Greetings to the Hive community. This is my entry in the contest: Writing Club Special Contest: Gothic Stories, Sponsored by @hive-132410 [Writing Club].

Poker is canoeing down the Danube on a sightseeing tour with his friend, Olive, and the two are just leaving Bratislava, Slovakia, when they enter a strange and deserted stretch of wetland dominated by sandy shoals and sliver-leaved willow bushes. He solemnly notes that it is “a region of singular loneliness and desolation where [the Danube’s] waters spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low willow-bushes.”

The currents shift mercurially, cutting channels one day where there were none, making or destroying sandy islands without notice, and making the navigation of such a fluid place tremendously treacherous. Seasoned adventurers, poker and Olive dismiss warnings they get in Bratislava about the curious, misanthropic nature of the marshlands and press on in their Canadian canoe.

But poker thinks there may be something to the locals’ anxieties: “feeling disconnected from the realm of human structure We allowed laughingly to one some other that we need to have had some unique sort of passport to admit us and that we had certainly audaciously come besides asking go away into a separate little kingdom of surprise and magica kingdom that was once once reserved for the use of others who had a right to it with in all places uncontested. The complete isolation and fascination of this special world of willows, winds, and waters at once laid its spell upon us.

After a long day of paddling, they land on a sandy island (although it’s a good acre in size, they note that the slushing waters are already dissolving its borders) covered with willow bushes. Something about their movement and omnipresence disturbs Poker’s imagination, but his friend is utterly practical and seems to feel nothing but relief at stretching out on the sand. As twilight falls, they search the island for firewood, and in the gloom over the marsh, they notice something odd in the water: it looks like a man’s body – turning over playfully (or helplessly) in the current, with yellow, glowing eyes. Shocked at first, they later realize that it is only (or appears to be only) an otter, and they laugh it off.

But as they do, a real man passes their island in a boat, shouting inarticulately to them in Hungarian, and making frantic gestures. Before he drifts out of sight, he makes the sign of the cross, leaving the Poker deeply disturbed, although Olive assures him that the man must have taken them for ghosts.

As night falls, the wind stirs up from the marsh, rustling the willow branches for miles around, creating a strange, unholy humming noise that Poker imagines to be “the sounds a planet must make, could we only hear it, driving through space.” There is something abnormal about these bristling, nodding willow shrubs, but who could be afraid of a sea of bushes?

Nonetheless, he senses that the sound is melting into a sort of common “note,” and that it has a message: “the note of this willow-camp now became unmistakably plain to me; we were interlopers, trespassers; we were not welcomed. The sense of unfamiliarity grew upon me as I stood there watching. We touched the frontier of a region where our presence was resented.” Said Poker.

Late that night, Poker is woken up by his intuition and stumbles outside to look at the sky. To his horror, he discerns a flowing column of grotesque, luminescent elementals flowing into the heavens, parading madly in the air above the island. He associates them with the old gods before the Romans who have claimed this desolate territory as their retreat from modern man – wild elementals of Nature who have more in common with the black cosmos beyond than anything on earth.

He hopes that it is a dream, but he knows that he is awake. When the vision disappears, he returns to the tent, but is frightened by the sound of “patterings” on the sand outside: as if a host of strange creatures were sneaking around them.

That morning Olive’s mood is dark and serious: the bottom of the canoe has been slit open, one paddle is missing, and another seems to have been sanded down “beautifully” to a thin pane of wood that will snap in the water. Olive grimly claims that this is “an attempt to prepare the victim for the sacrifice.” – the bizarre, telltale markings of the Willows, poker suspects.

They sense that it is an intentional sabotage, and that the nets are closing in on them. On edge, they proceed to patch the canoe, but are revolted by a strange new phenomenon: conical pock marks covering the sand around them – the As the island continues to shrink around them, the two men discover that some of their food is missing. Olive is forced to acknowledge what is happening and proffers his own interpretation: they have wandered into a window zone where a fourth dimension makes contact with the physical world, allowing extraterrestrial forces to peek in on human activity. He fears that anyone who tarries too long in this frontier between the two worlds will become a sacrifice to the Elder Gods, being transformed into something entirely inhuman.

