Water Rites

by Guy N Smith

Kate ran at the slope, it was slippery after the drought and again she lost her footing. Scrabbling on all fours, tearing at every available handhold in sheer desperation; sliding back, pulling herself up.

  Finally, after what seemed an eternity, she made it to the top, knelt there, again had to shade her eyes from the sun, was forced to wait while her vision adjusted to the bright light.

  Peter and that awful creature, who was neither wholly human nor fish, were almost at the blockhouse. Even from this distance Kate could make out the jagged hole in the wall.

  And that female monstrosity was leading the child towards it.

  “Stop!” Somehow Kate found the breath in her tortured lungs to enable her to scream. “Don’t you dare take my child in there!”

  Neither looked back, they did not appear to have heard.

  Running again.

  Kate’s eyes stung with sweat, distorted her vision. Creature and child appeared to have shrunk to miniature proportions, Tom Thumb puppets in a bizarre play, about to enter a cave, the black entrance of which yawned in front of them.

  “Wait!” Kate’s foot slipped in some kind of slime which coated the grass, she skidded but somehow managed not to fall. If anything, the slip added impetus to her pursuit, she might just reach them in time.

  Tiny heads turned, they saw her now. Peter shouted something but the reduced power of his voice was no louder than a mouse’s squeak. His expression told his mother that he had changed his mind, he didn’t want to go in there with the fish lady.

  His companion’s smile faded, was replaced by a snarl of animal ferocity. The hand holding Peter’s tightened its grip, the boy was shrieking mutely with the pain.

  “Let go of him!”

  Kate advanced threateningly, her maternal instinct was uppermost, she had no fear for herself, only for her son. The grass was shiny with that slime, a hoar frost scintillating in early morning sunlight. Already it was starting to melt. Its stench was sickening, she almost retched. It reminded her of rotting fish.

  The creature was standing at bay, Kate was barely a couple of yards from it. She experienced a weird sense of loss of proportion in relation to everything around her. That she was some kind of Gulliver confronting the inhabitants of Lilliput; or maybe it was she who had grown outsize and they were normal. It was frighteningly confusing.

  She glanced about her in search of a weapon of some kind. A stick, maybe, or a fist-sized rock. A mother whose child was suddenly threatened by a poisonous reptile looking for something with which to beat the reptile to death or crush it into an unrecognizable mulch. There was nothing, just lumps of powdery mortar which would crumble to the touch.

  If necessary she would grab it with her bare hands, swing it aloft by that hideous tail, batter it to death against the blockhouse wall. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath to steady herself, the thought of contact with that thing was repulsive. She would probably throw up. It didn’t matter.

  “Mommy!” A cry that was piercing, one of jubilation rather than infant terror at the prospect of being dragged down into some dark, watery lair.

  Kate’s eyes jerked open, she saw Peter standing before her. Then he flung himself at her, embraced her. He had grown back to normal size, his weight was crushing her.

  Only then was she aware that she was back in the deckchair in the garden.

  He hugged her, kissed her. Confused, she could barely speak coherently. “Peter … whatever … why … I thought you were …”

  “You were shouting, screaming in your sleep, Mommy. It frightened me.”

  The traffic out front on the road was still going by in a steady stream. Kate looked up, the sky had lost its blue, it was a kind of hazy grey. The predicted cloud formation was moving in ahead of schedule, it would probably rain before morning. The last of the summer was over.

  “Mommy, what’s wrong?”

  “Peter, you haven’t been away, have you?”

  “No, I promise.” She could tell by his wide-eyed innocence that he was speaking the truth.

  “I … I went to look for you …”

  “No, you didn’t. At least, I don’t think you did. I got bored, so I lay down on the grass. I fell asleep. Then you woke me, shouting for me. I got frightened because I thought you were poorly again.”

  “I must’ve had a bad dream,” she was sweating like she was starting a fever. Her head was aching, pounding. “It’s nothing, everything’s fine. We’d best go inside, it’s gone a lot cooler like they said it would, it’ll rain soon.”

