The Rougarou: Blood in the Bayou
A new original tale every week—twisted, terrifying, and inspired by the darkest legends you thought you knew.
"Y'all sure about hunting tonight?" Josh asked, his voice tight with nerves as he glanced toward the darkening tree line. At nineteen, he was the youngest of the group, raised on his grandmother's warnings about things that lurked in the deep places of Louisiana. "Mémère always said the Rougarou hunts when the moon is dark."
Caleb laughed, a harsh sound that sent a heron flapping from the shallows. "Just a Cajun Bigfoot with bad PR, kid. Your granny's been watching too many horror movies." He spat into the fire, making it hiss. "Ain't nothing out there but gators and maybe some poachers."
David looked up from cleaning his rifle, his weathered face serious in the firelight. As the oldest of the group at forty-five, he'd been leading hunting parties into these waters for twenty years. "Laugh all you want, Caleb, but something's been taking livestock from the Boudreaux place. Whatever it is, it's big enough to drag a full-grown bull into the swamp."
"Could be a bear," Caleb shrugged, spitting tobacco juice into the fire where it hissed and popped. "Hell, could be your mama looking for her dinner."
"Show some respect," David said sharply.
Josh shook his head, fingers brushing the silver cross at his neck. "Bears don't climb trees eight feet up," he muttered. "And they sure don't howl like that." His eyes slid toward Luke, who sat stiff by the fire, sleeves tugged down over his arms despite the heat. "You've been... different lately. Sweating, jumpy. You gonna tell us what's really going on?"
Luke's jaw tightened. "Ain't nothing wrong with me," he said, eyes fixed on the fire. "Swamp heat'll make anybody sweat."
Caleb rolled his eyes. "Here we go with the ghost stories."
"It's not a ghost," Josh insisted, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Mémère told me what it really is. The Rougarou—it's a curse that passes from person to person. It takes your shape, but wrong somehow. Too tall, too hungry, with teeth that never stop growing. And once it marks you..." He swallowed hard. "If it asks for blood, don't give it. That's how it binds you."
Luke's hands tightened on his rifle, knuckles white. The coffee mug trembled in his grip as memories flooded back—that night three years ago when he'd been caught in a storm deeper in the swamp. Lost and desperate, with water rising and lightning splitting the sky. That's when he'd heard the voice in the darkness, honey-sweet and patient like his mother's lullabies, but wrong in every way that mattered: "A drop of blood for safe passage, hunter. Just a drop, and you'll find your way home."
He'd lived. He'd made it out. But the bargain he'd struck was finally coming due, and he could feel the thing inside him growing stronger each night, clawing at his ribs from the inside, hungry for release.
"Load up," David said, shouldering his pack. "Whatever's out there, it bleeds. And if it bleeds, we can kill it."
The swamp transformed after dark into something primordial and alien. Fog rose from the black water, turning their headlamps into weak halos that barely penetrated the gloom. Spanish moss hung like funeral shrouds from the cypress branches, and every sound—the splash of an alligator, the cry of a night bird, the rustle of something moving through the palmetto—seemed amplified in the oppressive silence.
They poled their flat-bottomed boat deeper into the maze of waterways, following channels that David had mapped over decades of hunting. The air grew thicker, more oppressive, as if the swamp itself was holding its breath.
"There," Josh whispered, pointing his light toward a massive cypress. Fresh claw marks scored the bark in parallel lines, each gouge deep enough to sink a finger into. Whatever had made them possessed claws longer than a man's hand and the strength to tear through hardwood like paper.
Caleb examined the marks with his light, his earlier bravado fading. "Could be a bear," he muttered, but his voice lacked conviction.
"Bears don't climb trees backwards," David observed, tracing the downward angle of the gouges. "And they don't leave marks this high up." The scars stretched nearly ten feet up the trunk, far beyond the reach of even the largest black bear.
Luke stayed in the boat, one hand gripping the pole while the other clutched his rifle. His breathing had grown labored, and when Josh's light accidentally swept across his face, his eyes seemed to glow with their own inner fire.
They continued deeper, following a winding channel that led to a small island crowned with ancient live oaks. David beached the boat and they climbed onto solid ground, boots squelching in mud that smelled of rotting vegetation and something else—something metallic and wrong. That's when they found the deer.
It lay half in the water, half on the muddy shore, its body torn open but hardly eaten. The air around the carcass buzzed with flies and reeked of copper pennies mixed with the sweet-sick smell of decay. Massive bite marks punctured its neck and flanks, but the wounds looked wrong—too precise, too deliberate, as if whatever had killed it had been savoring the act rather than feeding. Most predators ate what they killed. This creature seemed to kill for the pleasure of watching life drain away.
