The Fisherman

by John Langan

  “It will prevent her from becoming worse,” Rainer says. “Lottie has been enchanted—”

  “I thought you said she was poisoned,” Clara says.

  “Another way of saying the same thing,” Rainer says. “I have a better understanding of what afflicts her, now. She is staring into a mirror from which she cannot look away. What I have done is like throwing a cloth over the mirror. She still has felt the mirror’s effects, though; she still is under its spell. It is like the Snow White story we used to read her when she was a girl. Even after the poisoned apple has fallen from Snow White’s hand, there is the piece of it stuck in her throat. She needs the prince to loosen it.

  “Sadly,” Rainer says with a grin, “we do not have a handsome prince at our disposal to ride in and save our daughter. We have only her father and his books. Those books tell me that to break the spell Lottie is under is a dangerous thing. I must step carefully, or Lottie will fall into the mirror and be lost. So we must go ahead slowly. Trapping that woman is the first step.”

  “And the second?” Clara asks.

  “We leave her there,” Rainer says. When he sees the panic flash across Clara’s face, he adds, “Not for long. A few hours should do. She must be weakened.”

  “So you can destroy her.”

  “Eventually, yes, I will destroy her,” Rainer says. “But first I must make her answer questions.”

  “Questions?” Clara says.

  “Yes,” Rainer says. “Bad as she is, the woman is not the true source of what has befallen Lottie. That is—”

  “The man in the big house,” Clara says.

  “Exactly,” Rainer says. “He may not be the true source, but I do not think I need to go any further. I think I can stop all this if I can deal with him. The problem facing me is, I don’t know anything about him. This is why I must question the woman. Once I have learned what I can from her, I will be more ready to meet her creator.”

  “What about him?” Clara asks.

  “What about him?” Rainer answers. “I told you, I don’t know anything—”

  “I heard you,” Clara says, “and I’m wondering, if you don’t know anything about him, how you are so sure you can destroy him, too? For the matter, how do you know you can destroy the woman?”

  “Ach, her, she is a water-thing. As for her master…” Rainer frowns. “I don’t know if I can overcome him, not for sure. If the man is a dabbler, someone playing with fancy toys—someone like me—then I will settle with him and settle quickly. If he is more serious—if he is a true Schwarzkunstler, then—let us say there is room for doubt. I believe I have learned a way to—compromise him, you could say—so much that he will no longer be of concern to us. I could be mistaken, of course.”

  “Whoever this man is,” Clara says, “surely he must be what you call a dabbler. What would an actual Schwarzkunstler want with this place?”

  Rainer shrugs. “Who can say? In the books, such men’s motives are often unclear, mysterious. They appear in strange places, in little, out-of-the-way villages, or in the middle of forests, or on the tops of mountains. Remember the fairy tales, all the witches and wizards with their houses in the woods. Maybe they want privacy for their work. Maybe there is something about the places they choose to live. Maybe the world is thinner there. Maybe they can hear the sounds they are listening for more clearly.”

  “You think this is one of those spots?” Clara says, waving her hand at the camp, taking it in and dismissing it with the same gesture.

  “There are stories about this part of the country,” Rainer says. “There is Irving and his Sketch Book, with old Rip Van Winkle meeting the strange little men in the mountains.”

  “That tripe?” Clara says. “The man stole those stories from German sources. They have nothing to do with this place.”

  “The same stories may hold true for different places,” Rainer says, “or different times. It does not matter. What matters is that the water-thing has been contained and will not be able to work any more of her mischief. Lottie has been removed from immediate danger. When I return from work, we see this bad business through to its end.”

  Clara believes her husband, but she’s less than happy at having to wait until the later afternoon for him to resolve this situation. Of course she isn’t going to the bakery today. Even if she were willing to leave Lottie alone in such a state, with the dead woman in the house across the street—trapped, Rainer says, but who can be sure?—she figures her place is here. So after he’s gone, his face still lit by that strange light, she pulls a chair up to Lottie’s bedside, and settles in to wait.

