Providence Place

by Matthew Tait

  Carolina Gates had, for a time, been one of them.

  Taking to the water as a mere babe, her lack of social relationships and shortcomings in academia were enough to cement long hours immersed in water when others were about more collective pursuits. Though her initial attempts at competing were disparaged by her family, they slowly came around when blue ribbons and trophies, not time spent in a pool, soon became the order of the day. After participating in the World Junior Championships in Los Angeles in 1984, it wasn’t long before her coaches looked toward entering in major meets once her high-schooling days were over. Looking at the front façade now, it was hard to imagine those giant glass doors were the same ones that had ushered her through mornings and nights into a place smelling of chloramines, perspiration, and discipline. On top of the doors, only a few letters remained of the original Heartwood sign with Heart erased completely. In its place somebody – perhaps the same individual who’d defaced the basketball boards – had scribbled the word: Worm.

  ‘Wormwood Swim Center,’ said Alyssa. ‘Has a nice ring to it.’

  Carolina’s heart ached at the sight. Though she’d wholly expected this, seeing it was another thing … akin to witnessing a childhood home razed to the ground. Despite her story ending in a kind of tragedy, her fondest memories would always be synonymous with the swim center. The type where she had left all her insecurities behind and taken flight in a vacuum of water.

  ‘Stay close to each other,’ Dillion told them. ‘Join our beams together to make a single path. There’s liable to be a shitload of broken glass everywhere.’

  They did so, Alyssa making an idle quip about crossing the streams in reference to the movie Ghostbusters. ‘We even have a token black dude,’ she said as they walked, and laughed uproariously.

  Jeff did not laugh in turn.

  While the top portion of the building was shaped somewhat like a dome (hundreds of glass skylights permitting the sun to blaze through during the day), the lower region was a small warren of metal blockades to herd a considerable crowd when championship meets took place at the school. Navigating them, Carolina had the distinct impression of an iron labyrinth gone to rust and abandoned by its architects. Briefly, the image of the dead teenager trapped in her own maze tried to resurface … and she quashed it before it could mature.

  Once in the building the pool made itself known, a black void the size and width of a small airplane hangar. On their right, a dust-mote laden passageway petered off into a myriad row of shower stalls and change rooms. To the left, stadium seating shared space with conference rooms walled off by see-through glass partitions. With the conjoined might of their flashlights, only brief patches of the interior were revealed in stark detail.

  Ambling toward the pool, Jeff said, ‘Do you hear that?’

  Silence as they listened. From up high, Carolina detected a soughing of wind through obvious holes in the glass roof. Then she heard it: a gurgle of water like the rush of a stream.

  ‘The pool?’ Jason inquired. ‘Surely there’s no water left in it?’

  Treading lightly they made their way toward the edge. Almost tip-toeing, Carolina mused. Just before the raised piece of concrete slab heralding the brink, Dillion held out an arm, keeping them from taking another step further. Lowering her light, Carolina peered into the inky well.

  At first there was nothing: pale, insubstantial shapes of debris. Floating debris. The water, though filling only a portion of the pool, was a grey morass of churning sludge. Following Dillion’s light, Carolina spied a fountain of water spurting from plumbing about halfway down the bottom.

  In a low-pitched lilt, Alyssa sang, ‘You left the water running …’

  Bristling, Carolina swung her light into Alyssa’s face.

  ‘What, not an Otis Reading fan?’

  ‘I can’t make out any of this stuff,’ Jason said. ‘What is it?’

  Pushing past Dillion’s arm, Jeff said, ‘There’s something huge in the deeper end.’

  ‘There’s a deeper end?’ Jason asked.

  ‘Depth for the diving boards,’ Carolina replied automatically. A question she’d fielded numerous times over the years, she could feel Jason nodding in comprehension.

  Excited, Jeff had moved off into the darkness ahead. Soon the point of his light came to rest about fifty feet away, more or less in line with the ladders broaching the diving dais. Then it descended as Jeff took to his hands and knees, inspecting his find. Making her way over, Carolina could envision an entire pool full of corpses identical to the girl in the art center, bodies stacked atop each other like cordwood.

