“The Old Man.”

By RD Rivero

December 3, 1999

 

On a fine day Wileykit and Wileykat casually strolled into the "Amok Bait & Tackle" to borrow one of the store's canoes.  The front entrance was wide open, soft and cool, misty currents breezed on out from deep within the establishment.  The place was an echoic relic from the fifties in the Southwest of America.

Along the left wall were sliding glass door freezers partly full of colas and other drinks.  The doors were profusely wet with moisture.  Three or four rows of groceries and supplies followed in parallel.  The right wall was nothing more than a series of windows that overlooked the calm lake waters.

There was not one light on except for those from the freezers.  Way at the back, at the counter was Berbil, in between two low powered fans, quiet fans.  He eyed yesterday's paper.  In the dark back rooms of the store a door creaked in the flux of a gentle wind.

"We'll use the boat through the morning until, say, one," Wileykit said.  She looked at her brother wide eyed.  Wileykat mulled over the time arrangement.

 

"OK, you two," said Berbil, "but be careful of the currents.  The water's a little high after the rains last night.  Fishing should be good."

Wileykat and Wileykit loaded the boat with the gear and the bait.  The small vessel rocked and swayed to and fro.  The two noticed an old man who stood near the dock, the man waved them over.  Neither of them knew what to do.  Then Wileykit put down her equipment and started to approach the man but the agile cat stopped her with an extended arm.

"What are you doing? We don't know that guy," Wileykat said.  He tugged his sister.  "We don't have time to talk to him, we spend such little time together already and besides, he looks, weird."

Wileykat and Wileykit looked at the man.  He wore a muddy white shirt, stuck wet to his skin.  The collar was buttoned up around his neck in defiance to the heat and the humidity of that summer morning.  When the man saw the two looking at him he motioned them again.

"Maybe he's from around here and knows a good place to fish," Wileykit said.

"All right but be quick," Wileykat said.  He locked eyes with her.  Face to face Wileykit and Wileykat were only a few inches from each other.

"Hello," Wileykit said.

"Hello," the man answered in a thin, nearly formless voice.  "Where are you two going fishing?"

"By Etreum Branch," Wileykit said.  She spun around.  Wileykat hovered over the canoe back at the edge of the dock where Wileykit had left him.

"You're not new to that are you?" The man smiled, weakly pointed to Wileykat who only then had turned to face the rippling waters of the lake.  Wileykit was half disturbed, half a backed.  She did not know what to make of the comment.

"Have you been out fishing already?"  Wileykit asked.  She tried to keep some level of civility to the conversation.  Although she really wanted to ask the man if he had fallen into the lake.

"Yes, yes, that's right," the man started, "I was out on the lake with, my friends.  We haven't caught anything yet today."  The man chuckled.  "I think we will soon.  I think our luck will turn."

"Well.  Where's the best place to fish?" Wileykit asked.  "Where are you and your friends fishing?"  Wileykit eyed the man carefully.  He seemed too thin and too skeletal and his face was pallid.

"We're fishing over the flooded locust grove."  The man said in that voice.  "On the other side of the lake.  That's where my friends and I are.  There are lots of fish over there.  Big ones.  I'll give you directions on how to get there.  The cat's calling for you."

"Come on, Wileykit," Wileykat said, "let's get going."

Wileykit quickly walked toward her brother.  "Why don't we try it?" Wileykit asked and looked back at the old man on the dock.  "Listen.  You get the boat ready.  I'll ask the man more about that good place to fish.  I'll be back in a minute."

After a few minutes Wileykit rejoined Wileykat at the boat.  "The man said he had caught a twelve inch bass in the flooded grove that other day.  Let's go over there."

"Fine, fine," he helped his sister into the boat, "anything you want."

The two paddled away from the dock.  Wileykit looked back at the odd old man.  He waved to them.  After a half hour they reached the secluded cove where the old man had said there would be many fish.  The opening to the cove was somewhat hidden by over grown trees and bushes but the directions Wileykit had been given had been perfect.  She was able to find just where to go.

"I like this place.  Hidden," said Wileykat.  He had his hand on his sister's shoulder.  "There could be a lot of fish here too."

"I told you so, Kat," Wileykit said softly.  Wileykat growled playfully.  "That guy knew what he talked about."  The two continued to paddle under overhanging branches and trees so thick the sky was almost totally blocked.  "Dark.  The fish'll be coming to the surface.  I've a feeling we'll have something to show for our time at last."