  It would be a lie to say the time passes quickly. It never does, when you want it to. Lottie does not awaken, but her sleep appears to be more restful. It is. For Lottie, it’s as if a curtain has been drawn over her vision of the black ocean, the other her. She’s in a dim place, surrounded by a kind of heavy fog. On the other side of it, she can sense the black ocean’s heave and fall, but the fog insulates her from its worst effects. Though far from happy, she is calm.

  XV

  When Rainer walks up the street to his house later that day, he’s accompanied by a small group of men. There’s Italo, naturally, and a pair of brothers, Angelo and Andrea—also Italian, obviously—and a fellow named Jacob Schmidt. That’s right, same as Lottie’s family. No relation, though. Jacob’s Austrian, a tall fellow with thick brown hair and a big round chin; his eyes set too close to a short nose that was broken at some point in the past and that sits above a mustache which droops down either side of his mouth. Because of a bad stutter, he mostly keeps to himself. He’s sweet on Lottie, always waits to be served by her at the bakery. Clara’s noted his interest, teased her daughter about it. In response, Lottie’s turned scarlet and told her mother to hush. Once Rainer learned what was going on, he declared that he hadn’t left his home and crossed the ocean to have his child marry a damned Austrian. I don’t know what Rainer had against the Austrians. Whatever it was, it didn’t stop him from accepting Jacob’s offer to join his little company.

  It will be from Jacob Schmidt that Lottie will learn the events of that afternoon and evening; although it will take her the better part of two decades to hear all of it. Neither her father nor her mother nor Italo will say anything about what happens first at the house across the street, and then up at the Dort house. To say that Lottie will accept Jacob’s proposal in a few years’ time so that she can finally find out what took place while she lingered in that gray space would not be fair to the man. He’s a hard worker, a kind man who will do everything in his power to ensure that she and their eventual children do not want for anything. It is fair to say, however, that Jacob’s conduct that afternoon and evening will help ensure that, when he goes to Rainer to ask for his daughter’s hand, the older man will put aside his distaste for Austrians and give Jacob his consent.

  By the time Lottie’s husband forces the last words of his account past his quivering lips, her father will have been dead five years, taken by what’s at the time called senility. Most likely, it was Alzheimer’s of a particularly aggressive stripe, hacking away great slabs of Rainer’s personality in a few months, until there was nothing left but an empty shell the disease would claim soon thereafter. Clara will have relocated south to Beacon, to live with her youngest, Christina, and her family. When she at last has the story complete, Lottie will be near the age her parents were as its events were unfolding, and I’d be surprised if she doesn’t reflect on that fact. What happens in those few days looms over the rest of her life like a mountain in whose shadow she’s been fated to dwell. How strange to think that the people in the thick of it, the man and woman whose decisions set her beside that peak, might be herself, Jacob, their neighbors in Woodstock.

  XVI

  At quitting time, Rainer and his group don’t waste any time. They march up the street to the house formerly occupied by George, Helen, and their children, now covered in marks it makes your eyes ache to look at. They’re carrying
axes they’ve borrowed from work—as you might suppose, not the kind of activity the company favors, or allows, for the matter, but the clerk from whom Rainer asked for them raised no objection, nor did any of the other men milling around. Everyone knows about what’s been happening, and about Rainer’s increasing involvement with it, and if he and the quartet of men with him are on their way to do something about it, then no one will notice if a few axes are misplaced for a night. Rainer halts the group outside the front door to the dead woman’s house, where the silver knife he flung into the dirt has continued to vibrate, ever-so-slightly, throughout the day. The men can feel whatever it is is causing the knife to shiver, a wrongness in the air that floods their mouths with the taste of metal, twists their stomachs like spoiled milk. They grimace, spit. Rainer asks Italo for his clasp knife, which Italo fishes from his trouser pocket, opens, and passes to him. Gripping his axe midway down the shaft, Rainer uses the knife to cut three marks into the wood just below the blade. Without being asked, Italo holds his axe out for the same treatment, and the others follow suit. The symbol Rainer cuts into each shaft resembles a cross, or an x, a pair of lines bisecting one another—except for the third line, which loops around the other two in an arabesque that looks too elaborate for the casual flick of the wrist Rainer uses to produce it. It’s hard to tell where this line begins and where it ends. The more Jacob studies it, the more of it there is to study. He can hear Rainer speaking, giving them some sort of command, but he can’t yoke the words together into any kind of sense. That third line seems to pass behind the other two; there seems to be a tremendous depth concealed there, and Jacob is aware of himself floating over this depth, high, high over it—

  Italo shoves him and says, “Pay attention. He said not to look at it.”

