The Fisherman
Authors: John Langan
Critical Acclaim for John Langan's The Fisherman
Part 2:
Der Fischer:
A Tale of Terror
Part 3:
On the Shore of the Black Ocean
Titles Available from Word Horde
Critical Acclaim for
John Langan’s The Fisherman
“
The Fisherman
is an epic, yet intimate, horror novel. Langan channels M. R. James, Robert E. Howard, and Norman Maclean. What you get is
A River Runs Through It
…Straight to hell.”
—Laird Barron, author of
X’s for Eyes
“Stories within stories, folk tales becoming modern legends, all spinning into a fisherman’s tale about the one he
wishes
had gotten away. Langan’s latest is at turns epic and personal, dense yet compulsively readable, frightening but endearing. Already among the year’s very best dark fiction releases.”
—Adam Cesare, author of
The Con Season
and
Zero Lives Remaining
“In this painful, intimate portrait of loss, two damaged men take steps toward redemption, until the discovery of an obscure legend suggests a dangerous alternative. Can men so broken resist the temptation to veer away into strange, unfamiliar geographies?
The Fisherman
is a masterful, chilling tale, aching with desire and longing for the impossible.”
—Michael Griffin, author of
The Lure of Devouring Light
“Reading this, your mouth fills with worms. Just let them wriggle and crawl as they will, though—don’t swallow. John Langan is fishing for your sleep, for your soul. I fear he’s already got mine.”
—Stephen Graham Jones, author of
Mongrels
“John Langan’s
The Fisherman
isn’t about fishing at all. Yes, there’s fishing in it, but it’s really about friendship, loss, and bone-deep horror. What starts as a slow, melancholy tale gains momentum and drops you head first into a churning nightmare from which you might escape, but you’ll never forget, and the memory of what you saw will change you forever.”
—Richard Kadrey, author of
The Everything Box
“Whenever John Langan publishes a book I am going to devour that book. That’s because he’s one of the finest practitioners of the moody tale working today.
The Fisherman
is a treasure, the kind of book you just want to snuggle up and shiver through. I can’t say enough good things about the confidence, the patience, the satisfying cumulative power of this book. It was a pleasure to read from the first page to the last.”
—Victor LaValle, author of
The Ballad of Black Tom
“A haunting novel about loss and friendship,
The Fisherman
is a monstrous catch in the sea of weird fiction.”
—Cameron Pierce, author of
Our Love Will Go the Way of the Salmon
“For some fishing is a therapeutic, a way to clear one’s head, to chase away the noise of a busy world and focus on one single thing. On good days it can heal the worst pains, even help develop a sense of solace. John Langan’s
The Fisherman
isn’t about the good day fishing, it isn’t even about a bad day fishing, it’s about the day that you shouldn’t have even left the house, let alone waded chest deep into a swollen stream of churning water. Langan tells you that up front, warns you this isn’t going to be that story, but you ignore the signs, lured in by the faint smell of masculine adventure, hooked by tragedy and the chance of redemption, and reeled in by a nesting tale of ever growing horrors. By the time you realize what has happened it’s already too late, you’re caught in an unavoidable net of terror that can end in only one way. It doesn’t matter how strong you are or how prepared, John Langan has you hook, line and sinker, and he doesn’t let go until the very last page.”
—Pete Rawlik, author of
Reanimatrix
“John Langan’s
The Fisherman
is literary horror at its sharpest and most imaginative. It’s at turns a quiet and powerfully melancholy story about loss and grief; the impossibility of going on in the same manner as you had before. It’s also a rollicking, kick-ass, white-knuckle charge into the winding, wild, raging river of redemption. Illusory, frightening, and deeply moving,
The Fisherman
is a modern horror epic. And it’s simply a must read.”
—Paul Tremblay, author of
A Head Full of Ghosts
and
Disappearance at Devil’s Rock.
The
Fisherman
Other Books by John Langan
Novels
House of Windows
Collections
Sefira and Other Betrayals
The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies
Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters
The
Fisherman
John Langan
Word Horde
Petaluma, CA
The Fisherman
© 2016 by John Langan
This edition of
The Fisherman
© 2016 by Word Horde
Cover: “Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast, 1870”, by Albert Bierstadt
Cover design by Scott R Jones
All rights reserved
Edited by Ross E. Lockhart
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-939905-21-5
A Word Horde Book
http://www.WordHorde.com
For Fiona.
Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? …
— the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like willful travelers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?
—Herman Melville,
Moby Dick
Part 1
Men Without Women
I
How Fishing Saved My Life
Don’t call me Abraham: call me Abe. Though it’s what my ma named me, I’ve never liked Abraham. It’s a name that sounds so full of itself, so Biblical, so…I believe patriarchal is the word I’m after. One thing I am not, nor do I want to be, is a patriarch. There was a time I thought I’d like at least one child, but these days, the sight of them makes my skin crawl.
Some years ago, never mind how many, I started to fish. I’ve been fishing for a long time, now, and as you might guess, I know a story or two. That’s what fishermen are, right? Storytellers. Some I’ve lived; some I’ve had from the mouths of others. Most of them are funny; they bring a smile to your face and sometimes a laugh, which are no small things. A bit of laughter can be the bridge that lets you cross out of a bad time, believe you me. Some of my stories are what I’d call strange. I know only a few of these, but they make you scratch your head and maybe give you a little shiver, which can be a pleasure in its own way.
But there’s one story—well, it’s downright awful, almost too much to be spoken. It happened going on ten years ago, on the first Saturday in June, and by the time night had fallen, I’d lost a good friend, most of my sanity, and damn near my life. I’d come whisker-close to losing more than all that, too. It stopped me fishing for the better part of a decade, and although I’ve returned to it once again, there’s no power on earth, or under it, could bring me back to the Catskill Mountains, to Dutchman’s Creek, the place a man I should have listened to called “
Der Platz das Fischer.”
You can find the creek on your map if you look closely. Go to the eastern tip of the Ashokan Reservoir, up by Woodstock, and backtrack along the south shore. It may take you a couple of tries. You’ll see a blue thread snaking its way from near the Reservoir over to the Hudson, running north of Wiltwyck. That was where it all happened, though what it all was I still can’t wrap my head around. I can tell you only what I heard, and what I saw. I know Dutchman’s Creek runs deep, much deeper than it could or should, and I don’t like to think what it’s full of. I’ve walked the woods around it to a place you won’t find on your map, on any map you’d buy in the gas station or sporting-goods store. I’ve stood on the shore of an ocean whose waves were as black as the ink trailing from the tip of this pen. I’ve watched a woman with skin pale as moonlight open her mouth, and open it, and open it, into a cavern set with rows of serrated teeth that would have been at home in a shark’s jaws. I’ve held an old knife out in front of me in one, madly trembling hand, while a trio of refugees from a nightmare drew ever-closer.
I’m running ahead of myself, though. There’s other things you’ll need to hear about first, like Dan Drescher, poor, poor Dan, who went with me up to the Catskills that morning. You’ll need to hear Howard’s story, which makes far more sense to me now than it did when first he delivered it to me in Herman’s Diner. You’ll need to hear about fishing, too. Everything’ll have to be in its proper place. If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s a poorly put-together story. A story doesn’t have to be fitted like some kind of pre-fabricated house—no, it’s got to go its own way—but it does have to flow. Even a tale as coal-black as this one has its course.
You may ask why I’m taking such care. Some things are so bad that just to have been near them taints you, leaves a spot of badness in your soul like a bare patch in the forest where nothing will grow. Do you suppose a story can carry away such badness? It seems a bit much to hope for, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s true for the little wrongs, you know, the kind of minor frustrations that you’re able to turn into funny stories at parties. For what happened at the Creek, though, I doubt there’s such a transformation waiting. There’s only transmission.
And there’s more to it than that. There’s the tale Dan and I heard in Herman’s Diner. Since Howard told what happened to Lottie Schmidt and her family, some ninety years past, I’ve been unable to shake it. You could say his words stuck with me, which would be the understatement of the year. I can recall that tale word for word, as could Howard from the minister who told it to him. Without a doubt, part of the reason for the vividness of my memory is the way that Howard’s story seems to explain a good deal of what happened to Dan and me later that same day. That tale about the building of the Reservoir and who—and what—was covered by its waters, prowls my brain. Even had we heeded Howard’s advice and avoided the creek that day—Hell, had we turned around and headed back home as fast as I could drive, which is what we should have done—I’m convinced what we heard would still have branded itself on my memory. Can a story haunt you? Possess you? There are times I think recounting the events of that Saturday in June is just an excuse for those more distant events to make their way out into the world once more.