Water Rites

by Guy N Smith

  “Barry, where the hell’ve you got to?” He couldn’t possibly be writing in the dark and his eyes weren’t good enough to see to work by candlelight. “The water’s coming into the kitchen fast, it’ll be through to the hallway soon.”

  Ah! She could hear him now, slopping his feet through the water. Funny, she thought he was still upstairs but instead he was coming in from the flooded patio. He’d probably been out in the garage all the time, messing about with the Rover instead of doing what he should have been doing, helping to mop up this foul, stinking floodwater.

  “There’s another mop in the cupboard. And get those newspapers …”

  Jocelyn’s voice trailed away, she stared at the figure which had pushed open the back door, crawled inside.

  “Who … who’re you?” She backed away, kicked over the bucket so that its filthy contents spilled back out.

  Whoever it was, it most certainly wasn’t her husband. A burglar? She checked her scream, a thief in the night wouldn’t be entering on hands and knees. Somebody who was injured then, maybe a road casualty. I’ll phone for an ambulance but it won’t get through the floods. I won’t even attempt to bandage you up because I can’t stand the sight of blood, I’d faint.

  “Ba … rry!” Jocelyn was close to hysteria.

  She couldn’t see the intruder properly in the candlelight, only that it was a woman. The outline was female. Well, mostly. Except for the lower half of the other’s body which appeared to be wrapped up in a rug or a blanket. She was dragging herself through the spreading water, clutched a sleeping child in her arms.

  That, in itself, was strange. But it wasn’t that which finally brought a scream to Jocelyn Jackson’s thin lips.

  It was because she recognized her own daughter. An almost extinct maternal instinct that went way beyond physical features for there was little resemblance to Barbara in the face which moved out of the patch of shadow. But Jocelyn knew that it could not be anybody else.

  Even though Barbara wasn’t Barbara any longer. And that which Jocelyn saw she tried to disbelieve for it was too awful to contemplate.

  She screamed a second time.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” Barbara’s words were the hiss of a deadly snake, taunting its intended victim, “even though that would be the kindest act I could bestow upon you. I’m going to let you suffer, watch your coveted possessions being sodden, ruined. Even the new bedroom suite in your room, because the floods will submerge the house. You’ll climb up on to the roof to try to escape, cling on to a chimney as the water rises right up to your sagging tits.”

  “How dare you!”

  “Up to your scrawny, wrinkled neck, over your puking mouth so you won’t be able to bitch and whine and complain about everybody and everything. In the end, you’ll drown. It won’t be quick.”

  “Barbara!” A pleading whine, the mop fell to the floor, splashed foul-smelling water over Jocelyn. It tasted vile, she spat and retched. “Please. Barbara.”

  “Too late,” a cracked laugh that sounded scarcely human. “I’ve only come because I wanted you to know before you died. Now, I must return with my son to the remnants of my temple to await my finest hour.”

  “Your son? This is impossible!” Jocelyn leaned weakly against the table, oblivious of the water which now reached up to her ankles, was creeping through into the hallway. Barbara’s sanity was gone. Was it any wonder, mixed up with that dreadful man who had brainwashed her? There were rumours about Royston Shannon in the village recently, he was supposedly some kind of weird religious fanatic.

  “He’s my son.”

  The fish creature, maybe it was some kind of hallucination or a trick of the candlelight, was now only too familiar to Jocelyn. She remembered the mermaid on the ring which she had found down in the reservoir. “Barbara … wait!”

  “No, I must hurry, the Floods are here, faster and deeper than even I anticipated.”

  “Just … just talk to your father before you go. Please.”

  “No,” the other swivelled her strange body around, held the boy clear of the rising water. “You go talk to him. At least he won’t die the way you’re going to die!”

  Then the thing which had once been Barbara Jackson was gone out into the rain lashed night.

  Jocelyn turned away, waded through to the hallway. The floods were already lapping over the bottom stair.

  “Barry!” Her shout echoed eerily. “Barry, quick. Barbara’s come back. She’s left the back way, you’ll have to go after her.”

