Hell And High Water

by Angela Blythe

  The black fishy blood was sprayed up the sides of Pat’s makeshift shed. The men butchering her were covered in it. A couple of the women took chunks away as they became loose and transferred them into either large food bags or carrier bags. Once tied up securely, they dropped these into bin bags and then into Joe’s van. The bags didn’t leak … much.

  When she had been wholly dismembered, including the head, which they split into several pieces, they walked down to the river. Joe drove the corpse there, all windows open. He waited in silence at the entrance to the canal. Friarmere was completely deserted.

  Pat remained with Jackie and started to put the balm on her wounds. When she took the bandage off, which Julia had kindly put on, the sight of her sister’s arm shocked her. The scratches were yellow now, the puncture marks and a snotty mucous bubbling out occasionally. Pat hoped that Kelpies didn’t lay eggs with their claws. What if Jackie had some kind of weird Friarmere Botfly condition? In a month’s time, Jackie could be eating an Eccles Cake and a whole load of baby Kelpies could hatch from her arm. Stranger things had happened in Friarmere.

  Pat opened the jar of ointment. It did smell strange. Pat took a finger full of it. It looked like earwax. She didn’t even want to know what Wee Renee had put in it. Pat suspected that there was a high urine content!

  Ernie thought that they should wake Jim and Julia up first. Their noise would probably wake them as it was, even though they would try and be as quiet as possible. After all, about twenty people were walking on a gravel path with lots of rustling bin bags. Maurice rushed down to tell them, once the gang had arrived.

  The couple should know what was and had gone on. Jim and Julia had decided not to go to the Pub because they were going to try and have a night away from it all. Jim also wanted to defend their boat, in case Julia came under attack.

  Little did they know that at 2:30 in the morning they would be standing at the canal side in their pyjamas along with a lot of their friends who reeked of rotting fish.

  ’I don’t know Darren … never met the fella,’ Jim said, ‘but send my best to him.’

  ’I don’t think we should mess with this any longer. It’s got Jackie badly hurt and someone else now is maimed for life. We are not equipped to deal with this kind of person or whatever you would call them,’ Julia said. She looked at Martyn, who had been called half an hour ago and informed of the situation. He had turned up, bewildered, tired and a little angry, but had said nothing up to yet. He was not trained to deal with these kinds of situations. In this instance, the people in the Friarmere Band were the authority on such matters.

  ’I am happy to help you on a personal basis. But I think if you’re expecting the Police to do anything, you’ll be waiting a long time. Something like this would take months to investigate and decide upon, I’m sorry,’ Martyn said.

  ‘We’re not, rest assured about that!’ Ernie said sharply.

  ’Yes, it isn’t exactly going to have fingerprints you can look up, is it?’ Jim said. ‘How would you get them in court or imprison them?’

  ‘If it escalated, which I hope it doesn’t, they would get involved pronto. You have that reassurance,’ Martyn said.

  ‘It’s a veritable minefield,’ Wee Renee said.

  They untied the bags, retching at the smell. Even from here, another Sea Witch could smell it. Each chunk went in. The empty bags all got stuffed into one big bag. Ernie said he would get rid of them tomorrow in his incinerator with some autumn leaves.

  When all the lumps had sunk to the bottom, everyone went back to their homes and to bed. Tomorrow would be a new bad day, with new dangerous challenges. They all knew it.

  Bob and Adam had kept the lid on the bottle firmly closed. Instead of putting holes in it and thus giving the creature a chance to escape, they kept taking the top off every so often, which replaced the air in the bottle.

  They kept glancing over to the bottle throughout the night. Their Mum and Dad had come in very late last night and there were lots of whispering. Strangely they both had a shower. The two boys thought something must have gone on. They wish they had gone, but they had to know everything about these eggs.

  About 5.30am, it began, Adam was watching, who woke Bob. They watched the eggs hatch one by one. They had got six eggs in their bottle.

  As the first egg hatched, they immediately began to crawl up to the lid to try and escape. Others hatched. None of them had any interest in eating each other. That was interesting.

  When they had all hatched, there were still six and they were all at the top. They couldn’t all fit in the confines of the lid, so were squirming in the bottle. The underneath of them was now readily visible to Bob and Adam. The squids had a circular mouth with a tube that rubbed itself on the plastic of the bottle. There were dots around this sucker. Bob pointed to it.

  ‘I bet that’s how they eat their food,’ he said. The other boys had told them that fish food didn’t seem to be the way to go, the mini squids hated it.

  ‘What shall we give them?’ Adam asked.

  ‘See what we’ve got,’ Bob said. Bob took watch over them while Adam went down to the fridge and came back up with a chunk of chicken. He tore it up into tiny pieces outside the bottle.

  ‘Ready?’ Bob asked.

  Bob turned the bottle upside down, so the water swished the six squids off the top of it. He flipped it back, quickly opening the bottle. Adam dropped the chunks of chicken inside.

