When Cal came home for summer break, he found his sisters eating frogs in the living room. The shag carpet was swollen and in need of vacuuming. Every lamp’s shade was heavy, the light casting gloom rather than brightness. The furniture was gaudy, overstuffed: the sofas and his father’s matching leather recliner, the entertainment center bursting with VHS tapes and DVDs of movies no one ever watched—all of it in dark, heavy wood. One sister was sitting on the coffee table, the other perched on the sofa with a container of frogs, a writhing mass between them. Cal couldn’t help but stare as Katie and Karleigh leaned their heads back in tandem and plunked the coin-size frogs into their mouths.
He might have been more disgusted by this had he forgotten their childhood of devouring sand and mud cakes formed on the banks of the Bayou Teche and of swallowing pebbles while Cal and the neighbor boy, Vasek, watched. Louisiana was a place of eating rabbit gumbo and alligator, of fried liver, of boudin and mirliton. Their oil executive father loved frog legs, so the stretch to whole cricket frogs, a plastic container’s worth, was not deep or far.
When he finally found his voice and said, “What are you doing?” Cal’s sisters turned to him with cinematic slowness and stared. Their faces were all frowning anger.
“We’re doing as the Cauchemar says,” Katie, on the couch, said, voice low. Karleigh nodded, looking ghostly.
*
Vasek and his parents were immigrants from the Czechia, and Cal had no idea what they did or why they’d chosen the armpit of Louisiana as the place to do it. Vasek first introduced himself in excellent but heavily accented English the day he and his parents moved in. Cal and his sisters were playing in their yard, him pretending to be a Rougarou, the twins hunting him with Nerf guns. Vasek asked if he could also be a Rougarou—he pronounced the word perfectly, winking at Cal as he did—and then proceeded to run for the water, howling. He liked tormenting frogs, poking at them with sticks so they jumped away in terror. It had been Vasek who instructed Cal and the twins on the other monsters of Louisiana folklore rather than the other way around; he lowered his voice to a thrumming whisper as he regaled them with stories of the Grunch, the Merbeing, and Parlangua, the creatures’ names especially dense and terrifying on his Eastern European tongue. Vasek always looked like he had been conscripted into a backwoods militia, his hair buzzed close to his scalp, his white t-shirts a size too large, his camo pants two inches too short, revealing a strip of pale skin above the kiddie-size combat boots he wore as he stomped around.
Eventually, Katie and Karleigh grew tired of the river and their yard games, replacing Rougarou hunting with television and books and cross-country running. Cal still walked loops around the exterior of the house sometimes, and sometimes, Vasek joined him, which didn’t bother Cal because Vasek understood not to talk. But then once, when they were sixteen, they were blocked from both houses by a copse of trees, and Vasek grabbed Cal’s wrist before he said, “Could I touch you?”
In nine years, his accent had not softened, and there was something musical in it when he asked questions. Cal understood immediately what Vasek meant, and his face went hot, not because he was disgusted or afraid, but because he was surprised that Vasek had somehow seen and understood a desire that Cal did not quite understand himself. All he could do was nod, and soon enough, Vasek’s hands were unclasping Cal’s belt buckle. Cal felt the breeze on his thighs, Vasek’s spit on his hipbone.
What Cal did not know was that Vasek’s understanding of angles had been off. They weren’t invisible; Cal’s father saw everything from his bedroom window.
*
Cal’s sisters returned to their consumption, as if Cauchemar was a word he should understand like milk or aunt or lobster. His sister didn’t seem to chew. There was no sick crunch, no pop, no squish as they ate. Neither seemed to breathe, swallowing frogs like pills. The air was thick and immobile. His sisters had always been lean thanks to cross country, but their thighs looked like the narrow branches of cypress trees, truncated and weak. Their elbows were knobs, their cheeks sucking and thin.
Although he knew she must be at work, the elementary school year stretching longer into the Louisiana summer than his collegiate schedule, Cal was filled with rage at his mother’s absence. And shouldn’t the twins, juniors, still be at school themselves? He didn’t have the St. Martin Parish schedule memorized, but mid-May was too early for them to be free and clear. Here they were, daughters of an educator, straight-A student-athletes (last time he heard), skipping school to do whatever foul thing they were doing.
