Duet

by O'Gorman, Brian

  “Haven’t you had enough of me for one day? People will start gossiping Gregory.”

  “I must love it really mustn’t I?” said Greg cheerfully.

  “What can I do for you big man.”

  “Sorry to hassle you after hours Louis, but I need to say something.”

  “Go on,” said Louis. He heart began to skip again, this time in possible anticipation of Greg asking if he could come over. Perhaps he was going to say that he needed to see her, that he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He could be there in ten minutes and she could have him in bed within two. She would come within one, there was no doubt about that, then she could roll over and let him….

  “It’s about what June Dobson said….about the water I mean. I keep thinking about it. There is something about what she said that has me unnerved Louis.”

  Louis’s heart sank. She felt the swollen bubble of anticipation deflate slowly and painfully. “I was thinking the same thing Greg. She might be a crazy old bird, but I think she saw something.”

  “Do you think we could go and see her again tomorrow Louis? I would like to have another shot at talking to her, perhaps give us a clue as to what’s going on out there.”

  “O.K. Greg, we will go first thing. She said she likes to watch the sun come up so we know she is an early riser. We might even get a coffee out of it.”

  “Hey, don’t tell Nicola, she has cappuccino for us tomorrow morning.”

  Louis forced a laugh, “O.K. sport, now fuck off and let me rest will you?”

  Greg laughed back, “O.K. Sarge, I will see you tomorrow.”

  Louis hung up on him without saying goodbye which was her usual thing for Greg. Treat him mean, see if he comes back. That was her take on the old saying and Greg always came back, every time.

  She turned her attention back to the bowl of soapy water. After a moment of contemplation, she lifted the side of the bowl and tipped it all away. She didn’t want to put her hands in that water until she had spoken to June tomorrow. She ordered Pizza instead and when it arrived she ate it straight from the box whilst sitting in front of the television. She poured herself a generous glass of red wine and got herself comfy for a decent nights television. She was asleep sitting up in her seat after two mouthfuls of wine and she didn’t stir again until her phone rang at six the next morning.

  8.

  Just as Louis began snoring and her glass of red wine was overbalancing and generously soaking her crotch, Bentley Robert Mason was on his way out of his front door so he could go night fishing. His wife of seven years Louise had been putting up a protest about him going, but he was going to go anyway. She couldn’t tell him what to do, after all, he was the man of the house, he brought the money home, so if she didn’t like it then she knew where the front door was. As he was exiting the house with all of his gear slung over his shoulder, she screamed one more curse at him and then made her way upstairs to go and sit in the silent solitude of their bedroom. She would be on the phone within five minutes to her mother complaining about what a useless piece of shit he was and how she was going to leave him. Her mother would listen in good humour, knowing full well that she had no intention of doing either. She also knew that Bentley would be in a more loving mood when he got back and the next night Louise would be phoning her telling her what a lovely man he was, until the next time of course. She always advised Louise just to let him go and do his thing. All men had to go and do their thing, whether it was fishing, football or propping up a bar sinking a few cold pints. They needed to go out and hunt, it was what men did, and when they came back they were more affectionate and more loving because they had got it out of their system. But would Louise listen? Would she shite.