  Or like something from a World War II era reel, her mind spoke morbidly. A pit of arms, torsos, and malformed legs. Every head pulled back in a rictus smile of –

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she heard Jeff say as they joined him. He was still on his haunches, looking almost ready to leapfrog off.

  It took Carolina some courage to get closer to the edge, her own light making inroads into the detritus below. First there was a wedge of something yellow, then the jarring silver oblong of a machine-grill, and finally two headlights canted up on an angle but staring up at them. Before long Carolina ascertained she was staring at the derelict remains of a school bus.

  One of the school’s yellow buses sitting in the bottom of the hollow pool.

  ‘I can believe it because I’m looking at it,’ Alyssa said. ‘But how did it get down there?’

  ‘How did anything get where we’ve seen it? Jason replied. ‘Like that church bell on the balcony? If somebody drove the bus into the pool, it would be totaled. Like, a Tonka toy smashed to pieces.’

  Trailing her beam along the bus’s roof, Carolina became aware of a hole in the middle, a perfectly spherical opening festooned with rust. As if someone just poured a barrel of fucking acid on the spot. For a moment the world swam, and she felt her frame sway sluggishly forward. Then she felt Jason’s hand steel her back.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘Somebody help me out here.’

  ‘No, no. I’m fine,’ she said. ‘It’s just … my mind’s trying to reconcile this place as the same one I swam in every day. And I can’t do it. It’s like they’re two separate worlds.’

  Dillion said, ‘Hold that thought. Perhaps it’s time for you to take a seat, Carolina.’

  A second passed where Dillion’s words may have been spoken in another language. Then it dawned on her: she had returned here for a very specific reason.

  She had returned to tell a tale.

  Though Carolina had protested, more candles were set up, and by their light the group sat in a rough circle on the stadium seating. Positioned about halfway up the tiers, the candlelight created a beige womb of warm light that felt like protection, even if it was of a meager sort. Everything outside the light – the unseen glass roof, the dark chasm of the pool itself – was like an overpowering miasma, one that could almost be perceived on an emotional level. And though Carolina had stated coming back was like returning to a different world, the past still felt ever present … like the background static of radio tuned to a midnight frequency.

  While Dillion prepared his camera, Jason passed around the chocolate bars and potato chips. Two-liter containers of Gatorade were also to be found in Dillion’s bag.

  ‘Why don’t we just break out the booze?’ Alyssa suggested.

  Expecting a complaint from Dillion (their director would no doubt want his cast sober), Carolina was surprised to see the man consent when observing they all shared the same expectant look. After breaking the seal and taking a small swig to ascertain it was indeed as the label proclaimed, Jason handed the bottle to Carolina first, a wordless gesture she was perhaps deserving of its effects before anyone else.

  ‘Tastes like a whole bunch of dead ants,’ Jeff said after it was his turn to take a swig. ‘Never had a taste for wine. Now beer – that’s something I could happily bathe in.’ Grimacing, he proffered the bottle to Dillion.

  Already Carolina
could feel the wine’s trajectory through her stomach, a silken fire that clamored for more. The chocolate had felt wonderful, but this felt even better: a twin pillar of relaxant and confidence booster. She licked her lips, about to say something (though she didn’t know what), when Dillion asked the question: ‘Was it a ghost that attacked you that morning, Carolina?’

  Put so bluntly, she could feel an unwelcome degree of self-consciousness returning. Again without saying anything, Jason had passed the bottle back into her hands. She drank.

  ‘First, let’s go back a bit,’ she said. ‘Before the day of the so-called ghost.’

  Four pairs of eyes watched her intently. No one interjected.

  ‘Beginning in the winter of, this would be 1987, I began training in the mornings. I’m not sure if you remember Coach Mannering, or the rumors that had begun circulating about her –’

  ‘That she was a rug-muncher?’ Alyssa asked.

  Carolina ignored her. ‘But she resigned not long after. Before that, I trained five nights a week, but with no coach appointed as Mannering’s replacement I could do what I liked.’

  Dillion said, ‘I tracked her down, believe it or not. She lives in Maine. Never went back to coaching, or teaching. Rumors like that can dog you for life, I suppose.’

