Bait
by Rick Grehan
Southwestern New Hampshire
Spring, 1822
It is well past midnight on the Cheshire stage road. No one should be
abroad this unholy hour -- much less abroad and alone – among the hills
and woods that lay between the the Connecticut River and the
Monadnocks. Yet, on the Contoocook river bridge, a young boy stands
tip-toe, leans over the stone parapet, and peers down into the dark
water.
Here, the river's channel is deep and the water runs smooth. It is a
black mirror reflecting a clear, cold, starry sky. The river flows
south to north from the bog-filled valleys between the Temple and
Peterboro ridges, slides under the bridge, then widens into Bennington
Pond before cascading over the mill falls many miles away from where
the boy now stands.
The boy peers, and shivers.
He should not have crept out of the house, should not have gone
exploring down the stage road. If his folks find out, he'll get a
wicked whipping -- two, in fact; one from Mother, then one from Father.
But he’ll only get those whippings if he ever makes it back home.
The moon breaks above the treetops. The boy looks out toward its
reflection in the water. It swims on the surface like a bright, white
face. As he watches, another face appears just beside it. It is a
beautiful face, a smiling face, the face of a young woman.
The boy feels his fingers claw the parapet’s granite stones.
The woman’s face drifts with the current toward the bridge, floating in
a river of stars. As it comes nearer, the boy sees hair streaming all
around it. Even in the colorless light of the moon, the woman's hair is
a brilliant green. It glows like a green halo surrounding her face.
Soon, her face is directly below him in the water, looking up at him.
It is the face of an angel, with eyes the color of a twilight sky and
hair the color of sunlit spring grass. Still smiling, the face rises
out of the water and the boy sees the faint outline of her body. It is
the body of an angel.
He feels the strength of her eyes, the strength of her smile. It makes him smile, too.
Behind his smile, the boy whimpers.
She lifts her hand. She motions to him with her finger. Jump down! the beckoning finger says. Come and swim with me!
He whimpers again. He feels one leg rising, preparing for the climb
over the parapet. But a voice from somewhere in the night whispers,
hissing like a timber rattlesnake, "No! Not that way!"
He lowers his leg.
The boy looks to the nearby shoreline. Just beyond the bridge's end,
visible in the moonlight, a footpath leads away from the road and down
to the river's edge.
He looks back to the angel in the water. He begins to walk sideways
toward the path, always watching the smiling face and the beckoning
finger. In the water, the angel follows him.
The boy steps off the bridge and starts down the path. She sees where
he is going, and her smile widens. She glides toward the shore, still
holding him with her eyes.
Now the boy is shaking all over. He has climbed down the riverbank in
spite of his trembling legs. The ground is a mix of mud and pebbles.
Larger boulders are nearby, and farther up the shore are river bushes
and swamp maples, throwing darkness along the bank and out into the
river.
The boy goes down to his hands and knees. He is fighting to keep from weeping aloud, and yet he is still smiling.
The angel's smile seems to have grown impossibly wide. She is in
shallow water now. She pulls herself along with her hands on the river
bottom.
She begins to hum a tune. A beautiful tune. The boy can feel it through
his whole body. The song is wonderful, the song is frightening. He
crawls forward, his fingers sinking in cold mud and sand.
He is at the water's edge. She is a few feet away. She lifts herself on
one arm. He is mesmerized by the ivory beauty of he upper body as it
rises out of the water. With her other arm, she reaches out to him. Her
singing is all around him. Take my hand! Swim with me!
The boy clamps his eyes shut and reaches for her hand.
A sudden, swift noise behind him. He feels, rather than hears, a
massive shape fly over him. Her song is cut off, and an eerie shriek
tears the air. Bodies collide, followed by a splash.
The boy hears a chaotic struggle in the water. It is punctuated with
snarls and high-pitched wails. His eyes still closed, he covers his
head and tries to press himself into the mud and sand.
The struggle ends with a snap like the sound of a large, dry branch
being broken. Now the boy only hears dripping and heavy breathing. He
crawls backward, sits up, opens his eyes, and gapes.
The were-catamount is crouched in the water, the water hag's neck in
his mouth. The hag's spell now broken, her hideousness is revealed. Her
hair hangs like wet, matted water-weeds. Her lips are thick and
transparent; her once-luminous body is the milky gray of a frog’s
belly. Her head has swung back, too far back, as if it might fall away
from her body. In the moonlight, the boy sees black streams of blood
flowing down her limp arms.
The were-catamount drags the body ashore, and drops it into a heap
beside the path. It rises on hind legs and turns to face the boy, whose
terrified eyes dart back and forth between the hag’s body and the
towering were-creature.
"You were good bait, boy!" it rumbles. Its voice is a gurgling growl
and a rasp mixed together, it’s misshapen head a blend of man and
feline.
"We had a deal!" the boy whispers quickly.
"Aye, we did. You be thankful Jenny Greenteeth here was out tonight,
and I wanted fish-flesh for dinner. Else I'd have had you instead!"
The boy sits frozen.
The were-creature makes an oddly human gesture with one massive, clawed
hand. "Well, run along home, boy, 'fore I change my mind and sup on you
both! And next time, think twice 'fore wandering these woods on a night
when the full moon's flying. I catch you again …" it bends forward " …
won't be no deal!"
The boy leaps to his feet and scrambles up the path. As his shoes pound
the hard-packed dirt of the moonlit road, carrying him back to the
farmhouse, he fancies he hears behind him the sounds of the
were-catamount feasting on its catch.
The boy knows when he gets home, Mother will see the mud on his hands
and clothes. She'll guess the truth, and he'll get those two whippings.
I'll take them whippings, the boy thinks. Won't make no sound, neither.
THE END
© 2020 Rick Grehan
Bio: Rick Grehan is a Senior Software Engineer for AirTank, Inc.
His most recent story, "Edna and the Singularity" appeared in the Oct.
2018 issue of Aphelion.
Comment on this story in the Aphelion Forum
Return to Aphelion's Index page.
|
