by Dave Shelton
His legs are submerged as far as his knees before he grabs hold of a mooring post and brings himself to a stop. So then he’s lying there feeling foolish and pulling himself back up out of the water, and the wet material of his trousers is clinging to his legs, when something brushes against his foot. A fish or some weed, he supposes, just glancing against him, but enough to make him jump.
He scrambles up the bank a little way and turns to look at the water, his arms clutching his wet knees beneath his chin. The clouds of mud he’s stirred up settle, the rippled surface of the water flattens, and everything goes still. And now he’s wet, flustered, and embarrassed, as a couple of older girls from his school pass by, giggling. He runs home and races upstairs to change his clothes before his aunt and uncle can see him.
Later they have dinner and make the usual polite chitchat. His uncle’s day at work was “fine,” his aunt’s was “fine,” Jonah’s day at school was “fine.” He doesn’t even consider telling them about what happened at the river. He’s almost forgotten all about it himself.
Then one day in the following week, it rains during the morning, and when Jonah sets off back home the roads and pavements are still wet. He cuts through the old shopping area where Barker’s, the newsstand, used to be. When he was young, he and his brother would buy sweets there when they were visiting Auntie Jane. There are puddles scattered around the parking lot, and in one corner the paving slabs are cracked and tilted, forming a mini lake of rainwater.
Rather than detour around it, Jonah decides to jump it. He takes a running leap, and as he passes over the puddle he catches sight of his reflection in the water. Only it isn’t him. It’s someone else’s face that he sees there, pale and blank, looking up at him with wide eyes. It’s his brother—his dead brother—staring up at him out of a gray puddle of water in a rundown shopping mall.
Jonah lands badly, falls painfully to his hands and knees, feels his lungs empty. When he gets up, he doesn’t look back at the puddle. He walks away quickly, runs home.
Everyone has had a “fine” day, and his aunt and uncle don’t notice his grazed palms. After they’ve eaten and Jonah has done his homework, they watch a film on television and laugh in all the places where it seems like they ought to.
The next day, Jonah tells his aunt and uncle that he’s feeling ill and can’t go to school. They don’t ask questions, except to check that he’ll be all right left alone all day while they’re at work. There’s a subtle implication that, if needed, one of them will take the day off to be with him. But there’s a much less subtle hint that they’d rather not.
Jonah says he’ll be fine on his own. Says he’ll just read in bed and get some rest, and so they go to work. Then Jonah plays computer games all day, with the sound on headphones, and ignores the noise of the rain against the windows.
A wet weekend passes in a similar fashion. Jonah’s aunt and uncle make suggestions for trips out, but he says he’s happy to stay in “just to be on the safe side,” even though he feels much better, and they’re happy to accept this and do their own thing without him.
Monday is sunny and dry and Jonah declares that he has made a full recovery. School is “fine.” He gets the bus home for a change, even though walking would probably be quicker. He sits on the top deck near the back, playing games on his phone, and misses his stop.
When he gets off at the next one, it’s starting to rain again, even though the forecast on the radio in the morning had said dry all day. It’s one of those sudden showers, the kind that goes from nothing to a downpour in a second. The pavement is instantly awash: one vast puddle churned into chaos by the torrent of rain. Jonah runs homeward, eyes ahead, ignoring his fractured reflection beneath him. The street is almost empty of other pedestrians, though it’s hard to see for sure through the dense curtain of rain.
He turns a corner and comes to a sudden halt. Directly ahead of him there’s a kind of shadow in the falling rain. Only it’s not a shadow—it’s more of an absence. The hard, straight lines of rain are broken, as if hitting something invisible. It’s hard to make out exactly what, but it’s a little shorter than Jonah, and roughly the shape of a boy.
“Joe?” he says, and shivers. He hasn’t spoken his brother’s name since he died, and the taste of it on his lips now is bittersweet. He lifts a hand up slowly. Reaches forward toward the apparition, trembling and expectant.
