’Are you okay in here for a bit on your own?’ Joe asked Rick.
’Yeah carry on. Take as long as you like,’ Rick replied.
’I’ll bring it over now. I’ll get as close as I can to the canal footpath,’ Joe said.
When Wee Renee returned to the boat, she saw Jim and Pat standing by the tarpaulin. They seemed strange and anxious. Julia was just coming off the boat, eating a packet of crisps. She didn’t seem bothered as long as it wasn’t going in her cupboard. Wee Renee joined the three of them quickly.
’He’s on his way,’ Wee Renee said breathlessly. Her hair was half out of her ponytail one side. She was starting to look very wild and woolly.
’You might not need a van for it,’ Pat said sadly.
’Why? Have we killed it or something?’ Wee Renee asked downheartedly.
’That’s not the problem,’ Jim said. ‘The problem is that what is under that tarpaulin is different from the other one we had. This isn’t a Kelpie.’ Jim said sternly, pointing downwards.
’What do you mean?’ Wee Renee asked. Jim walked to one end of the tarpaulin. He lifted the edge up between two fingers, wrinkling his nose at the smell that puffed out. Wee Renee looked down, at the large black fishtail.
’No hooves,’ he said, ‘and the wrong colour.’
‘I think it’s just a giant fish. That’s all that we’ve got,’ Pat said, shaking her head.
‘You’re right, it is a fishes tail,’ Wee Renee confirmed.
‘It ain’t fried chicken,’ Pat said, sniffing.
’Did you check the other end?’ Wee Renee asked.
’No, we’ve only just noticed this,’ Jim said.
Wee Renee walked to the other end of the tarpaulin. On the top of this end was Julia’s saucepan set and five coat hangers, which didn’t disguise the occasionally flopping pile well. Tentatively Wee Renee lifted up the top of the tarpaulin. It was dark underneath. She took a good look for a few moments until she got some idea of what was there.
Wee Renee walked the couple of steps back to Jim, Julia and Pat, who stood waiting for the news.
’You’re right, it’s not a Kelpie. But you’re wrong if you think it’s a fish, because it isn’t that either. I can see a definite humanoid head and a hand,’ Wee Renee advised them. ‘But it’s face down. I didn’t see any other distinguishing features.’
’What the hell is it?’ Pat asked.
’At best it’s a traditional mermaid. But they don’t usually have black tails. I dread to think what it is. I have got a feeling. I won’t say anything until I see it fully. I just hope it isn’t one of those,’ Wee Renee said squeezing her lips together in a tight line.
‘Where’s Joe? This place will be busy at any minute. The kids got out of School fifteen minutes ago’ Pat asked.
Joe arrived then, answering Pat’s question. He greeted them and without asking questions, the four of them loaded the large parcel into the back of his van. Wee Renee and Jim would walk to Pat’s house and Pat would ride in the passenger seat with Joe. Julia would be staying on the boat with Jackie, who was still sleeping feverishly.
When they were well and truly gone, Adam and Bob came out of their hiding place, behind two wheelie bins at the entrance to the towpath.
They took a large portion of spawn. Safely securing it with a tight intact lid. They intended to help their friends by investigating this in another way.
When the van got to its destination, Pat immediately went around to the back of her house to open up the Anderson shelter. She took the clothes-maid off the bath and started to fill it up with water, using the hose out of the garden.
When Wee Renee and Jim arrived ten minutes later the bath was a quarter full and ready to receive its new inhabitant. During its ride in the van, the captive had fully awoken and now was issuing a similar kind of screeching that they had heard before.
’It sounds like the Kelpie to me,’ Jim said.
’No, it’s slightly different,’ Wee Renee said.
‘Still bloody noisy,’ Pat commented.
The group looked up and down Pat’s road for anyone on the streets, and it looked like if they did it now, they would get away with it. They opened the back of Joe’s van and grabbed the noisy form as quickly as they could.
At a fast pace, the four of them walked up the path towards the back garden with their load, leaving Joe’s van doors flapping open. With a loud wet slap, they dropped her into the old bath. The shock of it stopped her screams for a moment.
Pat frantically looked around the Anderson shelter for some tape to use on her mouth and Joe ran back to his van to secure it.
Wee Renee and Jim slowly unravelled her from the tarpaulin. Her face was frog-like - bulging eyes, flabby lips that were unnaturally wide, stretching around to the side of her head. She had gills at the side of her neck, as well as the functioning mouth. Unlike the Kelpie, she didn’t seem to have a blowhole.
She had crustaceans on her lower body, and there was a wet rotting kind of smell. She did indeed have a fish-like tail and the scales radiated up to just above her waist. The skin above that was more of a grey colour. It looked like it was always in the water and was wrinkled. That part had already dried out and looked different than the rest of her body that was currently absorbing the water out of Pat’s bath. Her hands were also entirely dried out.
’I think she drip-dried on the way back,’ Pat said.
’She is definitely dehydrated,’ Wee Renee said. ‘You are going to have to keep her moist, Pat.’
