Copyright © T. J. Brown (2017). All rights reserved.

www.theunhappymedium.com

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real events, people or places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, places or people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Dedicated to Peter Marsh

A Little Knowledge

by T.J. Brown

Jimmy and Sam's summer-long festival of burglary was over. They'd now reached the point where they were leaving clues for the coppers like confetti outside a parish church, and it was obvious, as summer turned to autumn, that they were going to have to gather their swag, leave town, and let the trail go cold.

Jimmy, a huge Irishman, had been in England eight years, avoiding the Police back home. He'd had found the cottage in the way that such men always do, via a bloke in the pub. Jimmy had got the poor man so drunk that, just as last orders were called, he'd slid the keys over the bar and fallen backwards off the stool like a sack of King Edwards.

Dan was not tall like Jimmy. Dan was a stout little man, a Cockney in the old mould, prone to jerking his head about like a jackdaw as he spoke, a roll-up dancing at the edge of his lips, flicking like a conductor’s baton to his incessant swearing.

The pair were undoubtedly good at their craft; they could break into nearly anywhere with comparative ease; deftly negotiating dogs, security alarms and reinforced plastic windows with a low cunning.

But with doors being knocked and collars being felt back in Camden Town, Jimmy and Dan were putting their home turf far behind them, heading north east in Dan's battered old van, three months worth of TV's, candlesticks and oil paintings in the back.

The county of Lincolnshire is flat. The landscape across the famous fenlands is bleak, even in good weather, the black peaty soil and scarcity of trees giving the place all the charm of an open cast mine. It was once a vast wilderness of marshland, barely rising anywhere above sea level, crisscrossed with creeks and rivers leading to the bad tempered North Sea. In the Bronze Age, this network allowed the early Brits to sail far inland, making the most of the waterways to trade back out into Europe. By the 1900’s, however, technology was becoming sufficiently advanced to tame this sodden landscape; drainage releasing the rich, peaty soils to modern agriculture.

It was to the remains of one of the resulting farms that Jimmy and Dan were heading, a wind-slapped cottage suitably distant from the Metropolitan Police. It wasn't much to look at, a flint-walled outbuilding to a long-gone farmhouse that someone had once mistakenly attempted to adapt into a holiday home.

It was dark when they finally found it, their dissatisfaction at their new lodgings expressed in the way they expressed most things: swearing.

‘Jessssus,' said Jimmy, peering through the car wash of an easterly gale. ‘What a God forsaken shithole.'

Dan set the handbrake, and they dashed inside, pausing only to fight with the stubborn locks. With the damp wind punching against the windows, they lit a fire, polished off a 12-pack of Special Brew in a sullen silence, then crawled away into the damp sheets to sleep it off.

The next day dawned grey and sodden. The rain ran down the small windows in a continuous stream as they heaved themselves from the bed sheets to fish about in the ill-equipped kitchen. Jimmy peered out at the expanse of grey flatness extending away into a wet nothingness and scowled.

‘And they reckon Ireland is bleedin wet. Bejessus, willya look at the place?' He shuddered against the damp. 'Oi need some feckin bacon. That’s what I reckon,' growled Jimmy.

‘Bloody good idea,' said Dan looking deep into the dusty cupboards, ‘But there ain’t nuffink in ere but a few measly cans of carrots and some bog cleaner. Gonna have to go into town, ain't we?'

Driving aimlessly across the blasted landscape, they finally wound up in a supermarket in Althorpe. Jimmy grabbed the bread and bacon, (10 packs) and Dan lugged as much Special Brew as his lumpen hands could carry. They passed reluctantly through the checkout.

‘Here on holiday?’ asked the jolly fifty-something woman on the till. ‘I hope this rain isn’t ruining things for you? It really is rather ghastly isn’t it?’

‘What?' barked Jimmy back at her. He began stuffing the bacon in the bag in savage unsubtle thrusts.

‘I … I was just wondering if you are here on holiday,’ persisted the woman, her rosy fat cheeks balled up into a misplaced smile.

‘Now why the feck would anyone in their right mind come here for a feckin holiday?' snapped the Irishman. ‘God awful shithole that it is. It’s done nuttin but feckin piss down since we got ere.’

