I grew up in a place and time where superstitions abounded. The place was rural Mississippi, and the time was the 1950s and ’60s, when kids were free to roam the countryside as long as they got home by suppertime—and it was easy for us to imagine terrible things lurking in the dark woods and swamps where we played and explored. I still shiver a little when I see tall columns of kudzu rising from hollows like silent green monsters, having covered trees, buildings, and anything else in its path. Who knows what might be hiding in there?
This was the part of the country I chose for my short story “The Cado Devil” (Jan/Feb 2025 issue), although it’s set in the present day. I first pictured an isolated house under construction at the edge of a swamp, and a young woman standing there in her almost-completed living-room, measuring and planning and looking forward to the day she and her husband would move in. I then of course decided to have something happen to upset it all—in this case, the arrival of a murderous escaped convict, on the run and looking for someplace to hide.
Alone and unarmed and terrified, my protagonist’s only hope is her familiarity with the partially-finished house and her knowledge of a local legend about the nearby swamp and the mysterious creature that supposedly lives there. What she does in order to survive was inspired in part by my memory of a wonderful movie I saw while in college called Wait Until Dark. In that film, as in my story, a young woman is alone and defenseless in an enclosed place with a knife-wielding killer, and no one is coming to help her. Her only weapon is a quick and imaginative mind.
I once heard that the requirements of a story are to (1) get someone up a tree, (2) throw rocks at him, and (3) get him down again. In other words, (1) problem, (2) complication, (3) resolution. You’ve already heard the problem I created for my heroine in “The Cado Devil,” and I think I managed to make her situation grow even worse—I certainly tried to—before providing what I hope is a satisfying ending. You’ll have to be the judge of that.
Anyhow, I do hope you’ll like the story. If you have half the fun reading it that I had writing it, I’ll be happy.
Trace Evidence 