Mervin Badman

by Jonathan Antony Strickland

spine chilling noise came from out of it. "Whooping" and "Ooping" sounds echoed from the cave, sounding like a bunch of frightened creatures horrified by Ted's torch light.

  The strange screams made the four men freeze on the spot. Then after several seconds the noise stopped as suddenly as it had begun and only the gentle breeze from the wind once more became the only sound to be heard.

  "Could be bats", said Phil, breaking the silence and softening the edge of the moment.

  "Could be", agreed Adam "though I aint ever-" ... Suddenly a scream and a loud splash interrupted Adam. It had come from one of the other men. Each turned around quickly to see what had happened.

  Greg had vanished. Where he had stood the pond weed had been disturbed and the water beneath the weed rippled and bounced up and down angrily.

  Ted, Phil and Adam dashed to the spot shouting Greg's name while searching beneath the murky brown water with there hands in search of Greg.

  "Perhaps he slipped", said Ted, his voice shaking and with a worried tinge to it.

  "Yes ... but, but wouldn't he still be here. I mean under the water kind of thing", said Phill whose face had frozen in alarm as he’d blurted out the last sentence.

  There hands continued searching but it was quite obvious that Greg was not in the spot he had suddenly vanished from.

  Then ten feet away from where the three men searched frantically, pond weed and water exploded upwards as Greg re-emerged, coughing and spluttering. "Someit, someit grabbed, grabbed me. Something grabbed my leg", he said as his eyes bulged and he fought to get his breath back.

  The other three men waded over as quickly as they could to where Greg had come up. As they did there eyes continually searched the lair of weed for any kind of unwanted movement, not knowing what horror lay in wait beneath.

  "You sure you was grabbed", said Phil not bothering to disguise the panic in his voice.

  "Course, course I'm sure. My ankle ... Arghh ... My ankle still hurts", said Greg as his face creased with pain.

  "Let's get to the hill. Fast as we can", said Adam whose voice also showed signs of panic.

  The men now stood right on the edge of the weed; the hill with its cave was only thirty feet away from them. To get to it they would have to cross through the water, not a task any of the men now looked forward too. At least there would be no more pond weed to get through though this thought was only a minor comfort to the four.

  Ted led the way. As he took his first step out of the weed a large wave four foot to the right of him boiled upwards. Beneath the water the four men watched as a large brown shape moved outwards, leaving a thick trail of muck in the water behind it. They watched wide eyed and open mouthed as it headed across the open water and vanished downwards, seeming to go beneath the base of the hill.

  The time for reasoning was over and the four men dashed as fast as they could through the remaining water and up onto the grassy hill. Fortunately the water became no deeper and the closer they got to the hill the more solid and less muddy the ground beneath there feet became.

  It took the men just under a minute, though it seemed to them far too long a length of time as the seconds dragged cruelly by. All four had made it safely though to the bottom of the hill where they dragged themselves upwards onto the lush green grass and lay down, soaked to the skin and exhausted. Once each had recovered from the shock and weariness that there quick flight across the water had left them in they headed further up the hill, well away from the silent grey water.

  "What the hell was that", said Ted. "I thought your fishes were mere tiddlers and as far as I'm aware ya don't have any beavers, God damn".

  "Yeah a fish", said Phil breathing a sigh of relief. "It was probably just a big fish".

  "A big fish that grabs your ankle and drags you below the water" said Greg grimly and with a touch of sarcasm in his voice.

  "No it could have been ... Yeah, of course. You can get big pike down here. They’ve been known to attack people before. That's all it was, it was just a pike that grabbed ye Greg", Adam said, cheering up at the thought of the unnamable horror being unmasked.

  Greg didn't reply. Instead he rolled up his trouser-leg to look at the ankle which still throbbed with pain. He revealed five long red marks where the skin had been squeezed hard. He quickly rolled his trouser leg back down, not wanting to worry the rest of the group for to him the marks on his ankle did not look to have been caused by the mouth of some huge great fish that had mistook his leg for a tasty snack. To him they looked like powerful finger marks.

  Greg's shoulder was shook as he sat on the ground in thought.

  "Come on", said Adam. Where going into the cave. It'll be a lot safer in there".

  Greg stood up, then froze. He suddenly remembered his precious beetle Horrus who was in his jam-jar that dangled from his waist. As he did a nasty black thought struck him: "As I was pulled down beneath the surface of the lake the jar may have filled with...Oh God...Horus".

  Quickly he reached for the jar but what he found proved worse. The glass had broken and only half the top of the jam-jar remained. Horrus was no where to be seen.

  Adam turned around as he realized that Greg was not following him.

  "Come on Greg. There's a nice cozy cave waiting".

  "I can't go".

  "What. What do you mean, where all going in, it's madness to...”

  "It's Horrus Adam ... Horrus ... Horrus is gone". Greg lifted up the jar to show Adam the broken glass.

  Adam sighed. He knew like the rest of the group that Horrus was only a simple garden beetle, but he also knew what that little beetle had meant to Greg.