  Still there was no answer. Barry had to be upstairs, he couldn’t be any place else. He was lazy, impossible, didn’t want to undertake the smallest chore. He had probably gone to bed, sought refuge in sleep.

  Jocelyn held on to the banister, followed it across the landing, stubbed her toe on a footstool that her husband hadn’t bothered to put away. She kicked open the bedroom door.

  “I thought so!” Relief and anger, she stood at the foot of the bed, there was just enough half-light coming in through the unclosed curtains for her to discern the only-too-familiar form beneath the crumpled blankets. “When there’s a crisis, you either make a recluse of yourself and write your childish stories or else you go and hide in bed. Now, you can damned well get up, get dressed and go after Barbara!” Her voice rose to a shriek.

  She moved across, shook him roughly. He didn’t stir.

  “Come on, it’s no good faking sleep.”

  His head rolled to one side, his mouth was open but he wasn’t snoring the way he always did. Which meant he wasn’t really asleep. In her anger she slapped his cheek, a dull sound. He didn’t so much as flinch or groan a protest.

  Realization that her husband had passed away peacefully in his sleep took several seconds to filter through to Jocelyn’s confused brain.

  Her first reaction was revulsion, backing away because she had never encountered a corpse before. She had even refused to go and see her own parents in the Chapel of Rest because she feared death.

  Because it was a reminder to her of the day when, inevitably, she, too, would die.

  Barbara’s words came back to her, brought with them a nightmarish vision of herself clinging onto the chimney as the floodwater relentlessly rose up to drown her.

  Barbara, and it surely was Barbara, had ensured that her father did not live to suffer the final ignominy.

  Jocelyn rushed back to the head of the stairs, saw that the water was already half way up, down in the hallway a table and chair floated; the telephone was already underwater.

  Outside, the wind had gathered force, drove the rain against the house, battered it mercilessly as though it had singled it out for destruction. Just as the elements had destroyed the temple of she who had returned to rule over a watery world, they seemed intent on demolishing the home of her parents who had spawned this terrible evil.

  Mukasa’s revenge on her own mother was only just beginning.

  Thirty

  “It’s sheer madness!” Phil screamed into the rising wind. “We’ll never make it up there.”

  “We have to!” Kate gripped the pickaxe, used it to keep her balance, in the manner of a skier in an attempt to negotiate the muddy, waterlogged slope. “Peter’s up there somewhere, we have to go to him.”

  The forest floor was a foot deep in swirling, muddy water. The whole hillside was deluging, trees were crashing down as the torrent washed away the soil from around their roots. Now the wind was driving the rain horizontally again.

  The beam from the powerful rechargeable torch reflected, dazzled. It was impossible to see further than a few yards.

  “The reservoir must’ve burst,” Phil shouted in Kate’s ear. “Rain alone wouldn’t make a flood of this size. I tell you, we won’t get as far as the reservoir, the water’s getting deeper all the time. If we don’t turn back, we’ll be swept away. The entire village will be under water by morning!”

  “What’s that?” Instinctively, Kate pulled at her husband, almost overbalanced him. “Oh,
my God!”

  Phil swung the light. “What?”

  “Over there, caught up in that fallen tree.”

  He looked where she pointed, tried to shield what he saw in the beam from her with his own body.

  It was a human corpse, horribly mutilated, its disfigured features staring at them, a torn and open mouth screaming for help even in death.

  There was something familiar about it that even its terrible injuries were unable to hide.

  “It’s the detective!” he muttered.

  “Then where’s Peter?” Kate would have gone forward but he held her back.

  “If he is up here, and I very much doubt it,” he tried to sound convincing, “then we don’t stand a cat in hell’s chance of finding him.”

  “I’m going to look, anyway,” she struggled.

  A sudden rush of water hit them, Phil grabbed a low branch, hung onto Kate with his free hand. A pounding wave that would surely have swept them away had not its full force been broken by the trees up ahead. Water that foamed waist high, rushed onwards.

