Do you find it queer that I avoid lakes and rivers and seafood isles? That I refuse all boats or ferries or even bridges that span over water? Do you find it humorous that even at the mere mention of the word ‘fish’ my hands start to tremble and my eyes go wide with horror?
Do not laugh.
Do not laugh, for if you would have seen what I had seen — you would act the same.
They say not to trust the word of a dishonest man, and I will not pretend that I have lived my life morally or that the advice is foul. I have been a thief, a liar and — although never directly by my own actions — a killer. My hands are not clean of sin and my word carries little trust with those that know me, but I have no reason to lie about my crippling fear of those strange-eyed limbless creatures that hold dominion over the dark corners of the sea.
I have no reason to lie about the terrible old Estonian who haunts my dreams each and every night.
I was first made aware of the feeble fisherman by an old colleague of mine, Tião Cândido. Cândido had been vacationing in Britain with one of his lovers when he became aware of the potential business opportunity. The gray English skies and the company of warm young flesh did nothing to deter Cândido’s keen eye. When the Brazilian noticed the old crippled man paying at the grocers with golden coins of centuries past, all promise of a romantic seaside getaway was obliterated and replaced with cold calculations.
For two days Cândido surveilled the potential target and his domicile. Once the Brazilian mapped out the manor in which the old man lived and developed an account of how he spent his days, Cândido bid goodbye to his companion and gave us a call. There was a job waiting for us in a sleepy British seaside town, he said. The job was simple and the pay was good, he said. If we didn’t interview the old fisherman soon someone else would do so in our stead, he said.
I have never been work shy and I was not work shy then. The night Cândido contacted me about the job I booked my flight and by sunset the following day I had taken up residence in the bed and breakfast where the Brazilian was staying.
When Cândido took me to observe the old fisherman I found his assessment of the job to be flawless. The mark, was, indeed, feeble beyond being a threat and his life was solitary enough to invite the likes of Tião Cândido and me into his home. The fisherman was completely bald and had the skin of an old abandoned leather couch. His voluminous round body moved like a moon robbed of orbit and was always covered in an aged yellow raincoat which gave the old fisherman the appearance of one of those round toys that can never be knocked over.
We watched the old man in his waking hours and, when he slept, we drank in a nearby pub. Cândido, with his tendency to seduce all that walked on two feet, has always been the more charming. Without ever directly mentioning the old man, my Brazilian associate prodded the bartender for information about the strange foreigner which lived on the edge of the quaint town. Even before we were halfway through with our pints, the bartender proved to be a well of information.
The old fisherman, he said, was quite the talk of the town. Many years prior he had bought the sea side manor which had been long abandoned by its original owners. At first the townsfolk celebrated the purchase, hoping perhaps that the broken regal home would be refurbished to its former glory and thus lure tourists back to the region. When the old man eschewed all repairs and simply moved into the broken home as it was, the townsfolk speculated over what would urge a man to live without plumbing or electricity. When the old man took to paying for his groceries with ancient golden coins that fetched exuberant prices in the cyberspace the town grew even more bewildered.
The youths of the town, the bartender said, had taken to teasing the old fisherman over his sluggishness and strangeness. Every night, for weeks on end, they would sneak past the iron gates of the manor and watch him through the grated windows which led to the basement of the broken-down house. The strange fisherman, they claimed, had a collection of jars which preserved the remnants of odd fish and various other unidentifiable beasts of the sea. Each night, in a Baltic tongue none of the locals could understand, the old fisherman would sing melancholic songs to his collection of specimens.
The youths of the town, the bartender said, found his queer expressions of affection for the dead creatures to be the pinnacle of comedy. Every night, for weeks on end, the youths would sneak onto the old fisherman’s property and jeer and laugh at him from behind the window. Once the vulgarity of the children became unavoidable their parents begged them to stop but the youths refused to listen. It isn’t until one of the youths disappeared that the torment stopped.
For five days, the child was missing. The boy was perhaps the most vulgar of the bunch and would often throw rocks at the aged fisherman whenever he passed him on the street. Naturally, the old man was seen as a suspect of the boy’s disappearance.
When the boy disappeared his friends were quick to point the finger at the strange foreigner living in the decrepit manor. Nothing came of their accusations, however, even after the old man’s home was searched.
