999

by Al Sarrantonio

  Swimming in the Mississippi was only slightly less hazardous to your health than brushing your teeth with lit dynamite. Every so often some fool would get drunk enough to try to swim the river—and disappear without a trace ten feet from shore. If the family was lucky, the body would turn up a few days later, fifty miles downstream, snagged in the branches of a tree on the floodplain, looking more like a drowned pig than a human being. But what Hop saw hadn’t looked anything like a floater popping to the surface. For one thing, it stayed in one place and didn’t follow the current. Hop shaded his eyes against the sun, trying to get a better look, but there was nothing there. His attention was brought back closer to shore as the bobber on his line registered a strike. Hop dropped his guitar and snatched up the fishing rod, reeling in a ten-pound catfish.

  It looked like Lucinda wasn’t going to have anything to scold him about tonight, that much was for certain.

  But as he headed back home, his fishing pole draped over one shoulder and his guitar slung over the other, Hop couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched—and by something besides the catfish hanging from his belt.

  That night as he was lying in bed, Lucinda snoring beside him, Hop got to thinking.

  Maybe what Sammy Herkimer said about catfish gals wasn’t all hogwash after all. He remembered reading in one of them yellow-backed magazines down at the barbershop about some kind of fish everyone thought was extinct being found in some foreign country a few years back. Besides, who was he to decide there weren’t no such things as catfish gals, when he didn’t know a soul who’d been to the bottom of the Mississippi and lived to tell the tale?

  The very next day Hop went fishing without Lucinda telling him to.

  He decided to try his luck again at Steamboat Bend. When he arrived at the dock, he was relieved to find he was alone. Hop set himself up on the dock just as he had the day before, but after a half hour of sitting and waiting for something to happen, he put down the fishing rod and picked up his guitar to pass the time.

  Halfway into “Moanin’ at Midnight,” Hop heard what sounded like a fish slap the water near the pier. When he glanced up to see what had caused the noise, what he saw caused him to nearly drop his ax into the water below.

  There was a human head bobbing in the water a hundred feet away from the dock. At the sound of his astonished gasp, the head ducked back down beneath the muddy surface without leaving so much as a ripple to mark its passing. Just as suddenly, there was a strike on Hop’s line so powerful it nearly yanked his fishing pole into the river.

  * * *

  Although Lucinda was extremely pleased with the fifteen-pound catfish he brought home that evening, Hop didn’t say anything about what he’d seen on the river. Something told him that whatever it was that was out at Steamboat Bend was best kept to himself.

  The next day Hop didn’t even bother casting his line into the river. He knew what was drawing the thing in the river to the dock, and it sure as hell wasn’t the shiners he was using for bait.

  He made his way to the very end of the landing, careful to avoid the loose and missing planks, and sat so his legs dangled over the edge. After a moment of deliberation, he decided “They Call Me Muddy Waters” would be an appropriate choice.

  Just like before, the thing surfaced halfway through the song. Hop’s heart was racing so fast it was hard to breathe, but he forced himself to keep playing. He didn’t want to scare it off, so he kept playing, switching to “Pony Blues” once he’d finished with his first song.

  While he played, Hop kept his head down, ignoring his audience as best he could. As he launched into “Circle Round the Moon” he risked glancing in the thing’s direction, only to discover it was almost directly underneath his dangling feet, staring at him with big, dark eyes that seemed to be all pupil.

  Hop was surprised at how human the catfish gal looked. From what Sammy had said, he’d pictured a fish in a fright wig, but that wasn’t the case. Hell, he’d seen worse-looking women in church.

  Her upper lip was extremely wide, with the familiar whiskers growing out of them, and she had slits instead of a nose, but outside of that she wasn’t too ugly. Her hair was a real mess, though, with everything from twigs to what looked like live minnows caught in the tangled locks. He couldn’t see much of what she looked like below the waterline, although he did glimpse vertical slits opening and closing down the sides of her neck.

