Mudcat

by John Quick

“Aside from its size,” he began after taking a sip of the coffee. It was horrible, as instant almost always was, but at least it would do the trick. “Was there anything… I don’t know… special about this catfish?”

  Carrie shrugged her shoulders; Foley began to look even more uncomfortable. Rob focused his attention on him.

  “Look, Jake,” he said, hoping that the use of the boy’s given name would help to foster trust between them. It was going to be a hard sell, Rob knew that, but he had to break through to him somehow. “I get that it was scary, but the more you can tell me, the easier it will be to….”

  “It talked,” Foley said suddenly. He looked utterly and completely miserable, as if the very act of saying the words was the most horrible thing he’d done in all his life. “It called my name, said it was hungry.”

  “You’re shitting me,” Rob said, unable to help himself. “A talking catfish?”

  “Is that any weirder than a catfish trying to attack us?” Foley shot back, obviously offended. “I mean, we’re already talking about some crazy-ass shit here, so….”

  Rob held up a hand, forestalling the rest of the argument. “Point taken. Sorry I said anything. Please, continue.”

  Foley shook his head. “That’s it. It called my name, said it was hungry. Except….”

  “Go on.”

  Another deep sigh. “The voice was familiar. I couldn’t place it at first, then the thing tried to tell me it was Brandon. When it said that, I realized the voice sounded a little like his.”

  Rob sat forward, suddenly curious for reasons he couldn’t explain. “That’s not possible. At least I don’t think it’s possible.”

  A look of defiance crept onto Foley’s face. “Really? Well why don’t you fill me in on why the fuck not?”

  Carrie put a hand on his arm but he shrugged it away. “Tell me, mister know-it-all lawman, why the fuck would I make up a goddamn fish trying to convince me it was my former best friend?”

  “Because I have reason to believe Brandon Snyder is dead,” Rob said.

  It came out harsher than he’d intended, but it had the desired effect. Foley rocked as though he’d been punched, then started shaking his head as if denying it would make it less true.

  “His car was found out on a service road alongside the lake,” Rob said. He knew this was privileged information, but telling him was the only way he could think of to make the boy believe how crazy what he was saying was. “Parked in front of a public works truck. We didn’t find his body, but we did find the bodies of Annie Fordham and Chase Wilcox. Something had killed them, and eaten part of them. With all of that evidence, the only conclusion we can reach is that Brandon was killed and dragged off somewhere to be eaten as well. Once this storm calms down and the water levels drop, we can look around and try to find….”

  “That’s not the only explanation,” Foley said, locking eyes with Rob.

  “Then why don’t you enlighten me?” Rob shot back.

  “Maybe the fish wasn’t lying,” Foley replied. Rob felt a moment of dizziness, disorientation from how strange this conversation had suddenly turned. “Maybe it really is him, only somehow he turned into a catfish.”

  “You do realize how insane that sounds, right?”

  “So fucking what?”

  Rob actually laughed as he leaned back in the chair again. “You’re trying to suggest that a human being turned into a catfish like some horrible sub-b-grade movie on the damn SyFy channel. What would they call that one? Attack of the Were-Fish? Catfish Man Lives? Give me a break, kid.”

  “I’m not your fucking kid!” Foley yelled, leaping to his feet. His mug tumbled from his hands, splashing coffee everywhere as it bounced off the coffee table and then shattered on the hardwood floor. “And if you’re so goddamn smart, why don’t you tell me why a fucking catfish that was bigger than I am called my name, told me it was Brandon, then said it was hungry and tried to fucking attack me!”

  As much as it pained him, Rob found he had no other explanation to give. As Carrie struggled to pull Foley back down to the couch again, he also realized that as much as he didn’t want to, his mind was starting to consider the possibility of that exact thing happening, and what it would take to stop such a creature.

