{"sf1_id":885099,"sf2_id":null,"title":"Upriver","author":"Aux Chiens","words":7184,"posted_at":"2015-07-11T03:39:00.000Z","tags":["Boating","Catfish","Horror","Smith Mountain Lake","aquatic","creepy","fishing","lake","mystery","river","spooky","virginia","weird"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/885099-upriver","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/view/885099","image_url":"https://www.sofurryfiles.com/std/thumb?page=885099\u0026ext=.jpg","description":"","content":"They say he still\nwears clothes, but he'll take to the water soon._________H.P.\nLovecraft, \"The Shadow Over Innsmouth\"\n            August - that time of the year when a stillness descends on\nthe land, after the panicked fever-fires of July that ring deafening with\nbellicose thunderstorms, so all that remains is a quietude, a serenity, a\ndefiance to the arriving blessings of the Harvest, and then the chill that\ncomes with Autumn. It is the last bastion of Summer, season of violence, but\nthe violence is remote from the ears and nigh-hidden from the eyes, it is subtle,\nbut the malice remains. \n            It is the month of stirring\nghosts, it is the reminder that October will be soon and with it Samhaim and\nHalloween, there are murky depths that will be at last deigned to be glanced at\n- during the remaining warm Elysian months of Spring and Summer it seems as\nthough no darkness can occlude the bliss of the welcome heat, but then arrives\nAugust, with its greens that turn to gold when the locust trees become the\nfirst of their fellows to change their foliage.\n            That particular part of\nVirginia is, even to non-natives, glorious\nin August - the weather is still fine, rather hot but by poolside and lakeside\nand ankle-deep in creeks, fading to the gentle rhythms of rocking chairs amidst\nsymphonic swirls of crickets and katydids on porches and porticos...it is a\ncharmed life, the Old South still thriving in the growing cosmopolitanism of\nthe area around the enigmatic city of Roanoke, as haunted and esoteric as that\ncity is often rumored to be..\n            But still the underlying\ndiscomfort that August brings moves: it is the month of secrets, stirred to\nlife on a massed subconscious level. On affluent pool furniture and by hiker's\ncampfire and underneath colorful umbrellas in outdoor restaurants are murmured,\nhinted, whispered, all manner of subterranean things - harmless gossip,\nperhaps, or something stranger, weirder, more lethal, snatches of a second\nworld unseen by the casual observer. It is a theme explored in curiosity by any\nsensitive person: what appears to be very often never quite\nends up being what actually is...as\nsomething as innocuous as a cheating husband, usually, but then there are other\nthings, deeper things, things that leave the listener wanting a stronger drink,\nbecause the teller wishes they could remember a little better, and so many\ndetails cannot be filled in.\n            The best place to find these\nstories in that part of Virginia is, without question, Smith Mountain Lake.\n            There is a reason that, for\nsome thirty years, the Lake has been a Southern Riviera, the hideaway for the\ncolonizing Mid-Atlantic elite - it is a place that must be experienced to be\nbelieved and to be understood.\n            Words\ncan certainly be put to paper to describe its transcendental beauty, surely as\nthough they will fail: how the vibrant green of the trees drape the rolling-plunging\nhills of that part of Appalachia and then fade to the mirrored shimmer, the\nsame hue, of the water below them, and how the entire scene fills the eye and\nforces it to behold a glory of a God that the Baptists, in their stately brick\nchurches that dot the area, still sing about...\n            How and why the Lake, which is\nnot natural and is the result of damming nearby rivers, came to be is not here\nimportant - it is a matter of public history and public record - but it is\ndifficult, perhaps impossible, to guess what the region would be like without\nit, as cloyingly hackneyed as that sentiment now is.\n            Perhaps because it is so new\nto the landscape - five decades is very new indeed to this immortal Appalachian\nrealm - and perhaps because it is the\nlandscape, ultimately, the Lake has attracted its share of legendry, passed\ninto the collective consciousness of the area, the big towns and the tiny ones,\nmorphing and waxing until it becomes the stuff of ghastly urban legends: the\nrealms of fact and fiction blurred and mixed into something opaque and murky,\nlike the water of the Lake itself.\n            Depending on who you ask, the\nproperties that were flooded by the Lake's inundating waters in the 1960's\nstill stand today, under the sparkling mirror-surface - fishermen would\nsometimes catch shirts and jackets on their lures from where they had been left\nin the desolate properties beneath them, and for many years coffins from\nunclaimed graves in the old churchyards would rise to the surface, and boats\nwould strike them unawares, their gruesome contents exploding out into the\nwater from whence it came, disintegrating putrefied corruption. \n            Certainly it is a fact that\nthere is a very large bridge completely submerged underneath where the Hale's\nFord Bridge spans now, at the border of Franklin County and Bedford County. If\nyou are brave enough you can dive and see where it is - lonely and forgotten,\nbut still intact, still there, all iron and concrete and rivets...sixty-eight\nfeet down the Sun is dim, and shines weakly above you. But be careful, for the\nbridge is now slick and slippery with mud and grime, and it's easy to lose your\ngrip or lose your footing, and there you'll go, deeper, darker, down, down,\ndown...