J. P. Holt’s shiv-shaped, candy-apple red Tracker—loaded with an Elite 5X fish-finder, live bait wells and powered by a 115-horse Yamaha that reached hot holes in a hurry—tugged against its anchor line, neatly cleaving the Ohio’s current.
Holt’s buddy, a human fish finder named Woody Conroy, perched on a swivel seat tying a three-way bottom rig to an oversized rod and reel meant for saltwater fishing. The Ohio was home to dozens of fish species from pike and sturgeon to seven types of bass. But he and Holt were going for the big boys—
Blue Catfish. They could easily top one hundred pounds.
Holt had really been looking forward to this. Work had been brutal. He wouldn’t have another chance to get on the river over the next two weeks, not with Old Fashioned River Days coming up. He consulted the 5X’s screen. His calculation about where to drop anchor had been dead on. The drift had left the Tracker directly above one of the deep holes where the Blue Cats sought refuge from the fast-moving waters.
His phone chirped. He squinted at the screen. Reds win. He popped a beer. I should be happy, he mused. It don’t get no better than this. Isn’t that how the scene goes?
But happy was not how he felt. “Happy” wouldn’t make the top ten.
Holt drank while Conroy fished. After thirty minutes and no action, they hoisted anchor. Holt bee-lined the Tracker to his second-favorite spot.
“Try dead bait this time,” Holt advised. “The stinkier, the better.” Blue Cats were known for their keen sense of smell.
Conroy baited his hooks with dead minnows and a chunk of putrid chicken. He lowered his line until the sinker hit bottom and waited.
Not very long.
“Fish on!” Conroy’s rod bent into a quivering ‘u.’ The Tracker rocked. Holt grabbed the wheel to keep from spilling out of his chair.
“Lunker!” Conroy yelled.
Holt was surprised when something big breached the surface. Conroy had a habit of declaring every bite a “lunker”—until the fish was boated. But this time he was right. The thing was at least five feet long.
Conroy pulled up and reeled in. The monster went deep.
Holt swiped a gaff but hit nothing but water. He tossed the gaff, grabbed Conroy’s line and drew it in hand-over hand. Conroy reeled slack.
Holt began to get a bad feeling. Maybe the fish was just worn out, but it wasn’t fighting. In some ways, it didn’t even feel like a fish. The thing was acting like a dead weight.
When it broke the surface five feet from the boat, they both knew.
“Timber trout,” Conroy said disgustedly.
“A damn log,” Holt said. “A log for Woody.” He reached over the gunwale to unsnag the lure. He fell back like he’d been hit in the chest with a rocket.
Conroy peered over the edge. The log wore jeans and stunk to high heaven.
Holt stifled nausea and looked again.
It was easy to see why he had mistaken it for a log. Chunks of flesh dangled from the dark brown torso like sloughed-off bark. Boney fingers poked from bloated hands and arms, like twigs from branches. Holt couldn’t be sure, but he thought it was a man. Conroy’s fishing line was deeply embedded in the pulpy neck.
The body rolled over in slow motion. The lower half of its face was gone, giving prominence to a solid set of teeth that made the corpse appear to be grinning. The remaining face, including the nostrils, floated languidly in the water, attached only at the left ear.
To Holt, the skin of the face looked like a slab of white cheese. He shuddered. He knew the image would join the others—the shotgun-in-the-mouth suicide, the car wreck decapitation, that burned thing/man from the plant—that swirled unbidden in his head like bats in his own belfry, at least until obliterated by alcohol. They were all horrible. But this was beyond a doubt the most disgusting thing he had ever seen.
Holt considered hauling the body into the boat but thought better of it. Holding the fishing line, he started the engine and set off slowly, intending to drag the dead man to shore.
The rotting flesh released the jig midway. The body returned to the current, yawing as it sunk.
Holt and Conroy watched until it seemed unlikely to resurface.
“Looks like he’d been in there a while,” Conroy volunteered.
Holt nodded, but he wasn’t sure. He’d seen any number of drowning victims—people like old man McCoy who’d simply filled his pockets with rocks and walked into the river when his feed and seed had gone bust. Those corpses were bleached, always bloated, misshapen.
Old Cheese Face was different. Different. And awful.
“You gonna drag the river?” Conroy asked when they had tied up.
“Not with the overtime budget going to River Days. I’ll put it out on the wire, but for now, Old Cheese Face is going to have to keep on rolling. Probably won’t stop until he gets to Possum Island.”
Holt picked up the sack with the lunch they had brought but had left uneaten—cheese sandwiches. He doubted he would ever eat cheese again.
The sky darkened and the wind built. Cyclones of dead leaves danced through the parking lot of the Winston News. Thunder shook the squat prefab building and rain roared against the metal roof. Editor and Publisher Josh Gibbs, thirty-eight, took scant notice of the storm, even though his powers of observation were seldom off high alert. Tie at half-mast, shirt-sleeves rolled up to mid-forearm, Josh hunched over a low metal table proofing the News’s upcoming edition. He read each story and headline a third time. Then, just to be sure, he read the headlines again, this time aloud.
Since Josh’s wife’s death, the News had become more than a job. It had become a refuge where he could exert a degree of control over stories and schedules in a world out of control, a place where he could count on the press to run every Thursday at 3 p.m., a place where he always knew what he was doing, and where the newspaper’s relentless demands meant pain was forgotten, temporarily, in the mad crush.
At big city newspapers, the editor and publisher wrote no stories, sold no ads, did no editing. A few might dash off an occasional—or even regular—Sunday column. But in terms of contributing to content, that was about it. If the editor or the publisher absented himself for a week or two, the newspaper would still publish every day—possibly with even greater efficiency. Subscribers would never