Nelly Longarms

by Keith Davies

Part 1 appears in this issue.

conclusion

Ashburn returned to his room seething: he had quite resolved to clatter the whole piece out in one go, paste in pictures and send it — but he was utterly fed up. This one would provoke postbags of outrage: he already had the header: Cutty Can’t Cut It. Just when the Folk Horror Revival was so sexy, he’d rip it up. Phrases spilled out of him:

The Old Gods are dead: all the demons — from Abaddon to Zepar — became redundant after Auschwitz. There is nothing “under the hill” — only landfill and rocks. Mankind has long outstripped any need for infernal evil. Colour your monoculture with boggarts and sprites if you will — but it’s all fanciful rot: tribal totems — a species of cosplay.

He had to clinch it with a chilling tagline and concluded: “We are TV-suckled and denatured; our children hate us — and they care more for plastic than any ‘sacred’ landscape: leave the Old Ones lost, forsaken and obsolete — or be careful what you wish for.”

The story sent, he enjoyed a good supper, slept soundly, and returned to London in the morning, rather sore-headed.

He had quite forgotten two old saws: Be careful what you wish for and how you bind your wishes.

The Birket brothers had waited until full darkness and then pulled on hazsuits, gaffer-taping cuffs and then their ankles to stout rubber boots, even smearing Vaseline around the hoods’ elasticated seams. They checked each other’s outfits, then pulled on full face masks — not the throwaway carbon versions, but types with full visors and powered breathers. It took them two hours’ sweating and cursing to load the drums onto the trailer, and then snug them down under a tarpaulin.

Callum lifted his mask and grinned: “Where’ll we do it?”

Jem pushed away the planks and climbed into the cab before answering: “We tip it into Stanford Water, quiet, mind, and no lights — keep the safety gear bloody tight n’ tidy. It’ll mean fish kills all the up to the shallows up at Northwold, through the open sluice at Wretton Fen and on to the estuary at Denver, but they’ll never know which creek it came from.

“You take the quadbike first light and zig-zag all over in the mud to lose our tracks. I’ll crush and bury the barrels with the digger, deep down at Osset Fallow — it’s all redshanks and rubbish there now — the mud and floodwater’ll do the rest for us.”

His brother turned on the ignition and they moved off slowly; the headlamps carefully taped to slits, turning onto the Stanford — Stumpsall road.

“I’m all on a-dudder ’bout they bad buggers from Swaffey, Jem. Should we be takin’ their money?”

“It means silage for winter; feed for the heifers an’ a new pump for the bulk milk tank, so we’re doin’ it, Cal. Turn in here, slowly now, gentle-like.”

The drums behind them boomed and sloshed as they stopped feet away from the bank. The lake, heath and sullen sky were strata of grey and black; it was utterly still.

With their suits re-taped and masks fastened, they rolled each drum back down the planks and to the dark water’s edge. The first drum’s cap took five strikes from a heavy chisel to loosen and, instantly, yellow foam hissed and frothed out of the opening. Even in the murk and through half-misted visors, they could see the air around it ripple. “Tip ’im — fast!” yelled Jem, and they booted the thing over, the liquid sloshing into the lake, chocking up the drum with wedges and a crowbar to angle and drain it.

It arced outwards, curving with current: a silvery-green oily scum.

Instantly, hundreds of fish rose, thrashing and dying in all directions, even before the stuff reached them. By a sliver of moonlight, they made out the golden-olive scales of carp; striped white and green bellies of perch, roach, grayling — and writhing knots of eels.

Though there was no breeze at all, the breckland reed beds circling them and far across the heath, bent and swayed, and began their sighing.

Both men turned away from the second drum to face the lake and saw a sudden, dark wake rush towards them through the leaping, agonized fish, already sinking under their own thrashing weight.

It lifted from the surface and took form: a thing of slime and dripping rags; of terrible, ancient hate — then flung itself upon them before they could scream.

* * *

“I must emphasise that you wear visors and rubberized gauntlets at all times,” urged Doctor Mary Cressingham. She handed two plastic tubes to the Inspector and the young Sergeant; ‘Vapour rub — smear it under your noses.” They complied, and followed the county’s pathologist behind the plastic curtain, the Sergeant trying to shut out the swabs and basins; the sensory overload of strip-lit tiles; the rows of instruments.

D.I. Harry Rawthey told her all he knew: “Both sets of remains were found trapped in the sluice at Wretton Fen at around six-eighteen yesterday morning by a dog walker — mercifully, not by a child. He’s still in the Hellesden unit, sedated. The EA were busy with the fish kill — it’s now run the full course from Shipdam to the estuary, so it took three hours to shut down the pumping section and recover them.

“We believe them to be two known chancers, Jemand Callum Birket from Watermill Farm. The Trust Warden found their tractor, engine seized, battery drained, and a trailer load of corrosive chemicals on the bank. One drum had been emptied. Small-time, leery pair — but this; this must be gang-related. Some insane punishment and warning. What can you tell us?”

“You’ll see that, under the sheeting and surgical canvas, I have them in a bio bath — that’s a Portland Down stipulation. The tissue is gelatinous; resembling deep putrefaction — as if they’d been submerged for weeks instead of barely seventeen hours and supersaturated with neonicotinoids, organophosphates and carbonates — agrochemicals so lethal you’re not even supposed to store them beyond a year; it’s as if they’ve been immersed in the stuff, steeped in it.

“Two things defy reason; they suggest violence beyond belief .... and ritual elements.”

She paused; Rawthey had never seen her like this, struggling to match science with context, and she was the best he’d worked with.

“Will he be OK with this?’ she looked at the young D.S; already flinching. “He may see worse, but I doubt he’ll see stranger.”

It was not the two torsos, limbless, decapitated, slicked and horribly bleached — they were awful enough: it was what had been done to them: clumps of rotting eel grass dripped from each torn socket, stuffed into the remains of the jagged neck stumps.

Both stomachs had burst.

“That’s not me. It was post mortem but ruptured with distension, because they had been jaggedly incised from clavicle to sacrum, then stitched with these and reeds.”

She held up a cluster of large fish bones, bagged in clear fluid. “From this point on, you’ll need a team of forensic archaeologists — we’re just the path lab. Look closely. Beautiful aren’t they?” They were fish bones, smooth and worked and pierced with tiny, elliptical holes at the top. “Sewing needles — probably for hides and pelts when most of the Fens were between ice ages — possibly Mesolithic. Both torsos are eviscerated — it’s all gone: intestines, vital organs scooped out and replaced.”

“You’ve got stomach contents though?” asked Rawthey.

“Their entire body cavity contents, certainly, but we’ve had to clean them with saline or an alcohol solution to make some identifiable. Over here.”

She removed the lids from two sterile tubs filled to the brim with a mad child’s treasure hoard: river-smoothed pebbles, flint arrowheads, snail shells, tinfoil, fishing line, disposable lighters, screwcaps, carrier bags, ring pulls, keys, lockets, tiny animal skulls — even spent .303 brass cases, all smeared with tiny flecks of glitter.

“Stanford Training Area,’, explained Doctor Cressingham; "taken over for live firing by the army in 1942. These were not ingested, that’s impossible — they were placed there.”

“But this is the oddest item we’ve removed. It makes me think of sacred springs, holy wells and cloutie trees: as if it had been some kind of votive offering or tribute or summoning, even an unintended one.”

And she held up a single golden wedding ring.