The Art Of Fishing (part two).

©2011 David Jasmin-Green

Charlie decided to finish off his coffee a couple of hours later because he still felt a little sleepy, though the sun had slipped behind an ominous looking bank of cloud and the air was considerably cooler. It was almost nine in the evening and there was only an hour and a half of daylight left, so it wouldn't be long before he started thinking about packing up. But then he had a bite. He had been dutifully watching his float most of the time, but he averted his gaze for a moment to check on Connoly, who was still snoring his head off under the old maple, so he missed the strike - bloody typical, he thought. By the look of it he had hooked a sizeable fish, because it pulled the float under and dragged it a fair way into deeper water.

“Softly softly catchee monkey,” Charlie said, reeling in his catch a little way and then giving it some slack, deliberately letting it think it had escaped him. That was how his father had taught him to tire out the big ones. You had to break their spirit and shatter their confidence a little at a time or they would outsmart you with their curious piscine brilliance, they would beat you hands down at your own cunning game.

Whatever had taken his bait felt like a carp, and it was more than likely a big one – you get a feel for these things when you've been a fisherman for as long as Charlie had. A million snippets of information rushed through his mind. Carp didn't often go for worms, he mused, or at least the humble earthworm wasn't the wisest bait to tempt them with. And he wasn't properly kitted out for carp, especially a big fucker, but he had seen his old man land huge fish with the most laughable equipment and the most unlikely bait imaginable. It was a trifle easier when you had a rough idea what you were doing, but landing a sizeable carp with a flimsy rod, a modest hook and eight pound breaking strain line was still a major challenge – and it would have proved damned nigh impossible for the poseurs who knew more about fancy kit than they would ever know about the art of fishing. But if he played his cards right, Charlie reckoned, he might just be able to pull it off.

“Give her a bit more slack, Chaz,” a voice echoed from deep inside Charlie's head. “Let the old girl knacker herself out for a while.”At once he recognised the voice of his father, and he couldn't say he was surprised.

“If the old man decided to show himself in spirit he'd choose to appear during a momentous occasion like the hooking of a big fish,” Charlie mumbled. “Or a record breaking fish, perhaps.” The two men on the far side of the lake and the trio of teenagers who had spent most of the evening some forty yards to his right had packed up and left a while ago, so Charlie guessed it was permissible to talk to a ghost (or a possible ghost). He had been broken in to the other side now, he reminded himself, and if a disembodied spirit that might be the devil himself could communicate with him he saw no reason why his long dead daddy couldn't do the same thing.

“I'm doing it, dad,” Charlie said, a little self consciously. “Just for a little while, mind. I've already played her back and forth half a dozen times and I sense she's already tired. You told me yourself that really big fish, especially carp, don't always have as much energy as people imagine. If it is the legendary big momma of this lake and it's a good few pounds over the national record it's well over fifty years old, so it must be damned nigh knackered by now.”

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a disturbance in the air on the muddy shore beside him as something began to take shape, but apart from taking an occasional glance he was far too preoccupied to watch the unhurried materialisation of his father. Charlie was too single minded to give even such an important spectre his full attention for fear of losing a fish that might well be the mythical Old Slimy. As the apparition shimmered and crackled in the sunlight Charlie could smell his father's familiar earthy aroma with just a hint of cough sweets and hand-rolled tobacco. That smell comforted him and surprised him in the same instant, because the possibility of ghosts possessing an odour had never occurred to him..... The old fellow was clad mostly in khaki. He wore a floppy Barbour hat, a battered pair of wellies and his trademark camouflage body warmer with about a hundred pockets.

“That's it, Chaz,” the spirit said. “That's bloody well it! Now pull the beautiful baby back in and strike her hard as soon as you can see her – she's almost ready to land.”

The copper coloured fish that slowly came into view through the darkening water was a veritable monster. It was the biggest carp that Charlie had ever seen, bar none, and he wouldn't have been surprised if it was thirty odd pounds over the record, never mind just a couple. It was a marvel, a freak of nature, a sheer godsend..... Soon he would have to call Pete, his fishing buddy, who lived a short distance away, to round up the troops. He needed someone with a set of scales and a decent camera, and he needed witnesses.

“Now!” the spirit said. “Strike her now! Don't leave it too late, or you'll lose her.” An overconfident, too trusting Charlie did exactly as he was told, and the ancient, almost doubled over rod snapped a couple of feet above the reel. Though he spastically hung on to the remains the queen (or possibly king) of fishes did the dirty on him and swam leisurely back into the depths of the lake, taking the hook and float with it.