  He let out another long sigh and closed his eyes. It was definitely going to be a very long day.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  She’d wondered why the only thing she could get when trying to call the police station was a series of three beeps and then a fast busy signal, but as Gail drove through the deserted and nearly washed out streets of downtown Ashford Fork, it started to make a little more sense. It was also a fairly good explanation for why Chet hadn’t come home last night. He would have had to drop Mitchell back off at the diner, and if he’d had as many beers as Gail suspected he had, driving through roads like this would’ve been insane. They kept an old army cot set up in the office just in case one of them—usually Chet—needed to stay overnight for some reason or another, so she fully expected that she was going to find him crashed out there, snoring and letting out beer farts that stank up the entire back of the place.

  She knew well enough that Chet wasn’t really staying at the diner most of those nights, of course. The fryers always looked the same, and there were no new pest inspection forms on the desk when she came in the following afternoon, despite his insistence that someone was coming to clean or spray or whatever the night before. While a part of her wished the man would just come clean with her and admit that he’d found some pretty little floozy to spend the night with, there was also another part of her that was thankful he helped her continue living in denial. While she didn’t much care where Chet stuck his business anymore—especially considering she hadn’t wanted to take care of it herself for the last ten years or so—it was easier to act like she was clueless than to let on that she knew and condoned it.

  Plus, she did kind of like the sympathetic looks some of the more gossip-prone townsfolk gave her. It was probably the closest she would ever get to being famous, and while on the one hand it was pathetically sad, on the other she couldn’t help the thrill that went through her with each knowing glance.

  She might have kept on not knowing anything for real, except that he’d been stupid enough to try and talk Leanne into a little “after-work fun” one night when he’d had about a six-pack too many. The woman had been beyond embarrassed and on the verge of quitting when she confessed it to Gail, and it had taken a solid hour of convincing to get her to stay, along with a promise that she would never have to work alone with Chet again.

  She frowned as she pulled into the small parking lot in front of the diner and saw that it hadn’t changed from when she’d headed home last night. Mitchell’s beat-up old clunker sat in the same spot over next to the edge of the lot, and Chet’s truck was nowhere in sight. She’d been sure this is where she would find him, but to see not only that he wasn’t here but that he apparently hadn’t dropped Mitchell off yet either was cause for concern. Neither of them had come back, and since she’d seen down a couple of the roads running alongside the lake, and how flooded they were, there was a very real possibility that they might be in some kind of trouble.

  A quick glance up the street showed her a single patrol car parked in front of the police station, and light burned through the windows in the double doors leading into it. Someone was there, so since the phones weren’t working, she thought she ought to go ahead and make the report in person. Then again, she would feel foolish if Chet and Mitchell were just holed up in Chet’s truck out by the docks, unwilling to risk the drive with the weather and road conditions being as bad as they were. It was even possible that in that scenario, Chet would confuse her concern for mistrust, and would get angry with her over it. He never had much of a temper unless he’d been in the bottle pretty heavily, and if he’d had to sit all night out there at the docks with Mitchell as his only company, it was a sure bet that he would’ve drunk himself into a good stupor just to m
ake himself pass out. If the cops woke him up, she would never hear the end of it.

  And she just might feel how angry he was, on top of it all. He was already going to be mad that she elected to keep the diner closed today without consulting him first; anything added to that might be enough to make his fists and the belt come out, and then she’d pay for it; oh, would she ever pay.

  That decided it: she would drive out that way as far as she could to see if she saw any sign of him. If not, she’d swing back by the house to make sure he hadn’t gone there after she left, and if that was a bust as well, she’d just drive back into town, march over there to the station, and let whoever was on duty know that her husband and cook were both missing.

  She had a sudden flash that maybe they’d ended up in the same place as Annie Fordham and that Snyder boy, but she refused to allow that idea to flourish. If it did, she was apt to end up smiling about it, and that just wouldn’t be proper.

