Green Hags; or, Catfish
For VIOLENCE IN JULY 2026. Also available as a pdf.
Scenario
Your sister’s husband became insecure over his desk job and decided to get into hunting.
On the 18th of August he took her and the kids on a trip to a town called Avinger in north-east Texas.
On the 19th of August she sent you a picture of them together at a lakeside camp-ground. She’s rolling her eyes at the camera as her husband tries to use a camp-stove in the background. Your niece is laughing.
She appears to be holding the phone-camera up above, selfie-style.
On the 20th of August she sent you a picture of them together in a hunting store dressed in pricey-looking outdoor gear. Your niece is in fluorescent pink camo and holds a pink bolt-action rifle.
A middle-aged ginger man is holding the camera: his reflection is visible in a gun case over your nephew’s shoulder. The logo of a hunting supplies store is also visible.
On the 21st of August she sent you a picture of them together in the woods with their gear and rifles. The four of them are kneeling over the slumped body of a hog. Your niece is wiping away tears.
There is a shadow of a fifth person holding the camera.
It’s been two weeks. You have not heard from them since.
Avinger, Marion County, North-East Texas.
Population 873 in 2010. Population 791 in 2020. Locals call it A-Town.
The town sits on the Lake O’ the Pines reservoir, dammed in 1959 as part of flood control efforts on the Red River basin. Fishing and other recreation is common: yachts sail back and forth from the marina at Pine Harbor, just by the dam, where rich folk holiday.
FM 729 strikes through the centre of town. Coming from the edge of the state and heading inwards, one passes Rustic Pines Cafe, the Lake O’ The Pines Cabins motel, Big D’s Liquor, the Legends O’ the Pines bar and music venue, the Jeremiah 2911 Resources car dealership, Crestwood One Stop gas station, Lake O’ the Pines Baptist Church, a Dollar General, and a The Office self-storage complex.
The town is served by Mim’s Volunteer Fire Department and Ambulance Service. The station is also used as a community centre.
The people of Avinger are friendly: they have staved off the worst of rural anomie. Many have slight coughs: most of the town is employed, some way or another, by the Lone Star Steel Plant at the western end of 729.
In 1993 celebrity fisherman Don Allen claimed that while visiting he saw a mammoth catfish inhale several piglets that were bathing in the reservoir’s waters.
Investigation
An old woman stands outside the café with a baguette sub. She is tall and thin and greying-blonde. She wears jeans and a blouse. The woman carefully picks greasy pieces of sliced ham from the sandwich with long acrylic nails, dropping them one by one into a bin until the sandwich is bare. If bothered she points you towards places of note in a croaky voice, blankly staring from under her crumpled sun-hat and through black shades. She stinks of cigarettes.
This is Mary.
Non-working townfolks spend their day in the café. In the late afternoon some retire while others move to the bar or VFD in the late-afternoon.
Most folks have heard about the missing family in the woods. Several off-duty members of Mim’s had put together a search party two days after they’d gone missing. They found nothing. State police even came to question Fran Robins, but they haven’t been back since.
More outdoorsy locals are able to identify the logo of the hunting store (a bigfoot silhouette over a Texas-shaped cut-out of pine trees) as Bigfoot Hunting Supplies & Antiques Store in Jefferson, the next town over and the county seat.
Johnson Creek Camp-Ground
A fed-owned camp-ground sits on the lake just by the edge of town. Most of the site is for RVs but there are a few spots for tents. It’s well kept and has good amenities. Check-in is 3pm and check-out is 2pm. A little concrete office sits in the corner next to the shower blocks.
Chris, a brown haired 22-year-old with jogger’s thighs, was on duty on the day when the family went missing.
Nothing was off as he was doing his check-out time walk-around and clean-up. When he did his evening walk-around he noticed that the family had put down their tent but their car was still there. He presumed they’d gone off to stay at the motel: “most out of town folks don’t know how bad the gnats get this time of year”. He’s checked the register and they were meant to be staying until the 24th.
The car is still there: a 2012 Kia Sorento In the trunk are the family’s camping gear: rotting food in a cool-box, a camping stove, folding chairs, a heavy mallet for tent-pegs.
Mim’s VFD & Ambulance Service
The VFD is a tall structure on the edge of town. It resembles a long barn with a corrugated metal roof. The left side of the building is taken up by a common room, a pair of offices, and a bathroom. The right side of the building is panelled with three large garage shutters that open onto the two fire engines.
Mim’s is hosting a fundraiser bake sale. Half-a-dozen children are doing finger painting in the corner as adults chat.
