Shock Totem 5: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted

by Shock Totem

  “What’s that?” I ask, looking over at his tackle box. He’s fiddling with something.

  “Diamond ring.” He ties it to his line. “Three-quarters of a carat. Cost about two grand.”

  He’s trying to impress me. It works. It’s a brave thing to use as bait. Then again, Finney always catches the good stuff. Part of me wants to think that that’s just luck, but we both know it’s not. We’re no history buffs, even as much as we both obsess about the pond three hundred and sixty-four days of the year, but he actually plans. I just pray and enjoy the elation that comes with the fishing.

  “It’s all about the bait,” Finney once told me, back when we were on decent terms. “If you want something hungry, throw food. If you want something savage, throw a knife. If you want something greedy, throw a Krugerrand. Put a U.S. Dollar on the line it’ll get dragged through the centuries till something actually interested in a dollar comes along. You gotta choose wise.”

  Choose wisely because each of us could only pull one catch a year. Rule number three. The final rule the old man had given us. Always remember that. One cast a year.

  All I’ve got to bait with is raw chicken, and my line sits there in the water, drifting along. Down there, it could be centuries, but up here, its four minutes local time when I get my first tug.

  My heart skips.

  A single tug doesn’t mean much. Could be a fluke. Could be a shifting rock. Even two tugs wasn’t much to fuss over. And a steady pull? Could be an earthquake or hurricane a thousand years ago. No, you need to wait till you had an erratic, living thing caught on the other end, till the line jumps with emotion, till the pond gives you a catch. I stare at the line. It’s a teapot, waiting to boil. It’s a light about to turn green. It’s a mouse, ready to bolt in fear. Sweat collects on my brow, despite the cold air.

  There’s movement at my side.

  “Got something!” Finney launches to his feet, ecstatic. He grips his rod tight. The line jostles and bounces and Finney hooks a thumb around the reel handle. He never reels right away; he likes to see what he’s up against. Sometimes you have to fight with some heavy contenders. We struggled quite a bit with a saber-toothed cat one year (till he shot it), and then Grog...well, Grog took us twenty minutes to wrangle out. Threw both our backs out, too.

  Finney’s catch doesn’t offer much resistance. There’s a grunt, a heave, a shout of triumph and a groan of disappointment. On the other end of the line emerges one of the ugliest horseshoe crabs I’ve ever seen.

  “Dammit!” Finney says with disgust.

  Horseshoe crabs were about the worst thing you could catch; it counts as your catch for the year, but the creatures have been around for millions of years with no sign of letting up. Who knows when this one was from? Or more important, who cares? Finney cuts the line and tosses it back on principle alone, though it was small enough he could have kept it. Rule number four: Throw everything bigger than us back. That was a rule we made up ourselves; a lesson learned the hard way.

  “Dammit!” he says again as the creature wriggles back into the murk. “The ring!”

  It’s lost now, somewhere in the eons of time. Ain’t a snowball’s chance he’ll ever see it again, and we both know it. I feel like laughing. But I don’t. He’s got the shotgun after all. I don’t even smirk.

  My catch turns out equally disappointing. I pull up a strange deep-water fish, round and full and as close-to-alien as you can find on Earth. It might be worth a good chunk of change, but it deflates the moment it breeches the surface, and by the time I pull it to the shore it’s turned into a puddle of ooze, congealing around the half-chewed raw chicken. The fish’s very flesh dissolves away in the air. Maybe it was something from the past. Maybe from the future. Whatever it was, it wasn’t meant for the present.

  The excitement of seeing a new creature lasts a few minutes, but then the lack of payoff sinks in. Most years are like this. Waterlogged. How could they not be? The world is covered in water, geographically, yes, but looking across the other axis, over time...well, most of time is covered in water, too. It’s an exciting day when we catch something not covered in seaweed.

  Time, she is nothing if not an ocean, the old man said once.

  Still, we hold out for a small mammal or bird, something extinct that we can sell to scientists or newspapers. That was how Finney made his money: with a dinosaur carcass, a dead saber-toothed cat, and a living frog no one had seen for ninety years.

  Finney’s staring at the water, looking bitter.

