Phantom (17 page)

"Why? What d'you think them noises is?"

"I don't know." Ned hadn't anticipated the
question, but now that Peeler had surprised him by opening another
door he couldn't let it pass. "Maybe they're phantoms, ghosts,
things like that. Do you think maybe they are?"

"Ah-ha."

Ned couldn't tell if that was a response to
what he had just said or merely a remark addressed to the rusty jig
hook Peeler was studying at that moment.

"When I asked you once before you said you
did believe in things like that," Ned continued.

"I did, did I?"

"Yeah."

"Well, maybe I do and maybe I don't."

"Do you think that's what I've been
hearing?"

"Could be."

"Peeler, why won't you say?" Ned's feeling
of exasperation was too much for him now. "Tell me," he
demanded.

Peeler put down the hook and the carbide
stone.

"I truly would, if I knew," he said. "But
the fact is, I don't know, one way nor the other. Look here, Nedly,
you ask me on a beautiful sunny morning like this and I'll say,
Hell no, there ain't no such things like what you're talkin' about.
But you ask me late on a cloudy afternoon when I've progged too far
into Old Woods and I won't be so sure, And if you ask me again on a
bad bad night, when it's hot but I got me a bone-shakin' chill,
when I can't tell if that's a nosy skunk lookin' for my garbage
outside—or something else—well, then maybe I'll say, Yeah, I think
you got somethin' there. But the heck of it is. it don't make
so-what neither way. Now you call 'em phantoms or what-all, but to
my mind that just makes it all the more confusin' for you. I told
you before a name won't get a pea out of a pod."

"What should I do then?"

"Ain't a Christ-thing you can do. Don't
matter if it's magic you hear or just mice in the attic, you leave
it be."

Ned didn't believe that. Later, when he
thought about it, he would be startled by the fact that he had
actively rejected something Peeler told him, but he couldn't stop
for that now.

"Peeler, it scares me."

"Why?"

"Because I don't know what it is."

"That's what most folks'd say but they'd be
wrong, and you're wrong."

"What do you mean?"

"It ain't the unknown that
scares a person, even though they may think it is. You catch sight
of a movement outta the corner of your eye or hear an odd sound in
the night, and you feel somethin' stirrin' inside of
you
, somethin' buried so
deep in the back of your head you can't put a finger on it nor give
it no name, but it's there, it's
known
—and that's what'll make you
brown your britches,"

Peeler held up a long stretch of blue
monofilament with leaders and snelled hooks branching off on either
side.

"This here is a kind of double crappie rig I
fixed up," he said, smoothly changing subjects. "But I put the
split shot above it, not below, and it works just fine in shallow
water for bluegills. I've pulled 'em outta Baxley Mill Pond two,
three and even four at a time with this contraption. Kinda looks
like a TV antenna for midgets, don't it."

"It's not just my imagination," Ned
asserted, pursuing the original point. "It's something more than
that, I'm—" He ran out of words momentarily.

"If it is, Ned, you'll know before I do. But
you can't get no answers from the likes of me, nobody else, at
least not none that'll be worth a damn to you." Peeler tested the
knots on the rig, to keep himself busy. "You're the one who hears
them sounds and sooner or later you'll be the one who decides what
they are."

Ned didn't understand. How could he decide
anything about the sounds? He was just the person who happened to
hear them. Or did he? Perhaps he really was so wrong about his
senses, so inclined to pick up strange sights and sounds, that the
whole thing was, after all, nothing more than the product of his
own imagination. That's what his father had been telling him, and
now he was hearing the same thing, or something very like it, from
Peeler. Maybe the old man was right and the best idea was not to
build up the sounds into something other than what they were—mere
sounds. They were real, but how real? Peeler seemed to be saying
that it wasn't all that important.

But Ned remembered something else Peeler and
Cloudy had told him. You don't go wading barefoot in what looks
like snapping turtle water. You might not see the beast and he
might not even be down there but you'd better assume he is,
otherwise you could be one toe lighter before you found out for
sure. Okay, maybe the lawn chairs and the house do make those
noises. Maybe the buzzing is a symptom of a minor ear ailment. But
assume they're not. Assume they're something else entirely.