“Bugger!” Charlie yelled. “Fuck, fuck, bollocks! What the hell am I supposed to do now, dad? Dad.....” Once he managed to tear his attention away from his fleeing destiny he realised that the thing beside him wasn't his father at all. Oh, no. The apparition was doubled over, uncontrollably laughing its spectral knackers off at him from somewhere deep in the pit of its equally spectral stomach. When the spirit overpowered its mirth and straightened itself up he could see that it was a poor imitation of his father. Shit, it didn't even smell like him any more.

The clothing was more or less right, but the face was too broad , it was all mouth and yellowed, oversized teeth. In that gaping maw Charlie could see hundreds of tiny maggots and worms milling back and forth, gradually devouring their host, and he could smell the sickly sweet odour of decomposing flesh. And then there were the eyes - the thing's eyes were dead fish eyes rather than the sparkling human eyes he expected to see in a benevolent ancestral spirit. To top it all the damned thing had gills, for fuck's sake, and they emitted a raspy croak as it struggled to breathe.

“Oh, Charlie,” the thing cried. “What's the matter, have you lost your sense of humour? You're such a divvy. You're so gullible, so easy to fool, so fucking stupid. If you'd managed to tear your greedy eyes away from your impossible prize for a few seconds you'd have realised that I wasn't your daddy almost straight away, but landing a record carp is your greatest desire, isn't it? It's even more important than conversing with the spirit of your dear, departed father. You tit, you twat, you tosser, you complete twannock.” Charlie did his utmost to speak, but he was so flustered that at first nothing would come out of his mouth and his venom filled reply balanced precariously on the tip of his tongue.

“You wanker,” he managed to yell after a long pause. “You utter wanker! You made me lose Old Slimy on purpose, you total, complete bastard!”

“That's me,” his counterfeit daddy rasped. “That describes me down to a 't,' Chaz, m'boy. I'm all of those things and more, but that's part of the territory and I won't let it ruffle me. Now we have something crucially important to discuss.

You want this fish – you crave a god-damned miserable fish, for fuck's sake, and you want it more than anything else in this whole, wide, wonderful world. Can't understand it myself, but that's the way it is. You crave a stupid, oversized fish and the infamy its capture will bring you more than you crave a couple of hundred grand, more than an infinite supply of jewels and diamonds and all the goodies that limitless wealth can buy. You even crave it more than a once in a lifetime, never to be repeated chance to converse on some meaningful level with the spirit of your dear departed father. Sad. I wonder what else you value that poxy fish above.....

You can have the fish if it's what you want. Don't look at me like that, Charlie, you really can. Don't fret now, I won't land it for you because that would be cheating and I guess you wouldn't accept that, but I think you would accept me bending reality a teensy-weensy bit. I'll magically replace that broken piece of tat in your hands with your old man's best carp rod, the hand-made Italian jobbie, and I'll even throw in some decent line and a more suitable hook so that you can land the damned fish yourself. How does that sound?”

A fat black beetle crept out of the thing's permanently grinning mouth, scuttled down its chin and disappeared down the neck of its shirt. Just then there was a loud pop behind the spectre's head and a sickly yellow winged thing that looked like a cross between a fruit bat and a squid appeared, flapping frantically to remain airborne. It glared at Charlie with its tiny bloodshot eyes, made a snickering sound and flapped off clumsily over the trees.

“What the fuck was that?” Charlie said. “And that!” he continued as another creature materialised in a puff of smoke, dropped to the ground, hurled itself into the water and disappeared into the weeds. It was a blood red crab as wide as a dustbin lid, and he could have sworn that it had a human face. A third and final invader appeared in mid air and fell to the ground, a lurid purple and pink monstrosity that looked like a malformed heart or a bloated tumour balanced on far too many long, spindly legs. “Freedom!” it proclaimed in a squeaky voice as it scampered off into the undergrowth.

“Oh, don't worry about them,” the spectre said, chuckling at the comical expression on Charlie's face. “They're worthless scum. They're just random stowaways, opportunistic travellers taking advantage of the temporarily open gateway to the great beyond, to the grand Mystery with a distinct capital 'm'. They can't survive for long in your realm, not without human blood or maybe tears to feed on, anyway. They'll more than likely fizzle and die within a day or two at the very most. Let's hope they don't frighten the cack out of too many old ladies in the meantime..... Now what do you say to my proposition, Charlie? Hmmm?” Charlie rubbed his chin, and he looked decidedly unsure.

“What's your price, then, shit-face?” he said after a moment of silence. “You're not helping me to catch Old Slimy for nowt, are you?”

“Now let me think,” the spectre said, scratching his chin. “Let me weigh the pros and cons of the situation..... Give me a minute and I'll make you an offer you can't refuse.”