‘I was only asking,’ said the woman, her smile now around her ankles like loose underwear.

‘Yeah? Well don’t,’ said Jimmy with signature menace. ‘Mind yer own feckin business.’

‘That'll be forty-five, seventy,' said the woman shakily.

Jimmy threw over two badly creased twenties and a tenner.

The poor woman was still watching them through the wet windows as they slung the balanced diet in the back of Dan’s van. The soaked newsboard of the local paper watched them as they clattered away in a cloud of blue diesel. ‘Severe gales increase risks of flooding,' warned the headline.

‘Bastard bloody locals,' said Jimmy once they’d got back to their digs. They began emptying their carrier bags on the kitchen table. ‘Thick as shit, the nosey feckers.'

‘Everyone's a local somewhere, Paddy,' said Dan, slipping open two whole packs of Danish. The air, rarely warm between them, chilled. Jimmy turned his huge head.

‘Don't ya friggin dare call me a Paddy!' he snapped, lifting up the bread knife. ‘That's feckin racist that is, ya little tinker.'

‘Tinker?' laughed Dan. ‘Aint that racist too? Why, ain'tcha calling me some kind of Gippo?'

‘Yer a bleedin bastard is what ye is,’ said Jimmy getting back to cutting huge lopsided wedges of farmhouse white. ‘And while we’re at it, don’t think I ain’t watching ya.’

‘Watching me? What ya mean?' asked Dan, his greasy forehead furrowed like the sodden fields outside.

‘Think I don’t know what ya got in yer greedy little mind?’

‘Why? What have I got in my greedy little mind,' he replied jauntily.

‘Why I’d no more trust ya than I’d trust a truck full a bent monkeys. Yer dishonest is what ya are.’

‘Dishonest?’ laughed the cockney. ‘Of course I’m sodding dishonest, I’m a burglar. That’s my job.’

‘You know what I mean, ya smart-arsed little weasel, there's meant to be honour amongst thieves, so there is.'

‘Bollocks! You ain't got no reason not to trust me,' said Dan defensively. ‘I ain’t never done nuffink but stick to the plan, whatever that is.’

‘Yeah, well you maybe been a decent bloke up ‘til now, but I still don't trust you none. I never trust the English, never. Know this, gobshite: this ere Paddy ain't no thick Mick fresh off the ferry. If you are of a mind to nabbing any of this ere loot for yerself, well, you can bloody well forget it. I got both my Irish eyes bang on yer greedy English behind, and neither of em is feckin smiling. The moment you try anything – anything – why I'll be down on you like a ton of house bricks.' For extra emphasis, he held the breadknife up to his partner's face, so close that the Londoner crossed his eyes as it came to rest on the tip of his nose.

‘Alright, keep yer bleedin hair on,' he said, backing up against the prehistoric refrigerator. ‘You ain't got nuffink to worry about awwwright? I ain't never done no one apart from the general public, so you can stand down, big fella. Put the soddin knife away, willya?'

Reluctantly, a sulphurous fire still lurking in his yellow eyes, the Irishman returned the knife to the loaf and began to saw aggressively.

An invigorated rain spat at the window, hardening after a moment into hail by way of a thick sleet. It continued like this as the two men made their lunch in an aggravated silence.

It was still aggravated a good twelve hours later as they ate a sullen breakfast of yet more bacon sandwiches. Jimmy was as paranoid as his colleague was self-serving, but the pair of them were glued to each other by these unpleasant personality traits; traits that had ensured both of them were wife-free and their friends, such as they were, drank far down the other end of the bar. A mutual dislike had always lurked throughout their short and dirty career together. This morning’s breakfast had him growling at Dan’s every move, his honey badger eyes scrutinizing the Londoner closely. They moved to the lounge to catalogue the loot. After an hour or so, the tiny lounge began to look like a junk shop, the brass and silver piling up in a mostly Victorian heap of saleable swag.

‘Not a bad lot is it?’ said Dan buffing a silver platter with a sleeve.

‘It’s ok,’ grumbled Jimmy.

‘Gordon Bennet,’ said Dan, looking wearily up. ‘Yer a miserable bastard aintcha?’

