Hook, Line, and Dinner

No one paid any attention to the first poster. Not the second, either. The third turned some heads, but it was the fourth that finally got the attention of the local news.

“If you have seen or heard from these folks, call us!” the Sheriff urges in a passionate speech. His hands, white knuckled, grip the podium. He leans over it, head hanging, back hunched, moustache quivering, eyes squinting almost shut, fully the picture of a man finally able to do the job he applied for all those years ago.

Jim thinks he’s being overdramatic. People go missing all the time. Even if this is an epidemic of people snatched from the lakesides, the rivers, the ponds, pixelated photos stretched too large in posters that cry Gone Missing! Please help! because God forbid anyone resize their damned pictures before printing them.

How do they expect anyone to recognise those grainy images? Those wind-battered, rain-stained, crumpled posters pinned to the community notice board near the city centre?

“This really is just terrible, ain’t it, darlin’?” Jim’s wife croons. She sits there, hair in thick curlers, crochet shawl around her shoulders, balancing a tray of food on her knees as she watches the TV.

She plunges a fork into the honey-glazed gammon, the knife screeching against the plate as she cuts, back and forth, back and forth until she rips the tough meat free and presses it delicately into her mouth.

“People go missing all the time,” Jim says curtly. He isn’t in the mood for talking tonight but Margaret would take it personally if he stopped replying. He isn’t in the mood for dealing with that, either.

Maybe he should go missing. He imagines standing on the roadside, a wooden sign splintering in his hands please kidnap me, I beg you! but then it wouldn’t be kidnapping, it would be hitchhiking, and Jim doesn’t think he’ll get the same liberties from that.

He wants excitement, he wants out of this life, this job, this marriage, all of it heavy shackles around his ankles, holding him back, pulling him down.

Jim decides he’ll go fishing instead. As he always does when things get hard, as his father did before him, and his grandfather before that. He’ll go the day after next, on Saturday, and take the icebox and three or four beers, crisp and cold and dripping condensation. He’s almost salivating just thinking about it.

“It’s weird, though,” Margaret grumbles through a chewy mouthful of food just when Jim thought maybe she’d let it go already for tonight.

Jim is silent. He knows after thirty years of marriage that she doesn’t need any encouragement to go on.

“They were all taken near the lake.”

“The lake?” Jim’s reply bites off the end of Margaret’s. She huffs, swallows, cuts back and forth, back and forth through the overcooked gammon again and speaks only once her mouth is full.

“That young man that went missing the other month—you know, the one who moved here recently? I teach his sister at the school.” She shakes her head. “Anyway, everyone knows you ain’t to go in the lake—you fish there like nobody’s business no matter what I tell you, even though they been finding all kinds of weird shit, like rings and bracelets, in those fish lately. Honestly, Jim, you really need to—”

“Oh, get off my back already, Marge.” Jim waves his hand. Every conversation turns back to this, it’s the bane of his existence, a slow poison. But he won’t stop fishing. He’s not going to let her take everything from him.

“Whatever,” Margaret says, sharp, barbed. “Point is, they all went swimming there. That lake’s been cursed for centuries, I tell you. You won’t never catch me in there, Jim, I tell you.”

“Like hell anyone’d catch you swimming anywhere.”

“Eat your dinner, Jim. It’s going cold.”

The conversation is sniped just like that. Jim is glad for the silence, but he feels uneasy at what Margaret said. He’s been hearing these old wives’ tales since he was a boy, he knows that everyone thinks the lake is cursed, that every few decades a swath of people disappear near it. But he hasn’t ever seen anything out of the ordinary there.

Still, he’s uneasy. It’s a stone in his gut, cold slimy sweat glossing his skin, raised pulse, lump in his throat, eyes at the window.

Jim turns, fast and sudden, breath caught in his tight lungs; there’s no one there but no one needs to be. He can feel it, sense it—there is someone watching him.

Jim would normally wait to go fishing the weekend, but he has to go now. It’s Friday night, he’s finished his shift in the grotty office, briefcase slung up the corner, his suit jacket over the back of the sofa waiting to provoke Margaret.

