Rottenhouse (28 page)

‘
Must be getting
tired. Reel him in, Simon……Slowly mind you, don’t go at it like its
yamissus on a Saturday night. Treat it like a laydee, Simon…… Keep
going……that’s it……now keep doing that whilst I go and get
net.’

Hands shaking and not really knowing
what he was doing Simon did as he was told. The reel clicked with
every turn and the wet line soaked his hands. The wriggling fish
swerved violently but nothing like it had been when it first
bit.

A fin splashed from the water.

‘
Looks like a good
size. Perhaps 3 pound, maybe 5, if yalucky.’ Bob said from
somewhere behind him.

A few seconds went by, Simon sweating
like a cornered pick pocket. He could see the tracer coming to the
surface and the fluorescent orange tubes that marked the knots
glistened beneath the clear bubbling water.

‘
Bob, it’s coming.
Where that net!’ Panicking, Simon took some steps back, almost lost
his footing on the wet stones. Steadied himself.

‘
Calm down yasouthern
tart. I’m here, I’m here.’

Bob was next to him now and he had
replaced his rod with the long metal pole that held the green
fishing net.

‘
Like I said, keep on
bringing him in……That’s it……Now stop when tracer hits the tip of
yarod… Good lad… Bugger me it’s a biggun. Can yasee it,
son?’

‘
Yeah I can see it.
Bloody hell this is great. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna catch my
first fish.’

‘
Now lift the rod up
out of the water and turn it toward the net. Let the fish flop in.
Don’t force it or you’ll lose it.’

Simon pulled back the rod raising it
and the fish, ‘Stay on, stay on, stay on,’ he prayed out loud but
he didn’t need to pray so hard. Bob was already on it and had the
net under the flopping and struggling fish. Together they walked
out of the lake and onto the grassy bank. The water splashed high
and wide casting little rainbows as it caught the sun.

When Simon reached the bank he clenched
his left fist tight and smiled through gritted teeth. Breathless
with both excitement and exhaustion Simon placed the rod down and
helped Bob land the fish. It flapped about in the net furious to be
out of the water. Its mouth opened wide as it gasped for water to
breath. Bob took hold of it with a steady and confident hand,
placed it on a smooth rock, withdrew his knife from a pocket sown
into the waders and quickly stabbed the fish once, square in the
middle of its shiny head. The fish flopped about, it’s wet scales
slapping the rock sounding like, well, sounding like a wet fish
slapping against rock. He then retrieved the hook using the special
little tool he retrieved from inside the grip of the knife.

The fish stopped wriggling, opened its
mouth wide one final time and then the lake grew quiet. The
rainbows faded into memory and the ripples sunk beneath the deep
waters.

Simon and Bob stared at the fish and
their reflections bounced back from its cold black eyes. Both men
wore smiles as wide as canyons whilst water dripped from their
hands and faces onto the soft earth beneath their feet. Both men
basked in each other’s glory but remained silent, knowing that
speaking aloud would break the spell.

And the fish just stared back at
them.

There is not much else a dead fish can
do.

5

‘
What is
it?’

‘
It’s a fish,
Simon.’

‘
Yeah, I know that.
But what
sort
of
fish is it?’

‘
It’s a Bream. You can
tell a Bream from its black tail and fins. Chubby bitch, I guess
about 4 pound, maybe just under.’

Bob leaned in, stroked the dead fish
and stood back up. He turned to Simon and held out his hand.

‘
Yadid well there,
lad.’

Simon shook his hand. ‘Thank you. That
was good. Harder than I thought. They really struggle.’

‘
So would you if yahad
an
oook
in yer
gob.’ Bob said as he withdrew his hand and picked up the two rods.
Once again he busied himself on the wooden pallets readying the
rods for another go around.

Another dog, different to the one he
had heard earlier barked in the distance. A couple of small birds
took flight from a nearby tree screaming their agitation as they
flew away and out of sight. The dog continued to bark, on and on.
It wasn’t a yap, the dog sounded big, the bark dangerously deep.
And it wasn’t a playful bark neither. It was a bark that told you
to back up or face its massive mouth full of teeth.