  Jacob shakes his head, which is spinning.

  “All right?” Italo asks.

  Blushing, Jacob nods.

  The last axe marked, Rainer folds the clasp knife and returns it to Italo, who takes it with his thumb and forefinger, as if it’s been dipped in some toxic substance. Having learned his lesson, Jacob is doing his level best not to stare at the plain door to the house, on which the figure Rainer cut this morning is writhing, crawling all over itself like a mess of snakes. Instead, Jacob keeps his eyes on the ground, where the knife Rainer left there is shimmering at the edges, like butter starting to melt on a hot skillet. He watches Rainer bend to tug the knife free, and sees how it stretches as he does so. For an instant, it’s on the verge of losing its form altogether, and then it’s a dinner knife Rainer’s slipping into the front pocket of his pants. Jacob’s already feeling like maybe he’s in a bit over his head, and what Rainer says next doesn’t help his nervousness. Addressing himself to the newer members of the group, Rainer says, “You have heard about this woman, this Helen, yes? She used to be dead and now she isn’t. Now she walks around, telling people things they shouldn’t know and attacking our families. No more. We are here to put a stop to it. For all of today, I have trapped her in this place. I have changed it, so that it will draw off the power that sustains her, make her weak. But although her strength is less, she is still dangerous. She may say all manner of things to you, tell you terrible things about yourself, or the ones closest to you. It is the last weapon left to her, and she will use it to whatever advantage she can. You must ignore her. It is not easy, but it is the only way.” Before any of them can reply, much less decide that this is more than any one of them signed up for and run, Rainer walks to the front door and pushes it in. Jacob has the impression that the symbol on the door hangs in the air, wrapping itself around Rainer as he passes through it. With a deep breath, Jacob follows him.

  Inside, the air is clogged with the smell of damp earth and must, a combination that forces its way up Jacob’s nose, into his mouth, down his throat. It’s like trying to breathe through dirt. His body responds with a fit of coughing and sneezing. His eyes, his nose, stream; his chest convulses. Dimly, he can hear the other men hacking and wheezing. After what feels like hours, his lungs succeed in clearing enough of what’s invaded them for Jacob to breathe. They aren’t easy breaths he takes in, but for the moment, they’re sweet as honey. He wipes his eyes clear, and the cause of the air’s thickness is revealed. The walls, ceiling, floor, all of the room he’s entered is dark, furred with dense, black mold. It’s impossible to tell where the windows are. The room is full of gray, diffuse light. Mold envelopes what must have been a steamer trunk. It joins a trio of chairs along the opposite wall. It transforms a small table into an enormous toadstool. The only thing in the room clear of mold is the woman standing in the middle of it, at the center of a large puddle of dark water.

  Jacob knows he shouldn’t look at the woman, at Helen. But she’s been on the lips of everyone in the camp for the last several days, first for her death, then for her return from it, and then for her assorted activities after that. More people claim to have seen her than is likely possible. Their reports have assembled a hodgepodge monster in Jacob’s imagination, a hunchback whose right arm is the tentacle of a cuttlefish, whose skirts rustle and shift in odd ways, whose shadow doesn’t stay in place, but ranges around her like a dog on a long leash. It would be remarkable if he didn’t lift his eyes to her.

