Something in the Water

by Trevor Baxendale

  ‘Well, in the absence of Professor Len, I did go that extra mile,’ Gwen smiled sweetly, ‘and came up with this.’ She placed a sheet of paper on Toshiko’s desk. ‘Several more water hag sightings in modern times. They’re not as old-fashioned as you think.’

  Jack picked up the hard copy and scanned it. ‘Nine sightings in the last year alone. Why didn’t we spot this sooner?’

  ‘We’re on the lookout for all sorts of things,’ Toshiko argued. ‘We can’t follow up every single paranormal sighting or report.’

  ‘But look at the locations,’ said Jack, snapping his fingers against the paper. ‘Six of these were within a five-mile radius of here.’

  They all knew what he meant by that – the chromium tower rising through the centre of the Hub, trickling with water, the base practically covered in moss and algae.

  ‘The Rift,’ nodded Toshiko, moving around so that she could check the report herself. ‘We know these things have a special connection with space-time – and I’ve correlated chronon discharges with nearly all of these areas. If I made a closer comparison, I bet they’d be exact matches.’

  ‘Get on it – double-check. We need to know for sure.’ Jack tossed the papers towards Gwen and Owen, adding, ‘Look – there was even one sighted in the local canal! Right under our noses.’

  ‘Anywhere there are stagnant ponds or marshy areas,’ Gwen said, studying the map. ‘Even in city areas.’

  There was a polite cough from behind them. When they looked around, they saw Ianto standing a little off to the side. ‘I can only think it appropriate at this point to remind you about Saskia Harden,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’ Jack frowned.

  Owen straightened up, saying, ‘The girl I went to Trynsel to investigate …?’

  ‘The serial suicide?’

  Ianto nodded. ‘That’s right. If you recall, she had been found by the police floating in water, on a number of occasions. In a canal, in a pond, in a disused swimming pool …’

  ‘Stagnant water,’ said Toshiko. ‘Or as near as she could find.’

  ‘Could she be a water hag?’ wondered Gwen.

  ‘Let’s ask her,’ said Jack. He turned to Owen, only to find him already heading for the exit.

  FOURTEEN

  Owen drove straight to Bob Strong’s house. He felt vaguely guilty for not having taken Ianto’s original request seriously enough, but Strong’s illness had seemed more important at the time and Owen had forgotten all about Saskia Harden.

  He was reminded of just how bad Bob Strong was as soon as the door opened. His skin was grey-green and his eyes, beneath the heavy, swollen lids, were veined with blood.

  Strong stood in the doorway for a moment, focusing. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said gruffly. He coughed and then stood back. ‘You’d better come in. Hope you’ve got some good news.’

  As he spoke, he started coughing again and his knees buckled. Instinctively, Owen caught him, took his weight and helped him back inside the house.

  ‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ Strong assured him, leaning on the furniture for support but making sure he took the shortest route back to the sofa. The room was a mess, full of half-drunk cups of coffee, medicine bottles, crumpled tissues and a terrible smell.

  Owen sniffed cautiously. He knew what the smell was – sickness, illness. And something else. It took him a moment to work it out: rotten cabbages. Maybe something in the kitchen was going off.

  Strong’s cough sounded ragged and guttural, and Owen heard him moan as the pain ripped through his chest.

  ‘Sit down,’ Owen said. ‘I’ll get you something.’

  ‘Feel … like … hell …’ groaned Strong, lowering himself into the cushions of the settee.

  ‘What have you taken?’

  Strong’s eyes were closing, as if he was too weak to reply.

  ‘What have you taken?’ Owen repeated, quickly sorting through the bottles of painkillers and decongestants spread across the floor. There was nothing too serious here.

  ‘Found anything?’ Strong asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The blood tests. What did they show?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Owen said truthfully. ‘All clear.’

  Strong was frowning now. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s true. You’re the picture of health, according to your blood tests, mate.’

  ‘Feels like I’m gonna die,’ said Strong. There had been, for a moment, a fleeting expression of relief on his face, but it was quickly displaced by a look of bewilderment and fear. ‘So what the hell’s wrong with me?’

