The Legend of Charlie Fish

by Josh Rountree

Genres: Historical Fantasy; Historical Fiction; Westerns; Horror

Synopsis

“Odd, creepy, funny, The Black Lagoon meets the Six Gun universe. High up on the way-cool factor. You need this.”
—Joe R. Lansdale, Edgar Award–winning author of the Hap and Leonard series

As an unlikely found-family flees toward Galveston, a psychic young girl bonds with Charlie Fish, an enigmatic gill-man. Meanwhile, they are pursued by bounty hunters determined to profit from the spectacle of Charlie. But the Great Storm—the worst natural disaster in U.S. history—is on its way. Josh Rountree’s strikingly original debut novel ranges effortlessly between the Gothic, pulp, literary, Western, and comedic. With his vivid imagery, evocative storytelling, and uncanny wit, Rountree enters the fine tradition of Texan storytellers, wading into True Grit by way of The Shape of Water.

As always, Floyd Betts rides into town alone. He arrives for his father’s funeral, but he is returning to Galveston, Texas, with two orphaned siblings he has rescued. Nellie, who is descended from a long line of witches, has visions from other people’s minds. Hank, her impulsive younger brother, just wants to break out his outsized revolver.

Along the way home, Floyd, Nellie, and Hank encounter a dubious traveling salesman, Professor Finn, and his henchman, Kentucky Jim. They are struggling to capture a fish-man in order to put him on cruel display. When Nellie taps into the peril of the gentle Charlie Fish, Floyd’s makeshift family expands to include the lost, two-legged amphibian.

With the circus charlatans in pursuit, ominous winds are picking up from an impending hurricane. Meanwhile, all Charlie Fish wants is to return to his home at sea.

 

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Release date: July 25, 2023

Publisher: Tachyon Publications

Print pages: 158

Sample

PROLOGUE: 1932

 

 

 

I lay awake in the dark, listening to ghosts.

The summer heat was furious, and hard rain sounded against the roof. An electric fan clattered and hummed but failed to offer any relief. My sleep clothes clung to my body, sodden with sweat, and I tossed on top of my sheets for an hour before giving up on sleep. When I turned on the bedside lamp, yellow light flooded the corners of my bedroom, and I walked barefooted to the window, looked out at the approaching hurricane.

I was not afraid of ghosts or of storms.

But they did make it hard to go to sleep.

Wind rattled the windows as I watched giant waves chip away at the beach. Black storm clouds crowded in from the Gulf, one after another. More than thirty years had passed since I first came to Galveston, since the greatest storm in memory had torn away the face of the old town and left it unrecognizable. There were few enough left who recalled the people and places stolen away by that storm, and when we passed one another on the streets, we saw reflections in each other’s eyes of all we’d lost.

We understood hurricanes better now. Could more effectively predict their path and measure their ferocity.

But they were no less deadly.

Living on the island so long, I was no stranger to storms. But something about this one felt different. Light posts swayed beside the road, and palm trees gave up their fronds to the clawing wind. A couple of men stood along the seawall, hands on their hips, suitcoats flapping. The ocean felt heavy against the world, deep with secrets, and the wind carried voices I hadn’t heard in a long time. Storms always stirred up the island’s ghosts and they whispered in my head, anxious and insistent.

Even those who tended to keep quiet spoke up during storms.

I wished my brother was with me. I could hear his little-boy laughter and the bark of his pistol. I could smell gunpowder. I wished for another morning with Mr. Betts and Mrs. Elder, sitting around the breakfast table, listening to the sound of their quiet conversation, and Mrs. Elder’s teaspoon rattling against her teacup as she stirred in a bit of milk. I wished for my father with his strong hugs, and my mother who held the key to every mystery I had never solved. Her most of all. Maybe she could help me rein in the ghosts, to figure out what they wanted. Help me finally tame the whisper talk that told me all the things I didn’t want to know. Just thinking of her made the air smell like pine needles and burning sage, and I could feel three iron nails, cold in my hand. All their faces made reflections in the window, but it was just my imagination, a sort of wishful spell. The truth was, they were all gone.

Ghosts were my only company.

They crawled through the wet streets, hovered in the corners of my bedroom. They clung to the ceiling, dripping stagnant floodwater.