\n            The whole area was, once,\nheavily wooded, before they built the dam, and along many parts of the\nlakefloor still stand whole rows of defoliated trees, ghostly, timeless - dangerous, snagging unwary swimmers and\ndivers and trapping them, like a sentient predator, entangling them and drowning\nthem, claiming from the world above for a world below, left to die amidst a\nnightmare of slime and mud.\n            And in the stillness of the\nVirginian August air that is filled with the blowsy honeysuckle and raked with\nthe patient wheeze of the katydids, can all this be gleaned in the comfort and\nsafety of an anchored boat, a Sun-parched deck - it is a fond topic of\nconversation, after all, to find out that God's Country is, in fact, a glimpse\nof Hellish abyss.\n            But even these little morsels\nof ghoulishness are not nearly the most interesting of the stories that move,\nfurtive, beneath the placid waters of the Lake - there are more, always more,\nalways stranger.\n            Like - for instance - the\ndisappearance of Michael \"Mike\" Fischer. \n            Unlike the lingering creep of\nthe other urban legends that cling to the Lake and to its hidden culture, Mike\nFischer vanishing is a very real, verifiable fact, backed up not merely by\nnewspaper reports and police inquiries but by many who saw him and knew him and\nwere affected by it directly in those days - the mid-1980's, before development\nin and around the Lake really took off and left behind it, motorboating away in\nits wake one could say, the days of peaceful rural life. \n            The events surrounding it are\ntold time and again by people who remembered it firsthand, dispersed into the\ncollective consciousness where it becomes ever more bizarre and twisted, until\nit last it seems impossible to separate, as the old cliché would have it, fact\nand fiction. \n            What actually happened to Mike\nFischer - his move to Smith Mountain Lake, his glib success in the social\ncircles there, his collapse and his disappearance - are easy enough to piece\ntogether, if you talk to the right people, and know how to discern faded\nmemories and half-baked recollections with what actually, really, happened.\n            For it is, after all, one of -\nbut, deliciously, not the most -\nspectacular pieces of the Smith Mountain Lake mythos.\n            Mike Fischer had been born in\nPennsylvania, and was there educated, starting a highly lucrative fueling\nbusiness out of college with a partner that, the whispers went, he cheated out\nof success by an underhanded deal. \n            Whether or not that was true\nwas a moot point - at thirty-two he was already a very wealthy and a very\nambitious man.\n            He was a slight man with light\nbrown hair that was neatly coifed with the prevailing style, rather unassuming\nuntil he spoke in his clear, assertive, confident voice. He blended in,\nchameleonic, wherever he went.\n            In keeping with what has come\nto be known as conspicuous consumption\nof the boomtimes of late era Reaganomics, he found himself wanting to pursue\nhis passion for fishing, evidently oblivious to the obvious symbolism of his\nsurname, but inherited from boyhood. He wanted somewhere that was cheap and\ndifferent from the dread certainties of the chilly Trans-Allegheny climate, and\nfound it readily when a friend - it's been variously said who, exactly -\ninvited him for a week at Smith Mountain Lake, in Virginia. He soon found\nhimself in love with the area, the spacious scenery, the perpetually fine\nweather...and the excellent catfishing, and resolved to buy condo in the area at\nthe then-exclusive resort of Bernard's Landing, his visits getting more and\nmore frequent.\n            Mike was known as something of\na near-expect on the catfish and how to catch it - he entered tourneys around\nthe area and won at least a few titles, his ingenious ways of detecting and\nhooking catfish put down to a library of books on the topic coupled with many\nyears of practice. He was said to be the greatest aficionado for cooking that\nparticular fish, and his recipes were sought after for parties and barbecues.\nSmith Mountain Lake, having an abundance of fish, catfish especially, became\nhis beloved playground.\n            His family, curiously, had\nsome kin in the area, from the supposed town of Monroe that was, so the story\ngoes, left standing after it had been vacated and then flooded by the rising\nLake - his mother's name had been Rives, a prominent name from that area that\nhad migrated north with news of steel-related jobs during the Carnegie years in\nPittsburgh.\n            Mike constantly heard, and\nsoon grew tired of, the implication that this was a homecoming for him, that\nhis roots had brought him back here, because more than once he had detected a\nkind of lingering tease with it, something sinister he wanted to ask about but\ndidn't think worth it at the time.