Cal felt invisible, disintegrated. He was tempted to back out of the room, out of the house, out of the state, spool everything in reverse across the country to South Carolina, settle back into his new apartment and wait for his summer job at the university’s writing center to start. He imagined his sisters growing fat on frogs, turning into blobby, reptilian things that exploded in size until it was their mother, and maybe their father, whom they scooped up and swallowed with nothing more than a burp.
He had not come home because his mother or father begged. Instead, Cal had packed up a bag and made the thirteen-hour drive, swooping through Atlanta on I-20, then down I-85 and 65, because of Vasek or, more precisely, Vasek’s mother. She had died, apparently, after a lengthy and ugly bout with breast cancer. The funeral was the next day.
“I thought you’d want to at least know,” his mother had told him. Her voice was always edgy on the phone, as though someone was holding her at gunpoint and she was saying what she thought she was supposed to.
“You did?” Cal said.
“Maybe he’ll come,” she said.
Cal waited until the last second. He told himself he didn’t need, or want, to come. The truth was he had not seen Vasek since leaving for South Carolina. Cal felt a little haunted.
He heard the pop of tires crunching along the gravel troughs of the driveway. His father had always groused about what he called this “backwoods hick feature,” but he’d never sprung to have anyone come out and pave. Katie and Karleigh didn’t scramble up at the noise, but they did seem to float, Katie picking up the container of frogs like it was nothing before they disappeared down the hall. Cal beelined for the front porch and watched his mother gather her school bag and purse from the passenger seat.
“Hi,” he said.
She stood before him, a large pair of sunglasses obscuring her eyes, though the lines that appeared on her forehead gave away her frown. She was the only person Cal knew who never seemed to be affected by the Louisiana heat and humidity; her shirts were never stained with sweat, and her hair was always voluminous and perfect. She held whatever thoughts came to her close; Cal had seen, many times, her mouth moving briefly before she spoke, as if she were testing out the words, not only to decide if they sounded right but to determine if she actually wanted to share them.
“Well,” she said, her voice somehow verging on both cheer and annoyance but not teetering into either. “This is something of a surprise.”
“I know.”
“Is it going to be a happy one?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
She laughed and climbed the stairs. “Oh,” she said, pushing past him, her bags whacking him in the arm so hard he nearly spun like a cartoon character. “I think you can figure it out.”
*
By the time he was passing Biloxi, Cal had felt a familiar welter in his stomach. Anse Broussard Highway looked the same as always. He felt like he was crossing into another universe when he exited at Grand Point Highway and turned onto Melvin Dupuis, leaving behind the Waffle House and Andy G’s Body Shop for fields of cane and crawfish and, eventually, the cypress trees that draped the edges of the swamp. When he approached the house, it looked as it always had: white paint, shuttered windows, long drive, thick columns pasted with decorative stones that held the house’s two teetering stories up above the flood-friendly grass. Stepping out of his car, he could smell the muddy Bayou Teche. Cal had gone through a period with Vasek, right before the outdoor fun stopped, of chasing wild crawfish and then tormenting his sisters with the crustaceans they gathered in their hands. Katie and Karleigh would run inside, dashing through the kitchen without taking off their shoes, which drove their mother insane. Their shrieking rang in perfect harmony, Katie’s voice two notes higher than Karleigh’s but equally terrified and just as sanity-draining for their mother.
Not long after he and Vasek had been out in the trees, when Vasek touched him but Cal didn’t reciprocate—he tried, reaching toward the bunched elastic band of Vasek’s camo pants, but Vasek shook his head and brushed Cal’s hands away in gentle rejection—his father came home from a night at Evangeline Downs. He swayed with drink, voice garbled with frustration as he called for Cal, whose face felt hot, his ankles weak, as he descended the stairs, his father waiting at the bottom like one of Vasek’s swamp monsters.
“I don’t like that boy,” his father said by way of greeting.
“Who?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Sorry.”
“Just—I don’t like him. You should leave him be.”
“I don’t think I bother him.”
His father sighed. His hands were in the pockets of his chinos. “Just stay away from him, okay?”