  It took her roughly twice as long as it normally would to drive the few miles out toward the boat docks, and she realized that if he was there, he wasn’t coming out any time soon long before she actually made it all the way to the little parking lot. From the sounds of it, the water was already halfway up her tires, and if she opened her door she was willing to bet that there’d be only inches of clearance between it and the bottom of the car. Chet might well be out there, but there was no possible way she was going to make it far enough to see for sure. If she went much further, she was likely to flood the engine, and trap herself out here as well. Since she didn’t have a cell phone, that wouldn’t be good at all.

  She slowly backed the car up, turning the wheel sharply as she went, then cranked it the other direction and pulled forward a couple of inches, and then repeated the process again. It would take forever to get turned back around this way, but it was better than risking running off the side of the road and either sinking or getting stuck in the soft shoulder. She finally got herself mostly facing the direction she’d come, dropped the car back into drive again, and put her foot on the gas.

  Something slammed into the side of the car hard enough to make it skid into the opposite lane. She considered herself damned lucky that she hadn’t slid all the way across the road and into the ditch on the other side. She craned her neck, not sure what she was expecting to see, but confused when she saw nothing at all out the passenger window. She knew something had hit her, so what was it?

  She tapped the gas lightly, and felt the car lurch as it crept forward again. Her stomach sinking, she realized that she’d felt it do this before, and knew exactly what it meant: one of the tires on that side was flat. Suddenly, she knew what must have happened. There was a log or some other large chunk of debris in the roadway, covered by the water so she couldn’t see it. She’d slammed into it, knocking the car sideways and puncturing a tire in the process. Had the roads been visible, it would never have happened, but the fact remained that it had, and now she had to deal with it.

  There was a spare in the trunk, along with a jack and a tire iron, but rather than a full-sized tire, it was one of those cheap things that looked like it had been pulled off a kid’s go-cart and tossed in as an afterthought. She knew how to change it; that wasn’t the issue. The problem was that she didn’t trust that stupid thing in water this deep. She was just going to have to limp the car along until she got to a place where the water running across the road was shallower than it was here. She’d stop, change the tire, and then head straight back home. A trip back into town to visit the police station was out; she ran the risk of either not making it there, or not making it back if she tried. She’d just have to keep calling and calling until she finally managed to get through to someone.

  She gave the car a little more gas, wincing at each thumping jerk as the flat tried to rotate itself on the rim. She rolled her window down, trying to ignore the light rain that immediately blew in on her as she leaned out to keep an eye on the water level while she chugged along. When she was finally able to see the bottom of the rim on the driver’s side tire, she stopped, pulled the emergency brake, rolled up the window, and hit the trunk release before turning the engine off.

  Gail got out and wished she’d worn something more substantial than a pair of tennis shoes when she left the house this morning. The house she and Chet shared was near the top of a hill, so there had been nothing more than a few large-ish puddles in the yard when she’d looked out and checked. By the time she made it to the trunk and pushed it the rest of the way open, her shoes were soaked through and even starting to fill with water.

  She got the large nut holding her spare in place off, then pulled the tire out and leaned it against the back of the car. She reached back in, pulled the little jack out, then grabbed the tire iron and headed around to the passenger side. She could see at once that it was the front tire that was out, so she moved almost all the way to it and knelt down, wincing again as the cold water soaked through her jeans over her knee. She felt around under the car until her fingers touched the little notch that fit with the head of the jack, slid it into place, and cranked it until it was flush with the bottom of the car. Then she retrieved the tire iron and duck-walked to the tire itself.

  It didn’t take much searching to see what the issue was. Even in the faint light of the dawning day, she was able to see a chunk missing from the tire. She frowned and glanced back the way she’d come, searching for some idea of what could’ve done this, but saw nothing other than a few ripples, the probable by-product of her moving around and disturbing the water’s surface. She shook her head and turned back to the task at hand, slipping the end of the tire iron over the first of the five lug nuts and straining until it finally broke loose. She turned it another couple of turns, then moved on to the next one.