‘So what if I am?’ snapped his colleague. ‘Don’t see how you have the right to tell me how to be.’

‘Yeah, well I have to work with you,’ he continued, much against his best interests. ‘So, I reckon I got a say in your mood alright, and I say yer a miserable sod, a grumpy bastard and a sour, slapped-arsed bogtrotter.’

‘What did you just call me?’ a cloud of anger passed over the Irishman’s already irritated face.

‘You 'eard me,’ said Dan, digging himself an increasingly deep hole. ‘I said yer a miserable bogtrotter.’

‘Right!' said Jimmy standing up. He rolled back the sleeve on his brawling arm. ‘You've had this coming a while, so ye have. Call me a bogtrotter, eh? Ya racist English bastard.'

‘Oh sit down ya, drunken paddy.’

Jimmy's eyes flared like jet engines. His race insulted one too many times, he lurched over the antiques and let his balled-up fists fly, the tattooed knuckles missing the frantically dodging cockney by inches. The Irishman was not in the mood for discussion. Neither was the Cockney; he'd had a gutful of his colleague's perpetual moodiness and had snapped his restraints. Flinging one of his arms around Jimmy's thick neck, they locked together, swinging crazily around the lounge, knocking adventure novels off the bookcase and trampling their stolen goods to such an extent that they were losing fifty to a hundred pounds with each clumsy dance move.

‘Jimmy!’ yelled Dan, finally disengaging. ‘Look mate, much as I’d love to smash yer face in right now, we gotta be good to the swag.’ Jimmy looked down and lowered his balled-up fists.

‘Guess yer right, ya little fecker,' he agreed, stepping back to consider his options. ‘Outside!'

‘Eh?’ said Dan, slow on the uptake.

‘Outside. Now. Let’s finish this outside, like men.’

‘But it’s raining.’

‘So what?' said Jimmy. ‘Don't care if it's feckin snowing, it's time I taught yer English arse a lesson.’

‘Outside it is then,’ said Dan, and after this rare moment of accord, they lurched over the toppled swag, through the kitchen and out through the back door. Once in the long-neglected garden, Jimmy called it.

‘Right then,’ he said as his fists came up. ‘Let’s finish this, ya gobshite.’

They launched at each other.

It was not the stuff of action movies; alcohol consumption and general clumsiness saw to that. It was a windmilling, collar-grabbing affair that saw them careering through the dead weeds, garden tools and beanpoles. A clothesline, already sagging from neglect, collapsed in a cloud of coloured pegs. Few punches landed anywhere decisive, the two burglars grabbed clumsily at each other and staggered about until, finally, they burst through the rotten slats of the back fence. They took the battle out to the fen beyond.

Jimmy finally got a punch in, landing an unspectacular clout to Dan’s jaw. Dan reeled away with his arms flailing, fighting for balance. Jimmy let him go, choosing to watch his adversary recoiling towards the bank above the rising waters rather than finish him.

‘Had enough yet?’

‘No, I bloody haven’t, ya Irish bastard,’ Dan sneered back. ‘I’m just getting start ––’

The retort was interrupted, caught short as the bank beneath him, sodden from a month of heavy rain, dropped suddenly away. As Jimmy watched in amazement, Dan vanished.

‘Well, I’ll be fecked!' said the Irishman, and forgetting that he'd been gleefully trying to beat his colleague senseless just a second before, ran to help him.

Cautiously, he approached the new lip of grass, now the only sharp line in a landscape long weathered into slush. By the standards of this low country, what now remained was a cliff, despite the fact that it was no more than six foot from the edge to the dark brown water churning away below. Dan, caked head to toe in an evil chestnut ooze, was splashing about in the mud, fresh sods of blackened peat conspiring to drown him. He was panicking.

‘Help!' he burbled through the slime. ‘Get me a bleedin rope or summit.'

‘We don’t have any rope,’ laughed Jimmy, beginning to enjoy his colleague’s misfortune.

‘Eh? How do you know we ain't got no soddin rope, have you friggin looked?'

‘Nope.’

‘Well, bloody look then.’

‘Never mind a bloody rope, grab that tree root over there,’ said Dan, pointing to a gnarled protrusion from the bank. ‘Use that. Pull yer own bloody self out, gobshite.’