  "Listen Greg", said Adam. "It's what Horrus would want you to do. He'd want you to go inside into the cave where it's warm and dry". Ted and Phil who had been listening to the conversation came over to try and back up Adam. The three found that it was not an easy task and Greg was completely inconsolable, at one point he even broke down in tears at the thought of Horrus lying drowned at the bottom of the lake ready to be eaten by some fat brainless fish.

  Eventually after each had had there say and each had sympathized with Greg's loss they did manage to get through to him and persuade him to accompany them into the cave, telling him that Horrus was now in a far better place, free to roam fields of grass and borrow into mighty oaks, feasting on there heavenly bark and drinking there Godly sap. In Horrus's heaven there’d be no predators that could swoop from the sky or dig him up and eat him.

  There words proved a great relief to Greg and he agreed that Horrus would want what was best for him, the cave being far safer and more comfortable than camping out on the hill. As the four men had spoken, a light rain had begun to fall around them.

  "Come on before it starts getting heavier, said Phil".

  The sky had now become black and the men shone there torches around to get there bearings and to find the position of the cave. Phil’s torch swept across the lake and onto the thick green covering of pond weed. "My God", he cried. "Look". The other three turned to see Phil’s face twisted in horror, then each followed his torch beam with their own.

  It looked to all like the mass amount of weed they had earlier waded through was moving. For a moment the same thought swept through each of there heads, thinking that the weed was in some way alive and at any moment it would slink over to them and once more cling to there bodies, though this time it would not let go. Then Ted recalling old memories, realized what it in fact was and to the other three's shock broke into a huge roaring laugh. "Bugs", he said. "It's only bugs ... When I was in Nam the same thing used to happen. The weed on top is dry and home to millions upon millions of bugs. You name it, spiders, beetles, flies and other creepy crawlies that you can and can't imagine live in that stuff, once the rain hits the top lair of the weed which is above the water, the place in which the bugs live, it becomes wet and the bugs have to come out o
r be drowned. Yep, back in Nam I'd used ta see it all the time. Scarred the shit out of me too first time I saw it. Ha, who'd da imagined that after all these years it would still to this day give me the spooks".

  The other three men realized that Ted was indeed right. During there passing through the weed they had noticed many different types of insect scuttle out of there way as they had ploughed through there homes. Now Adam and Phil joined in with the laughter. The relief of knowing what it was and how they had panicked at an imaginary monster ready to gobble the four of them up brought back memories of childhood when everything unknown was something unnatural and evil.

  Greg for the time remained silent. Then an expression of realization crossed his face and a joy of how wrong he'd been, filled up his soul.

  "It's Horrus. Horrus, he's alive", he cried aloud revealing the emotion to the rest in his voice". The other three men stopped laughing and looked at Greg who was grinning insanely. "What do you mean", inquired Phil while giving Ted and Adam a confused look.

  Greg turned to his three friends with tears of joy streaming down his face. "Don't you see", he said. "It's Horrus", he pointed outwards towards the sea of insects.

  "Where", said Ted.

  "No no no", said Greg shaking his head smiling. "I can't see him out there. But don't you see, this is a sign. It's Horrus telling me, telling me his alive."

  "Of course he is", said Adam, humoring Greg. "Anyway let's make our way to the cave now".

  "You go, I'm staying here to wait for his return".

  "THAT'S IT", shouted Ted angrily. "I’ve had it with this fruit. Him'nd that God darned beetle. If I get hold of that bloody bug, ar swear I'll shove it up his ...”

  "COOL IT TED", shouted Adam.

  "Ted", whispered Phil. "It's not his fault, remember the guys highly strung".

  "Listen you’se two", said Adam to Ted and Phil in a whispered voice so as Greg wouldn't be able to hear him. "I know him best, give me a minute and I'll talk to him alone. Losing that beetle seems to have hit him badly, we all know what he thought of it. I'll see if I can persuade him to come along with us". The other two men agreed and Adam went over to talk with Greg.

  Adam's efforts proved fruitless. Greg's mind was completely made up and any argument that Adam put forward to stop Greg from staying on the hill through the night where squashed straight away by Greg who considered the beetle more important than a good nights sleep. Greg told Adam that he would wait outside on the hill. He would set up his tent and wait in case Horrus decided on returning to him.

  Adam was not keen on leaving Greg in his present state but Greg reassured him that he'd be alright and if the weather did change for the worse then he'd come and look for them in the cave. Whatever happened he would see them all in morning, no matter what.

  And so the three men set off upwards towards the cave, after they had made sure Greg's tent was up safely for him to sleep in during the night. Once they had gone, Greg settled down in the tent looking out the door flap and remembering back to that fateful day when Horrus had saved his life.

  It had been an unusually hot summer’s week, with temperatures reaching over ninety degrees everyday. This however did not stop him going out on the morning with his trusty metal detector and heading into an open farm field in search of coins or artifacts of an age long long before. He could not believe his luck when after but a few minutes searching the detector bleeped and digging down he discovered a mug made of iron and dating back some three and a half centuries.

  The field turned out to be a well of treasure and in his excitement he continued his searching, not bothering to go back and get a hat as the mighty suns rays beat down.

  Hour after