Swimmer

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Oh! Tibbles will be delighted. Not.’

  Jim tiredly rubbed his eyes. ‘Tell me something, Mervyn … have you ever felt that you were cursed?’

  Ten

  The evening was still uncomfortably warm when they parked outside Gabriel Dragonard’s single-story house at the more expensive end of Lincoln Boulevard. Laura was wearing a skimpy pink top and a white mini-skirt, and Washington was sporting a pair of wrap-around sunglasses with yellow mirror lenses, so that he looked ineffably cool.

  The house looked like an illustration from a Grimm’s fairy tale, with leaded windows and a bright red clay-tiled roof and bougainvillaea climbing all around the verandah. The lawn was almost poisonously green and looked as if it had been clipped with nail scissors.

  There was hardly any breeze at all, and seagulls circled silently overhead as if they were flying through syrup. Jim hadn’t called Susan to tell her what he intended to do. He had the feeling that she would be badly upset if she knew that he had consulted another sensitive – no matter how dangerous it might be for her to try to contact the Swimmer, and no matter how adamant Michael had been that she shouldn’t try. After all, she had found Jim, rather than the other way around, so she must have felt the urge to help him from the moment they had first met.

  ‘Looks like the Wicked Witch of the West lives here,’ Washington remarked as they climbed out of the car. Outside the front door hung a bronze bell-pull with the face of a serene young woman on it, wearing a hood. Her eyes were closed as if she were sleeping, or dead; and for some reason Jim found her unnervingly creepy. He tugged her, and they heard a long and complicated carillon of bells.

  ‘See what your friend means about the dude’s dubious taste.’

  It was over a minute before the door opened and a thin bespectacled man appeared. He had a wild overgrown bush of brambly gray hair and three days’ growth of prickly white stubble, so that he looked more like a species of wild animal than a man. He was wearing an emerald-green shirt, with a sand-colored linen vest and scrumpled linen pants to match, emerald-green socks, and sandals.

  ‘Jim Rook is it?’

  ‘That’s right. Pleased to know you. This is Laura and this is Washington.’

  ‘Come right in. You’ve, ah, brought the essential?’

  Jim handed Gabriel Dragonard a plain white envelope. ‘I’ve brought a picture of Jane Tullett, too.’

  ‘Good,’ said Gabriel, holding the photograph at arm’s length and peering at it long-sightedly. ‘Wrong glasses, as usual. Why don’t you follow me?’ He led them through a tiled hallway with rough-plastered walls and into a large living-room, also tiled, but painted absolutely white, with white hessian-covered furniture and white lilies in tall white vases. At one end of this room was a large circular table, also white, with white chairs and white cushions.

  ‘Pretty white in here,’ said Washington. He walked appreciatively around the room, and then went across to the large sliding doors at the far end, which overlooked a yard filled with terracotta flowerpots, and a swimming pool.

  Gabriel looked at his wristwatch. ‘It’s nearly nine. We should start as soon as possible. I’m not going to attempt to materialize the spirit herself … I don’t think that’s necessary yet. I’m simply going to try to communicate with her by using a little Chinese trick called smoke talking. All the same, I’ve taken the precaution of locking the doors to the back yard, just in case her spirit does decide to pay us a visit. We don’t want her getting access to the water in the pool, and I’ve locked the kitchen and the bathroom, too.’

  ‘Spirits can pass through doors, can’t they?’ said Laura.

  ‘Of course. But the only time we need to be concerned about this spirit is when it takes on physical shape. Spirits can pass through doors and walls, but a figure made out of several gallons of water can’t. In any case, I’m probably being over-careful, but you never know with these vengeful presences. Devious beggars, some of them.’

  He walked around the table, drawing out a chair for each of them. Then he sat down himself, and laid his hands flat on the glossy white surface. ‘The reason this room is totally white is because it offers the spirits no dark corners to hide themselves in. It’s also symbolic of complete spiritual purity, and truth. Spirits can be terrible liars, don’t you know. Worst of all, they lie to themselves. They delude themselves into believing that, if it wasn’t for the negligence of other people, they would still be alive. Like most people, they find it very difficult to accept responsibility for their own misfortune. It was always somebody else’s fault that they died, and somebody else must suffer for it.’

  He pulled out a shallow drawer underneath the table, and produced a sheet of white paper and a white ceramic saucer. With a large shiny pair of scissors he cut the paper in half, and wrote the name Jane Tullett on one of the pieces in purple ink. He folded it into a triangular pyramid, which he carefully placed in the center of the saucer. ‘Three sides, each with three angles. Three threes are nine.’

  Washington gave Jim a frown of bewilderment, but Jim lifted his finger to his lips to advise him to stay quiet.

