Stealing precious moments together in the budding dawn, it was two young lovers who saw the body wash up on the sand. They thought little of it, believing it to be a log covered with seaweed, but as the morning arrived in full, a rumour that the lifeless body of a woman had been found on the beach had spread, and soon the entirety of the town had crowded along the promenade hoping to catch a glimpse of the woman from the sea. Access to the sand had been cordoned off by the authorities and all the gathered masses could see was a shape beneath a black sheet amongst the milling officers. Those on the sand were at a loss with what to do with the body. The town was small and the only doctor had drowned two years previously, so an open call was put out over the local radio stations and spread by word of mouth for anyone with sufficient anatomical knowledge of men or fish to make themselves known.
First to answer the call was a travelling medical student from Scandinavia who emptied his stomach upon seeing what lay beneath the sheet. Twice more eager strangers appeared in those early hours, and on each occasion they left ashamed, unsuccessful, and haunted by what they had seen. It was then that the authorities decided to move the body. They took it into the basement of the police station, to a forgotten room where an autopsy could be performed in private. Locking the door behind them as they returned to their investigations, they waited for a solution to appear.
Brooks arrived three days later. An amateur ichthyologist and professional con artist, he presented himself at the station in a freshly starched black suit and bowler hat while the day was still young.
‘I believe you’ve been waiting for me,’ he announced, proudly striding into the station. From his briefcase he produced papers asserting his medical qualifications, stealing them from sight before they crumbled under closer inspection. ‘Where is the body?’
A junior constable led him down to the basement. Unlocked the door. Paused. Then removed the sheet.
There it was, lying in front of him. The body that had washed ashore. Lifeless. Her eyes open. Her sclera full of the sea. A fish’s tail where her legs should be.
‘I see,’ Brooks muttered to himself. He then repeated himself for the benefit of the watching constable who had backed up against the wall. ‘You are very lucky that I have found my way here.’
Brooks began to scrutinise the body with the precision of an architect, his face so close to its sallow skin that his eyelashes ran across the dead flesh. A viscous, tear-like liquid coated the skin around its eyes, while the lips were still damp with seawater and the tongue was noticeably missing. A strange smell permeated from the skin, reminding Brooks of an Italian port. Tilting her head to rest as if sleeping against the stainless-steel table, he found small incisions along the neck and, recognising their structure, deduced that these were gills of some description. Using a pen produced from his jacket pocket he lifted a lamella.
‘Aren’t you going to…’ The constable’s voice stumbled, and instead, she pointed towards the lower half of the woman, to the fish tail. In truth, Brooks had been stealing glances at the tail since the sheet was lifted, but he was an expert in his profession, a professional with a role to play.
‘My dear. Clearly, there is something here with this poor soul that we would not expect. It does not take someone with my expertise to tell you that, you know this already. But first, we must ascertain if what at first view may appear normal – her face, her heart, and so on – we must know if these are as expected, or if…’ Brooks made a show of pausing, to think. ‘What if this piscine appendage is merely a misdirect, hiding an even bigger secret?’
It was close to midday, and the town had not forgotten about the mystery that had washed ashore three days previously. Curiosity had festered like a rotting infection, nursed by vivid dreams of a lady walking from the ocean, only to become a fish on land. Those who experienced these dreams woke unusually late the following day with the salty taste of the sea on their lips and found themselves unable to speak of anything other than the body which had been hidden away deep inside the station. So it was that crowds gathered and grew outside the station day by day, water-sellers, fire-breathers, card sharks, and fortune tellers plying their wares; pickpockets, silver-tongued politicians, young mothers, and aged beauties mingled with their prey. Amongst the crowd was a young troubadour whose eyes sought out the station door, watching anxiously for her lover.
Once his initial inspection was complete, Brooks excused himself from the station in search of ingredients for a tonic he told the officers would be needed to complete the autopsy, though first he procured enough coin to cover his supposed costs. He wasn’t long out the station before the crowds swarmed around him. What is it? Where did it come from? Should we be afraid? Can I count on your endorsement? Brooks shook these questions off with a reassuring smile, stopping long enough to bask in the heat of the fire-breathers as he moved among the bodies. Free of the crowd, he straightened his bowler hat and secluded himself inside a dark, windowless pub and found a drinking companion who would enable his vices in exchange for strange tales.
While waiting still for her lover to emerge from the station, the troubled troubadour heard a quiet song carried on the wind. It was a tune that belonged to no one, a whispering lament which forced her into action. It demanded to be discovered. Entranced, she abandoned her wait for her lover and began a pilgrimage in the direction of the song, towards the beach on which the body washed ashore.
