🪦 Swamp Season Séance, Episode 1: “The Board in the Mud” Friday, May 2nd, 2025 – by Dale T. Doll Barry says I shouldn’t meddle with an...
🪦 Swamp Season Séance, Episode 1: “The Board in the Mud”
Friday, May 2nd, 2025 – by Dale T. Doll
Barry says I shouldn’t meddle with anything half-buried under the porch.
He says that like he wasn’t the one who dragged it in himself, trailing swamp muck and mosquito eggs like a man determined to open a cut-rate bayou portal in the kitchen. “Found this stuck in the mud near the east post,” he said, setting it on the table like it wasn’t a cursed relic radiating the subtle aroma of mildew, regret, and bad decisions.
I mean honestly—for someone who’s mortal, he sure has a death wish.
Or at least no sense of interior decorating.
It was a spirit board.
Old. Slick with damp. No letters—just hand-etched symbols, the kind that hum if you squint too long. Not a Parker Brothers special. No, this was the hand-whittled, blood-oiled variety you don’t make unless you already know what’s listening.
One symbol in particular caught my glass eye.
A spiral tucked inside a jagged triangle, like a warning trying to eat itself.
The acrid stench of burning pine.
Firelight licking the ceiling.
That man’s shaking hands, sweat pouring as he carved the final sigil into the attic floor.
My body, limp and motionless, waiting for a soul I didn’t want.
His scream.
The flames.
And then nothing but smoke and silence—until now.
Barry, of course, shrugged and whistled. “It’s just a piece of wood,” he said, sipping lukewarm lemonade like we weren’t in the middle of a haunting.
Mortals. Honestly.
I kept my distance. I may be stitched from thrift-store terror and stuffed with mystery, but I have standards.
Still, when the air conditioner kicked on and rustled a receipt across the table, I swear on my button heart—the planchette twitched.
Just slightly.
A flick. A flirtation.
Like something underneath was tasting the air.
That night, I didn’t sleep. Not because I was afraid—please. I’m a doll. I don’t sleep.
But I did watch.
And at precisely 3:06 a.m., the board hummed.
A low, vibrating groan that settled under my joints like cobwebs spun from static. Barry snored louder in response. Because of course he did.
I went to the window.
The swamp behind our place was cloaked in fog—humid, heavy, wet as a fever dream.
And floating in the mist…
A single lantern.
Flickering.
Drifting.
Waiting.
🧵 Dale’s Dreadful Diary
🪵 Barry brought in a spirit board that smells like mildew and bad karma.
🌀 One symbol matches the 1997 near-possession incident (still not over it).
🧂 Barry remains unconcerned. Mortals—go figure.
🌙 Séance planned for next Friday (assuming mosquitoes don’t carry Barry off first).
“The only thing worse than being haunted is being ignored by the thing haunting you.”
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