The Fisherman

by John Langan

Helen chuckles again, that liquid wheeze.

With a shock, Lottie realizes that the girl she’s been listening to is herself. That’s her mouth saying those horrible things. That’s Gretchen and Christina whose lives are being threatened. That’s Italo playing lead in that x-rated fantasy. Glancing

None is any nicer than what Lottie hears her other-self saying. Quite a few are worse. Here’s Clara, regretting that she never brought that tinker who came around the house every other week up to her bedroom. He was tall, and his hands and feet were big, not to mention that nose.

“He waits, girl,” she says. “He will always be waiting for you.”

In response, Lottie’s turned scarlet and told her mother to hush. Once Rainer learned what was going on, he declared that he hadn’t left his home and crossed the ocean to have his child marry a damned Austrian.

To say that Lottie will accept Jacob’s proposal in a few years’ time so that she can finally find out what took place while she lingered in that gray space would not be fair to the man. He’s a hard worker, a kind man who will do everything in his power to ensure that she and their eventual children do not want for anything.

Rainer to ask for his daughter’s hand, the older man will put aside his distaste for Austrians and give Jacob his consent.

“Who is your master?” Rainer says. “Ask Wilhelm Vanderwort,” Helen says.

“The Fisherman,” Helen says.

demands. Rainer is on the verge of delivering his request a fourth time when Helen utters a word that Jacob has never heard before. It might be “Apep,” but she says it too quickly for him to be sure.

Without looking at Helen, Rainer motions with his left hand, what might be a throwaway gesture except that his fingers bend, rise and fall as if he were playing a complicated tune on a trumpet. Helen’s form dims, then dissolves in a fall of water whose slap on the floor makes the men shout and jump back.

Rainer, Italo, Jacob, and Andrea

Andrea loses his job.

Free to depart the camp whenever he wishes, Andrea wastes no time in so doing: he packs his bags and leaves right away.

As for Angelo, the story that circulates is that he’s run off, taken a handful of axes and lit out for parts unknown. It’s an explanation that’s so patently false, even the folks who know next to nothing about what’s been going on suspect it.

Every piece of ground that’s to be flooded has to be cleared of anything that might contaminate the water.

By Jacob’s estimate, they’re about halfway on their journey when Italo says, “So.” There’s no mistaking whom he’s addressing. Rainer says, “So.” “When the dead woman said her master was the Fisherman, you didn’t ask her any more about him.” Rainer doesn’t answer. “Does this mean,” Italo says, “you know him?” “No,” Rainer says. “But you know of him,” Italo says. “Yes,” Rainer says. “Not much, but yes.”

In the later years of the sixteenth century, a man named Heinrich Khunrath lives there. He is a scholar—” “He is the Fisherman, this professor?” Italo says. “No,” Rainer says. “Khunrath is interested in alchemy, in magic.

“Yes, yes,” Italo says. “This boy with the funny eyes, he is the Fisherman. Does he have a name?” “No,” Rainer says. “Khunrath does not write it down. In his letters, he refers to him as his young friend. Once, Khunrath calls him his young Hungarian.”

Rainer scowls. He doesn’t like having his story rushed. He says, “Because the man wants to catch one of the Great Powers.” “What Great Power?” Italo says. “Do you mean a devil?”

“Khunrath,” Rainer says. “Yes, that is so. He took advantage of Khunrath’s hospitality for almost a year, and when he left, he took The Secret Words of Osiris with him.” “He stole it,” Italo says.

“The ocean that is Leviathan’s home lies underneath, below everything.” “Under the ground?” Andrea says.

“A what?” Italo says. “Uno strégone,” Rainer says.

“The dark ocean,” Rainer says. “Here, it is leaking through.” “What the hell does that mean?” Italo says. “It means our friend is further along than I had hoped,” Rainer says.

His hair is lank, greasy, his chin fringed by a stringy beard, the face between young, almost boyish. He must be Rainer’s Fisherman, but if you told Jacob he was a junior butcher, he’d believe you.

doesn’t recognize the contours of the shore, but he already knows the black ocean, as he knows that the humps rising from it, parallel to the coast, aren’t islands, but more of the great beast he’s watched shift its back in front of him, Rainer’s Leviathan.

It’s the Fisherman. He’s struggling against the rope that has stitched itself to him, crossing from his right hip to his left shoulder like a sash.