\n            At Bernard's Landing he\nhobnobbed with the top strata, the commanding talented tenth, of the late 80's\nVirginian and West Virginian kleptocracy, the People You Should Know - he heard\nthat phrase more than once and from more than one person - if you lived in that\npart of the country, folded in on itself, a constant Reaganesque\nautofellatio...lawyers, doctors, businesspeople, men and women, mostly but not\ntotally white, spending their idling summer weekends on expensive Sea-Rays and\npontoons, immodestly drunk and frankly sexual on the docks in their Sperrys and\nLacoste, away from the prying eyes of Roanoke, Lynchburg, Richmond, Charleston,\nsecluded and protected by the geography of privilege, the bounding dips and\nrises out off the main roads.\n            Privilege itself, for the time\nand the place, was a fluid concept: it did not matter what color one's skin was\n- the only color that mattered was the glimmering, fleeting gold, silver,\nplatinum of insatiable capitalist appetite, an exclusive club that one bought,\nand was not born, into.\n            Their success was always, Mike\nnoticed, barbed with some sort of catch, something that these beautiful people\n- money apparently bought you good looks as well as boats and condos -\nunwholesomely ugly: unfaithful spouses, businesses built by backstabbing and\nlies, the occasional murmurs about someone killing someone for inheritance or\nspite or ramming a car into a tree blackout drunk.\n            The man who owned the Toyota\ndealership, for instance, from Blacksburg, who catered to the wealthy Hokie\nalumni, was invariably coked out of his head - he had inherited his business\nfrom his father, and at twenty-six was by far the youngest and worst amongst\nthe assembled decadents: he talked too loud and too much and he was jittery and\nexcitable and laughed at all the wrong times, everyone was annoyed by him and\nhis wife had left him after barely a year and took the kid they had with her\nbut that meant his condo was always open and the parties were wildest there. \n            They were all repugnant in one\nway or another, they were all dirty and they were all insufferable. \n            The only ones Mike could stand\nto be around for more than an hour was a man named Lynch who went by \"Junior\"\nwho owned a chain of c-stores and was there by invitation from one of his\nsuppliers - he had a thick Appalachian accent that veered into being\nincomprehensible, but he was soft-spoken and didn't drink much and his wife,\nSusan Anne, always laughed at Mike's jokes...they were always with a man named\nArchibald Lightfoot who, the gossip went, had enormous, even incredible sums of\nmoney hidden away as a family fortune - he was polite and could be charming but\nhe and his wife, who he called Maggie, did not socialize much, and Mike got the\ndistinct impression they thought themselves indisputably better than the\nmaddening crowd there gathered.\n            Mike boozed with the best of\nthem, his favorite drink an inedible mixture of grape vodka and whiskey and\nsoda - he made it himself, and it caught on to a select few who could stomach\nthe strange combination and getting plastered just that fast with that much\nliquor.\n            They all drank liquor bought\nat alarming prices and cigars at the upper edge of premium - De Gaspar, from Tampa, by way of Cuba\nand thus highly illegal - and they did not care about the future, what would\nhappen to them all, tomorrow was a closed book to them, each and every one.\n            Mike Fischer himself would\nhave been just another rich immigrant of no significance, but he was destined\nfor greater things - if one could call it that. \n            And his legend did not really\nbegin until the middle of August, 1987. Those that were there remember it well,\neven today.\n            One night that month, the\nparty at the Toyota dealer's condo - his name was Jones, luckily, he had zero\nchance of anonymity but his surname meant that he could do atrocious things and\nalmost sort of get away with it - had gone on unusually long, stretching into\nthe dim hours of the early morning when the Summer constellations still\nbejeweled the sky overhead, cut through with the sparkling backbone of the\nMilky Way...you couldn't see that in Roanoke, but out here, God's Country, you\ncould see the skies as they were intended to be seen.\n            Jones' condo especially afforded\nawing views of the Lake: the vast mountain-peak that brimmed and bristled with\ntrees, the greenish water that reflected it, framed with sloping hills on\neither side. Now, however, it was all dark - a sable coat thrown over,\nslumbering to the melody of a cricket's chorus.\n            A little too drunk, Mike had\ngone out to the dock to sit and sip his drink - grape vodka and whiskey and\nwhatever soda was on hand at the time - contemplating the cosmos. \n            Things weren't going well -\nhis old partner in Pennsylvania had finally figured out a way to take back the\ncompany that he had bought out from him unawares all those years ago, there was\na letter from his lawyer saying he should probably come back to Bethlehem and\nsort a few things out before it got any worse...but he didn't want to think about\nthat, he just wanted to look at the stars, and not think about the future which\ndaily grew more uncertain.