  What he sees might be considered a lesson in the difference between rumor and reality. Helen’s right arm hangs at her side, no sea-beast’s limb, the odd dips and bulges in its pale skin mementos of the beatings inflicted on it by Italo’s hammer and Regina’s frying pan. Her dress is like a drape thrown over a pile of rocks, but that’s due to the injuries that took her from this life. As for her shadow, though it’s difficult to see in the gloom, Jacob’s reasonably sure it isn’t moving. What catches his attention is the fact that the woman is soaked, from head to foot, as if she’d been doused with a barrel of water the second before Rainer stepped through the front door. Her hair, her dress, are sopping. Her skin shines. It almost looks as if the water is flowing out of Helen, but that’s probably a trick of the light. The rumors are correct in one detail, the woman’s eyes, which are dull gold, the pupils black holes. Should those eyes turn in his direction, Jacob is ready to drop his gaze, but Helen is fixed on the man standing closest to her, Rainer.

  There’s something about his posture, a certain formality, that calls to mind the professor in front of a lecture hall, the lawyer in front a witness, the priest in front of the altar. Rainer’s work clothes, his rough shirt and trousers, laden with the dust of his day’s labors, seem almost comically inappropriate. He should be wearing a suit, or the robes of a scholar or clergyman. The dead woman opens her mouth, and what sounds to Jacob for all the world like a low, throaty chuckle emerges. Jacob shifts from foot to foot. The laugh continues, spools out of the dead woman like thread snarling off a loom. It’s almost tangible. Jacob can practically feel it winding around him. There’s something inside it, a message for him and him alone. The message is extremely important. It concerns Lottie, Lottie and him. If he concentrates harder, lets the laughter tighten its coils about him, he’s sure he’ll be able to hear what it’s trying to say to him.

  “Silence,” Rainer says.

  The laugh stops. Helen frowns. Jacob shakes his head, as do the rest of the men.

  “Who is your master?” Rainer says.

  Helen answers in a voice like rocks cutting the surface of a stream. Jacob feels his bowels shudder. The others step back. She says, “His name is not for you.”

  “Who is your master?” Rainer says.

  “Ask Wilhelm Vanderwort,” Helen says.

  That name sends a jolt through Rainer. He starts to speak, stops, and says a third time, “Who is your master?”

  “The Fisherman,” Helen says.

  Rainer nods. “Why has he come here?”

  “To fish,” Helen says, her mouth twisting in a sly smile.

  “Why is he fishing here?”

  “The water runs deep.”

  “For what does he cast his line?”

>   “No thing.”

  There’s a pause, then Rainer says, “Not whom, surely?”

  “Surely,” Helen says.

  “Who?” Rainer says.

  “You are not fit to hear the name,” Helen says.

  “Who?”

  “You could not stand the sound of it.”

  “Who?” Rainer says again. Jacob has the sense of a ritual being observed in the exchanges between Rainer and Helen. She is under no obligation to answer his question’s first asking, or its second, but if he persists, she is obligated, he’s not sure how, to surrender the information he demands. Rainer is on the verge of delivering his request a fourth time when Helen utters a word that Jacob has never heard before. It might be “Apep,” but she says it too quickly for him to be sure.

  Rainer appears to recognize the name. He says, “Nonsense. He would not dare.”

  “You have asked,” Helen says, “and I have answered. Would you prefer another name? Tiamat? Jormungand? Leviathan?”

  “The truth!” Rainer shouts. “The Compacts—”

  “I heed the Compacts,” Helen says. “Do not blame me for what you cannot accept.”

  “He does not have the power,” Rainer says.

  Helen shrugs. “That is his concern.”

  “The consequence—”

  “Does not matter to me.”

  “How much work is left him?”

  “Not much.”

  “He has woven the ropes?”

  “From the hairs of ten thousand dead men.”

  “He has forged the hooks?”

  “From the swords of a hundred dead kings.”

  “He has set the lines?”

  “Why do you continue with these questions?”

  “Has he set the lines?”

  “If you run home, you will have time to kiss your wife farewell.”

  “Has he set the lines?”

  “The near ones,” Helen says.

  Rainer turns to the others, something like relief written on his face. He says, “We must leave, now.”