Bob looked up only briefly and then
returned his attention to the two rods and the mesmerising knots
and weights that were held in the two orange and white stripped
boxes.

On and on went the dog, Bark, Bark…
Bark, Bark… Bark, Bark…Bark, Bark… and then someone yelled at it,
their voice carrying on the soft breeze and echoing in this little
canyon where they stood. The voice was a little muffled, but it was
a man’s voice, though the dog paid it little attention. The animal
and the man continued to argue though neither of the two could
understand what the other was saying.

‘
Is that coming from
the house?’

‘
Maybe.’ Bob said
placing a completed rod and line of the floor. ‘Dog needs to be
careful.’ And like some all-seeing know it all there was one final
bark and then a gunshot. Simon took a step back and he slipped on
the wet grass. He fell on his arse hard and let out a little
oomph
as he did. The
canyon fell silent. Bob turned to see what had happened to Simon.
He looked down and Simon saw that behind those squinting eyes the
old man was laughing at him, though his face retained that dead
fish look.

‘
What yadoing down
there?’

‘
What do you think? I
slipped.’

‘
Oh, why dya do that
for?’

‘
It wasn’t on purpose,
Bob. I didn’t just think I’d fall on my arse for shits and giggles.
I did it because I was surprised to hear that… that gun… that was a
gunshot, right? It came from that house, didn’t it?’

Simon stood up, rubbing his backside
through his slippery waders. On the wind he was sure he could hear
someone crying but it could just be the sound of an animal in the
woods. The old man sighed before he answered. ‘Aye. Dog probably
went mad. They have some big ones up there, protecting whatever
shite they own. A pack from what I been told, and a pack has to
have a leader. You have to show the rest whose boss once in a
while. If one steps out a line you have to put it back in or give
it a beating. If yadon’t do that, Simon, what you have will ruin
itself and those around it will suffer.

‘
You
understand?’

Simon knew exactly what he was talking
about, what he was referring too and he understood perfectly what
Bob was saying.

‘
Yeah, Bob, I
understand.’ And that was that. They moved on like the world moved
on and the clouds overhead moved on and the water in the lake moved
and maybe the fish did too, but there was only one way to find that
out.

6

Simon put the Bream into the large
catch net that Bob had set up on the edge of the river. It floated
on the surface, and then slowly sunk to the bottom. Simon watched
it whilst Bob readied the rods.

Once the rods were baited, they waded
out into the lake and cast off, Simon to the right, Bob to the left
much like they had been prior to the catch. Both men were stood in
similar poses, their backs slightly arched, knees apart, left hand
holding the rod gunslinger style and their right hand perched
neatly on their waist, eyes narrowed; focused on the line, and
their mouths a slit of concentration.

Keeping his voice low like instructed
to by the ancient fisherman Simon said, ‘So, I guess I am one nil
up then.’

Bob chuckled. ‘Aye, but don’t get
cocky.’

Simon laughed. Realised quickly that it
was too louder a laugh and slapped his free hand across his mouth
stifling whatever sound tried to come out.

‘
What’s so funny?’ Bob
said.

‘
You just quoted Star
Wars.’

‘
What’s Star, Wars,
Simon?’ He said Star Wars like they had about 20 R’s in
them.

‘
What’s
Star Wars?’ Simon parroted and turned to Bob with
his eyebrows raised. Bob shrugged his shoulders but didn’t take his
eyes off the line.

‘
One of the most
popular movies of all… you know what, never mind. Just ignore me.’
So Bob did.

7

Both men continued to fish, each
reeling in and casting off a few times more. Bob asked Simon to
hold his rod so that he could throw a few crushed up balls of bait
into the water. ‘That should attract some more. Waters going dead
and we need to liven it up.’ But since then, almost an hour ago,
there had been nothing.

