The dead toads stared at him silently. The night was still. He heard a small shuffle. ‘What was that?’ he gasped aloud. There was no anawer.
He looked at the toad captain of the Collingwood football team. Its eyes seemed to stare back. Frisbee blinked his eyes and looked again. A cold shiver ran up his spine. Had that football toad blinked? Surely not. It couldn’t. It was dead.
From the shelves, hundreds and hundreds of dead toads peered down at him. Their eyes seemed to say ‘murderer’.
‘Nonsense,’ whispered Frisbee to himself. ‘Dead toads don’t know anything. Neither do live ones for that matter.’ He felt foolish for whispering.
He heard another scuffle in the silence and jumped. He looked at the toad with the fishing rod. Had that line moved? Surely not.
For the first time in his life Frisbee was scared. He was terrified. The stuffed toads seemed to stare at him as if any moment they might jump down and attack him. He remembered that the Rambo toad had a sharp little hunting knife in its hand.
He heard another soft movement behind him. He looked around suddenly and nearly fainted with fear. One of the tennis toads was moving. He was sure of it. He could see its throat pulsing as if it was breathing. Suddenly the toad lifted up its tiny tennis racquet and threw its little ball into the air. It hit the ball over the net.
Frisbee rubbed his eyes and screamed out loud. The toad on the other side of the net returned the serve. The stuffed toads were playing tennis.
Frisbee charged at the locked door. His terror gave him super strength and he burst the door from its hinges and ran screaming into the night.
Martin laughed gently from his hiding place behind a tree. Then he walked into the shed and picked up the two tennis toads. ‘Well, Pancake and Fruitcake,’ he said. ‘It was hard work teaching you to play tennis. But it sure was worth it.’
‘The way I see it,’ says Jacko.
‘You’re pretty small,’ says Johnno.
‘For a boy of fifteen,’ says Tommo.
I look up at the three brothers. They are all wearing the same checked shirts. They all have the same tattoo on the backs of their hands. They are all real big guys. And they are right – I am small for my age.
‘Geez,’ I think to myself. ‘I can hardly tell them apart. They even look like each other.’
I am very nervous. This is my first job ever and I want to do well. All my life I have dreamed about working on a fishing boat like this one. All my life I have wanted to get away and sail out on the open sea. It is only a holiday job but it is my big chance. If I do well the brothers might keep me on for good.
‘Come aboard the Oracle,’ says Jacko.
‘And see if you like it,’ says Johnno.
‘Living on a cray boat,’ says Tommo.
I follow the brothers up the gangplank and onto the deck. I breathe in deep. I take in the smell of the salt air and the coiled ropes and the scrubbed decks. ‘Ah,’ I say out loud. ‘Excellent.’
The brothers grin.
‘That is a very good sign, Alan,’ says Jacko.
‘That you are going to do much better …’ says Johnno.
‘Than the last boy,’ says Tommo.
I stare up at them. ‘What happened to him?’ I say.
The three brothers look down into the dark, still water. The smiles fall from their faces. They all speak together. ‘He is feeding the fishes,’ they say with one angry voice.
I suddenly feel cold all over. A picture comes into my mind. A picture of a silent body lying still on the bottom of the ocean. Fishes nibbling at its toes.
I want to ask, ‘What happened? Did he fall overboard?’ But I look into the brothers’ brooding eyes and decide not to.
2
The brothers give me jobs straight away. Scrubbing the deck. Stacking the empty craypots. Scraping rust from steel railings and painting them with red undercoat. I am so happy to be going to sea. And so are the brothers. They sing together as they work.
They seem to love one particular song. They sing it over and over. It’s about some old guy who lives on a mountain with his daughter. And no one is allowed to go near her. Lots of guys want to because she has lips that are sweeter than honey. But everyone is too scared to risk it because the old guy is handy with a gun and a knife.
The way the brothers lift their voices makes it seem as if they know the person in the song. Sometimes tears come to their eyes as they sing about her tender lips.