"What kind of animal leaves a kill like this?" David wondered aloud, studying the carcass.
A howl echoed across the water, long and mournful and utterly inhuman. The sound seemed to bypass the ears entirely, vibrating through their bones like a tuning fork struck against their souls. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, bouncing off the trees and rippling across the dark channels. Josh grabbed David's arm, his face pale in the lamplight.
"Sweet Jesus," he whispered. "That's it. That's what Mémère warned me about."
The howl came again, closer this time, and Luke doubled over as if someone had punched him in the gut. His rifle clattered to the ground as he gripped his stomach, muscles spasming under his shirt like something was trying to claw its way out from the inside.
"Luke Landry, what's wrong with you?" David reached for his friend, but Luke waved him away with a hand that trembled violently.
"I'm fine," he gasped, but his voice carried a strange resonance now, like an echo answering itself. The words seemed to come from somewhere deeper than his throat, somewhere dark and hungry. "Just... just need a minute."
Red eyes flickered in the darkness beyond their lights—there one moment, gone the next. Josh spun toward the movement, but found only shadows and Spanish moss swaying in the humid breeze.
"We should go back," he said, his voice cracking. "This isn't right. Something's watching us."
Caleb forced a laugh, but it sounded hollow now. "Just gators, boy. Their eyes reflect red in the light."
"Gators don't climb trees," Josh shot back. "And they don't howl."
Another sound drifted through the night—the slow splash of something large moving through the water. Not the quick plunge of an alligator, but something deliberate, patient. Hunting.
Luke straightened slowly, and when he looked at them, Josh could have sworn his teeth looked longer, sharper than they should be.
"I'm gonna scout ahead," Caleb announced, his voice too loud in the oppressive quiet. Fear had stripped away his earlier bravado, leaving him loud and desperate. "Whatever's out there, it's just playing games. Time to show it what real hunters can do."
"Absolutely not," David said sharply. "We stay together, or we're all dead."
But Caleb was already moving, his ego wounded by his earlier terror. "What's the matter, old man? You scared of some swamp stories?" He pushed through a curtain of hanging moss toward the far side of the island, his light bobbing between the trees. "I'll show you boys what a real man does with monsters!"
"Caleb!" David called, but received no response.
For ten minutes, they waited in tense silence. Luke continued to sweat and twitch, occasionally gripping his head as if fighting off a headache. Josh kept his rifle ready, spinning at every sound.
Then the scream tore through the night.
It started human—Caleb's voice raised in terror—but twisted into something else entirely before cutting off with horrible abruptness. The silence that followed was deafening.
They found the spot where he'd been standing: a small clearing beside a stagnant pool. Blood painted the palmetto fronds in dark splashes, and the muddy ground showed signs of a struggle. Deep gouges marked the earth, and something massive had disturbed the water, leaving ripples that still spread outward in lazy circles.
"Caleb!" David shouted, his voice echoing across the swamp.
From somewhere in the darkness came an answering call—Caleb's voice, but wrong somehow. Deeper, more resonant, with an animalistic growl threading through the words: "I'm... here... come find... me..."
Josh whimpered and backed away from the water's edge. "That's not him. That's not Caleb anymore."
Luke was breathing hard now, his face flushed and slick with sweat that smelled like wet copper. His eyes reflected their lights like mirrors, and when he flexed his fingers, Josh could swear he heard the sound of claws scraping against palm. When he spoke, his voice carried that same strange doubling they'd heard from the darkness—as if two throats were speaking in harmony.
"The swamp takes the loudest first," he said, and his words seemed to come from somewhere deep in his chest cavity. "Always has. Always will. Caleb never learned to listen."
David spun to face him, rifle half-raised. "Luke Landry? What in God's name is wrong with you?"
Luke's smile revealed teeth that were definitely too long, too sharp, like broken glass. "I tried to fight it," he said, his voice layering into harmonics that made Josh's skin crawl and his teeth ache. "For three years, I tried. Prayed every night, went to confession twice a week, even had Father Boudreaux bless me with holy water. But you can't pray away what's in your blood. You can only carry it... or pass it on."
Josh stared at his friend—his mentor, the man who'd taught him to track and hunt, who'd been like an older brother since Josh's daddy passed—and saw something else looking back through familiar eyes. Something ancient and patient and hungry.
"You made a bargain," Josh whispered, remembering his grandmother's stories. "Dear God, Luke Landry, you gave it blood."
