Part 2: The Moon Island Fishing Club

      After burying the ball, Cornelius Wheeler began to see things. Lifelike imagery flashed through his mind. Mastodons thudding over sheets of ice. Packs of wolves. His small town in icy ruins.

      What he named Moon Island was part of a circle of islands surrounding a deep basin. Large ships couldn’t access the bay—the channels between were too shallow—so Cornelius used his rowboat to explore this new place.

      His boat moved easily through the calm water. He began mapping the bay.

      Dropping a lead line in the center, he found it to be over 30 fathoms—deeper than his line could measure. As he coiled the line, a gull’s droppings struck his leg. It kept flying, landing in a large gathering of birds accumulating at the edge of a nearby drop-off.

      As he rowed, the birds dove into a large school of fish. Cornelius stood up, scaring the birds off, and threw his casting net over the shallow water.

      He found hundreds of small, dark green fish when he pulled the net in. A hatchling, he thought. When he picked one up, it stiffened, driving spines into his hand.

      “You little bastard,” he said, throwing it down and stomping it. The fish in the net began violently splashing as he threw their dead member overboard. What if he killed them all? Would that please It? The birds circled as if they anticipated being fed. Like jackals. He shook this idea from his mind and filled a bucket with water before picking a few fish from the net and placing them inside. They were about 4” long with oversized mouths and bone-hard gill plates. “Odd fish,” he said. One of them swam to the top, peeking its eyes out of the water. Then it sank back down with the others.

      Soon the afternoon got away from him, and with little to show for his efforts, he went home, leaving the bucket in his boat. He forgot about it until the next morning.

      Instead of finding four small fish, he found one large one that nearly touched both sides of the bucket. When he reached down to pull it out, it bit his hand with great tenacity. He pulled back, smashing it against the side of the boat, sending the fish into a death shudder near his feet. As it lay gasping for life, he noticed the inside of the mouth was cardinal red. He saw it clearly: a beach full of these fish, dead. The thought left him strangely warm. He opened the fish with his knife.

      Its fins and head were oversized; its bones were heavy. Cornelius looked at the marks on his palm from yesterday and noticed the dark red spreading in his hand. The hand felt tight and thrummed in sync with his heartbeat.

      He began fishing them that day.

      Within a week, the fish began to keep their distance from his boat. He found some success in trapping them, but too quickly they grew wise to that as well. The few he caught were small. He’d seen a few bigger specimens patrolling the edge of the sandbar near where he buried It, but they were uncatchable. These fish must feed, he thought, laying on the sand one afternoon. If they feed, I can catch them. He felt the sand underneath him grow warmer at the thought. At the same time his hand began to ache.

      On all but the windiest, rainiest days, he fished the bay of Moon Island. In the winter, he axed holes in the ice to set his traps. Sometimes he slept on the island. His monthly catches became yearly, then dipped further. The fish he caught grew larger with time, but were harder to catch. After that first year, there were never any more hatchlings. Whatever had brought them couldn’t reproduce them here. Eventually, his bad hand turned the red of the fish’s mouth. His grip weakened.

      He needed help.

      One day while stretching his nets, a skinny, freckled boy wandered into his yard.

      “Excuse me, sir,” the boy said, watching Cornelius. “I’m looking for work.”

      Cornelius studied the boy, then shook his head.

      But the boy didn’t turn away. He grabbed the other half of the net, straightened it, and unfurled it across the yard. A big hole in the center became apparent.

      “What did that?”

      “A parasite,” Cornelius answered. An image moved through his mind.

“A what?” the boy asked.

      “Never mind.” Cornelius said, pausing as he looked at the boy again. He walked towards him. The boy stood unflinching as the man approached.

      “How old are you, son?”

      “12.”

      “You’re big for 12. What’s your name?”

      “Leo.”

      “I’m Cornelius,” he said, looking around, then back at Leo. “Maybe you can help me.”

      “What do you pay?”

      “Rewarding work is what you’ll get.”

      “Mister, listen, I’m looking for work. Not to be a slave.”

      “Slave? No.” Cornelius heard these words come from his mouth, but they were not his. He didn’t know why he’d said them. It continued, “What you’ll be is something much more important than a slave.”

      The boy tilted his head. “What do you mean?”

      “Come out with me, and I’ll show you,” Cornelius watched himself say. “You’ll understand. We have important work to do.”

      The boy caught one of the monsters his first night. Cornelius taught the boy that the fish were to be dispatched immediately and thrown back into the water to rot. Not to be touched for too long. Never to be eaten. Cornelius’s hand throbbed as he explained.

      Later in his life, Cornelius wished he had killed the net full he released as a young man. It would have made It happy. It would have made him happy.