get back to the road even if we head back now—which we obviously aren’t doing. “You gonna know how to get out of here, come night?” I ask.
“Don’t worry about that. Just drink. You want a water, too?”
I nod, and catch that while sipping at the beer.
I don’t know how long we’ve sat in the clearing, mostly still and silent, when something shifts the log I’m resting my ass on. I drop the water bottle to the ground and turn to face the path with my gun in hand... but there’s nothing there.
“Put the gun away and pick up that trash or this trip’ll be for nothing,” Chase comments. He swallows whatever was left of his own beer and reaches out his hand for my empties—water bottle and beer can—and I’ve done as instructed before it occurs to me to do otherwise. “And keep your ass where it is on that log,” he adds.
There’s a rustling in the air now—a movement to the trees and even the sand around us, though I can’t lay my eye on its source. Chase looks at peace, weirdly so, and I decide now’s not the time to break the silence. Whatever we came out here for, it’s about to become clear.
“You found a replacement,” a voice whispers. The ‘s’ was drawn out, the end syllables of each consonant-ending word clipped, and I have to clench my muscles to keep from turning to seek it out in the trees. Something tells me I wouldn’t find it, so I focus on the sound. There was a vague accent to it—Brazilian, maybe, I think. From that part of the world, at least.
“If you approve him,” Chase drawls slowly, raking his eyes over me in a way that suggests he’s both pleased and concerned. “He says he’s already sold his soul to justice, so this may just be a formality.”
The rustling in the trees becomes more centered, and a branch bends above me, as if reaching down to brush my shoulder. “Your intentions are pure,” the voice comments, and the accent is more pronounced now. “But you are not from here. My warriors normally come from the land they agree to protect. Tell me why I should make an exception.” Again, the ‘s’ sounds are drawn out, lingering in the air. I still can’t place the accent or locate a person for the voice.
I stand up, thinking that I ought to look the part if this glades-dweller wants a warrior, however strange this is. “I’ve got family here. I’m not going anywhere,” I say loudly. That’s what Chase has been pushing to know, so I’m guessing it’s what the voice needs to hear. “And I keep losing people in these parts of the state—people who’ve done bad things. Chase seems to think you can help me with that.”
The rustling seems to be circling the clearing, and I glance over to Chase. He’s got his eyes narrowed on me, and they nearly glow against his tattooed skin. “You run now,” he tells me, “I might have some trouble finding you if that’s what he wants, so I suggest you brace yourself.”
There’s no time to think about what he’s just said.
When I stood, I stepped away from the tree, and suddenly I’m aware of something large and soft and firm flopping overtop of it, landing against the back of my legs and rustling by my jeans’ legs. I twitch sideways and look down and to the side, and that’s when I see it. Stretching along one whole side of the clearing, and running between me and the tree, there’s what looks like a thirty-foot length of deep green fabric, like rolled up carpet—but it’s moving, slithering like a snake even though it looks soft. I blink, hard, and then look around me.
Whatever this is, it’s longer than a snake, and when I crouch down, I see that it’s actually feathered, which makes not a damn lick of sense. “What—” I begin, but then there’s a tail end to it, and I can feel the warmth of it as it wraps lightly around my legs. Not hard enough that I have to bring together my feet, but a few coils—ten inches thick, each one—land around my braced, booted feet as if they’re rubber tires. But they’re feathered, verdant green coils of what must be some monstrous creature, not tires, and somehow, from Chase’s unsurprised expression, I know it’s the head of these coils that’s been talking to us.
“Sit,” it commands, and a shift of the coils against the back of my legs sends me falling back to the log I rose from.
When I look up again, I see the head of the thing coming at me from across the clearing, and I don’t have time or mind or inclination to think about how long that makes it. The body is green, but it gets blue near the head weaving toward me in the air, and this head is like none I’ve ever seen. A mix of hawk and man if I had to describe it, but with a beak that could break me if it had a mind to. The beak alone is half my size, rimmed in silver that sparkles even in the dim light slipping through the trees.