He didn’t even sit down five minutes, just changed his clothes and stuck a note on the fridge and left with his tack box and rod. Jim can’t be bothered for his folding fishing chair, he’ll sit on the bank, on the sand and mud and pebbles, flattening the reeds. If it’s good enough for rats, it’s good enough for him.

It’s still and quiet on the lake this evening. The sun is low in the sky, dimming, falling, warming the cold surface with a saturated orange that ripples like a silk sheen each time it’s disturbed.

Jim hasn’t caught anything yet. Last time he had a bite, some kid ran past shouting to his friend on the phone. Just how young do these kids have phones these days? Jim didn’t give his son a phone until he was in his late teens, he got glued to the thing, never stopped texting, calling, tap tap tapping.

You’d never know that now, he hasn’t called in close to a year. Must’ve gotten over that addiction of his.

The line goes taut. Just like that, Jim’s lax hands are tight around the rod, reeling it in, pulling back against the thrashing just beneath the calm. He yanks, the fish yanks harder, fighting against the hook in its mouth.

Jim distantly notes it must hurt, the fish must be in agony, but he doesn’t let that deter him. No, rather than this, Jim is thinking about dinner. About baking the plump fish, gutting it, roasting it, wrapping it in tin foil and letting it saturate itself in its own oil and juices, the tender flesh soaking it up inch by flavourful inch.

Jim pulls harder, digs his foot into the flat nest of reeds he’s left behind from sitting on the lakeside, and kicks over an empty beer bottle which clatters against a rock then rolls into the water.

“C’mon, y’fishy bastard,” Jim swears, gritting his teeth and pulling, pulling, pulling until the fish finally breaks through the surface of the water, flying high and arched in the air, before landing with a wet, flat, thud against his chest.

Jim stares at the fish. The fish stares back.

Jim opens his mouth, to shout, to scream, to gasp. The fish opens its mouth and groans.

“What the—” Jim starts, unable to force the words up and out of his tight throat.

The fish has teeth. Not big, jagged, sharp ones, nothing nightmarish like that, no. It has human teeth—which is ultimately worse.

They’re too large for its gaping mouth, crowded together like they’re trying to shove free, with an underbite like a spotty teenager in an orthodontist’s office. Then the fish flips over on to its other side, still thumping up and down up and down against Jim’s chest, and there, where the other fin should be, is a hand.

That snaps Jim back to his senses. He shudders and sits up, so the fish falls to his lap, then kicks out his legs, spasmic and shaking to try and break free. But the fish isn’t having it.

With its disfigured, no-nailed hand the fish grabs hold of Jim’s ratty tatty jeans, grips the leg of them in an unrelenting fist. Jim scrambles to his feet, kicking and shouting, “Get off! Get off!” But the fish won’t let go. It groans again, a deep, throaty sound, and yanks him towards the edge of the lake. Jim smacks at it, tries everything he can to break free, tries calling for help against this malformed creature, but nothing works.

No one comes to help him, and the fish, surprisingly strong as it is, struggles and pulls and flips itself and Jim into the cool water though Jim barely registers the feel of it. The lake sprays up around them as the fish drags Jim thigh-deep, far enough in for the vicious thing to finally let go, but not without first sinking its blunt-edged teeth deep into the soft flesh of Jim’s leg.

“Let go of me!” Jim cries, finally drudging up the courage in his adrenaline-fueled haze, to choke the fish in his own fist and to rip it free from him and throw it far, far, far into the belly of the lake.

It squeals something fierce and breaks the surface with a loud splash! Then it flails and chokes and waves its five fingers, almost purple, now, with the chill of the water, like a drowning man.

Jim doesn’t wait around to see what happens next. He’s already wading back to shore, jumping, diving, spluttering back to dry land. He throws himself down into the reeds once more, catching himself on his shaking hands, dry heaving with terror.

His leg is throbbing, aching, stinging, burning, burning, burning and he feels sick to his stomach. Jim clutches his thigh in both hands, grunting against the wave of pain it causes, and he pulls at the raggedy tear in his jeans with both thumbs, letting him glimpse into the little glistening cavern of his fresh wound.

Blood pools to the surface of the gash, almost black at its source, dark red where it matts in the fabric of his jeans, dark pink where it meets with the lake water and dribbles in thin rivulets down his leg, over his fingers.