A thin mist evolved from between the trees that lined the cove.  The surface of the water scattered with tree limbs and rotted boards.  Dead branches stuck out of the water in thin, elongated fingers, hands swirled in fog that reached up toward the cloudless sky.

The two threw their lines in the water, fished in the gloomy spot for about an hour and caught nothing.  Wileykit could no believe the absurdity of the situation.  Wileykat had something else on his mind.  The clear and distinct glow of the sun the mist suddenly disappeared.

"Do you feel, that," Wileykat said.  He arose abruptly and pressed himself against Wileykit, hugged her from behind.  Wileykit giggled and laughed and nearly dropped her hold on her line.

"I can't believe this place doesn't jump with fish.  Let's try one more cast."  After a few minutes Kit's line snapped tight in the water.  Something tugged hard below the muddy, murky cove.  "There!  I got a bite!"  Wileykit was so excited she stood in the canoe.  She tried to hold onto the line but the fish on the other end pulled quickly, strongly.

"Wileykit!  Sit down, you're rocking the boat!"  The cat's warning was too late.  Wileykit was pulled right into the dark waters.

She popped up a second or so later.  "It's not a fish at all, Wileykat, the hook was caught on a big box or something.  I'll try to dislodge it."  Wileykat shouted to his sister to leave it there but it was too late, Wileykit had dived under the waters of the cove.  The surface rippled and churned in a short lived whirlpool.  Wileykat expected Wileykit to resurface any second.  When his sister did not come back up he worried.  He poked his hand over and into the water of the secluded cove, he hoped Wileykit could see it, grab it.

The water was cold.

"How can the water be so cold?  In the middle of July?"  Wileykat was suddenly very afraid and incoherently ashamed.  Something was wrong, horribly wrong and he was too afraid of the water to jump in and rescue his own.  His mind wandered and returned to the strange man on the dock.  He shivered, frozen to the bone when he remembered the old man's thin voice and ghost white appearance.

"Wileykit!  Wileykit!"  The cat called hysterically.  The only sounds to answer were his own echo and the soft din of the dark water slapped against the black branches along the sides of the boggy, muddy edge of the lake.  Wileykat did not know what to do, he just could not get in the water and by then Wileykit had been submerged for five minutes.  Wileykit was a good swimmer and she could not free herself.  If Wileykat had jumped in he might have gotten stuck too.

He grabbed the paddles and backed the canoe out of the knurled cove into the open water.  He rowed as hard as he could but it seemed to him that he was getting no where, that something was holding the canoe in the dark cove.  With a powerful push against a fallen tree he paddled out of the cove.  Turning back to take a last look for his sister Wileykat saw WileyKit's belt floating on the water.  With a loud roar he paddled as fast as he could across the lake to the dock.

 

Berbil called the Mandora and her deputy Quickpick immediately.  When the officers arrived they took out a map of the lake so Wileykat could show them exactly where Wileykit had disappeared.

"The flooded locust grove," Wileykat said.  He pointed at the map frantically.  "An old man on the dock told Wileykit about it, he said he and his friends had caught lots of fish over there."

Berbil's face turned white.  "A man on the dock told you that?  He told you to fish there?"

"Yes.  What's wrong?  What's wrong?"

"Was it an old man with wet clothes and a really thin voice?"  Mandora asked.

"Yes," Wileykat answered.

The policewoman looked at Berbil who shook his head.  "Wileykat, thirty years ago that area, the locust grove, was flooded to make the lake larger.  A few days after the water had covered up the land people started to notice big boxes that floated in the water."

"I saw boards but Wileykit had said something about a box before she disappeared.  What does that have to do with anything?"

"The area flooded had been an old prison graveyard, where hanged murderers were buried.  The folks around here call it 'Dead Man's Cove.'  The boards are from the coffins."

"WileyKit's the seventh person in thirty years to disappear there," Mandora continued.  "We've never found the bodies and each time it's happened the survivors always said an old man told them to fish in the cove."

"The old man?  Why don't you find him, arrest him?"

The policewoman sighed and looked down, stepped back.  Berbil said: "Because the man on the dock bears an uncanny resemblance to a serial murderer who was hanged and buried a thousand years ago."

 

 

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