Cal wanted to pretend misunderstanding, but he wasn’t a good actor. He nodded, and his father patted his shoulder, as though he was consoling Cal after a bad breakup, or for failing his driving test, or having suffered a grievous loss.
*
Cal’s mother grabbed a glass and a sweating bottle of wine from the refrigerator and went out front. Cal joined her. He had become used to the loose, salty wet of the Southeastern coast, the cool joy of the Atlantic that managed to press all the way into Conway, the ocean tide unheard but certainly felt. Here, now, Cal felt like he was inside a coffeemaker, the air clotted with a muddiness he could taste. Sweat bloomed across his shoulder blades as he sat down on an empty patio chair, a small glass-topped table between him and his mother.
“So you’ll go to the funeral,” she said, sipping.
“I guess.”
She looked in the direction of Vasek’s house, even though the angle made it impossible to see. “I haven’t seen him.”
“That’s fine.”
She glanced at him, one eyebrow arched. Something was strange about her exposed face, and Cal realized she was wearing less makeup than usual. His mother was good at using foundation and eye liner in such a way that made her skin look pristine but untouched, as if she’d applied nothing at all. Now he saw creases and lines. Nothing egregious, just the regular signs of time. But they hadn’t been there the last time he saw her. He reminded himself that that was two years ago.
“Where’s Dad?” he asked.
His mother drained her glass. As she gripped the bottle by its neck and poured, pausing like she was making a joke before filling it to the rim, she said, “You’re kidding, right?”
“What?”
She skimmed some butter-yellow wine off the edge of her glass before leaning back in her seat. He watched her mouth move as if she was taking tiny bites of food: words formed silently on her lips. Finally, she said, “Your father is leaving. Has left. Left a while ago. Take your pick.”
“What do you mean? Why?”
“He’s in love with his secretary. . They’re expecting.”
Cal opened and closed his mouth. His mother laughed and shook her head. . Cal saw that she’d brought two glasses. She picked up the empty one and held it out to him. He wouldn’t be twenty-one until mid-July.
“Please,” she said when he didn’t take it. “I’m not stupid.”
“Didn’t say you were.”
“College kids drink.”
“Not all of them.”
“Well. Puritans.”
“Do you know what Katie and Karleigh are doing?”
At this she sighed and drank again, half the wine gone when she set the glass down on the table. “The frogs.”
“So you know?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “They’re struggling with what’s happening between me and your dad.”
He thought of the enflamed look on his sisters’ faces when he’d interrupted them. “I don’t know if that explains it.”
“You’ve an expert opinion, huh?”
“I’m just saying. It’s—Mom. They’re eating frogs.”
“Better than drugs.”
“Have you asked them about it?”
She laughed.
Cal’s face felt hot as he said, “They mentioned something called the Cauchemar.”
“Someone.”
“What?”
His mother gripped the base of the wine bottle. “It’s a someone, not a something. The Cauchemar.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Of course you don’t.” She lifted the bottle and drank straight from it. “That’s no surprise. That you don’t know.”
Cal felt slapped. The only thing he could think to say was, “Why did you tell me about Vasek’s mom?”
The bottle thumped against the table. “Did you not want to know?”
“Of course I did.”
“Well, there you go.”
“And that’s it?”
“It wasn’t a lure, if that’s what you think.”
“No. I just. I don’t know.”
“Right.” She ran a finger down the wine bottle, catching condensation against her nail. “You don’t.” She looked at him. “No one really does.”
*
Cal saw Vasek one last time—right before he packed up the sedan he’d saved up for by working at Randoll’s in Lafayette, slinging bowls of jambalaya and etouffee and fried gator onto tables covered in plastic checked cloths, pocketing every dollar and foregoing any other type of fun for the sake of his savings. Cal liked to open his bedroom window at night and listen to the rustle of the trees and the slow trickle of the bayou that often ticked up in the aftermath of heavy rainfall. Every now and then he would wake in the middle of the night from a dream he would immediately forget, and instead of settling himself back to sleep, Cal would go to his window and peer out at the trees. If the moon was hanging at the right angle, he could see silvery flashes of the water through the branches.