\n            At some length he was joined\nby Jones, the host, blondish hair a mop-like mess, eyes haggard, rail-thin from\nhis own bodily self-abuse, but still spry for the hour. He had stumbled,\nclomping his sockless loafers on the wood, out to see him, and bring him back\nto the party.\n            On the way back in, a short\ndistance, the two men began to talk about the only subject the two of them\nreally shared: fish. Jones wanted to know how Mike had gotten quite so good at\ncatfishing, and when Mike explained it was just a matter of study and practice,\nJones laughed at him and called him a liar.\n            \"It's skill and\nluck!\" he roared. \"Something you're born with, not practice! I've\nbeen at that shit for years and ain't ever had close to what I've seen you catch!\"\n            Tipsy but forbearing, Mike\nentered the house with Smith through the patio and into the downstairs kitchen,\nthe gathered party now privy to their conversation.\n            \"I can assure you, Mr.\nJones, it's all about practice and knowing what to do.\" He took a sip of\nhis drink, his glass still in hand. \"I have a freezer full of catfish I've\ncaught, you know? And it didn't take anything but a little know-how.\"\n            \"Knowing what to\ndo!\" Jones repeated, dubious. \"Well I'll tell you­ what to do--!\" He poked his thin finger into Mike's chest.\n\"There's a spot out past Bay Roc, ain't far from here, pretty good\ncatfishing, and that's where you need\nto go, that's where all the fish are,\nthat's where you gotta be!\"\n            \"Yeah, you know, I've\nheard about that place around here but I just don't think--\"\n            \"Well why ya gotta think!\" slurred Jones.\n            Mike observed that the room\nwas favoring him, wanting him to answer to this blathering idiot. \"I think I'll go up there and give it a\ntry,\" he said coolly. \"No harm in trying, I guess.\"\n            \"Well ain't this time of\nyear good for catfishing, then?!\" Jones threw out his arms. \"You\noughta go out there tomorrow night! They bite easy at night time.\"\n            \"That's true,\" Mike\nsaid back, because this time of year a lot of cats are out spawning, and\nthey're easy to catch that way unawares. \"But not at night - that's a\nmyth, you see, that catfish bite best at night, that's simply untrue, a skilled\nangler can get them any time of day.\"\n            The remark drew nods of\napproval, from those gathered, but Jones, nonplussed and drunk and belligerent,\npressed, his abrupt fury welling from his inebriated brain: \"Well then\nprove it! You come up here with some mighty big cats and we'll all see what a\ngood fisherman you is!\"\n            For some reason even Mike's\nacceptance of the challenge was memorable: \"Alright then, jackass! Two\nnights from tonight, we'll have a big catfish grill-off at my place.\" He\nslammed his drink down, grinning to the sound of an applauding room.\n            The night ended and those who\nwere sober enough - a slim majority - went back to their respective condos,\nwhile many others doing their best to doss down on couches and floors and the\nsole hammock that was hung outside the patio.\n            Hungover but unwilling to back\ndown from having made such a boast, Mike finally arouse the next later\nafternoon in his own bed and made preparations for his fishing trip - he bade\nhis friends, the Lynches and the Lightfoots, gathered on the formers' front\nlawn for some lemonade and sandwiches, a good day, that he would be back by\nnight time with his big haul of catfish to shut that moron Jones right up.\n            The last thing he saw were the\nfour of them raising glasses. \"Good fishin!\" called Junior.\n            He nodded back at them, and\nmade his way down the hill, to the dock where his fishing boat waited for him.\n            The spot where he was promised\nimmense prospects for catfishing was beyond Bay Roc Marina, which to those\nunfamiliar with the Lake is a fur piece from Bernard's Landing by boat, reached\nby going north, then west, in winding waterways that become increasingly\nnarrow, the expanse of open water continuously shrinking until the\nheavily-wooded shoreline closes in, like a gripping talon ready to snatch away.\n            That part of the Lake is\nactually more or less part of the Roanoke River, with its silted, rocky sides\nforming shallows that are lethal to the bottoms of boats - dead center it is\ndeep enough that one can still not see the bottom and still motor down, that\ngreen, dappled-reflection water of where the River meets the Lake flowing and\nguiding.\n            He was far away from everyone\n- few other boats tread up here with him, the houses whose lights blinked at\nhim, bleary eyes through the trees, too far to call for help if he needed it.\n            He slowed the motor - he was\ngetting close.\n            It was getting to be dusk and\nthe sunlight was dying behind him, all around him, an ambient glow that ached\nand convulsed in the sky, a red-orange light that exploded from cloud to cloud\nand held an angelic glimmer over the tiny crests of the wake and waves,\nblinding glints that lasted for a passing second, and then vanished as his boat\nmoved up, up, past the railroad bridge, that loomed dizzily overhead, into the\nriver.