“Officer Juan Vettorello, this is Quetzalcoatl, keeper of the justice and the lands in these parts, the Feathered Serpent.” Chase cracks open another beer. “Quetzalcoatl, I give you Juan, over-eager Sheriff’s deputy who’s ripe to take my place.”
The snake-bird-monster’s head comes to a stop a few feet from me, and I realize that what I took to be a beak is more of a snake’s snout, but elongated and pointed and smooth with scales bleeding out of the feathers covering the rest of its body. There’s a greyish sandy color to the lower portion of it, to its belly, but its head is otherwise blue, and that blue fades into the vibrant gray and silver I was focused on a few moments ago. If Chase hadn’t said this was a god, I’d already have guessed it.
“You’re Aztec,” I breathe out. “You don’t…you aren’t from here, either.” I was about to say it didn’t belong here, and I’m thankful I caught the instinct. If ever a creature belonged in the everglades and this land that’s ripe with non-indigenous creatures, it was this one.
“I was,” it hisses at me, gruff, and it lowers its head so that its cat-marble eyes are at eye-level to mine. “And then I wasn’t.”
“Quetzalcoatl left the South American continent to explore. When it returned, its people had mostly been demolished,” Chase informs me. He stands up and puts another beer in my hand, and I drink it down without a thought to holding onto sobriety. “He used to keep the people of that land safe, but he came back here to the land that seemed to need him most and where he felt most at home. He ranges back to South America at times, and there are a still a few small groups there who worship him, but he tells me he prefers these lands now. Somehow, he says they’re wilder.”
Chase opens another beer while I try to find my voice, and then he continues before I do.
“I’ve been one of his so-called warriors for a few decades now. You take my place, maybe I’ll finally go take a look at the land he comes from, see if he’s right that these lands are wilder, but you can generally find him here now. Least-wise, he’ll be here when you need him to be.”
“And I am here now, of this world,” the monster—the god, I remind myself—finishes for him. “You may learn someday that not being known is better than being largely forgotten. So, yes, I take care of the people of this land, and the jungles and wild areas here are my domain.”
I swallow, making myself meet the beast’s cat-like snake eye. “But you must have some agreement with Chase.”
The thing glances to him without moving its head. “Chase has been a strong warrior—a worthy one. He’ll be free of this land if he wishes to be, should you take his place. If you can pass a test, I’ll transfer the agreement to you. I purified myself before serving my people. Are you brave enough to do the same?”
The question hangs between us, with the only sounds being the rustling feathers of Quetazlcoatl’s huge body and the opening of another bottle of beer, as if Chase is watching a show instead of watching me decide our futures. I think of the wind and smoke I’ve seen in these lands, and the stories I’ve heard about Chase. This isn’t about one case, but then again, it never was. I want to catch Josephs, but I also want to catch everyone like him who tries to use the glades as an escape. I want to be the guy who other officers look to when it comes to tracking this land—even if maybe I wouldn’t have thought that possible until now.
Quetzalcoatl’s head dips in the air, as if swimming in the wind, and hisses—sounding fully like a giant monster of a snake for the first time since we entered this clearing. “You’re considering the proposition. Chase didn’t hesitate.”
Twisting the cap from a water bottle, Chase grunts. “Chase didn’t think, is how I’d put it. Maybe this one’s smarter than I was.”
There’s a shifting, a rippling in the sand ahead of me, and then what looks to be a stone coffin is rising from the sand, unearthly and ungodly and dark.
One of the god’s coils slithers soft against my leg, exerting only enough pressure to make me shift my legs toward the log—telling me its strength. “I spent three days buried. I’ll ask of you for three hours.”
I look at Chase, and he only shrugs. “You can run one way, or you can run the other,” he tells me. “Forward, or forget all of this. You wouldn’t be the first, though you’re the first I’ve brought out here. Thought you might just have the stomach for it, I guess, but I’ve been wrong before—outside of these glades, that is.”
“Outside only,” Quetzalcoatl offers, in something close enough to a whisper that it sounds a little more human. “Now, Juan, where do you fall here?”
Whatever I was about to say, I swallow it down. I think of the men who’ve lost me on the edge of these glades, and that any one of them might kill more people and then escape into these wilds again. And then I look at Chase, who must have survived this test at some distant point in the past. And then I stand up again, and I take a step toward the coffin.
