Arc 2: Up Around the Bend

  The mystery tied to a decades-old map, the rusted dredge, eerie symbols, CCR music, and the Mudpuppy Patrol’s growing bond—we’re ready to launch into the final act, guided by the spirit of “Up Around the Bend”.

  That song carries a vibe of optimism, forward motion, wild possibility, and change—a perfect tone to guide the last arc. The kids have seen the shimmer, crossed the vanished bridge, heard the howl (now revealed to be the dredge), and discovered echoes of something hidden long ago.

  Now, they move toward truth, choice, and legacy.

  Chapter 8: What the Wind Remembers

  Scene 1: Morning After

  The morning crept in slow, like it was just as tired as the kids were.

  Mist hung low across the swamp, not thick, but enough to blur the tree line and make everything feel like it hadn’t quite woken up yet. Dragonflies buzzed lazily over the creek, and a bullfrog let out a half-hearted croak before settling back into the mud.

  Inside the clubhouse, the air was heavy with sleep and swamp-sweet air. Josie stirred first, blinking up at the slanted beam of sunlight that spilled through a knot-hole in the roof.

  She sat up slow, rubbing her eyes. Her shoulders ached from sleeping half-curled in the corner, and her mouth was dry with the kind of thirst that only comes after a long day of secrets.

  Tadpole was already awake, of course—sitting cross-legged near the door, whittling a stick to a fine point with his pocketknife, like he’d never slept at all.

  “Sleep?” she asked softly.

  He nodded once, didn’t look up.

  Josie smiled and stretched, stepping over Bo—who was sprawled out like he’d fallen from the sky—and padded barefoot onto the porch.

  The swamp looked… still.

  Not in the creepy way it had beyond the bridge. Just calm. Like it was waiting.

  Behind her, Cricket rolled over in her hammock and groaned. “Do we have to move today?”

  “Eventually,” Josie called.

  “Define ‘eventually,’” Bo muttered from the floor.

  Kenji sat up with a loud yawn and blinked at the light. “My legs feel like I fought a dinosaur and lost.”

  Lila Rae was already scribbling something in her notebook, her braid half undone. “I had the weirdest dream,” she said. “We were all underwater, but not drowning. And there was this sound…”

  Josie turned.

  “Like a hum?”

  Lila Rae nodded. “Yeah. And something glowing behind a tree. It wasn’t scary, just… calling.”

  Tadpole finally spoke, voice low. “I heard it too. Not in a dream.”

  The others sat up straighter.

  “You mean last night?” Kenji asked.

  Tadpole shook his head. “Just now. While y’all were still sleepin’. Faint, but same sound as the dredge.”

  Josie stepped off the porch, into the dew-damp grass, and tilted her head to listen.

  And there it was.

  A sound like metal moaning across water—but gentler. Thinner. Like wind playing through the reeds. Coming from somewhere deep in the east trees. Not the direction of the dredge… but close.

  She looked back at the others. “Y’all hear that?”

  Cricket jumped down from her hammock and froze. “Okay, that’s new.”

  Lila Rae slowly closed her notebook. “I think it’s calling us back.”

  Josie didn’t smile.

  She just stared into the tree line.

  “Maybe it never stopped.”

  Scene 2: Listening Again

  They followed the sound like hounds on a scent—slow at first, cautious, weaving through the knee-high grass behind the clubhouse. The hum was faint, barely there. You couldn’t always hear it. But when you did, it curled around your ears like it had been whispering all along.

  Josie led the way, eyes narrowed, head cocked. Every few yards, she’d stop and listen, shifting slightly until the hum returned—more vibration than sound. It came and went, as if the swamp was breathing it in and out.

  Kenji walked beside her, a portable radio held tight against his chest, the antenna fully extended. “No signal,” he muttered, tapping the side. “No static. No blips. It’s like the air is too thick.”

  “Or too smart,” Cricket offered. “Maybe the swamp don’t want us listenin’.”

  Bo rolled his eyes. “Great. First it’s ghosts, now it’s psychic humidity.”

  But Lila Rae wasn’t joking. She held her notebook to her chest and looked around slowly. “It’s not the dredge. The noise is coming from somewhere else. You can feel it shift when the wind blows.”

  The trail led them back toward a different ridge near the old creek bed—a part they hadn’t explored much. The trees here were tall and thin, their bark silvery with age. A few creaked gently in the breeze, but one stood out.

  Josie stopped, staring at it.

  “That one.”