\n            The trees were thick, thicker\nthan he was used to around the lake, and they loomed over him - tall, stoic,\nverdant sentinels that watched him pass, the groaning whisper of the katydids\nsinging out of their branches.\n            His nose was filled with the\npeculiar admixtures of boating on the Lake - redolent, of the fetid musk of the\nunseen skunks, cleansed only partly by the herbaceous woods, and the slow\nputter of his engine belching out the fragrant pungency of marine gasoline, and\neverywhere that ineffable smell of the lakewater.\n            Before him he noticed a kind\nof whirlpool, a gentle breathing indentation in the water, a compression,\nsomething moving - he cut the engine and grabbed his fishing gear, smiling to\nhimself, expecting to see, any minute, a large mass of his favorite fish there\nready to be caught, gathering in a swarm from the shallows. He took a few\ncautious steps forward to peer on and get a closer look.\n            But he saw no school of fish -\nhe saw something else.\n            Something worse.\n            It arose from the whirlpool it\nhad made, from beneath, amidst a flurry of bubbles that wreathed about the\nedge, burbling, boiling, turning the water into a cauldron - and from the\nsurface appeared a fin, webbed, bony, flat, but now rising up, flinging up a\nspray of water as it flared up, erect and angry: an announcement, a herald,\nforward go the banners of the king.\n            The fin was flush with an\nemerging surface, the flesh of the thing itself, scaleless, slimy, filthy, the\ncolour of mud, mud rich with Virginia iron that had been packed into bricks for\nplanter's houses by dying slaves - for it was ancient, more ancient than any\nman or woman who had laid claim to Virginian soil ere these four centuries of\nsettlement, it had come here, small and unassuming, from a river in\nantediluvian ages but it waited here, for as long as it needed, for as long as\nthe dam had been here, and grew, and grew, until it attained its titanic shape.\n\n            Eyes appeared - bulbous,\nspherical, but without the dead listless apathy so often of fish, no, even in\nthe dying evening August light, the sunset fading behind him, he could see it,\nthe spark, the emotion, the sheer annihilating malevolence.\n            A massive, domed head, shiny\nwith slippery mucous, breached the surface - four whiskers, a pair on either\nside, springing up from its face, twitching, seizing, waving about slowly in\nthe August air, testing it, tasting it, sensing the outer surroundings of what\nwas unquestionably its domain.\n            And then lips - the saggy thin\nlips of the catfish, not in the rhythmic sloppy breath-pulse of its smaller\ncousins but firm, downturned, unyielding...it\nwas frowning at him.\n            Mike dropped his fishing rod,\nbarely hearing the noise it made on the deck, as he backed away, slowly,\nstumbling into the upraised seat.\n            \"Pretty good\ncatfishing\" my ass.\n            This was no fish.\n            This was a monster.\n            It was creature, beast, a\nphantasm vomited up from every fisherman's worst nightmare, that karmic\npunishment, that ironic Hell, for lacing its brethren's mouths with spears and\nhooks and dragging them to the surface to asphyxiate out of the water - a\nLeviathan, a divine instrument, what the Hebrews hallucinated in their darkest\ndreams.\n            He made a seizing, panicked\nmotion to turn around and restart the motor - his discretion the better part of\nvalor - when he turned back, one last look, one final parting shot.\n            Later - when he would tell the\nstory - he would say he didn't know why he did it, why he looked, he shouldn't\nhave, he should have just run like Hell and never looked back...but he did.\n            It was gone.\n            Just as soon it was there - it\nwas gone.\n            He breathed a sigh of relief,\nlaughing at himself - what a stupid thing, he thought, there was no monster\nfish, nothing weird up this river, this part of the Lake, but being alone, and\nthe loneliness, the shadows, the isolation, the anticipation, it all had all\nmessed with his head, he had imagined the whole thing.\n            But then - he felt something.\n            A - bump - some faint pressure at the bottom of his boat.\n            He looked down - he felt it\nagain - a shaking vibration at the bottom of his boat.\n            He grabbed hold of the side,\nand peered down - the water was still green, dark green, opaque, he could see\nnothing beneath him, nothing at all.\n            Another bump - harder this\ntime, at the bow, hard enough that Mike lost his balance, nearly falling, but\ngripping the edge of the boat hard enough to stay on his feet.\n            His head jerked, one way, then\nanother - he dashed to the other side of his boat, vainly searching the water\nbeneath him, vainly seeking what could be doing this.\n            And then he got his answer:\n            A sudden, boiling whirlpool,\nrimmed with froth and foam, and then it reappeared, the entire thing, all of\nits bulk, all of its slime, all of its grotesquerie - the giant fucking catfish.