  “You ready to get out of here?” I ask as I pack up my tackle box. It’s up to him to lead the first leg of the way back.

  “Yeah,” he says. Slow. Deliberate. Like he doesn’t mean it. He looks up at the sky, searching the gray blanket for the sun. “We got time, Jack. We got time for one more.”

  “Finney...the rules,” I say. The catch-limit, that wasn’t like the size-limit. Cast once a year was an authentic, from-the-old-man mandate.

  “I threw the horseshoe crab back. We pull up one of those bastards every other year. They shouldn’t count.”

  “They do.”

  “No one’s gonna know. The old man’s been dead, what, seventeen years? We’re the old men now. We’re the only ones who even know about this place.” He starts fumbling with his gear, looking for suitable bait. “It’ll only take a minute.”

  “Finney!” I say, as sharp as I dare. “Stop it. Let’s go.”

  “Piss off.”

  He secures a sinker and a small hook to the line. He’s going deep with this one. I’m left with my mouth hanging wide. There’s a reason the rule exists. What if Finney gets hurt? Or, worse yet, what if he breaks her, the pond, forever? What did we know? What did anyone know, except a long-dead old man?

  Finney is about to cast when I finally snap to action. I lurch forward and try to yank the rod away, but Finney’s bigger than me, and younger and faster. He shrugs me off, and gives me a good elbow to the gut. He’s fixed on the idea, lost to reason.

  I find myself staring into the pond. It’s so dark I don’t even see a reflection, but somewhere in there are all the mysteries of time. I’m not about to let Finney jeopardize that. Finney turns away from me and throws the rod back for a cast. I gather myself up and charge.

  I shout, growling some primitive battle-cry nonsense that Grog might be proud of. If nothing else it gets Finney’s attention, but not fast enough. We both end up in the underbrush.

  We roll around for a minute before his weight gets the better of me. The wind leaves my lungs as he drives a knee into my stomach.

  “Dammit, Jack. Stay the Hell out of my business,” he says, as he brings a stone-cold fist across my nose. Pain lances through my face and my sight goes dim. Hot blood spreads over my face and I know he’s broken something: a cheekbone, a nose, a tooth, something.

  I’m ashamed it only took one punch. Never been the most physical guy, but I’d have thought I would’ve lasted longer than one punch. I spit away blood, but more fills my mouth right away. It’s all over my shirt.

  “Finney,” I moan from the underbrush. He’s already back at the pond. He’s already got a line in the water.

  It takes a few minutes before the world feels sturdy enough to stand up on. When it does, I remember why I’d rushed Finney. So does he, and he glares at me.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Jack,” he says, as if he hadn’t already. It’s then I see the shotgun in his hands. “But, God help me, I will.”

  He sounds like he did the day we caught Grog, and I know there’s no convincing him otherwise.

  It’s a long time that the line stays still. Seems like I hold my breath the entire time. I know this is wrong. I don’t need an old man to tell me. I can feel the pond’s violation.

  There was a twitch in the line. Finney’s eyebrows lift.

  “I’m not helping you,” I say. “I won’t help you.”

  “Didn’t ask you to.”

  Finney reels in. Slow. In control. It gives, whatev
er it is, but grudgingly, clinging to the muck of time, I can see the tendons in Finney’s neck strain. It’s giving him more of a fight than he wants to admit, but I know him. He won’t let his transgression go unrewarded. He won’t leave empty handed. He mouths a curse and his eyes bulge. The rod curls in agony. For a minute I think he’s going to topple in. And then something black bursts from the surface. It clatters against the shore, sounding like cheap, hollow plastic.

  Except it isn’t plastic. It’s stone. And crystal. And smoke. And I’ve never seen anything like it.

  My belly twists into a knot. I don’t like it, but I can’t look away.

  Finney touches the crystal with his boot. When it doesn’t react he pokes it. He grasps it with two hands and holds it before him, his gaze lost within the crystal folds.

  I see dust in the crystal. No, not dust. Stars. Not just stars, no. Galaxies. Whole universes. Everything. I see everything in that crystal, and just looking feels like free fall, like I’m going to spill into it and drown.