  Bentley enjoyed his fishing. He had done ever since he was twelve years old and his big brother Alan had taken him night fishing. It had been such a wonderful adventure for him to be out after dark. He had just barely managed to stay awake until the sun had come up the next morning. They had caught five fish and they were just as pleased as punch about it. Every weekend after that, he had persuaded Alan to go fishing and he had obliged. The weekend ceremony had gone on until one bright morning in the height of spring time, Al had been crossing the road using the pedestrian crossing to get to the shop to buy his daily supply of smokes, when a car driven by a balding overweight solicitor by the name of Dom Lature came hurtling into the crossing. Al had both his knees broken on impact and his upper body was thrown forwards onto the car with such force that some of his mashed brains had actually been poking out of his left eye. Lature was breathalysed and he was found to be four times over the legal drinking limit. He was sent to prison for vehicular manslaughter and three days into his sentence he dropped dead in his cell, the victim of a massive stroke. Bentley had been devastated and he didn’t go fishing again for ten years. It was on the tenth anniversary that he decided to go and sit by the reservoir in the spot that was shared by him and his brother. As he sat there thinking about all the good times that they had shared sitting by the edge of the water he saw something that at first made his blood run cold, but then filled him with warmth and happiness, enough to help him to take the next tentative steps forwards in his life. The water began to ripple, just a small amount at first but then it grew, bigger and wider. It took him a few moments to realise that there were fish coming to the surface of the reservoir, looking for food. It might have been the fading light, but it looked to Bentley like the entire fish stocks had come to the surface to show him that they were still there and they were waiting for him to come and catch them. Bentley had taken it as a sign from his long dead brother that it was time for him to carry on doing the things that he loved without him, it was time to dust off the old fishing gear and to start enjoying his life again. He had thought it over for three days and then he had gone out and blown most of his savings on new equipment. That weekend he had gone night fishing and caught five fish, the exact same amount as when he had done it for the first time. Whenever he was sat by that reservoir with his line cast off, he felt like he was close to Al again, almost like he could hear him talking in his ear, or see him standing in the distance, waving to him and giving him the old thumbs up because he was doing a good job. Some of these things could have been his imagination and the partial effects of the three to five joints that he would smoke during the course of the night. Either way, it was a comforting experience.

  On this night, he was setting off as usual, putting his gear in the boot of his knackered old Ford Escort and then setting off in the direction of Barrington Reservoir for a good night of peace and quiet. He was nearly at the turn off when he saw that the fish and chip shop was still serving. He had eaten a sandwich before he had left the house, but seeing that shop and imagining the smell of a good fish supper made his stomach gurgle with hunger. The quality of the food was nowhere near the master cuisine of the Crispy Cod but it did have something that the Cod didn’t have. He pulled the car over and made his way into the shop. He was pleased to see that Masie Lewis was working tonight, Bentley knew Masie well. He had been friends with her father Tom Lewis for donkey’s years. Masie had flowered from a scrawny, buck-toothed child into a stunningly beautiful woman. Despite his obvious reservations about lusting after a friend’s daughter he found that he couldn’t help himself. He knew quite well that nothing could ever come of it and that his impure thoughts about her would only ever resound inside his head, but still, he had certainly got himself an extra liking for fish and chips since she had started working there. He had the feeling that she knew just how good looking she was. She was always dressed in a low cut top and the tightest denim jeans he had ever seen in his life. The almost perfect swell of her buttocks against the material was enough to send him away with something pressing against the material of his crotch. The fantasy would be enough to keep him going for a while longer and he would put her image in his head when he was in bed with Louise.

  “Hiya Bentley, you off fishing?” she said flashing him her best smile.r />
  “Hi Masie, yeah I’m on my way right now, but I need to get some good food in me to keep me going all night,” he said.

  “I bet you say that to all the girls,” she said tipping him a wink.

  “No, just you,” he said and then bit his tongue. That was a little bit too close to the bone for his liking. Masie just laughed and asked him what he wanted. He ordered fish chips and mushy peas with extra vinegar. She went about putting his order together.

  “Have you heard about what has been going on up at the reservoir?” she said. She had her back to him and he was using the opportunity to have a good look at her rear end. He began to feel the usual spring of pressure in his groin. Then his mind focused in on what it was that she was actually saying.

  “No, why, what’s been happening?”

  “There have been some animals killed. I heard a load of ducks got torn to pieces and then a couple of deer were found too. Apparently they were mutilated, the coppers were up there and everything.”

  Bentley frowned. “I hadn’t heard anything about it. Any idea what, or who did it?”

  “Dunno. Nobody said anything about that. I guess the coppers will be sorting that one out. Anyway, you be careful up there. If there is a wild animal of some sort I don’t want it chewing you up,” said Masie wrapping up his supper for him.

  Bentley chuckled, “if anything comes after me I will gut it and mount it over my fireplace,”

  “Well, you will make the papers if you do,” said Masie, “You would be the town hero.”