  Rabbit scratched at the mesh as if pleading for one last run on the lawn.

  “Phew! Something smells, Mommy.”

  “I expect Rabbit needs his hutch cleaning out …” The stench hit her, so pungent, overpowering, that she nearly retched.

  So familiar, that she knew instantly that it wasn’t the rabbit.

  “You stink, Mommy,” he sniffed at her, screwed his features up into an expression of disgust. “And so do I. It’s like those kippers that you put in the pantry the other week and forgot all about until they started to smell.”

  Kate turned her head away, not just because of the stench but so that her son would not see the look of sheer terror on her face.

  She and Peter both stank of rotting fish.

  Twenty-two

  The others had never seen Royston Shannon visibly shaken before. Sharon Levy’s corpse he had treated almost with contempt, dragging it through the gorse, heedless of the thorns which scratched and spiked her dead flesh. He had seemed to derive some sadistic delight from setting up her body in a lewd pose for the benefit of that unfortunate person who stumbled upon it.

  There had not been a trace of emotion in his expression in the reflection of the headlights as he drove the car over the old man lying in the road.

  Callous efficiency, the satisfaction of a job well done and the knowledge that he had served the Queen of the People of the Water.

  But this time it was different. The sacrifice of Janice and her newborn child had most certainly had a profound effect upon Royston Shannon’s equanimity. Twice he had stalled the car as he drove slowly back up the Lady Walk. And as he and Stogie had interred the corpses of mother and child in the manure heap, he had worked with a fervour that bordered on panic. Almost as if their burial would erase the deed which he had committed.

  The others had huddled in the rear seat of the car, frightened by what they had done, even more scared of what might happen to themselves. In the beginning it had been exciting fun, none of them really believed.

  But there was no doubting the existence of something in the dark waters of that underground lake that defied the laws of Nature.

  The attempt on Shannon’s life had failed miserably, it had never even been a real threat to their high priest. He had not even been aware that a coup was imminent. Thank God!

  No woman was capable of carrying out an assassination in the throes of childbirth. In effect, the baby had saved Shannon’s life and its reward was being sacrificed to the Queen.

  Next time there must be no mistake. Next time the sacrificial victim could well be one of themselves. Each of them wondered about the neophyte, the woman called Barbara. She had not shown up tonight. Was it because she guessed? They had kept the deaths from her on Shannon’s instructions but she might have become suspicious. She might even have gone to the police. It was a worrying thought, all of them might be arrested and charged with murder.

  Shannon and Stogie smelled strongly of horse muck, the interior of the vehicle reeked of it by the time it glided to a halt on the forecourt of Packington Hall.

  “Let us go and cleanse ourselves in the waters of the sacred pool,” Shannon led the way down the sloping corridors.

  Shannon’s thoughts were on Barbara, she had never really been absent from them throughout the evening. Her failure to turn up both puzzled and worried him for she was a true believer. Not like Sharon Levy who had come along for whatever she could get out of it. He had only brought the prostitute he
re for one purpose and she had served it admirably.

  The vagrant had been sheer opportunism, surely the Queen herself had summoned him that night because of her desperation for a human sacrifice.

  But Barbara was different, Shannon had plans for her and at the moment they did not involve sacrifice.

  The sacrifices, too, were strange. The corpses were returned to the surface for disposal, there was not a mark on them; no ravenous underwater creature had fed on their dead flesh.

  It was undoubtedly some kind of bizarre mating ritual in the same way that the Akikuyu of Africa sacrificed their virgins to the snake god. The medicine men consummated the marriage; Shannon had done just that. Janice’s child was fathered by himself, he had convinced himself of that by now. Otherwise, the Queen might become angry.

  Male or female sacrifices, it seemed not to matter which. Shannon took the women, committed their bodies to the deep. Yet she had undoubtedly summoned a male because she needed one; the thought of Mukasa mating with the corpse of the old man had bile burning Shannon’s throat.

