by Gill, J. G.
Bede elbowed me hard in the ribs. By that stage though, I was already horribly aware I was making an idiot of myself. A dangerous idiot. I was relieved when the officer just looked at me and laughed.
“I guess you’re right,” he said. “You two have a good night now, won’t you?”
Bede and I held our breaths as we watched the officer open the driver’s door and slide inside the car. As he drove away, Bede sighed heavily.
“What got into you, you moron?” he said. “Five more seconds and you would have been offering to go joyriding with him!”
“Sorry. I guess I was just really nervous,” I said.
Bede shook his head, wearily.
“Your nerves are getting on my nerves,” he said.
We continued in silence to the end of the bridge, before following the pavement down a small, grassy slope towards a path on the southern embankment. There was hardly anyone around, apart from a few homeless people who were searching through the rubbish bins. As we walked further away from the bridge the streetlights became more and more sporadic. Before long, the only light we had was a thin rim shaved from the moon.
“It’s like we’ve stepped off into some sort of forgotten city,” I said.
“I guess it kind of is in a way,” said Bede. “The cargo ships stopped coming here years ago.”
We carried on for what seemed like another hour at least. I was so tired that my feet had started to drag and I could feel my eyelids getting heavier. In the distance I could see a large structure that looked like a square animal with its head down, drinking at the water’s edge.
“Is that it?” I said. Bede squinted.
“Yeah, I think so,” he said.
As we got closer I began to pick out the individual pieces of the jetty – its thick central posts, encased in a chaotic lattice of broken wooden struts and criss-crossed beams, with the bollards on the top for tying up ships. Everything seemed eerily quiet and still. By day, I might have said it was tranquil, but at night it was downright creepy.
We left the path and cut across the grass to where it met the riverbank. Bede jumped down, making a loud squelching sound as he landed. I followed, cringing as I felt my boot sink into the sludge.
“That’s so gross,” I said.
Extracting my boot, I began walking through the debris along the bottom of the river bank to the wooden casing of the jetty. Several of the planks had already rotted away, making it easy to crawl into the space beneath the pier. It was only once we were both in there, huddled close in the dark, that Bede finally began to relax a bit.
“None of this makes any sense,” I said. “Why would anyone target our house like that? And why would they break in, smash it up, and not even take anything?”
“I dunno,” said Bede. “To scare us maybe?”
I spun to face him. “Do you know something about this?” I said.
Bede glanced away evasively, as if rehearsing in his head exactly what he wanted to say. He cleared his throat, drew a breath, then promptly chickened out.
“Just tell me,” I said.
“Okay,” Bede paused. “I can’t really think of any other way of saying it, except that Dad’s got himself mixed up in some pretty heavy stuff.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.
“Well…money laundering for a start.”
“Money what?” I said. I’d never heard of it.
“Laundering. It’s basically when someone sets up a business which looks legit, but it’s not. People do it to hide money that they’ve got from doing dodgy stuff behind the scenes.”
I laughed. Out loud.
“C’mon Bede, you don’t seriously expect me to believe that do you?” I said.
Bede stared at me, stony-faced. I waited for him to smile, to tell me he was kidding around, before giving me the real explanation. Instead, he just looked down at the sludge and began fidgeting with a dry bit of stick that was poking up out of the ground.
“Bede, stop mucking around, it’s not funny,” I said. “We don’t have time for this, just tell me the truth.”
“I’m telling you the truth,” he said. “I wish I wasn’t, but I am.”
I shook my head and snorted. “You can’t be. It’s mad. I mean, for a start, we’d know about anything dodgy that Dad was involved in. He’s uber ‘establishment’.”
“What makes you so sure we’d know about it?” said Bede. “It’s not like he’d just come out and tell us, is it? Hey kids, guess, what, I’ve just started up a money-laundering business. Shh, don’t tell anyone.”
Okay, so Bede had a point. But even so, it still didn’t stack up.
