by Ross Welford
‘What the …?’
‘It’s chicken. It was in the bin behind your pub.’ He adds quickly, ‘And if it’s in a bin it’s not stealing, is it?’
He had explained the plan on the way here, but now – kneeling on the jetty screwing his four-part rod together – he goes over it again.
‘So, this chicken breast is the bait. We paddle out about thirty metres and drop the chicken over the side attached to the buoy.’ He points to a red buoy the size of a football in the bottom of the canoe. ‘That should stop it sinking. It’s attached to the line and my rod. We paddle back, letting out the line, and just wait. Pikey comes along and sniffs the lovely meat …’
Iggy acts this out, his eyes narrowing as he twitches his nose left and right.
‘He just can’t resist it! Bam! Down go his jaws and he’s hooked. We see the buoy bobbing and start reeling him in to the jetty, where you are ready with your phone to get the pictures. Then we release him and we cycle back to fame and fortune, or at the very least, our pictures in The Hexham Courant!’
I keep telling myself that everything will be fine, even as we throw all of the gear into the canoe and I step into the rocking vessel, with the freezing water in the bottom seeping into my trainers. Suzy follows us and I could swear she looks at me funny. She takes one sniff of the rotten chicken and moves as far away as she can, right up to the far end of the canoe.
I hadn’t mentioned anything to Mam about going out on the water, because I hadn’t known till Iggy said so. My conscience is clear. But still …
‘Iggy?’ I say. ‘Do we … erm, do we have life jackets?’ I feel daft saying it, and even dafter when I see the look of disdain on Iggy’s face. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ I say. ‘I can swim.’
We unhook the wobbling canoe from the jetty and start paddling out towards the middle of the lake, saying nothing.
Perhaps it’s the motion of the canoe, but I begin to feel a bit queasy. The chicken (the dead one) isn’t helping. The putrid smell is on my hands from where I tossed it over the side attached to the red buoy.
I lean over and dip my hands in the icy water to wash them, then jerk back with a yelp, rocking the canoe.
‘Hey! Watch it!’ protests Iggy.
Did I imagine it?
I did imagine it. I look again: it’s just a log, submerged below the surface. There’s a branch coming off it that sort of looks like an arm, and in my head the whole thing became a floating body and I thought it was Tammy, and it wasn’t. It was just a log, and my mind playing tricks on me.
‘Shall we go back now?’ I say, trying to keep the tension out of my voice.
We paddle back, letting out the thick line as we go.
And so we wait on the jetty. And wait. I look up at the sky, which is much darker now, and I think I should be going back.
My phone’s clock tells me that we have been here for more than an hour, and frankly, I am bored, cold and still a bit shaken by the log-that-was-just-a-log.
And then the buoy moves.
‘Did you see …’
‘Yup.’
We scramble to our feet and stare out over the lake to where the buoy is once again still, with tiny ripples expanding from it.
‘What do you think?’ I say, but Iggy just takes off his cap and runs his fingers thoughtfully through his messed-up red hair, looking at the water.
We stay like that for several minutes then he says, ‘I think we need to check’ and he starts to reel in the line. ‘Perhaps the bait’s been taken, or fallen off. Dammit.’ The line is jammed. ‘Might have got caught on weeds, or a log.’
The more he tugs, the tighter it gets. ‘Come on,’ he moans, getting into the canoe. ‘We’ll have to free it.’
‘We?’ I murmur, but I get in anyway.
Iggy whistles to Suzy, just like you would to a dog, and she hops in obediently after us. Iggy pulls his cap down purposefully, pushes his glasses up his nose, and we begin to paddle back out towards the bobbing buoy.
Before we reach it, the massive splash comes.
It’s huge – like a car has been dropped into the water from a great height over on the other side of the reservoir.
Obviously, it isn’t a car. But – equally obviously – I don’t think it’s an invisible spaceship either, because I’m not completely mad.
But that is what it turns out to be.