  Gabriel took a match out of a plain white box and lit it. He held it up for a moment, so that its flame was reflected in his glasses. Then he said, ‘This is the fire that will release your name, Jane Tullett. This is the message that will bring you back to us.’ He lit the paper pyramid; it flared up instantly, and vanished into a little heap of soft white ash.

  A faint puff of smoke rose over the table and hovered there, twisting and curling. Gabriel said, ‘I am calling on Jane Tullett to come across. I am calling on Jane Tullett to step out of the shadows. I want to see her face and hear her voice.’

  Laura was biting her lip and looking disturbed; but Jim could see that Washington was completely skeptical. He was slowly shaking his head from side to side as if he couldn’t believe that he had agreed to come here and witness all this mumbo-jumbo.

  ‘I am calling on Jane Tullett to leave the world of darkness and walk out into the light. I command you, Jane Tullett. You, the dead, have to answer to the living for your acts of revenge. You have to speak to me, because I command you.’

  Gabriel’s voice became softer and quieter, until it sounded like tissue paper rustling. At the same time the wisp of smoke over the top of the table began to coil itself into an elaborate knot, weaving in and out of itself and forming strange, constantly changing shapes.

  ‘Can you hear me, Jane Tullett?’ Gabriel whispered. ‘There’s no place for you to hide. You drowned in the pool and the water will never release you unless you allow me to help you.’

  Gabriel was speaking so quietly now that Jim couldn’t hear him at all, only the occasional clicking of his lips. Washington and Laura were leaning forward, trying to catch what he was saying. But suddenly, in a deafening roar, with spit flying out of his mouth, he shouted out, ‘Open up the door of death, Jane Tullett! Step out where we can see you!’

  Washington actually jumped, and clapped his hand over his heart. ‘Man, you almost made me have a accident then.’

  But right in front of them, the wisp of smoke gradually formed itself into the shape of a girl’s face … a face that reminded Jim of the bronze doorknocker, sleeping or dead. Her eyes were closed and her hair blew around her forehead as if she were standing in the wind.

  Jim stared at the face in disbelief. It was Jane Tullett, no question about it. He recognized her with a deeply unpleasant thrill of shock, like accidentally touching a bare electric wire. She looked exactly as she had on the morning when she had been lifted out of the swimming pool at West Grove College, her eyes closed and her lips slightly parted. The swimming coach had broken her breastbone trying to revive her – Jim had forgotten that, but now he remembered the way it had cracked as vividly as if it had just happened.

  Gabriel looked at Jim and said, ‘Is this the Jane Tullett you’re looking for?’

  Jim swallowed and nodded. Laura was staring at the smoky face with her hand claspe
d over her mouth, and Washington was shaking his head again, but not in mockery.

  ‘Jane Tullett, why can’t you rest?’ asked Gabriel. ‘Why are you trying to hurt those people who tried to save you?’

  The smoky head didn’t reply, but drifted and shuddered in the wind that none of the living people in the room could feel.

  ‘Jane,’ said Jim, his voice hoarse. ‘This is Jim Rook here. Do you remember me? I was your teacher in Special Class II.’

  The head opened her lips a little wider, as if it wanted to say something, but still no sound came out.

  ‘Jane … you drowned Jennie Bauer’s little boy. You drowned Dennis Pease. You nearly managed to drown my friend Mervyn. I don’t understand why you want to hurt us all so much, Jane. We did everything we could to try and save you that day. Your death was an accident, believe me. Nobody grieved for you more than your friends at West Grove, and they still grieve for you, even today. We loved you then, Jane, and we love you now.’

  The head stirred, and partially dissolved, so that it looked as if Jane’s face were melting.

  ‘Jane!’ snapped Gabriel. ‘Are you listening to me, Jane? I command you to answer us! If you don’t help us, then by God I’m going to exorcize your spirit if it takes the rest of my life!’

  The head took on a slightly more definite form, so that Jim could clearly see the outline of Jane’s oval face and her long, straight nose.

  ‘… Can’t …’ she breathed. Her voice was no louder than a net curtain blowing against a summer window.

  ‘Can’t?’ Gabriel insisted. ‘Can’t what? Can’t exorcize you? I’ll have a damn good try.’

  ‘… Can’t rest … not ever …’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong. You can rest. Your mortal existence is over, Jane. It ended ten years ago when you drowned. All you need to do now is sleep, and dream, for ever.’

  ‘… Can’t sleep …’ said the soft, blurry voice.

  ‘You can, Jane. Forget the life you had before you drowned. It’s nothing but a memory now. It’s all finished, for ever. You can’t go on taking revenge on your friends, or on Jim here, and the people he cares about. They weren’t responsible for what happened to you. It’s all over, Jane, accept it.’

  ‘I ain’t seeing this,’ said Washington. ‘I ain’t seeing this and I definitely ain’t not hearing it, neither.’