“Dad’s just not like that though,” I said. “He’s an ordinary guy who gets up every morning, puts on a shirt and tie, goes to work at an insurance company, and then comes home. That’s what he does Bede, that’s his life. I’ve even seen his pay slip. He left it on the coffee table one day by mistake.”
“You need to see this.” Bede pulled a piece of paper from the inside of his coat and handed it to me.
“What is it?” I said.
“Just open it.”
I unfolded the paper along its firm crease line to reveal the letterhead of Dad’s insurance company. It began, “Dear Mr de Milo…” I scanned the lines quickly, interrogating the words for clues, until I came to the final sentence, “…it is for this reason that we must, regretfully, advise you that your post has become redundant to the needs of our organisation”. I flicked my eyes back to the top of the page where it had been dated three years earlier, but that couldn’t be right. Dad was still getting ready and going to work in the mornings just as he always had. I looked at Bede and shook my head.
“There’s got to be some sort of mix up,” I said.
Bede shrugged apologetically. “’Fraid not. I found it when I was digging around in the safe at home, looking for some old stuff of Mum’s.”
“So?” I said. “It doesn’t mean it’s real.”
I knew I was clutching at straws but none of it made sense. If anything, it felt as if our family had become better off over the last few years, which didn’t exactly fit with Dad losing his job. In fact, he’d recently bought Arlene a new car and last year he’d taken the whole family skiing. I’d also noticed that he seemed to be a lot more chilled lately about Bede not having a regular job.
“Where’s all the money come from then?” I said.
Bede took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Reptiles,” he said. “Dad’s been importing them.”
“What?” I said, flabbergasted.
Bede shrugged. “It’s the poisonous ones, snakes mainly. There’s supposed to be big money in them, if you can get them into the country.”
I stared at Bede, my mouth literally gaping in shock.
“You’ve got to be kidding me?” It was a rhetorical question, but I could see by Bede’s face that he was being deadly serious.
“Dad’s been smuggling snakes?” I said slowly, each word a bullet cased in disbelief.
Bede nodded, as I felt my eyes prickle and the first hot, fat tears start to roll down my cheeks. I couldn’t believe it. Not only did it seem that my father wasn’t the person I’d always believed him to be, but an animal smuggler? It was all too much. I’d learnt about smuggling at school and how cruel it was. I couldn’t believe that Dad would ever choose to get mixed up in something like that.
“I know, it’s a lot to take in,” said Bede.
“No kidding,” I said. “How long have you known about this?”
“A while,” said Bede quietly.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded.
“Arlene told me not to.”
“So she knows about this?” I said, wiping my face with the back of my sleeve.
“Yeah,” said Bede. His face stiffened and he stared at the river, deliberately avoiding my eyes. I could tell that he was enjoying this as much as drinking a cold cup of sick. “Arlene’s the one who told me about it. She walked in on me when I was readin
g the letter and confirmed it was true. Then she made me promise not to mention it to you or Dad – she didn’t want to ruin your view of Dad, and she didn’t want Dad to feel ashamed or embarrassed with me.”
“So are you saying she was fine with it?” I said.
“Not exactly. But she said she could live with it for the sake of the family.”
“So the stuff that’s happened to our house, you think it’s linked to all the stuff Dad’s been doing?” I said.
Bede nodded. “Something must have gone wrong – maybe a deal went bad or Dad fell out with one of them, who knows? Smashing up the house and writing scary stuff on the bedroom mirror is a pretty good way of sending a message, don’t you think?”
“So you think it’s also one of Dad’s associates who’s tipped-off the police and told all those lies about you?”
“Yeah, it makes sense,” said Bede. “I mean, think about it, what’s a great way of getting back at someone? Target their kids. It’s pretty screwed up, but it’s effective.”
“This whole situation’s screwed up,” I said.
Bede put his arm around my shoulders and drew me close. That’s when I really lost it. Before I knew it, my face was resting on his chest and I was sobbing in that loud, embarrassing way that you can only really do with your family.