  Bentley laughed again and paid for his food. He took a sly look down the front of her top as she was bending down to root in the till for his change. Her cleavage jiggled as she dragged coins out of the till and into her hand. The pressure in his crotch began to intensify. She looked up and handed him his change, she had been half a second away from catching him in the act. He thanked her and walked out of the shop and back to his car. He sat behind the wheel for a few moments watching Masie in the shop, there were no more customers, and it looked like she was winding the place down for the night. He toyed with the idea of asking her to go fishing with him, but he dismissed the idea as nonsense. There was no way she would ever be interested in a sad, middle aged old fucker like him. She could have the pick of any man she wanted. He looked away from her and started his engine. He drove off before any more stupid ideas came cruising out of the dark sludge that was his brain. It didn’t matter anyway, he would soon be by the water, high as a kite with a nice feed. He might even have a snooze inside his little pop-up shelter that he normally brought with him. Best of all, he was going to catch fish, lots of fish tonight. He began to feel better about everything and the pressure in his groin was melting away again. He parked his car in the usual spot at the side of the small road near the path that led to the reservoir. He heaved himself out and unloaded his gear from the boot. His fish supper was swinging from its bag which was hung on his wrist. The wonderful greasy aroma that was rising from it made his stomach growl again. He couldn’t wait to get settled down and to tuck into it. He locked up his car and started to trudge down the path. He turned right and began to head into the wooded area along the nearside of the water. It usually took about ten minutes to get to his favourite spot, but tonight he managed to do it in six. The promise of food had made him pick his feet up a little quicker this evening. There was a small gap in the woods on the left of the path which dropped down to a small gravelly area which had been his spot for many years. He had never seen anyone else in this spot so he reckoned that he was the only one who knew about it. He didn’t know how he would react if he found somebody else in his spot, he might just cast them off along with the rest of his bait. He set some of his gear up. His folding chair was first and his small pop up shelter just in case it got too cold or the rain decided to come. He didn’t think there would be any rain this evening, the sky had a few flecks of cloud but nothing more. The sun was dying below the horizon and the sky was lit up with a stunning orange glow which turned slowly blue as it rose into the sky. Bentley sat in his chair and unwrapped his food. It was just the right combination of temperature and sweatiness for him to eat. He cursed himself slightly for forgetting to get some ketchup from the chippy, but it didn’t matter. He began to eat and looked out over the water as he was putting the food in his mouth. He couldn’t think of anywhere in the world that he would rather have been right at that moment in time. This was his paradise right here, his very own little corner of heaven. He found a rock hard chip in his supper and launched it into the water. Bentley heard something that sounded totally out of place and it made him snap his head up and look in the direction of the chip he had sent to its watery grave. The otherwise calm water was rippling as if he had thrown a large stone into it and not a tiny little slice of overcooked potato. A thought came to his mind that there was a large fish nearby and it had snacked on the chip. He picked out another hardened chip from the collection and he laid the rest on his bag so he could stand up. He launched the chip into the water. The moment the chip struck the water there was a mass of bubbling, just for a split second. It looked to Bentley like the water had started boiling right where the chip had landed. He knew he wasn’t seeing things because the ripples from the bubbling were radiating outwards. If it was a fish in there, he had never seen one behave quite like this before. He went back to his seat and set about pulling his waterproof trousers and his long wellies on. He was going to go and have a look and see if he could see anything out there. He picked up his big net, just in case he had the chance to swipe a catch and he picked out a few more hard chips to use as bait. He started towards the water, the anticipation of the possibility of a good catch was raising his heart rate. It was making him feel as he had done all those years ago when he had first seen a fish thrashing around in his net. That feeling would always come back every time he got a good catch, it was better than any drug he had ever experienced (and he had tried a fair few over his illustrious career) and the effect of it never dulled as the years went on. If he could catch the big one this evening using just a few manky chips then it would be the rush of his life. He was seeing visions of his photograph plastered all over the local newspapers of him holding up his monster fish, his knees buckling with the sheer weight of the fish in his arms. How jealous would the people of this town be, how jealous would the fishing community for a hundred miles around be, how they would want to meet him and shake his hand. It was almost too good a fantasy to be true. He stepped slowly into the water and moved outwards slowly. He was trying to breathe as lightly as possible under a false pretence that the fish wouldn’t recognise him as a living thing. He dropped the hard chips into the water two feet in front of him and the same thing happened again. As the water foamed up, he instinctively swiped into the water with his net, expecting it to snag the monster fish that was lurking under the surface. Instead his hand dipped into the water and it stopped dead. He tried to pull it out again but found that he couldn’t. He frowned and looked at his arm for a moment before a thought came to him.