The night before he left for South Carolina, Cal heard human noise: a whistle, a beckoning two-note tune that repeated every twenty seconds or so. Cal rose from bed and looked out the window, where he saw a dark shape in the grass below, a body framed by the glow of the moon. He crept downstairs and made his way to the back porch, where bugs assaulted his fingertips. Cal descended the steps into the yard.
“Hello,” Vasek said. “I believe you are leaving.”
“In the morning.”
“All alone?”
“My parents have work.”
“Yes. That makes sense.”
Vasek, despite the hour, was in his usual garb. Moonlight glistened in the buzzed filaments of his hair. “I am happy for you. I would go, if I had known.”
“You would?”
“Don’t worry.”
“Okay.”
“I’m glad for everything,” Vasek said.
“Everything?” The night air was full soaked, crammed with the heavy dog breath of Southern heat and moisture. Vasek’s forehead gleamed with a film of sweat.
“All of it, yes.” Vasek clapped his hands together. “Might I give you a goodbye hug?”
“Is that a euphemism?”
“A what?”
“Never mind,” Cal said, and stepped toward Vasek, who welcomed him. His grip was tight, strong, familiar. Cal remembered the last time they touched, and he shivered, but there was no cold he could point to for blame.
*
Cal googled venomous frogs. Then venomous frogs from Louisiana. Then Louisiana monsters, then frog monsters, then, finally, Cauchemar.
Cauchemar: French for nightmare. A demon or witch that drains a sleeper’s energy. In Louisiana stories, also the Kushma or Kooshma. Some stories had it invisibly riding on its victims’ backs, hunching over them, and tiring them out. In none of the stories did it rise from a bayou and order teenage girls to eat frogs.
He struggled to sleep, rising several times to look out his window; everything was grim and empty, and when he pulled the window open, Cal was surprised by the silence: no rush of water, no rustle of tree branches and leaves. He expected, almost, to hear the two-toned whistle, Vasek’s beckoning, but all was ticking silence.
In the morning, Cal forced himself to put on the one tie he’d packed, to stuff his feet in dress shoes, and go to the funeral. He caught his mother in the kitchen, drinking a glass of water. She wore one of her nicer dresses, a deep-sea blue that hugged her hips, the straps over her shoulders two inches thick.
“You’re going?”
“Of course. It means I don’t have to go to work.” She marked an invisible tally mark in the air. “Nine days left in the year instead of ten. You can drive.”
“And Katie and Karleigh?”
She shrugged. “Only if you want to corral them.”
The funeral was at St. Bernard. “I didn’t know they were Catholic,” Cal said.
“There are Czech Catholics.”
“Are there?”
“Well. Clearly.”
The church was not full, but it was large, so Cal imagined this diluted the crowd. He and his mother, by silent agreement, sat near the back. The church was hot, the pews set at a sharp, uncomfortable angle. Cal’s neck tingled every time the doors behind him opened, and he kept expecting to see Vasek come slinking down the central aisle in his camo pants, his oversized white T-shirt. Cal could so easily see the sunshine coming through the large windows catching in Vasek’s buzzed hair.
But he didn’t see Vasek. He didn’t recognize Vasek’s father, either, wherever he was. The priest said a full mass and gave a forgettable eulogy. Cal listened to the sniffles of the mourners and wondered who they were. Relatives, bedfellows, co-workers? He could barely remember what Vasek’s parents looked like.
When the congregation started rising for communion, Cal’s mother cocked her head. They slid out of their seats and snuck out of the church, careful with the large, creaky doors. The afternoon was a blitz of heat and light. Even as they departed, Cal half-expected to find Vasek loitering outside, perhaps smoking a cigarette or crying or reading. But the parking lot was empty except for the shimmering heat rising off the asphalt, turning everything Cal looked at blurry.
*
In eighth grade, Cal’s class gave presentations on what they wanted to be when they grew up. Vasek went first because he always volunteered to go first: answering math problems, reading aloud, spelling a word for practice before a test. Their teacher, Mrs. Thibadeau, indulged him because most of the other kids were busy staring off into space.
