Swamp Season Séance, Ep. 5: “The Locket and the Lies”

Swamp Season Séance, Ep. 5: “The Locket and the Lies” as told by Dale T. Doll Here’s a fun rule for ghost stories: If a specter gives you ...

as told by Dale T. Doll

Here’s a fun rule for ghost stories:

If a specter gives you half a backstory and a quest involving jewelry, they’re probably lying.

After the whole "weeping wall revealing a haunted door marked with my initial" situation (which, by the way, is still bleeding from the edges like a shy wound), Barry insisted we "stop poking the ghost bear." He bought sage. He bought Florida tap water labeled “holy” by a guy named Steve. He even tried to bribe me into compliance with a limited edition Shudder Blu-ray. Nice try, Barry.

But I couldn't stop thinking about the locket.

Lucinda whispered about it like it was sacred. Or dangerous. Or both.

So when Not My Cat started pawing obsessively at the old air vent in the hallway—the one that hasn't blown air since The Reagan Administration—I knew.

Something was back there.

It took me three days, a pair of tongs, and a disturbing amount of lint to get it loose. Inside, wrapped in what I hope was ancient cheesecloth, was a tarnished gold locket shaped like a teardrop.

I opened it.

On one side: a photo of a young woman—maybe Lucinda?—in sepia, water-damaged, her smile slightly off-kilter.

On the other: a sliver of paper, nearly rotted through, bearing the words:

“For D—Finish what I could not.”

Great.

Not only is Lucinda’s backstory less The Others and more Gaslight, now we’ve got confirmation she was working with or for “D” at some point. Maybe she wasn’t a victim at all. Maybe she was part of the original curse. Maybe… she helped bind that spirit to me.

That night, the TV turned on by itself. Black screen. White noise. And in the middle, floating like a rot spot in the dark:

Lucinda’s face.

She looked older. Hollow. More real.

And she said:

“You weren’t supposed to find it yet, Master D.

Not until the wall opened fully.

Not until the night the house drinks the moon.

But now that you have it...

You have to finish what we started.”

Then she smiled. Wide. Too wide.

Barry walked in and asked why the house smelled like wet brass and dread. I told him the truth:

“We’ve got a ghost who’s trying to gaslight me into opening a door that shouldn’t exist using jewelry that fell out of an air vent older than the Cold War.”

He said, “So, a normal Thursday, then?”

Exactly.