The kid on the skateboard is a bit younger than Jonah, and going too fast to do anything about it when he rounds the corner and finds himself headed straight toward Jonah’s back. Jonah doesn’t hear him coming, only feels the impact. He’s thrown forward, arms splayed like frantic wings, and lands heavily on the wet paving slabs, adding fresh grazes to his palms. The boy lands on top of him and knocks the wind out of him. He mumbles something that might either be an apology or swearing, and then he’s back on his skateboard and speeding away just as recklessly as before.
When Jonah gets up, there’s no gap in the rain anymore, just a relentless torrent. Stair rods, as his dad used to say. Some of his books have spilled out of his school bag. He should gather them up before they’re ruined, but he’s too distracted. He’s thinking about stair rods and he doesn’t know what he’s feeling.
At home, everything has been “fine” for everyone, except for the weather. Jonah doesn’t feel like trying to laugh at the TV so he goes up early to his room to do homework and read. With headphones on and the music turned up loud, concentrating hard on his book, he barely notices the sound of the rain on the window. He doesn’t hear the knock on his door at all. His uncle appears behind it as it swings open.
“We’re just nipping out. Jenny called and we’re off around to hers for a while. Do you want to come?”
Jenny is a woman a couple of streets away. Jonah is scared of her gigantic dog and her strangely immobile hairstyle. He says he’s happy just to stay in and carry on reading. Uncle John seems perfectly happy with this, too.
They’ve been gone about an hour when the lights go out. Jonah peeps out of the window and sees that the streetlights and the lights in the other houses are still on. He knows there’s some kind of fuse box in the basement—the lights had gone out once before a couple of weeks earlier, and Auntie Jane had gone down to reset the switch.
Jonah uses his phone to light his way safely downstairs, gets a proper flashlight from a drawer in the kitchen, and then opens the door to the basement. He’s only been down there once before, when he first moved in. He’d brought along more stuff than could fit into his room, so some of it had gone down to the basement temporarily.
The stairs down are narrow and creaky and there’s no banister, just a (slightly wobbly) handrail running down the wall, so the other side is open, with the potential for a longish drop if you misstep near the top. It isn’t much of a worry when you can see where you’re going, but somehow in the darkness it seems much more of a danger. Jonah keeps the flashlight trained studiously on the steps beneath his feet and edges down slowly. When he gets to the bottom step, he notices something strange: the pool of light at the end of the flashlight’s beam has ripples in it.
Standing still, he tracks the flashlight over the floor of the basement. It is entirely covered in water. He flicks the flashlight beam up to the back wall. Right near the top there’s a small barred window, opening to the outside at ground level. It’s been broken for years (the result of a mishap with a cricket ball that Joe and Jonah had each claimed was the other’s fault), cracked and holed and letting in torrents of rainwater, directly onto the fuse box.
It takes Jonah a moment to realize what has happened: the river runs through the meadow behind the house; it must have burst its banks, flooding the garden and then leaking into the basement. He points the light around the room, piecing together the full scene from the fragments freed from darkness by its beam. The floor is a shallow sea with islands of all the boxes and junk that are kept down there.
One of those boxes—one of Jonah’s boxes—is full of photo
graphs. He decides that before he phones Auntie Jane’s cell he’ll get the box—full of his past, full of his dead family frozen in life—out of harm’s way. A little more scanning around with the flashlight beam finds the particular box in a far corner.
Jonah steps down from the bottom step and moves toward the box. But when he steps out, the floor isn’t where it ought to be. Though the water can’t be more than a few inches deep, his foot drops ankle-deep beneath the surface, as if going down one more step on the staircase. Thrown off balance, Jonah lurches forward. His other foot goes forward to steady himself—and drops another step down.
But there isn’t another step there. Jonah can see boxes across the room that show with certainty the level of the floor. But his feet are beneath it. He is standing shin-deep in less than an inch of water. It makes no sense at all. But he is puzzled rather than alarmed.
