Mind the Marsh People

Here’s a story to be told every five years for they arise every five. Every five years it’s wise to mind your steps and routes. Some years they’re quiet. But some years they got a mean streak.

In the marshes and swamps of Barnstable live the Marsh People. There’s no telling where they came from or how they got there, but they live in the mud and muck — looking every bit of the mud and muck they rise from. They could’ve been people who long adjusted to hibernating and living in the muck. They could be the marsh mud itself; rising to feed, to bring justice, or just be plain mean and cruel to the humans who been mean and cruel to the marsh.

They like to walk down and over the railroad tracks long abandoned and long cutting through the wetlands. Coming up and over and down, down into the mire and sludge. They could be angry at the railway for the Marsh People haven’t been seen before the tracks were laid down. Seem to have settled down some since the trains slowed down on this spit of land.

But don’t forget what they can do to a person.

Walk along the old railroad and you sense being followed though no one will appear behind, in front, or side to side. Maybe off in the distance towards the water you can see something like a tall man or two wandering the marsh though they have no boat in high tide and you can’t make out hardly any details. That man disappears as quickly as he was spotted and you aren’t sure what you saw. So you keep walking your walk because what else is there to do when the mainlanders ain’t around? And there’s no way other way back home.

So you walk and you walk and you can’t shake off that feeling of someone else being around. You can’t shake off wondering about the men wandering. Step after step, you notice the ground is softer than you had expected and softer than you remember. You can see the steps you took as you had walked in. And some of those old steps are swiped through as though something had dragged itself across to get to the rest of the marsh.

Your mind goes back to that man in the marsh, the moving water in the back and the cordgrass to the front making you think maybe you had just seen things. So you pick up the pace because you’re tired of this and you want to outrun out the strange sounds coming from the mud too close to you. It could be the small critters. You hope it’s the small critters.

Light and color from the sky fading, you do your best to pick up the pace. The sounds can’t be ignored and you just want to be home and safe.

But that’s when you’re yanked down by the ankle, sliding off the railway something rough. And before you can properly make a sound, you’re gone. Down, down into the mud and silt — like quicksand. Just like that. Snatched with barely a noise or ceremony.

Maybe they are vengeful. Maybe they hunt. Maybe they are tending to the marshes, seeing if they need protecting. When the cordgrass started dying, the Marsh People showed up again. Either way: don’t be caught near the railroad tracks, don’t disrespect the wetlands. And mind the cycle: watch your step in five years time. Though you ought to starting minding your step today.