  Carolina wanted to say: So does bullying, my dear. Instead she simply nodded.

  ‘It seems a bit of a cliché, for a swim teacher that is, but it happens all the time. And Coach Mannering looked the part. She had muscles, short blonde permed hair, and spent all of her time with younger female students. You’re probably thinking, was she a lesbian? And the truth is I never really thought she wasn’t. You could see it from space. But she never laid a finger on me or any other student.’ Here she shot Alyssa a coarse look. ‘The foul accusations usually begin with the most popular kids at school, and once they do, they spread like wildfire. Poor Coach Mannering never stood a chance.’

  If Alyssa perceived an insult, her stoic face resolved not to show it.

  ‘So you were in between coaches?’ Dillion asked.

  Carolina nodded. ‘I liked getting to school early. Hardly any students compared to those that stuck around at night. And the pool was all mine.’

  ‘This school has always had a … questionable reputation,’ said Jeff. ‘Weren’t you just a little bit scared being in here all by yourself?’

  ‘Are you asking me whether I was ever aware of your unseen world, Jeff?’ Transformed by the light of fluttering candle flame, Jeff’s face resembled a hooded mask. ‘I guess the answer to that would be yes. Nothing I ever saw with my own eyes, mind you. Just a feeling you would sometimes get coming up for air. Like someone was watching you. Every now and then it felt like something was underneath me, ready to drag me down underwater. I remember closing my eyes even though I wore those little goggles, just in case. But mostly I felt safe. I was free, you see. Free from the bullying names and Coach Mannering’s drills.’

  Almost without being aware of it, more wine had made it to her mouth. With each successive sip, her head began to sing in chorus with the warm feeling in her stomach. ‘Until the morning of the 23rd of August, that was. When I was hard at it, one of the coach’s techniques for freestyle involved imagining something behind us … something bad. Chasing us, if you will. Whether it be one of the teachers who were giving us grief, or whether you just wanted to imagine Godzilla himself swimming toward you to increase your speed, it was a method that worked for some and not for others. For me, not usually. But I remember using it on that particular morning. Stroking away, I tried to envision a great black blob of energy on my tail, slowly gaining. A thing that took up at least four lanes and had an appetite for young girls. And my imagination was up to the task, it seemed, because I could see it in my head, like a moving oil slick through the water. Soon afterward I could feel it. Feel its dark energy behind me. Enough so that I had to stop swimming and look around. Of course, when I did look around, treading water and panting, the thing was actually there, as real as all of you sitting before me.’

  It was a narrative she’d dispensed many times, of course. In many different ways. But now lent gravitas by their proximity to the pool. Keeping his camera focused on her face, Dillion turned around and looked at it. So did the others. No one said anything, permission for Carolina to take up the reins of the past once more.

  ‘At first I thought I was seeing things – you’d be surprised what physical exhaustion and chlorine can do to your brain when you’re in the zone. But I could see it underwater, too. And I could smell it. Jeff, you would know the smell of the school well – it’s like the smell of old bananas, teenagers’ sweat, and bubble gum. It was all of those things but amplified beyond belief and getting stronger by the second.’

  Alyssa, who up until now had been holding the captivated expression of somebody brainwashed, screwed up her nose in what was an obvious show of skepticism … perhaps outright disbelief. Jeff reached for the bottle clasped in her hands. Dillion eased his iPhone even closer.

  ‘Though I wanted to turn around and keep swimming, I simply couldn’t. It was paralyzing, seeing such a thing come at you. And make no mistake, it was me its sights were set upon. That feeling was almost as tangible as the sudden smell in the air. Like it had waited years for the opportunity, perhaps even generations. And now that I was close it wasn’t going to be denied.’

  ‘You keep saying it,’ Dillion said. ‘Do you mean this dark cloud or …?’

  ‘The school? It was both. They were one and the same. The school was the cloud and the cloud was the school. Like I said, I was paralyzed, merely treading water on autopilot. Occasionally my head would dip under for just a moment, enough where I could open my eyes again, and the closer it came the more details I could make out.’

