Free The Golden Leg by Dale Jarvis Page A

and for a moment, felt a surge of
     optimism. The net was heavy. He shifted his weight in the boat, leaning back,
     legs braced instinctively. Hand over hand he hauled the net into the boat.
    As he did, he started to mutter under his breath. This net was empty as well,
     but heavy, as if something had snagged in it. Joseph looked down into the
     slate-grey waters, and could see a dark mass. He hauled it in closer, and felt a
     great lump form in his throat.
    Twisted into the netting was the body of a man. The skin was
     bluish-grey, with long bare arms. The hands were rough and callused, the
     fingernails short and broken, a working man’s hands, like his own. The body
     still wore dark navy pants, though the boots had been lost and the toes had been
     nibbled by the fish.
    Joseph was something of a hard man. He had seen a lot in his day, had gutted
     more fish than there were stars in the sky, had seen friends lost to the sea and
     family lost to wasting sickness. But nothing had prepared him for what he hauled
     up in the net that day. For the man in his net was missing its head, the edges
     of the neck ragged and torn.
    For a moment he sat there, the only motion the rise and fall of the water, the
     headless corpse half in, half out of his boat and still tangled in the web of
     his nets. Finding a body like that, waterlogged, fish-nibbled, headless . . .
     that was not something any man would want in his boat. But at the same time, it
     was not something you could exactly ignore, either.
    Joseph freed the corpse from the nets, and tied a line under the man’s arms,
     around his chest, securing the other end of the line to the boat. He set his
     nets again, carefully. Then trying as best he could not to gaze upon that
     frightful stump of a neck, he pushed the body of the man back into the water. He
     fitted his oars into place, and started to row for home.
    The line played out behind him, towing the body along. As he rowed, Joseph’s
     eyes kept darting back along the line, towhere the headless man
     could be seen, bobbing along. Joseph shivered, unable to shake the impression
     that the corpse was swimming after him.
    By the time he reached the shore, Joseph was ready to be rid of his unusual
     catch. He hove the boat up onto the beach, and reeling in the line, cast the
     headless body up onto the shore. He looked down at it, uncertain what to do
     next.
    “I can’t leave him there,” thought Joseph. He reached down, picked up the
     body, and slung it over his shoulder. Up the beach he went, the man’s cold, wet
     arms dangling down Joseph’s back. He carried the body up to a large, flat rock,
     near a place known as the Spring Well. He laid the body down on the rock, and
     then went to find help.
    Joseph’s feet flew over the rocks as he ran into the town, shouting out for
     help. A few men gathered at the sound of his voice, and Joseph told them all
     what he had hauled up out of the ocean’s deep. The men agreed to go back to the
     Spring Well with him, and together they would bury the body in the
     churchyard.
    When the men returned to the Spring Well with Joseph, they all stopped and were
     silent. All eyes looked at the rock, and then questioningly turned back to
     Joseph. The rock was empty, and the headless body had vanished completely.
    This happened a long time ago. But there are those, to this day, who say that
     the body can sometimes be seen on cold windy nights. It is said to return to the
     spot known as the Spring Well, forever searching for its missing head.

T
here was an elderly gentleman whose
     business often took him between cities, and it was his regular habit to take the
     train. One night, he took a late-night express train to the city of Bayswater, a
     trip he had taken many times before.
    At that time of night there were few passengers, and the man found himself
     alone in one of the train cars.
    “Good evening, sir,” said the conductor with a smile as he came to collect the