by Steve Alten
Skin tingling, Wade inflates his buoyancy vest and races to the surface.
***
Brian’s head bursts free of the hot spring and into the cool night air. Gripping the side of the rowboat, he raises one leg out of the water and with his last ounce of strength, pulls himself out of the water as Wade’s hand emerges and latches onto his left ankle in a bone-crushing grip.
Brian twists around, kicking desperately at the freaked out biker as the rowboat begins to tip over, the night suddenly splattered with blood.
Brian falls backward, slamming his head against an oar. Dragging himself onto his haunches, he looks overboard, his heart fluttering in his chest.
The sinkhole is a frenzy of light and teeth and blood as Wade’s lower body disappears down the massive gullet of the monstrous prehistoric viper fish, its bizarre set of lower fangs impaling the biker like a pair of eight-foot-long curved stilettos.
Wade flails in a cloud of his own blood, his cries for help muted by the water, his throes stifled by a sickening crunch as the creature’s hyper-extended jaws snap together upon his cervical vertebrae. The biker’s decapitated skull floats free, bleeding and spinning in the percolating hot mineral stream.
The viper fish feasts on Wade’s remains until its gills flutter and its photophores cease blinking, forcing a hastened retreat to its sulfurous, deepwater purgatory.
Locating a fishing net, Brian leans over the side and scoops up Wade’s bodiless head, the ache in his shoulder vanquished by an exhausting wave of elation.
***
“Welcome to Lost in Time, the most unique fossil store in Florida. How can I help you?”
“Just looking, thanks.” The middle-aged man and his pregnant wife walk past Brian, pausing to browse at the rows of prehistoric shark teeth.
“Those are Megalodon teeth, fifteen million years old. Big shark, sixty to seventy feet. Everything grew bigger back then. We also have giant sloth remains and mastodon teeth. If you folks need any help—”
The man nods politely, then continues on. Pauses. Chuckles. “Hey hon, check this out. Wouldn’t this make a fabulous conversation piece for Jack’s office?”
Situated on a shelf beneath the mounted viper fish is a human skull.
“Like him?” Brian limps over and picks up Wade’s freshly boiled skull.
“Is it real?” the woman asks.
“Hell, yes. Found it years ago at the bottom of a hot spring. Indians sometimes selected a white explorer as a sacrifice to one of their gods. God only knows how long it was down there.”
“It’s creepy,” the woman says.
The man smiles. “How much?”
“Hundred bucks.”
“I’ll take it.
“What on earth for?” his wife asks.
“It’s for Jack, you know, to congratulate him on his new job.”
The woman grins. “He’ll love it.”
“Who wouldn’t,” Brian says. “Will that be cash or charge?”
“Charge. Do you deliver?”
Brian shrugs. “If it’s local.”
“It’s local. Drop it off at Jack Morefield’s office.”
Brian grabs a pen and paper and jots down the information. “Jack Morefield. Where’s he located?”
“Right next to the courthouse. He’s the new District Attorney.”
THE FISH THING
GUY N. SMITH
Leo didn’t really want the goldfish. Indeed, he couldn’t understand why he’d gone to the air-rifle range, or even the fairground, in the first place. Possibly, he thought it would take his mind off things. Off Mandy, that was. Air-guns held a morbid fascination for him… he stood there, a vacant expression on his face, clutching the jam-jar with the fish swimming about in it, and then everything flooded back to him.
That balmy August evening, walking through the sweet-smelling pinewoods, the air-pistol dangling loosely in his left hand, his right closed over the girl’s. She was beautiful. Barely eighteen, with raven hair falling below her waistline, small perfectly moulded breasts visible beneath the half-unfastened blouse, her dusky skin and gold earrings giving her the appearance of a gypsy. Leo knew that she had Romany blood in her veins, that she came from the caravans parked way beyond the village. A tinker’s daughter, but nonetheless attractive for it. The villagers had raised a petition to try and move the caravans. They’d surely lynch him if they knew that he was meeting one of the hated breed, making love to her in the woods every evening… or was it the other way round? She held a strange fascination for him, like a rabbit experiences when it comes face to face with a stoat, content to stand there and have the blood sucked from its veins. In his heart he knew Mandy only wanted his body, but he tried to convince himself that it went deeper than that; that she wanted Leo, the wandering farm boy who wandered from sowing to sowing, harvest to harvest, here today, gone tomorrow.
Eventually, they had arrived in the clearing which held the Pike Pool, a deep marl hole, its brackish waters hidden beneath a thick green scum of algae. Its circumference was no more than twenty feet, the branches of the tall oaks all around it meeting, the sunlight barely filtering through for a few hours during the day. A sinister place. A place of death. A child had drowned there last summer and it was three days before they had managed to retrieve the body, the frogman saying that he hoped he never had to go down in another place like that!
The old men spoke of the pike in hushed tones. A monster. He’d been a fearsome brute in their young days, almost pulling Abe in when he’d hooked him way back in the twenties. Fortunately for Abe the line had snapped. The pike had grown over the decades and on still evenings a ripple beneath the scum would mark the place where he lay, patiently waiting… for what?