Assume the worst.

* * *

16. The Noekk

"It ain't nothin' but a big overgrowed mud
hole," Peeler said, wiping sweat from his face. "But there's a
stream in and a stream out, so it stays alive."

"Just about," Cloudy said.

Ned took in the scene. The pond covered only
a few acres.

It looked shallow, muddy and stagnant. The
surface of the water was studded with the remains of dead trees;
brittle, bone-gray trunks and jagged, rotting stumps. It was not a
promising sight, it was simply desolate. They had hiked a long way
to reach this place. They were deeper into Old Woods than Ned had
ever been before.

"There's catfish in here," Peeler went on as
he prepared his rod and line. "A few big ones, too. Now's a good
time to fish for 'em. August is when the bass're settin' back out
in deep water, where it's cooler, but the old catfish still moseys
around in close to shore."

"A catfish is an awful low critter," Cloudy
declared. "All he does is eat the crud on the bottom."

"Yeah, but he tastes might good hisself,"
Peeler argued amiably. "And they put up one helluva fight."

"That's true," Cloudy admitted. "We used to
eat 'em just about every day when I was a youngster." He turned to
Ned. "Say, that's a smart-lookin' outfit you got there, Mr.
Tadpole."

The boy smiled proudly and held up his
lightweight Zebco spin caster rod and reel. "My father gave it to
me."

"Well that was pretty darn nice of him, I'd
say."

"You make sure you hold onto it real tight,"
Peeler warned. "You don't want no grandaddy catfish pullin' it
right outta your hands and swimmin' away with it."

"They're not that big," Ned said, although
he wondered about it. "Aren't you going to fish, Cloudy?"

"Oh, no, not me. No, I'm gonna wait till you
and Peeler start haulin' in the monsters and then I'll be here,
ready to bash their heads in. I got to find me a good stick."
Cloudy wandered off, searching through the brush. A few minutes
later he returned, carrying a hefty piece of broken branch.
"This'll do the job," he told himself, taking some practice
swings.

"You really hit them with that?" Ned
asked.

"Sure. You got to. Catfish'll live forever,
unless you kill 'em. Peeler threw one in the garden a few years
back and it stayed alive out there most of the summer, huffin' and
puffin' like an engine. Ain't that right?"

Peeler nodded. "Kept the raccoons away."

Ned smiled. It was one of those stories he
couldn't believe but didn't want to disbelieve either.

Peeler had cast his line out and was sitting
on a rock with a can of beer in his free hand. He checked to see
how the boy was doing. "Hey, put another worm or two on that line,"
he said. "A catfish likes a big mouthful, he ain't gonna waste his
time on one dinky worm. And put some more lead on too; it'll give
you better castin' range and make sure your bait stays on the
bottom where the cats are."

Ned followed Peeler's instructions, then he
cast out, tightened up on the slack and stood waiting. Now that he
looked more closely at the water he noticed plenty of signs of
life. Bugs danced across the surface, air bubbles ballooned up from
the bottom and widening rings of concentric ripples formed here and
there. Of course there had to be fish here, Ned thought. Peeler
knew. Peeler would never come all the way out here to fish a dead
pond. The boy fidgeted with impatience. Come on fish, he urged
silently. He held the line taut in his fingers, the way Peeler was
doing. Before long, he felt a nibble.

"Something's out there," Ned said. "I can
feel it."

"Let him get it in his mouth and start to
move on you," Peeler advised. "Then give a short, sharp yank on the
line, and set that hook real good."

Nothing came of that nibble, but within the
hour the old man had landed three good-size catfish and Ned one.
Peeler showed him how to hold them without being stabbed in the
hand by the fish's spiky whiskers. Cloudy whacked each one with his
club and Peeler slit their throats, letting the blood drain out of
the fish. He sliced open their bellies and scraped out the
entrails. Then he wrapped them in wet grass and packed them in a
wicker basket. Ned was startled by the fierce struggle put up by
the first cat, whipping through the air in a frenzy, then the
sudden splat of the branch, followed by the knife blade and the
brief rush of bright red blood—it all happened so quickly. But it
was exciting, not disturbing.

