John Langan - The Fisherman

I licked my lips, which had gone dry. Attempting to keep my eyes on all four figures surrounding me, I said, “This isn’t your wife, Dan. You have to know that.”

“Shut up,” Dan said and, before I could offer a rejoinder, charged.

The last fight worth the name I had been in had occurred the better part of three decades ago. Dan was younger, at a guess stronger, and he was fighting for what he’d convinced himself was his family. He’d learned a little from his first pass at me: he faked a swing at my head with the stone, then whipped his left hand at me in a roundhouse that might have been smoother if he hadn’t injured that arm. It clouted my ear with less force than he intended, leaving me able to jerk my head out of the path of his rock. I slashed the knife right to left across him, felt it drag on his shirt. He hissed, and swept the stone at me in an uppercut that hit me high in the chest. I grunted, and slashed left to right, feeling the knife catch on his skin. Hugging his left arm to the vents I’d cut in his shirt, Dan stumbled back.

My chest was heaving, my temples pounding. “Dan,” I said, “please.” The tip of my knife wavered in front of me, Dan’s blood scarlet on more of the blade than I’d anticipated.

Crouched forward, his own breath coming in pants, Dan said, “You cut me. You son of a bitch.”

This did not seem the appropriate moment to point out that I had done so in response to his effort to crush my skull with the rock he continued to hold. To either side of me, the twins had drawn closer, their pudgy fingers ending in hooked claws. At my back, Sophie was also nearer, similarly changed. I’d cut Dan deeper than I’d intended. Where it pressed against him, his shirt sleeve was wet with blood. Without releasing his grip on the stone, he lowered himself to sitting. “Ow,” he said. “You son of a bitch. You cut me.”

“Sorry,” I said; although I wasn’t, not exactly. A mix of joy and revulsion swirled in my gut: joy that I’d survived Dan’s assault; revulsion at the blood soaking his sleeve. Was there any way to find him some kind of medical care in this place?

Dan didn’t answer me. Blood was dripping from his shirt cuff onto the rocks underneath him. The twins, their toes webbed and clawed, were less than a yard from me. I wasn’t as concerned with turning the knife on them or Sophie, not with their appearances so changed, but I wasn’t sure it would do me any good. Yes, they seemed solid, as much as Marie had earlier, in the forest, but the ease with which their forms shifted made me doubt the efficacy of any weapon I could muster against them. When the boys paused their flanking maneuver, I assumed it was to judge the best moment to strike. I didn’t think I could evade the two of them. I was hoping to hop out of the range of one and deal with his brother; though their wide mouths, crammed with fangs, troubled me far more than had Dan’s stones. Not to mention, as long as I was occupied with one of them, their mother would have the opportunity to move on me from behind.

It was the twin to my right who started towards Dan first. His brother looked at me quizzically, and turned after him. Dan raised his head to them. His skin was white, his eyes glazed — shock I guessed, at the wound I’d dealt him. He grinned sickly at the monsters working their way in his direction. “My boys,” he said. “Come to your papa.” The closer the things drew to him, the more their pale forms shimmered, until by the time they were standing beside Dan, they had resumed the appearance of toddlers, with the exception of their mouths, which retained their shark grins. Beneath Dan, the rocks were slick and red. With a broad tongue the color of liver, the boy on Dan’s right licked his lips. His mouth opened, as if in a yawn, and kept opening, wider and wider, his notched teeth ringing a gullet studded with clusters of additional fangs. His attention returned to the blood trickling from him, Dan didn’t notice the boy’s head pivoting in his direction, the better to deliver a massive bite to his shoulder. To his left, the other twin was spreading his jaws, readying his strike. I went to speak, to call out a warning to him, but Sophie shoved me aside and strode past me. Her mouth was likewise open, the full set of her teeth on display.

What must Dan have thought, watching the creature he had called his late wife’s name advance towards him, the lower portion of her face a stark refutation of the identity he’d tried to confer on her? Something was happening to Sophie, to the boys, another change rippling over them. Their flesh blackened as if burned, cracking and crumbling, showing charred muscle in some places, burnt bone in others. The odor of charcoaled meat filled the air. An expression of unutterable sadness dragged Dan’s features down. As if to ward off what Sophie had become, he held up his right hand, and the boy to his right snapped his jaws shut on Dan’s shoulder. At almost the same moment, the boy on Dan’s left clamped onto his chest. Dan’s head jerked up, his eyes starting, his arms flying out to either side of him, his back rigid, as if he’d been struck by lightning. His mouth worked to release some sound, a scream or a curse, but Sophie swallowed it in the terrible kiss she lowered on him. As her jaws closed around his face, what sounded like a frantic humming rose from deep in his chest; while his legs spasmed underneath him, as if he were trying to stand. The trio that had him in their teeth kept him in place. Without surrendering her hold on him, Sophie pressed Dan’s arms down.

His family’s attack on him could not have lasted more than a couple of seconds, yet it seemed as if I had been standing watching the three of them savage Dan for hours. So much useless, bloody metal, the knife hung in my hand. Somewhere in the recesses of my brain, a voice was shouting at me to do something; it hadn’t been that long; though hurt, Dan might be savable; even if he weren’t, no one deserved to die like this, devoured alive. My eyes focused on the knife and shifted to Sophie. Her spine was visible at a couple of points through her burned flesh. If I stabbed the knife icepick-fashion on the back of her neck, that might be sufficient to cause her to release Dan. I switched my grip on the handle.

Whichever boy had bitten into Dan’s shoulder pulled his mouth from it and leveled his metallic gaze at me. His face was a patchwork of cinder and ash, his lips and chin splashed scarlet, his teeth hung with shreds of meat. Dan shuddered; his right arm lifted, the hand cupped, and swept in to his chest, as if beckoning me to approach. The boy stared at me with eyes in whose depthless shine I saw all the intelligence of a trout, or pike.

Before I fully understood what I was doing, I bolted. As fast as my feet could pick a path across the stones, I fled that place, ran from Dan and the family he had literally imagined for himself, from Marie looking out across the waves, from the Fisherman engaged in his titanic contest, from the unimaginable creature with which he contested, from the black ocean roaring to the horizon. I made no attempt to retrace the route that had brought me here; instead, I headed straight for the Vivid Trees lining the top of the beach. Loose rocks rattled and snapped as my boots landed on them. I slipped and slid from side to side like someone trying ice skates for the first time. Point down, the knife was in my hand. Stones skipped and rolled away, kicked free by my boots. Beyond the clatter of my passage, I could hear nothing except the breath rushing in and out of my mouth and the waves foaming on the shore. Sophie and the twins — Marie, her bloodlust aroused — any of the pale creatures stationing the beach could be pacing me, waiting for the misstep that would allow them to share Dan’s fate with me.