It was because of the pike that Leo had brought Mandy to the pool. He wanted to impress her, do what other men before him had failed to do. They would sit on the bank in the long grass, the air-pistol fully loaded. A close range shot and there would be no mistake. The brute would float dead on the surface, they would pull it into the side with long branches and then carry it in triumph down to the inn, Mandy by his side. He’d be a hero in everybody’s eyes, most of all Mandy’s. Fantasies? The cold steel of the gun in his hand told him that it could so very easily become real.
Yet, it hadn’t worked out like that at all. There had been no sign of the pike and after half an hour, Mandy had become impatient. Her thoughts had turned to other things, and as he bade her to be quiet, she had taunted him.
“You are a stupid boy!” her loveliness was transformed to bitter evil rage in a matter of seconds. “You think I am in love with you, eh? I love no man. Men love me! The foresters and the road-workers. They give me what you would never be able to give me if you lived to be as old as the pike. You have nothing. Not even guile. That fish laughs at you just as I do…”
It was at that point that he had shot her. One slug between the eyes was all that was necessary. She was dead on her feet, balancing there on the edge of the scum pool, her glazed eyes meeting his, and holding them. A few seconds that seemed an eternity, an expression on her features that was not even surprise. It was twisted evil that thirsted for revenge. Slowly, her legs buckled, and she slid, rather than fell, into the Pike Pool, the algae parting to receive her, and then knitting together again after she had gone. There had not even been a splash.
Leo had stood there for a long time afterwards. He did not panic. He was not sorry. She had got what she had asked for and he was satisfied. Then, pitching the empty pistol in her wake, he had set off back to Bastaple’s farm in the gloaming.
There were no enquiries. Every day he awaited the coming of the police, maybe even the gypsies themselves, seeking the missing Mandy. Nobody came. The barley crop was harvested and by the time the fair came to the village he had ample time on his hands. There was little to do in the evenings in Clungunford. His mind was filled with hate towards the dead gypsy girl as the days passed. Indeed, he was almost tempted to return to the Pike Pool to glo
at. Then he won the goldfish on the shooting range and that changed everything.
The more he looked at the goldfish, the more it reminded him of recent events. Its eyes saw him and returned his stare. It had the beauty of Mandy, the grace and the poise, but there was something else… a kind of superior bearing. Like the pike in the pool, it was a prisoner in its surroundings, yet it did not fear him. Instead, it seemed to mock him. ‘Guile’, Mandy had described the pike. Well, this goldfish had guile.
As he slept in the loft above the hay-barn, he tossed restlessly. Twice he was awakened by nightmares that found him in a cold lather. It was always the same. Mandy, the pool, a fish eating off her body in the thick mud at the bottom. It wasn’t the pike, though. Well, not quite. It was big, fearsome, but bright orange in colour with eyes that seemed to bore into his brain. It was driving him mad!
Leo knew that he would have no peace until he got rid of Fish, as he had named his pet. In the cold sober light of a new day it seemed only too simple. The drain was the best place, entomb it in the sewers! No, that was too easy, he decided. There was a much better way. He would condemn it to the Pike Pool! He laughed to himself at the thought. It would have company. The Pike would pursue it relentlessly, but maybe it would escape for a time by hiding in the rotting corpse where the larger fish could not reach it. There would be several entrances. The empty eye-sockets where the pike had gouged them out as a delicacy, the gaping mouth… and others. It would not starve. It could feed on decomposing intestines.
There was time to get up to the Pike Pool and be back in time for breakfast. Farmer Bastaple would not even know he had been away. So, he dressed hurriedly and started up the hillside at a shambling gait, some of the water out of the jar slopping over and wetting his shirt. He tried not to look at Fish. The thing was regarding him the whole time with unblinking eyes, a kind of smile on its face.
Leo jerked his head away several times. He felt almost hypnotized by the goldfish. It was almost as if it knew… and liked the idea! He was glad when he arrived at the brink of the pool. Glad because he could tip Fish in and get away. It was even more eerie in the half-light of morning than it had been that evening. It was more real. There was no atmosphere for idle daydreams and fantasies. He saw it as it was… a place of death, unknown terrors lying beneath the algae. One movement and it was all over. The scum barely parted. A few bubbles and then nothing. Flinging the empty jar away, he took to his heels.
It was two nights later that Leo awoke and knew that he had to go back to the Pike Pool. It had been in the dream that he had been summoned. That creature… pike or goldfish, maybe both… a Fish Thing, was calling him. Either he went up there and found his peace or else his mind would snap. What it wanted him for he had no idea. He had done it no harm. In fact, he had fed it… twice! Maybe it wanted feeding again. More victims, dead or alive. If so, then he would have to do its bidding. He didn’t mind killing… not now, anyway.
Feverishly, he stumbled along the woodland path, trying to see his way in the faint moonlight which filtered through the foliage overhead. Several times he fell, wrenching his ankle, and tearing his flesh on wicked briars. It mattered not and he scarcely felt the pain as he dragged himself to his feet and staggered on. Soon he saw the Pike Pool. It was barely discernible in the deep shadow of the clearing, except that it was a darker shade of green. He pulled up abruptly on the brink, gasping for breath, and holding on to a gnarled and twisted oak for support.