  It’s exhausting, and I tear my eyes away. I spit out more blood and look over the pond. I can see the bottom. I’ve never been able to see the bottom before.

  “Throw it back,” I plead.

  Finney doesn’t listen. He knows as well as I do. This is nothing from the past. This is nothing from our world at all.

  • • •

  Finney calls me up two days later to apologize for the nose. His voice isn’t angry anymore; in fact, it’s downright giddy. He goes on faster than I can understand, his words blurring into one another, galloping from sentence to sentence. All I really understand is “Come over.”

  Grog answers the door, looking bored. I don’t like to be around him when he’s bored, just in case he gets ideas, so I skirt past and ascend the stairs to Finney’s study.

  “Jack! In here, Jack!” a voice calls to me. I follow it to the bathroom down the hall.

  The tub is filled with water, and Jack sits beside it, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, a box of Wheat Thins next to him. The crystal sits on a towel in front of him, dripping wet.

  “My God, Jack. Wait till you see this. Wait till you see it,” he says with that mad laugh of his. “This changes everything. Everything!”

  “What does, Finney?”

  His finger points into the air, calls for attention. Observe, the finger says. He takes the crystal in his arms, cradles it like a babe, nurses it into the water.

  The water clouds over. The surface becomes mirror smooth, polished, dark, abyssal. I see Finney’s visage perfectly reflected. There can’t be more than fourteen inches of water, but it seems to go on for forever.

  “What’s is it?” I ask him. But I know.

  Time, she is nothing if not an ocean, the old man had said, and she waits for the fisherman. The old man said a lot of strange things. The older I get, the less strange they seem.

  Finney’s grabs a line of fishing wire and ties a Wheat Thin and a sinker to it. He drops the line into the tub and gets a bite almost at once. He cuts the line and lets it go.

  “Jesus,” I say.

  The finger raises again. Wait, it requests, and, observe. This time Finney dips his hand into the tub. My heart jumps. Never touch the water. But I can tell Finney’s done this before. His arm vanishes up to the bicep and there’s a sucking sound, as if he’s prying up the plug at the bottom of the tub, but when his hand emerges, all he has is the crystal again.

  “Jesus,” I say again. “How is this possible?”

  “Is it any crazier than that time-vortex pond crap? I’ve tried it in the tub, sink, a bucket. Hell, I even tried the crapper. You get one pull to catch something, and on the next cast you pull up the crystal. Every time.”

  “Who made it?” I ask.

  “Might as well ask who made the Pacific,” Finney says with a shrug. “This is what made the pond work. This is why we were told to never cast twice. On the second cast you pull up the crystal.”

  “Someone made it.

  “Who cares.”

  Something in his tone made me uncomfortable.

  “We should put it back,” I say.

  “Are you crazy? And trek out to that godforsaken waterhole in the middle of nowhere again? Walk blindfolded for hours? Wait twelve months before you finally get the chance to, if you’re lucky, pull up a fish or crab from a million years ago? No. No, thank you. We don’t have to mess with that nonsense anymore, Jack. We can fish from the comfort of my living room if we want. Crack a few beers, lean back and cast a thousand times till we pull out Einstein and rub his face in this whole damn thing if we want. We don’t need all the hassle. We don’t need rules.”

  It was only then that I realized what he was saying. I don’t need your half of the secret. I don’t need you. But I still needed him. I needed him or I’d never cast again. That bastard.

  “Finney.”

  “I didn’t have to tell you, Jack,” he says, as he pats the crystal dry. “You see, I didn’t have to. I could keep it to myself. But there’s enough for us both. It’ll be like the old days.”

  And it’s tempting. God, is it tempting. My mind reels as the sheer possibility of time stretches before us, of her intoxicating embrace. I know what Finney wants me to say. Hell, I want to say it.

  “The old days,” I hear myself speak the words.

  But my mind is made up, and I know it’ll never be like the old days again.

  • • •

  In my basement there’s a spare room where I keep things I like to forget I own. I hunt down a small shoebox held shut with cracked packaging tape. My nose aches, which in turn makes my head ache. It’s hard to think straight, but my mind is never far from Finney. I pull my old handgun from the box.