  Owen picked up his wrist and checked the pulse. He counted the beats off against the second hand on his watch. The heart rate was fast but steady. ‘You’re not going to die yet,’ Owen told him. He prised open one of the puffy eyelids and looked at the eye beneath, producing a slim pencil torch from his jacket pocket to help.

  The eyes looked sore but the pupils contracted when he shone the penlight at them.

  ‘Open wide, Bob,’ Owen said, turning the man’s face towards him. ‘I need to have a look at your throat, mate.’

  The mouth duly opened, and, using a pencil as a makeshift tongue suppressor, Owen shone the torch into the man’s throat.

  It looked red and inflamed, which was what he expected. But there was something else there. Across the wet skin at the back of the mouth were a number of white sores, almost like mouth ulcers, some of them speckled with blood. There was a layer of foul-smelling mucus there too. So far so bad throat infection.

  Then something moved at the back of Strong’s throat.

  Owen blinked, hardly believing it. He kept very still and shone the torch steadily at the soft flesh.

  There it was again: a tiny movement, beneath the skin. The pink flesh rippled slightly as something squirmed under the surface.

  Owen clicked off the torch. ‘OK, close up. Nothing happening here.’

  Strong swallowed with difficulty. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Too early to tell.’

  ‘That’s what you said last time.’ Bob suddenly started coughing again, and Owen jerked back, not knowing what to expect but nevertheless wary.

  ‘You been near any ponds recently? Canals? Stagnant water of any kind?’

  ‘Don’t think so. No. Why?’

  ‘Do you know Saskia Harden?’

  ‘Sorry?’ Now Strong sat up, coughing abruptly, a querulous look replacing the worried frown. ‘Saskia Harden? What’s she got to do with anything? How do you know her?’

  ‘I don’t,’ Owen said. ‘But you obviously do.’

  Strong swallowed painfully again. ‘Is she connected with this? Is she carrying something? A virus?’

  ‘It’s possible. We really need to talk to her.’

  ‘You’d have to check the records at the medical centre.’

  ‘We already have. The address on her file doesn’t exist.’ Owen saw Bob frowning and carried on, pressing home the questions. ‘Do you have any idea where she might be? How we could find her?’

  ‘Wait a minute. I … I saw her yesterday. In surgery. She came to see me. She’s not been well – mental problems, that kind of thing. Some attempts at suicide. I don’t know her all that well, but she …’ Once again the words disappeared under a series of coughs. Strong grabbed a handkerchief, but not before he’d had to bring up an odious lump of green and red matter. ‘Oh, God, I don’t know how long I can take this,’ he gasped. ‘What’s wrong with me? I should be in hospital, surely …’

  Owen shook his head. ‘No. Definitely no hospitals. Not yet. I don’t want you taking this into a hospital, not until we know exactly what it is.’

  ‘But they’ll have facilities,’ Strong argued. ‘Quarantine.’

  ‘This may not be something they would know how to deal with,’ Owen warned.

  ‘They have facilities for this sort of thing—’

  ‘It’s unlikely. No hospitals, not yet.’ Owen stood up, signalling that the subject was closed. ‘Is there anyone els
e at the medical centre who might know how to find Saskia Harden?’

  Strong shook his head. ‘No one. All we know is what’s on the records.’

  ‘OK. Sit tight.’ Owen stood up, speed-dialling his mobile phone. ‘Ianto? I can’t trace Saskia from here. You’re gonna have to find her yourself. Go back to the police records. See if there are any clues there. If you don’t find anything, go back and check again. And get Gwen to help you – she’s got a cop’s instincts.’

  ‘Gwen’s gone out with Jack,’ said Ianto.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘There’s been a sighting – a water hag, we think. In Garron Park.’

  ‘I’m on my way,’ Owen snapped the phone shut and turned back to Strong. ‘If you think of anything, anything at all, that might help us find Saskia Harden, ring me on this number.’ He jotted something down on a piece of notepaper and handed it over.

  ‘OK.’ Bob glanced at the number and then folded it and slipped it into his shirt pocket.