  With a slight slur to her speech, Alyssa said, ‘A merman?’

  Though the core of his attention remained fixed on the tale-teller, Dillion deigned Alyssa a protracted glare. He said, ‘You won’t be having any more wine tonight.’

  But Carolina wasn’t about to be slowed now.

  ‘I told the reporters back in the day it was like something from a movie … that sounds trite now, I know. Too convenient. But you have to understand this was before the era of computerized special effects. My imagination simply had no other reference point to catalogue it. It was everything you would expect to see in a horror film, yet at the same time infinitely worse. There were things inside that cloud. Hundreds of things. Like an entire ecosystem of them breaking through the surface layer of the cloud as it came through the water toward me. There were faces in that ecosystem, I think – but they were of such an alien magnitude it was like trying to understand bacteria if you were shrunk to its level and face-to-face with it. When it was close enough I only just manage to keep my eyes open. Then it entered me.’

  Expecting guffaws from Alyssa, Carolina was surprised by the silence. For a while the only sound was the endless trickle of the spume in the pool.

  ‘I’d like to say I blacked out here, or at least had some kind of amnesia concerning the next part, but that wouldn’t be true at all. When offshoots of the cloud entered me, they entered where you would expect … in the same place where Marcy Ribald placed her broom. Up it went, through my system, filling every part, every cavity. At this stage my head was still above the surface, just, and I could see the bulk of the cloud had come to a complete stop. Part of my everyday brain was still conscious, and I remember thinking that whatever it was wasn’t regulated to the water, because I could see those churning faces very clearly above the surface, breaking in waves of ecstasy or agony. And I’ll tell you one other thing: I could feel them inside me, too. Feel them sniffing out my organs and riding the waves of my blood. Not human, I remember thinking. Whatever they were had never been human. But that’s why they were here, you see, inside me; they wanted to understand what it was to be human.’

  More quiet. This of the awed type. Whatever doubts any of them harbored were wayla
id by a simple revelation: Carolina believed these things had happened to her. She was telling the truth as she understood it.

  Dillion cleared his throat. ‘If they weren’t human … what do you think they were?’

  Carolina shrugged. ‘People always wanted the simple explanation – the dark cloud contained the ghosts of days gone by. Or whatever nonsense best suits the linear mind. I can only … Jeff, what word did you use before? I can only postulate what entered me that morning. Something cosmic; something different from things that live here. Something that was around long before the school was ever built. Don’t you see? The school was built around this thing, or on it. In some ways we’re the invaders encroaching on its turf. I felt that, too. Over a hundred years of studying us wasn’t enough. So now, through me, it was going to do something completely different.’

  Throat parched, Carolina lifted up the last dregs of wine from the bottle to her lips and swallowed. Licking them, she said, ‘It was going to use me to see the world.’

  Concerning that particular morning, there wasn’t much else to tell. Not long after her encounter (a thing even worse with this telling), Carolina had succumbed to unconsciousness. Finally acceding to shock or being remedied into further paralysis by the entity she could not say. Only a short time later, a member of the teaching staff had found her floating on her back and drifting aimlessly. After diving in and retrieving her limp body, a greenhorn type of resuscitation had ensued. Though the act had been unnecessary, because Carolina had not ingested any water.

  Only a monster.

  Dillion asked, ‘Do you remember anything at all during this period of unconsciousness?’

  ‘Yes. And in some ways, what I saw during this period was even worse than being chased in the pool. It was like taking a small peek through the eyes of the faces in that cloud … how they saw the world at large. A kind of appetite, but not as we think of it. To them appetite is the most natural of things, an important base emotion. Devour everything and anything. If Providence Place was built around their home, a place where the walls are thin, then what they saw while the school was in full swing was a place where appetite could be indulged to the fullest. So much strange energy concentrated in one place, it was like a smorgasbord. Think about it – all the neuroses that come with puberty, all the creativity and insecurities of the very young. A concentrated cesspool for something that knows only appetite. Time moves at an entirely different level, too. No surprises there. No day or night in Jeff’s unseen world, only an eternally dark moment where they can flit in and out of our lives like spectators.’