Jim tries to stand but finds his leg unable to hold his weight, instead he slides his phone out his pocket, but it’s waterlogged and dead. He shouts, yells, cries, but no one hears him.

Jim feels thirsty. Something moves in the water, there’s a ripple spreading out from its unknown assailant, its epicentre, and the disturbance sets Jim on edge. He’s alone, afraid, wounded, and so thirsty.

Margaret bandaged his leg when he finally got home last night. Jim supposes he should be grateful, but Margaret’s hands were not tender and soft, her long nails nicked him, she pinched and prodded and, “How many times have I told you not to go fishing down there, Jim?”

Jim didn’t argue back last night, he was too tired, too traumatised, all he wanted was to be bandaged up and to drink all the water in the damned tap. He got through four glasses before vomiting it all back up in a dark watery sludge that sluiced down his front and clung to his skin beneath his clothes.

He didn’t feel much better this morning, either.

Or this afternoon. Now it’s nearly evening, and he hasn’t been able to eat, or sleep, or keep anything down longer than an hour and his head hurts so badly his gums are aching.

“Jim, dear, are you alright? You ain’t moved this whole time I been at work it looks like,” Margaret says as she jangles through the door. She throws her keys into the little ceramic bowl by the entrance and kicks off her thick clunky shoes, thud thud one after the other and they bang against the wooden cupboard. Then she throws her bags down, full of the kids’ schoolwork, marking, it’s always work, work, work with her, never any time for—

“Jim?”

Jim hums, low and deep in his throat. He’s hidden, safe, beneath a blanket on the sofa.

“You gonna talk to me or what?”

“M’sick, Marge,” Jim manages. “Leave me ‘lone.”

“Fine. Suit yourself. Don’t say I don’t care about you, it’s all on you. You and your damned fishing—wouldn’t have gotten yourself into this if you just—”

Whatever she was going to say is swallowed by Jim’s sudden cough, loud and abrasive, rattling through his chest. He coughs so hard his teeth throb. He swallows, clears his throat; there is something in his mouth.

He can feel Margaret trying to stare through the blanket as Jim spits out a tooth. Why is his mouth so tight, so sore?

Why does he feel like he’s burning up from the inside out?

He feels like he can’t breathe.

Jim throws the blanket off himself and kicks it down his body. Margaret screams.

Jim’s head has become a shrunken, wrinkled, sagging grey lump, barely distinguishable from his shoulders. He spits another tooth out of his puckered lips, aims for his palm and misses. His arm, suddenly, feels wrong, foreign, dislocated, and it isn’t until he focuses his swimming vision that he realises they are both suddenly an awful lot shorter than they should have been.

“What’s wrong with you!” Margaret continues to yell, shrill, loud, panicked. Her eyes water and her plump hands fly to her mouth then reach out towards Jim then clasp back around her mouth. Her red lipstick is halfway gone, sticking instead to the flakes of dry skin that raise from her lips. “Oh god, Jim! Oh god, what’s wrong with you!”

Jim tries to reply, tries to answer Margaret’s rising panic with his own, but his throat is tight and his breath is wheezing and he cannot, for the life of him, remember how to speak.

“I’m going to bring the doctor right on over!” Margaret hurries away, pulls her clunky thick-soled shoes back on, grabs her jangling keys out of the little ceramic pot on the side near the door, and then she’s gone. Jim can hear the engine, distantly, can hear the car driving away, and he wonders whether Margaret will come back.

The only sound in the house, then, is Jim’s raggedy breathing, which is rapidly becoming something of a wet rasp. His throat is burning, and his bones feel like they’re becoming liquid, condensing down into a coarse paste, white-hot acid. He’d scream if he had the energy, he’d convulse and twist to try and escape the agony, but all he can do is roll limply off the sofa and on to the hardwood floor.

Jim doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know what’s happening.

He’s naked apart from his underwear, writhing weakly on the cold floor, and he has the distinct sensation that everything is slowly getting bigger. Did he take too many tablets? Is he dying? Is this a dream, a nightmare?

Then, through the thick haze of his mind it hits him. The fish! It was that fucking fish, it bit him, the bastard. It must’ve been infected with something. It had looked deformed, a Frankenstein’s creature of parts, a disgusting blaspheme against God’s creatures. Jim hadn’t been religious in a long time, but there was nothing he could do now but pray.

