Catfish in the Cradle

by Wile E Young

  From somewhere deep I heard something boom, like a deep pounding drum.

  I froze behind the Deep Folk, maybe twenty feet, as it hastened its pace making a right turn at a fork in the tunnel.

  For a minute I thought about drying out my lighter again but with how loud I had been earlier I was damn sure that the thing would hear me. Its sight may have been shot to shit, but I bet its hearing worked all too well.

  I followed behind it, careful to make sure that my footfalls weren’t making too much noise. It had quickened its pace, seemingly eager to answer the beat of the drums that were now pounding away deep in the bowels of this hell.

  There were hollows and side caverns branching off the side of this tunnel, things I didn’t bother to explore as I passed, my mind conjuring images of horrible things just waiting for me to step in their line of sight and become easy prey.

  The tunnel began widening and another glow began to fill the tunnel, orange and red… fire. A roaring reached me that mixed in with the now steady beat of the drums.

  The tunnel ended, and the creature walked out of it while I hid behind a pile of rocks in a small crevasse near the exit. The cavern was massive with jagged rocks and tidal pools of liquid mercury filled with glowing algae. Torches burned everywhere next to crude wooden cages and altars.

  One rock more massive than the others jutted from the pool at the center of the cavern. It had been carved into a massive idol of a Deep Folk, chiseled in the likeness of its primordial glory. A waterfall of mercury oozed down from above, drowning the idol in its torrent and forming the pool at its feet. My vision might have been shot but I could definitely make out all the blood that was mixed in that silvery lagoon.

  On ledges and alcoves around the cavern, Deep Folk beat drums. And on the floor, The fishmen were clustered beneath the idol, all of them waiting, larger fully-formed specimens at the front while their deformed brethren scampered and hissed behind them.

  Men and women lay in a heap between the creatures writhing in the mercury, their stomachs grotesquely swollen in pregnancy.

  Bile rose in the back of my throat and I fought to keep myself from vomiting. I shut my eyes tight… so many of these revolting things and then that… my mind couldn’t take it anymore.

  I rocked back and forth, knew I had to be in their home… the Cradle. There was no other explanation.

  The birthing screams echoed in my head like Sammie Jo’s own on repeat, complete with the squealing infant that came caterwauling from their wombs.

  My mind told me not to, that I would I would never forget what I was about to see, that I would spend the rest of my life having sleepless nights screaming into the dark at what was at the bottom of the lake.

  I looked. The men were dead, their bellies ripped open, lifeless eyes as wide as their mouths, that last scream of pain shadowed on their faces. The women were a mix. Some just looked tired and hollow ,others jubilant. The tall, fully-formed Deep Folk reached down and picked them up, carrying them away like a bride. Their deformed comrades fell upon the dead men with ravenous glee, bits of blood and sinew flying.

  Under them, weaving in and out between their legs, were tadpole like monstrosities new to life and eager to feast on what their older brothers left behind.

  This wasn’t like Lincoln; these things weren’t whole…

  A mad chuckle escaped my lips… they were dying slow. Good riddance.

  Darkness hovered at the edge of my vision and I knew that I couldn’t handle another viewing of so many… I’d go blind.

  When I was a kid my momma told me that if I kept reading at night, I’d go blind. Don’t think momma ever factored fucking fish people into the mixture.

  I got up and turned, ignoring the sounds of happy hooting and cracking bone behind me.

  Chapter Eighteen

  My lighter dried again rather quickly. Didn’t realize how cold I had been until the small flickering flame sent a wave of warm comfort shooting down my arm.

  Pretty sure my eyes were fucked, or maybe it was my mind. Either way my vision was still blurred. Maybe that was how it was going to be for me: eternity wandering around this labyrinth, slowing losing my marbles.

  I’d kill every son of a bitch I found, though.

  The light illuminated blurry shapes that I had to squint to make out; I had seen carved tableaus, underground rivers, but no more of the monsters that had destroyed my life. No more noise other than the drifting water, and I crept along in the darkness praying for a way out.