Luke nodded slowly, and as he did, his neck seemed to lengthen slightly, vertebrae popping like knuckles cracking. "Just a drop. I was lost, scared, thought I was gonna die in a storm three years back. It whispered to me from the dark like a lover calling, promised safe passage home. One drop of blood, that's all it asked. Seemed like such a small thing to give for my life."
The sound of something large crashing through the underbrush interrupted him. Branches snapped and Spanish moss tore as whatever had taken Caleb announced its approach.
"I thought it forgot about me," Luke continued, his form beginning to change. His shoulders broadened, his spine lengthened, and when he flexed his hands, claws extended from his fingertips. "But it never forgets. It just waits until you're ready to pass the curse along."
The thing that had been Caleb burst into the clearing, and Josh's mind recoiled from what he saw. It retained his friend's basic shape but stretched and distorted, as if someone had taken a human form and pulled it like taffy. Its arms hung nearly to the ground, ending in claws that gleamed wetly in their lights. Its face was a grotesque mockery of Caleb's features, with a jaw that opened too wide and teeth that curved inward like a shark's.
When it spoke, Caleb's voice emerged from that twisted throat: "Boys... help me... please..."
David raised his rifle, but the creature moved faster than anything that size should be able to. It knocked the gun aside and sent David sprawling into the mud. Josh screamed and stumbled backward, his own weapon forgotten.
Luke stepped between them and the Rougarou-thing, his own transformation accelerating. His clothes tore as his frame expanded, and his face elongated into something that was neither fully human nor completely beast.
"Not them," he growled, his voice a bass rumble that seemed to vibrate through the ground. "The boy's not ready. Take me instead."
The Caleb-thing tilted its misshapen head, considering. "The marked one calls to us," it said in voices that weren't quite Caleb's anymore. "But the unmarked blood sings sweeter."
Josh found himself backing toward the water, rifle shaking in his hands. His grandmother's voice echoed in his memory: If it asks for blood, don't give it. That's how it binds you.
But Luke was changing, losing more of his humanity with each passing second. David lay groaning in the mud, his shoulder twisted at an unnatural angle. And the thing that had been Caleb was moving toward Josh with predatory grace.
"A drop of blood, boy," Luke managed to say through his transforming throat. "Just one drop, and I can hold it back. I can keep you safe."
Josh looked at the knife on his belt, then at Luke's increasingly inhuman face. "What happens to me if I do?"
"You live," Luke replied, but his smile revealed rows of needle-sharp teeth. "For now."
The Caleb-thing lunged, and Josh reacted without thinking. He drew his knife and sliced across his palm, letting blood drip onto the muddy ground.
Luke inhaled sharply, and his eyes rolled back as the scent reached him. The transformation completed itself in a rush—bones cracking, muscles swelling, skin darkening into something between fur and scales. But instead of attacking Josh, the Luke-thing grabbed the Caleb-creature and they both tumbled toward the water, claws and teeth seeking purchase.
They hit the black surface with a tremendous splash and disappeared beneath the water, leaving only ripples and the echo of inhuman roars.
Josh and David limped back to their boat as dawn crept across the bayou, painting the Spanish moss silver and turning the dark water into mirrors. Neither spoke during the long pole back to civilization. What was there to say? That their friends had been consumed by a curse older than Louisiana itself? That they'd witnessed the stuff of nightmares made flesh?
The locals in town just shrugged when they reported Luke and Caleb missing. "That's how it goes with the Rougarou," old Boudreaux said, rocking on his porch. "It always takes someone. Been happening long as I can remember. My daddy's daddy used to tell stories about it."
That night, Josh stood in his bathroom brushing his teeth, trying to scrub away the taste of fear and mud. In the mirror, his reflection looked tired, haunted, but normal. Just a young man who'd seen too much.
But then he blinked, and for just a moment—less than a heartbeat—his eyes flashed red.
He told himself it was nothing. Trick of the light. Exhaustion playing with his vision. But when he lay down in his bed, Luke's transformed voice whispered in his memory: The curse is yours now. Pass it on, or be consumed.
Josh pulled his pillow over his head, but he could still hear it—that patient, honey-sweet voice calling from the deepest parts of the bayou: When you're ready, boy. When the hunger gets too strong to bear. We'll be waiting.
Outside his window, something howled in the distance.
Some bargains don't end in the swamp. They follow you home.
© 2025 Karen Cody. All rights reserved. This original story was written exclusively for the Urban Legends, Mystery, and Myth blog. Do not copy, repost, or reproduce without permission. This tale may appear in a future special collection.
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