  She demanded children, offspring. Tonight he had given her a child yet she had returned it with the mother’s body. Because it was dead. A rejection? The thought was disturbing. Was a half human creature capable of conceiving by Man? The idea was both erotic and frightening.

  Why had the Queen not shown herself to them yet? Because she wasn’t ready, that could be the only answer. All they had witnessed so far was a rippling of the water, a shapeless luminosity beneath the surface.

  He knew that he must find her an infant, a living child that would go into the water squalling. In her omnipotence she would teach it to live in the depths, rear it as her own.

  Where the hell had Barbara got to? Tomorrow he would call her at her office, demand an explanation. Perhaps she had been taken ill or an accident had befallen her. No, please, not that. Or the Queen was angry because of his affections for another woman, jealousy from the deep had exacted its revenge.

  Tonight he must show penance and the sacred pool was a fitting place to ask her forgiveness. If I have erred, it is because of foolishness and naivety. Give me guidance, O Queen, for I am your servant and will obey your every command. If you desire a living child, I will bring you one. If you demand the body of the one called Barbara as an offering of appeasement, then I will sacrifice her to you. Ours was only an earthly relationship, my true devotion is to a higher deity.

  He heard the others dragging their feet in his wake, an unwilling slouching. Rabble! One by one, he would sacrifice them, even Stogie, for such low intelligence had no place in a higher civilization.

  There was something different about the pool, he could not work out quite what it was. The palm tree bowed its subservience on the far bank, shoals of fish darted to and fro. In the shallows a pair of annelids were duelling with their horny pincers; a sponge of dead men’s fingers clutched at a ten-inch Bahamas azure vase. Life throbbed beneath the surface more vibrantly than he had ever known before.

  As if the pool was awakening from a long slumber, coming alive.

  The coven crowded close, seeking safety in his presence. He sensed a new fear in them, they felt it, too. Like nothing would ever be the same as it had been, they were on the verge of a new era.

  He picked up their vibes, tensed. Sullenness and terror, but something else which he had not been aware of until now. Hatred and jealousy. It was in their posture, their eyes.

  He met their combined gaze. Lisa and Debbie turned their heads, Sheila followed. Cheeks flushed with guilt because they knew that he knew. Only Stogie maintained a stubborn defiance, arrogantly pouting his dead cigar stub. But not for long, even he wilted before his high priest’s searching look.

  Shannon would feed them all to the Queen. In turn. Eventually. But at this very moment there were more pressing matters on hand.

  “Let us bathe in the holy waters,” he discarded his robe, stood naked before them.

  Their costumes still dripped reservoir water, fish that had been stranded temporarily on dry land and were now to be returned to their home.

  Something was amiss, he paused with the water lapping his ankles. Something blatantly obvious and yet he was blinded to it. Again his eyes roved his surrounds, saw how the water rippled; it was probably a shoal of fish darting away in their natural fear of Man, the unnatural being. The pugnacious water worms still battled, he took care to step well to the side of them for they were capable of inflicting a sharp bite. The dead men’s fingers were erect, a sponge hand that warned of some lurking danger. Go back, before it is too late!

  Then he saw. And knew. The effigy of their Queen, the mistress of the People of the Water, the statue which he had painstakingly sculptured with his own hands over a decade, had toppled from her rocky plinth.

  The base had snapped, leaving a jagged fish’s tail still clinging to the rock, her body had plunged down into the water below, out of sight. It had probably smashed on the hard bottom.

  The shock cramped his stomach, weakened his powerful legs. A sharp intake of breath, vainly praying that it was some kind of optical illusion.

  Vandalism, a desecration, sacrilege within a holy temple. Who had been in here.

  Who?

  The surface still moved, ripples that spread outwards from the centre, growing until finally they met with the shores. As if Mukasa had slipped from her regal position only seconds before their entry and the turbulence still disturbed the depths.