“It is my goal,” Vasek said, hands tucked in the back pockets of his camo pants, “to be a philosopher who studies anger.”
A few kids in the back of the room snickered.
“I am also interested in monsters and why people love them. Or are scared of them.” He looked at Mrs. Thibadeau at her desk, which was covered in piles of papers and ceramic apples. “Or whatever they think of monsters and why.”
“Uh huh,” she said. “Interesting. Anything else?”
“Just a quote, if you don’t mind.”
Mrs. Thibadeau nodded.
“It is from Plato. ‘There are two things a person should never be angry at: what they can help, and what they cannot.’ Thank you.”
The class gave him a limp round of applause. Cal felt ablaze, the fire only growing in his cheeks when Vasek, right before he sat, nodded in Cal’s direction and winked.
*
The ride home was silent until Cal’s mother pulled onto Anse Broussard. No other cars were around, but she drove with a neat precision, hands at ten and two on the wheel, eyes on the road at all times. Cal knew she’d been in some kind of terrible accident in her youth, one that didn’t kill anyone but left her shaken, eternally vigilant.
“It’s called pica,” his mother said.
“It—what is?”
“A condition. Medical condition. Eating disorder.” She took her right hand from the wheel and swirled it in the air. “Whatever the right term is.” The car slowed just so as she glanced at him. “For what your sisters are doing.”
“They’ve seen someone?”
“It’s called the internet. Heard of it?”
Cal cleared his throat. “You haven’t talked to anyone at all?”
He watched her mouth curl into silent words before she said, “And what would I say?”
“I don’t know. Something? They’re eating frogs, Mom.”
“There are worse things to be up to.”
“Like what? What could be worse?”
“Meth. Teenage pregnancy. Suicidal ideation.” She dared a glance at him. “I see all of that, you know.”
“Okay, okay.”
“We can’t all vanish off to the beach, you know.”
“They’re not running cross country,” Cal said.
“Not anymore, no.” The house appeared up ahead.
“How long ago did Dad leave?”
His mother didn’t answer as she pulled into the driveway. She killed the engine and gave him a long look before saying, “Would it matter?” But she didn’t wait for him to answer, leaving him alone in the car.
Cal sat still and wondered what he would find inside: had his sisters set up shop again in the living room, slurping down frogs? He pictured it, practically felt it, the reptilian slither down the throat, the thump into the gut. He imagined that some of the frogs were still alive when they landed in his sisters’ guts, pushing and kicking and struggling, suffering, beating at the walls of their bodies, ignored while Katie and Karleigh prepared to devour more, more, more: as much as they could.
*
Only once did his father call Cal while he was in Conway, late in his freshman year. The subject was the fact that his father would be in Columbia for some kind of conference, though why an oil company would be meeting in the middle of South Carolina was beyond Cal.
“It’s a tough drive,” he said when his father suggested they meet for dinner. “No interstates between me and you after I-20.”
“Ah,” his father said. “Well. Next time, then.”
“Okay,” Cal said, as though there would be a next time, and that the next time would feature an easier drive. Cal had not lied, exactly: I-20 went only halfway from Columbia to Conway, and then it was all state highways buttressing fields and palmettos, winding two-lane roads that often clogged thanks to incomplete construction or semis taking supplies to the beaches. But halfway was barely more than an hour—the two cities were barely one hundred thirty miles apart—and thus not so much as to be unmanageable. But before Cal could even consider changing his mind or offering an alternative, his father had hung up.
*
Cal and his mother found Katie and Karleigh in the living room, no frogs to be seen. They were watching television, some afternoon talk show. His mother sighed and stomped to the kitchen. Cal listened to her while he stared at his sisters, who paid him no attention. His mother took whatever she grabbed from the refrigerator and disappeared onto the back porch. Cal went upstairs and packed his bags, deciding he had to leave, though he would stay the night so he had a full day of light to drive back to Conway.
When he came down as the sun was setting, he discovered his mother had reheated leftover jambalaya. Cal forced down a bowl while his sisters picked at grains of rice. He wanted to say something about them being full of frogs, but the words lumped and lodged like concrete in his throat. Later, he couldn’t sleep. Cal’s room was tiny, the smallest of four bedrooms on the second story, barely enough space for a twin bed, a dresser, and a tiny writing desk, the last of which was crammed in a corner right next to the window.