’I’ll tape her mouth up before we get her moist or else the tape won’t stick,’ Pat said.
Her eyes angrily glared at her captors. There was murder in them.
’Do you know what she is?’ Jim asked.
Very downheartedly Wee Renee answered him.
’She’s a Sea Witch. And I’m not happy about the fact that we’ve caught one. If we thought we had problems before with the Kelpie, this is far worse,’ Wee Renee said. ‘I am glad she is far from the river and not on your boat Jim. She could have sunk it.’
While the Sea Witch was quite distressed and dehydrated from the journey, Joe and Jim grabbed her hands and tied them to the useless taps at the top of the bath. Pat turned the hose off when the water was up to the Sea Witch’s neck. She bumbled back into her house and came back out with an old tea cloth that she used to clean the windows with. She wet it and laid it up over the Sea Witches face, which was a relief for the Sea Witch and for the sake of the people watching it. The eyes were terrifying.
‘Keep it damp Pat,’ Wee Renee said. The Sea Witch seemed to be feeling a little better as she started vigorously flapping her tail up and down at the bottom of the bath, causing the water to splash over onto the floor and everyone’s shoes.
’Hey!’ Pat said. ‘None of that. Naughty girl.’ She turned the nozzle of the hose to hard jet, instead of sprinkle and sprayed it on top of the tea towel.
’Play ball, communicate, or you get the hard hose again,’ Pat said. ‘I’m not messing around with any of you lot again. Do any of you have a harpoon, if she happens to get out of control?’
Joe had the idea of making some kind of clingfilm wrapping around the Sea Witch’s tail and attaching it to the bottom of the bath so she couldn’t do that again.
’When are we going to do all this communicating?’ Pat asked.
Wee Renee looked at her watch. It was now 4pm. She had to go home and look at her book about what could help Jackie and then be at St Dominic’s to deal with the next problem. Today was proving to be quite hectic. She loved these kinds of days.
’I can’t do it now,’ Wee Renee said. ‘Until I can, she will have to be guarded, night and day. I’ve got to be somewhere tonight I’ll tell you later. Pat can you get on the jungle drums and round up all those interested in our new find. We’ll all meet in the Pub tonight, probably sometime after eight? We’ll have a brainstorm.’
’I will do that for you,’ Pat said
’I’ll
be in contact about Jackie’s wounds,’ Wee Renee said. ‘Until then Pat remember, keep her wet.’
‘Jackie?’ Pat asked.
‘No. The Sea Witch!’ Wee Renee exclaimed.
22 Fingers
There was indeed a remedy for the injuries that Jackie had suffered. The preparation was unusual, but the ingredients weren’t hard to find. Wee Renee considered taking it down in one of the condoms but then thought better of it. After a good root around in the back of her food cupboards, she found something suitable, by washing out an individual jar of mustard that she had liberated from a hotel a few years ago.
Before Pat rang around the players of Friarmere Band to ask if they were able to attend the meeting tonight, Joe took Jim back to the narrowboat.
Between Jim and Joe, they managed to get Jackie into the passenger seat of Joe’s van. She really did seem quite poorly and was a nasty colour. Joe took her back home where Pat put her to bed. Then she began her calls, rounding up the faithful for the evening.
Joe said he would sort out the guards for the Sea Witch as nearly everyone else they knew would be at the Band meeting. He contacted Darren and Craig who said that they would share the duties between the three of them until this was sorted out. This meant eight hours each shift.
Joe explained that with Jackie ill in bed, Pat would have to look after her and if Pat was out of the house at the meeting there was no one to guard the Sea Witch. Duties would have to start tonight. When Joe told Craig and Darren about what they had to look after, they weren’t shocked. After all, this was Friarmere.
Darren was the first to be on duty. He arrived at Pat’s almost immediately, not even thinking about having anything to eat. Pat prepared some sandwiches and put them in the fridge for later on. There was also a packet of crisps and a Penguin biscuit on the plate. She said he was welcome to have one of her Milk Stouts too, as long as it didn’t make him drop-off.
Wee Renee put her jar of ointment and a few other items in a bag and set off to the other side of Friarmere where St Dominic’s was situated.
Wee Renee wasn’t looking forward to this. She didn’t mind battling the forces of evil and being the foremost expert on supernatural happenings in Friarmere. That was always fun. She didn't like her job when it involved children. That always rang alarm bells.
The early Communion classes were held right in the Church rather than in the Church Hall, which was usually the place for Sunday School.
Wee Renee sat at the top behind the altar, where the Church Choir usually sat. From these seats, she could watch everything going on from the front, in the whole of the Church.
Father Philip explained again why he was so concerned and said that to avoid it looking odd and preventing the suspects from getting suspicious, he had invited all the children of that age to come here.
He hoped that there wouldn’t be more acting in this peculiar way. Wee Renee knew what had happened at Bob’s School, which was not a secret, so she confided the happenings to Father Philip.
’I wonder whether some of these are their siblings?’ She asked.