‘Why … damn you, Paddy! Damn you to hell!' With no alternative, Dan began lolloping over the mud like a seal over kelp until finally, in a last awkward flop, he shot up a hand and grabbed the root.

‘Argghhh Jesssuuussss.!'

‘Oh for fecks’ sake, ya wanker, what now?’ said Jimmy.

‘It’s a hand! A hand! It’s a bloody hand!

‘Ah, away with ya!’

‘There’s a body I tell ya. I should know, I’m bloody holding the bastards hand!’

‘Yer pissed, so ye are!'

‘No, really, I mean it,’ said the hysterical Londoner. ‘If you don’t believe me, come ere and take a friggin look!’

Doubtfully, the big Irishman dropped low onto the fresh edge and tilted his head. Ignoring his struggling colleague, his gaze fell on the protrusion. Sure enough, despite the withered condition, there was no denying it; it was a human arm. It was not the same pink colour as the petty criminal hanging from it, but there was no mistaking the bones, clearly visible through the wilted muscle and semi-transparent flesh. And it had a tattoo; an elaborate Celtic motif that encased the dark upper arm like a serpent.

‘Well, I'll be fecked backwards,' said Jimmy. ‘It is a bloody body, so it is.'

Dan, obliged by his predicament to continue the hideous handshake, was keen to move things on. ‘Right, so give me a friggin hand up then and get me the fuck away from it! I’m doing my nut here, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

‘Right, right,' said Jimmy, his curiosity now kicking in at the expense of his anger. He leant and dangled his hand, just enough for Dan to swing up his other arm and grab his fingers. In no time, he'd been hauled up like a fish and landed, gasping, on the wet grass. Jimmy was still looking over the bank at the withered arm as Dan regained his composure beside him.

‘W-what we gonna d-do then?’ Dan said, shivering as the wind chilled him. ‘Shouldn’t we report it?’

‘Like feck,’ said Jimmy sharply. ‘Two villains like us report a body? That would look pretty good to the filth, wouldn’t it? They’d bang us right up, off to jail in a heartbeat. In fact, they’d bang us up just for getting in touch; we’re wanted men remember?’

‘Oh yeah, true,’ said Dan.

‘Nah, we need to dig it up is what,’ said Jimmy, finally.

‘We do?’ said Dan, a certain squeamishness starting to make itself felt in his gizzards. ‘Er … why?’

‘So we can get rid of it. You mark my words, we'll be better off digging it up and getting it the hell away from here, so there's no danger we get the blame. There's some shovels in the garden, let's get to it. If we work fast we can have it out sharpish then, tonight, we can take him to one of them rivers we saw and sling him, weigh him down with bricks like they do in the films.'

And so, ignoring the rain that had never once abated, they took the two rusty shovels from the overgrown garden and began their clumsy archeology.

An hour later, the black peat embracing the corpse finally peeled away from the body. They began to get their first view of the dead man. 

He was short, no more than five foot two, and he seemed to be naked. But as they pulled the clods away from the body, it became apparent that he was in fact wearing some roughly made trousers, the tanning effect of the dark water making them blend with the skin beneath. There was even a belt. It wasn't a neat leather and brass affair, however, more a coarse rope fashioned of plant material, disappearing beneath the waist as it lay face down on the pale grass.

‘Let's turn the bastard over,' said Jimmy, respectfully.  ‘Come on, help me here.' Together they prized under the body with their shovels, edging in until they could lever the corpse upwards. With a final heave, it flipped over.

‘Well, I'll be f…' said Dan as the corpse landed face up. And what a face! Clearly the body had been there a while, because the sheer weight of the soil had squashed the man’s face into a hideous distortion. The features were smeared across the left side of his face in such a way that the ochre teeth were grimacing manically from the corner of his mouth, one eye was clammed shut and his large moustache was now halfway to the back of his head. The other eye was wide open, an opaque cloudy mush. But the standout feature was the tattoo, mostly upon his chest but coiling out onto his arm. It was a spectacular Celtic dragon, still clearly visible despite the darkness of the peat-blackened skin as it rippled around the neck and shoulder.

