The next story I have to tell is the one of the Water Man. He is a very strange man indeed. I had to review his cases some two hundred years ago. Needless to say I was still fairly green in the field compared to now.
Jacob Richtenburg, also known to the villagers of the town as the “Water Man," was a crotchety old man. He had a grouchy old wife and together they had two kids. The kids went to school there in the village, but they made no friends because they were known to all as the town snobs. The family lived just on the outside of town, on the water’s edge. They never made much of a fuss, except when they came to the market and tried to purchase bread. The water-man would always make a fuss about the price. If it was too expensive he would start throwing things about the market until the vendor would agree to give him a discount. What’s worse, if he went to town on a day where bread was cheap, he would turn his nose and loudly state that the bread must be burned or moldy, if the vender was going to be “giving it away at that price.”
Then all of a sudden things in the village got strange. People started turning up missing and corpses were showing up on the beach some half a mile to a full mile down the beach from the Richtenburgs' cottage. The local law enforcement officials tried to investigate the case themselves, but after the third body turned up in a month, of course I was called in.
At first, the local police had brushed it off as a regular drowning. There was something about the appearance of the corpse, though, that they couldn’t get over; there were massive blue spots all over their body. It almost appeared to be painted on because the coloring of the spots was so bright. The one they were investigating when they called me in was a young female, probably in her early twenties. She had a sweet-smelling substance in her hair. We determined that the substance was soap. She had been bathing in the ocean when she met her demise.
“Who would kill someone while they were taking a bath?” I thought.
We investigated for months, and three more victims turned up, but still no luck. Finally, the sheriff and I decided we had no choice. We were going to have to go in the water and set up bait and see if the killer fell for it. I was the lucky one who got to be the bait. I was seventy-five at the time, but hadn’t aged a day since I was thirty. (Remember the curse I had put on me? It did have its perks I guess.) I felt strange knowing that there was back-up all around me. Several male law enforcement agents were perched and ready to pounce when the killer showed his face. I had to pretend to bathe in front of an audience. Not exactly an experience I care to repeat. Anyway, I was doing my best to stay covered from the neck down and continue to “wash” myself. I had been in the water for probably an hour, and I noticed the current had taken me down the bank a ways. I was about to give up when all of a sudden the water started to bubble around me and turned blue. There was an eruption in the water as this giant demon-looking man burst out of the water.
“How dare you bathe your filthy self on my land, in MY water?” the demon exclaimed.
I should have been frightened, but I kept thinking to myself that I knew that voice, I knew that face. These thoughts distracted me and the next thing I knew I was under water. He had me by my neck and had forced me underneath the surface. Everywhere his webbed hands touched me I was blue. I don’t remember much but I came to in the local infirmary. The sheriff told me the rest of the story because I had blacked out.
He said that shortly after I went under, they sprang into action. It took about seven arrows directly to the chest to get him to even stagger. Then, while his balance was off, an over-zealous officer rushed out to finish the job. He managed to behead the monster. Then the strangest thing happened. Once they had dragged the severed head and body back to shore, it began to shrivel. It became a human body and head. It was none other than Mr. Jacob Richtenburg himself. He had been the culprit all along but he lived in such a secluded area and stayed so much to himself that no one ever even suspected him.
The sheriff also said that when he went to the cottage to inform Mrs. Richtenburg and the kids of his death that Mrs. Richtenburg went crazy. She shouted something unintelligible about “stupid humans deserved to die.” She gave an awful screech and grabbed a potion out of her pantry. She doused herself and the two kids with it and the next thing the officer knew they were all a pile of dust. Turns out she had killed herself and her two kids with some sort of acid, but that’s an entirely different story and we won’t get into that today.
Demon, Source: Wikimedia
Author’s note: The original story was pulled from Water Nixes, The Water Man, and His Wife. The story was fairly short, so I had some room to expand the story. I gave the story more detail by giving the water-man a name. I felt like the blue marks that were indicative of his murders was important so I kept that in my story. The original story indicates that the “water people” interacted with the villagers as normal humans, and that you could only tell who they were by the hem of their skirt or pants a wet him was indicative of the "water people." I wanted to portray them in such a way that they were separated from the society they lived in. For instance, they felt like they were better than the local villagers because they were supernatural. I also felt like the isolation of their cottage would be easier to cover up murder. The ending where the mother pours acid on herself and the two kids is meant to help to show her state of mind. There is no doubt that they did not think in the way of a “normal” person, but the fact that she committed murder/suicide at the knowledge of her husband’s death was to show that they were all at least somewhat crazy.
Bibliography info:
Title: Water Nixes, The Water Man, and His Wife
Author: Karl Haupt, "Die Wassernixen, der Wassermann und seine Frau," translated by D. L. Ashliman.
Year: 1862
Source: Water Spirit Legends1