\n            His breath was a shudder, the\nSummer noises of the birds and the insects and the smells of the wood and the\nLake all muted, all he could see and sense was the dire malevolence that\nemanated from the eyes of this titan monstrosity.\n            Mike felt as though he had\ncommitted a terrible mistake, something he could not be forgiven for, one false\nstep into the abyss he had stumbled, he would die here, he was sure of it,\neaten, swallowed, like Jonah, just like him, prey to this monster, this fish,\nwhose brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers he had spent a lifetime\ncatching, gutting, eating.\n            Jones had no idea - none of\nthem did. They'd all heard the story, Mike had heard it too, big schools of\ncatfish waiting to be caught up here, but none of them had ever bothered to\ncheck it out, none of them could ever have known just what the Hell was swimming\nup here.\n            He and the monster shared a\nlocked gazed - Mike from fear, but the creature from something else, some\nineffable rage, some demanding ultimatum that Mike would not, could not answer.\n\n            Its back fin swayed, a moving\nwave that stopped into a splash at the surface, back and forth - its front fins\ntwitched, treading water.\n            And then it opened its mouth.\n            It was nothing at all - some\npassing seconds before it was fully agape - but it was an instant that\nstretched out into eternity: Mike saw its maw, ravenous, insatiable, a hole\nfrom which nothing escaped, its mouth,\nso wide and hollowed and ribbed, like a cavern, a bottomless pit, a watery\nSheol. \n            Mike's breaths were ragged,\nchoked with horror - all he could was watch, helpless, as the mouth filled, a\nrushing torrent , with the waters around it, churning in foam, draining into\nthe limitless hole passed from its lips.\n            He had no time to react, no\ntime to process what was happening - full of water, its mouth engorged, the\ngreat hidden beast that had swam undisturbed in this Lake and this River spewed\nit out, all of it, all the water it had drawn out exploded into a spraying\ndeluge of lakewater and phlegm and slime and backwash.\n            Mike screamed aloud, throwing\nhis arms up to protect himself, but he was blinded by it, thrown to the deck of\nhis fishing boat, as the arcing stream of vomited water and nastiness poured\nover him, onto him, ruining his clothes, soaking him to the skin.\n            It lasted half a minute, no\nmore - the great geyser of whatever that catfish had launched out of its vast\nmouth, at him, on him.\n            He stood - slowly - trembling,\nshaking, at once beset with a chill he could not shake, shivering violently in\nthe Summer breezes that made his sodden form cold, so cold, like he would\nfreeze to death there in late Summer on his fishing boat, covered with catfish\nspit.\n            He blinked, shuffling in his\nchilled fit to the edge of his boat, looking down into the water that was\neasing its shimmer with the disappearing Sun - nothing.\n            He shuffled to the other side,\nhis skin clammy and dripping, still, it was though the air was not drying him -\nagain, nothing.\n            The monster was gone.\n            Once again, he was alone.\n            He curled into a ball - and\nwept.\n            How he got back, how he was\nable to turn the motor back on and make the long journey back to Bernard's\nLanding, he didn't tell anyone, because he freely admitted he didn't know - but\nhe remembered, he said, racing, going as fast as the boat would carry him,\nstill slick with the belched-up slime, freezing, trembling, in the dusk air\nthat turned to night.\n            He would tell anyone who would\nlisten this whole story, anyone at all - for the first day, he would repeat it,\nwild-eyed, nigh-crazed, grabbing hold of random arms or random hands, calling\npeople in the middle of the night, all to regale the time he faced off against\na monster catfish that dwelt in the\nfathoms beneath Smith Mountain Dam. \n            The Laker community was still\nsmall and any news was usually well-circulated within days of something\nhappening, and soon all anyone could talk about was Mike Fischer going crazy\nabout his monster catfish, how he\ndidn't bathe anymore and stunk of something rotten and damp, how he would stand\nat the end of his dock, stark naked, at night time, looking out into the lake,\nbut otherwise never leave his condo, how a few days after his supposed\nencounter he never said another word to anyone.\n            It was generally agreed that\nMike's behavior indicated he had suffered some kind of psychotic break, that he\nhad perhaps seen a catfish of unusual size and thought it to be a real monster,\nor that he had fancied the whole thing as part of a bursting of nervous anxiety\nthat destroyed his heretofore strong tether on reality.\n            There were calls to get the\nman help, but they did not last long - still the all-day drunk boating and the\nall-night drunk partying went on apace, the world did not stop for Mike Fischer\nor his giant catfish, he may have gone crazy but it would be crazier to stop\nenjoying the life that would eventually kill them. \n            And why the Hell not? The\nmoney was still easy and so was the alcohol and so was the coke.