Ned was fascinated by the surface of the
pond. It never remained the same for more than a few seconds at a
time. The lightest breeze, a build-up of clouds, the shifting angle
of light, all registered on the water, becoming part of its
constant transformation. It was almost hypnotic, and with that and
the afternoon heat, Ned began to feel drowsy. Then he saw something
out in the middle of the pond. It was the kind. of roll and swirl
in the water caused by a top-feeding fish. But it was too big. It
was huge, perhaps five feet long judging by the movement it made,
and Ned thought that no fish so large could live in such a small
pond.

"Look," he said, pointing. "Look at
that."

Both men stood up.

"I told you there's some big ones here,"
Peeler said.

"
That
is a monster," Cloudy said.
"Don't catch that fella, Mr. Tadpole, otherwise you gonna have real
trouble on your hands."

"It can't be a fish," Ned said. "Not in
here, it's too big."

"They come that big." Peeler sat down again.
"Bigger, too."

"Really?" There was awe in Ned's voice.

"Big enough to make a meal outta you,"
Cloudy added, breaking into laughter.

"Maybe it was a noekk." Peeler's smile had
turned into a mischievous grin.

"A what?"

"A noekk."

"What's that?"

"Yeah, what you talkin' about?" Cloudy asked
with an exaggerated look of skepticism on his face.

Peeler jiggled his line, putting the worms
through an exotic dance for the benefit of any passing fish. "I
never did see one myself," he said. "But a crazy Norwegian sailor
once told me about the noekk."

"Just a second," Cloudy interrupted. "Would
that be Happy Hansen?"

"That's him. Happy Hansen."

Cloudy smirked. "That old fool never had his
head outta the gin bottle long enough to put two sentences in a
row."

"What'd he say?" Ned asked Peeler.

"Well, he told me that the noekk is a big,
black, slimy critter that lives in certain rivers and ponds. Nobody
knows just what it looks like because nobody never sees more 'n a
glimpse of it, and then only very rarely. But they're ugly as sin,
with real sad eyes, and you're supposed to be able to hear 'em
cryin' and wailin' for their lost love or because they're so
lonely, or some damn thing like that."

"Can they hurt you?"

Peeler shrugged. "Could be. I know they're
said to play tricks on a man, like sing to him from under the
water, or knock a boat over, cut a fishin' line—that sort of
thing."

"Do you believe it?"

"Who knows? Like I said, I ain't never seen
one in my life, but Happy Hansen, he always did say there's one
around here somewhere, and that he seen it once."

"Yeah, he saw it, I'm sure of that," Cloudy
said. "From the floor of the bar, lookin' up."

The movement out in the middle of the pond
had ceased. Ned continued to watch but there was no further sign of
it. A noekk. He didn't believe it for a minute, of course. But
still, he tried to imagine what it might look like if it really did
exist. Peeler had such a could-be way of delivering such stories
that it was hard for Ned to dismiss them completely, no matter how
improbable they were.

"Whatever become of Happy Hansen?" Cloudy
asked.

"I guess the noekk finally got him," Peeler
replied, laughing some more. "He was somethin' else, that guy
was."

"That's for sure."

Another hour passed without a bite so they
decided to begin the long walk home. Ned reeled in his line slowly,
but suddenly it stopped. The harder he tried to budge it, the more
his rod bent over, until it looked as though it was about to
break.

"I think I snagged a rock or a log," he
said.

He waved the rod back and forth, hoping to
dislodge the hook, but it didn't give an inch.

"Looks like you're gonna have to cut it,"
Peeler said.

Just as Ned was about to give up and snip
the line, it slackened a little. He wound in a foot or two, and it
felt like he was pulling a very heavy weight.

"It's loose," he said, grunting from the
effort.

"Nice and slow," Peeler coached. "Save the
hook."

Ned's eyes widened as he gasped as something
broke the surface of the water right in front of him. It was dark
green, as long as his forearm and just as thick. Ned saw two black,
seed-like eyes staring at him. Then the jaws opened and the hook,
stripped of its worms, was spat out. The thing sank back into the
water, disappearing from sight. Ned gaped, unable to speak.