He gave it an almighty shake above the water. This did the job. All of them plopped out into the water and sank down to the bottom as individual groups. He watched them join together again as one and immediately rise up to the top.
‘Unusual,’ he said.
Michael leant over to have a closer look. It crossed his mind that this might not be exactly safe for him to live so close to these. Who knew what they would finally end up as? They were supposed to be evil. Sixty mini balls of evil, twenty feet away from where he slept. Great idea. What if they had been tracked somehow, by the thing that had laid them?
He decided that he would shut all doors and windows just in case they grew into ferocious monsters. They were in here, behind glass. He should be able to hear them smash out and that would at least give him a minute to get clear.
Michael laughed to himself. He was sure he had faced worse than this. He would check on them in the morning and decide on his safety then. He wondered if the Hardware Shop did a range of Flamethrowers if he needed some extra firepower. Feeding them would also be a good thing to stop them from wanting to break out and eat him. The Fellus hadn’t expected that he would be gathering livestock, and neither had he, but he had better think of some options tomorrow. He shut the greenhouse door firmly behind him and wedged a lump of concrete against it. There that should fix that problem for the night.
When he saw The Fellus, he would update him on his findings. Maybe he knew what these eggs would turn into and if they would end up as profitable as he thought. If they were worth money, Michael would say this was all he could get, then go down with a hundred Tizer bottles and become a millionaire.
Now that he had got this, perhaps The Fellus would agree that he could have his second wish. He sat down in the chair looking around the room. It was a bit lacklustre at the moment, nothing like The Grange.
Michael was sure that one of those ladies would be happy here. He might as well ask for the first one he decided. Michael could do with some help and she could look after the spawn. If they were dangerous, they probably wouldn’t be able to harm her, with her being dead and everything. Besides that, he was lonely.
The Band were hotly and energetically discussing the fact that Wee Renee intended to dive into the river and try to do a Jacques Cousteau in there.
’With all due respect, Wee Renee,’ Jim said, ‘as much as I have heard about how good you can be at carving things up and outwitting monsters, I really do think that you ought to not jump into this.’
’Don’t forget the snake, Jim?’ Julia said.
’Aye it might not be a snake either,’ Wee Renee said. ‘I’ve got plenty of experience and knowledge about water beasties. That rattling that you heard, perhaps it was something else. There are so many things in the water that we don’t know of and I wasn’t there, so I don’t know which it was. There is the Bean-Nighe. An old woman who washes blood out of clothes. Was that lassie doing her washing, Jim?’ Wee Renee asked.
‘No just singing,’ Jim replied.
‘She sounds like a Siren or perhaps a Sea Witch. Although those are uglier. I am glad she wasn’t the Bean-Nighe because those signify you are going to die,’ Wee Renee said nonchalantly.
‘Great. I feel quite glad now as well,’ Jim said astonished.
‘Perhaps she was a Storm Kelpie. The rest, the rattling noise, I would have to hear it. It could be an Each Uisage, a Fuath, which is a hate spirit. Or a tangle spirit. It will be deadly, mark my words,’ Wee Renee said, her eyes wide.
‘I’d rather it be a snake I think,’ Julia said.
‘Aye a snake is better,’ Wee Renee agreed.
‘What’s an Each Sage?’ Freddie asked.
‘An Each Uisage? It’s a Kelpie. A vicious one. But it’s always a horse Kelpie,’ she told him.
‘I might have missed it, but what is a Kelpie?’ Gary asked.
‘A shapeshifter common in the lochs of Scotland. Usually a man, but you can get the odd woman one. They are more dangerous. You might consider her a Mermaid, Gary. But she has hooves. Did you see the lassie’s feet, Jim? Did she have feet, hooves or a flipper?’ Wee Renee asked.
‘They were curled away from me each time,’ Jim said, after deep thought.
‘Cheeky wee minx. It’s doubtful she had feet then,’ Wee Renee mused to herself.
‘Have you seen any of these for yourself?’ Julia asked.
’I have seen them all in my time, especially when I was a girl. Bonny Scotland is riddled with them. There’s a lot of water up there – Rivers, Lochs and the Sea. You know, Loch Ness, is deeper than most parts of the North Sea. Imagine what’s hidden in its icy depths. Scotland is wilder than these parts, and those type of creatures can conceal themselves for years, you understand,’ Wee Renee informed them. ‘Let’s just hope they aren’t all here for a wee mini-break. Hmmm… who can meet up tomorrow at lunch?’
‘What are you planning Rene?’ Pat asked ominously.
‘A riverside picnic of course. Let’s all bring a collective lunch and see what pops up, eh?’ Wee Renee said excitedly.
Most of the people there said they would come. They hoped it wouldn’t rain, as Wee Renee would still expect them to turn up with a blanket and sandwiches.
They drifted home one by one, thinking about what new terrors they might face by the River and planning what they were going to bring to the picnic. Wee Renee went straight to her books about River beasts. She was fired up.
