The Byssus Killer by Charles Tucker (howl and other poems TXT) 📕

be different. They would recover on board the factory ship. If Mason and James’ lysozyme treatment proved effective, the Bulgars would be given the same, but accelerated, higher dose treatment. The Maritime Agency could release ship and crew and allow them safe passage home.

A bombshell hit Jones. The Concarneau trawlerman, the victim of the byssus shell attack aboard the factory ship, lay in suspended animation on the English Channel seabed. Jones could not leave him there. If he released the one hundred factory ship men, by collective consciousness the seabed victim would become agitated. Jones could not leave him in an agitated state for all eternity. Jones would feel guilty to his dying day. He had to visit Concarneau and explain why he wanted them to dredge up a drowned fisherman who had been missing for weeks.

Jones had a problem. Concarneau fishing port had already held a last rites celebration for their late fisherman. Now, an English marine biologist was going to arrive and tell them their late lamented colleague was not dead. He, Jones, would do a Lazarus act if they would kindly send a trawler to a position twenty miles south of the Isles of Scilly and bring their encased man up from the depths. Jones was secretly worried that a starfish would get to him first and do a Stone Man: suck his brains out.

The mayor of Concarneau rescued Jones. Nobody believed Jones’ fervent tale. Mayors are all powerful in France. Retired from crabbing to become mayor, Monsieur Seillons volunteered his boat mainly to get him away from the miserable Bouillabaisse episode that was driving him mad.

Passing Ushant Light and heading north, Andre Seillons could not stop talking about the Pinna nobilis bouillabaisse stomach bug that had struck many people down.

Jones was incredulous. “You ate Pinna Nobillis mussels! You are certain half the port actually ate Pinna nobilis mussels!”

“Of course, they were so big, the shells were three metres long. One shell held enough meat to make a bouillabaisse for forty people. The meat was tough, but we tenderised it with wooden mallets as you do for abalone.”

Jones remained incredulous. “Forty people ate three-metre long mutated Pinna nobilis shellfish. What did it taste like?”

“I don’t know. I did not eat any. I don’t like abalone.”

Jones was silent for a while, watching the rolling sea creaming past the boat’s bow. He came to a decision. He had to insist on Andre’s agreement of taking the trawlerman’s encased body to Plymouth if he wanted him returned alive.

Andre was a quick wheeler-dealer. “D’accord, but you must come to my port, Concarneau, and cure my town of its bouillabaisse misery.”

“D’accord,” mimicked Jones.

Some thirty hours’ trawling later the echo sounder picked up the outline of a cylindrical body and they had enough seafood to make a decent mayoral bouillabaisse. Jones had previously sought Coastguard and Customs permissions to offload the body on to the factory ship impounded in Falmouth harbour. The Concarneau body would soon have the company of one hundred others.

The mayor knew nothing about the Seven Stones Pinna nobilis byssus shell mutations attacking surfers and trawlermen. Jones knew nothing of the Concarneau trawler returning to the interception point with the factory ship to scoop up the remainder of the mutated shells for monetary gain. They had plenty to talk about on the return trip.

A crowd stood on the Ville Clos quay wall to greet the mayoral boat. The mayor made a statement. “We have recovered our colleague’s body, but as it was in British waters it is subject to the UK Coroner’s Court and remains there.”

Jones was surprised how one group hung together in a lacklustre, debilitated manner. These people, the mayor explained, were the victims of the Pinna nobilis bouillabaisse. He added that he thought they were slowly dying, doctors unable to stop their demise. They returned to the quay every night and stood there in morbid silence.

“I am afraid that one night they will do a mass drowning! Dr Jones we need your help, desperately.”

Jones offered one ray of hope. He explained he was about to test a stomach enzyme that might negate the effects of the bouillabaisse. Jones could not let his colleagues, Mason and James, debilitate to the depths of the morbid people on the quay. He had to get back to Plymouth and start treating Mason and James soonest. Concarneau may reap the benefit.

 

 

 The Lemming Effect

A very thoughtful Dr Jones realised he had to work on three critical life dependent programmes in parallel.

He went into overdrive when the technicians reported the one hundred factory ship trawlermen were no longer fidgeting in their casings. Their eyes had shut. What the technicians were describing was exactly what he had seen on the Concarneau quayside. They were collectively consciously dying at the same rate in the same time frame as the bouillabaisse victims. The frightening thought was that Mason and James might soon join them. The third life dependency was the Concarneau trawlerman. Was he about to join the collective consciousness and start losing the will to live?

Matters came to a head, when Mason and James announced they were planning a visit to Sennen Cove and the Seven Stones on a pilgrimage they could neither describe nor dismiss, but it was imperative they went. The call from ‘the Soul of the Sea’ was overwhelming.

At the same time, Jones had an urgent telephone message from the mayor stating that the bouillabaisse victims from Concarneau and Douarnenez had organised two coaches to make a pilgrimage to Ushant Light in ten days’ time to coincide with the highest tide of the year.

Jones had a premonition that the bouillabaisse victims were going to hurl themselves lemming-like off the cliffs above Ushant Light. The raging seas would consume them. He had the same premonition that Mason and James were being drawn to the same high tide crashing