After that splash about two hundred metres away, comes another one a few seconds later, slightly smaller but still enormous, and closer to our canoe. In the light of the rising moon, the water droplets glisten as they cascade back down. Seconds after, there is a third splash, then a fourth, all getting closer to us in a straight line, as though a massive, unseen stone is being skimmed across the surface. By the time the fifth splash comes, only about six metres from the boat, the resulting waves have started to tip our little canoe violently from side to side.
‘What’s happening?’ I wail.
Then the spray soaks us and we both cower in the bottom of the rocking boat. I feel, rather than see, something pass overhead very close to us, causing Suzy to squawk with alarm.
‘What is it?’ I shout.
Iggy makes no attempt to answer.
I raise my head to see the sixth splash on the other side of the canoe. The seventh is much smaller. Whatever is causing it is becoming less forceful. There’s an eighth splash, then a swoosh of water that washes over the jetty then … just nothing. Nothing but the darkening sky, the purple lake, the black-green of the surrounding forest …
… And silence, broken only by the slapping of rippling waves on the side of the canoe.
Eventually, Iggy straightens up and says ‘Good Lord! Did you see that?’, but I don’t know what we saw so I just end up moving my mouth without making any sound.
There’s nothing to see now, anyway: whatever caused the splashes must have sunk, but only about ten metres from the shore, where the water is shallower and fairly clear. Together, we paddle towards the spot: perhaps, despite the gathering darkness of the afternoon, we’ll be able to shine a light into the water and see something?
As we get closer, I hear a humming noise, and we stop, allowing the canoe to drift as I turn my head to hear better.
‘Listen,’ I hiss. ‘That’s it! The noise I heard on the night that Tammy disappeared.’
There it is again. A low hommmmm like a bee trapped behind a window, but almost inaudible.
Staring again in the direction of the sound, the surface of the water appears disturbed, and sort of indented, as though a huge glass plate is resting on the lake near the jetty, but it’s hard to make out in the half moonlight.
Then, as we drift closer to the shape in the water, the nose of the canoe bumps into something. Probably another floating log, I think, but when I look there’s nothing. Nor is there a rock. I take hold of the paddle again and stroke it through the water, but we are stopped again with a bump, by some kind of object we can’t see. From the sound the canoe makes, it’s as if this object is in front of us, sticking out of the water, but that’s impossible because we can’t see anything but air.
‘What is that? What’s stopping us, Tait? What are we hitting?’
When the canoe bumps into nothing for the third time, I decide to change the route and paddle around the triangle of smooth water. I stop before the canoe reaches the shore, then I turn back to look.
‘Pass me the spinner, Tait,’ says Iggy.
He takes the large fishing lure from me carefully, avoiding the vicious hooks, and pushes a tiny button on it, activating the laser light that is supposed to attract fish. He points it in front of us, towards whatever it is that we’re not seeing.
‘Oh my word. Would you look at that?’
I’m looking. The green beam of light heads straight out across the lake, takes a sharp left turn, then curves around to go straight again. Iggy moves the light and it does the same – deflected by something we cannot see.
I find a pebble on the floor of the canoe and t
oss it towards where Iggy is pointing the light. There’s a dull ping and it bounces back towards me, landing in the water with a plop.
It is exactly as though it had hit a pane of glass, only there’s no glass there. I throw another pebble and it does the same. Opening Iggy’s fishing tackle bag, I take out a big lead weight and throw that, hard. Same result.
We’re both freaked out by now. Then the humming lowers in tone, the water before us seems to churn up slightly, and the shape on the water heads towards our canoe.
‘Move! It’s coming for us!’ yells Iggy.
We both reach down for the same paddle, causing the canoe to lurch sharply to one side. In one smooth movement, Iggy and I are tipped into the dark water and we don’t even have time to shout out.
The cold doesn’t hit me immediately, but as I plunge beneath the surface I suck in half a lungful of water, and come up spluttering and weighed down by my heavy jacket and sweater. I’m just able to keep my face above the surface and that’s when I gasp at the freezing cold.
Between gasps, I call out, ‘Ig … Iggy!’ I think about us not wearing life jackets, and I’m consumed with fear.