That night, Jim and Julia had a peaceful night on the canal, but Julia dreamed of snakes, a thousand of them, slithering towards her from the River, their fangs gleaming white in the moonlight. She watched their approach, frozen in fear on the deck of the narrowboat, a pair of wet tights in her hands.
Jim’s dream was just as exciting. His was of Wee Renee swimming fearless in the Loch, approaching Nessie. Resplendent in black swimming cap and goggles, she swam a very slow breaststroke. A knife strapped to her leg, fancying her chances.
14 Black Lagoon
From the bottom of the Sea they had come. It had taken that long for the waters full of hate and evil to get down to the Seabed. Their dead bodies had been eaten away a long time ago. Hundreds of years ago. Their spirits were uneaten but rotten to the core. Hard and spiky.
Slowly they rose. Drifting to the surface, past the bottom feeders, the jagged coral and the Sea-fish. A great evil was coming, and they would be witness to it. They could be part of it themselves. They lived for vengeance, always vengeance.
Shackled, beheaded, maimed, burned, their ghostly entrails pouring out of them. They rose up above the surface of the water. They waited until all their shipmates were present. They knew they were legion. With seaweed in their hair and throat, they began to drift towards the source.
On Sunday morning Lauren woke up and looked up at her ceiling. She wanted bacon for breakfast but had cooked the last rasher for Alan last night on his ‘special’ order. She considered sausage, she had that in the house but knew that only bacon would do. Rick still lay next to her asleep. She quickly and quietly got dressed. Lauren had set her mind on bacon and would have to go to the shop to buy some.
It was only 8 o’clock in the morning, and the streets of Friarmere were deserted. Lauren thought about what was said last night. She was going to go on the picnic as well today with Rick and wondered what they would find. It looked like it would be a lovely day for it.
Lauren thought she might get a bit of a closer look at the area on her way to the shop. This was a little bit out of her way, but she would be nowhere near as close to the danger as Jim and Julia, and so it should be okay.
She walked into the Park and began to walk across to the other side of the grass, closer to the River. The Park usually smelled of cut grass, but today she could smell the Sea and fish. That was strange, it wasn’t just that wet River smell. When Lauren breathed in, she felt like she was at the beach. It was quite relaxing in a way.
Lauren stopped walking. It was lovely and quiet. No people, warm and
peaceful. She folded her arms, and with closed eyes, she breathed deeply again. Then she heard a noise from the direction of the River. This was not the rattle of a rattlesnake; it was more like the sound of seashells rustling against one another as if they were being brushed up-and-down the beach by the waves. It had a rhythm to it, itself, almost like breathing.
That wasn’t normal for Friarmere. Rivers didn’t have tides or shells. Immediately she felt danger. She began to reverse a few steps looking everywhere for the source of the noise.
She turned, and with a swift walk got out of the Park. As she walked off, she could feel something watching her. The hairs stood up at the back of their neck. She quickly walked out of the Park and into the shop. A place where there were other people. Lauren bought the bacon, then went straight home.
She would be telling them all about this at the picnic. Lauren had been fortunate this time.
Just over the hill in Moorston, Lee the conductor of Moorston Band was on his way to the shops himself. He had no idea that the river was a dangerous place. Lee would be the first in Moorston to be given a taste of coming attractions.
There was a little bridge over the water, connecting one part of Moorston to the other. Lee lived one side of this bridge; the shops were the other. Halfway across the bridge, Lee started whistling, which seemed to startle something. He heard a slopping kind of noise and immediately looked over the bridge. He wished he hadn’t.
What Lee saw really terrified him. There was a fishlike head looking up at him. This wasn’t a normal sized fish head though; it was nearly as big as a human’s with the top of its head being massively domed and misshapen. The fishlike, lidless, eyes looked up at Lee as he gawped down at it.
This was the head of some deep-water marine fish that shouldn’t be in a little river in Northern England nevermind staring back up at an unsuspecting conductor. The water was always choppy here, and it was hard to see anything but the head, but that was probably enough. Lee really didn’t want to know what the head was connected to especially if it was as big as a human’s. He could see the hint of a neck, and he kept thinking of the 1950s movie ‘The Creature from the Black Lagoon’.
Before he could remember any other classic movie fish monsters, it disappeared under the bridge, and he couldn’t see it anymore.
Lee hoped that there were no more of these. He walked a few more steps in the direction of the shop but realised he had forgotten what he was going to the shop for. He decided that whatever it was he would learn to live without it and turned back to make a quick escape for home. Sunday hadn’t started off well for him.
On the canal, Jim and Julia peered out of their window. Now the frogman, if that is what he was, seemed the least of their troubles. They both stared in one direction, towards what they now knew as Black Island.
’Trust you to bring us here,’ Julia said, nudging Jim.
’It’s a bit exciting though, isn’t it, Jue? Go on, admit it,’ Jim asked.
’Yes, I’ll give you that one. But just remember everyone else is far away enough that they aren’t in danger. We are kind of living in cheek to jowl with these abominations,’ she stated.
’We’ll be all right, and we’ve got the best team now on the case,’ Jim said, hoping that he had reassured Julia.