One of the police who was returning from the manor sat down for a pint at this very bar, the bartender claimed. He spoke of horrid living conditions and an inescapable stench of rot and cigarettes. Cigarette butts so old that they looked like baby teeth were scattered all across the manor and the structure itself looked like it was to fall apart at any moment. The queerest specimens of sea life were found in the jars that the old man’s basement held, the most hideous of rot was found in the walls — yet there was no trace of the lost boy. Eventually the old foreigner’s name was cleared by the authorities and he was free to return to his queer ways.
It was the night after the old man’s search, the bartender said, that the missing child was finally found. He washed up on the shoreline to the horror of the morning joggers. They boy had been long dead, marred in seaweed and crustaceans which he surely picked up along the journey. The coroners ruled the death a drowning and, as tragic as the fact was, life in town remained unchanged.
Cândido was a most rapturous audience to the bartender’s story and when the tale concluded he prodded the man with questions. Was there any speculation on how the old foreigner managed to afford such a manor? Surely one cannot gain such wealth as a humble fisherman. Did the police say anything else of the old man’s lodgings? And of the golden and silver coins which the fisherman was said to use for his groceries? Was there any truth to that?
The bartender was most cheerful at the start of his talk with Cândido, yet the Brazilian’s rapid questions stole away his smile. For a discomforting amount of time the man behind the bar just looked at Cândido, probing him with his eyes. Then, quietly, he asked my Brazilian colleague if he was an officer of the law.
Cândido laughed. So did I. Eventually, so did the bartender.
The policeman stayed for more than a pint. The more he drank, the more he spoke and, finally, with his last drink, he told the bartender of the chests that the search party had found. They were hidden behind old moth-ridden curtains down in the basement and the old fisherman protested in the little English that he knew against opening them. When the lawmen started to suspect that he had hidden the missing child in one of the chests, however, the old fisherman capitulated and opened the chests with heavy brass keys he kept nearby.
Gold and silver, ancient coins — thousands, if not tens of thousands, of ancient prized medallions. Yes, it was true, the old fisherman paid with the money of dead empires at the store — this everyone in the town knew. What they did not know, what only the bartender and the policeman knew — was how much gold and silver the old man truly had.
The drunken policeman, upon leaving, paid for his bill in such coins and left a generous tip. Without any prodding, the bartender proudly revealed the booty which the man of law stole from the fisherman. They were adorned with centuries old insignia which neither Cândido nor I had any knowledge of. I thought a picture of the coins would suffice for research, yet by the end of the night Cândido had the bartender singing songs in Portuguese and proclaiming the beginning of a lifelong friendship. As a gift, he handed us each a coin when we finally left the pub.
Once we returned back to our lodgings we contacted Hans Stigelbauer, an Austrian locksmith who we both have worked with on multiple occasions. Stigelbauer left much to be desired in the realm of social graces, yet he was quick as a key when confronted by a lock and, more importantly, a skilled historian. When the Austrian arrived in the seaside town two days later he confirmed that the coins were indeed of a fine heritage. The silver currency was that of the 15th century Hansa traders and the gold looked as if it might trace its lineage back to the Vikings.
From the town’s grocer, while claiming to be the secretary of a famous coin appraiser, Cândido received an additional sample of coins. That currency, as varied as it was, also traced back its lineage to days of old. It would fetch a handsome price at the market, Stigelbauer appraised. Reappropriating the collection from whence the currency came was deemed a worthy use of our time.
The plan we constructed to obtain more of the old fisherman’s wealth was simple. I would park the van near his manor in the morning as to not arouse suspicion and then move it closer when the heist was at hand. After sundown Cândido and Stigelbauer would enter the manor. Cândido would go off to interview the old man whilst Stigelbauer would descend down into the basement to assess the situation with the trunks and coins. With the old fisherman restrained, my two colleagues would take the chests and whatever other valuables they could find and load them in the van.
It was a simple plan, yet simply it did not go.
Stigelbauer, as I mentioned, is the foulest of characters and has a dark soul even for someone of the thief’s profession. It is him who I blamed for the slow progress of the heist. I was unsure whether the Austrian locksmith had distracted himself with the old fisherman’s private possession or whether one of his more violent moods was to blame, yet the result was the same. For well over an hour I was left waiting in the van outside the manor.
As the handle on my watch dragged on my anxiety grew, yet there was a moment, perhaps two hours after my associates had entered the manor, when my panic reached to wholly unmanageable heights. I was worried about the progress of the heist and that worry was present, yet the shot of panic that hit me was entirely different from the thoughts of a reasonable man.