Finally I just have to ask. I point to their tattoos and the word that is etched on each hand. ‘Who is Shelley?’ I ask. ‘Is she your mother?’
The brothers stop work.
‘She is our sun,’ says Jacko.
‘She is the stars,’ says Johnno.
‘She is our little sister,’ says Tommo.
‘And here she is,’ says a soft voice.
I look up and see a girl. She is about my age and very pretty. She wears denim shorts all frayed at the edges. And a tight top. She has deep brown eyes and dark hair. And her feet are bare.
She smiles with a soft, kind mouth. A very nice thought about her tender lips comes into my mind. I try to push it away and stare at the distant cliffs. For a second the rocks at the end of the cliffs seem like two faces kissing. I rub my eyes and turn back to the brothers.
‘This is Shelley,’ says Jacko.
‘If anyone ever touches her,’ says Johnno.
‘They will end up feeding the fishes like the last kid,’ says Tommo.
Shelley gives me a warm smile and holds out her hand. ‘Hello,’ she says. ‘Don’t take any notice of them. They don’t really mean it.’
I look at the three brothers and can tell that they do really mean it. But I hold out my hand and try very hard not to think about how I would like to kiss Shelley. I try very hard indeed. I do not want to get the sack before I have even started. And I do not want to end up feeding the fishes either.
3
So the cray boat puts out to sea. With me and the brothers and Shelley. I love the work. I learn to put the chopped fish-heads and bones into the craypots for bait. I learn how to lower them down to the bottom of the ocean. How to attach them to buoys so that we can come back and recover the pots. I learn to empty the live crayfish into the holding tank down below. I learn to cook. And scrub. And to keep away from Shelley.
She is on my mind all the time. But every time I get anywhere near her one of the brothers pops up from nowhere and sends me to the other side of the boat.
Not that I would have a chance with someone like her. Beautiful and clever. Not like me. Nah, she wouldn’t be interested in me. And even if she was I couldn’t risk it. Those brothers mean it. They really would toss me overboard if I so much as touched her.
So I put all my thoughts into my work. I come to love that boat. It is much more than a place of work. It is a home that goes everywhere with us. The sound of the engine turning is like a heart beating. It is almost as if the boat is alive. A friend that will never let me down.
‘You are doing well,’ says Jacko. ‘But—’
‘Don’t love a boat too much,’ says Johnno.
‘It is only a boat,’ says Tommo. ‘It can’t love you back.’
But I am not too sure. Sometimes at night when the moonlight is on the water and the sea is still, the boat seems to talk to me. I think I was born to go to sea.
4
One morning, early, I watch Johnno pulling in a craypot. It is deep in the green sea, somewhere out of sight. I watch the dark shape gradually take form as it nears the surface. Closer and closer. There is something in it but it is not a crayfish.
Johnno dumps the craypot on the deck. Then he gives a terrible scream. ‘Aaagh. Seeshell,’ he yells. ‘Seeshell.’
Jacko and Tommo scramble over to the pot as fast as they can go.
I look at the shell. It is a creamy colour, rippled and shaped like a beautiful clam. It is tightly shut. The brothers are staring at the Seeshell as if it is a hand grenade that is about to go off.
Johnno has his eyes tightly shut. ‘Careful,’ he whispers.
Jacko has his hands over his eyes. ‘Don’t drop it,’ he says. ‘It might open.’
Tommo holds the Seeshell out over the water and lets go. Plink, it splashes into the ocean and swirls down into the depths.
The brothers start to race around like crazy. ‘Lift the anchor,’ yells Johnno. ‘This is a bad spot for fishing.’
‘Pull in the other craypot, Alan,’ shouts Jacko.
Tommo disappears into the wheelhouse and starts the engine. The brothers sure are in a terrible hurry to get out of here. Shelley is down below. She doesn’t know anything about what’s been going on.
I start to pull up the rope on the other craypot. Faster and faster. Here it comes. There is something in it. A crayfish? A crab? What is it?
The brothers are all getting the boat ready to leave. Shelley is pulling in the anchor with the electric winch. Nobody is taking any notice of me.
