Read Freaks for Free Online

the bodies of dead men that drifted downstream, but Till believed none of that. All she was thinking right now was that there might be something in the mud worth eating. Something that would make a change from cabbage water and gruel.
    With her tongue poking hungrily between her lips she rounded on the source of the ripple. Slowly, slowly, so as not to scare it, she crouched and eased her way through the mud. Her feet made soft slurps as they broke the surface and slipped back down into the clammy ooze.
    When she was above the spot where the ripple came from she stopped and held her breath. She stood motionless for a whole minute, then two. Nothing stirred, and for a moment she thought she might have imagined the whole thing. Then it came again. A shudder in the jellylike silt, somewhere near the surface.
    Till’s hands shot into the mud like lightning. She felt the long, slimy body of the eel between her fingers, and closed them around it. Her grip was as tight and hard as the hunger in her empty little belly. The eel didn’t want to budge, but she gritted her teeth and pulled with all her might, until her hands broke free of the water. Gripped between them was a fat, wiggling creature, wet and slimy. Till’s face broke into a wide grin. It was massive!
    She continued to heave, her mind racing with thoughts of eel pie, eel soup, eel casserole with extra eel. More and more of the creature was dragged from the mud. It looked as though it was going to be over three feet long!
    Till dug her heels in. Any minute now the head would break free and she could knock the thing’s brains out with her bottle and drag it back home for dinner. She started to haul hand over hand, and there was still no sign of it ever stopping. . . .
    It was about then that she realized that the eel’s skin wasn’t quite normal. The few miserable specimens she had seen at the fish market had been a gray-green color, as sickly looking as the river water they’d been hooked from. This one was bright red. And completely smooth all the way down. No gills, no fins, no head. Maybe it was some kind of pipe, but pipes didn’t bend and wiggle, did they?
    As she stared down at it, a puff of smoke jetted from the end she was holding. It burnt her hands, making her let go with a shriek. She fell backward,
smack
, into the mud.
    But the eel-pipe was still moving. Even though she was no longer pulling it, the thing was pushing its way out of the mud.
    And then she saw another . . . and another . . . ten or more of the things, all puffing out little bursts of steam that mixed with the stinking fog.
    â€œWhat in blazes are you?” Till managed to shout, although it came out as more of a squeak. The mud beneath the pipes was rising up now, as something pushed its way to the surface.
    Till started to slide backward through the muck, her legs pedaling furiously as she tried to find purchase in the slime. Whatever was about to be birthed from the riverbed, she didn’t want to be around to see it.
    There was a sucking, slurping sound and out burst a domed carapace studded with jutting spikes. Till got a glimpse of a huge yellow eye and a pair of grasping claws.
    And then she was on her front, scrabbling and crawling away from the hideous creature.
    Behind her came a cacophony of clanks and hisses, drowning out her terrified screams as she felt something cold and hard and serrated close around her ankle and
pull
.
    And then it was over.
    The fog whirled in brief, frenzied wisps before returning to blankness. The splatters and splashes on the mud gradually closed over like a wound healing. The only sign that Till had even existed was her tattered picking sack, and an echo of her last shriek drifting along the river.

Breakfast was a cup of weak coffee, served at the kitchen table. Sheba peered over the rim of her chipped mug at the others sitting around the cramped room. Mama Rat sipped hers in between puffs of her pipe. Sister Moon sat