  Shannon’s head turned, again his accusing glare swept over his companions. But no, it could not possibly be any one of them for they had been within his view the whole time.

  Somebody had trespassed in here. The vibes told him that the person was still here.

  The others were mutely protesting their innocence, contradicting it with blushes of guilt. For, right or wrong, Shannon’s wrath was terrible to behold.

  “Who has done this dreadful thing?” His words were addressed to everybody yet nobody in particular; to Stogie and Lisa, Debbie and Sheila, the fish which had swum back into view. Even the dead men’s fingers which might, somehow, have found the strength to dislodge their Queen.

  Even as he finished speaking, the water stirred and the fish fled in terror once again. Something swam beneath the surface, the greenish background light reflected on a paleness and turned it luminous. A shape that was distorted by the waves it made and yet, even then, was vaguely human in shape.

  It was Lisa who screamed, “The Queen has arrived, she has come down from the sacred pool underground!”

  Royston Shannon backed away, almost turned and fled. For four decades, ever since he had first encountered the mermaid on that beach, he had lived for her coming. But now that the moment was nigh, it was the most frightening prospect of his whole life.

  He cast a glance behind him, his companions had sunk down onto the floor, they were moaning softly amongst themselves, covering their faces with their hands. Except Stogie, who just stood there sucking on his soggy smoke as a baby might have sought solace in a pacifier. Expressionless, unmoved, eyes glazed from his last fix, maybe secretly hoping that whatever was down there in the water would succeed where Janice had failed. Death was but a dream when one was high on cannabis.

  The creature surfaced, its hair was a cascading waterfall that hid its features. Breasts that were full, nipples aroused as though in readiness for a suckling infant.

  Moving into the shallows so that it stood, thighs apart so that the pinkness of its vulva glistened through the mound of pubic hair. Only the feet were hidden, doubtless they were joined in the fashion of a Siamese twin to form the shape of a fishtail.

  Royston Shannon had dropped to his knees in fear and reverence. He dared not lift up his face, scared to look upon those same features which he had last seen in boyhood. Trembling, his lips moved but no words came from them.

  Have mercy upon us, O Queen, for we have served you faithfully, brought sacrifices which, in our ignorance, might not have been acceptable. Spare u
s, your disciples, so that we may continue to serve you now and after the waters cover the earth.

  He stared at the lower half of her body from between half lowered eyelids. Her skin was not as smooth as he had imagined, more the flesh of a mature woman than that of a nymph.

  A roughness, at first he thought it was abrasions, or maybe eczema. In a strange way it was erotic, the way it began on the insides of the thighs and travelled right up to … He caught his breath, they were miniature scales, when the light fell on them they glinted silvery.

  She had feet, too, shapely ankles; she lifted one up out of the water as if to show him.

  Mukasa, it could be none other, had evolved and was now regressing; she had walked amongst humans, now she was returning to the depths, gathering her disciples around her. Royston Shannon had shown faith, now he was about to be rewarded.

  The Coming was reality.

  Fearfully, he raised his eyes. The face on the statue, that graven image, he had fashioned it from a forty-year-old memory which was surely confirmed by the tiny features on that ring which had since gone missing. He would recognize her as surely as if he had seen her only yesterday.

  He stared in amazement. She bore no resemblance to the facial image of his memory. And yet her features, her smile, were only too familiar.

  Gone was the statue which they had worshipped, destroyed because it was a false idol. In its place, so divine even in ageing nudity, stood the goddess, the queen, whom they held sacred. Human in shape and form, Mukasa had arisen from the water in immortality. Physically, the change was beginning, they sensed her power, flung themselves prostrate before her. Even Stogie’s cheroot stub dropped from his trembling lips.

  Barbara Jackson looked down on them and her expression hardened.

  Twenty-three

  Detective-Inspector Barr doubted his wisdom in returning to the reservoir tonight. Not that he was in any way afraid of this dark, depressing place; it was just cold and unpleasant. But that was a minor inconvenience where inexplicable murders were concerned.