  Hop couldn’t help but smile to himself when he saw how the catfish gal looked at him. Half fish or not, he knew what that look meant on a woman’s face. He had her hooked but good and now was as good a time as any to reel her in.

  Hop looked the catfish gal right in the eye and smiled. “Hello, lit’l fishie. You come to hear me play?”

  The catfish gal’s dreamy look was replaced by one of surprise. She glanced around, as if confused by her surroundings, then shot backwards like a dolphin walking on its tail.

  “Please! Don’t go!” he shouted, stretching out one hand to stay her retreat.

  To his surprise, the catfish gal came to a sudden halt, regarding him curiously, bobbing up and down in the Mississippi as easily as a young girl treading water in a swimming pool.

  “You ain’t got nothin’ to be scared of, lit’l fishie,” Hop said, smiling reassuringly. “I ain’t gonna hurt you none. Do you want me to play some more for you?” he asked, holding up his guitar.

  The catfish gal nodded and lifted a dripping arm and pointed at the guitar with a webbed forefinger. Hop smiled and obliged her by picking up where he had left off on “Goin’ Down Slow.”

  By the time the sun was starting to go down, Hop’s hands were cramping and his fingertips bloody. He’d played a little bit of almost everything—blues, bluegrass, honky-tonk, camp songs, even a couple of nursery songs—trying to figure out what the catfish gal liked and didn’t like: turned out she was partial to the blues—which made sense, seeing how the blues was born on the banks of the Mississippi.

  When he finally put aside his guitar, the catfish gal disappeared beneath the river’s muddy surface. A few seconds later a large catfish came flying out of the water as if shot from a sling and landed on the dock beside him. Hop picked up the floundering fish and shook his head.

  “I appreciate the thought,” he said loudly. “But this ain’t what I’m lookin’ for.” After he tossed the fish back into the water, Hop reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver dollar, which he held up between his thumb and forefinger, so that it caught the sun’s fading rays. “If you want me to keep playing, you got to feed th’ kitty. And this here is what the kitty eats.”

  The catfish gal popped back to the surface, stared at the gleaming coin for a long second, then submerged again. Hop shifted about uneasily as first one minute, then another, elapsed without any sign of the catfish gal. Maybe he pushed his luck a little too far too early. …

  Something heavy and wet struck his chest, then dropped to the deck with a metallic sound. Hop picked up the flat, circular piece of slime-encrusted metal at his feet with trembling fingers. He scraped the surface with his thumbnail and was rewarded not by the gleam of silver—but the mellow shine of gold.

  He gave out a whoop, then looked around to see if anyone might have witnessed his good fortune, but he was alone on the landing, at least as far as human company was concerned. Talk about falling in a honey pot!

  And all for the price of a song.

  As summer wore on, Hop Armstrong became a regular visitor to Steamboat Bend, showing up early and staying till late, and always leaving with heavy, if somewhat damp, pockets. On those occasions Sammy Herkimer was fishing off the dock, Hop was forced to wait the old angler out, but for the most part he didn’t have to worry about being found out.

  At first Lucinda had been suspicious of his newfound interest in fishing, but since he never came back smelling of perfume or wearing another woman’s shade of lipstick on his collar, she eventually accepted his pastime as genuine. Of course, Lucinda had no way of
knowing about the Folgers can full of old gold and silver coins he had stashed out in the garage, or about the bag of gold doorknobs hidden in the woodpile behind the house. Hop didn’t see any need to tell her about his newfound wealth because that would lead to her asking him where he got it from, and where would he be then?

  If he told Lucinda about the catfish gal, every man, woman and child in Flyjar would be lined up on the dock playing everything from a banjo to a Jew’s harp trying to muscle in on his gig. The way Hop saw it, there was no call for him to ruin a good thing before he had to.

  Once there weren’t any more goodies coming his way from Lit’l Fishie, as he called her, he planned to take his Folgers can full of antique coins and gunnysack of doorknobs and head off to the big city—say, Jackson or Greenville. Hell, he might even go as far as New Orleans—maybe even Biloxi! He didn’t really care where he ended up, just as long as it was someplace where the women were prettier and younger than those in Flyjar and you could buy beer on Sundays. Judging from how Lit’l Fishie was behaving during his more recent serenades, something told him it wouldn’t be long before things dried up on her end, so to speak.

