Dead Bait 4

by Weston Ochse

  They hauled in their first net. Swollen with the weight of the fish, the boat tilted under the strain. The hoist struggled. Slowly, but surely, the net lifted out of the water, the writhing fish rippled against the net and made it look alive. The net came in and lowered over a large tub, to catch their fill and sort them into barrels at the end of the night. Graham's own boat had a similar set-up, but on a smaller scale.

  Through the sound of men calling to each other and the sound of hundreds of fish flopping helplessly in the tub, Graham strained his ears. There was something crying. Multiple somethings. His eyes fixated on the tub. While the fishermen cast the net back out, two others with arm-length gloves shoved their arms through the fish, pushing and pulling, sorting through the mess. One pulled out a fish whose cry rang loud throughout the lagoon.

  Graham looked carefully at the fish and recognised the shape.

  Not a fish, but a human child.

  The second fisherman pulled up a second baby. From below deck, there formed a procession of men who came up and collected the babies from the fishermen and returned below deck. The two then returned to rummaging through the fish-muck for babies.

  Graham watched the first of the carriers pass nearby, heading down below. The baby screamed its lungs out. Its skin caught in the moonlight, wet and shining, scaled like a moonfish. Eyes gigantic and black.

  Graham wanted to scream. He wanted to throw himself overboard and swim back to the docks. He wanted to grab Hastur and get the fuck out of there. But he was stuck. He couldn't swim that far. The moonfish and fish-baby infested water was a crawling nightmare. The screams haunted him into a frozen stupor. And the two fishermen digging through the tub kept pulling up babies and the carriers kept bringing them right past him.

  There was a short break in the procession as the diggers worked through the tub but found no babies. They waited with the carriers for the next haul to come in. Graham waited for the path below deck to become clear, and took the moment to dart quickly down. He heard the cries of all the babies, but the deck was empty but for those barrels. He checked on Hastur, scrunched up small and fearful in the dark. He stroked her fur to let her know he was okay.

  He followed the sound of the babies to a corner where there was an open trapdoor and a ladder leading down. He knelt by the trapdoor and peeked through it. There, in the dim candlelight in the guts of the ship, rows and rows of cots stacked five high and filled with scaled babies, one of the fishermen down here tucking them in and feeding them mashed moonfish from a wooden bowl.

  There must have been at least a hundred of them, all crying, all being calmly fed by the freakish fisherman kindly acting as their fish-mother.

  A cold hand grabbed Graham's leg and pulled him from the trapdoor. The fisherman passed his baby off to the one behind him and seized Graham by the neck, saying something he couldn't understand.

  Hastur shot out from the barrels like lightning and launched at the fisherman with claws out, digging and slicing into his slimy flesh. He let go of Graham and grabbed at Hastur, but she was too fast. She launched off his back and stood by her master's side, hissing and growling at these nocturnal freaks.

  More of them passed their babies off to each other, delivering them down below, gradually forming a mob surrounding the man and his cat. Graham hadn't realised until now how large and daunting they were up close. He didn't realise how many of them were aboard the Night Watchman.

  One of them stepped forward, and Hastur lashed out, slashing at his hand. He grabbed at her and she bit his hand several times. He flinched a little, but didn't move back. He snatched her by the head and lifted her up. She writhed and kicked like mad, but he didn't let go. He grabbed her body with his other hand and flicked his wrist and her body went limp.

  Graham threw himself at the fisherman and punched at him and yelled, but he was too weak. He was cornered and he was incapable of fighting his way out. They lifted him by the limbs and carried him above deck, where the others were still casting out their nets and sorting the fish from the babies.

  They sat Graham down and tied him up and left him there helplessly struggling while they continued to fish and sort and carry the babies down below. He noticed not all of the babies were going into the arms of the carriers. Some were simply tossed into nearby barrels. Lifelessly, they bounced off the wood and filled the barrels up.

  Hastur too disappeared into one of the barrels. Graham stared at the barrels. He now knew where the fish came from, although he no longer cared. These people were barbarians. Their babies were freaks. He could see them forming a fleet once their young grew up. They could take over Dunpeal, spread from fishing village to fishing village. They could take his boat and take his home. He didn't think he would see Laura again. His stomach churned at the thought that her last memories of him were these obsessions over a goddamn fish.

  The last net for the night was only a quarter full. The thick drumming of fish against the boat had died down and the frenzy on the surface of the water had died down. The babies were sorted dead from living. The cries sealed below deck leaving silence in the lagoon.

  The fishermen began to toss the dead babies overboard, floating on the surface, they tossed about a dozen in then waited by the edge of the boat.

  The water rumbled, the boat began to move.

  A gaping maw spurted from below the surface and swallowed the floating babies. Its head was slick black, with a crown of white eyes surrounding its mouth. Its mass took up the majority of the lagoon.

  The fishermen cheered and yelled unintelligible words.

  The beast withdrew and returned the water to calm. The fishermen tossed a few more babies overboard. Graham noticed Hastur's body in this batch, flying out into the water.

  She was gone, and now he felt truly alone.

  Again the beast snatched up the offering and returned below.