The ghosts hounded me. People I’d lost, and those I’d never met. Some of them begged me to leave the island, but it was far too late for that. I had not meant to make a home in Galveston, but I’d been here so long, I wasn’t sure where else I’d go. Others assured me it was time to die. It would be so easy to make a grave for myself and let the ocean rush to bury me. These were the voices that reminded me my death was overdue. I’d escaped it in childhood, and it had finally come for me. Whether I would escape it again, or whether I would take its hand willingly this time, even I wasn’t certain.

I opened the window, and the wind rushed in like the house was gasping for breath.

Hot rain slicked the floor, and I could hear gulls struggling against the gale. The night growled and hissed. The air smelled like blood and rot, though I was sure that was only a memory come back to haunt me. Salt water burned my eyes and I breathed in the darkness. Dared the storm to come and take me. Whatever it wanted, I was ready to give this time. Ghosts tugged at my hair, placed cold whispering lips against my ears. Cried and pleaded and shrieked. But the ocean shouted loud enough to keep them at bay. I leaned out the second-story window, wondered if giving in to gravity would be the easiest surrender of all.

But then I heard Charlie.

Or not heard him, I suppose.

Charlie had been gone for decades, but every time the ocean grew angry, I could feel him pouring back into my mind, filling all the places that he’d left hollow. We were connected beyond all reason, and I wondered how often he felt me calling him from the depths. Did I haunt his thoughts the way he haunted mine? He felt so close. I leaned out farther, looked past the beach and out to sea, like I might see Charlie and his family, rising out of the misty darkness. Night swirled beyond the streetlights, but nothing else. Wind wrapped arms around me and pulled. But Charlie was there to hold me in place, his presence a sudden rush of cold water through my veins. I lurched away from the window. Could almost feel Charlie’s scaled hands pulling me back to safety. His whispers in my head assured me death wasn’t the answer, but neither was staying here. Charlie promised

a better life, a better place.

He hadn’t arrived yet, but he was really coming this time, and he was close.

I shut the window and listened to the muffled sound of the wind pressing against the glass. Climbed back into bed, turned off the lamp.

And I slept peacefully after that, knowing one way or another, this would be my last night in Galveston.

 FLOYD

 

 

 

We reached Galveston two days ahead of the storm.

It was a homecoming for me, but the children had never seen the ocean. The ferry cut through the water between the Bolivar Peninsula and the island, pitching like a cork in the swells. Nellie held tight to the railing with both hands, leaning as far as she dared toward the water. Hank stood behind her, gripping the back of his sister’s dress.

“Is a storm coming?” Hank asked.

Low clouds obscured the horizon and colored the ocean a metallic gray. Hot winds tore in from the Gulf, causing men to clutch at their hats. The Texas flag snapped overhead like a bullwhip. Seagulls rode the surge, lighting on the boat for a time before allowing themselves to be lifted up again. They spun and dove, chased one another away beyond the line of smoke trailing behind the steam ferry.

“Looks like it’ll rain, but nothing to worry about.”

I’d lived a long time on the Gulf and was accustomed to the slow creep of tropical storms, but we’d had no indication that the weather intended any more than that.

“The captain is worried.” Nellie turned and fixed me with a look that suggested she knew more about the situation than she was telling. The wind knotted her long blonde hair and worked diligently to lift the skinny girl into the air with the seagulls.

“Well, that’s part of his job,” I said. “Worrying about storms. But no reason you have to.”

“Charlie Fish is uncomfortable.”

“I imagine he is, but we can’t help that right now.”

Nellie stared at me with her pale-blue eyes until the hairs on my arm stood at attention. She had a habit of quickly changing conversation topics that I attributed to all the noise going on in her head. I hadn’t believed Hank’s stories about his sister’s whisper talk as he called it, until we brought Charlie Fish into the fold, and I saw the way they could communicate. Nellie had a way of knowing things that was more than a little unsettling.

“We should have given him a pillow,” said Nellie.

“We don’t have any pillows, Nellie,” I said.

“And that tarp is scratchy against his back.”

“We’ll be there real soon, alright. He won’t have to put up with it too much longer.”

“How long before the next ferry?” she asked. “I expect those two scoundrels will be on it. ...