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Charlie Pride published his first book, 'The Art of Carp Fishing,' just a few months after he caught his record breaker. The cover bore a photo of a grinning Charlie struggling to hold Old Slimy, a mirror carp fifty one pounds and three ounces over the national record and a smidgen over thirty two pounds over the world record. “Yes, the world record!” Charlie had cried when he and his friends weighed the fish. “How brilliant is that?”

A growing number of fishermen and freshwater fish specialists disputed the claim, though. They said it was an impossibility, they said that no mirror carp on the planet could possibly grow to almost a hundred and twenty pounds in weight. The complaints came in thick and fast despite the excellent photographic evidence and the fact that Charlie managed to round up fifteen witnesses, including a doctor, a local police Inspector and a press photographer who just happened to be walking his dog near the lake and wandered over to see what all the fuss was about. As the huge carp was released as soon as the photos were taken and the owner of the lake refused permission to net or drain it in order to provide conclusive proof of the size of Old Slimy the truth remained elusive, and practically overnight the price of a day's fishing on the lake went up an astonishing two thousand percent. Funnily enough, though, despite the fact that swarms of determined fishermen descended on the lake, no one ever landed Old Slimy again.....

The controversy simmered for months, and the claims, mostly from jealous anglers, that Charlie had hatched a big, fat con refused to be silenced. There were suspicions that the photographs of the gigantic carp had been Photoshopped or that the fish had somehow been inflated to ridiculous proportions (with a bicycle pump, one wag seriously suggested) but despite extensive investigations by budding conspiracy theorists no convincing evidence was put forward to support those allegations. Charlie didn't care. “All publicity is good publicity,” his agent told him, and his books sold like hot cakes. He packed in his job just a few weeks after publication, because he was making a bloody fortune.

In an ideal world that should have been that. In an ideal world there should only have been one setback, and all considered it was a small one, at least in Charlie's opinion – and that was getting used to his artificial hands.

He was learning to manage, though. A prosthetic specialist and avid fisherman from Berlin had made him a pair of special solar powered fishing hands free of charge, and ever so gradually he was learning to use them. He guessed it would be a long time before he even approached his former glory, but he would get there one small step at a time and there was no way that he would allow his disability to defeat him.

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Charlie pondered the 'accident.' Almost twelve months back his agent had landed him a grand tour of America where he hosted a one man talk and slide-show before audiences of up to two thousand fishermen. He and Cheryl had been doing a spot of sightseeing (they had left the kids with Cheryl's sister) and there was a freak incident, a one in a million occurrence while they walked across a suspension bridge on the outskirts of San Francisco.

It had all happened in a flash.

A high tension cable snapped with no warning. Charlie instinctively raised his arms to protect his face, and the catapulting steel whiplash severed both of his hands cleanly at the wrists.

In retrospect he didn't care about that, not as much as he should have cared, because he had been expecting it. It was all part of the deal, it was his pound of flesh, it was an agreed payment for the assistance of the spirit or demon (or whatever the hell it was) in landing Old Slimy and granting Charlie Pride celebrity status. He had no inkling when he was going to lose his hands, but he knew that losing them was his forfeit.....

What he did care about was that a fraction of a second after the cable severed his precious hands it sliced off the top of his wife's head about an inch and a half above her eyes, which was definitely not part of the deal. Charlie was utterly devastated, as any decent person would be, though he seriously doubted if he was a decent person any more. He didn't know if he would ever get over it, and he was still on pretty strong medication for his nerves. The horror of the event and the recurring nightmares that followed in its wake wasn't the worst part of the situation, though – the worst part was the sheer flippancy of the monster responsible for the outrage.

After the cable flipped off the top of her skull Cheryl stood there for a few seconds with a puzzled look on her face, an expression that Charlie guessed would never leave him. She gently touched the dividing line where her skull was and then, inexplicably, wasn't, and her eyes rolled back in their sockets until they were all white like the eyes of a shark before it put in a killing bite. And then, astonishingly, she smiled and giggled her infamous girlish giggle.

“Did you enjoy my little joke, Charlie?” the thing that temporarily possessed Cheryl said through her mouth in a familiar wet, fishy voice just before her legs gave way and she tumbled to the ground. “Did you like the optional extra I threw in out of the kindness of my heart, the freebie that you failed to notice in the small print before you signed your name in blood, because your avarice filled your heart with recklessness and the pound signs in your eyes obscured your vision? You stupid prick! Fancy trusting pond life - fancy trusting a low down dollop of scum like me. You're a proper Charlie, aren't you, Charlie?”