Father Philip began Sunday School that morning, with a joyous retelling of Noah’s Ark. He had printed out a lot of sheets of various animals, in pairs, for them to colour or paint. He had known most of these children for a couple of years now. This was the age 4-11 group. He had baptised most of them.
He had witnessed various things during the years he ran Sunday School. It ranged from childish arguments to bullying and even evidence of children being ill-treated by their parents. He learnt that it paid to keep his eyes out for any changes.
Today there was what he would call a ‘faction’ acting very strange. They all sat together. These children were usually in different friendship groups, but today that sat in a close-knit bunch, slightly apart from the rest. They stared unblinking at him throughout the whole of the story.
Afterwards, they did not move to do the colouring but instead watched the others. Silently standing over them … oppressing them, even. When he spoke to them, they seemed to snap out of their trance and answer him normally. As he stopped talking to them, he saw them automatically revert back to their original unnatural behaviour.
He didn’t take the older ones, there weren’t many as it was. As children got older, it seemed that Church was the last thing on their minds. At least he tried to make a difference when they were smaller. He wondered how far this strange behaviour spread. When the parents picked each child up, they engaged normally with them. It seemed like a pack mentality. There was a strange problem here, and Father Philip realised he needed help.
Wee Renee had been working well into the night so had woken up at about 10am, which was very late for her on a Sunday. Now she was behind.
She had found lots of information about various creatures and had written it down in a small notebook. Wee Renee had already put this in her bag to take down with her when she went to the picnic.
She was wondering who should also get involved in this along with the Band. After a little thought, she decided that until she knew what they were facing she wouldn’t call anyone for help. There were several groups she could bring in on this matter. Joe’s vigilantes, the Moorston Vampires and lots of other folk if required.
This morning she had to make two phone calls. The first was to Our Doris, to invite her to the picnic and to give her the lowdown. She had promised Our Doris that she would keep her in the loop, as she got a bit lonely over there in Melden. Our Doris found this new watery mystery fascinating. She couldn’t wait for this afternoon. This would make her day. The next phone call was to warn someone.
Wee Renee called Beryl, who picked it up after the first ring.
’Hello?’ Beryl said.
’Hello love, it's Wee Renee,’ Wee Renee said.
‘Oh. Not that I am not pleased to hear from you, but something’s happened hasn’t it?’ Beryl asked. Beryl had never known Wee Renee to ring her up just for a chat or gossip. She was always fighting evil or learning new facts about so-called mythical beasts. When she called, it was for one reason only.
’Not yet but I think it’s about to, and that is my point of ringing. You walk Bambi around the Park, don’t you?’ Wee Renee asked.
’Yes, I do, she loves it in the Park. What’s in there?’ Beryl asked warily.
’Lots. Just don’t go near the river, that’s all. It looks like something is in there and the canal too. Just keep away from those areas. I wouldn’t like that wee lassie to be anyone’s dinner. She’s no Rottweiler; she won’t be able to give them a bit back. But keep this under your hat, it’s secret until I know more, okay?’ Wee Renee asked.
‘I don’t know what I’d tell anyone. You're a bit vague. I’ll keep away from the Park. I suppose the Moors are safer now. If she wants soft ground on her pads, we’ll go up there. Thanks for the warning, Wee Renee it’s much appreciated. I hope it doesn’t turn out as bad as last time.’ Beryl said.
’Er… aye, we’ll see,’ Wee Renee said. They both put the receiver down at the same time. Beryl didn’t think that last sentence sounded optimistic.
15 Cucumber
Everyone met at the Park. Most of them bought food, blankets and plates in their bags. It was a beautiful day. Our Doris’s contribution was in two large Tupperware containers. One held homemade fairy cakes, the other, warm sausage rolls.
Liz had had to work that morning, so she had not had time to prepare food. Working in a local supermarket meant that everyone had to take their turn doing weekends. She had been at work this Sunday until 12.30, after starting at 6am.
Liz had bought a ready-made vegetarian pasta for herself, as she thought that most of everyone else’s food would probably contain meat. She was right. Then she bought a huge salad platter as Andy’s contribution to the shared lu
nch and a box of cakes.
Lauren had brought a plateful of tuna sandwiches. Pat had made barmcakes filled with brawn or beef. She shouted over to Bob.
’I’ve got you sorted lad, lots of lovely brawn. Me and thee will sit here and scoff these between us,’ Pat said. ‘I’ve even got some brown sauce with me.’ Pat winked at Bob. He still didn’t know what brawn was.
Jackie had baked scones. Sue had made scotch eggs, while Tony had made ham sandwiches on wholemeal bread.
Maurice had been to the shop and bought a whole shelf of pork pies. Ernie had baked a fruitcake. Gary had bought three large family packets of crisps; Martyn had bought lots of drinks, and Wee Renee had warmed up several tins of soup and brought a couple of loaves of sliced bread. She hadn’t had time to prepare anything, after her mostly all-night research session.
Hell And High Water Page 7