\n            He'll get over it was the common, willfully deluded sentiment - he'll get over it, you know his old\nbusiness partner from Pennsylvania is trying to get back at him? Big money in\nthat, you know, very big money, maybe even a million on the line, and the case\nwasn't going well...he probably lost it, he probably had every right to go a\nlittle crazy.\n            But then Michael Fischer\nvanished, without a trace, one late August night.\n            It was his two friends from\nWest Virginia, Lynch and Lightfoot - fortuitously in town that weekend - who\nnoticed his car, that massive tank-like Toronado he drove everywhere, was\nmissing from his driveway. \n            Had Mike finally left his\nhouse - back home to Pennsylvania?\n            Lightfoot and Lynch decided to\ncall on the man at last, and told their wives to stay at home, because their\nshared hunch was that they would not like what they would find, so aberrant and\nelusive as Mike had been - but they would settle this as a private matter before\nthe police were called.\n            No one answered when they\nknocked, when they loudly announced they were there - but then they tried the\ndoor...which to their shock was open.\n            Into the house they entered -\ninto an appalling wreck, furniture and food and clothes in a chaotic jumbled\nmess, lamps shattered, silverware bent, everything thrown askew as though in a\nstate of utter derangement, a berserker rage, someone who was desperate and\ninsane and had taken it all out on every possession he owned.\n            And amidst it all - a great\nlivid cloud of miasmatic stench,\nnauseating and hateful, a punch in the gut when inhaled through the nose...but it\nwasn't long, moving from the living room and the kitchen, that they discovered\nits source:\n            It was Mike's bedroom.\n            His bedroom was all catfish.\n            There were his wildly-flung\nbooks on catfish, torn-out magazine pictures of catfish, and in the bathtub,\nfloating, disintegrating, slivers of meat and bone, congealed gobs of defrosted\ncaught catfish.\n            Everything smelled, everything\nwas damp, moldy, a must that should not have been there, that should have taken\nmonths or even years to grow on his curtains, the clothes that still hung in\nhis closet, the black spidery blooms splattered on his bathroom tile.\n            All over his bedroom wall was\ndrawn primitive little catfish, over\nand over and over, the same figure, a fat fish with long barbed whiskers,\nflapping its fins, swimming around the plaster. And in the margins was written\na cryptic phrase, all capital letters: WAITSFORME.\n            The little scrawled catfish,\nand WAITSFORME, again and again and\nagain.\n            The bed was a torn-up pile of\nfuzz and fluff and cloth, cuts made wildly as though looking for something\ninside it that would not be found, with the culprit - an antique boning knife -\nlying nearby, the same blight on his clothes and in his bathroom spreading its\nspores across the fabric.\n            Whatever had gone on in Mike\nFischer's head was impossible to guess, but it was certainly must have been\nintolerable, something so impossible to deal with it had driven him to depths\nof quaking madness, that made him filthy and revel in fast-growing\nsqualor...something that throbbed, night and day, something that lived in the\nshadows of his house and infected the shadows of his mind - all, all, until it\ndestroyed him.\n            But what Mike Fischer seen, or thought he had seen, that drove him to\nthis point? What had made his brain sicken and grow so strange that his grip on\nreality was loosed in less than a week, what had so violently severed his\ntether to the real world?\n            What did he think - waited - for him?\n            Maybe it was an abrupt onset\nparanoid schizophrenia, maybe it was some sort of nervous collapse because of\nthe stress of his business, maybe something latent that attacked him in\nmiddle-adulthood - but nothing concrete ever emerged.\n            The more adventurous suggested\nthat he did indeed see something in the Lake, that some monster-fish had\nattacked both him and his boat, that it was still out there past Bay Roc and\nthat someone should look for and exterminate it - but these were ignored, and\nlaughed, if nervously, away.\n            That same day, the Toronado\nwas found at Crazy Horse Marina - which Mike did not even belong to - a very\nlong distance away, and his fishing boat was found adrift two weeks later,\nfloating aimlessly in the water around the area known as the S-Curve.\n            Something truly awful had\nhappened to this man - and no one has ever discovered why.\n            But just as it has been in\nlife, so in death, for the world kept on, and things moved swiftly: Mike\nFischer was searched for over three states, but he was never found - he was\ndeclared legally dead, drowned by the same Lake that had charmed him. His\nbusiness, Fischer Fuels, was offered to his erstwhile friend Junior Lynch, who\nmerged it with his own business to become very wealthy indeed - but he died in\na car crash some years later with his wife, leaving a very young son, Bligh\nAllen, who would be raised by Junior's father, and who was cheated out of a\nmodest fortune by that shadowy old partner of Fischer's from Pennsylvania who\noutmaneuvered Lynch's lawyers and Lightfoot's hidden treasure to retake the\nbusiness that was originally his all those years ago. \n            Archibald Lightfoot himself\nwas known to have taken the failure to save his friend Lynch's legacy very\nhard, and he sold their formerly shared condo at Bernard's Landing, almost a\nsecond home to them both, washing hands of the whole matter - the whole thing\nhad become a nexus of tragedy and regret.