Fish Face

Fish Face is a scary campfire story about a deformed man who lives on the banks of a lake in Tennessee, USA. It is based on an old short story by Irvin S. Cobb called 'Fish Head'. Reelfoot Lake is like no other lake that I have ever seen. It was formed by the great earthquake of 1811. The earthquake caused a section of the earth's crust, sixty miles long, to fall down, taking trees, hills and hollows with it. Then, the banks of the Mississippi river broke and ran up stream, filling the hole with water. The locals say it is a lake of mystery. In some places it is bottomless and in other places, it is shallow, but it is very dangerous to swim there because of the weeds that can entangle your legs. The skeletons of the underwater trees still stand upright beneath the surface. If the sun is shining at the right angle and the water is less muddy than usual, you can peer down into the depths and see the slime-covered branches stretching up like the fingers of drowning men. The locals say there are monstrous creatures that live in the lake. Pale, scaleless, slimy things with corpse-like eyes and poisonous fins. They say they have mouths wide enough to eat a man alive and greedy enough to eat anything, living or dead. There are many tales of the wicked and evil things that live in Reelfoot lake, but the strangest of all is the tale of Fish Face. He was a strange, disfigured man who lived in a makeshift shack just below the spot where the river feeds into the lake. He had lived there all his life, but nobody knew his real name, they just called him Fish Face. His parents were both dead. The story was that, before his birth, his mother was frightened by one of the big fish that swam in the lake and when the boy was born, he was hideously deformed. Fishhead was a human monstrosity. He looked like something out of a nightmare and the older he grew, the more bizarre-looking he became. His skull looked like it was squashed. His forehead sloped back at an odd angle and he barely had any chin at all. His eyes were set far apart, almost on either side of his head. They were large, round and bulbous with pale-yellow pupils and they stared at you, wide and unblinking, like the eyes of a fish. His nose was little more than two tiny slits in the middle of face and worst of all was his mouth which stretched from ear to ear like a catfish. Fish Face mostly kept to himself. He lived a lonely existence and didn't bother anybody, tending to his corn patch and trapping small rodents in the swamp. He cooked his food over an open hole in the soggy earth and he drank from buckets of water he dredged from the lake. His neighbors were all superstitious people and they feared him. Many times, they would see him there, crouched on a rock, silent and motionless, peering down into the murky waters of the lake. They avoided him like the plague and left him well enough alone. Further up the river, there was a small, dilapidated cabin built of logs. It was the home of two brothers named Jake and Joel Baxter. They were a violent and irresponsible pair, always up to mischief. They lived on whiskey and tobacco when they could get it, and on fish and cornbread when they couldn't. Every day, they traveled up and down the river in their motorboat, checking the traps they had set along the weedy banks and collecting their catch. One day, the brothers were out on the river. Jake sat at the back of the boat, manning the motor and steering while Joel was in the front, checking the nets. They always kept a crate of beer between them on the boat. As the story goes, the brothers were drinking heavily and, as they made their way downriver, they came across Fish Face, crouching on a rock outside his shack. Emboldened by alcohol, Jake and Joel shouted at him and hurled abuse, calling him every name under the sun. Fish Face didn't respond. He just crouched there silently, eyeing them suspiciously. Then, the brothers grew bolder. They got out of the boat and approached the deformed man on the bank of the river. One thing led to another and when Fish Face didn't react, the brot