by Adam Lowe
In mid-January, ice floes thick enough to walk on, a dog dragged out what was left of the floral dress Jen wore on Christmas Eve. Most saw her leave with Cal, a wiggle of her cute little ass, the way she blew us a Christmas kiss, well it made our day. O’course Cal’s scowl, his I-got-what-you-ain’t smirk emphasised an underlying don’t dare touch.
Right. Like would anybody want to come up against a feller that used barbed hooks?
Lemme say that a hook like that piercing a fish’s lip ain’t pretty. A hook of that ilk piercing anywhere ain’t pretty!
You’ll have guessed small community folk are close knit, allus on the lookout for each other. Given it was the butcher’s dog found Jenny’s dress, I told the others we’d never report her missing to the law. Mind, law didn’t work from here, nossir. Law was housed eight mile down river by the bridge where the main highway slips into the next county.
There’s a world-wide sayin’ states, Never take the law into your own hands.
Come on, I mean why’d we wanna do that?
Time slid into March. Two months on, an’ Jenny’s loss a real puzzler to folks.
I’d go my usual walk through woods, trees like cathedral pillars close by where the old miner’s shack still stood after twenty years. Walkin’ back I’d drop by Gran, sure the old gal had survived. We’d drink coffee and chew the fat, mostly ‘bout Jen.
Calvin you ask? He dropped from our corner a mite quick. Rented cottage stood empty, his attempts to own us with a look, a threat, a hook, all gone.
Some thought it unsettling to be honest that he should go like that. Come fishin’ season, fellers on the west bank checked Cal’s spot expecting to see him. They didn’t.
River went kinda comatose too. Sunlight sparked off of her ripples, flow caught our next Fall’s leaves, a million or so tiny boats, carried to the sea, or drowned deep when the rains came. For certain our river remained a permanent threat.
Take one from here, I take you—the river’s threat and I guess our community motto. Had a ring to it.
As I recall Sam Baker hooked the first bite that July. His last cast of the day.
An arm—a left arm, all fish bit. No tattoo like the one Calvin wore—would you believe a pike’s mouth, razor teeth? The same we’d see whenever he strutted around shirtless.
Mentioned the river threw out unsettling stuff so not easy to know what might wash up. What’s more, water does things to corpses after they been submerged a while.
Over time more bits surfaced—a left leg, then up came a right. Left foot next, strips of purple black flesh. Kids found that one in the shallows.
If it was Cal, we liked to believe we were well rid.
By the way, I told nobody nothin’ ‘bout how Jenny said she’d done a fine job luring Cal. But even so, she weren’t too sure that what kept surfacin’ was him, it being pike ripped.
You should understand that me an’ Jenny started out childhood sweethearts. Can you imagine the look across the school playin’ field? A stolen kiss close by where the willows curtained the river banks—our reflections drowned in the matt surface o’ summer days.
Only me and Gran knew Jen hadn’t really disappeared. Bein’ honest I have t’say it was her and me thought up the scheme to get rid of you-know-who and give us all a chance. See most were scared Cal would do bad things, Jenny mightily so after she’d done . . . Well like lured him into the water. Scared silly that he might not be . . . y’know . . . properly dead.
The dress was a neat touch of hers. I watched her wrap it around a stone and throw it in. Reason we never told the cops.
Things died down yet it wasn’t the same, townsfolk trying to justify the fact that no stranger had better think he could own us. Then attemptin’ to face up to what did surface. We were made more skittish wonderin’ where the arm wearin’ a pike head tattoo WAS?
Keep faith in m’neighbours, I kept telling m’self.
We carried on looking (and hooking) seeking the one extra proof needed.
The bits already mentioned we stacked in the butcher’s other freezer. Only a matter of time afore one smart ass came up with the idea we cook ‘em come Thanksgiving. ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘and feed the fishes!’
A week on and every piece disappeared, the freezer empty. Not one toe nail.
A year older and here’s me with a hook fastened around a windfall branch.