Fran stands behind one of the back tables of cakes slowly eating a brownie from a paper napkin. She’s called over by folks if you ask after her: “Hey, Sarah! More people from outta town!”. She is happy to talk and invites visitors to an office.
Bigfoot Hunting Supplies & Antiques Store, Jefferson.
This downtown retail unit used to be a bar. The tables and stools are gone, replaced by glass cabinets of guns and racks of clothing and shelves of supplies and tools. The counter is still there. A middle-aged man with thinning ginger hair and stubble sits on a stool behind it: this is Tim.
Amongst the stock is a pair of flourescent pink camo outdoors-trousers and in one of the cases is a pink bolt-action rifle.
On sale are all of the items bought by the family except for your niece’s pink outdoors-jacket, your sister’s beige jacket, and your sister’s husband’s grey trousers and hunting cap. All items have been relegated to the reduced section.
Tim can answer questions but protests. He says that state troopers already came in last week and asked him questions about the family, accusing him of selling them faulty out-of-date hog repellent spray (“Yeah. Hog spray. You spray it around your tent after you put it up, and it makes the hogs not bother you”).
What he can say is that the family came in on the 20th of August to buy a full set of hunting gear for each of them: gun and clothing. The guy seemed loaded: he spent like $6500. Your sister got him to take a picture of them all in the store. She held a gun for the photo but didn’t buy one. Apparently they had a guide sorted out wherever they were staying and were going hunting the next day.
This is a well-rehearsed lie. Mary recommended Fran to them at the store.
If accused of something regarding the family’s clothing and guns being sold again, he says that a “woods-hobo with a grey beard and a red baseball cap” came to the store with a battered shopping cart of stuff and offered to sell it to him for two hundred dollars. He doesn’t think that the hobo knew that this is where it came from originally, but just that his store happened to be the closest.
This is a lie. Mary sold it to him.
387 Washington Drive, Avinger
The door of this small bungalow is covered by a bug screen, the grill stained by cigarette tar. A mat that’s shed most of its bristles: “God Bless This Home”.
The main room has a futon couch, a small TV mounted on the wall, a coffee table, and a kitchenette. The kitchenette has a few dirty plates. On the wall below the TV is a trio of medals: a framed Purple Heart belonging to Brian Robins, and two framed golds for state-level women’s shooting competitions - 1981 and 1982 - belonging to Mary Robins. Above the futon is an amateur watercolour of the sunset over a pine-shrouded lake.
Fran sleeps on the futon when she’s staying at home.
The cramped bedroom is filled by a double bed. A shower rail has been set up to use as a floating clothes rack: a few old sundresses and jeans and blouses. In a cigarette-burned bedside table are three empty packs of Benson & Hedges and a half-full bottle of anti-psychotics prescribed to Mary Robins. Under the bed is an empty gun case for a Remington target rifle. A taxidermied catfish is mounted on the wall.
Mary used to sometimes sleep here.
Frances Robins
Fran is 32. Her skin is rough and tanned from outdoors work. She wears a black tank top and baggy fatigues and puts her blonde hair into a loose bun. A pager sits on her belt. People call her Sarah Connor. She’s friendly enough.
She’s a forest ranger who works closely with the team at the Jefferson Creek Camp-Ground. Her realm is the Lake and everything in a two mile radius of it. When she’s not on duty as a ranger she’s usually on duty for the VFD, or at least helping out. She has very little time outside this.
Occasionally she works as a hunting guide: she’s a forest ranger, she’s trustworthy and responsible, she knows the Pines well. It’s a way to supplement her income.
Her story, if questioned, is as follows:
She had been recommended to the family (she never thought to ask who). She took them out into the woods, past the protected area, onto ground where it’s legal to hunt. They walked around for a few hours, she taught them about the Red River Basin and its history and nature. Along the way they bagged two boar. The first one was by the dad. The second was by either of the kids, she’s not sure who (they lay down and aimed up together and shot at the same time).
At about 3pm she said it was time to start to head back to Avinger. The dad said they were gonna stay out for a bit longer. She tried to persuade him but he refused. She had to go because she was going to be on duty at the VFD that evening. She made $400. Nobody ever saw them again.
She was part of the search party that looked for them. She and others loosely trailed the path they took. No sign of them or their stuff. The dad had a big duffel bag with him while hunting that she presumes contained their tent and basic supplies for camping out that night. She thinks that the family got freaked out by hogs in the night, packed everything back up but the tent, wandered away and got lost and fell into a bog.
She wants to help visitors in any way she can. She asks to exchange phone numbers.
