Volume Ten by Dark Screams-Volume 10 # (v5.0)

Author:Dark Screams-Volume 10 # (v5.0)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2018-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

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More to keep his mind off the sickening motion of the boat than because he genuinely valued the mariner’s opinion, Beisho related what Leauqueau had told him about the legends of the lake and asked Flimchen if he believed the stories.

“Some people say we come from fish,” he replied, “but I’ve been handling fish all my life and I never saw one—not one—with a shadow of a soul in its eyes.”

“So you believe we’re descended from human castaways?” Ruty said.

“More than likely.”

Ruty made a sour face. “Does that trouble you?” Beisho required of him.

“To be descended from a dreaming species?” Ruty said. “Yes…that troubles me.”

“Why?”

“Because it means we’re accidents, Fie. Bastard children. Without purpose. Without meaning.”

“Then we must make our meaning,” Beisho said.

The mariner seemed to approve of this, to judge by the little grunt he gave.

“And when we die?” Ruty said. “What then? When we can no longer make meaning for ourselves? Do we just fade away, like dreams?”

“That will not be so bad,” Flimchen said, “if that’s the way of it.”

“Will it not?” Ruty said, his voice lowered to a melancholy whisper. “I wonder…”

There was a long silence then, while the boat moved out over the dark waters. It was Flimchen who broke the hush.

“There,” he said, and pointed across the water.

A large form was breaking surface, turning as it did so, showing its mottled flesh.

“What is it?” Beisho breathed.

“At a guess,” came the reply, “your man-eater.”

As if it knew it was being debated, the creature raised its ungainly head from the water. It was a wretched thing, no doubt of that, lacking both grace and symmetry, its head eyeless and encrusted, its flanks gouged and raw.

“I don’t see its mouth,” Ruty said.

“Perhaps it doesn’t have one.”

“Then how does it eat men?”

“Maybe it doesn’t,” Beisho said, still studying the creature. “Maybe it’s the wrong animal.”

“It hears us,” Flimchen said, and as he spoke the beast came at the boat head-on.

“Knives! Knives!” Beisho yelled.

Flimchen was already scrabbling in the bottom of the boat for weaponry, but before he could lay his hands on a blade the beast struck the boat. The vessel lurched, and Ruty lost his footing on the rot-slickened boards. Flailing, he was pitched over the gunwales and into the water. Despite his fat he sank in an instant, and for a moment Beisho thought he’d had his last sight of his comrade. A sob of grief and rage escaped him, but it was drowned out by a great commotion at the bow, and in a roar of frenzied water Ruty was borne up out of the lake on the snout of the beast. He reached for Beisho’s arm, caught hold of it, and was hauled back into the vessel, gasping for breath.

“It comes again!” the mariner cried. This time he was armed with a short harpoon, and as the beast ploughed toward the tossing boat he threw the weapon, striking his target in the centre of its misshapen head.

A din escaped the

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