\n            Jones, for his part, because\nit was his suggestion for Mike to go and find the rumored bevy of catfish, at\nlast collapsed from the strain of this ordeal and the ordeals he put his body\nthrough - he went to California to get clean, and returned, first to Blacksburg\nand then to an obscure part of Pulaski Country, a hollow, joyless shell, running\nhis Toyota dealership without incident for another twenty-five or so years\nuntil he shot himself not long ago one cold Winter morning after his son,\nCaleb, also went missing in totally different but equally eerie circumstances.\nTil the day Jones died he blamed himself for whatever - whatever - had happened to Mike. \n            It was a rumor, just a stupid,\nsilly rumor - and it killed him.\n            Mike's condo was bleached and\nscrubbed and fumigated and hosed down at great expense, sold to an elderly\ncouple from Michigan who kept to themselves - it was as though Mike had never been at all.\n            And it wasn't long before the\nlittle circle that had gathered at Bernard's Landing in those far off halcyon\ndays, The People You Should Know, dispersed, worn down with all manner of the\nmaladies that come from aging: cirrhosis, cancer, diabetes, and that most\ndreadful of all afflictions - children,\nand even worse, grandchildren. \n            It is often said - a noisome\ncliché - that what time does to the body and soul are ravages, as though getting\nolder is a series of catastrophes simply by being alive, fires and floods...and\nyet, seeing the body decay, the glory days fade ignominious into paunch and\npastiness, the sting is renewingly fresh each year.\n            Summer turned to Autumn, the\nall-night party went to bed.\n            Bernard's Landing is now a\nquiet, well-maintained resort, and the memories of debauchery and freewheeling\nare an embarrassing memory not spoken or mentioned anymore - except, of course,\nsomeplace in private, like over dinner, on the patio of a well-appointed condo.\n            The legend of Mike Fischer\npassed into the mythology of Smith Mountain Lake, where it created a great\nsensation for a year or so before it faded and became something of an urban\nlegend, impossible to separate what really happened with speculation and rumor.\n\n            At any rate, what had happened\nwas not, in and of itself, altogether outré: an outsider from another state\ncame to the area, he suffered some mental breakdown, made up a story about a\nfish, then drowned in the Lake - maybe caught on one of the ghostly trees that\nsits at the lakebottom. People go crazy all the time, people disappear all the\ntime - why should Mike Fischer be treated any different?\n            Because, as it turns out, the\nstory doesn't end there.\n            This seems to have been the\nstart of the hearsay about the very large catfish up by the Dam: gargantuan,\nwent the stories, which were numerous, about those absolutely huge catfish - the size of Volkswagens! - great big\nungainly things that hid in the turbines, that lurked and swam amidst the\npreternaturally still waters near the Dam itself. Not just big, but mean - bloated creatures of the deep\nthat will attack and drive off intruders with their bullying size.\n            Now fishermen's tales are\nnotoriously, even proverbially stretched and unreliable - yet the rumors\npersist, even today: giant, ugly catfish that lurk somewhere in Smith Mountain\nLake, maybe up near the dam, but maybe in the more distant parts, still\nswimming the bottom, monstrously huge and gross and territorial, waiting, patiently,\nfor the days when they can reign supreme amidst their watery brothers and\nsisters, the striped bass and the swarming carp and whatever else that swims in\nthe glass-smooth waters.\n            There are some who maintain\nMike Fischer didn't drown, but still lives in the Lake - a great big catfish\nhimself, just as angry and just as large, his surname a punchline to an\nobscenely long joke.\n            But this is all just local\nangler lore and tall tales - a half-secret churned up from the deep, into the\ncomfortable August sunshine...\n            ...isn't it?\n            That's the trouble with the\nstories about this area - they're always so inescapably unsolvable, so bereft\nof evidence and answers, and if you hear the story over drinks you might need\nsomething stronger.\n            To that purpose: the drink that\nMike Fischer was so fond of is still a favorite around the bars at Smith\nMountain Lake - grape vodka, whiskey, a little Sprite: a foul, unbalanced\nconcoction, with a colorful name: Sex\nWith A Catfish, or something equally ribald. \n            But with the years Mike\nFischer's favourite drink acquired another, and probably more fitting name\naround Smith Mountain Lake: Catfish Mouth."}