I grab the craypot and haul it onto the deck. Then I look inside.
5
It is a Seeshell. Much smaller than the other one. It is also creamy and rippled. But one thing is different. The shell is starting to open and strange red tentacles wave like slippery eyelashes. I give a shudder and open my mouth to yell out to the brothers.
But then it happens. Oh, weird. Disgusting. Oh, yuck.
The shell opens right up and there inside is something looking out. An eye. Right in the middle is a bulging eye. Not a fish-type eye, cold and still. But a human type eye with a pupil.
The eye stares at me.
And I stare back.
I start to think. All my life I have been poor. I have never had expensive Christmas presents. I have never even owned a bike.
And now I am staring at a fortune. A shell with an eye? No one has ever seen such a thing. I could sell it. The story would be worth millions. Newspapers, magazines, television, the Internet. Everyone would want to see it. But for some reason the brothers do not want to keep the Seeshell. They are scared of it. Maybe they are superstitious.
If I show the Seeshell to the brothers, I already know what they will do. They will throw it back. But at the moment they are too busy getting the boat ready to leave. They are not paying any attention to me.
I see an old bait jar nearby. As quick as lightning I tip the contents into the sea. Then I grab the tongs that Tommo had thrown on the deck. With shaking fingers I drop the Seeshell into the jar and screw on the lid. The Seeshell closes up as tight as a clam. For the moment the eye is gone from sight.
I carefully hide the jar under some ropes and get on with my jobs. After a couple of hours the brothers stop the boat.
‘This is a much better spot,’ says Jacko. ‘We’ll put down the pots.’
So that is what we do.
Dropping pots is slow work and it takes half a day to lower them down into the water. We attach a rope to each craypot and leave a buoy so that we can find it again. All the time I am working I can only think of two things. The eye in the Seeshell, and Shelley, the brothers’ beautiful sister.
Shelley seems to want to talk to me but I am scared to go near her. Once my hand accidentally touched hers when we were cleaning fish. It sent a tingle right up my arm.
But I can’t think about it. It is too dangerous. I get stuck into my jobs and try to forget about her. Finally I am finished. I grab the bait jar and then go to my favourite spot at the back of the boat. This part of the boat is low and I can touch the sea with my hand. I take the lid off the jar and fill it up with salt water. I don’t want the Seeshell to die. It won’t be worth as much if it dies.
I screw the lid back on the jar and watch. The Seeshell slowly opens. There it is. There is the eye. It stares at me without blinking.
Suddenly I see something weird. Not in the jar. Not on the boat. Not out to sea. Not even in the sky.
What I see is inside my head. A picture inside my mind. Just as clear as day. It’s as if I am watching a movie. I see a little scene that is not really happening. I see Johnno coming up from below. He hauls himself up onto the deck, leans over the side and spits into the water. Then he wipes his forehead with his arm. Even when I close my eyes I can still see him doing it.
I open my eyes and see that the Seeshell has closed. There is no one else on the deck. My brain seems to freeze over. What is going on? Am I seeing things? Am I going crazy? Having visions about things that are not really there.
Suddenly I hear something from below. Someone is coming. I quickly shove the Seeshell jar under some ropes. I hear footsteps. Johnno hauls himself up onto the deck, leans over the side and spits into the water. Then he wipes his forehead with his arm.
Just like he did in my vision.
I saw him do that. I saw him spit into the water before he even did it. Something is terribly wrong with me. I need help.
But who can I ask? Johnno and Tommo and Jacko will be mad at me for keeping the Seeshell. I might end up feeding the fishes like the last kid. Is that what he did wrong? Kept a Seeshell when he wasn’t supposed to?
What will I do?
6
‘Okay,’ says Johnno. ‘Let’s get going.’
‘Let’s find a place to anchor,’ says Tommo.
‘For the night,’ says Jacko.
Tommo starts the engine and we head for shore.
There is nothing for me to do so I sit up the back of the boat and think.