  Owen paused, raising a hand to rub at his neck. He swallowed, wincing a little.

  ‘What’s up?’

  Owen shrugged and headed for the door. ‘Nothing. Just getting a bit of a sore throat, I think.’

  FIFTEEN

  Jack and Gwen were in the SUV, hurtling through the streets of Cardiff. Jack was at the wheel, Gwen sat in the passenger seat, loading a fresh magazine into her automatic. Jack’s eyes never left the road but he was still talking.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ he said, biting the words off. ‘I don’t like running after something when I don’t even know what it is.’

  ‘The sighting was yesterday,’ Gwen said. ‘We have to follow it up.’

  ‘The sighting was unconfirmed. It’s internet chatter. An old woman lurking near the lake in Garron Park? Give me a break.’

  ‘Then why are we speeding there like our lives depend on it?’ asked Gwen.

  ‘May be I’m just tired of waiting around.’

  Jack swung the SUV into a tight bend, the street lamps painting stripes of orange across his face as the car roared along the avenue. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘Tosh says there’s a pattern of Rift activity centring on the park. Rift sparks. Best place in the city to find the kind of water these creatures like.’

  The SUV skidded to a halt by the park gates, and they scrambled out. Jack flipped open his leather wrist-strap and checked the readings. A green light flickered on the display and it beeped metronomically. ‘Chronon discharge – this way,’ he said, starting towards the park gates.

  The main paths through the park were lit, but it was deserted and some areas were in total darkness. Gwen had made a quick study of the geography of the park in the SUV on the way here, but she had taken the precaution of downloading a map of the area, combined with an aerial photo, onto her mobile.

  Five minutes later, they were at the lake, and the light from Gwen’s torch floated across the shimmering blackness of the lake. It looked as cold and still as slate.

  With a hiss of impatience, Jack snapped shut the cover on his wrist-strap.

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. He took a small single-lens night-sight out of a pocket and scanned the lake. ‘What exactly am I looking for here?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. Ianto said some school kids reported seeing an old woman floating in the lake yesterday afternoon …’

  ‘School kids?’

  ‘It was all over the internet chatrooms, apparently,’ Gwen continued.

  ‘Ianto has too much time on his hands.’

  ‘He was searching for specific references – woman, water, local canals, rivers, parks … key words that came up with this.’

  ‘That was yesterday, this is now,’ said Jack. ‘If she was here then we’re too late. This is getting to be a habit.’

  A dog barking some way off drew their attention. It wasn’t a good bark; there was real aggression in there. The sudden, obsessive noise of an irate dog going in for the attack.

  Automatically, Jack was moving towards the noise. ‘It’s over there,’ he said as he picked up speed.

  Gwen ran after him, shouting, ‘It’s only a bloody dog!’

  But there was no stopping him now. His greatcoat flapped like a superhero’s cape as he circled the lake. The barking grew louder, more frenzied, and Gwen’s instincts told her that, whatever was happening, it wasn’t right and they needed to stop it. It could be someone under attack, or just a dogfight, but they had to intervene.

  They found the dog by the edge of the lake, where the water was covered with a film of green algae and some tangled reeds. It was a pit bull terrier, a fired-up bundle of aggression, its teeth flashing in the moonlight, saliva spraying from its brutish jaws with every bark. It was jumping around the edge of the water, attention focused on something just out of reach.

  The dog’s owner was with him, a muscular young man, no less brutal than the pit bull, wearing jeans and a hoodie. He was waving a length of chain in the air at the dog and swearing. ‘Leave it! Karlo! Leave it I said!’ He was bellowing at the dog now, angry as hell but scared too – he’d lost control.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Jack wasn’t looking at the man or the dog. His attention was directed entirely at the water.

  ‘Stupid bastard saw something in the water,’ spat the man. ‘Rat, probably. Now he’s gone effing mental.’

  The dog was barking itself hoarse. Its paws were splashing at the edge of the water, sending ripples out into the green scum.

  ‘Get back here, you little horror,’ the man stepped forward, trying to reattach the lead.

  But the dog was having none of it.

  ‘Get it away from the water,’ warned Gwen. ‘It’s not safe.’

