Pleasance – 2023 Upperclassmen Fiction Runner-Up

Huck Johanberg moved into Pleasance two months ago. Pleasance, overall, was
the wrong thing to name this town, in Huck’s opinion — if you considered muddy, crocodile-infested marshland pleasant, then Pleasance is the town for you. However, Huck couldn’t get out of it. He had barely enough money to travel to Pleasance, and definitely didn’t have enough to get out.
It was dark, the sun had set many hours ago, but it was muggy. It was always muggy. Huck went on a quick out-of-town grocery run, because the only store in Pleasance was closed, as the shopkeeper came down with the flu. Deadly business in a place so damp. Now, he was nearing the dreaded marshland on his horse; he didn’t know how far he was, because the only thing that lit up the road was an occasional insane cowboy camping out under a tree.
Huck thought they wouldn’t be dumb enough to camp near the crocodiles, but he had seen at least three campfires on his way home. His horse’s hoof got stuck in a particularly mushy patch of road — then she reared up, spooked.
Huck pulled back on the reins, calming her, and squinted through the darkness to see what could have possibly set her off.
“Papa, stop!”
Huck whipped his head around to see a young woman, alone, just o of the road.
She was a little hard to make out, and he squinted through the darkness. “Ma’am?” He said. His voice must’ve spooked her into hiding, because Huck couldn’t see her anymore. He sighed, considered the groceries on the back of his horse, and went home.
Three days came and went, and with it left the shopkeeper. He died of the flu — his son took over the shop. Huck didn’t trust the son much, he was shifty and they were always out of carrots, which were his horse’s favorite snack. So, he took more and more trips to the town over.
Sometimes, at night, he swore he saw that girl that he scared o a few days prior, but he was never sure. He wrote the entire thing o as a strange, hermit family that he accidentally ran into — until.
On a particularly late grocery run, Huck was urging his horse on, into the darkness, when she got skittish and began to get restless. He sensed it before he saw it, really; the figure of the girl, in the distance.
“John?” She whispered.
“‘Scuse me?” Huck asked, rubbed his eyes, and was unable to find her again. She had probably run back o to her hut, or wherever she lived. He went home.
Three days came and went, and the next time he went to the store the town over, Huck found that the shopkeeper had been killed in a duel. Strange, but not impossible — he always did have a temper, in Huck’s opinion. Still, they had carrots, so he continued to go there.
After that shopkeeper’s death, Huck bought a gun to keep on him. If he was talking with someone who got in a duel and wasn’t even aware of the possibility of dueling him, he thought he’d better be more prepared. So, he bought a gun. Good thing he bought it then, too, because only three days had come and gone before that gunsmith was dead.
They said something about poison, but Huck wasn’t one to mingle in other people’s business. He even went out of his way to avoid one of his neighbors struggling with herding sheep; Huck was no good with animals other than his horse.
Good thing he did, however, because three days came and went and with it went his neighbor’s heart. Died of a heart attack, right there in his bed. His wife said he’d been sick for a while.
None of the people of the town seemed phased, so Huck assumed that it was normal for people to die in the swamp. He rode out to the grocery shop the town over like normal, and made his nighttime commute home on his horse like normal.
“John!” That was not normal.
He stopped his horse and turned to the girl. She was a little shifty in the darkness, hardly able to be made out. “I’m not John, lady.”
Huck could hardly see her, but it seems like she didn’t like that. “John.” She said.
“No,” he said. “I’m Huck.”
“John!” More firmly this time, as she approached him.
“Who’s John?”
His horse bucked, and Huck landed on his butt in the marshy road. He stood up,
faced the young lady. Even up close, it was hard to see her. “John…” She advanced on him. She reached out, and Huck tried to bat her hands away but it seemed like he could only go through her. She was still hard to make out, even up close, but that could be the gradual blurring of Huck’s vision. He grasped desperately at his neck, but only managed to scratch at his skin.
Three days came and went, and with it went Huck. His horse ran home and he was forgotten in the swamp, below the mud. Pleasance, overall, was the wrong thing to name the town.