A Spicy Adventure story set largely in the bayou which goes a whole five lines before mentioning “barbaric voodoo!”
Dr. Bob Carson is asked if he is willing to be assigned by the government to Okochee Bayou, said to be “a fester of filth and disease.” The doctor thinks of “Pasteur . . . Lister . . . Walter Reed.” Although he might have actually been thinking of Reed’s namesake when he heard about the filth and disease. Dr. Carson not only accepts the assignment, he intends to take his wife Enid with him.
As their guide rows the Carsons across the bayou, they are chilled by the eerie calls of owls and bullfrogs. “Some folks say dey’s duh spirits ub duh dead,” he says, channeling Buckwheat. With those comforting words, he drops them at their new shack. He leaves, but says he’ll be back in a week . . . if they are still there. Bwa-ha-ha-ha!
They are surprised to be welcomed by Boll Eddinger. Maybe surprised because he is described as a giant; or maybe because he is inexplicably wearing a sombrero in the Louisiana swamp. He says he is happy to have a local doctor again. A lot of the local “white trash” have been dying lately. The local custom is to burn the bodies and eat the ashes so that the deceased’s soul stays alive in them, and on the carpet.
He says the locals don’t much cotton to that big-city medicine. “Last week a girl ran a sliver through her hand. They didn’t wait to see what come of it. They just chopped the hand off.” After Boll leaves, Bob assures his wife, “In a month, we’ll have them eating out of our hand.” You know, if they don’t get a sliver.
Unbeknownst to the Carsons, after Boll leaves they are still not alone. “Neither of them saw the face at the window. It was thin, sallow and heavily bearded. Dark malevolent eyes peered out from under scraggly unkempt brows. The yellow green tusks of root rotted teeth hung viciously over a twisted lower lip. It was the face of a maniac.” But not so maniacal that he didn’t check out Enid’s boobs as she fooled around with Bob.
The next night, “a barefoot girl in a filthy rag of a cotton dress” knocks at the door. She is nonetheless beautiful and seems to be wearing nothing else. Bob goes with her to check on her sick father. After Bob is gone, the hideous face is again checking Enid out. This time she sees it and screams. He opens the door and tells her, white-coated tongue a-wagging, that folks in these parts don’t like strangers and they’d best be shipping back to where they came from. Enid replies with the punchline from an old Ronald Reagan joke: But we’re from the government, and we’re to help!
He snaps that they don’t want no help and that they have ways making people leave. He is joined by a “shuffling, gray-haired hag.” She begins chanting a curse that terrorizes Enid to the point she imagines a devilish beast attacking her and ripping her clothes off.
Meanwhile, Bob is following the girl. “A twig had caught in the girl’s dress bodice, ripped it down the front. It had fallen from her shoulders. Her youthfully firm breasts were bare.” Being a doctor, Bob’s first concern is for the bruises revealed on the girl’s bare back. She says her father beat her. Bob realizes that she was sent to lure him from the shack, leaving Enid alone.
He races back to the shack and kills his wife’s attackers, but the real action comes when he and Enid try to escape by boat. The locals begin attacking them. They throw cans of oil into the water, setting the swamp on fire. As the old boat is beginning to burn, Bob and Enid dive out and swim under water to the shore. Not familiar with the old going-under-water trick, or bathing in general, the locals suddenly hail them as heroes.
Points for the setting and going the extra nautical mile for the ending. But these stories are getting to be a bit of a slog.
Post-Post:
- First published: March 1937.
- I fell into a burning river of fire.
First shot: man shaves in front of mirror. Second shot: man wakes up from nightmare and looks into a mirror. Gee, I wonder where this is going?
As in TZ60’s 
Finally the guard spots feet under the desk, but toes-up which is unusual. Twitchy then kills him — I really didn’t think he had it in him, so that was a surprise. He hears noises and finds Chance2 pouring them a couple of drinks — doubles, I imagine. See, because they’re . . .
Then I have no idea what happens. Twitchy replays in his mind the events from having that morning, to the deal with Markham. In this iteration, though, the deal went through as he expected and he pocketed $45,000 — literally, as he is ecstatic to unexpectedly find $45,000 in his pocket. Jackie pops the cork on some champagne. When she enters the bedroom, Twitchy is proudly holding out the stacks of bills in his hands. When she looks at his hands, however, all she sees are 12 fingers, 2 of them being cold, dead and severed.
The doc realizes that Charlie’s rantings were correct — they are taking death back to Earth!
Strange things afoot:
Elwood’s wife had heard that the ship had been struck with the plague. Logan assures her that it was no plague, merely a hurricane and an infestation of poisonous snakes that both came aboard in Florida. Two men died and 3 others survived being bitten.
Things get frosty pretty quickly when Ruth Elwood comes to the Inn to purchase a bottle of wine. Bessie tells her the Captain might be late as he is hanging out with the guys. Ruth can tell by the long table set up for a party that he won’t be home for dinner. When Elwood spots her, he accuses her of spying on him and tells her, “to expect me when you see me.” He closes the door on her like 
Oh my God. How could this get any more tragic for her? Oh yeah, she reaches into his suitcase, a snake bites her, and she dies.
After a respectable year, Elwood feels he can get on with his life. The Widow Smith has been dropping by, and tonight he is attending a dinner for his former first mate who is now a captain. As the group is preparing to go to the table, all the dishes crash to the floor just as when Ruth had done it a year ago. Bessie is suspected, but resets the table. This time, as the group watches, the dishes are again flung to the floor.
After two Twilight Zones that weren’t very Twilight Zoney, we have an Alfred Hitchcock Presents that isn’t very Alfred Hitchcock Presentable. It’s more like 
They continue the job together and make good progress the first day. There is a fiesta that night with the camp’s only guitar and the camp’s only senorita.
The next day a boulder falls on a worker. While Philips helps him, Johnson single-handedly shores another another boulder from falling. It seems the job is not impossible to complete on schedule. The men have a respect for each other, though, and decide to give it a try.
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