Twilight with little surface ripple can be a tad upsetting.
An’ yeah it resembled a branch but the naked arm I did hook, what little skin clung to the flesh and the bone, wore the remains of a mean looking tattoo. Once seen it ain’t easy to forget that vicious look in cold black eyes.
Blast it, the line wouldn’t come free. And certainly not when a big rod surfaced in a big hand, and a custom made barbed hook whiplashed across surface swell.
I slammed against a tree, thank Christ avoiding the hook. Harder to avoid the giant who stepped out of the water lookin’ like a well-scrubbed patchwork doll knotted with fishing line. He smiled, the look real dark. Rotten. Sayin’ don’t ever mess with me.
“Where’s my Jenny?” Bubbles bubbled out of Calvin’s blubbery mouth.
I gawked, I fish-mouthed, unable to raise a sound.
“Best tell me,” he, it, said. “otherwise you’re bait.”
Rarely do tourists stop by to hear our tales.
Eleven years on, the place is all but deserted. Gran died. Jenny and I are together—and reasonably safe.
Take heed though: If you do stop by best not walk down Main Street, or wander close to the river. Likely you’ll catch sight of a dark bulk, the legend COWLEY’S BOATS writ on its bright orange slicker.
If you’re conscious of a hand reaching, or find yourself caught by a barbed hook, don’t fret too much, Cal Winters will ask one question:
“Where’s Jenny?”
Just state you don’t know. Odds are he’ll release you.
If he does . . . RUN.
Feel free to stop by mine and Jen’s place—the old miner’s shack in the deep woods I mentioned—always assumin’ you like pike to eat.
A matter of taste. But then none of us sussed how powerful Cal would be.
Yet he does have limits.
If you do bump into him don’t let him read this story.
Hold up, he can’t . . . when I saw him up close his eyes were all bitten out!
Maybe his hearin’s okay . . .
Derek M. Fox is an author, creative writing tutor from Derbyshire, in the UK. He has steered dozens of students into publication, and his own credits include countless short stories (his tale ‘Porcelain’ from F20 received an honorable mention from Ellen Datlow); two novels, the popular Recluse and Demon; two collections, Treading on the Past and Through Dark Eyes (the latter out now in trade paperback from Cosmos); plus Heart of Shadows and Sinister Quartet, both of which examine Lord Byron’s association with the supernatural.
Light Fingers
by Selina Lock
The car tyres crunched on the gravel lane that led into the graveyard. A middle aged woman got out and helped an elderly lady alight.
“Get out of the car, Sophia,” the first woman said.
There was no movement from the car.
“Get out here now, young lady.”
“Sophia Clare Butler! Out of the car now!” she shouted.
Finally, a grumpy looking twelve year old appeared and made her way slowly towards the two older women.
“Now, stay with Grandma Iris and help her with the flowers, while I nip to the shops.”
“Do I have to?” Sophia asked.
Her mother gave her a hard stare, reached into the car and handed her a bunch of daffodils. Sophia stared back at her mother for a second before dropping her gaze and taking the flowers.
“C’mon Sophia, let’s go see your Great Grandfather Eric,” Iris said and started a slow shuffling walk towards the graveyard gate.
Sophia looked longingly after her mother’s car reversing down the lane, be
fore following her Grandma, kicking stones as she went.
The lane narrowed into a passage with the small village church one side and a high stone wall the other. An apple tree overhung the passage, its branches reaching down to brush the heads of the unwary. Sophia shivered as she left the light of the spring sun and entered the shadowed path.
Iris kept up a litany of remarks as they walked. About the last time she had seen her husband, what they had buried him in, how they were lucky to get a plot in the churchyard and that there was a space waiting for her above his coffin.
It was all a bit weird and morbid, Sophia thought. She was fond of her Great Grandmother, or Grandma Iris for short, but she did seem to be obsessed with death. Her own, or one of their many deceased relations, half of whom seemed to be buried in this churchyard.
