By Frampton Jones
If you ever spent time with Greg Tulonen you likely heard him mention that he isn’t Aqua Man. That he can’t breathe underwater, has no gills, definitely can’t swim long distances, did not swim to this island in the first place, has no mermaids in his ancestry and so on and so forth. You probably also assumed that he was protesting too much and there was some awkward shred of truth in amongst the protestations.
And apparently, you would have been wrong.
How Greg came to be down the well in the yard behind the abandoned public house – The Hand of Glory, is anyone’s guess. Did he go there by himself? Why would anyone do that? Did he have enemies? It seems unlikely, he was always a popular chap. Was he lured? Was he killed somewhere else and then hidden in the well? Did he jump? No one knows.
It was only because, by some perhaps-related freak incident, the glass washing machine in the pub started up. Normally it only continues its peculiar activities at night. The lack of glasses to wash has never dissuaded it. Drawn by the noises of the machine, several children came to the scene. They’ve asked not to be named and I assume they were not supposed to be there, but a good journalist protects his informants.
They found Greg’s boots sticking out of the well, and on closer inspection, the rest of Greg turned out to be in the well. It’s not a deep one, so removal was not difficult.
Doc Willoughby said, “I can confirm that he definitely didn’t have any gills at all. There were no occult markings on his body. I expect it was an accident. It’s not a deep one.” And then he kept repeating the phrase ‘not a deep one’ while staring past my left shoulder.
Greg had somehow taken up a considerable quantity of water and his remains continue to drip, so the funeral will have to wait until he has dried out enough. He’ll be at the mortuary until then. Friends will be taking shifts with the body to prevent the curious from looking for gills.
(Whether Greg is in any way Aqua Man, can be ascertained by watching Ragged Isle, which you should definitely do… http://www.raggedisle.com/ )
Okay ‘not a deep one’ is veritable genius, I nearly needed to learn to breath through coffee when I read that …