8

A terrific scream out of nowhere broke
the quaint soft sounds of the forest. It was harsh, bestial, and
cut right to Simon’s core. Simons gut dropped about 16 floors and
his heartbeat pumped erratically, reddening his face and making his
hands and feet feel fat as the blood rushed from them into his head
and chest. Quickly, though he knew he wouldn’t be able to see who
had produced that scream, he looked over toward where it had come
from. The scream went on for what seemed like minutes but was only
seconds. No birds flew from the trees and no dog barked in return.
When the scream faded a soft breeze blew across the lake and made
the overhanging trees whistle and creak.

Simon heard Bob
tsk
under his breath,
sigh heavily, and then mutter something about
noisy bloody freaks go back to fucking yapigs
or something like that.

That scream and the previous dog bark,
which was silenced by the gunshot, could only have been a mile
away, which meant that the building once called the Brew House but
now called the Rotten House was really close, perhaps just over the
valley in front of him where the trees stood atop it like sentinels
guarding a hidden treasure. Sentinels protecting him maybe?

‘
What is
that place over there, Bob? What are they doing in
there?’

Bob rubbed his unshaven chin and throat
and puffed out his top lip so that his bottom one curled underneath
it. He looked like a man in great thought. Painful thought.
Whatever he was thinking about saying, or thinking about not
saying, seemed to be weighing heavily on his mind. A water-boatman
skirted past Simon and carried on across the water caring not a jot
what dangers lay beneath it. A blood red dragonfly with wafer thin
wings flew past him: dipping here and there whilst a fat bumble
bee, defying all the laws that physics put before it, wheezed past
his shoulder.

Simon started to believe that Bob
wasn’t going to answer and was about to ask again when the old man
finally spoke his voice had changed, it was low, not a whisper, but
low enough for his voice to alter in pitch and to deepen like an
old seadog washed ashore on a distant golden beach. To Simon he
sounded like an old man that had smoked way too many cigars and
drank way too much whiskey and though Bob had never seen it, Simons
mind had no choice but to link this monologue with the monologue
from the opening scene of the Godfather.

So Bob spoke and Simon listened and the
clouds continued to blow by and the trees kept on swaying in the
warm summer breeze and the bees kept a buzzing and the dragonflies
kept a sweeping and the fish went on swimming but none of those
fish came a biting.

9

Simon, his throat dry and looking over
toward where the house stood beyond the abruptly raised ground and
past the trees standing as sentinels, reeled in his line and said,
‘So what you are telling me, Bob, if I heard you right, is that
over there, out the way of the rest of the us, either to keep us
safe from them or them safe from you lot, is a house filled with
single toothed Yorkshire bred rednecks?’

‘
Spose. Aye, I guess
you got it right. Though I don’t know how many teeth they have,
never been that close.’

Simon cast off
plop
and was pleased that
he had only missed his target by about a foot. ‘Well yeah, okay I
get that, nobody sees them much and when they do its usually the
mother or father that ventures down and they, for what it’s worth,
are almost…normal?’

‘
Getting good, Simon,
just try not and be so twitchy when flicking forward. And yeah, the
mother and father are so-so but as for them kids…’

Simon and Bob looked at each other,
both with raised eyebrows, both holding their rods gunslinger style
and both with their right hand upon their hips.

Simon completed the sentence for the
old fella, ‘They aint quite so-so. By the sounds of it they aint
nowhere near so-so. Especially what they do with the pigs and any
other animal that has the poor misfortune to find themselves up
there.’

Both fell quite. A bird sang in the
trees somewhere and far off a truck honked its deep throated
horn.

‘
Do they really do
that, Bob, yaknow,
that
? With animals?’

Bob coughed, releasing
some phlegm from his throat, which he had no choice but to swallow
with a grimace on his face. He pulled back on his line and then
reeled it in quick. He looked at the bait on the end of the hook,
saw that it was intact, shook his head and then cast off near some
reeds
plop.