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  It was taller than the rest, with a twisted trunk and wide arms that stretched like they were reaching for something long lost. Moss clung to its branches, and its roots curled out in a broad circle, some half-sunk in soft black soil, some raised like ribs.

  Tadpole crouched beside it and pressed his ear to the bark.

  “It’s hollow.”

  Kenji raised the radio again. Still nothing.

  Bo walked around it, then froze. “Y’all…”

  He pointed to a faint carving, almost swallowed by the bark—another spiral, just like the ones on the map and the tree past the bridge.

  Lila Rae stepped forward, eyes wide. “This isn’t just a tree. It’s a marker.”

  Josie reached out and laid her hand flat against the trunk. The hum was stronger here, thudding slow and steady beneath her palm.

  “Signal tree,” she whispered. “That’s what it is.”

  “A tree that sings,” Cricket said, half-grinning.

  Bo snorted. “You ain’t gonna start preachin’ again, are you?”

  But even he couldn’t hide the goosebumps on his arms.

  The hum came again—stronger now—like the wind had turned and found its voice.

  Josie stepped back and looked past the tree, where the trail dipped toward the low part of the swamp. “Whatever this is… it’s pointin’ to somethin’.”

  Tadpole didn’t say anything.

  He just stood and nodded once.

  Like he already knew.

  Scene 3: Lila Rae’s Sketches

  Lila Rae dropped cross-legged to the mossy ground, already flipping back through her notebook with fast fingers and a focused frown. She thumbed past pages of bridge sketches, hollow layouts, and swirled symbols until—

  “There,” she said, tapping the paper. “Look at this.”

  The others crowded around.

  It was a rough drawing of the dredge from the day before—profile view, complete with sagging cables and the warped tower. In the background, behind the wreck, just barely inked in, was a crooked tree.

  Josie squinted. “That’s this tree.”

  “Didn’t even realize I drew it at the time,” Lila Rae said, her voice hushed like she’d found a secret she wasn’t supposed to know. “But it’s the same. That weird twist in the limbs? That knot that looks like an eye?”

  Cricket leaned in. “Why would a tree be hummin’?”

  “Old trees do weird stuff,” Kenji offered. “Air pockets, twisted wood fibers, resonance. Sometimes you get wind moving through at the right pitch and—boom—natural speaker.”

  “Except this one’s marked,” Josie said, running her thumb over the spiral in the bark.

  Bo grunted. “So what are we sayin’? That the swamp’s got, what, sound beacons? Trees that remember radio signals?”

  Kenji didn’t laugh. “It’s not impossible. If the dredge was part of some kinda surveying project, maybe this tree was an anchor point. Lester might’ve used it.”

  Tadpole tapped the spiral twice with his finger, then pointed out toward the low ridge behind it.

  “The ground drops off that way,” he said. “Could be more.”

  Lila Rae flipped to a clean page and began sketching the tree as it looked now—adding more detail, more care. “We missed it before,” she murmured. “So what else did we miss?”

  Josie stood, brushing off her knees. “This tree’s singin’ ‘cause it wants to be heard. Or remembered. Or both.”

  Cricket pulled out a pencil and added, “Or it’s got a ghost stuck in its roots.”

  “Preacher,” Bo warned.

  “I’m just sayin’!”

  The wind shifted again, and the tree gave off a faint creak—low, steady, like breath through hollow bone.

  Lila Rae didn’t look up.

  She just kept sketching, slower now.

  As if trying to draw what she heard.

  Scene 4: Preacher’s Wild Theory

  Cricket stepped around the far side of the tree, arms crossed and one brow cocked, the way she always did when she was about to start talkin’ sideways.

  “You know what this is?” she asked, dead serious.

  Bo groaned. “Here we go…”

  “It’s a singin’ tree,” she said. “There’s a legend—my meemaw used to tell it. About a tree that hums when it remembers somethin’. Like it soaks up voices and lets 'em back out when the wind turns just right.”

  Kenji gave her a look over the rim of his glasses. “You’re saying it’s got a memory?”

  “I’m sayin’ it ain’t forgettin’,” Cricket replied. “There’s a difference.”

  Josie tilted her head, listening again. The breeze had picked up, and sure enough, the faint hum had returned. Only now it was lower—more like a growl than a sigh. It rose and dipped with the rhythm of the wind, like a slow song on an old phonograph.

  Bo leaned on the trunk, skeptically tapping it. “So what’s it singin’? Swamp jazz?”

  “No,” Cricket said, suddenly serious. “It’s singin’ grief. You can hear it, if you hush.”

  The group quieted.