  The fishermen tossed out the last of the babies and cheered as the lagoon monster swallowed them up.

  They turned to Gregory as the monster behind them returned beneath the water. Gregory kicked and writhed and screamed. The ropes burned against his skin. They rubbed raw and tiny drops of blood appeared on his flesh.

  The fishermen untied his knots. He kicked and pushed and screamed and wrenched himself free from them. He leaped up and threw himself forward. He bounced off one fisherman with silver teeth and ran in the other direction. He crashed into another fisherman. This one was missing half his ear.

  He threw his weight into them, but they didn't move. They didn't try to grab him again either. His breathing was short and sharp and erratic. The stars above began to spin. His skin burned from the rope marks. It felt like he was on fire, like there was something on the rope which was reacting with his skin. He propped himself up against the railing. He threw up overboard, chum to feed the few remaining moonfish.

  He hurled himself across the deck and slammed into the hardwood walls. Before he knew where he was going, he looked up and saw the water rushing at his head.

  He tumbled overboard and in the water he could hear the muffled laughter of the crew above.

  They cheered in anticipation of the rising beast below.

  Graham could feel its movements in the water. He tried to find the direction of the beach. He flapped his arms in a swimming motion but it felt like he was going nowhere. He looked down and gazed into its dazzling mouth of shredded teeth. Its ring of eyes slick, gazing right back. The deep groan of its hunger.

  He saw the consequences of his future, either dying of starvation on the beach of the lagoon, or consumed within the belly of the beast, joining Hastur in the brine-washed oblivion.

  The Wheel House

  Bram Riddlebarger

  “Watch out for the Rabbits, son,” said the father.

  Their canoe, a green fiberglass model, bumped across the water. The river was low, but still contained a number of holes and stretches of deep water, most of which would not be more than chest-high to the average adult. There was a story, from t
he turn of the last century, about a newlywed couple that had drowned crossing a ford of this river, with a small team of horses, when the water was said to be low. The father had grown up hearing the story in the town. He had heard the rumors of a hidden chasm, or sinkhole, when he was a boy himself. Then, a year or so back, while eating breakfast at his kitchen table, the father saw that a local man had found a wagon wheel, spokes and all, nearly complete, in the river. The man’s picture had been on the front of the town’s daily paper, smiling, with the old wheel. No one was quite sure where the hole might be. The newlyweds had dreamt of life and of carnal desire, like a release from coarse linen, but they had found eternity instead. Now, the father and his five-year-old son floated the river. The canoe was rented, but solid. They wore orange life jackets that fit snugly and too high, as was usual with the sort at commercial liveries, but they would do. The father had made sure that his son was secure in his vest. Now, he sat in the rear of the canoe and pushed with steady J-strokes of confidence, enjoying the fine summer weather. Tulip poplar petals fell like haiku poems around them in places and the father felt at ease. His son held a small, child-sized oar in the bow and attempted to help to propel them at times. More often, he sat and listened to the river, somewhere else in his five-year-old mind entirely—his imagination bringing terror to the Rabbits that his father had convinced him were lurking out there, somewhere on the river. His father kept close watch. The water was low. The canoe scratched the rocks if they did not keep to the deeper current of the river, which flowed like a corkscrew from a meandering bottle.

  ***

  His reaction when she walked into the room was one of resignation rather than love. The worry of parenting and being locked in a war of endless duty did melt somewhat away. Relief shone on his face. But the other emotion, the one that she saw, was not love.

  She looked back with rippling disdain.

  “You guys going out on the river tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, I’ll take him.”

  “Good.”

  She left the room.

  He adjusted his glasses. Everything was ready. There would not be many chances left.

  ***

  The boat ground to a halt on a large rock near the bank. The father could not navigate so well when the water began slipping over the rapids of the low rocks with his son in front, partially blocking his view. Nor was his son an adept lookout. Rights became left and lefts became right. The rocks were slippery near the bank, moss-covered and slimy in the shade of the trees on the bank. He had worn his contact lenses, which he only wore when swimming or boating, and they drove him crazy with a feeling of restriction like a pressure of time. Although, in a sense, he could see better without the black plastic frames that he normally wore, which obscured part of his vision, the feeling that he had with the contacts was one of restriction—a tightening of the world pulling in on itself, a neurosis.

  “We’re stuck, dad.”

  The father pushed his oar into the bed of the river to free the canoe. He pushed on a rock.

  “Switch me places, buddy.”

  A group of sleek, blue, yellow, and red kayaks slipped down the rapids on the other side of the river, able to transverse the shallow water with their lighter build and lesser weight.

  He pushed against the rock that held the canoe. The boat turned and began to take in water. The rock, a boulder really, was fixed in the stream. It jutted from the water like the head of an expired parking meter of significant girth. Suddenly, the boat took in more water, as the rapids beat in, and the boat slipped perpendicular to the line of the earth. The boy tumbled into the water with a screech. The father managed to fall and slip and come back up with some grace, losing his hat to the rapids, but, as he stepped to grab the canoe, now free, his canvas sneakers slipped on the mossy rocks. His ankle snapped. He fell into the river, as the canoe floated downstream. He still held his oar, but everything else was floating away. Pain welled up like lightning in the sky of his ankle. His son stood with his life jacket dripping water onto the shallow rocks. And then he too fell, unable to stand up on the slippery rocks with the force of the rapids upon him. They were four miles from their take-out point.