Apparently the isn’t so unimaginative after all, because he admits that he has been sensitive to these liminal zones his entire life – spaces occupied by “immense and terrible personalities” which dwarf human concerns and make every day cares seem like dust. He recommends that they try to keep their wits about them and “keep their minds quiet” to prevent the elementals from “feeling” their thoughts.

He supposes that they could be spared if another sacrifice could be found, but doubts that this is possible in so uninhabited a place, and warns Poker not to think, “for what you think happens!”

As night deepens around them, they hear the atonal music of the Willows and discern something inhuman and otherworldly moving towards them in the darkness. Terrified, they violently stumble into one another – Olive is knocked unconscious and Poker is rocked with pain. But this seems to have inadvertently saved them: the mental distraction of the pain has caused the humming to cease. However, when Poker looks up, he notices that the tent has been knocked over, and that the sand around it is utterly peppered with conical divots.

Sleep is difficult for them, and Poker awakens to hear the telltale patterings of the Willow Things outside, along with a wild “torrent” of atonal humming rising up from the marshes. He notices that the Olive is missing and catches his friend standing by the rushing waters, prepared to hurl himself in.

The two men struggle in the sand, with Olive begging Poker to let him take “the way of the water and the wind.” But before he can slip out of Poker grip, something changes in the atmosphere: the humming stops, the patterings stop, and the Olive’s reason returns to him. Relieved, but disturbed, he mutters that the Willow Things must have found another victim to take their place.

In the morning, Olive searches their surroundings, certain that he will find the “sacrifice” nearby – and he does: he discovers the drowned corpse of a stranger tangled in the willow roots on the border of the island. The men are shocked to find the body riddled with “beautifully formed” conical impressions, which Olive laconically points to as “their awful mark.”

They decide that they must “give it a decent burial,” but as soon as they touch the corpse the humming noise rises angrily – possessively – from the marshlands. The two men cling to each other in terror, and before their eyes the water rises around the pock-marked body, washing it away into the river: “the body had been swept away into mid-stream and was already beyond our reach and almost out of sight, turning over and over on the waves like an otter.”

And after all of this there was peace, silence , the Eagles were crying, the frogs were croaking and sun rose up to peace center of the earth shining bright and Breeze was still and the voices of birds singing can be heard And the muttering sound of the waves of the river beats the tide. They noticed a flash of motion at the east side of the river. Behold, it was a boat, empty with two paddles in it. Olive didn’t think twice he went straight to the side of the river waiting for the boat and when it got near they got in it. Oliver and Poker and they went home.

Spanish

Saludos a toda la comunidad Hive.blog. Esta es mi participación en el concurso: Writing Club Special Contest: Gothic Stories, Patrocinado por @hive-132410 [Writing Club]. Los invito a todos a participar."

Poker navega en canoa por el Danubio en una excursión turística con su amiga Olive, y ambos acaban de salir de Bratislava, Eslovaquia, cuando entran en un extraño y desierto tramo de humedal dominado por bancos de arena y arbustos de sauce de hoja fina. Señala solemnemente que se trata de "una región de singular soledad y desolación en la que las aguas [del Danubio] se extienden por todos los lados sin que exista un canal principal, y el país se convierte en un pantano de kilómetros y kilómetros, cubierto por un vasto mar de sauces bajos".

Las corrientes cambian mercurialmente, cortando canales un día donde no los había, haciendo o destruyendo islas de arena sin previo aviso, y haciendo la navegación de un lugar tan fluido tremendamente traicionera. Aventureros experimentados, Póker y Olive desestiman las advertencias que reciben en Bratislava sobre la curiosa y misántropa naturaleza de las marismas y siguen adelante con su canoa canadiense.