  He swung the light back; there was no sign of the body. It must have been carried away in the raging current or else they had imagined it. Maybe Barr had been prowling around up by the reservoir again tonight, which was why he hadn’t returned the key, and he had been unfortunate enough to be washed away when those bowing walls finally yielded to the pressure. His broken body had been tossed through the wood, battered and torn by the trees.

  “There’s no way we can go on,” Phil pulled Kate to him. His main concern was whether or not they would ever get back. If they did, then surely their home would have been swept away.

  They clung onto the tree, it was as if they were trapped in a maelstrom; the pine shifted alarmingly, they felt the ground move beneath their feet. Somewhere behind them another tree fell, they heard it splash down amidst a cracking of branches.

  “Surely the reservoir has to empty,” Kate was trembling. “A million gallons can’t flood forever.”

  “It could be that the computer at HQ has registered it very low and some bloody fool has switched on the inlet so that there’s an emergency supply going into it,” he voiced his worst fears. “In which case, it’ll just go on pouring down the hillside. Christ, the whole countryside will be flooded by tomorrow, the river is already overflowed.”

  “What’s that?” He felt her stiffen, look behind them.

  There was a lull in the gale, all he could hear was the sound of roaring water.

  “I heard something. Like somebody moving about, splashing.”

  “A log, I expect, there’s trees down all over the place.”

  “No. No, it wasn’t a log. It sounded like … like somebody swimming. Phil, shine the light back down the hillside.”

  It wasn’t easy, a half turn while trying to hold onto the tree at the same time, the moving water gave him a sense of vertigo. He reminded himself to go easy with the torch, rechargeable lights weren’t like the regular torches that grew dim when the batteries were run down and gave you ample warning. One moment the light was fine, the next you were in pitch darkness. And this one hadn’t been charged up recently.

  The circle of white light showed a swamp-like scene; the Everglades, the Okefenokee, you shied away in case you spied an alligator coming right for you.

  And there was one only a couple of yards away, struggling amidst a mass of broken branches that had piled up between some trees, its scales glinting evilly in the sudden bright light, its tail swishing with anger and frustration at its plight.

  “Jesus Alive!” Phil pulled Kate back, his first thought was to lift her up into the low branches of the giant Scots pine, clamber up after her. Maybe the creature had broken free from a menagerie sought its freedom in the fortuitous floods.

  “Phil, it’s that fish creature, and she’s got Peter!”

  It was crazy but it was true. His eyes followed on from the swishing tail, up beyond where the scaly skin ended. Human breasts, a face that was dark with fury, a thing that was half-woman, half-fish.

  And in spite of her struggles, she held their son clear of the water. Unbelievably. Peter appeared to be fast asleep. Or dead.

  Kate screamed, and this time there was no way that Phil could have restrained her. Her strength was fuelled by a maternal instinct that had no thought for the flood dangers nor some creature whose very existence was sufficient to blast one’s sanity into gibbering imbecility.

  Kate waded forward, lifted up the heavy workman’s pickaxe, held it shoulder high in a menacing manner.

  The other was dazzled, held up a hand in an attempt to shield her eyes. There were weals on her face where branches had sprung back on her, her body was streaked with mud.

  “Give me my son!” Kate took another step forward, lifted her weapon higher.

  “Fool!” The water witch spat, gave a bestial snarl. “This child is mine, one day he will rule the earth at my side.”

  Kate shuddered, the woman was raving mad. But, when half of your body was like a fish, there was no way you could be normal. The figment of her nightmarish dream that afternoon had become awful reality in a flooded forest.

  Peter stirred suddenly, his eyes flickered open. His expression changed from one of contented slumber to sheer terror.

  “Mommy!” A shrill scream, he would have wriggled free had not Mukasa clutched him firmly to her. Her tail flicked, pulled at the entangling branches. The water swirling past her had a silvery sheen on it as though she bled her own kind of blood.

  “Get him, Phil!” Kate heard her husband splashing at her side.

