By Alexander Pigounis
It was 1941 when we moved to the countryside of Wales, near a town called Lampeter. I was twelve. My brother Howell was the same age but loved saying he was seven minutes older, which I found exceptionally annoying.
The countryside was very green, much different from Swansea, which was all stone grey, then blackened from the bombings. The bombs crumbled buildings, draping soot over everything. There were bodies in the mess—some moving, some not. It was a terrible send-off for our home.
I didn’t like our new house as much, even if it wasn’t full of soot as Mam insisted. It was a little brick thing; claustrophobic and cramped, stitched together with barely enough mortar. Worse still, it sat across from a lake. I hated lakes—cold, bottomless pits teeming with gloomy water, going down and down like they want to swallow you into the forever night. It could’ve only been worse if we’d moved near the ocean.
This lake was as terrible as any, if not more so—like a shadowy mirror the span of two rugby fields. To think of how deep it might’ve been sent my heart racing.
Mam walked us down there on our first day, and I covered my eyes with my hands, peering through the finger gaps because it didn’t seem so horrifyingly vast that way. Howe ran along the pier, which I refused to set foot on. Mam stayed with me because she was good like that. I saw a ripple at the water’s edge and told Mam I didn’t like it here. Howell screamed something about fishes.
On our second day, my brother called out to me from the garden.
‘Floyd!’ he said in that eager, domineering tone of his. Back then, those seven minutes between us meant everything. They meant that I was the baby brother to be ordered about, and he was the little king in his throne. ‘Over there,’ he whispered, having me peer over the fence. On the far end of the lake was a rickety log cabin, so close to the stony shoreline that its foundation kissed the water. Its wood was wet like it had been crying, and in its tears, lichens had spread white-green patches. Howell wanted to investigate. I didn’t, but what I wanted was never of much interest to my brother.
Howell rapped the wood with his knuckles when we arrived, enjoying the dull thuds it produced.
‘You shouldn’t do that,’ I warned.
‘What? It’s abandoned, you willy.’
Lengths of moss hung from its discoloured logs like the curtains of a witch’s hut. The cabin felt run-down and lost to time: an abandoned relic, not a home. Maybe Howell was right, for once.
‘Still, I wouldn’t—’
‘Course you wouldn’t, fogey.’ I thought of telling him to at least be careful, but the words fell away. Nothing could stop Howe once his mind was set, anyway.
‘Go ahead then,’ I relented. Howell licked his lips, tasting the opportunity for mischief upon them. I turned and left Howe to his shenanigans.
Reluctant to face the lake, I gazed at the tree canopy above. Leaves rolled along the breeze, sending shafts of sunlight down to dance across the stones like will-o’-wisps. The air was quiet but not silent. Hushed, like God was whispering. Bored and joking to myself, I bent an ear to listen.
At first, I couldn’t believe it, but the more I concentrated, the more I heard. The wind was speaking. Fragments of unfamiliar words flittered down from the rustling trees, and goose pimples broke out across my arms. A breeze hit my face, but not a regular breeze. It was warm like someone’s breath; I was sure of it. Hot panic shot down my shoulders. Suddenly, the thin whispers that drifted from the sky made themselves clear enough for me to understand—What. Are. You. Doing?
‘What’re you doing?’
I leapt, nearly out of my socks. Looming over us was an was an old man, thin and sunken. A living corpse wrapped in filmy skin, thrice the height of me or Howe. He wore a yellow raincoat with big, raised lapels. They were always raised, covering the sides of his neck, stopping just at his jawline. Howell just turned his head, unbothered by the old man.
Hanging out of the cabin doorway, he resembled a crooked painting—a classical portrait of an esteemed but terrifying gentleman. Black, wet hair dipped to his shoulders, a few strands gracing his sharp cheekbones which appeared manufactured like a doll’s. His hollow eyes locked onto Howell, who had grabbed a fistful of moss from the cabin wall.
‘What’re you doing?’ he repeated.
‘Was gonna throw this moss at my brother.’ Howell pointed to me with his moss-free hand, and I couldn’t even muster any annoyance towards him. I was still firmly in shock.
‘Oh,’ the old man muttered. ‘Carry on.’
Howe did exactly that, and the moss stuck to the back of my jumper, all clumpy and wet like bogeys. I nearly cried.
We came to know the old man well over the coming months. His name was Mr Marlow, but he preferred we call him Bamps. I preferred not to do that.
Mam really liked Mr Marlow. He’d bring fresh fish every other day; she’d give him bakestones in return. Not once did I see him eat one as he claimed to. He claimed to love them.
Howe liked Mr Marlow too—thought him a wise sort. He let Howell borrow his fishing rod and gave him tips. He offered me, too, but I refused. Even the idea of holding onto something that dared touch that dark water…
I was the only one who didn’t like Mr Marlow. He wasn’t nasty—in fact, he was friendly and polite—but still, I didn’t like how he made me feel.
You see, Mr Marlow enjoyed swimming in the lake. From the window in me and Howe’s room, I’d watch him submerge himself under the water. Sometimes he’d go under for five or six minutes. How his old lungs could manage that, I didn’t know. I shuddered to imagine being down there, swallowed by the abyss, swimming with the fish like you belonged there. For that, I grew to detest him. A petty reason, I know, but I was twelve.
So too would I come to fear him. Certain things didn’t add up with Mr Marlow, at least not to me. First there was Mam’s bakestones—I was sure he was lying about them, hiding them somewhere or disposing of them.