The path narrowed further as it wound around the side of the church and into the churchyard proper.
“May the Lord protect us from the Hanged Man,” Iris said, while rubbing the gold cross she wore around her neck.
Sophia started. It had been ages since her last enforced visit to the graveyard and she had forgotten all about the Hanged Man. She remembered Iris relating the tale to her when she was younger. It was the tale of a man who lived in the village a hundred years ago. He had a young daughter who disappeared, and everyone in the village thought he had killed her. They hounded and taunted him until he hanged himself from the apple tree above them, right where Grandma Iris was relating the story. His spirit was supposed to haunt the spot, not able to rest until his daughter had been found. He stopped the villagers from resting easy in their graves as retribution for their treatment of him.
She grinned at how silly she had been to believe in the story. Also at the way that on previous visits, she had run as fast as she could down the path, fearful that tree branches would snatch at her. That they would mistake her for the Hanged Man’s missing daughter and give her to him to keep.
Iris still seemed to believe something haunted the graveyard, but this was the twenty first century and Sophia knew it was superstitious nonsense. To prove it, she reached up and snapped a twig off the nearest branch. Nothing happened, of course. It was just an old apple tree, after all.
Iris had shuffled into the churchyard and found her husband’s grave. She gestured for Sophia to bring the daffodils over and then sent her off to empty the vase of the old, dead flowers.
Sophia stomped over to the bin full of rotting bouquets and the old dishevelled plastic arrangements. Iris shouted after her.
“Don’t walk over the graves. It’s disrespectful.”
It’s not like the occupants were going to notice, Sophia thought; they were dead and buried quite a long way down. Still, she probably wouldn’t like the idea of someone walking over her if she were down there, so she threaded her way between the graves on her way back.
Sophia left Iris muttering at the graveside, telling her dead husband the latest news while snipping flower stalks.
She wandered past the rows of drunken headstones; the area reserved for wealthier families. The ones who had big stone boxes above their graves, with statues and fancy carvings. This area had been weeded and neatly mown, probably where the wedding parties liked to take pictures, she thought.
Remembering her tedious stint as a bridesmaid, Sophia had been turned this way and that for photos. She tried not to squint at the sun and had to paste on a smile when the photographer told her off for sulking. All for the promise of a present at the end of the day, and what had it turned out to be? A gold cross, just like her grandma’s. Not exactly fashionable.
One set of graves stood a little apart in their own plot. There was a large double grave and a smaller one beside it. She could only make out part of the inscription, as the headstones were worn and covered in moss.
What she could see was that they all shared the same date of death. She wondered what could have killed a whole family at once. Perhaps they were brutally murdered? She bet Iris would know the story if they had been.
The little and large graves each had a low fence around them. A raised stone wall with Fleurs-de-Lis wrought iron stakes embedded in it and each stake connected by a chain. The graves themselves were covered in what looked like precious stones, amethysts glinting in the sunlight. Or that was what she had thought the first time she had seen them, but apparently it was some kind of fancy glass gravel. I mean, who would put anything valuable on a grave? It would not last five minutes.
She sat down next to the little grave and let some of the glass pieces run through her fingers, watching the light dance around them as they fell. She glanced around, thinking someone might tell her off if they saw her, but they were the only ones around. Plus, there were no flowers on the graves or anything, so they must be too old for anyone to still be visiting them.
She leaned back against the gravestone, put her headphones on and flicked through her iPod. She wondered what track to play and whether she could convince her parents to get her an iPhone for her birthday in May.
Someone shaking her shoulder woke Sophia up and she wondered where she was. Then she saw her mother frowning down at her and felt the rough stone against her back.
“You were supposed to be helping Grandma Iris,” her mother said. “Not having a nap.”
“Sorry,” Sophia mumbled.
Her mother sighed. “Let’s just get home.”
Sophia shot straight up to her bedroom and threw herself on the bed. Her mother’s disappointed tones echoed in her head. She rolled over, placed her iPod in its dock and turned the volume up to try to blot them out.