  She was just starting to loosen the last nut when she heard ferocious splashing behind the car. She turned quickly, thinking that maybe another car was coming that might not see her and end up running her down since she was sitting in the middle of the road, but all she could see was waves running across the water where it had been disturbed. She heard the splashing again, this time from almost directly behind the trunk, where the spare was propped up, and stood, hoping to figure out what was going on.

  She froze at the sight before her. The biggest fish she’d ever seen was swimming along the surface of the water, headed straight for her car. As she watched, it adjusted its angle, then splashed hard and threw itself up so it looked like it was standing on its tail in the shallower part. Incredibly, it thrashed its tail, using it to propel itself along toward her with amazing speed. From this angle, she was able to tell straight away that it was a catfish, and was crazily reminded of a picture Chet used to have hanging up in his den at home. It was Chet, standing next to a fish just as massive, with the caption “The One that Got Away” printed at the bottom. The difference was that picture had been fake, some mail-order thing he’d gotten from somewhere or another; the thing coming for her now was as real as real could be.

  Instead of backing away or running, she braced her feet and secured her grip on the tire iron. When the thing got close enough, she swung the tool like a club, the crooked end with the socket slamming into the side of the thing’s wide, thick lips. Its head snapped to the side, and it fell. For a brief moment, Gail felt a sense of elation, that she’d managed to best this creature coming for her, then she realized that it hadn’t been knocked over, but had thrown itself to the side, using its momentum to swing the tail up in an arc that connected squarely with her face.

  She felt her nose break with a faint snap that nearly echoed in her head. Sticky warmth covered the bottom of her face, and when she opened her mouth to scream, some trickled in, leaving a metallic taste across her tongue. The tire iron fell from her fingers as she reached up to try and stem the flow of blood gushing from her nostrils. She didn’t hear it hit the ground, only heard the splash as it sank into the water.

  Gail staggered backward, her eyes watering, clogging her s
ight. She went to one knee, not even feeling the water soaking through her pants this time, and forced one hand away from her nose to search the ground in front of her for her only weapon. Her fingers brushed against it, and were moving forward to grab it when something slammed into her chest, driving the breath from her lungs and sending her sprawling on her back in the water. Her head snapped back and bounced against the pavement, sending stars dancing across her vision, and making her feel dizzy.

  She felt a weight on her chest and belly, and craned her neck to see what it was. The only thing she could see clearly was the open mouth, filled with sharp-looking teeth as it raced toward her. She had no time to scream, only time to mentally blame Chet for finally doing something that got her killed before the mouth consumed her head and closed with a snap that followed her into eternity.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  He was wet, he was tired, he was irritated, and above all, Stan was drunk off his old ass. He’d spent all of last night sitting there with his rifle balanced over his knees, sipping from the Mason jar full of his last batch of ‘shine, watching for that damned critter to come back and try to eat him. He was so sure that it would try again, he’d let the latest batch sit there in the drum, not even wanting to take the time to fill up the fresh case of jars he had set aside for that purpose, lest the thing slip up on him while his attention was diverted. As a result, he had no idea how well it would turn out; he didn’t think it would hurt it any, but he had a system in place and now that had been interrupted. If he didn’t consistently deliver quality to his customers, they’d go elsewhere. Since the pension check the government sent him every month didn’t go that far anymore, this was all he had for income. If it got wrecked, he was up shit creek without a boat or a paddle.

  Even now with the sun lightening the sky behind layers upon layers of rainclouds, he didn’t want to take the chance on turning his back to the lake that had risen nearly as high as the still itself. Drunk as he was, he’d probably just cock it up anyhow. What he needed to do was hike his ass back down the road, hope that his truck wasn’t underwater, and head back home. Once he got there, he’d wake up his son Luke and send him out here to finish things up. The boy’d probably end up raising Cain about wanting his cut again, but at least it would be an argument for another day.