’I would know if I knew some of the older children’s names,’ Father Philip said.
’I only heard one name and that was a boy named Callum,’ Wee Renee said.
’I don’t know a Callum,’ he said. Father Philip thought he had now blown that theory out of the window, sadly. His companion was not that easily put off.
‘There are lots of Senior School children affected, so that means nothing,’ Wee Renee said. ‘One thing Bob did tell me, was that they all had these mini-squids in bottles in their bags, close at hand. I think straight away we could sort out whether the same thing is happening if I could get my hands on any being brought in here. I really don’t like going through kids bags, it just goes against the grain for me Father, but we need to know if that is what we are dealing with. In the end, it is for their benefit.’ Father Philip agreed.
’I could ask all the kids to put their bags up here, for a start,’ Father Philip said.
’Yes. Good idea. The problem is if they are facing the front, they will see me going through them,’ Wee Renee said.
’During the evening, I’ll make them go into the Lady Chapel to do something for five minutes. When they have all gone, that’s when you can go and have a rummage,’ Father Philip said.
’Good plan,’ Wee Renee agreed.
It was 10 minutes to 7 o’clock, and there were still no children in the Church. Father Philip was getting a little worried that they had realised what he was doing. With a few minutes to go, they arrived almost like a flock of birds descending, being dropped off by their parents.
By 7 o’clock the whole lot of them had arrived. Father Philip shut the doors and walked to the front so that he could address them properly.
’Put your bags up this way, please. Where the Choir sit,’ he announced.
Some of the children came straight up. Some of them were quite reluctant, but he stared at them until they did it.
They all put their bags in a pile near to Wee Renee. Against the contrast of the wood and dark tones of the Church, lots of little pink princess and blue football backpacks were in a pile. Some of these probably hold monsters, Wee Renee thought. Her heart ached for innocence lost.
Father Philip had devised this first Communion class so that there would have to be interaction from the children. There were no activities or colouring. This was an ideal form of assessment. He kept asking questions or telling them that if they thought one thing or believed another, they should walk to different sides of the Church. This was so that he and Wee Renee could observe them as much as possible. Early in the class a girl stuck up her hand and asked Father Philip who the lady was.
’That is a lady named Wee Renee, who lives in the Village. She is observing our class. It’s nothing to be concerned about, you just carry on,’ Father Philip explained.
He knew this sounded like Wee Renee was observing him teaching rather than the pupils in the class. The important thing was he hadn’t lied to them and they all seemed satisfied with the answer.
Wee Renee watched them moving in their shoal, as Bob called it. He was right. A collection of children who did not speak to the others or amongst themselves moved together, deciding on the same answer to Father Philip’s questions every time.
They seldom blinked and had expressionless faces. Father Philip made conversation with a couple of them individually and each time that seemed to break the spell. Very quickly though they went back to their almost trancelike state.
Finally, Wee Renee got her chance to confirm both of their suspicions. Father Philip told them that he wanted to do a particular exercise in the Lady Chapel, which was to the left of the main congregation area. As soon as the last one’s back had disappeared, Wee Renee started quietly opening backpacks.
She didn’t know which bag belonged to which child, so the first few that she opened had nothing suspicious inside. Only items like girls hair bobbles and football trading cards. Then she came across one with a bottle. She pulled it out quickly, but there was only lemonade in it.
The next one had a bottle too. Even before she pulled it out, Wee Renee knew that she had found one. At the top of the bottle, there were holes punched in the lid. She picked it up. One solitary squid was wriggling around inside. She opened the next bag, this was pink. Carefully wrapped up was a bottle with two mini-squids.
The next one held just colouring pencils. The next one had a squid again. Then she felt a weird sensation behind her. She stood up and there were at least eight of the infected children standing right behind her. Straight away, in the back of her mind, she knew that the squids had communicated that she was looking at them. She just knew it.
Father Philip in the Lady Chapel was trying as hard as he could to entertain all the children. He hadn’t noticed the others quietly slinking off and now he did, with a horrible feeling in his chest, he rushed over to try and save the situation.
‘Children come back
, you are missing the best bit,’ he said as he nervously tried to get to Wee Renee’s aid.
Wee Renee was already mumbling something to them before he got to her.
‘Hello children, I have lost my glasses,’ Wee Renee said.
’We didn’t see you in glasses,’ one boy said harshly.
’Aye, well that’s because I’ve lost them. That’s why. They’re somewhere on the floor and without them, I can’t see to find them, can I? I think one of these is my bag, I was just checking,’ Wee Renee said unconvincingly.
All the children in this group said nothing but walked over and picked up their respective bags. Of course, these were the ones that had the bottles in them. They joined the others in the Lady Chapel, staring at a few kids who stood apart in the corner. No words were exchanged, but these children drifted over and picked their backpacks up. En masse, they put them in a pile on the pews in the middle of the Church, which could be observed from any angle. Without a word, they walked back into the Lady Chapel.
Hell And High Water Page 13