THE DEVILS STREAM
Hugh was out walking , it was mid august and a lovely bright sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, and the insects were scurrying into hedgerows to get out of the heat of the noon day sun.
He had just moved to a small village called Kerry to do some work away from the rat race of a city, it was peaceful and he could write his book and be undisturbed by family and friends, it was a small village with only two shops a well disguised library and two pubs, in the middle of Wales.
It was a big change for Hugh as he had just moved from Cambridge, and Kerry was very quiet and small in comparison . But he reckoned he was going to like here.
Hugh was originally from Wales but moved away when he was very young, a mere 4 or 5.
He walked over the road through the gates to the church and through to the graveyard , then the cemetery, he wondered how a small village like this needed two graveyards surely there are less people living here than this, and if so the entire village would be buried here.
He read a few of the gravestones as he walked by, there were some very random welsh names . Looking at some of them was sad there were quite a few children’s some of them died quite young.
He then walked down through a country lane where the stinging nettles were taller than him (he thought ‘day of the triffids’). He then jumped over the sty that lead through to a field, there he saw a rickety old wooden bridge up ahead with bright blue water catching in the sun light underneath it, the stream flowed towards a deep watering hole round to his right which was almost black. The stream glistened in the sunlight and as he got closer the water wasn’t blue, but crystal clear, with thousands of little blue fishes no bigger than pebbles, he went to put his hand in the water and the fish scattered in frenzy.
Although the sun was out the sky was getting dark some clouds were starting to form, so he decided to head for home.
The next day Hugh revisited the stream and decided to follow it’s path as it flowed, he turned a corner and saw a massive tree had toppled over the streams path with big branches ,and a lot of moss on the big thick heavy trunk, Hugh climbed down the bank towards it, the water under it was nearly black, it looked extremely deep, and he did not want to fall in.
He climbed on to the tree’s great big heavy trunk to get a better view of the area, he looked down into the water and saw no little blue fish but great big red fish with razor sharp teeth they looked like angry piranhas, he thought.
Hugh had enough of looking at fish and decided to fall asleep against a very thick branch ever so close to the water; he was just falling off to sleep when he heard a voice from behind him
‘ You ought to be careful, you don’t want to fall in do you?’ (The voice said)
‘ Who said that?’ Who are you?’ (Replied Hugh)
‘My name is Rosie, I live around here, and do you know how many people have died from falling in this river?’ (Rosie said)
‘How many?’ (Asked Hugh, interested)
‘ a lot of people were stupid enough the believe in a local myth, and killed themselves’
‘Do you believe’ (Rosie said with a smile on her face, very sarcastically)
‘ believe in what ?’ (Hugh said back, curious)
She didn’t say anything, she just smiled. He moved on still curious, but also suspicious of her motives.
‘ What kind of fish are they? (Hugh asked)
‘ We call them devil piranhas, and up stream you will find the angel fish, they are blue and haven’t got big teeth’ (said Rosie)
Hugh stared down at the big red piranhas and gulped.
Rosie started advancing towards him; Hugh was slightly terrified as to what she was going to do when she got to him,
When Rosie was close enough she said
‘ Don’t be so curious , just believe’ (she said with no emotion in her voice and piercing dull lifeless eyes), then with out warning she pushed him feet first in to the almost black pit, as he was being mauled by the fish he noticed Rosie had vanished into thin air. Then the pain got the better of him and he scrambled to get out of the water.
When he got out he looked back and noticed the water he had just left was empty, nothing was there even the water was clearer, he could almost see the sparkling pebbles on the bottom. Despite that the pain was bad and his clothes were ripped and bite marks were visible. Hugh decided going home was probably a good idea; it was starting to rain so he ran home through the cemetery and onward round the side of the graveyard and over the road.
The next morning Hugh awoke with a headache but no bite marks; he wondered why, and then gave up, he thought now that it could have all been his imagination.
He decided to investigate the village and stay clear of the water for the time being, he decided to take a walk towards the library that looked like an ordinary old brick house, but inside it had high pillars and lots of old looking books,
‘ Can I help you dear’ (said a woman, although Hugh wasn’t sure where the voice was coming from)
‘ Hi, I’m looking for books on local history’ (asked Hugh randomly to thin air)
‘ In the back corner’ (she said popping up from a stack of old newspapers and pointing to the back far right corner)
Hugh started looking and found that over a hundred years ago there was a girl called Rosie that had died from what the villagers called ‘devils piranhas’ when she fell into the local ‘nook’ whilst playing. That was around the time that Kerry was shut off from the rest of the neighbouring villages for acquiring a few people that were believed to be ‘crazy’. Quite a few of the locals thought that the devil had come to earth and disturbed the fish, making half of them good and half evil, nearly all the villagers killed themselves believing that by throwing themselves to the evil piranhas it would satisfy some random pagan god that they believed was a version of the devil. They also believed their bodies and souls would go to different places to be free from one another. Only the ‘crazy’ people and some children survived and rebuilt the village. Now it is said that if you ever see the fish in the stream you are going to die by the curse of the devil and his piranhas, Hugh gulped just thinking about it. He put the book down and went in search of alcohol.
After that revelation he went to the local pub to drown his sorrows and to try and forget what he just read. The next morning he awoke expecting a hangover from all the beer the night before, but he seemed to be fine. He did some work and then went for a walk down a different lane, away from the ‘nook’, he walked past a farm and ended up by a small lake and sat on the bank, and basked in the mid-day sun on the dewy green grass, listening to the birds. After
awhile he woke to find the birds had stopped singing and everything was deathly still, and creepy. All of a sudden the water in the lake started bubbling up like it was boiling and things were rising from underneath the ripples, it took him awhile to work out was was happening, he was staring constantly at the water , not moving, until the reality of the moment kicked in, and he realised that the burnt and bitten people were coming towards him were getting closer, he attempted to run but was frozen to the spot, their heat engulfed him and sharp teeth sank into his flesh, more and more joined them and his body went limp and finally gave up, then it sank to the ground, he was then carried into the lake. It was like he was never there, the waters had stopped bubbling and even the birds started chirping again.
The sun was shining down on the affectionately named ‘nook’, the fish were enjoying the heat from the sun the angel fish schooled together, an extra one had joined them. And in the almost black pit there was an extra ‘ devil piranha’ .