999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [129]
He finished with the Blind Lemon and started into Leadbelly, but the catfish gal had yet to put in an appearance. Hop frowned. Maybe she couldn’t hear him. He didn’t really know where she lived, exactly, but he was under the impression she didn’t stray that far from the Bend. He changed from Leadbelly to Son House, on the offhand chance that she didn’t care for “Cotton Fields.” When Lit’l Fishie still didn’t show herself, Hop’s frown deepened even further. It was time to pull out the stops. He began to play one of her favorites: “Up Jumped the Devil.”
There was a bubbling sound directly below where he was sitting. Hop smiled knowingly at the shape lurking just below the murky water lapping against the pylon. Robert Johnson worked like a charm on women—whether they were two-legged or had gills.
“Why you so shy all of a sudden, darlin’?” he called out. “Why don’t you show me that sweet face of yours?”
The bubbles at the end of the pier grew more intense, as if the water was boiling. Hop scowled and leaned forward, staring down between his dangling feet at the muddy water below.
“Lit’l Fishie—is that you?”
There was less than a heartbeat between the moment the thing with bumpy skin and gaping mouth filled with jagged teeth leapt from the water and when its powerful jaws snapped closed on Hop’s legs. He was only able to scream just the once—a high, almost womanly shriek—before he was yanked, guitar and all, into the river.
The last thing Hop saw, before the silty waters of the Mississippi closed over him, was the catfish gal watching him drown, a sorrowful expression in her bruised eyes.
When Hop Armstrong went out fishing and never came back, most folks in Flyjar were of the opinion he’d found himself a new girlfriend and left Lucinda for greener pastures. A smaller group thought the handsome ne’er-do-well had gotten drunk and fallen through the dilapidated dock into the river below. In any case, no one really gave a good god damn, and after a couple of weeks there were other things to talk about down at the barbershop.
About three months after Hop disappeared, Sammy Herkimer snagged his line on something underneath the pier at Steamboat Bend. At first he thought he was just caught on some waterlogged reeds. But when he reeled his line back in, he found Hop’s git-box hanging off the other end.
The guitar that had charmed so many ladies out of their drawers and their life’s savings was now dripping slime, its neck splintered and body badly chewed up. Sammy shook his head as he freed the mangled instrument. He really wasn’t surprised by what he’d found. In a way, he blamed himself for what happened to poor Hop. After all, when he’d told him about the catfish gals, he’d forgot to mention they weren’t the only critters that made Steamboat Bend their home.
One thing about them gator boys: they sure are jealous.
Ramsey Campbell
THE ENTERTAINMENT
Ramsey Campbell has done it all in the horror field—and he’s refused to leave it. There from the beginning of the boom in the late 1970s, where brilliant stories like “Mcintosh Willie” very quickly established him as a distinctive voice, he has continued to publish brilliantly in the genre to this day. His best tales are identifiable almost immediately as Campbellian; though his style owes something to Robert Aikman with its dreamlike, vaguely roiling quality, Campbell’s images are unlike any others in imaginative fiction.
Campbell won the Stoker Award in 1994 for his collection Alone with the Horrors, and his latest work can he found in a nonsupernatural novel (something of a departure), The Last Voice They Hear, as well as in the following typically creepy tale, written just for you and me.
By the time Shone found himself back in Westingsea he was able to distinguish only snatches of the road as the wipers strove to fend off the downpour. The promenade where he’d seen pensioners wheeled out for an early dose