A dim lightbulb switched on in Jimmy’s mind. 

‘Feck me,’ he said suddenly. ‘Why, if this isn’t one of them bog fellas!’

‘Bog fellas?’ asked Dan. ‘What’s one of them when they’re at home?’

‘I’m trying to tell ya. When I was in prison a few years back,' said Jimmy, remembering one of his many brushes with law and order, ‘there was a magazine, Natural Geographics or summit. There was this story see, about these dead fellas they keep finding back home in swamps and bogs, dem kind o’ places. Why, back home they found some now I remember, t'was on the news, so it was. They’re old, ya know, thousands of years old, back to the Romans and all that bollocks. They find them in the ground when they’re cutting the peat. The peat preserves them see, it’s like pickling a bloody onion.'

Dan looked down at the figure, its horror film face looking right back at him.

‘Ya mean, this isn’t a nowadays kind of bloke then?’ asked Dan.

‘Not even slightly,’ said Jimmy, ‘He’s not very nowadays at all. He’s old. Bloody old. And, best of all, he’s worth summit.’

‘He is?’

‘You bet yer sweet life he's worth summit,' continued the Irishman loftily. ‘Why I bet some collector would pay a right royal price for the bugger.'

‘He would?’

‘Course he would,' said Jimmy. ‘Scientific interest, I think they call it. Laughing boy here could be worth thousands.'

‘But how we gonna sell him?' said Dan. ‘I mean we can hardly take him down the boozer in a bag like we do the DVD players.'

‘Of course not, ya dumb feck,' snapped Jimmy. ‘We'll have to think it through for a bit, do a bit of research, see who's looking for this kind of thing. Do it all proper like.'

‘Research? How? We haven't got a computer, have we?’

‘Aye,' said Jimmy. ‘We'll have to sit on him, if you'll pardon the expression. Ere, grab his legs, I'll take the arms. Let's get the gobshite in the house.'

The pair of them lifted the body upwards. Gingerly, they began to carry it towards the cottage.

‘Have you noticed the wrists?' said Dan, as they passed through the hole in the fence. Sure enough, as Jimmy looked over the limbs it became apparent that each was looped with an untidy rope. Most ended in a ragged break, but on one wrist there was a wooden stake lashed to the end. It dangled back and forth as they travelled.

‘What's that all about then?' said the cockney. ‘Looks like the geezer was tied up or summit.'

‘That’s right!’ said Jimmy as they reached the back door. ‘I remember now. They were sacrificed!’

‘They … were?’

‘They bloody were,’ said Jimmy. ‘It’s coming back to me. Sacrificed. No one knows exactly why, but they were bashed in, or strangled. For the gods they reckon. I’m guessing this one was just nailed down and left to drown.’

‘Oh great,’ said Dan. ‘And we’re bringing him – it – into the house? That’s bleedin charmin that is.’

‘Oh, don't be such a soft lad. He's as dead as a feckin doornail, ain't he? Just look at him. He's a bloody mess. Don't tell me you’re spooked by the thing?'

‘Course not,' said Dan defensively. He was lying. 

Later, after they'd wiped the thick cloying peat from their clothes and restocked themselves with yet more beer and bacon, the two burglars stood side by side in the bathroom. They looked down at the bogman where they’d placed him in the bathtub, his distorted and peat-stained body badly at odds with the floral tiles, a nautical shower curtain and a solitary rubber duck.

‘So what now?’ asked Dan, who’d accepted early on that Jimmy was more expert than he on the subject.

‘Er … dunno,’ said Jimmy, ‘I say we leave him here for now. Tomorrow, we can see if he’s dried out, right now he’s like a feckin used teabag. Ugly bastard ain't he?'

‘Bloody right,’ agreed Dan.

‘Though to be fair, he was probably a lot more handsome before they done him in.’

‘Wonder why they did that?’ said Dan. ‘Perhaps he was a murderer or summit?’

‘Not a feckin clue,' said Jimmy. ‘All I know is, he's probably worth some money, and that's all I give a shit about. Once he's dried out, we can stuff him in a lock-up while we think about what to do with him.' 

‘We ought to give him a name,’ said Dan suddenly.