  Then I heard the crying and immediately froze in place.

  It was all too human, and that was what scared me the most. I placed my hand on an old wooden beam and leaned my head out.

  A woman lay against the stone wall, rubbing her face against the cool rock. She was naked and her belly was swollen, massively pregnant.

  “Miss him, miss him terribly… can’t go home, can’t go home…”

  I wasn’t stupid. I knew a trap when I saw it, I was perfectly prepared to walk right past whatever this was.

  “Grady?” I froze in place, my heart stopped, the tension in my chest clenched so tightly I couldn’t breathe. “Grady?” She repeated it again.

  My dead wife rose shakily to her feet. My last memory of her had been a woman limp and decrepit inside her casket.

  Now she was young, her belly swollen with life.

  “Renee…” I breathed out, reaching out a trembling hand as she nodded, tears in her eyes. Her skin was warm, and she leaned her head into my palm, tears spiraling down her face as she smiled.

  I wrapped her up in my embrace and wept tears of pure joy; reunited, she wasn’t dead…

  “I missed you so bad.”

  “I missed you, too.”

  Didn’t want to let go of that embrace. Looking down and kissing the top of her head I whispered, “How are you here?”

  My wife shook her head. “I’m not.”

  She shoved out of my embrace, stepping back, her eyes rolling back into her head, all whites and bloodshot veins.

  “Down here in my womb, Grady Pope… never leave, never leave, never leave.”

  I watched wide0eyed as blood began seeping from between her legs, thick globs running down, coloring her skin so dark it was nearly black.

  “I want the child.”

  Her voice wasn’t her own; it was like the deepest point of a suck hole, all rage and crashing water.

  She reached down between her legs, cupping her hand and letting the blood congeal inside it before sloshing it in her face and hair.

  “T’usa phalay icha VHI’OCTA!”

  Gibberish words that I didn’t understand, but I screamed when the fish came erupting from between her legs in spurt of blood. The placenta dropped behind it with a wet pop, a fully formed bass flopping on the stone floor.

  Renee reached down and grabbed it, cuddling and cooing with it like a baby.

  I turned and ran into the tunnel, the mocking laughter followed me.

  ****

  I took tunnels at random. Didn’t know where I was going; all I knew was that I was at my wit’s and sanity’s end. I just wanted to get out, go home, wrap my grandson up and leave this lake behind me.

  They’d done it, they’d broken me. I loved Uncertain… I loved the lake…

  Knowing what I knew now I swore that if I made it out of this place, I would put the muddy water and the cypress in my rear view mirror.

  Images whirled past me: a small cave that contained three pregnant women crouching naked around a flank of meat… a solitary Deep Folk submerged up to its chest in a tidal pool ravishing a naked man with its repulsive hand…

  Things that left my eyes bleeding.

  There was a blast of humid air and the tunnel disappeared; a wide-open cavern too massive for my puny lighter to illuminate.

  I turned around to head back. The entrance was gone, a solid wall of mud and rock all that remained. I pawed at the thick mud desperately, chipping my fingernails and cutting my flesh on the jagged
rocks underneath.

  Hopelessly, I sank to my knees and let my head thud into the dripping mud wall. There was no way out, and behind me an infinite blackness that probably contained all manner of monstrosities and sights too horrible for me to conceive.

  If I just sat here and let myself starve to death, that would bring an end to everything. No more poverty, no more loneliness, just me and the blessed dark.

  There was shuffling behind me; no doubt whatever had been down here saw my light and the promise of an easy meal. I flipped over and looked at the dark, ready to scream and cuss at whatever was coming along to end it.

  “Grady?”

  Sheriff Otis Porter came crawling out the blackness. His clothes were torn, exposing his bare chest and gut that were covered in scrapes and bruises. His face was bone white and haggard looking like he hadn’t had a decent meal or sleep in ages.

