John Langan - The Fisherman

When he notices the movement again, this time on the trees to his left, it’s harder to discount, and with the third incident, also on the left, Jacob stops and stares into the woods. They’ve walked no more than a hundred yards up the drive, but the trees have drawn in closer together. The darkness among them is denser, almost tangible. Jacob strains his vision to distinguish whatever has been making that weird, liquid motion. You know how it is trying to see at night. Your eyes pick out all kinds of shapes in the shadows, even where you’re sure there’s nothing. Jacob stares into the blackness, unable to decide if the pale forms that appear to be dancing somewhere deep in the trees are actually there. He considers calling out to the others, who have not picked up on his absence and are already leaving him behind, but, wary of looking the fool, he hesitates.

With a sudden motion, one of the white shapes is at the edge of the tree line, startling Jacob so much he trips backwards and sits down, hard. He loses hold of his axe, which clatters musically on the rocky drive. Eyes bulging from the sockets, heart pounding at the base of his throat, Jacob gapes at the thing in front of him. No nightingale, it regards him from gold eyes that shine in the moonlight. Dark hair floats around its head, coiling and uncoiling as if with a life of its own. Its arms stretch to either side of it, slowly waving up and down, the light sliding back and forth along them. They’re covered in scales, Jacob sees, the dull nickel of old coins — all of its skin is. Not just its arms, but its entire body is moving, bobbing up and down ever-so-slightly, as if suspended in water. When he sees its feet hovering a good two feet above the ground, Jacob realizes that the thing is floating, that, impossibly, the space between the trees is full of water. Jacob is swept by the sensation that he’s looking not across but down , that instead of sitting firmly on the ground, he’s perched precariously on the side of a cliff. His hands scramble for purchase amidst the dirt and stones beneath him, but find nothing to forestall the feeling that he’s about to tip headlong into the water that shouldn’t be there, that can’t be there.

The fingertips of his right hand brush something smooth, polished — the handle of his axe. Jacob grabs it, drags the tool to himself. With a sickening lurch, the ground is the ground, again; although the water between the trees remains where it is. As he struggles to his feet, he feels hands under his arms, on his back, hears voices asking if he’s all right. It’s Rainer and Angelo, run back to see what happened to him. Afraid that the nausea that hasn’t subsided will find its way out of his mouth if he opens it, Jacob gestures at the trees.

When Rainer sees the thing floating amidst the trees, he grunts. Angelo crosses himself repeatedly and unleashes a stream of what Jacob assumes are Latin prayers. He’s surprised at his relief that the others see this thing, too. The symbol he carved on it faced out, Rainer raises his axe. The creature’s eyes widen, and it darts away, farther back into the water. Rainer continues to hold his axe outstretched. Jacob waits for the water to vanish. From Rainer’s bearing, Jacob has the impression that he’s expecting the same result. It doesn’t happen. Rainer maintains his pose for a good minute or so, before lowering his axe with a sigh, an expression on his face Jacob doesn’t like in the least, puzzlement, mixed with unease.

Angelo notices it, too. “What?” he says. “What’s wrong?”

“It is nothing,” Rainer says, which the three of them know is a lie but which neither Jacob nor Angelo disputes.

As they walk the remaining distance to the Dort house, the water lapping the nearest trees flows over them — Jacob thinks that it’s rising, except that that’s the wrong word, the wrong direction. It’s more as if the five of them are passing between walls of water that are sliding steadily closer to them. By the time the Dort house is in view, the treeline is barely visible beneath ten feet of water that is oddly dark. The men glance to either side of themselves nervously. Even Rainer spares the nearing water a look. Not far enough away for comfort, several of the white things Jacob saw keep pace with them. There isn’t one of the men who doesn’t want to say something, but it’s Italo who finally says, “Rainer. What the devil is this?”

“The dark ocean,” Rainer says. “Here, it is leaking through.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Italo says.

“It means our friend is further along than I had hoped,” Rainer says.

Jacob is desperate to ask about the white things shadowing them. It’s the face of the one he confronted that bothers him the most — not its inhumanity, the eyes, the scales, but the maddening suggestion of the human, its proximity to any, to all, of them. If he could shape his unease into a question, he would force it out of his trembling lips.

In front of them, the Dort house sits lightless. It’s the kind of structure you encounter throughout this part of the state, its lower storey constructed of round stones of a variety of sizes cemented together, its upper storey and attic wood. The house isn’t especially tall, but it is wide, at least twice as much as any of the Station’s other houses. Both ends of the house are difficult to make out clearly, because the walls of water that flank the men extend across the distance to it, where they intersect it seamlessly, leaving only the central portion dry. Jacob is reminded of a tunnel, and the similarity does nothing for the nervousness that’s made every square inch of his skin feel supersensitive, responsive to stimulus too subtle for him to notice otherwise. As ever, Rainer leads the way, but Jacob is gratified — and guesses the others must be, too — to catch the slight hesitation before he steps forward.

“Like Moses at the Red Sea,” Angelo says. The allusion hadn’t occurred to Jacob, but he supposes it’s a fair one. There are no trees visible at all in the recesses of the water, only the white creatures, maintaining their distance. Odd as it might sound, the absence of trees makes the walls of water loom with added menace. As long as there were trees at or close to the water’s surface, Jacob could convince himself that their trunks and branches were helping to restrain the dark water. Without them, the great blocks of water appear that much more tremulous. There’s nothing Jacob would love better right now than to cross the remaining yards to the house’s wide front door as fast as his legs would carry him, but he’s certain with a kind of dream-logic that, the second he started to run, the water would crash down on him. So he controls himself and does his best not to look at the white things, which are darting back and forth amongst themselves with what appears to be ever-growing excitement. And when something much larger than the group of them combined darkens the distance behind them, swimming with the lazy back-and-forth of a turtle riding the current, Jacob tells himself that he didn’t see anything. The door to the house can’t be ten feet away from him. It’s plain, made of heavy planks of dark wood bound together with strips of metal dull with neglect. In the center of the door, a large ring hangs from the mouth of a creature Jacob can’t identify. It might be a snake, except its mouth is closed in a very human grin around the top of the ring. Rainer’s pace has picked up, these last few feet. He has both hands on his axe, all the way at the end of it. Without breaking stride, he heaves the axe up over his shoulder and brings it crashing down into the middle of that smiling snake face. As axe meets knocker, Rainer shouts a word Jacob doesn’t understand.

There’s a flash of light — only, Jacob will tell Lottie, it was black light, momentary dark instead of momentary bright. The effect on their vision is the same. They can’t see anything; they keep blinking and rubbing their eyes until the black spots in front of them have faded enough for them to make out the door, split apart and forced in as if by a small explosion. Jacob wouldn’t be surprised to smell gunpowder. Instead, the air reeks with scorched metal. Whatever the knocker was supposed to represent, it’s so many smoking pieces.