Jonah steadies himself as best he can, wobbling and waving his arms. As he does so, the dancing flashlight flits over something else odd happening. In the center of the floor, the water is moving, bulging up in a way that water can’t do, forming itself into a tiny hill that continues to rise, grow, and shape itself. He steadies the beam of light to watch it, still strangely calm.
In a few seconds, a bizarre effigy stands before him: water in the shape of a boy. The features are unclear—they ripple and change—but he knows it is his brother.
He knows it is Joe.
The watery figure raises a hand slowly, and Jonah raises his own hand to match it. He looks into his brother’s face—his face made of water, which he looks through as much as at. And he feels something, as he did when he saw the reflection in the puddle, and again when he saw the figure in the rain: it had been fear to begin with, but now it’s a sad longing, a slow, long ache of loss.
Then this ghost made of water turns and walks slowly away, and with each step he drops lower in the water, as if the staircase continues on, down below the basement floor.
Jonah follows him, sinking deeper into the water with each pace. As the apparition’s head dips beneath the surface Jonah laughs. A real laugh. Then, without really thinking about it, he holds his empty breath, and steps down and down.
Now the water is over his head. And now there is nothing beneath his feet anymore and he drops slowly down, deeper into the impossible water. He lets go of the flashlight and it sinks away from him, still shining, twirling away into distance and darkness. He feels his hands being held: one by soft, slender fingers; one by a larger, rougher hand.
And he laughs again, and water fills his lungs. Somewhere beneath him the flashlight dies, blinking into nothingness, and Jonah sinks happily into the welcoming dark.
Jack looks around, and stooping Lee isn’t stooping anymore. As he had told his story he had straightened in his chair, his voice had grown stronger, his narration more assured and fluent, as if the story had filled him with new confidence. He even raised his head a little.
If he’s not careful he might even reveal his eyes from beneath that ragged fringe. But now, with the story ended, he notices the attention of the others and shrinks back again, folds up, packs himself away from their gaze.
“So, uh, that was … Like I said, it’s not a very … Uh, yeah, um …”
“I liked it,” says Jack quietly. He doesn’t look over at Lee as he says it, and nor does Lee look back when he replies.
“Uh, thanks. Um, yeah …” And he seems to shrivel up a little more.
Jack can see from their expressions that the others all seem perfectly satisfied by Lee’s story, and his telling of it, but none of them says anything. Perhaps, Jack reasons, that’s just the way Lee prefers it, and he curses himself for having said the little that he did.
“Thank you, Lee,” says Mr. Osterley, and Lee eagerly blows out his candle and pushes his chair away from the table.
With six of the thirteen candles now extinguished, the light from the remaining flames does not extend as far beyond the confines of the table as it did at the start of the evening. The shadows, previously confined to the edges of the room, are creeping in, like gathering clouds.
Those who have told their stories and withdrawn are just gray shapes now, almost featureless. Jack can barely make out the wall beyond Mr. Osterley. He wonders whether he would still be able to make out the door if he turned around. And he knows it’s silly, but he feels the absence of Lee to his left now. With his story told, there are four chairs in a row pushed back around that side now, four candles blown out, four dark figures sitting back in the gloom. It feels like a dark hole has opened up there, and that he’ll need to take care not to fall into it. For all her strangeness, he’s very glad that Amelia is still there on his right, fidgeting away.
The dark gap reminds Jack, too, that time is running out for him to think of something to say when his own turn comes, but for now his mind feels like just another dark gap.
“Perhaps,” says Mr. Osterley, and he pauses for a moment that Jack fills with silent panic, “Ms. Mulligan might tell our next tale this evening?”
Jack hopes that his relief is not too obvious.
Katy Mulligan, with her short, serious haircut and her hard eyes, clasps her hands together in front of her on the tabletop. She’s rather small but sits up very straight, looking determined and businesslike.
“Yes,” she says.
And that, apparently, is all the introduction she intends to give.