A ball of red hair bobs up next to me, followed by Iggy’s terrified face.
‘Ah … ah … I’m here.’ He grabs on to me. ‘We go … gotta go. That thing’s ge … ge … getting closer.’ He can hardly speak with the cold. He starts to swim for the shore, then stops. ‘Wh … where’s Suzy?’ As he says the name, there’s a thumping from inside the upturned canoe.
‘Suzy!’ cries an anguished Iggy, and before I can say anything, he’s bobbed under the surface.
Seconds go by while I feel my clothes getting heavier and I am properly scared.
‘Iggy!’ I shout, and I turn a circle in the water. ‘Iiiiiggyyyy!’
I’m ready to scream again, when there comes a splash from beside the canoe. Iggy’s head reappears and next to it are the sodden red feathers of Suzy, who looks very startled.
I have ended up closer to the jetty than Iggy, and I’m finding it easier to swim than he is because he’s carrying Suzy. I heave myself up the slippery iron ladder, weighed down by my soaking clothes. I look back and that is when I notice the strange, half-visible shape on the surface of the water moving and getting closer to Iggy.
Iggy is only about fifteen metres away and I can see the look of sheer terror on his face as he realises what’s going on.
‘Swim, Iggy. Swim! D-don’t look back. Just swim!’
But he does look back and I think he’s frozen in terror for a second. Holding Suzy’s head up, he starts thrashing with his other arm and kicking with his legs.
‘Come on, Iggy! Come on – you can make it!’
Ten metres. Five. I can hear the humming noise now as whatever is making it cuts across the surface, getting closer with every stroke Iggy makes. I stretch out my hand.
‘You can make it – come on!’
Then he screams and, with a gurgle, lets go of Suzy and disappears below the black surface of the water.
Iggy reappears above the surface a few seconds later, making terrified noises. ‘It … it … got … got …’ He seems to struggle with something below the surface as if his legs are tangled.
Amazingly, his glasses have stayed on. He manages to get hold of Suzy and, one-armed, flaps the last two metres to the jetty, where I haul him up by his arm.
‘My … m-my le-leg,’ he moans. ‘It go … got me.’
Iggy left his bike light on the jetty. I grab it, shine it on his leg and recoil in horror.
‘Is … is it ba-bad?’ he says.
I nod. A huge, treble-barbed hook has embedded itself into his calf and has ripped out a long portion of flesh as he struggled. Somehow his leg got entwined in our fishing line and as he swam it hooked him as securely as any fish. Blood, mixed with the water draining from us, forms a red channel trickling back into the water. He reaches his hand down and moans again when he feels the warm blood.
‘Ca-call my mum,’ he croaks.
‘Sure, Iggy. Hang on. You’re going to be fine.’
I fumble in my soaking jeans pocket for my phone.
It’s not THAT bad, I keep telling myself. He’s not going to bleed to death right here on this jetty.
I jab the start button on my phone.
Smartphones and water are not a good mix. I try again. And again.
‘Where’s yours?’ I ask Iggy, whose breathing has become shallow, little pants.
‘My mu … mum’s confiscated it.’
That I can believe.
In desperation, I get to my feet and shout, ‘Help! Help!’ while Iggy pants and moans, lying on his back on the jetty.
‘No … no one’s going to hear you,’ pants Iggy at my feet, then he groans in pain again.
‘I’m going to run up to the road,’ I say. ‘There might be a car I can stop. Wait here.’
What am I even thinking? There are hardly ever any cars on that road, just forestry trucks now and then. Am I panicking? I am halfway up the steep path to the road when I realise that leaving an injured person, soaking wet and freezing cold, on a jetty in the dark is just stupid.
For a few seconds I actually hop from one foot to another, trying to work out what to do, until eventually I turn and scramble back down the path towards the beach. I can see Iggy lying where I left him, and then I stop and let out a small yelp.
Someone has just appeared on the jetty before me.