Mary Robins
Mary used to live on Washington Drive. Then she began splitting herself between Avinger and the woods. Now she lives full-time in the woods. She only occasionally comes into town, just so that she can watch people from up close.
In the woods she wears jeans and a stained white blouse underneath a camo-pattern rain poncho.
She carries a big plastic tote bag of clothes and supplies: jeans, blouses, underwear, a crumpled sun hat, a firestarter flint, a penknife, an old two litre coke bottle filled with dirty water, a worn-out filter straw, and sixteen half-empty packs of Benson & Hedges. Three of the packs are missing four cigs while thirteen are missing five.
Over one shoulder she carries a one-person tent in a bag. Over the other shoulder she carries a long bag containing her Remington target rifle.
Whenever Fran brings people out into the woods she stalks the party for hours until they’ve stopped and she’s got a clear shot. Then she blows her duck whistle to warn her daughter-in-law, waits a moment, and shoots each of her prey before they can react. One. Two. Three. Four. She goes for the neck.
Mary strips her prey, stows their guns and any salvageable gear to sell to Tim later, and then drags the rest in a tarp to a secluded shore of the lake. She waits until night. She gently slaps the water with the back of her hand. She waits. A sonorous groan echoes out. She waits. A catfish as large as a car hauls itself onto the sand. She feeds it the bodies and the evidence. She gently strokes it as it eats. Then they both leave.
What Happened?
A home-town love story: Fran married Brian Robins when they were both 21. They got a little bungalow on mortgage. Brian went away to war. Brian died.
Fran never particularly liked Brian’s mother, who was always very snippy and obviously had OCD or something: she would flick the lights on and off while spinning around before bed, and had unusual compulsions about walking around the lake while blowing a little duck whistle. But after Brian died Fran allowed her to stay and grieve in the bungalow. Mary never left.
Three years ago Fran went on an out-of-town trip as a hunting guide for two young campers. Some old lady had recommended her to them while they were buying guns in Marshall. She’d never done anything like it before but she needed the money: her mother-in-law had gone AWOL and the mortgage needed paying. The pair were lining up a shot on a boar when Fran heard a duck whistle through the trees. Moments after - bang bang - the campers were dead. Mary had shot them with her tournament rifle.
Mary glared at Fran with strange dark eyes. Mary told her to leave. She did. Two days later Mary came home and handed Fran $500.
The incident occurred three more times before now, each time at least six months apart. It was always the same: Mary would loiter around hunting supplies stores across north-east Texas, recommend her forest ranger daughter as a hunting guide to gullible groups, and then shoot the party dead when Fran met them and took them out into the woods. Fran would leave, and Mary would strip the bodies, sell the gear at a reduced price to Bigfoot Tim in Jefferson, dispose of the remains, and then pay Fran.
The most recent time, with the husband and wife and two kids, Mary got zealous. She broke two of her rules. First, she picked up the group at Bigfoot itself, instead of some other nearby town. Second, she picked up a group that was actually staying in Avinger.
Fran is worried. She thinks it happened too close to home. She thinks the truth is going to come out. Fran is even more worried about her mother-in-law: Mary hasn’t been home at all since the 21st. She thinks that Mary is equally paranoid about her slip-up and is hiding in the woods.
Fran hopes that she threw investigators off by stealing the family’s tent after she got back. She took it into the woods and burnt it in an oil drum. Then she rehearsed a story about the dad wanting to camp out in the woods.
Fran says that Mary stole the tent and that it was her idea.
Confession
Fran texts a single one of the player characters on the evening after she first meets them (or once a few of the leads have been followed up on). She wants to meet them at the bar. She goes for women first, then men.
She tells you everything that’s happened. She tells you that she’s afraid of Mary and what she might do if she stops playing along. She tells you that she’s worried that her mother-in-law will kill her if she tries to leave.
She tells you she wants nothing more than to leave A-Town with you. From the moment she saw you she felt different. She tells you that she wants to spend time with you, get to know you. She tells you that you’ve given her the strength: she’s come up with a plan to stop Mary.
She proposes taking you and your friends on a hunting trip, in the woods north of town, where it normally happens. You’ll act as if she didn’t tell you all this. She’ll act as if you’re a new party to be killed. And that’ll lure her out.
Fran guides those who agree on a full hunting trip. She teaches them about the woods. She teaches them how to track. She continually glances towards the person she approached and smiles. When you all find a boar, she shows you how to lay down and properly aim your rifle. She whispers “be brave”. She rises.
She waits for a duck whistle.