  Something’s got hold of me.

  A seed of panic began to take root in his gut. His fish supper suddenly felt like a hot hard ball in his insides. He tried to pull his arm free again but it was stuck, it was stuck like it had been jammed into hardened cement. He was about to start shouting for help when a pain suddenly shot up his arm the likes of which he hadn’t felt since he had accidentally burned his wrist in the rising steam from his boiling kettle when he had reached for a cup from the hooks on the wall. This pain wasn’t just in his wrist; it was every part of his arm that was submerged in the water. He began to scream, turning his face up to the sky. The screams echoed all around the valley, making birds in the surrounding trees take flight. Bentley looked down at his trapped arm and saw the water bubbling around his arm and pieces of his skin and flesh being tossed around. He roared one more scream and then his arm came free from whatever was holding it down there. He stumbled backwards and he felt his balance going. T
he pain was causing him to faint. His last coherent thought was that at least he would be unconscious whilst the thing in the water finished him off.

  As his screams had echoed around the valley, June Dobson had let the chattering cup and saucer which had held her long forgotten cup of tea fall to the floor with a jangling crash. She was sitting by the window watching the last of the day turn into the night. She had heard the screams but the screams were inside her head. Bentley’s screams were echoing inside her mind. Whatever was out there had attacked its first human victim, she knew that for sure. Bentley had reached out, not just with his screams but with his mind too, just like he had done on the day when he was thinking about his dead brother. She knew it was only the beginning, because Bentley had given it the first taste of the most abundant food supply on the face of the planet. June knew all of this because somehow the thing in the water was reaching for her through Bentley. Perhaps it had chosen her because she had been the only one that had seen it, that was the only reasoning that she could find for it. She could feel it pulling at her, drawing her, wanting her to take another little walk down to the water’s edge. She was afraid. She didn’t have many clear thoughts in her head these days, but this one was as clear as a bell. There was something out there and it wanted her to go to it. She knew that day would come, where that feeling of being pulled towards it, like a maddening itch of curiosity, would become too much for her to resist. The day would come when she would be fighting herself to prevent her dipping her foot in that cursed water and the creature in there would grab her and pull her in. One of the care assistants had come over and had begun fussing around her, picking up the broken cup. She was talking to her like she was a three-year-old that had just shit their pants rather than someone who had survived so many dark days, so many horrors that the world probably didn’t even know about and yet here she was being treated like some sort of idiot. She felt her temper begin to bubble up from within her and spread upwards towards her diseased brain. Where was the respect? Where was the humanity? Why didn’t this stupid little girl not just fuck off and leave her alone? Why didn’t she go and show her dirty little cunt on the street corner and go and earn some money that way? The girl was looking up at her with her mouth hanging open in shock. June realised that those last few thoughts hadn’t been just thoughts; they had come streaming out of her mouth at very high volume. She could usually tell that either by the remnants of an echo reverberating round the room or the reaction faces of people around her, just like the one she was seeing now. She hadn’t meant to offend the young girl who was just doing her job after all, and she realised that looking after her good self was generally a thankless task. She wanted to apologise and try and make the young girl feel better about the situation but here came the manager of the home, making a fucking big fuss as per usual. She was yaking something about calming down and not abusing the staff, but why the fuck should she calm down? They didn’t know about what she had heard or what was going on down in that reservoir that everyone liked to sit and look at. If she could have heard the screams that she had heard, she would have done more than just drop a cup and saucer, she would have gone out of her fucking mind. She would have gone into the kitchens, drawn a knife and torn open her forearms rather than face what it was that was hiding in that water. Why couldn’t she understand?