  ‘Get lost,’ said the man. ‘I’m only out walking my dog. Mind your own business.’

  ‘Hey!’ said Jack. ‘Watch your manners. And get the mutt under control.’ He’d raised his voice initially, so that he could be heard over the barking, but at the last moment the dog suddenly fell quiet.

  Automatically, they all stopped what they were doing and looked at the pit bull.

  It was standing four-square at the edge of the water, flanks heaving as it panted, tongue lolling, drool hanging in thick strings from its jaws.

  And then, with a sudden spray of water, something rose out of the lake just in front of the dog with the savage speed of a crocodile.

  Gwen didn’t even see it properly. She stepped back from the edge of the lake, away from the splashing, her heart hammering in her chest after the initial shock. She could hear Jack shouting something and the dog’s owner screaming, but all she could see was the pit bull staggering backwards, minus its head.

  She could see it quite clearly, as if the world had slowed to a standstill. The dog’s legs were still working, at least for a few moments as its body scrambled away, but the muscles must have been operating on the last vestiges of nervous impulse: at the neck there was only a red stump, blood jetting madly from the severed arteries. Gwen glimpsed a nugget of white bone where the dog’s thick vertebrae were still visible, and then the torso gave a final, huge convulsion and lay still.

  The water was still boiling. Jack had his gun out, aimed at the lakeside, but there was nothing to see. Algae swilled around his feet, and in the mud Gwen saw the pit bull’s head staring out at her from where it had fallen.

  The torchlight picked out a wide stream of red in the murky water, and the dog’s owner finally realised what had happened. ‘God almighty! It’s taken his head off!’

  ‘Get back!’ Jack ordered.

  But the dog’s owner was staring in mute, wide-eyed incomprehension at the dead animal at his feet. ‘Karlo?’

  Jack grabbed the man by the scruff of the neck and dragged him away from the edge of the lake. ‘I said get back! Keep away from the water!’

  ‘What the hell was it?’

  ‘Well I don’t know!’ yelled Jack. ‘D’you want to go back and take a closer look?’

  The
man shook his head, then turned quickly away and vomited.

  Gwen ran back to where Jack stood at the lakeside, scanning the swirling green surface for any signs of life. ‘Don’t get too close,’ she warned. ‘Did you see what it was?’

  ‘No. Did you?’

  ‘Too fast, just a blur,’ she replied. She tried to speak quietly and calmly, to control her racing pulse and natural inclination to panic, fighting down the desire to keep away from the edge of the lake. ‘Think the dog had the best view.’

  Jack had his gun trained on the water. ‘Didn’t even see which way it went.’

  The dog’s owner was walking back towards the lake in a daze. Gwen saw his blinking, disbelieving eyes and recognised the look of a man shocked into a silence that was about to erupt in fury. She could see the spark lurking in his dark eyes as he glared purposefully at Jack.

  ‘Did you do that?’ the man said, somewhat unreasonably.

  Jack didn’t even spare him a glance. ‘Easy, fella. We don’t know what happened yet.’

  The man stepped up, close, squaring his shoulders, legs apart. He jabbed a thick finger at the remains of the pit bull. ‘Have you seen that? Have you?’

  Jack nodded. ‘Kinda hard to miss.’

  The man balled a fist, cocking his arm ready to throw the punch, but Jack had seen it coming five seconds before and put the idiot on his backside with one meaty left hook.

  ‘Forget it,’ Jack said as the man sprawled in the mud. ‘I’m not in the mood.’

  The man touched his lip, found it bleeding, and began to get up. It was impossible to tell whether he was going to admit defeat or have another shot but, with a sudden cry of alarm, he fell down again. For a moment, Gwen thought he had simply slipped in the wet mud, but then she realised that he was being dragged into the lake feet first.

  Gwen and Jack saw it clearly. Two long, thin arms reached up out of the water, trailing wet, green weeds and grabbed the man around the neck. Bony, twig-like fingers closed around his throat and pulled, hard. Jack didn’t know whether to shoot or not – he had the gun trained on the lake, but he was worried he might hit the man if he fired.