  The squid fell upon the meat, devouring it almost immediately. Now the boys knew they were carnivores. The younglings were very impressive feeders. Scary. The single sucker in the middle of their body underneath was indeed a mouth. Bob was happy to see that at this stage in their development, they didn’t have a beak.

  They planned to take this to their Biology teacher and see what he thought about it. These mini squids were different. Bob and Adam knew that at some point this was getting into the public domain and the Biology teacher would find out anyway. Why not let him see them early, it might help their investigations. It couldn’t hurt.

  Because of the shoal of boys and how they acted, the two friends went into School early with their bottle in Bob’s backpack.

  The school was open from about 7.30, they got there at 8.00. They wanted to be outside the Biology teacher’s door to get in before School started. They seemed to arrive at the same time as Mr Bardsley who was a very conscientious chap. He had come in early to do some preparations for an experiment later.

  ’Hello, you two. What can I do you for?’ Mr Bardsley asked.

  ‘Can we go inside first, Sir?’ Bob asked.

  He unlocked the door, and the two boys went inside. Adam shut the door behind them and then carried on looking through the glass panel, checking that they weren’t being overheard, followed or interrupted. Bob did the talking.

  ’Sir, lots of lads, are getting these eggs from the river in the village and they hatch into a kind of mini-squid. No one knows what they are, and I looked on the internet and can’t find any information on them either. I wondered if you could tell us something about them,’ Bob said, acting all innocent.

  ’I’ll do what I can,’ Mr Bardsley said. Bob took the bottle out of his backpack.

  ‘You should really have some holes in this,’ Mr Bardsley said. ‘They won’t last long if they don’t have air.’

  ’The other lads have discovered that they can squeeze through quite small holes, kind of squish themselves out and escape, so we don’t want that to happen. Not until you have seen them anyway. We keep opening it, don’t worry,’ Bob said.

  Mr Bardsley picked up the bottle and looked at the six mini squids moving around inside. One was swimming around in the water at the bottom, having a whale of a time. The other five were all trying to make their way up to the top and then would drop-down and start the whole process again.

  ‘They are trying to escape. You’ve got that part right,’ Mr Bardsley said.

  ’What do you think of them?’ Bob asked.
r />   ’When did they hatch?’ Mr Bardsley asked.

  ‘In the middle of the night,’ Bob replied. ‘A couple of hours ago actually. I’ve fed them chicken, which they pigged out on.’

  Adam continued to look out of the square of glass in the door. He was sure at any minute that they were going to be caught out.

  ’The first point is, they’re not squids, so there’s no use referring to them as that,’ Mr Bardsley said. He observed them again, his eyes and voice were animated. ‘And they’re not a type of tiny octopus either. The octopus has eight legs. The squid ten, sort of. This looks more like a kind of jellyfish. They have more than eight tentacles at the bottom and they are long and uneven. The tentacles seem to drift behind them, more like hairs in the wind, just like a jellyfish, rather than limbs that are present on an octopus or squid. However, what is strange is that it moves using its many thin legs, like a cephalopod.’

  ‘What?’ Bob asked.

  ‘An octopus, squid or cuttlefish are cephalopods. They can crawl along the surface of their container, like this. Jellyfish take water in their bell, the round bit and squirt it behind them, to jet themselves this way and that. In summary, this moves like an octopus, but looks like a jellyfish,’ Mr Bardsley said, amazed.

  ‘So, what’s good about that?’ Adam said from the door. Mr Bardsley didn’t answer him, but instead raced towards his computer and started to look through webpages. Bob checked at his watch.

  ‘Sir, we’ve got to get to class,’ Bob informed him.

  ‘Do you want to leave them with me, Bob?’ Mr Bardsley asked.

  ‘Er… not really no. If you don’t mind,’ Bob said. He didn’t want them getting into the wrong hands.

  ’Could you take a picture of them on your phone instead?’ Adam asked.

  ‘Yes, I can?’ Mr Bardsley said. These were strange boys, he thought. He didn’t understand why they couldn’t trust him with a few wet creatures from the river. He took several pictures of the cephalopods, with his phone.

  ‘Come and see me after School,’ Mr Bardsley said. ‘I’ll have a look at some of my reference books and I’ll get as much information as I can about them.’

  ‘Thanks Sir,’ Bob said. He put the bottle back in his backpack. They left the classroom, shutting the door behind them. The two boys had plenty of time until morning lessons, but not wanting to go outside, they walked to the Maths block, which was their first.

  It was a very strange day. Today the shoal did not swirl in amongst the other children, it followed Adam and Bob relentlessly. The menacing group did not approach them or say anything. Or even try and take the bag. They just followed the boys around all day. At the end of the School day, the boys wanted to go to see Mr Bardsley, but they could not shake the shoal of boys.

  ‘Why aren’t they doing anything?’ Bob asked.

  ‘They probably think that we will be infected the same as they are, now we have squids. Waiting for us to join their silent festival,’ Adam said. Bob laughed.

  ‘They aren’t leaving us alone that’s for sure. It’s going to be a problem getting to Biology,’ Bob said.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Adam asked.