They were all taken near the lake Margaret had said. All those missing posters, pasted to the boards, those vacant, smiling faces staring out from paper streaked with rain. Had they been bitten, too? But that didn’t make sense. Jim tried hard to think, but he was in such pain it was becoming harder and harder to push through.

But one thing was clear. There was something in that lake. Something near it, in it, about it, Jim didn’t know the exacts but the stories were true. That lake was cursed, or bewitched, haunted, or something. Maybe if he could just make his way back there, to the reeds by the side of the lake, he’d know.

He tries to stand, but he can’t move his legs. He tries to look down at them, but moving his head yanks his whole body with it. His chin is touching his chest, his neck has, like an accordion, been pressed back into his body. But he needs to move, he needs to get to the lake, it’s only a five-minute walk from the house, he could do it.

Except, he can’t. Jim can’t stand, can’t get himself up off the floor. When he tries to move, he jerks, when he tries to breathe, he rasps, when he tries to talk, his tongue becomes a swollen slug in his mouth. He squirms forwards, both legs moving as one, and he realises that they are joined together. The skin has melted, fused, stuck completely together, like a mermaid. Like a fish.

The lake, he needs to get to the lake.

Jim can almost hear it, the calm of the water, the plip plop, the splash, the trickling and gushing, and the sides of Jim’s neck burn molten hot.

The lake.

It’s almost like it’s calling to him.

Jim braces his feet-turned-foot against the floor and shoves himself forwards, reaching with his shortened arms and dragging, dragging, but it’s no good, he barely moves. He tries to find something to pull himself with and sees only his fishing box, the handle left upright.

Reaching, reaching, reaching, Jim manages, at last, to get hold of the icebox, he tries to pull himself towards it, only to yank it over on to its side, sending cold chunks of ice clattering, clashing, avalanching to the floor. The ice freezes him where it touches him, the cubes melt against his skin, seep into him, permeate his flesh, making him cold and damp and—

The front door rattles on its hinges. Jim tries to crane his head to see but instead his spine bows backwards, the shrinking bones clicking and cracking against one another; he gasps but the air he fights in whistles, high and reedy, through the sides of what was his neck and is now a fusion of head and body and sucked-in shoulders.

Jim expects it to be Margaret, returned with the doctor, throwing the door open, rushing, hurrying, frantic to help—instead, it creaks open, slowly, and a shadow is cast over him. Jim can’t see who it is, his vision is tunnelling, the colours are fading into a kaleidoscope of reds, blues, greens, ultraviolets, shapes too sharp around the edges and sounds too vociferous to focus on.

The shadow steps closer, a smoky, not-quite-there figure that stands, accusingly, over him. It’s far too large to be Margaret, too broad, too tall, too silent.

It begins to reach down, a dark hand swooping towards him, a hawk and a rabbit, and it is then, as Jim feels the roots of his hair push through his scalp, his arms, his legs, and on to the floor, that he realises that it isn’t a shadow at all.

It’s not a person, either. At least not in any corporeal form.

Jim would say his hair was standing on edge, but he’d shed it all in a matted clump, the follicles now shielded by dull rounded scales.

“C’mon y’fishy bastard,” the figure says, it’s voice watery and thick and a mimicry of Jim’s as it lifts him off the floor and clasps him in both hands.

Jim sees two eyes, deep-set and fish-like, staring back at him as he’s raised to its face. They glint, surrounded by the murky darkness of what should have been eye sockets, before Jim is held by his tail and slapped against the doorframe, where the speed of it leaves a neat little dent and a clean-cut right angle in his skull. The force makes his silvery eyes bulge, but they no longer see.

Later, Margaret returns with the doctor, and, when she can’t find Jim anywhere, the police. They take evidence, sweep Jim’s hair into a neat pile and detain it in a sealable plastic bag, take photos of the overturned icebox, and tell Margaret to cook herself something nice for dinner while they analyse everything at the station.

Later yet, Margaret is sitting, hair in curlers, tray of food on her lap, watching TV.

She cuts into the fish Jim must have left in the fridge to cook and finds Jim’s wedding ring inside.