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according to Flatis calculations, Lery was under water for one minute, he started worrying indeed – generally ten seconds was enough to reach the bottom and to find the catfish sleeping quietly in the ooze.
    ‘He must be kidding’ - Flatis thought, but he couldn’t get rid of anxiety. There were too many strange things that he had noticed at the hammer-pond – the host hadn’t come despite they were calling him; all the frogs and fish had disappeared. Even black glowing bugs that lived in sparkling bubbles attached to algae couldn’t be seen anywhere.
    Flatis was getting more and more worried. He needed three leaps to reach the bank, then put down the pot on the ground again and hurried into the water as fast as he could.
    ‘Oh, Lery! If it’s a stupid joke, I’ll beat you like hell!’ – he thought while swimming fast to the middle of the pond.
    He was about to reach the center when the water boiled and a pillar of splatters suddenly rose into the air. A silhouette of Lery flashed inside it. Flatis saw a grimace of fear on his face and rolled out eyes. At once he understood that Lery wasn’t mocking at him – something bad did happen.
    -          Fl… Flatis – Lery could hardly say, spitting water out of his mouth – the host…
    Lery didn’t finish speaking – one more pillar of foam rose into the air, a black shadow glimpsed at the bottom. Lery raised his hands and disappeared under the water with a muffled sob.
    -          Lery! – frightened Flatis yelled – It’s not funny!
    He needed two strokes to swim up to the spot where his friend disappeared. Flatis inhaled fast as much air as he could and dove. He opened his eyes under water and started spinning around in attempt to see Lery who was obviously mocking at him. But the only thing he could see was the greenish thickness of water. Suddenly Flatis noticed a blurry shadow below, he decisively dove deeper to look closer at the strange object on the bottom. A fast thought came to his mind: ‘It can be a cramp, if only I could bring him out…’ and then he saw it…
    Frozen eyes of the giant catfish were staring at him from a muddy cloud of the raised ooze – there wasn’t a sight of the gigantic body of the fish, just the head with a shaking collar of shapeless shreds of pale meat was left. It looked like as if somebody had sawed the head off the body and had thrown it away as a useless thing with negligence.
    The ancient host of the deep water was dead.
    At last frozen Flatis realized what exactly he was looking at, he forgot that he was under water and yelled soundlessly with a wild terror exhaling bubbles of air. Moving his hands and legs as fast as he could, Flatis darted upwards to the sunshine far away from the nightmare he had just witnessed. His head broke through the water surface. He started gulping the air and turning his head around again and again to find Lery, but the water surface was empty and lifeless. Lery wasn’t able to reach the bank in one minute and Flatis understood that his friend was still under water, on the bottom. Inhaling air again, he dove and opened his eyes widely trying to find the friend. Finally he succeeded – in some yards he noticed a shadow struggling furiously at the bottom. Breaking through long catching algae, Flatis directed towards the shadow. And as soon as he was close enough to see the shadow distinctly, he hardly resisted one more scream of terror. Flatis was right. It was Lery who was trying to get his leg free that was squeezed in the jaws of the most frightening creature Flatis had ever seen. It partially resembled fish. The black body in the shape of a spindle was crowned with a head with long narrow jaws and teeth protruding in different directions that were squeezing the boy’s leg like a clamp. The fish got frozen on the bottom waiting when the prey was suffocated because of the lack of air and stopped trying to escape. Noticing a new movement, it turned the head in a