“I know, it sucks,” he said, trying to comfort me.
“I’m sorry,” I managed to blubber. “I’m being a complete wuss. He’s your dad too.”
Bede rubbed my shoulder reassuringly. “Don’t worry, we’ll find him. In the meantime, we’ll be okay here for the night.” He pointed to a pile of old cardboard boxes that had been discarded at the roadside. “We can pull those apart and lay them over the top of the sludge so we can lie down.”
I glanced sceptically from the manky cardboard to the sludge, then back to the cardboard. As plans go, it wasn’t great. Still, it was better than the alternative, which was no plan at all.
“Maybe we can build a small fire to keep warm?” I said. Bede nodded.
We gathered together as much driftwood as we could find and Bede lit some of the cardboard with his cigarette lighter. We huddled together in front of the flames, hugging each other for warmth and speaking very little. Eventually, I drifted off to sleep, as Bede continued to stoke the fire, oblivious to the horror that awaited us.
CHAPTER IV
It was still dark when I woke up and I was freezing. The fire had long since burned out, leaving a mass of dark embers which only made me feel colder. In the distance, I could see a lone car moving slowly along Murphy Bridge, the thick fog distorting the tiny yellow pinpricks of its headlights, making them look like frayed pieces of lint stranded on a grey carpet.
Bede was still asleep. His head was resting awkwardly on his shoulder, in an obviously failed attempt to get comfortable, and his dark, curly hair was flopping down over his eyes. He looked like a sleeping scarecrow. A loud, snoring one.
I pulled my coat tightly around me and hunched my shoulders, trying to bury my neck in the warmth of my collar, before nestling into Bede’s shoulder again. I was just starting to fall asleep again when I noticed that there was something lying across my left leg. Something heavy. In my half-awakeness it vaguely occurred to me that I might want to see what it was, but I was comfortable and I didn’t really want to have to shift again. I shook my leg but the thing didn’t budge. In fact, it only seemed to get heavier. Then it tightened its grip.
My eyes snapped open and I peered through the fog to see what had latched on to me.
“Bede!” I said in a loud whisper, digging my elbow into his side. I could hear the panic in my voice and it scared me even more. Bede made a snuffling, sleepy noise and promptly rolled away from me.
“Bede!” I said. This time I didn’t whisper.
“Wh…what?” his blurry voice replied.
“Something’s got hold of me. I don’t know what it is but it won’t let go.”
Bede frowned at me as if I’d gone mad. “Just shake it off then,” he said.
“I’ve been trying to, but it’s not that easy!” I said.
I lifted my knee and dragged it across the sludge, trying to scrape the thing off, but it still wouldn’t budge. Then, all of a sudden I felt something coil itself around my other leg and start to squeeze. It gave me such a fright that I screamed and grabbed Bede’s coat. Just like the first thing, the second began pressing tightly on my calf muscle, and both of them were now wrapping themselves up over my knee, locking my legs eel’s together so I could barely move. Then, to my horror, I felt myself being dragged towards the water.
I dug my fingers into the sleeve of Bede’s coat, gripping the solid girth of his arm as hard as I could. But no matter how tightly I tried to hang on, or how white my knuckles were turning, the force pulling down on my legs was at least three times stronger and faster than me. As my hands slipped from the coat, Bede tried to snatch my arm and pull me back. But it was too late. My fingernails filled with sludge as they clawed desperately at the river bank, trying to find something, anything, to cling to. The loose rocks and twigs tore at my hands, doing nothing to stop me from being dragged towards the waves lapping greedily at the sand. I could now feel the cold, dampness of the sludge leeching through my jeans and into my skin.
The closer I got to the water, the thinner the fog became and I could now clearly see my attackers. My blood ran cold. Coiled around my legs were two massive black eels. At least, that’s what they looked like, although I’d never seen anything quite like them before. The girth of each one was at least the width of my fully outstretched palms, touching thumbnail to thumbnail, and they were covered in thick, greenish-black, treacly slime that glistened like polished marble. Their eyes freaked me out the most – creamy white, like blind opals.