“Don’t be fecking daft,’ said Jimmy. ‘Now why the feck would we do that?’

‘Nah, I mean it,’ said Dan. ‘It’s sort of respectful, ya know?’

‘Well you can give him a feckin name if ya have to,' said Jimmy, dismissively. ‘But don't expect me to use it. I don't want to get attached to the bugger.'

‘Ok,’ said Dan, ‘let’s call him Barry.’

‘‘Barry?' What the bloody damn stupid name is that to call him. He's a Celtic warrior for God's sake, not an effin' plumber.'

‘Well I dunno, what do you think we should call him?

‘What about Dermot, that’s a good Celtic name.’

‘Ok,’ said Dan, shrugging. ‘I guess. Dermot then.’

It was late now, late enough for a last round of Special Brew to pass as a nightcap. So Jimmy threw the bathroom light switch and the two villains sat down amongst the scattered loot. After an optimistic speculation on Dermot’s value, they went to their rooms and snored like old farm dogs.

Dermot lay still and silent in the darkness of the bathroom.

The following morning, Jimmy awoke to a shout. Dan was bursting hysterically from the bathroom.

‘Jimmy! Jimmy! Quick, it’s Dermot! You need to see this.’

Rushing to the bathroom, Jimmy was greeted with much the same scene he’d left the night before.

‘What? What?’

‘His arm, look, he’s sprouting!’ Dan pointed. Sure enough, along the bogman’s left side, there was a small forest of white filaments erupting from the skin.

‘He’s growing hair!’ blurted Dan. ‘Hair!’ Jimmy leant in close.

‘Oh don't be feckin daft, ya idiot,' said Jimmy. ‘That's not hair, that's fungus. Our fella here has a touch of the mushrooms.'

‘Mushrooms? Eh?’

‘Yes,’ said Jimmy. ‘Well, not mushrooms exactly, but just as bad for us. Them hairs is fungus, see, and that means that our fella Dermot here is well on his way to decomposing.'

‘What? You mean he’s rotting?’

‘Exactly,’ said Jimmy. ‘And that’s not exactly good for business, is it?’

‘No, it ain’t,’ said Dan. ‘What do we do?’

‘We need to kill the bloody fungus, is what,’ said Jimmy. ‘We need to have a hunt through this shithole, see what we have in the way of chemicals and the like, see if we can stop the thing before he falls to bits on us.’ He pointed out of the bathroom. ‘You check the bathroom, I’ll do the kitchen.

Ten minutes later the pair of them were back in the bathroom, a small pile of cleaning fluids and powders on the floor before them.

‘Right then. Bleach, Toilet Duck, hydrogen peroxide, salt, vinegar, fly spray, Ajax and baking soda. Not much, is it?’ said Jimmy. ‘Sure now, but it will have to do. Get the lids off that little lot and I’ll run the bath for him. We’d better get on it.’

Jimmy forced the ancient taps and a stream of discolored water, stained orange by the aged pipes, began to surge around the bogman. He shifted.

‘Ooh, I hate it when he moves,’ said Dan. ‘Bleedin creeps me out.’

‘Ah, get a way with ya. Tis nothing. Now stop yer nonsense and start pouring.’

Soon, the bogman was bathing luxuriantly in a cocktail of household cleaning products, a crowd of noxious bubbles washing around him. After a cheeky wink at his colleague, Dan flicked the rubber duck in beside the body. It bobbed incongruously around just shy of the tattoo. The two of them laughed raucously.

‘Have a nice bath, yer dead twat,’ cackled Dan.

‘Aye, rubber dub dub, ya ancient bastard,’ added the Irishman. ‘Don’t forget to wash yer hairy arse!’

But Dermot, his solitary eye staring back at them, lay still, his distorted form bobbing lightly amidst the bubbles and bathed in an increasingly unpleasant chemical funk. Once they left him to it, he quietly absorbed the concoction, much as a rich tea biscuit absorbs earl grey, the cocktail seeping deep into his preserved tissue. Sulphurs, ammonia, acids, reacting angrily with each other, mingling with each other like badly matched guests at a wedding reception.

The smell of these noxious fumes was such that both men quickly elected to use the cottage garden for their ablutions. Left to his devices, the bogman fermented in peace. For an entire day and the following night he bubbled.