“From hell’s heart,” he shouts, “I stab at thee!

innocent,” Rainer says, “has power. It will help us to finish our work.” He’s talking about the ropes, Jacob realizes. That was what Rainer said to them: “We have to cut the rest of the ropes.”

“Do you mean to tell me,” Rainer says, “that this was not an accident?” Jacob shakes his head from side to side, furiously. “So.” Rainer nods at the ropes in front of them. “It would be best if we were not here much longer. But be careful. You saw what happened to the Fisherman.” The men nod, and set to work.

it. If we are not so lucky, then he will find his way free before that. Even if such is the case, though, it will be the work of decades for him to escape the prison we have locked him into.”

If Jacob expects an argument from Rainer, he’s disappointed. Having said what he had to say, the older man moves past Jacob, after Andrea and Italo. As he goes, however, he says, “And what about Lottie?”

“And what if it’s our children who must answer for what we’ve done?” Italo says. “Or our grandchildren?”

Cancer, apparently of the uterus, which likely has spread to other places in her body, the doctor opines. Italo and the children sit with her as she completes the remainder of her journey out of this life. At the very end, Regina’s eyes flutter, her lips move as if she’s about to say something, utter a final instruction or bit of wisdom, but all she manages is, “The woman:” the rest is pulled down into death with her.

To Clara and her girls’ surprise, however, Maria, the oldest of the adopted children, steps forward and seizes the reins of the situation.

Clara tells him he should find a nice woman, but Italo insists he doesn’t have time for such things. Over the course of his visits, his hair whitens and thins, his skin takes on a gray pallor that Clara declares she does not care for. Italo poo-poos her worrying, but when word comes from Wiltwyck that he’s suffered a heart attack and been hospitalized, her fears are borne out. Rainer and she set off for the hospital, but by the time they arrive, Italo’s heart has failed, completely.

husband long before this. She lost him to light the color of the full moon, of the froth on top of a wave, of a burial shroud.

Before his retirement and death, though, there’s one more matter with which Rainer Schmidt concerns himself, and that’s Dutchman’s Creek.

At first, Lottie had no idea what Jacob was babbling on about; once she understood what he was saying, she said, “But my father did not condemn you?” He didn’t, Jacob admitted. “Then that should be enough for you,” Lottie said. “Now come help me with our daughter.”

“Through the merchant who had provided the books for me, I made inquiries. Eventually, Wilhelm and I were put in touch with a small group of men who were familiar with the language we had begun translating, and more, besides. They were impressed with what we had achieved on our own, enough to accept us as…apprentices, you could say. There was a great deal to learn. There were other tongues, more ancient—and more powerful—still.

Before the horrified eyes of almost one hundred students, Wilhelm Vanderwort collapsed in a shower of dust and darkness, leaving nothing of himself behind but his clothing and his shoes.

“This was what led to me being dismissed from the University. Questions were asked, my name came up, conversations were had, and in no time, I was readying my family to leave for America. I could have fought the move to oust me; I might have succeeded, too. I was well-liked, and had not divided my colleagues the way Wilhelm had.

“As much as it can be,” Rainer says. “The mark on the tree will turn aside most who come near it. It is the best we can do, without a human sacrifice.”

At some point in the nineteen-twenties, a year or two after Jacob and Rainer’s visit to it, the locals start referring to the new stream as Deutschman’s Creek, which rapidly becomes Dutchman’s Creek.

His story done, Howard seemed relieved, as if that burden I’d sensed behind his words at the beginning of his tale had passed from him.

Not to mention, that business with the painter fellow, Otto, cutting his throat after he saw the woman in black.

Howard hadn’t said anything about a painter, had he? Where was that coming from?

According to this random stranger, he had been driving home along the eastern end of the Reservoir the previous week when he’d noticed a girl, standing at the side of the road ahead. She was barefoot, wearing a long, white dress.

She had directed the fellow down unfamiliar roads until they’d arrived at a gate set back a ways from the asphalt. Here, the girl had left the car, though not before kissing her driver’s cheek with lips so cold they burned. The next day, when the curious stranger returned to the spot where he’d dropped the girl the previous night, he discovered that the gates through which she’d passed led to a cemetery.

They call this second story The Phantom Hitchhiker, and you find versions of it all over the place—all around the world, I’d bet.