  I don’t want to hurt you, Jack, he’d told me, shotgun ready. But, God help me, I will.

  He wouldn’t have. I should have realized that. Finney wouldn’t care about the sentimentality of a lost friendship, nor the morality of taking a life. But my half of the secret, that would have saved me.

  And, now that I think about it, it was half a secret that saved him, too. Otherwise, I would have dug up this old gun long ago.

  I spend the evening cleaning every part of the gun. I don’t have a plan, just a dull pain in my frontal lobe and the realization that it’s best to act while I’m feeling brave. I feed bullets into a magazine one by one. It’s been over a decade since I’ve been to the range. The gun is heavier than I remembered. And colder.

  When I return to Finney’s house Grog tries to stop me, and I point the gun at him. He’s seen enough daytime television that it makes him hesitate, and for a moment I think he’ll let me pass. But my hands are trembling. There’s an explosion from the gun and Grog collapses in the corner, grabbing his thigh. He’s a small heap, for such a large man, and he groans at me as I vault up the stairs. I can’t wait. Not now, Finney surely heard the gunshot. Hell, everyone in the neighborhood must have heard it. And Grog...well, he was never supposed to be in this century anyway.

  I’ll have that crystal. To Hell with it all, I’ll have it.

  Time, she is nothing if not an ocean. She waits for the fisherman. Infinite. Inviting. Embracing.

  The gun quivers in my hand. I keep my finger off the trigger this time.

  There is no going back now. He’d come for me. As I come for him, he would come for me. He would come in his fastest car, the shotgun across his lap, his eyes red-rimmed with fury. I’ll have to kill him. I’ll have to kill him and anyone else who knows. No one could know. It could only be mine and it must be kept secret.

  I could run. I could change my name. Move to the East Coast. Pretend to be a rich Wall Street entrepreneur. I don’t need to kill anyone for this piece of rock.

  But I want to. I want to kill that smug bastard. And, now, there was no reason not to.

  Sweat collects on my forehead. Big, hot beads of it.

  There’s a crash upstairs. It’s the sound of furniture overturning and glass breaking and feet stomping. Maybe
he’s preparing an ambush. Maybe he and his shotgun wait for me at the top of the stairs. I take my ascent slow, and peek cautiously around the landing at the top.

  The noise comes again from Finney’s study. The door’s ajar. My heart pounds. Movement flashes inside the room. A lamp tips. More glass shatters.

  “Almighty above!” Finney’s voice calls from the room. “You think I’ll give up that easy, you sonofabitch?”

  It didn’t seem directed at me, and I realize he’s fishing, right there, in his office. I picture his big saltwater aquarium, the line leading from it. He’s hooked something big, and as much of a fight as it puts up, Finney’s too stubborn to let go. Maybe he hadn’t heard my gunshot. There was little you could do to distract Finney from a catch. Except shoot him, I suppose.

  I push open the door and raise the gun.

  Finney looks up at me, his arm is buried to the shoulder in the aquarium, which is lifted entirely off its mount, as if he’s trying to redecorate. Only he’s thrashing with it instead. Water splashes this way and that, yet the aquarium is always full. His eyes are wide and white.

  “Jack” he calls out. “Oh, thank God, Jack. Help me!”

  “Finney!” I say. “I’ve come to—”

  “Help me, Jack! I’m stuck! I’m being sucked in!” Finney’s eyes pass over the gun without so much as a second glance.

  My mouth opens. I can’t find the words.

  “It’s got me. It’s sucking me in!”

  “Just let go,” I say, confused. “Whatever it is, it’s too big.”

  “I don’t have it. It has me!”

  There’s terror in his eyes. And tears. It’s then that my humanity returns. A friend in need, perhaps? Disgust at the idea of watching Finney get swallowed by an aquarium? I’ll never know. But I toss the gun aside and run to him. I grab hold of the aquarium and try yanking it away. Finney falls to the floor, and I wedge my feet against him and the aquarium to gain leverage. I heave.

  Water bursts into the room. We are a submarine, the present day, and this aquarium was a leak. I see the eons of time for the oceans she is, ready to burst into our fragile existence.