I go over and over what happened. And it all comes down to this. When I looked into the eye of the Seeshell I saw something before it happened. I saw Johnno spit into the water before he did it.
Yes. There is no doubt about it. The Seeshell can see into the future. It knows what is going to happen. And it can send out thoughts. It can make me see what is going to happen too.
The sun sinks into the ocean and soft moonlight floats on the gently swelling sea. The jar with the Seeshell inside is out of sight under the ropes. I know what I should do. I should grab the jar and throw it into the ocean. Johnno and Tommo and Jacko don’t like it. Seeshells are dangerous. I should never look at it again.
But then I think about it. It would be great to see into the future. You could win bets. You could tell someone’s fortune. You would know what lotto numbers were coming up. You could win first prize every time.
I look into the jar. The Seeshell seems to be calling to me. It wants me to pick it up. ‘Come here,’ it seems to say. ‘Fall under my spell.’
Is it the Seeshell speaking? Or are these my own thoughts?
Slowly, slowly, slowly, I reach under the ropes and pull out the jar. The Seeshell is tightly closed. It is keeping all of its secrets to itself.
Then suddenly it starts to open. It reminds me of a mouth yawning. And there it is. The terrible eye. Staring at me.
I shudder and shut my own eyes. Straight away I see another vision. I see a picture in my head. As clear as day. Only it is not day. It is night, and soft moonlight is floating gently on the swelling sea.
In my vision the Oracle is cutting through the water at high speed. It is heading straight for a reef of jagged rocks just above the surface of the water. In the moonlight I can plainly see the edges of a cruel reef. Crunch. The Oracle runs straight into the rocks. A terrible hole is torn into the bow just above the waterline.
I open my eyes in horror. The Seeshell has shown me what is going to happen. We are going to smash into a reef and damage the boat. And I am the only one who knows it.
Think, think, think. Yes, I know what to do. Yes, I know. I will make Johnno change course. Then we won’t crash into the waiting rocks that lie out there in the night. We will go a different way. We will be saved.
But how can I make Johnno change course?
Simple.
‘R
ocks,’ I yell. ‘Rocks dead ahead.’
Johnno puts his head out of the wheelhouse. ‘I can’t see them,’ he yells.
‘Straight ahead,’ I yell. ‘Change course.’
Johnno shouts back in a hoarse voice. ‘We’re on course. We’re in the channel. I’ve been here a thousand times. There are no rocks in the channel.’
He is not going to change course. And the Seeshell has shown me what lies ahead. I have to do something.
‘I see them,’ I yell. ‘I see rocks.’
Johnno pulls fiercely on the wheel. The boat changes direction.
I have done it. I have put us on a different course. Now the Seeshell’s prophecy will not come true. Oh, it is so good to be able to see into the future.
The Oracle is cutting through the water at high speed. The empty sea is …
Not empty.
The boat is heading straight for a reef of jagged rocks just above the surface of the water. In the moonlight I can plainly see the edges of a cruel reef.
Crunch.
The Oracle runs straight into the rocks. A terrible hole is torn into the bow just above the waterline.
7
The brothers run to the front and stare at the hole. We are not in danger but the boat has been badly damaged. Johnno is furious. ‘You mongrel. You led us onto the rocks,’ he screamed. ‘Look what you have done.’
He grabs my head and shoves it over the side. He wants me to look but I can’t. The hole in the boat is like a gash in living flesh. A wound inflicted on a friend. I can’t believe what has happened. The Seeshell showed me the boat crashing onto rocks. I tried to stop it. But my actions made it happen. There is no way to stop the future. Once the Seeshell shows you something you can’t stop it happening.
Now I know why the brothers are scared of the Seeshell. Now I know why they moved to another fishing ground when they caught one. Seeshells are bad news.
There is only one thing left to do. I have to get rid of the Seeshell. And quick.
The brothers are pulling a cover over the hole in the bow. They ignore me. I am in disgrace. I make my way to the back of the boat and carefully take out the jar. It is dark and I can’t see the Seeshell. Good. I am safe from it.
Paul Jenning's Spookiest Stories Page 19