The silence seemed to be pressing in on him. Not even an owl hooted. It was as though he were the only living being in the whole wide world… he and that Fish Thing down there in the murky depths. Then his nostrils wrinkled as they caught the stench. A foul odour that seemed to come from the very depths of Hades, maybe filtering up into this outlet from the River Styx. It was death and decay and something that was more evil than the mind of mankind could possibly hope to understand.
How long he stood there he had no idea. Perhaps it was a second, a minute, or an hour. Time had ceased. He was in a void where earthly dimensions mattered not. He had been summoned to cringe and to obey. It was cold. Not the cold of winter as he knew it, the crisp frostiness or the raw dampness. It was the temperature within his own body that was freezing.
He could see more clearly now. An ethereal light that radiated from no particular source enabled him to see every detail of the Pike Pool. The waters were stirring, the algae frothed and bubbled as the foul gasses escaped. Something was rising up out of the depths, something that generated an even greater coldness and brought with it a stench that was older than Earth itself. Evil incarnate!
Leo was forced to watch. He saw the head. A cruel pike-like face, the jaws, and the eyes glowing red. The most horrible aspect of all was its colour. A deep orange, its scales scintillating in the strange light which focused on the pool and nowhere else. The surrounding woodlands were an impenetrable blackness.
The vision changed before his eyes. The Thing seemed to shrink and then change shape. A human form, from the waist upwards where it emerged out of the slime, glowed a fainter orange. There was no mistaking the long raven hair, the perfect features, those gold earrings. It was Mandy. Alive. Risen from the dead.
“You fool,” her words penetrated his brain, yet her lips did not move. Only her eyes glowed a deeper red. “You fool! You sought to catch me. Me! It is I who catch men. I have eluded them for longer than you can comprehend. You killed me with your pistol, yet you did not kill me. You do not understand? Then come with me and I will show you!”
Leo stepped forward, irresistibly drawn towards the apparition, feeling the water rise above his waist, up to his chest, and then only his head remained above the surface. The vision was changing back again. The fish-like head, the cruel jaws, a more pronounced orange.
Even the murkiness, as he went under, did not hide this Fish-Thing from him. With his eyes tightly shut he could still see it. Those jaws were open, waiting. It was then that he realized why he had come. The child last summer, Mandy, Fish, now himself. The Fish Thing would feast on his flesh and then it would become hungry again and its powers were not confined solely to the black depths of Pike Pool.
Shiners
Michael Hodges
“Don’t let it get the suction cup on your skin,” John said.
“I can’t help it, Dad,” Eric said. “They are squirmy!”
John bent over, aiming his headlamp onto the boy’s hands. A long, black leech squirmed between his son’s thumb and forefinger. The leech tapped its sucker onto skin near the thumbnail, eventually finding a spot to latch onto.
“When it does that, when it exposes its underbelly like that, guide the hook right through the sucker pad,” John said, adjusting his glasses.
Eric guided the brass hook through the sucker pad and the leech squealed. Juice from the bait bucket dripped down his hands as mosquitoes buzzed around their headlamps. Bats swooshed overhead, picking off insects that gathered around the light, their teeth hitting the insects with sharp, short taps. Inky water sloshed against the boat, and a lone frog cried out from the thick soup of vegetation near shore.
“Good job,” John said. “Now gently cast the leech to the aft, towards those reeds. Try not to whip the rod or the bait might fly off. You could be sitting there for ten minutes asking yourself ‘why aren’t the fish biting’ when the sad fact is the leech took a first class trip to St. Paul!” He patted Eric on the back and then moved out of the way, the boat shifting under his weight.
Eric stood, his thin frame unhinging like a colt. He lowered the rod behind him and then swung it forward with considerable gentleness. The glow-in-the-dark bobber twirled end over end, illuminating the peculiar flying leach with a green hue. A second later, the pleasant sound of the rig plopped into the water.
“Ok, nice cast, son,” John said. “Now kill your headlamp so we can see the bobber. I didn’t pay fifteen bucks a pop for these so we could chew up headlamp batteries.”
“Gotcha, dad.”
The odor of fish and leeches permeated the air, a wonderful scent to serious fishermen. John and Eric glanced away from the bobber, to the tops of the red pine and hemlock on the shore—the silhouettes up against the stars.
“I like this dad,” Eric said. “Will grandpa let us use this place more often?”
“Your grandfather and I have a sort of complex relationship, son. But I tell you what, he loves you to pieces and what you say goes.”
Eric thumbed the handle of his rod, keeping it straight.
“Then I say another fishing trip next week!”
John smiled and turned around to take his own fishing rod. He unlatched the hook from the bottom guide, flipped on his headlamp and stuck a leech with the smoothness of a pro. He launched the bait to the edge of the reeds, using more force than Eric, but still retaining an air of gentleness. He switched off his light and they sat, two fishermen and two bobbers below the Milky Way.
“What the smallmouth like to do son, is they like to come up into these shallows at night to feed on minnows and crayfish. Our boat is right over a drop off. And this drop off rises gradually to those reeds. We are doing the right thing here, son.”