He heard noise downstairs. The house was a creaky thing, all skeletal and warped, and footfalls on the wrong floorboards announced activity to anyone awake. Cal listened to the suck of the refrigerator opening, someone pushing condiments around, the hiss of a can opening. He pictured his mother snagging a midnight beer, or maybe one of his sisters. If frogs, why not alcohol? Whoever it was quieted down. Then the stairs yawled. Cal stood and went to his door. When he opened it, he saw his mother. She was wearing a puffy green robe he’d never seen before and had her hair piled in a beehive atop her head. Her eyes were like a raccoon’s, and he was the homeowner who’d caught her at the garbage bin.
“Well,” she said. “Look at this.”
“I heard noise.”
“So brave of you to check.”
“I don’t remember you being one for late-night snacks.”
“People evolve.”
“I’m sorry about Dad.”
His mother shook her head. When Cal didn’t say anything else, she said, “I have to work tomorrow,” and disappeared into her bedroom.
He wasn’t sure what else to do, and his brain was too buzzy for sleep, so Cal crept to his sisters’ room. They shared a large bedroom, the intended master, actually, originally chosen for them because of their abundance of clothing and toys and his father’s disinterest in having a wall of windows facing the street. The room was large enough for two queen sleigh beds to fit next to each other along one wall with a pair of nightstands in between. When Cal entered, the window curtains were open, heavy moonlight illuminating every surface and corner and curve. Between their beds sat the container, the lid closed tight. When he tiptoed closer, Cal saw that someone had jammed a few air holes through the plastic.
The container was heavier than it looked, and Cal struggled not to groan as he lifted it, careful not to scrape the plastic along the floor. He hoped that the frogs would remain quiet, and without checking to make sure his sisters didn’t stir, he scurried out of the room and down the stairs to the back door.
In Cal’s memory, the banks of the Bayou Teche were a long trek, a lengthy scroll of dried grass dotted with abandoned toys between house and river. He was startled to find the water was so close, barely twenty feet away from the lowest of the steps leading down from the deck. He could smell the bayou, its metal tinge. The humidity was thick as Bundt. Cal approached the line of cypress, trunks thin, their drapery of vines like tangly hair. He found them vaguely unkempt and, yet, somehow religious. They were eminently unclimbable, though Vasek had always been convinced he could top them, and he spent many occasions being proved wrong, falling on his ass, dirtying shirts and pants. As a young boy, Cal had asked his father to build him a tree house among their branches so he could peer out at the bayou, to which his dad had laughed with such disdain in his voice that Cal had never felt more stupid in his life. Now, the trees looked haunted but also protective, though he wasn’t sure if that meant they were protecting the bayou from something or trying to shield the world from what it contained.
Cal’s biceps burned. He half-expected to find someone out here waiting for him: one of his sisters; his mother; Vasek; maybe his father. Maybe the Cauchemar, brought to thickness and texture by the darkness.
He broached the tree line and arrived at the edge of the water, a straight drop six feet down. He thought of all the times he and his sisters and Vasek had clambered into the bayou. For just a moment, he wanted to be back in that water.
Cal peered at Vasek’s house through the trees; all of the windows were dark. If his father was there, he wasn’t mourning to lamplight.
He leaned down and set the container on the edge of the bank, the relief in his arms a pleasant tingle. Before he could think about it too much, Cal ripped the lid off. Noise rose through the night: the song of katydids, the shiver of tree branches as a breeze whistled through. The frogs were silent. Cal whispered for them to go, go, get away. He reached down and gave the side of the container a tap, but the frogs, dulled by their suffocating capture, didn’t want to move. Maybe they knew something he didn’t.
Out on the bayou, the surface of the water shuddered: the wind, certainly. That’s all it was, of course: just the breeze, the air. Nothing else was out here, waiting for him. Nothing that might slip into his dreams. Nothing, he told himself as he nudged at the frogs with greater violence, that would open its mouth and slurp him down, nothing that might consume him, growing fat on all he contained.