  His legs were both gone, just burned stumps below his knees that kicked back and forth uselessly as he crawled toward me.

  I didn’t bother moving. Renee hadn’t been real, so why should this be real either?

  “Grady help me…” He grasped the bottom of my shoes. “For the love of God please!”

  I felt the tears water in the back of my eyes; I braced for the end.

  “Grady it’s so close to your house, the entrance to this place… don’t just sit there dammit!”

  His sudden scream shocked me, and I snapped out of my fugue. “You’re not real Otis, you’re not here.”

  Otis groaned and looked down at his legs. “It fucking hurts, Pope. It’s hell… the ones who are too old to breed, they eat.” His muffled sobs reached me as he looked down at his stumps. “My fucking legs, they ripped them right off and let me crawl away.” His eyes twisted wildly in their sockets. “Those warbling laughs, this place, it fucks with your head.” Otis twisted a finger on the side of his skull before gripping my leg tight. “Get up, damn you! Get up!”

  “You aren’t here Otis…” I said, flatly refusing to move. My friend looked like I had stabbed him in the heart as he opened wide and bit into my leg, causing me to grunt and clench my teeth in pain.

  “I’m here!” He hissed spitting out a bit of my blood. “I’ve seen how they come and go. That’s why they took my legs because God help me, I saw them!”

  He twisted like a slug, unable to crawl, and pointed back into the blackness. “It’s just there. Just get up and we can swim for it. We can make it!”

  My hope was a shriveled thing, like a worm that had been left on a hot sidewalk. The insanity had taken it and left it shivering in a corner, bleeding, begging for a reprieve…

  Begging for my wife, my child, and my friends.

  Then the other part of me, the part of me that hated, the instinct that had carried me to victory over countless predators over the years, this deep primal part of me appeared…

  It kicked the ass of that quivering heap and found its balls.

  Still didn’t believe that Otis was real but I would be damned if I was going to sit here and die in the dark like a fucking coward.

  I clambered to my feet. “Where?” My voice was hoarse; all the screaming had worked the cords over.

  Otis pointed a shaking finger. “There’s a slope back there, lot of rocks and mud, old houses sunk into the lake, things living in them…” His lip trembled, and I thought he was on the verge of breaking down before he finished. “Big pool of water, like a suck hole. They’ve been swimming, going in… that’s the way out.”

  Well that was flimsy as shit. Even if it was a way out, there was no way to tell how far it was out of here.

  What the hell: I’d rather drown than let myself be eaten by the damn things here.

  I stepped over Otis and began walking down the way he came.

  “Grady…” He sounded worried; I kept walking.

  “Grady!”

  I kept walking, ignoring him.

  “Grady, don’t leave me here!”

  He wasn’t real.

  At least that’s what I kept telling myself.

  ****

  The path down the slope had a few jutting rocks that I tried to find steady footholds on. It was hard to see in the gloom. My lighter hadn’t been designed to provide light to such big spaces; even now it was sputtering, the butane inside beginning to run dry.

  The illusion of Otis was still screaming for me to come back.

  That soft part of me that had wanted to curl up and die screamed for me to go back.

  Guilt is for those who can’t handle survival.

  I tested the next rock with my foot and slipped.

  Didn’t even have time to be surprised before I was tumbling down the hill. I hit a rock, another, something cracked inside of me.

  I came to a rest and struggled to breathe, each gasp of air like a knife being dragged through my insides.

  Water was close, I could smell it, thought there was a tell-tale splashing too. So close…

  I had dropped my lighter when I fell. Now it was just me and the darkness.

  Deep Folk were near. I could hear that vile croaking along with footsteps as they sloshed through the mud and water.

  Crawled a few feet forward, then a few more, my mind blank, the pain sharp… I touched water, real water, not the mud puddles or shallow pools that were down here.

  It was deep, immediately dropping off. The pool went up to my arm and the current tugged at it.

