Heronshade

A Hurtville Horror Story by Scott Farmer
Long before Hurtville.
Long before the settlers carved trails into the Ozark hills or built cabins on the White River’s edge…
There was the Heron.
The Osage knew it.
Not as a bird, but as a spirit—a guardian, yes, but also a judge.
The Great Blue Heron walked between water and sky, shadow and light.
Its wings could lift a soul to the afterlife—or drag it down into the mud forever.
They called it Ni-Ka-Wa—the Watcher of Still Waters.
And when white men came and laughed at the old stories,
Ni-Ka-Wa went quiet.

For a time.
Then they built Hurtville.
And they broke the land.
They say the first settler to vanish was Josiah Treece, a logger who shot a heron out of boredom. He strung it up on the front porch like a trophy, bragged it would keep “the Injuns scared.” That night, the river rose twenty feet without rain. They found Josiah hanging upside-down in the tree line, neck twisted like a bird’s, lungs full of silt.
Others followed.
They saw it standing still at dusk--
A Great Blue Heron, taller than a man, with furious eyes and shadows clinging to its legs.
Sometimes it screeched like a bird.
Sometimes it spoke like a man.
Always near the water.
Then came the dam.
The flood.
The drowning of old Hurtville under Table Rock Lake.
But Ni-Ka-Wa did not die.
Now it’s seen gliding low over the lake on foggy nights, silent and watching.
It moves against the wind.
It casts no reflection.
Fishermen report catching heron feathers on their lines—blackened and soaked in blood.

Campers hear flapping in the trees overhead, followed by footsteps.

And sometimes, just before someone goes missing, there’s a stillness--
A hush where the frogs stop croaking.

The water stops rippling.

And something tall moves through the shallows on legs like knotted willow roots.
They say Ni-Ka-Wa returns not to punish, but to remind.
That what was taken—land, lives, respect—will be repaid.

And if you walk the edge of Table Rock Lake and see a tall heron standing still,
neck curled,
eyes fixed,
don’t look away.
Because if you do,
you’ll hear wings above you.
And you’ll feel your feet sink deeper into the mud…
until you can’t move.
Until your mouth fills with water.
Until you, too, become a shadow in the shallows.
Some spirits fly.
Others haunt the line between man and memory.
Heronshade.