The following morning, the smell was so bad that Dan was forced to make his way into the bathroom and heave open the small frosted window so that the by-products of the bogman's spa treatment could escape before it gassed them in their beds. Gradually, the gasses that had built up in the tiny bathroom began to ease somewhat until, at dusk the following evening, Dan felt reassured enough to use the filthy old toilet.

He was relieving himself in the partial light of the hallway lamp when he happened to look down.

Rearing backwards in alarm, he instantly washed the mud off his ugly shoes. The bogman was now sitting upright, his arm casual on the side of the tub and his body puffed back out to something approaching normality. For all the world, the dead Celt looked like he was enjoying a relaxing soak.

His facial expression had certainly improved, but was still, by most people's standards, a mess. When the head began to turn slowly towards the Cockney, it was more than enough to reduce him to an incoherent mess. 

‘Jeeeeessssuuuuuussss!’ he yelped, dashing into the lounge. ‘Jimmy, you gotta see this! The bloody thing’s alive!’

Jimmy, half asleep on last round of and stout and bacon, roused himself irritably. He looked up from the knackered armchair.

‘What the feck are you on?’ he barked, ‘Can a fella not have a decent kip anymore?’

‘I tell you!’ panted the hyperventilating Londoner. ‘He’s sitting up in the bath, and his head friggin moved. It moved!’

‘Oh, for the love of Mary and all the saints, ya dim bastard. Let me have a look, willya?’ Jimmy levered himself from the chair. ‘It’s like working with an old woman, so it is. Jeeesusss!’

They edged through the kitchen and entered the tiny bathroom. As advertised, the bogman was sitting up jauntily in his bathtub. The head, which Dan had been so sure had been looking at him, was still locked in the same orientation, but now it appeared to be staring up at the greasy towel hanging from a nail on the opposite wall.

‘I grant you it looks a bit weird and all,’ said Jimmy, ‘but it will be down to him getting sorted out by the chemicals and all. It’s a bit like the way bacon goes all wrinkly under the grill.’

‘It is?’ said Dan, not exactly convinced.

‘Oh, for sure,’ said Jimmy. ‘He’s bound to shift about a bit, I wouldn’t pay it no attention.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes really, ya big nancy boy. That's what I feckin said, weren't it?'

‘Yes, I know but his head ...’

‘Bugger his head. Look, I'm not interested in any of ya superstitious crap-trap, understand? He's dead, dead, dead. If you wanna get spooked, well, go ahead. But me, I'm a logical fella, see? Why Dermot’s no more alive than that there rubber duck.'

‘If you’re sure … ‘ said Dan.

‘Of course I'm bloody sure. Now clean up that feckin mess. Ya filthy pisser, it's all over the bloody floor.'

‘Right, yeah,' said Dan, apologetically. As Jimmy stomped off downstairs, cursing spectacularly in both English and Gaelic, Dan ran off an arm's length of toilet roll, then stamped and swept it across the cracked linoleum tiles with his shoe before throwing it into the bowl and flushing. Despite his colleague's assurances, he was quickly out of the bathroom and away downstairs, leaving Dermot to continue his bath in peace.

That night, the Cockney slept fitfully. More than a little unnerved by his earlier visit to the bathroom, he tossed and turned, trying hard not to listen to the noises in the old cottage, hopelessly blanketed though they were by the sawmill of his colleague's snoring. Around five in the morning, after a few scattered moments of proper sleep, he heard what could only have been a splash. Although they were but ten yards from the edge of the fetid waterway, it was unmistakably in the house.

He froze, his breath trying to extricate itself from under a frantically accelerating heart.

Then, there it was again.

This time, it was followed by what, for all the world was the sound of the shower curtain being dragged slowly along its rail.

He crept from the bed.

With Jimmy's magnificent snoring filling the spaces in between, Dan advanced towards the bathroom. Chilled in his vest and mustard-yellow y-fronts, he paused only to take the bread knife from beside the cooker as he passed.

It was dark, far too dark to see anything at first, so, rather than wait on his widening eyes in the earliest lightning of the new day, Dan's shaking hand went up for the light.

He threw the switch.