The moon above was luminous and full yet there were no stars in the sky. Suddenly, with no warning and no reason, my eye perceived the moon above not as a celestial body but as the eyeball of a fish. I could not describe it and I dare not dwell into those fetid corners of my psyche again — yet I was sure that the moon had turned into a primordial eyeball which stared down at me with expressionless animalistic interest.
I was submerged into sweat and terrified awe. I sat in that van, scarcely trusting my eyes or mind, staring at the suddenly organic moon above. That is when the doors to the manor burst open and I saw a shadowy silhouette of two men carrying a trunk — or at least what I thought were two men carrying a trunk — emerge.
With work at hand I managed to push away the thought of the living celestial body away and replace my thoughts with frustration at my colleagues for moving too slow. My frustration did not last long, however, for what emerged out of the shadows was not Cândido and Stigelbauer.
What emerged from the shadows was not a man at all.
He did not wear his filthy raincoat and it made all the difference. The old fisherman’s head was still human, yet it is the only part of him which was reminiscent of civilized life. His neck connected to a chest so frail that it barely hinted at human origin, yet it were his limbs which wholly defied the biology of man. The creature that stumbled out of the decrepit manor stood on a dozen strands of writhing fat purple flesh which all seemed to have a mind of their own. As the old fisherman moved, his tentacled mass snipped and whipped at the world about, yet it was the fish which truly drove my fear past the limits of sanity.
His arms were fish.
Two foreign forms of life which only hold the slightest resemblance to the animal man knows as carp. Their mouths opened and closed and the massive gills by their eyes swelled with effort. The old man slid towards me in a sudden burst of speed with his monstrous hands outstretched as if looking to embrace me. As he moved, as the terrible limbs of sea beasts approached — I spied that the fish had teeth. Long sharp rows of teeth which twisted and turned and snapped with each move of the lips.
As he approached, the old Estonian yelled a sort of song at me in his foreign tongue. I did not listen for long and I dare not try to recall the song in fear for my health. Before I could even acknowledge the new world of madness I had been plunged into, I found myself driving as fast as I could through the British countryside.
Eventually, in fear of being questioned by the law, I eased my foot off the pedal, yet I did not stop driving until the sun was peeking over the horizon and no large bodies of water were in sight. Exhausted, I parked my car at a rest stop and hoped I would awaken elsewhere finding the whole affair a dream.
I did not.
I awoke in the rented van, my body drenched in sweat sowed from terrible dreams of the sea. My back had received my resting place poorly and even though I woke well into the afternoon my body was beyond exhausted. I made no attempt to contact Cândido or Stigelbauer, for I saw no hope of evading the beast that lives in that manor on foot. Until now I know not of their fate. Perhaps one might browse the newspaper archives of a certain seaside town and find records of their deaths, yet I do not have the mental fortitude for such walks down memory lane.
It is not because I lost my colleagues that I despise the presence of those gill-breathing monstrosities that hide in the deepest depths of the ocean. No, in this industry one learns to not get too attached to one’s associates. The true source of my fear, of my absolute hatred for all that is associated with life in water, did not come until later that evening.
It was while I was checking into my hotel that the true nature of my fear manifested. It was a quaint provincial hotel which on its walls held commemorations for history even the locals wouldn’t find interesting. While the check-in girl worked at the details of my sleeping quarters, I noticed that the hotel had an aquarium in the lobby.
That is when the nature of my curse started to make itself painfully clear.
The fish, both big and small, colorful and plain — they were all staring at me. They stared at me with the same primitive eyes that the moon above stared on with, that the writhing appendages of the monstrous fisherman stared on with — the fish watched me as if they knew of my terrible night at the broken-down manor.
In that moment I buried all discomfort beneath the lie that I had simply not gotten enough sleep. The attention of the pet fish in the lobby of the hotel was no fluke, however. On my return home there was a large aquarium in the airport and I was, once again, the center of the animal’s attention.
They know. Somehow, through an interconnected mind which man cannot comprehend, they know. The fish know that I meant their old master ill and even though man jokes about those slimy beasts of gills having short memories, I feel like that humor is deeply misplaced.
Do not laugh.
The fish know what I did. Everywhere I go the fish know what I did. They know what I did and a righteous confident fear burns at my chest that one day they will take revenge on me for my sinful ways.