Zóra Luca Tulik
One dark stormy night, an tall old man arrived, at a little ruined pub by the name of Trout Fishing in America located near a remote village the name of which has long been forgotten. The pub had only a few guests, an errant man who carried a dirty bag and a cat with only one eye, and four young knights who were on their way home but just stayed because of the night. The old man was hungry and tired, but he didn’t have enough money. Hearing this, the honorable knights decided to invite the old man for dinner in exchange for hearing a lovely story.
“Long ago,” the grey-bearded man said, “the villagers started to notice that every second day of the month a billy goat disappeared and a day later his skin showed up on the mayor’s door. First they thought it was a freebooter who was angry with the mayor, but after the mayor died of old age, the disappearances kept on going. The old hunters said a huge monster who lived at the top of the hill was the one who ate the goats. On one of their hunting trips they saw it was three metres tall, it had arms and wings so long that it pulled them after itself when walking. It had claws and horns, and it wore a wolf fur coat whenever it went to the village. The youngest and bravest son of the mayor decided to go to the top of the hill to kill the monster once and for all, but he never made it back. His mother found his skin spread over his bed the following morning. To this day on stormy nights, as it is tonight, you can hear screams, though no one knows who is screaming.”
A long silence followed the words of the man, the faces of the knights anxious as if waiting to hear a scream. After a few minutes the young knights burst out laughing at his story.
“This is like a fish-wives tale my nanny used to scare me with.” the youngest knight said.
“Well the fish-wives in the village certainly believe the story. Even my mother would never let me go to the hill as a kid, and mind you well, my mother is a brave soul,” the old man said solemnly with a smile.
“Very well, old man,” the young knight said with a grin, “we’ve heard your story, but we have a long journey to our homes in the castle and an early morning to wake up. Let’s go to sleep.” They all walked up the stairs, each to his own room.
At night the guards of the village heard the screams, as was usual on the stormy nights, and one of them swore he had seen a tall old man go along the river towards the hill, wrapped in a coat made of wolf fur. His arms almost touched the ground and he was dragging something shiny that looked like armour. No one took the guard seriously, as he was the mayor’s grandson and for years had drunk a few gallons of wine every evening, because he didn’t want to have nightmares where the monster visited him.
In the morning the owner of the pub was waiting patiently for his guests to come down, but when the maid came to change the beds, he was forced to go upstairs. He opened the old man’s door, but no one was inside, and the bed was untouched, as if he had never been there. He went to wake up the knights. As he opened the door he recognized with horror that all that was left of the knights was their skin laid out on the beds, and all their shiny armour was missing….
Note from the editor: This is one of twelve pieces in the Spring 2022 issue of Folyosó that play with the concept of Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America.