By lunchtime, her mother seemed fine with her again, so Sophia dared to ask if she could go round to Jen’s. Her mother pursed her lips for a moment before her face relaxed.
“Okay, but be back by four.”
Sophia grinned. “Thanks Mum, I will be.”
Ten minutes later, she was cycling the two streets to Jen’s house. They spent the afternoon taking photos with Jen’s phone, playing with effects and uploading the results to Facebook.
Sophia was only allowed on the family laptop for an hour a day, under supervision, unless it was for homework purposes.
She could not wait until she was allowed to have her own laptop and phone, like Jen. It was so unfair of her parents to keep the wireless password secret, so she could not even get online with her iPod. They also checked all the music she downloaded before letting her listen to it. Heaven forbid that they might trust her to talk to her friends online or have any fun at all.
Four o’clock came too quickly and she headed home. At least it was Saturday, which meant family film night. Pizza, popcorn and probably some kind of action film, as it was her brother’s turn to pick.
She was halfway through a slice of pepperoni pizza when the phone rang. Her mother answered it and came back in holding the phone.
“It’s Jen’s mother. She wants to know if you remember where Jen had put her phone?” her mother asked.
“It was on her bed I think,” Sophia replied.
“She says it was on her bed,” her mother repeated into the phone as she wandered back out of the lounge.
A few minutes later, her mother returned. She had Sophia’s Hello Kitty backpack in one hand and Jen’s phone in the other. Her face was white and pinched.
“What’s Jen’s phone doing in your bag young lady?” her mother asked quietly.
“What are you doing going in my bag?” Sophia replied defensively.
“I didn’t. I noticed it poking out of the side pocket as I walked past. Now, how did it get in there?”
“Don’t ask me! Perhaps Jen put it in there as a joke?” Sophia said.
“I hardly think so. Her mother said she’s very upset at losing it.”
“I don’t know what it’s doing in there. Perhaps it fell in.”
“Fell in?” Her mother’s voice got quieter and sterner.
“I’m sure there’s an explanation,” her father commented. He was trying to
keep the peace, as usual, while her brother grabbed another slice of pizza and settled in to watch the show. Sophia nodded and frantically tried to remember what had happened when she left Jen’s that afternoon. She was sure the phone had been on Jen’s bed when she went downstairs to get her bike. She had left her bag in the hall for a few minutes. Perhaps Jen’s younger sister had slipped the phone into her bag then? It did not seem like the sort of thing she would do, but Sophia couldn’t think how else it had got there and she certainly had not stolen it.
“I really hope there’s an explanation,” her mother said, throwing Sophia’s bag to the floor.
The rest of the contents spilled out. Sophia’s purse, glittery lip balm and notebook, but also a brand new lipstick, a black memory stick and a Top Gear DVD.
She stared at them in shock. How did any of that stuff get in her bag? Someone was messing with her.
The rest of her family also stared at the items scattered on the floor and the shouting began. Her mother had only bought that lipstick that morning. Dad had important work on the memory stick, and her brother had been looking for that DVD all afternoon. The noisy demands for an explanation grew until her father roared at them all to shut up.
Sophia looked at him, her eyes wide. Her father hardly ever raised his voice. He looked back at her, with disappointment creasing his face.
“Why did you take all these things?” he asked.
“I didn’t, Dad. I didn’t.” she replied.
“Don’t lie. It only makes it worse. Just tell us why you did it.”
Sophia just kept repeating that she did not take them. Why would she? She did not understand what was happening.
Her dad rubbed his face and pointed to the stairs.
“You’d better go to your room and think about what you’ve done. Your mother and I need to discuss what to do about this.”
Sophia ran out of the lounge, tears pricking at her eyes.
The next hour passed in a blur, as her parents came up to lecture her about stealing. She wanted to protest, to shout out that she hadn’t done anything wrong, but all she could do was sob. How could they believe she would do something like this?