"The Unktehi" by A.M. Bacon

The Unktehi 

by A.M. Bacon

The one time he had tried to measured the depth of the sinkhole, he had three hundred feet of rope tied to a cinderblock that had slipped out of his hands and disappeared into the depths. 

When the Army Corps Of Engineers built the dam that created the lake, there was an oldtimer that told him about the sinkhole. The crazy old coot had cackled insanely as he gave Walter the exact location. 

It was a spot that was hard to get to, but he had memorized the directions to get to it, and had visited several times. Each time while fishing, each time making a drop. The old man said the natives called it Unktehi, and it had been trapped in a deep well like sinkhole long before the river that had dried up left it stranded there after a drought. The Engineers, in their infinite wisdom, never even knew it was there. But the old man knew, and the Lakota Natives the old man communed with had told him about their tribes would make sacrifices to the river spirit, and they would be granted some seriously good fortunes. 

The squirming and crying bags that he had tied to heavy items that he had lying around the garage had been dropped in, and set free into the abyssal depths that he still had not found a bottom for. Each time, Walter would ask for some good luck. Be it fishing, frolicking in the local bars, or just with normal everyday life. 

Over three hundred feet. Deep enough where if there was enough weight and dropped in, whatever you sent to the bottom would never be found again in the murky, muddy waters.

Walter believed that depositing the gifts to the depths was his only chance at getting what he wanted. It was worth the children of whores for him to exchange for some good luck. 

They were his whores, so their children were his to do with as he pleased. 

As the newest bag moved at the bottom of his canoe, he gave it a kick. It grunted and cried a bit, but went silent as soon as he picked it up, and dropped it over the side of the canoe, sinking to the depths below. 

He baited his hook and threw out a line away from the place where he had just dropped the baby into the abysmal sinkhole. The sacrifice he just offered should answer his latest wish of luck. A new young woman came into his desires. She would make a great addition to his company of prostitutes. And make him a lot of money! 

Normally his good fortune would be all the fish he could catch and the sluts he frequented liked when he brought them fresh fish to eat. He even brought some to his neighbors when he had a really good run. 

No sooner had his line hit the water, than he felt a tug, and the line go tight. Whatever was on the line, wanted to fight! His drag started running, and he held the pole steady, even as it bent over and seemed to be running back under his canoe. Struggling to pull it in, his reel spool exploded into a fury of tangled fishing line. 

“Shit!” He exclaimed, and scrambled to clear the twisted mess, hoping to straighten out the line so he could reel in the fish he had on the other end. 

As he struggled to clear the snarl that was now piling up in the bottom of the boat, Walter wrapped the part he had untangled around his feet to keep the line from tangling even more. Much like he used to do for his mother when she was knitting a blanket.

He remembered hating standing around, waiting for his mother to finish so he could go back to killing ants with his magnifying glass, or drowning kittens in the creek out back. But he believed that his mother secretly didn’t want him doing that. He became more discreet when killing things. 

As he finally got the last of the knot cleared, he began reeling in the slack that was now reeling in neatly, and he cranked slowly so it didn’t do it all again. 

Suddenly, the fish on the line ran, pulling the wrapped string tight. And it grew tighter. And tighter. Walter tried kicking off the line, but only managed to have it wrap around his exposed ankles. 

The twenty pound test, nearly break-proof line was pulling so hard, it was digging into the flesh of his lower legs as it sliced into him, friction cutting through the skin down to the bone on the front, and the muscles and tendons on the backs of his legs. 

Blood pooled at his feet, and he felt an immense tug from the fish, and his legs were yanked over the side of the canoe, spilling him backwards across it. He scrambled to grab anything to stop from going into the water, and managed to grab the seat, but could feel his legs being pulled even harder. 

That’s when he felt them. 

The hands grabbing his feet and legs. He could feel their cold, clammy dead hands. They had come for him! 

There were many a day that he wondered if the old man was right. Was there something there that fed on the children that he had sacrificed? Or did the children grow up, never knowing their families? Would they get revenge? Or be loving and helpful? 

Today was the day. The day of reckoning! 

The day that they took their toll in flesh and blood. As the hands dragged him kicking and screaming into the lake, Walter held his breath as he went in.

The last thing he saw as his life left him were the children that had grown after he had given them to the spirit of the depths. Their sharp claws and teeth tearing into his plesh as they dragged his carcass down.