The bath was empty.

The Londoner went to call for his partner in crime, but nothing came out. In his room, the Irishman roared on oblivious as Dan, his body now as cold as the stones on the floor, turned slowly to face the kitchen. The room seemed empty enough, so, with a building dread, he began to edge forward, moving into the kitchen with the blade held out before him, his breath lodged somewhere far back behind his throat.

He was no more than two feet into the kitchen when the cold hands wrapped around him. One firmly grabbed the wrist of his knife arm and made him drop the blade. With a clatter, the knife hit the stone floor. The other gnarled hand then slapped hard against his mouth and nose, sealing his breath inside his lungs.

Suffocation began.

His uncomplicated brain, starved of oxygen and overloaded with a raw panic, abandoned him.

Dan’s conscious mind went out like a guttering candle.

It was a good four hours later when Jimmy finally eased himself from his bed and staggered downstairs in his grubby trousers and vest. Turning his nose up at the lingering chemical scent of the bathroom, he chanced his arm against the ongoing weather and relieved himself explosively against the kitchen wall.

‘Dan,’ he shouted back through open door, ‘where the feck are ye, ya lazy English gobshite? Why ain’t ya got the bacon on?’

Silence.

His bad temper, somewhat more of a force than his curiosity, bubbled. The Irishman stormed upstairs to find his colleague's bed empty. Immediately assuming his endless paranoia to have reached confirmation, he crashed downstairs, but the loot, such as it was, was laying much where it had toppled a few nights earlier. The van was also very much there in the driveway, it's peeling paint shining in an inevitable falling rain. He frowned, confused.

A noise in the distance caught his attention. Somewhere, far off, he could hear his fellow burglar calling him. It was a frantic tone, its urgency unmistakable, even through the easterly wind busy lashing the fens.

Jimmy moved through the back garden, the distant voice rising in volume as he passed through neglected vegetable patch to the margins of the marsh. Dan's voice, a far from coherent wailing, was nearer now. It was clearly coming from the distant rushes flanking the banks of the bleak swamp beyond.

Finally, Jimmy spotted him. His fellow burglars head was just a small island of pink in a sea of mud, turning red in panic as the rising water around it rose towards his begging mouth.

‘What the feck?' said Jimmy.

Then something hit him hard.

Felled like a cow in an abattoir, his knees betrayed him. The Irishman hit the wet grass hard and bounced.

Then blackness.

In staggered moments of lucidity, Jimmy then felt himself on the move. 

The bogman was above him, his gnarled fingers tucked in hard beneath Jimmy’s collar. Demonstrating an unexpected strength quite at odds with his frail preservation, the bogman dragged Jimmy relentlessly into the blackened water. As in a dream, Jimmy felt his limbs splayed and tied. Then stakes hammered down into the mud and he was secured fast in the rising bog. His head mashed by concussion, he was in no fit state to resist.

Gradually his senses returned. It was only too apparent that he was not going to make it through the afternoon. Dan lay beside him, spluttering and coughing to a standstill as the filthy water entered his mouth faster than he could exhale it. The big Irishman would not be far behind him.

Silent upon a bank no more than four feet away, Dermot the bogman was watching them. He cut a curious figure, his badly distorted form draped in a jaunty beach towel, the bath plug worn around his neck by way of decoration and the yellow duck clasped to his chest as if it were an item of great spiritual value. As the endless rain fell in steady sheets, his impassive, distorted features followed their final minutes in the rising water with a long dead detachment.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Thank you for reading A Little Knowledge. I hope you enjoyed it.

If you can spare a couple of minutes to write a review that would be great, and if you’d like to subscribe to my newsletter, which will include updates on my next book, please email me (t.j.brown@theunhappymedium.com). You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR

The Unhappy Medium: A Supernatural Comedy

The Last Photograph of John Buckley: A Ghost Story

9 Lovers for Emily Spankhammer: The Spinal Tap of Romantic Fiction (with Kaleesha Williams)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in Dorset, T. J. Brown studied fine art and sang in bands before eventually settling into a career in publishing, designing and illustrating science and aviation titles for some of the UK’s biggest publishers.

He lives in Kent, dangerously close to two pubs.