Never chase a story that starts in a pub. That was pretty much the first bit of advice that Peter’s boss had ever given him, back when he started out at the Dunstable Gazette. He was very fond of giving advice, that editor, and Peter was fond of ignoring it. But for some reason he’d always taken notice of that one particular warning. At least, he had until now. Because this story, the murder, was the one that had gotten away as far as Peter was concerned.
Peter had joined the Chronicle just after the murder story had come to its end. It had been an enormous story for so small a paper: Local Property Millionaire Murdered in His Own Home. Peter had picked up the gist of it from conversations with his new colleagues, and read through the back issues to fill in the details: the murder weapon (an old-fashioned cut-throat razor put to fatally literal use); the gory details of the crime scene; some background character stuff on both victim and suspect; the arrest of the wife at Inverness airport; the lengthy trial, conviction, and sentencing. It was a once-in-a-lifetime story for a journalist on a local rag, and Peter had missed it by days.
But then, this lunchtime, there had been the man called Brian in the pub. They had fallen to talking at the bar and it had turned out that Brian ran a specialist cleaning company. He had done some work for a real estate agency in the house where the murder had happened.
And he believed the house to be haunted. Normally Peter would have ignored him and moved quickly away, but he had only just been served his hamburger and fries. He wasn’t leaving anytime soon, so he feigned interest and reached for the ketchup.
“Now, don’t go thinking I’m some kind of nut,” said Brian. “I don’t believe in ghosts.” He looked down at a beer coaster on the bar, picked it up. “I like science, me. I like things that can be explained, measured, proved. I don’t believe in fate, I don’t believe in horoscopes, I don’t believe in UFOs, I don’t believe in alternative medicines, and I certainly don’t believe in ghosts.” He picked at one corner of the coaster, separating the top layer of paper from those below, keeping his eyes focused on this small task, as if too embarrassed to look at Peter. “The only spirits I believe in are lined up behind the bar.” He glanced very briefly at Peter’s face, offered up a smile as weak as his joke, then turned his attention back to the coaster, tearing fragments off the corner with nervous, scratching fingers.
“But …?” said Peter, pausing between mouthfuls of burger.
“But there was something in that place.” Another tiny fragment of torn card dropped to the bar. The coaster looked as if it had been nibbled at by mice now.
A moment passed. Peter’s smiling expression did not alter. Finally, Brian seemed to make a decision, looked up into Peter’s eyes, and held his gaze.
“I was in that place three days. It wasn’t just the blood and such that needed cleaning up; the police had been in and out for days and made a right old mess. But I’ve done these kinds of jobs before, and it doesn’t bother me much anymore. But I swear, in that place … It sounds corny, I know, but there was this … presence there. Normally there’s two of us does the work, me and a lad. But the lad’s off sick so I’m doing this one on my own. The whole time I’m there I’m alone. But it doesn’t feel like I’m alone.”
Peter dipped a thoughtful fry into his ketchup. “Easy to imagine stuff when you know something like that’s happened in a place, I would think,” he said.
“Maybe,” said Brian. “But like I say, I’m used to this kind of thing, more or less. Never bothered me before. Odd thing was, it was all the rooms except the one where the murder was.”
“Really?” The next fry halted on its way to Peter’s mouth as he considered this.
“Yeah. All the time I’m working in the main bedroom, where, y’know … all the time I’m in there, it’s fine. But every other room I feel like there’s somebody else there. And it’s not as if it feels like anything threatening or bad or anything, but it’s still creepy. And I can do without creepy, if I’m honest.”
Peter thought Brian probably was honest. But it was all very vague. He’d briefly thought there might be the germ of a story in it, but even with a good dose of his usual enthusiastic embellishment this looked pretty thin.
“And then there was the weird thing with my kit,” said Brian.
“Mm-hmm?” said Peter, most of his attention back with his burger now.
“See, the first day I took everything back out at the end of the day and packed it in my van, ’cause I needed it for another little job somewhere else the next morning. Second day I just left everything where it was at the end of the day: vacuum, carpet cleaner, buckets, cloths, sprays, what have you. Needed it there again the next day, so it made sense. When I get in the next morning, though, it’s all moved.”