  ***

  The seismic activity of the breakfast table was curtailed by the boy’s entrance into the room.

  “I love you, mom.”

  “I love you, too, sweetie.”

  The father held his hands to his face. The contact lenses that he had put in that morning were like a snake constricting his eyes and his brain. He did not know if she would be here when he and the boy returned that afternoon from the river. The years had become contact lenses that each of them was ready to take out.

  ***

  The father used his oar to push himself over to his son, now crying and unable to stand in the water, and then on to the bank. The haiku poems of the trees had gone away, and the weather was hot now in the early afternoon.

  “Dad, are you ok?”

  “I think I broke my ankle.”

  His ankle, once he could see it clear of the water on the bank, was already turning yellow and blue. His low-cut canvas sneakers were full of sand.

  “We need to get the canoe. Can you see it?”

  The father had placed his keys and cell phone and his wallet in a zipped, plastic bag inside the canoe, secured in a bag with extra clothes and a few snacks and a water bottle, all tied to the wooden thwart of the canoe. Now, it was all floating away.

  “I need to get my phone and call your mom. Can you see the canoe?”

  “Dad, are you ok?”

  “The water’s low enough, we should be able to find the canoe and call your mom. We’ll have to try to get it. We’ll go a little way and if we can’t find it, we’ll find a house or something and call. Can you do that?”

  “Ok, dad.”

  They moved along the bank, which was thick with summer growth, for twenty yards or so, until they were forced back into the low water of the river. The water was calmer, now, after the rapids, and smoothed out for a stretch. The water was waist-high on the father. The water felt good on his ankle. His son floated in his jacket. The father towed the boy along. At least, he still had the oar. They rounded a bend in the river, full of downed trees. Soft-shelled river turtles plopped off the logs, and then into the safety of the stream. There, several hundred yards downstream, just past another low stretch of water, the father thought that he could see the canoe hung up on some rocks. He was not quite sure. His contact lenses played tricks on his vision, and the canoe was dark green against a backdrop of green and black.

  “I think I see it. Just a little farther, buddy.”

  He hoped that his phone was still there. He had tied the bag tight, but he did not foresee them overturning in the low water of the river.

  Dragonflies whizzed around them.

  They moved through the low water, less full of cumbersome rocks here and more full of sand. The father limped along with the oar and his son. There, ahead, was indeed the canoe, caught up, not on a rock, but on the exposed roots of a tree, cut out by the meandering of the river into the bank.

  “I see it, dad!”

  They crossed the ford and reached the boat.

  ***

  He sat in the chair and shook his head. No, no, no. This was not how it was supposed to go. The table, for one, was too clean. And he had not drunk nearly enough beer. No, this was not right.

  The chair scraped back on the dirty, worn vinyl flooring and hung up on a loose tile.

  “Maybe we should see someone,” she said.

  He shook his head. No. This was not how it was supposed to go.

  He stood up and got a bottle of beer out of the refrigerator. The beer was cold. He took a deep swig from the brown glass bottle. The cold beer stung his throat and felt good.

  “You’re such an asshole,” she said.

  He drank. Little spurts of bottled gas rose in his mouth, and he puffed them out.

  “Pfft.”

  Lips and glas
s.

  It was all over anyway.

  ***

  “She’s not answering.”

  The boy was sitting in the canoe, eating fish-shaped crackers from a plastic sandwich bag. The father stood in the river. The cold water was keeping the swelling down in his ankle. The sun was overhead and very hot. They had planned to be off the river, not long from now, after noon.

  After texting and calling three times, the father zipped the phone back into the plastic bag with his keys and secured it at the bottom of their daypack tied to the thwart. He had taken off his life jacket, which now lay in the tepid water that had collected in the bottom of the canoe. They had not seen anyone else on the river since the kayaks had passed by them just before they had capsized on the rock.

  The water was very low here. The father had been standing in a small pool close to the bank, which kept his ankle submerged. The canoe was hung up on the tree roots, but also now on the rocks in the river, with the weight of the boy back inside the canoe.

  “I’m going to the have to get us back into the current. We’re just going to have to get to the take-out point.”

  The boy ate his crackers. He still had not seen the Rabbits that had already bitten them.

  The father placed the oar in the canoe and began to push it over the low rocks toward the deeper water on the other side of the river. He had maybe twenty yards to get the canoe to where he could sit down in it, with his son, without foundering. There were rapids here, as well, and, as he pushed, the water picked up speed. Several large boulders protruded from the rapids like fists. As he passed by one of these larger rocks, he slipped and overturned several river stones. He came down on his ankle. He did not realize what happened next, but he heard the sucking sound and his hands no longer held the fiberglass of the canoe. He did not hear his son screaming. He did not see the canoe stop again on the rocks in the low water of the river.