The Plague Fish devour decomposing corpses and the bodies of the newly dead.
Jake falls in love with one of them.
His girlfriend tries to stop him.
Can she succeed?
‘It was called the Plague Pond because of the dead bodies from the Great Plague of the 1600s which were buried at the bottom of it.’
‘He believed that it had been created when an ancient spring that had been concealed far below the plague burial ground had finally managed to rise to the surface.’
‘He had discovered that the pond was inhabited by the horrifying species of fish by accident, when he had decided to go fishing in it.’
‘He had decided to call them Plague Fish because he suspected that they fed on the bodies of the plague victims who were buried in the pond.’
Chapters and Scenes
(The free sample is at end of Chapters and Scenes)
Jake and Janey arrive at Plague Fish Pond
Janey horrified by Plague Fish
Janey tries to free Jake from man trap
Janey senses Plague Fish nearby
Plague Fish moves closer to Janey
Mister Finn watches Janey try to escape
Jake in man trap calls out to Janey
Fish People torture Jake at Plague Pond
Fish People release Jake from trap
Plague Fish scared by Fish People
Jake tortured over Plague Fish pond
Janey taken to Mister Finn home
Janey taken into Mister Finn’s house
Janey spends night Mister Finn home
Jake fed human flesh on fishing hook
Jake begins to slither inside cabin
Finn shows Janey baby Plague Fish eating corpse
Pregnant Janey examined by gynaecologist
Janey sees food for baby Plague Fish
Janey sees corpse being chopped up
Jake plans to enter Plague Pond
Jake now part fish can’t breathe on land
Jake touches grave headstone in pond
Plague Fish after Jake goes to bottom of pond
Beautiful plague fish sees Jake
Jake sees beautiful Plague Fish
Beautiful Plague Fish among headstones
Jake exhausted on bank of Plague Pond
Jake returns to cabin from pond
Janey escapes sees Jake’s photo.
Janey escapes from Fish Person
Mister Finn decides to search for Janey
Mister Finn on ATV searches for Janey
Janey hears Finn and Fish Person approaching
Finn suspects Justin of betrayal
Mister Finn at house after failing to find Janey
Mister Finn at house while Janey free
Justin Ward after being tortured
Mister Finn decides to feed Justin Ward to Plague Fish Brute
Mister Finn feeds Justin to Plague Fish Brute
Janey goes up lane to rescue Jake
Jake hears Janey call out to him
Janey sees that Jake now looks like a fish
Janey at cabin tries to persuade Jake
Jake and Janey chased by Fish People
Janey sees Fish People carrying beautiful plague fish
Jake and Janey see beautiful plague fish in lane
Jake sees beautiful plague fish in lane
Mister Finn meets surviving Fish People
Mister Finn asks Janey to take new boyfriend to Plague Pond
Janey with new boyfriend at Plague Pond
1
Jake and Janey arrive at Plague Fish Pond
They drove along the quiet country road in the county of Lancaster, planning to go fishing in the river Caster, when Jake suddenly swung the car into a narrow country lane, and they discovered this pond.
“What the hell made you do that” Janey demanded as he suddenly swerved into the lane and threw her against the passenger door.
She straightened her denim miniskirt which had ridden up her thighs and waited for him to answer.
“I don’t know” he said, puzzled.
“You must know” she insisted.
“Was it the voices?” she added mockingly, meaning the voices that some people who suffer from mental health issues are supposed to hear.
“How did you know that?” he demanded.
“Are you serious? You really heard voices? I was just messing around when I said that.”
“Not voices” he suddenly said.
“What, then?”
“Gurgles.”
Janey laughed helplessly.
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”
“Listen! You asked me and I told you.”
“Okay” she said meekly – but she was just having fun with him.
She couldn’t resist it – she made a gurgling sound in her throat.
“Gurgle! Gurgle! Gurgle!” “So did the gurgles tell you to drive down this lane?” she added innocently.
“Maybe” he said defiantly.
Suddenly she saw something that was almost hidden by a bunch of trees on the left hand side of the lane, about a couple of hundred yards away.
It was a stretch of water, that looked like a pond.
“Was this the place that the gurgles had told us to go to?” she said.
“Yes!” he said excitedly.
“That’s the place!”
He drove the car towards it and turned off into a small clearing by the side of the lane, it was so narrow that he would block it if he parked on it.
***
She got out and walked through the trees and bushes towards the pond while he unloaded his fishing rods from the roof rack, and got his canvas bag of fishing tackle – reels, floats, hooks etc. from the back of it.
She was surprised to be able to reach it so easily, she was expecting to find a fence around it, but there was nothing, it was almost welcoming.
They had been fishing in quite a few private lakes and she knew that secluded places like this were usually private, there were usually a few no fishing without permission signs around,
but she couldn’t see any signs at all.
There was even a crude kind of picnic seat, just a big log placed on the ground, at a convenient height
Who put it there? She wondered.
It didn’t make sense, it seemed to be the ideal place for a nice quiet afternoon’s fishing but it was deserted.
And why aren’t there any other anglers around?
She saw that it was a pretty big pond, bigger than she expected, it was almost perfectly circular in shape and was about three hundred yards across, and there was deep grass growing all the way around it except for a big bunch of trees which were growing at the far end of it.
She looked at the surface of the water and wondered if there were any fish in it; if there were they should have risen to the surface every so often, to try to catch any insects that might have been briefly alighting on the water.
But she didn’t see any, which she thought was strange.
Maybe there are no fish in it.
Or maybe they’re the not kind of fish that are interested in eating insects.
But none of these notions made sense; if there were fish in there they would eat insects; what else was there for them to eat?
She glanced in the direction of the car and saw that Jake had taken his fishing rods off the roof rack and was messing around with them, he was probably deciding which ones to take with him to the lake.
For a young guy – he was only twenty two, the same age as herself – it took him ages to decide something.
Maybe that’s why he hasn’t asked me to marry him yet.
Maybe I’m like one of his fishing rods.
Suddenly the silence was broken by a loud flapping noise that seemed to come from only a few feet above her head and when she looked up she saw that it was a duck, flying low over the ground.
But there was something wrong with it because one of its wings was hanging down from its body, it must have been injured in some way.
It landed on the surface of the pond but not in the way that duck usually land, by skidding along on their webbed feet until they finally close their wings and settle on the water.
Instead, it landed in an awkward heap which created a big splash.
Suddenly something rose from the depths of the water and grabbed hold of it in its huge jaws, then almost as quickly disappeared under water again.
The duck screeched with pain and agony and a few seconds later there were only a few feathers scattered on the surface, to signify that it had ever existed.
A pike, she decided, it must have been a pike.
But its jaws didn’t look like those of a pike.
They looked almost human.
Available on Amazon UK
Available on Amazon USA