  Mukasa was at bay, her slimy tail trapped in the driftwood. She hissed another warning, and then Phil was reaching over the obstruction for Peter’s outstretched hand.

  “You shall not have him!”

  Kate had never really lost her temper since her childhood tantrums, receded with adolescence. Controlled anger, her tongue could be sharp when the occasion demanded. But now she felt a sudden rush of fury, a tensing of every nerve and muscle in her body, a blind rage that seethed within her like the floodwater foamed around her.

  Her arms responded, there was no way that she could have checked them; they went back and up, the pickaxe was suddenly a lightweight tool, no heavier than the feather duster which she used to reach the cobwebs on the ceilings at home.

  Her muscles hardened, a momentary pause while she powered herself, targeted that repulsive tail. Then she struck, brought her weapon down with every vestige of force which she could muster, grunted aloud as the rusted prong thudded deep into that scaled inhuman limb.

  Mukasa screamed, a sound that vibrated the stormy night, embodied every emotion known to Mankind and a few besides. Pain as the scaly flash was split asunder, the tail pinned down in the mud beneath the water. Anger because a mortal had defied her; worse, dared to strike a goddess of the deep, one who had known this earth when evolution began. Fury as the Chosen One was torn from her grasp, sobbing its relief at being returned to its human parents.

  Kate’s strength was used up in that one devastating blow, she could not have extricated the pickaxe from her thrashing victim even had she wished to do so. Weakness came with relief, she leaned against her husband, her probing fingers exploring her son from head to foot, the way they had done when he was born, checking that there were no injuries, no deformities.

  Peter was fine.

  God, she didn’t want to look, she had no wish to see that awful creature thrashing as it was pinioned to the ground, bleeding its stinking, silvery slime. No remorse, no pity; not even anger right now. Kate had done what any mother would have done, whatever the mermaid’s fate, it would not weigh upon her conscience.

  “Give me back my child!”

  The screams grew more hysterical but there was no pleading in them. One whose every command had been obeyed since time immemorial, was not accustomed to being defied.

  Phil cradled Peter to him, moved from tree to tree, branch to branch, headed back downhill, his onl
y concern to keep his footing. Kate clung onto him from behind, her joy and relief at being reunited with her son rendering her oblivious to the raging torrent that threatened to take them, dash them against the trees, smash their bodies until they resembled the unfortunate Detective Inspector Barr.

  Somehow they made it. The garden was under water, there was maybe six inches on the ground floor of the house but the main torrent had bypassed it and was raging down on to the main road.

  Saturated, weak from exhaustion and their ordeal, they made their way upstairs. Peter was asleep again; for what remained of this night he would sleep in the bed between them where there was no chance of him going anywhere.

  The storm battered the house with renewed vigour, windows rattled under the onslaught. They heard a bang outside, it sounded like the yard gate through to the pumping station had been torn from its hinges, washed away like the flimsy raft of a drowned mariner.

  The wind howled, it was like the anguished screaming of a surrogate mother who had lost her beloved child. Shrieking her grief, howling for vengeance.

  Phil and Kate huddled beneath the bedsheets, embraced the child whom, only hours ago, they were grieving for. And waited for daylight.

  Thirty-one

  On the third day the sun shone down weakly on a watery scene.

  Joe Graham lived in one of the canal side cottages next to the Marina. Raw boned, with thinning grey hair, he kept the Narita, his twenty foot pride and joy, moored within a couple of yards of his front door. Since his wife’s death a couple of years ago, he spent more time on board than he did in the house.

  During the summer months he spent weeks at a time cruising; he followed the canal network system north and south, east and west, tied up when he found a place he liked, moved on when he had grown tired of it.

  He had considered selling the cottage. What use was it to him when he had a floating home, could go where he liked, when he liked, was answerable to nobody. Fully equipped, there was everything on board that he needed; it was easier and cheaper to heat than the cottage. He envied the now-extinct breed of bargees, lugging coal in their boats, day in, day out, no responsibilities, complete freedom.