  She kept swinging back and forth between acting skittish—disappearing every time a bullfrog croaked—and making kiss-kiss noises with that saddlebag mouth of hers. Hop might not know much, but he sure as hell knew women, and Lit’l Fishie was showing all the signs of a sugar mama running short on cash.

  As he set out for Steamboat Bend that day, Hop decided it was going to be his last serenade for the catfish gal—and his final day as a citizen of Flyjar. Now that he’d found his fortune, it was time for him to strike out into the world and collect his fame.

  Hop scanned the sky, frowning at the approaching clouds. It had rained off and on since sunrise, and there were puddles all along the rutted cow path that was the only road that led to the derelict landing at Steamboat Bend. As much as he disliked tramping through the mud, going out on foul-weather days meant he didn’t have to worry about anyone snooping around.

  Tightening his grip on his guitar strap, Hop hurried down the levee embankment and onto the deserted dock’s wooden surface. He sat down on the end of the pier, as he always did, dangling his legs over the open water, and began to play “See My Grave Is Kept Clean.”

  Normally Lit’l Fishie broke surface about fifty yards away the moment he started to play, then moved in until she was staring up at him like a snake-tranced bird. Hop knew that look all too well. He saw it all the time in the eyes of the women whenever he played at the juke joints. He knew that if he said the word, Lit’l Fishie would roll in cornmeal and gladly throw herself in a red-hot frying pan.

  He finished with the Blind Lemon and started into Leadbelly, but the catfish gal had yet to put in an appearance. Hop frowned. Maybe she couldn’t hear him. He didn’t really know where she lived, exactly, but he was under the impression she didn’t stray that far from the Bend. He changed from Leadbelly to Son House, on the offhand chance that she didn’t care for “Cotton Fields.” When Lit’l Fishie still didn’t show herself, Hop’s frown deepened even further. It was time to pull out the stops. He began to play one of her favorites: “Up Jumped the Devil.”

  There was a bubbling sound directly below where he was sitting. Hop smiled knowingly at the shape lurking just below the murky water lapping against the pylon. Robert Johnson worked like a charm on women—whether they were two-legged or had gills.

  “Why you so shy all of a sudden, darlin’?” he called out. “Why don’t you show me that sweet face of yours?”

  The bubbles at the end of the pier grew more intense, as if the water was boiling. Hop scowled and leaned forward, staring down between his dangling feet at the muddy water below.

  “Lit’l Fishie—is that you?”

  There was less than a heartbeat between the moment the thing with bumpy skin and gaping mouth filled with jagged teeth leapt from the water and when its powerful jaws snapped closed on Hop’s legs. He was only able to scream just the once—a high, almost womanly shriek—before he was yanked, guitar and all, into the river.

  The last thing Hop saw, before the silty waters of the Mississippi closed over him, was the catfish gal watching him drown, a sorrowful expression in her bruised eyes.

  When Hop Armstrong went out fishing and never came back, most folks in Flyjar were of the opinion he’d found himself a new girlfriend and left Lucinda for greener pastures. A smaller group thought the handsome ne’er-do-well had gotten drunk and fallen through the dilapidated dock into the river below. In any case, no one really gave a good god damn, and after a couple of weeks there were other things to talk about down at the barbershop.

  About three months after Hop disappeared, Sammy Herkimer snagged his line on something underneath the pier at Steamboat Bend. At first he thought he was just caught on some waterlogged reeds. But when he reeled his line back in, he found Hop’s git-box hanging off the other end.

  The guitar that had charmed so many ladies out of their drawers and their life’s savings was now dripping slime, its neck splintered and body badly chewed up. Sammy shook his head as he freed the mangled instrument. He really wasn’t surprised by what he’d found. In a way, he blamed himself for what happened to poor Hop. After all, when he’d told him about the catfish gals, he’d forgot to mention they weren’t the only critters that made Steamboat Bend their home.

