The Thing Under the Jetty | Boomerverse Yarn #006

The Original Boomer had gone fishing because fishing, unlike the Rift, was supposed to make sense. You put bait on a hook. You put the hook in the water. Eventually something either bit it or didn’t. Simple. At least that was the theory. Boomer had been sitting in his little boat for twenty minutes when something knocked three times on the hull from underneath. Knock. Knock. Knock. He stopped winding his line. The water around the boat was flat. No logs. No seals. No rocks anywhere near the surface. Boomer waited. Nothing. “Righto.” He went back to fishing. The engine died. Not coughed. Not spluttered. Dead. Boomer stared at it. “You too?” Another three knocks came from beneath the boat. This time harder. Knock. Knock. KNOCK. Boomer pulled the line in and looked toward the nearest shore. There was an old timber jetty there, half-rotten and leaning slightly to one side, the sort of place sensible people avoided and fishermen described as “still good enough.” He paddled over. By the time he tied up, the sun had dropped behind the hills and the water beneath the jetty was almost black. Boomer stepped onto the boards. Something tugged his fishing line. He looked down. The hook had caught on something beneath the jetty. Boomer pulled. Up came a teaspoon. He stared at it. “No.” Tarnished metal. Bent tip. Four letters stamped into the handle. ZEEHAN. Boomer slowly reached into his jacket pocket. The spoon from the pub was still there. So was the other one. Now he had three. “That’s enough spoons.” Something creaked beneath the boards. Boomer froze. An old lantern was hanging underneath the jetty. Not sitting on a beam. Hanging beneath it. Swinging slowly above the water. It wasn’t lit. Boomer crouched and looked closer. On one of the old timber posts, just above the tide line, somebody had scratched two words into the wood. NOT YET. Boomer sighed. “Of course.” Then the lantern lit by itself. For one second the water beneath the jetty turned pale green. Boomer saw something standing below him. Not swimming. Standing. Upright beneath several metres of water. Too deep to see properly. Too still to be a diver. The lantern went dark. Boomer backed away. A voice came from beneath the jetty. Quiet. Almost conversational. “Wrong Wednesday.” Boomer stared into the darkness. “Nope.” His watch clicked. Thursday. He looked away. Clicked again. Wednesday. Then Thursday. Then stopped completely. Something bumped against a piling. A smooth black pebble floated to the surface. Boomer recognised that too. He did not pick it up. “Learning,” he muttered. The voice beneath the jetty spoke again. “Not yet.” The engine in Boomer’s boat suddenly started by itself. Boomer didn’t argue. He untied the rope, stepped aboard and pushed away from the jetty. Twenty metres out, he looked back. The lantern was gone. So was the black pebble. Nothing stood beneath the water. But something had changed on the old timber post. The words NOT YET were gone. Fresh letters now cut into the wood. NEXT TIME, FRIDAY. Boomer stared at them until the jetty disappeared into the evening mist. Then he looked down at the three Zeehan spoons rattling in his pocket. “Right.” He started the boat toward home. “I’m taking up gardening.”