Then were the fish he brought. He liked fishing, supposedly, yet I never once saw him actually do it. He wore a fisherman’s raincoat, and he certainly owned a rod, the very same he’d let Howell use. By all accounts, he was as he appeared. But then why had I never seen him sit on the pier and cast his line?
Lastly was his hair. It was always wet. Even hours after he’d last gone to swim, I would see his hair glistening still, as if that was its natural state. This, I think, concerned me most. Of all his oddities, this was the only one that could not be reasonably explained. Maybe he’d hidden Mam’s bakestones, maybe he’d gotten his fish from elsewhere, but there was no reason for his hair to wet so constantly.
One day, Howell went to swim in the lake with Mr Marlow. Mam said it was okay because it was warm outside, and Howe had been eating his greens, unlike me. So off he went, stripping to his drawers and leaping off the pier. All the while, I watched from our window, praying that Mr Marlow wouldn’t turn into a sea monster and eat my brother. But my view was not close enough for proper surveillance. All I saw was distant blobs splashing in the water.
Howe returned safely twenty minutes later, dripping wet like a dog. Mam wrapped him in a towel and sat him before the fireplace. Like a crow I descended upon him, badgering him with my questions.
‘What’d his hair do?’ I pestered, ‘Did it go dry once it hit the water?’ This idea intrigued me. Maybe his hair thought it was opposite day.
‘Why’re you asking bout Bamps’ hair?’
‘Did it do anything weird?’
‘Duw mawr, you’re a weirdo, Floydie.’ He shoved me very gently, but I was a wobbly kid, so I toppled anyway. Laying on the carpet, feeling its bristles against my palms, I imagined how Mr Marlow’s hair would feel. Wet and slimy like tentacles. This sent a shiver through me.
‘Ya know,’ Howe said. ‘Did see one thing.’
I rolled over and held my chin up with my hands, like a schoolboy excited to hear a myth. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. Old cuts on his neck. Five on each side.’
Something about this deeply unsettled me. Not wanting Howell to think me any weirder, I tried saying something a normal person might.
‘Maybe he was in wars, like Dad.’
Later that night, I dreamt that Mr Marlow took me into the lake. He dragged me to bottom—kicking and screaming—to show me a network of tunnels. There were hundreds, like holes of a beehive. They led straight to the ocean, he told me, and all I had do was swim right through and be free.
I awoke with a jolt, drenched in sweat. Howell, of course, snoozed peacefully beside me. I looked at his face and thought of what he’d said about Mr Marlow’s scars. Instinctively, I peered above the bedhead to gaze out the window at his cabin—but a glimmer of light caught my eye instead. At the end of the pier stood a tall white figure bathed in moonlight.
It was Marlow, stark nude, arms outstretched like Christ on the cross. My mouth fell open. Yet again, I was too far away to properly see anything.
Uncharacteristically, I decided to venture outside. Striking a compromise between safety and discovery, I promised myself I wouldn’t go beyond the garden. This soothed me a little as I meandered out into freezing darkness.
Hurrying across the garden to the fence, my tiptoes strained, fingers numb from the cold as I clutched them white to the pickets. I could see Mr Marlow much clearer now. He remained motionless at the pier’s end, looking up to the sky as if pleading to it. I’d never seen someone be so still.
That quickly changed with sudden movement along his neck, where the skin rippled with slight vibrations. I squinted, then blinked in shock, hoping my eyes were mistaken. I knew they weren’t.
The slits on his neck were breathing like lungs. Gills. Fish gills on a man’s neck. I stifled a scream as Mr Marlow’s eyes glossed over, his arms raised above his head., and he dove into the lake.
To this day, I’m not sure if what I saw was real. I recall hiding under the blanket after, terrified, but the memories of a child aren’t reliable. Maybe I never woke up at all that night. Sometimes, though, I feel the easier thing is to believe it did happen. Otherwise, Mr Marlow will never make sense.
It was just a few days after when Mr Marlow and Howell went swimming again. I warned Howe of what I’d seen, begged him not to go, but of course, he didn’t believe me. All I could do was watch helplessly from the window as they jumped into the lake, praying Mr Marlow wouldn’t eat Howe.
That was the last time anyone saw either of them.
There was a search party. Mam cried for months as divers scoured the lake’s every inch yet found nothing—no bodies, no ocean tunnels. I refused to believe it. My young mind was certain of what happened: Mr Marlow had taken my brother through those tunnels and sent him far away into the ocean.
But there was one thing that wavered my convictions. Never before have I spoken or written of it, for fear I may be mad.
It was six months after Howell and Marlow disappeared. Mam had finally decided for us to leave Lampeter behind. This was on our final day there.
The air nipped at my fingertips. December fog had settled over the lake, like a saucer hovering, threatening to abduct. I stood at the rocky shoreline, observing my reflection in the blackness. Oddly, my aversion to the water had faded. I guess I felt numb, apathetic, less stringent about safety. After all, the world can just swallow you at any moment, regardless of how careful you are. That’s what it did to my brother.
There was a ripple in the water. Normally, I’d step back, maybe even flee—but now, after everything—I just stood there. Seconds later, a fish leapt from the lake right into my hands—swear on the Bible. A colourful, exotic-looking thing, certainly not typical of Wales. Stranger yet, it didn’t thrash around. It just laid there in my palms, peacefully.
Staring at this fish, a strange feeling overtook me—a strong, inexplicable familiarity. I leant closer to whisper.
‘Howell?’
Now call me crazy if you will—I call myself it— but through its wet lips, I swear bubbled back a reply.
‘Floyd.’