“Clare!”
Bede’s disembodied voice seemed to find its way through the fog and follow me to the water’s edge.
“I’m down here!” I screamed back.
I craned my neck to see a small flame weaving haphazardly through the mist. A few seconds later, Bede burst into sight, barrelling down the river bank with a flaming cardboard torch in his fist. My brother had well and truly metamorphosised from ‘sleeping scarecrow’ into ‘wide-awake wildman’.
“Grab my leg!” he shouted.
He was now standing directly beside me. I snatched for his ankle, looping my arms around it. The torch was poised high above Bede’s head, the flame pointing downwards like a spear. Suddenly, the stick became a blur as Bede plunged it into the eel’s head, right between its eyes. The thing let go with a blood-curdling scream. As it opened its mouth I could see the rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth reaching all the way back down its throat, its tongue curling out of its head like a long red carpet to hell. I felt a shiver wiggle down my back as I watched its grotesque body slither into the tide and disappear.
I now tried kicking at the second eel with my free leg, but I was lying at the wrong angle and my heel just kept sliding off its slippery skin. I could feel it hanging off me like a dead weight, pulling me down the bank.
“Hold on!” Bede shouted.
The stick was still smouldering as he blew the remaining sparks into new flames. He thrust it into the side of the eel and the rancid smell of cooked, rotten fish filled the air. I clenched my stomach muscles and swallowed hard, trying to calm my gag reflexes. The eel screamed even louder than the first one, and slid backwards into the water.
Bede grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet.
“Thanks,” I said. My legs were wobbling like crazy and for a second I thought my knees were about to give way.
“You all right?” said Bede.
I nodded. “Yeah. Sort of. I think I’m more freaked out than anything.”
“C’mon, let’s get out of here,” said Bede.
I turned to follow him when something caught my eye. The river was starting to gently bubble.
“Something really weird’s going on,” I said.
&nbs
p; Bede turned to see what I was looking at. The entire river had begun to simmer, then boil. I could now make out the shapes of hundreds of lithe bodies, writhing, thrashing and swarming their way towards the bank.
“Run!” screamed Bede, grabbing my hand and yanking me up the river bank. There was no time to go back for our packs, the eels were moving far too quickly. As we reached the top of the bank, I glanced back to see the hideous head of one of the eels rising up beneath my foot.
“Hurry!” I screamed at Bede, even though he was already at the top of the bank, waiting for me to catch up.
I snatched a fistful of tough, reedy-looking plants and began to pull myself up. I had just about made it when I suddenly felt something snag the strap at the back of my boot. It felt leaden-heavy and horribly familiar. I screamed in horror.
“It’s got me!”
The terror in my brother’s face, stoked my own panic. Bede half stepped, half slid, down the bank towards me.
“Grab hold!” he said.
We locked arms and I was suddenly caught in the middle of a tug-of-war between my brother and an eel that looked big enough to eat the pair of us. As my shoulders threatened to pop from their sockets, I realised we were losing the fight. Bede’s feet were now skidding down the bank towards me.
“No!” I screamed.
Bede stamped his heel into the puggy clay just in time and leaned back into the bank as far as he could. Glancing down, the eel was hanging by its teeth from the thin strap on the back of my boot. I could see the leather straining under its weight. Break, damn you, break, I thought, willing the leather to give way.
“On a count of three!” said Bede.
We shouted out the numbers, rapid-fire. Summoning up the last of his strength, Bede wrenched me towards him. Suddenly, the leather strap snapped and I could hear the eel slump down wetly on the sludge. My foot was now feather light and I lurched forwards like a tipsy rag doll. I didn’t stop to look at my boot, much less, glance back at the eels. The only thing I could think of was running for my life.
“Over there,” Bede pointed to a narrow alley just ahead. To either side of it was a decrepit boat shed, one of them covered in peeling red paint and the other in peeling blue.