  ’One of us has to stay with the bag, which I bet is where the boys will stay. The other has to get to Mr Bardsley to see if he’s found out anything,’ Bob said.

  ’We are not bringing them tomorrow, I’ll tell you that for nothing,’ Adam muttered.

  ’Too right,’ Bob said.

  What they decided to do was to go into the boy's toilets, as there was only one way in or out of. Adam locked himself in a cubicle with the bag. There were so many children in the shoal now that they couldn’t all get in, so stayed outside, hanging around in the corridor looking furtive. They knew the boys had to come out sometime.

  Bob climbed on the toilet that was in the end cubicle by the window and got out that way.

  Outside were all the normal kids, luckily. Some of them saw Bob getting out of the window and began to laugh. That wasn’t a problem. He made his way the long way around to the Science block, hoping to catch Mr Bardsley. Bob found him still looking through his books. He glanced up to see Bob and his face showed that he was delighted to see him.

  ’I’ve got excellent news for you,’ Mr Bardsley said.

  ’What?’ Bob asked.

  ’You have discovered a new species of invertebrate,’ Mr Bardsley informed him.

  ’I thought somehow it might be one,’ Bob said, knowingly.

  ’And you know if you’ve discovered it, you could have it named after you. I was thinking Bobbus Medusozoa,’ Mr Bardsley said.

  ’I’d rather not,’ Bob said.

  ’It has to have a name. How are we going to refer to it?’ Mr Bardsley commented.

  ‘Let them have yours. I’m not bothered,’ Bob said.

  ‘Ah, if you’re sure. What an honour. Bardsley Medusozoa. It does have a ring to it. Tell me Bob, the ones that the other boys have got. Are they at a later stage of development than the ones you showed me?’ Mr Bardsley asked quite excitedly.

  ’Oh, they will be. Some of them are nearly a week old,’ Bob informed him.

  ’Could you get them to give me one of their specimens if possible, or at least come to me and show me one to see what it’s like. The ones you showed me were very developed for freshly hatched eggs,’ Mr Bardsley said.

  ’Er … I don’t think so, Sir. I doubt they would do it. They aren’t in my friendship group really,’ Bob said.

  ’Could you have a word with them on my behalf? Say I would love to see one. Just say it is for me and I have sent you there with the message,’ Mr Bardsley asked.

  ’They won’t do it. The type of boys that have got them … they are kind of ignorant, you know. They won’t be interested in the science of it, like me and Adam,’ Bob said.

  ’I see. I know the type of boys you mean,’ Mr Bardsley said despondently.

  ’Yeah you can’t educate pork,’ Bob commented.

  ’Not really, no,’ Mr Bardsley agreed, laughing.

  ’I tell you what Sir. If mine are all alive in a week, you can have one of them to keep. Is that okay with you?’ Bob asked.

  ’I’ll look forward to it,’ Mr Bardsley said. Bob thought he would try to avoid this situation. He didn’t want Mr Bardsley ending up like Mr Pugh. Bob had kicked the can down the road. If it got to the stage where the mystery hadn’t been solved in a week, he would tell him that they were dead. For now, Mr Bardsley thought he would get his own squid next week. Hopefully, that meant he wouldn’t try to get one for himself and end up dead.

  24 Coils

  Jim just missed a scrape with death that evening. After instructing Julia to lock all the doors until Ivy arrived, he picked up his euphonium and went off to Band.

  Ivy was finishing her shift at precisely the same time as Jim was leaving, which meant that there would be five minutes where Julia would be on her own. Ivy was stretching it to ten as she had made a couple of batches of scones and thought that they would cheer the couple up. She made a quick trip home to pick them up. It would be worth it. Ivy thought that Julia would be highly unlucky for her to have an attack in those brief ten minutes.

  Julia had made an evening meal for Ivy as she would not be getting her own again tonight. The two women had become very good friends. Ivy would be staying until Jim returned from Band practice.

  As it was, Julia was safe for those ten minutes. Ivy’s safety was in doubt when she walked down the canal path. There was something terrifying in the river.

  This was a little away from Black Island further east. At first, she thought it was a kind of smoke. It acted like smoke. This was an extraordinary phenomenon. The movement was such that Ivy thought that a cyclone had manifested itself above the water.

  After a while, her eyes could make out that it wasn’t smoke, it was a living creature which coiled and rose. Coiled and dropped again and this was why it gave the impression of smoke.

  It was black, thick and snakelike. W
ider than any living snake, as the body in the thickest parts must have been 1-2 feet in diameter narrowing off to seemingly nothing. It must have been enormous in length as it coiled upwards. Its head or whatever it had at the other end to its tail, was buried beneath the water.

  Ivy estimated the length of it must have been 50 feet, as even tightly wound, it was at least 15 feet out of the water.

  Ivy stopped and caught her breath. She did not want to disturb the monster, and she did not want it to see her. But she wanted to observe it and see what it did. It had been silent all this time. Coming from it now suddenly, Ivy heard the most enormous howl, it seemed like the noise was coming from the rubbing of the coils, but she could not be sure.