The Sunken Path

In the damp hollows of Cranston, Maine, where the old logging trails snake through the pines, things have a way of untying themselves from the land. The locals know to stay clear after dusk, especially near the bog they call the Sunken Path, where the ground gives way to a black mirror of water that reflects nothing. It was there, on a Tuesday night in late April, that I saw the first light of my life—a pale, pulsing orb that hovered just above the cattails, as if it were breathing.

I was with three others: Mark, a wiry skeptic with a penchant for ghost stories; Lena, whose great-grandmother had been Wabanaki and had warned her about the ‘drowners’ that lived in the muck; and Sam, a quiet man who had been coming here for years, collecting samples for a university study on peat moss. We had been walking for over an hour, our flashlights cutting weak cones into the fog, when Sam stopped and pointed to the water. ‘There,’ he whispered. ‘Watch.’

The bog was still as stone, but then, without warning, a burst of water erupted near the center—a violent geyser, as if something huge had breached and plunged back down. The spray reached our faces, cold and sharp. There were no fish in that bog, no animals large enough to make such a splash, and the surface had been calm for minutes. Mark laughed nervously. ‘Probably a log shifting,’ he said, but his voice cracked. Lena clutched her coat and muttered a prayer in a language I didn’t understand.

It was then that Sam told us about his previous excursions. He had come here alone, he said, to record the sounds. He pulled out a small recorder and played a clip: a low, rhythmic thrumming, like a heartbeat from deep underground. ‘I’ve heard this every time I’ve come,’ he said. ‘And once, I saw something in the water—a pale shape, like a person, but too long, too thin. It stared at me with eyes that weren’t there.’ He paused and looked at us. ‘I haven’t been back since, until tonight. I needed someone else to see it.’

We pressed on along the narrow path, the bog on our left, a wall of black spruce on our right. The fog thickened, swallowing our beams. Then, without any sound, I felt a blow to my back—a tremendous force, like a baseball bat swung by a giant. I fell to my knees, the wind knocked out of me. The others spun around, their lights scanning the empty trail. ‘What happened?’ Mark shouted. ‘I didn’t see anything!’ I tried to speak, but my lungs burned. My legs were numb, useless. Sam and Mark each grabbed an arm and dragged me forward, away from the water, while Lena stayed behind, staring into the fog with wide eyes.

When I could finally breathe, I looked back. The fog had thinned, and there, at the edge of the bog, stood a figure—tall, hunched, with skin the color of wet earth. It had no face, only a smooth expanse where eyes and mouth should be, and its arms hung too long, almost touching the ground. It tilted its head, as if considering us, and then it turned and waded into the water without a sound, disappearing beneath the surface.

The rest of the walk out was a blur. Lena wept, Mark kept repeating ‘That’s not possible,’ and Sam was silent. When we reached the car, we sat in the dark for a long time, listening to the tremor of our own breathing. I never went back to the Sunken Path. But sometimes, late at night, I feel the pressure of that invisible blow against my spine, and I hear—or imagine—a low thrumming from the earth, as if the bog is calling to something in my blood that I refuse to answer.