  One thing about them gator boys: they sure are jealous.

  Ramsey Campbell

  THE ENTERTAINMENT

  Ramsey Campbell has done it all in the horror field—and he’s refused to leave it. There from the beginning of the boom in the late 1970s, where brilliant stories like “Mcintosh Willie” very quickly established him as a distinctive voice, he has continued to publish brilliantly in the genre to this day. His best tales are identifiable almost immediately as Campbellian; though his style owes something to Robert Aikman with its dreamlike, vaguely roiling quality, Campbell’s images are unlike any others in imaginative fiction.

  Campbell won the Stoker Award in 1994 for his collection Alone with the Horrors, and his latest work can he found in a nonsupernatural novel (something of a departure), The Last Voice They Hear, as well as in the following typically creepy tale, written just for you and me.

  By the time Shone found himself back in Westingsea he was able to distinguish only snatches of the road as the wipers strove to fend off the downpour. The promenade where he’d seen pensioners wheeled out for an early dose of sunshine, and backpackers piling into coaches that would take them inland to the Lakes, was waving isolated trees that looked too young to be out by themselves at a gray sea baring hundreds of edges of foam. Through a mixture of static and the hiss on the windscreen a local radio station advised drivers to stay off the roads, and he felt he was being offered a chance. Once he had a room he could phone Ruth. At the end of the promenade he swung the Cavalier around an old stone soldier drenched almost black and coasted alongside the seafront hotels.

  There wasn’t a welcome in sight. A sign in front of the largest and whitest hotel said NO, apparently having lost the patience to light up its second word. He turned along the first of the narrow streets of boardinghouses, in an unidentifiable one of which he’d stayed with his parents most of fifty years ago, but the placards in the windows were just as uninviting. Some of the streets he remembered having been composed of small hotels had fewer buildings now, all of them care homes for the elderly. He had to lower his window to read the signs across the roads, and before he’d finished his right side was soaked. He needed a room for the night—he hadn’t the energy to drive back to London. Half an hour would take him to the motorway, near which he was bound to find a hotel. But he had only reached the edge of town, and was braking at a junction, when he saw hands adjusting a notice in the window of a broad three-story house.

  He squinted in the mirror to confirm he wasn’t in anyone’s way, then inched his window down. The notice had either fallen or been removed, but the parking area
at the end of the short drive was unoccupied, and above the high thick streaming wall a signboard that frantic bushes were doing their best to obscure appeared to say most of HOTEL. He veered between the gateposts and came close to touching the right breast of the house.

  He couldn’t distinguish much through the bay window. At least one layer of net curtains was keeping the room to itself. Beyond heavy purple curtains trapping moisture against the glass, a light was suddenly extinguished. He grabbed his overnight bag from the rear seat and dashed for the open porch.

  The rain kept him company as he poked the round brass bellpush next to the tall front door. There was no longer a button, only a socket harboring a large bedraggled spider that recoiled almost as violently as his finger did. He hadn’t laid hold of the rusty knocker above the neutral grimace of the letter-slot when a woman called a warning or a salutation as she hauled the door open. “Here’s someone now.”

  She was in her seventies but wore a dress that failed to cover her mottled toadstools of knees. She stooped as though the weight of her loose throat was bringing her face, which was almost as white as her hair, to meet his. “Are you the entertainment?” she said.

  Behind her a hall more than twice his height and darkly papered with a pattern of embossed vines not unlike arteries led to a central staircase that vanished under the next floor up. Beside her a long-legged table was strewn with crumbled brochures for local attractions; above it a pay telephone with no number in the middle of its dial clung to the wall. Shone was trying to decide if this was indeed a hotel when the question caught up with him. “Am I …”

  “Don’t worry, there’s a room waiting.” She scowled past him and shook her head like a wet dog. “And there’d be dinner and a breakfast for anyone who settles them down.”