Pero Póker cree que las preocupaciones de los lugareños pueden tener algo de razón: "sentirse desconectado del reino de la estructura humana Permitimos riendo uno al otro que necesitamos haber tenido algún tipo único de pasaporte para admitirnos y que ciertamente habíamos venido audazmente además de pedir ir lejos en un pequeño reino separado de la sorpresa y el reino mágico que una vez fue reservado para el uso de otros que tenían un derecho a él con en todos los lugares incontestados. El completo aislamiento y la fascinación de este mundo especial de sauces, vientos y aguas nos hechizó de inmediato.

Después de un largo día de remo, desembarcan en una isla de arena (aunque tiene un buen acre de tamaño, notan que las aguas deslizantes ya están disolviendo sus bordes) cubierta de sauces. Algo en su movimiento y omnipresencia perturba la imaginación de Poker, pero su amigo es totalmente práctico y no parece sentir más que alivio al estirarse en la arena. Al caer el crepúsculo, buscan leña en la isla y, en la penumbra del pantano, observan algo extraño en el agua: parece el cuerpo de un hombre, que se revuelve juguetón (o impotente) en la corriente, con los ojos amarillos y brillantes. Al principio se sorprenden, pero luego se dan cuenta de que sólo es (o parece ser) una nutria, y se ríen de ello.

Pero mientras lo hacen, un hombre de verdad pasa por su isla en una barca, gritándoles inarticuladamente en húngaro y haciendo gestos frenéticos. Antes de perderse de vista, hace la señal de la cruz, dejando al Póker profundamente perturbado, aunque Olive le asegura que el hombre debe haberlos tomado por fantasmas.

Al caer la noche, el viento se levanta de la marisma, haciendo crujir las ramas de los sauces en kilómetros a la redonda, creando un extraño e impío zumbido que Poker imagina como "los sonidos que debe hacer un planeta, si lo oyéramos, conduciendo por el espacio". Hay algo anormal en estos arbustos de sauce que se erizan y cabecean, pero ¿quién podría tener miedo de un mar de arbustos?

No obstante, intuye que el sonido se funde en una especie de "nota" común, y que tiene un mensaje: "La nota de este campamento de sauces se me hizo inequívocamente clara: éramos intrusos, intrusos; no éramos bienvenidos. La sensación de desconocimiento crecía en mí mientras permanecía allí observando. Tocábamos la frontera de una región en la que se resentía nuestra presencia". Dijo Póker.

Esa noche, Poker se despierta por su intuición y sale a mirar el cielo. Para su horror, discierne una columna fluyente de grotescos elementales luminiscentes que fluyen hacia los cielos, desfilando locamente en el aire sobre la isla. Los asocia con los antiguos dioses anteriores a los romanos que han reclamado este territorio desolado como su retiro del hombre moderno: elementales salvajes de la Naturaleza que tienen más en común con el negro cosmos del más allá que con cualquier cosa de la Tierra.

Espera que sea un sueño, pero sabe que está despierto. Cuando la visión desaparece, vuelve a la tienda, pero se asusta por el sonido de los "patinazos" en la arena del exterior: como si una hueste de extrañas criaturas les rondara.

Esa mañana, el estado de ánimo de Olive es sombrío y serio: el fondo de la canoa ha sido rajado, falta un remo y otro parece haber sido lijado "maravillosamente" hasta convertirse en una fina lámina de madera que se romperá en el agua. Olive afirma sombríamente que esto es "un intento de preparar a la víctima para el sacrificio". - las extrañas y reveladoras marcas de los Sauces, sospecha el póker.

Intuyen que se trata de un sabotaje intencionado y que las redes se acercan a ellos. Con los nervios a flor de piel, proceden a remendar la canoa, pero les asalta un nuevo y extraño fenómeno: unas marcas cónicas que cubren la arena a su alrededor: las Mientras la isla sigue encogiéndose a su alrededor, los dos hombres descubren que falta parte de su comida.

Olive se ve obligado a reconocer lo que está ocurriendo y ofrece su propia interpretación: han entrado en una zona de ventanas donde una cuarta dimensión entra en contacto con el mundo físico, lo que permite a las fuerzas extraterrestres espiar la actividad humana. Teme que cualquiera que se demore en

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