  Footfalls behind me…

  I threw myself in and let it take me.

  The current sucked me down, dragging me along; I held my breath… the pain in my chest made me want to scream.

  I don’t know how long I twirled through that dark abyss, pulled along like a child’s toy swirling towards a drain.

  I just knew that I began to float upward.

  I saw light.

  My lungs felt like they would burst any second, my mind convinced that a hand gripped with talons would circle around my leg and pull me back under.

  The sun was shining when I broke the surface, gasping for air.

  I tread water ignoring the agony; I was in the river, not the big lake. The trees and terrain here looked familiar but couldn’t quite make out where exactly I had found myself.

  Something hard hit my back and I yelped, turning in the water, prepared to see some monstrosity looming over me.

  Channel Marker 158 jutted from the water, its shadow cast long towards the shore.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I stumbled through the trees, clutching my side. Could have been noon or late morning; the mist had cleared off the lake and now it was just baking heat. The mosquitoes alighted on me as soon as I left the water, smell of blood in the air from a wounded old animal.

  Each step was torment. Didn’t realize how much I was bleeding. My old bones were done, the adrenaline that had driven me run out.

  I was going to get home on sheer determination alone.

  Saw Cy’s… Luc’s old cabin appear out of the trees and thought I heard a booming bark.

  My energy disappeared, and darkness took me.

  ****

  Whispered words, images of a dark cave, old fishing trips, deformed half human fishmen, a god with a bloody face…

  I opened my eyes to a haze of blurs and colors I didn’t recognize. I was inside a house but my vision was so shitty it could have been an outhouse for all I knew. There was a cool washcloth across my head and I thought I heard muffled voices.

  “He’s awake.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Because I can tell. You’re so eager to believe every piece of mumbo jumbo I tell you so why can’t you just trust my words on anything else?”

  I groaned and held up a hand. “You... don’t have to talk about me… like I’m not here.” Every word took effort and felt like I was eating nails. A familiar hand held mine tight.

  “You’ve got spunk old man; if you came from where Robichaude says you did… you’re a hard son of a bitch.”

  I cracke
d a small smile. I couldn’t help it… hearing Gideon Whyte’s voice was music. “What happened to that tight-lipped… respect you heaped on me… the other day?”

  Gideon paused and then gripped my hand tighter. “Threw it out with my relationship.”

  That was the understatement of the year.

  “How… how long have I been out?”

  Luc’s voice came drifting through the haze. “Two days, Mr. Pope. Davis Trucker was by earlier and put some of his old army training to use patching you up. Did what I could with my arts but after all the workings I’ve been doing over the past few days I’m tapped.”

  I coughed and something wet gurgled in my throat; a cold washcloth was pressed to my mouth. “Spit it up, there’s a good man.”

  When I finally cleared my mouth I let my head fall down with a weary sigh. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here.”

  Both of my friends lapsed into silence.

  Something had happened.

  “What… happened?” I groaned.

  “Apparently your escape from the Cradle didn’t go over so well. They’ve done a world class conjuring and flooded the whole damn river.”

  “The water hasn’t made it up to Shady Glade yet, but Davis said it’s close. Tons of debris in the river… nut jobs still out hunting in the middle of the rain.” Gideon said, his back against the brightly covered walls.

  I tried to sit up and lay back with a groan. my side screaming. Luc laid his hands on me gently.

  “Just relax; we’re safe for now. The Deep Folk aren’t going to be finding this place soon.”

  We weren’t in Luc’s cabin; the walls weren’t the same… not as much space.

  “Where are we?”

  “Roads were washed out and the water was coming up quick, took the 175 to Gideon’s place.”

  I groaned. I knew exactly where Gideon Whyte lived.

  “Welcome to the Minute Mother, Mr. Pope… finest houseboat floating.”

  We were on the river; any of those crimes against nature could have been swimming under the boat right now. I felt sick to my stomach.