Alan Baxter - The Gulp - Five Tales of Horror

Staring at the ocean he remembered his dad out here back in the old days, vibrant and enthusiastic. So different to the blank sheet of paper the man had become. Troy wanted more than that. He wanted someone he genuinely loved. Someone who fired up his heart every time he saw her, even after thirty-five years of marriage. Or more. He wanted kids who grew up happy and wanted to visit after they’d moved out, instead of the way he and his brother and sister only forced themselves back to the family nest for special events. Birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries, the occasional Sunday lunch when Mum got downhearted that all her little babies were grown and flown. They’d recently endured the fake frivolity of Christmas so at least that was done with for another year. He would have his perfect family one day, but it wouldn’t be with Cindy Panko. He needed someone better. He had time.

The ocean swell matched his breathing and his nerves rose again. He sensed an insistence from the water, an urgency, and frowned, but a smile tugged at his lips. He set up his rod, fingers a little clumsy with haste. Something’s out there, he thought. All these years had given him a sixth sense for the right spot, the right time. All fishers either claimed to have that second sight or claimed it was bullshit. He’d always been in the latter camp, but not today. Now, inexplicably, he was a believer. He crouched, sharp knife sliding into the wet crevices at the water line as he carved away chunks of cunjevoi for bait.

Ready to cast, he checked his watch and sighed. He only had a couple of hours. Would it be enough? Another day making dental instruments lay ahead of him, eight hours of knurling scalers and sickle probes. Something else he needed to change, that was no lifetime career. The thought of it made him feel hollow inside. Maybe if he got a better job, he’d get a better girlfriend, but there was precious little work going in The Gulp. Precious little with any real prestige anyway. And getting out of The Gulp was harder than finding good work.

Fuck it all. Fish and forget, that was his mantra. It was how he stayed sane among the drudgery of life. He let the meditation sink over him, watched the swell, watched the clouds, cast and recast. Today he would make a grand catch. He didn’t know how he knew, didn’t question it. Just believed.

As the sun rose, the overcast sky cleared and the heat rose. It was going to be a scorcher after all. He’d pulled in a couple of decent sized bream after a bit more than an hour, which was disappointing. It wasn’t anything like the inner feeling had made him expect. They’d feed him for a couple of days, along with the stock of vegies he had in his flat from his mother’s garden. Whatever other faults she might have, no one could say she wasn’t a green thumb. Vegie beds took up nearly half the large back yard on Thomas Street and she kept herself, all her kids, and several friends and neighbours well-stocked with fresh produce.

Troy checked his watch. He was due at work in just over an hour. It would take about twenty minutes to walk back to his flat on Freemantle Street on the south side of The Gulp, then it was only another five minute walk to Turner’s Manufacturing in the little industrial park on the very southern edge of town, where the bush rose steep and thick behind the large metal warehouses and workshops. So he had about half an hour in hand.

“Come on,” he muttered. “Today’s supposed to be special.”

He baited up and sent the line sailing out. The sun was well above the horizon now, shining gold and glittering across the water. Some of the locals were saying they were in for a long, harsh summer, but didn’t they always say that? Summer was always long, usually too hot, and getting increasingly humid even this far south. Thanks, climate change.

His line snagged suddenly. He flicked back, felt the hook catch and smiled. This felt bigger than a bream. Much bigger. He let the line go a little and it raced away fast. Frowning he tried to pull it back, but whatever he’d hooked was strong. His relaxed fishing became a sudden battle as he wound up, hauled in, let it run, wound up again. Whatever he had, he needed to tire it out before it broke his line. Or bit through it, some distant voice in his mind suggested.

“This is it,” he said. “Come on, in you come!”

For ten minutes they battled, the whole while Troy’s mind swam with possibilities of what he might have snagged. Then sudden slack and he staggered back.

“Fuck it!”

Another rock fisher, about a hundred metres away around the shelf, glanced over at Troy’s outburst. “Lost another one, hey?” he shouted across with a laugh in his voice.

Troy realised it was Trevor Clancy, one of the middle-aged whingers he drank with at Clooney’s, iron grey hair and hard eyes. Troy flipped the bird and Trev laughed, turned his attention back to his own line. With a sigh, Troy began reeling in. That fisher’s sense was bullshit after all. Wishful thinking. He felt a drag here and there and realised his hook must still be in place. He’d thought the line had snapped, but it didn’t feel that way now. Whatever it was got lucky and slipped the hook.

The line snagged again and Troy spat curses. Definitely caught up on something inanimate this time. He tugged and wound the reel, but it wouldn’t give. He slipped the knife from his belt, about to cut the line and his losses, but thoughts of sea life tangled in discarded fishing line passed by his mind’s eye. A lot of the old boys didn’t care, they thought themselves above the welfare of the ocean, but Troy had a respect for it. He fished for sport, certainly, but he fished for his dinner too. There was purpose to it, man in nature, sustaining himself. He didn’t believe in that process causing unnecessary suffering. He slipped the knife back and decided to try a little longer to reel in.

He wound and leaned the rod up and back. The rod bent, the line seemed to stretch, then as he was about to quit, a little movement. He hauled again. And again. Little by little, the line came back to him, but reluctantly. It seemed to be dragging something heavy along with it.

“Fucking kelp,” Troy muttered, picturing a great wad of the thick plant being drawn along the seabed. But he didn’t want to leave line in the water if he could help it, so he kept up the effort.

He flicked a glance over his shoulder and saw Trevor watching. “Fucken cut it, ya drongo!” Trev yelled.

“Worry about your own self,” Troy called back.

He heard the man’s guttural laughing as Trev lit a cigarette and crouched by his tackle box, baiting up.

It took ten minutes and with every passing second, the urge to keep pulling in grew stronger. Maybe his earlier sense hadn’t been wishful thinking. A deep yearning ached in his chest, a strangely primal need to see whatever this was caught on his line. With every wind, he thought less and less that it was anything as simple as kelp. On some deep level, it called to him. Troy had a sensation that whatever he’d hooked badly needed to come ashore. It needed his help.

It was a strange and slightly disconcerting train of thought, but he couldn’t help picturing whatever it was as though it had limbs that reached, stretched for him like a child asking for a hug.

Finally, he saw something causing a shallow wake at the end of his line and he took a couple of steps down the rock, careful not to get too close to the wet and slippery edge. His father’s lessons were burned in. As the bundle of whatever it was got closer, Troy realised it was incredibly heavy for its size. It wasn’t kelp, but some dark, slick seaweed of a kind he didn’t recognise. Thin, flat leaves with blisters all over that seemed like bubbles, pressing out in translucent bulges. Each blister was fluid-filled, seawater he presumed, but it seemed thicker the way it moved. Troy reached down and grabbed hold of the mass, hauled it up onto the rock beside his feet. It was warm despite the cool water sluicing off it. Too warm, like a living thing. A warm-blooded thing. A sensation of need rose from it and Troy stopped, stood back a pace or two in discomfort. The feeling was strong, too much.