Quetzalcoatl hisses in something like approval, and the lid of the stone coffin shifts sideways. Inside, I see a bed of grass and canteens set off to the side. “Water and whiskey for the hours,” it tells me. “I thought Chase might bring someone soon. Are you able? Ready? Loyal enough to the people of this land?”
I look back to the god, standing there beside the coffin in sand that I feel sucking at my boots, begging to suck me down. “If I do this, what happens after?”
The snake of a god shifts back and forth in what might be a dance or might be a shrug, or might be a gesture that it’s considering striking out and eating me. “You are able to catch bad men who seek to hide in these lands. And when I summon you to seek justice for people of this land who need you, you do.”
I hear Chase guffaw from the side, and look back over my shoulder to him. “You’ll seek your justice,” he tells me. “Quetzalcoatl will seek his. When someone is wronged, you’ll fix the problem. That might mean finding a child’s bike after it was stolen, or that might mean delivering to this god a thief or a rapist. Fairness, justice, loyalty.”
“All for the best of the people of this land,” the god says, above it all. “I’ll ask nothing of you that is not just. But when I call you, you’ll come. And whether I am here or elsewhere, you will be a warrior for me, for this land, for these people here. Whatever we all require.”
“Quetzalcoatl called me to retrieve that kidnapped child who was kept here,” Chase adds, more quietly.
“And then I ate the kidnapper, sour as he was,” the god tells me. “Can you live with that?”
This god isn’t looking for words from me, but actions. I can see it in the tilt of the god’s head and the squint of its expression. I think of the smoke and the wind I lost that man to, again. And I think of that murdered mother and her child. And then I step into the coffin and sit down. It’s deep enough that I recline halfway down against the head of it, and my head is beneath the lip of the thing.
Above me, the lid slides closed as I hear Chase and the god echo each other in saying it’ll be three hours. Around me, darkness coalesces, and I catch my breath in my gut as I hear the sucking of the sand around the coffin, taking it back down to wherever it came from.
I half-expect sand to seep into the side, but the air around me is still, and finally the coffin stops moving, and I sense more than feel the sand settling around my little stone tomb, heavy and still and on all sides of me. When I reach out my hand for a canteen, I unscrew the cap numbly and bring it to my nose. It’s got whiskey in it, and I take a deep sip, closing my eyes as I do.
Something in the grass at my leg shifts, and I hear what I have to take to be a sort of hiss of approval before a snake glides against my leg, and then settles in a loose coil against my ankle. I take another sip of whiskey, and feel another snake settle against my other hip. There’s a weight to them, a thickness, and I guess they’re baby pythons, or perhaps black racers.
Tests. The voice echoes in my head, godlike, and it’s a proof that all of this is realer than anything else I’ve ever known. I guard the nature of this world, and I guard the people. You’ll do the same. Consider that, sitting there, and if you accept it, you’ll rise and you’ll be my new warrior, and we’ll help each other.
“We’ll help each other,” I agree. “For justice and for this land and for these people. I’ll accept it, Quetzalcoatl.”
The coffin ripples around me, in a sort of up-down movement as if a wave of sand has just run beneath it, and I take another sip of the whiskey as one of the snakes settles closer, resting against me. The blackness is all-encompassing, but I force myself to relax into it, letting myself settle into the grass and grow warmer from the alcohol as time passes.
When it shifts again, I know somehow that the three hours has passed by in what felt both longer and shorter. There’s a new strength in my bones, which feel heavier, and I realize it wasn’t just whiskey which I drank, but some particular gift from this god.
I know, when I reach the surface, that Chase will be gone. That odd little house kept by banyan trees will be mine to fill or use as I see fit, and I’ll hear this god when he wants me to hear him, but I’ll have no trouble getting on or off this land, into or out of the trees and the mangroves and the waters. I’ll know this land because I’ll be partly of it and with it—Quetzalcoatl’s newly minted warrior, as the god said.
I think of Chase’s arm—of the snake devouring the man—and I smile.