Brooks returned to the station with ingredients squirreled away inside the pockets of his suit jacket: bellis perennis, to purge; peony and snapdragon, to relax; anise and garlic; spirits of salt. These he mixed together above a naked flame until they produced a viscous liquid coated with an amber-like membrane. In the borrowed beaker the tonic bubbled, like sea foam, like a rabid animal, a noxious scent rising above the glass. The scent of thirst and abandon, of being lost at sea, of washing ashore. But when he returned to the basement ready to administer the tonic, he found the room empty. There was no sign of the body which had laid there on the stainless-steel table, only the silhouette of a woman left behind in the dust, and a pathway of water leading out of the basement.
‘Where is the body?’ Brooks called into the mass of the station, but this too, he found empty. Finding a nearby flask, he emptied his tonic into the container, pocketed it, and then followed the trail of water out into the town. It was deserted. Where what felt like only moments prior, he had struggled through curious, self-serving bodies to get back to the station, but now all that remained were the legacies they would leave behind: propaganda pamphlets, scorched pavement, unwanted futures. Still he followed the water, through secluded streets and abandoned alleyways.
Eventually he arrived at the same beach on which the body had been discovered, three days prior. on that morning, the entire town crowded along the promenade looking out towards the sea. Brooks slid through the masses like a hunter, emerging onto the sand to see three silhouettes there on the crest of the sea. One of these figures he recognised immediately as the subject of his improved autopsy, but on either side of the woman, supporting her, dragging her towards the water, were two figures he couldn’t make out. One of them appeared to have an instrument of some sort, a lute or small guitar, strapped to their back.
‘Stop,’ Brooks cried, doing his best to run through the rising tide and sinking sand in his freshly starched suit and bowler hat, but he knew it would be to no avail. Helpless, he could do nothing but watch as the waves enveloped the shapes.
Three disappeared under the water, and two bodies washed ashore.
‘She just wanted to be free,’ said the troubadour, struggling for breath. The lute which had been strapped to her back was now missing, but she seemed not to notice. At her side, hand in hand, stood the junior constable who had been charged with guarding the body. Brooks stared hard at her, betrayed, but she refused to meet his eye. The flask containing the now-redundant tonic he had prepared for the autopsy hung limp in his hand.
Soon the crowds dispersed. Days went by without incident and any remnants of those salt-tasting dreams which had haunted the residents faded. Three days Brooks drowned his sorrows in the windowless pub, paying his bill with unbelievable stories – of a creature from the sea, part woman, part fish. Once the alcohol had thoroughly distilled his disappointment, Brooks placed this bowler hat proudly back atop his head and strode out of town, briefcase in hand.
On his way out of town he took the waterfront road, walking for the first time unimpeded along the promenade. It made him happy to see the beach deserted. Perhaps those young lovers would no longer need to hide their romance, he thought to himself, removing his shoes as he strode out onto the sand. In front of him was an endless world of blue. He walked into the rising suds of the tide, the water lapping at the bottom of his trousers. It was peaceful.
Brooks stayed there long enough to feel the tide rise and recede and watch the day fade away around him. It was then, in that greying façade, that he walked further towards the sea. Checking that the beach and the promenade behind her still deserted, he placed his briefcase down in the sinking, still-damp sand and clicked it open. There inside were his fraudulent medical papers, the flask containing the unused autopsy solution, and the bag of coins he had procured from the officers still full. He felt something wash ashore close by but didn’t look up. Instead, he ran his fingers along a glass jar hidden in his briefcase. There inside the jar was a human tongue, grey and decaying.
‘This makes six,’ Brooks said, directing his voice out into the ocean. Beside him rested the troubadour’s lute. ‘One more, and your payment is complete.’
Brooks shouldered the lute and turned his back on the water – and his accomplice, hidden beneath its surface – and made his way along the waterfront road to the next town.
About the Author
Greg Forrester (he/him) is an award-winning writer based in the North East of England. He is a current PhD candidate at the University of Sunderland, writing about magical realism and northern identity, and was Highly Commended for the Sid Chaplin Award in 2021. He is Managing Director of Bandit Fiction, a not-for-profit digital publishing company, and has been previously published by Fairlight Books and TL;DR Press. You can follow him at @GregForrester4 on Twitter, @forrester4 on Instagram, and find out more about him at his website, www.gregforrester.com.