  And for a moment… maybe… she wasn’t wrong.

  It wasn’t just wind.

  It wasn’t just creaking wood.

  It was something else. A sorrow that hung in the branches. A vibration that tugged at the ribs. Not scary, exactly. Just old.

  Tadpole walked the perimeter, placing a hand on the ground like he was reading Braille through dirt. He paused by the eastern root—long and half-exposed—and tapped the mud once.

  “It’s louder here.”

  Kenji stepped beside him, pulling a tiny screw from his pocket and dropping it.

  It rattled.

  Just slightly. Just once.

  Like something deep beneath the soil had shifted.

  “Okay,” Kenji said slowly, “I’ll bite. If this thing’s hummin’, and the dredge was groanin’, then maybe… they’re connected. Sound lines. Old tech. Or maybe it’s somethin’ Lester rigged up to talk.”

  “Or warn,” Josie added.

  Cricket stepped back, beaming. “Y’all laughed at Preacher, but now look who’s preachin’.”

  Bo shook his head. “Y’all are just mad enough to drag us into this again, ain’t ya?”

  Josie grinned.

  “You know it.”

  And the tree creaked again.

  As if it was grinning too.

  Scene 5: Tadpole’s Hunch

  Tadpole crouched low near the east-facing roots, his hand buried in the cool muck. He didn’t say anything at first—just closed his eyes and let his palm rest against the earth like he was listening for something more honest than words.

  The others stood back, watching him the way you do someone who knows more than they let on.

  Finally, he spoke.

  “My granddad used to say some trees got memories deeper than graves.”

  Lila Rae’s pencil paused mid-sketch.

  “He said the swamp plants remember things that people don’t,” Tadpole continued, brushing moss from the root. “Said you could follow the hum to where secrets are buried.”

  Kenji raised an eyebrow. “And you believed him?”

  Tadpole looked up, face unreadable. “He never lied about the swamp.”

  Josie knelt beside him. “You feel it too?”

  He nodded once. “There’s somethin’ down there. Buried near this tree. Not natural.”

  Cricket crept closer, peering into the exposed root line. “Like a ghost?”

  Bo sighed. “Preacher, I swear—”

  “No,” Tadpole said, cutting them off. “Like metal. Big. Hollow underneath. Feels like… like an empty drum in the dirt.”

  Kenji’s eyes lit up. “Could be a chamber. Storage tank. Or a man-made cavity. Some of those dredges had outposts nearby—supply sheds, fuel drums, equipment lockers.”

  Josie stood. “You think Lester put somethin’ here?”

  “I think,” Tadpole said slowly, “he didn’t want it found easy.”

  They stared at the base of the tree for a moment longer.

  Not just a tree anymore.

  A marker.

  A keeper.

  A memory wrapped in bark.

  The wind shifted again, and the hum grew louder—clearer—like it was guiding them.

  Josie turned to her crew. “We come back with shovels.”

  Bo sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Of course we do.”

  But no one objected.

  Not really.

  Because in their gut, they all felt it now—like something was waiting beneath that soil.

  Not treasure.

  Not ghosts.

  Truth.

  Scene 6: Decision to Return

  They stood in a loose half-circle around the signal tree, not speaking for a long moment. The hum was almost gone now—just the barest vibration in the soles of their boots and a gentle creak overhead.

  The swamp had settled again.

  Josie brushed her hands on her jeans, her eyes never leaving the roots. “We ain’t done here.”

  Lila Rae nodded. “Whatever’s under there... Lester wanted it found by someone who cared. Not by someone diggin’ for money.”

  Kenji snapped his radio shut. “Tomorrow. We bring tools. Rope. Flashlights. Maybe a winch if we can find one.”

  Bo squinted at him. “And what, dig up half the swamp?”

  Kenji didn’t smile. “If that’s what it takes.”

  Cricket pulled a leaf from her hair and tucked it behind her ear. “Preacher says amen.”

  Tadpole turned and looked to the east, where the trees thinned into open water. “This spot ain’t random. He marked it for a reason.”

  Josie took one last look at the tree—at the spiral, the gnarled arms, the ground that breathed beneath their feet.

  Then she turned and started walking.

  “Meet back here after breakfast.”

  Bo groaned. “That means I gotta wake up after breakfast.”

  Josie glanced over her shoulder. “Then bring snacks.”

  The others followed her out, single file, the signal tree slowly fading behind them as the wind picked up again and stirred the moss one more time.

  Not a warning this time.

  Not a ghost.

  Just a whisper.

  “Hurry.”