I know that sounds crazy, but it’s just like a magic trick or a special effect. One minute there’s only Iggy lying there. The next, this … this figure is there as well. It can’t have come from anywhere. I mean, there’s no other approach to the jetty than the route I took, and I didn’t pass anyone.
It is quite dark, though …
I am standing on the shore-end of the jetty when I hear the person speak. He or she hasn’t heard me approaching, is facing Iggy, and I don’t think Iggy has noticed me coming back either: he’s got other things on his mind, what with freezing and bleeding half to death. The person makes a weird snuffling, squeaking noise, followed by words.
‘I heard you. I will help.’
Iggy, who’s been facing the other way, propped up on his arm, spins round and then scuttles back in shock, slipping in his own blood.
I hurry to Iggy, passing close to the person on the jetty, who seems to be wearing a shaggy fur coat, but that’s all I notice at first: I’m more interested in getting to Iggy.
‘You OK?’ I say. ‘Sorry I left you. This person can help. That’s good, eh?’ I’m gabbling a bit and I don’t really understand the look of terror on Iggy’s face as he squints past me through his smudged, wet glasses at the figure who is still standing there.
Iggy can’t speak: ‘Tai … Tait. What … what …?’
His gaze is fixed on the person behind me and so I turn to look as well. What I see shocks me so much that I too stagger and slip, falling hard on my backside. I continue to scramble backwards to the end of the jetty, unable to take my eyes away from what I see, and – at the same time – desperate to put as much distance between me and it as possible.
Iggy cranes his neck around, but is unable to move as fast as me and so lies there, panting with terror.
This thing has a head, with a shining mass of long, silvery hair and, below it, a face. A human face. Well, human-ish: it is face-shaped, except hairy, with widely spaced pale eyes and a huge nose, twitching like a hamster’s.
I’m so scared that I think if I’d been a bit younger I’d have wet myself, but I don’t, thankfully.
It is definitely like a human. It’s got two legs and two arms for a start. Apart from the long head hair, the rest of its body is covered in a light, greyish, downy fur that seems to be standing up. From its back curls a long tail that moves like a cat’s. So, both like a human, and not at all like a human.
It stares at me with its large eyes for a bit and then casts its gaze about the forest, raising its nose to sniff the air. Th
en it turns back to us and takes a step nearer. Iggy and I both cower but it stops and carries on staring and sniffing. Then it shakes all over: a massive shiver that ripples its fur. Its top lip draws back, revealing long, sharp, yellow teeth.
I hear a whimpering sound. I don’t realise at first that it is me.
Iggy speaks first. ‘Who-who are you? What do you want? P-please don’t hurt me.’
The person-creature steps forward, and we creep backwards till we’re right at the end of the jetty and there’s nowhere else for us to go except into the water again. Even Suzy has backed away, after shaking as much water as she could from her feathers.
The creature leans forward till its head is only about a metre away. It takes a deep sniff then makes the same grunting and whining noise with its mouth and nose as before. That is immediately followed by: ‘You are alreatty hurt.’
The thing has a voice that is a strange combination of throaty and high-pitched. It pronounces the ‘r’ in words like are and hurt like Scottish Sheila in the village, and each word is precise, as though the language has been recently learned. It holds out a thin, hairy finger and points at Iggy’s bleeding leg.
Iggy can’t speak for fear.
‘To you want me to help?’ comes the voice again, after another brief snuffling and squeaking.
I can smell its breath: it’s like a dog’s – sort of sour and a bit fishy. Now and then it licks its lips with a long grey tongue.
Help? I’m not so sure. I’m thinking that I could scramble to my feet, and push this thing into the water, then run up the path for the bikes … Only Iggy is in no shape to run. I’d be leaving him here at the mercy of this … thing. He wouldn’t do that to me, I don’t think.
Iggy nods.
We both flinch when the creature raises both of its hands and brings forward a bag that was hooked on to its back, like a little backpack.
Racing through my head is this: This is what happened to Tammy. This thing is going to take us. It’s not a monster: it’s a person. It’s a weirdo dressed up in an outfit, and he’s going to bring out a knife or a gun or …