  ‘Ssh,’ Laura told him, taking hold of his hand. ‘This girl’s so sad.’

  ‘… All have to pay …’ said the head. ‘… Everybody … they all have to pay …’

  ‘But why now, Jane?’ Jim asked her. ‘Why does everybody have to pay now?’

  The smoke began to waver again. Gabriel’s hands were trembling and it was clear that he was having to use all his strength to keep the image intact. ‘I can’t hold this much longer,’ he said. ‘She might be nothing but a young girl, but she’s resisting me with so much strength.’

  ‘Jane, listen to me!’ Jim insisted. ‘I have to know why you’re drowning all of these people! I have to know what you want! Just tell me what it is you’re looking for!’

  The smoky head said nothing for ten drawn-out seconds. Then she appeared to turn toward Jim, and open her eyes. Jim sat back in his chair, seriously alarmed for the first time since this encounter had begun. Her eyes were nothing but dark hollows, yet they gave her an expression of terrifying malice.

  ‘What happened in the pool that day?’ she asked him, and her voice gave him a slow, crawling sensation down his back like a hairy spider. ‘Don’t ask me what I’m looking for. Ask yourself what you should be looking for. What really happened in the pool that day?’

  ‘You dived in, Jane. You hit your head. There were too many people in the pool and nobody noticed you. That’s all. It was tragic, but it was an accident.’

  Without saying anything more, the smoky head gradually disentangled itself and drifted away across the room. In a few seconds it had vanished altogether. Gabriel took off his glasses and his hands were trembling. ‘That – without any question at all – was the most difficult transmigratory confrontation I have ever done in my life. Ever.’

  Laura said, ‘What do you think she meant, when she asked you what really happened in the pool that day?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Jim. ‘I personally don’t remember seeing anything out of the ordinary, and the coroner was satisfied that it was accidental death.’

  Gabriel stood up, dragged a grubby handkerchief out of his pocket and loudly blew his nose. ‘As I said before, spirits are very good at deluding themselves about the way they died … especially if they were the victims of their own carelessness. Auto-wreck victims, they’re the worst. “It wasn’t me! The other guy wasn’t looking where he was going!”’

  ‘What are we going to do now, Mr Rook?’ asked Washington. ‘It don’t look like the Swimmer’s going to stop drowning people, does it?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. I think the next step is to try to find out if anything unusual happened on the day that Jane drowned, although I’m not at all sure how we’re going to be able to do that.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to Washington, Mr Rook?’ asked Laura.

  ‘I can delay it for a couple of days. But I have to report for duty at the Department of Education on Monday morning, eight sharp.’

  Gabriel said, ‘I could use a drink … anybody want to join me?’

  ‘I’ll have a diet Coke if that’s okay,’ said Laura.

  ‘A beer would be good,’ said Jim.

  At that second, however, Jim heard an extraordinary noise. It was a deep, furious rushing, as if a hurricane had risen out of nowhere at all. The whole house began to quiver, and a tall vase of white lilies toppled over sideways and broke.

  ‘Earthquake?’ frowned Gabriel.

  ‘This doesn’t feel like an earthquake,’ said Jim.

  ‘Hope it’s not a mudslide,’ put in Washington.

  ‘Mudslide? We haven’t had rain in over two months.’

  Jim looked out through the sliding windows into the back yard. It was almost dark now, but he could see the yuccas thrashing up and down like frenzied dancers; and there was a scattering of dried leaves blown against the glass. But as he approached the window more closely, his hand shading his eyes, he suddenly realized that the rushing sound wasn’t the wind, and it wasn’t an earthquake either.

  There was something glistening and dark in the yard. Something huge. All of the water in the swimming pool was rearing up into an immense tidal wave. It was crashing across the loggia toward them, thousands of gallons of seething water, as fast as an ocean liner. Jim didn’t even have time to shout out a comprehensible warning before the wave struck the windows with devastating force, smashing them into a million glittering fragments, and ripping away the frames.

  The whole living-room was filled with surging, foaming water. It swept from one end to the other, lifting Jim clear off his feet, and overturning the table and chairs. He saw Laura just before he went under, her eyes wide with panic, but he couldn’t see Washington or Gabriel. The next thing he knew, he was under the surface, tumbling helplessly across the carpet and colliding with the coffee table. He could hear distorted shouts and booming echoes, and he saw showers of crackling sparks as the water shorted out the electric plugs.

  He was whirled from one end of the living-room to the other, almost into the hallway. He managed to seize the top of the doorframe to steady himself, and it was then that Laura came past him, gasping and paddling and gagging for air. He managed to catch the strap of her suntop and pull her behind the door, where the current wasn’t so fierce.

  ‘Where’s Washington?’ he shouted.

  ‘I don’t know! I don’t know! What’s happened? What’s all this water?’

  ‘The pool! Hold on tight! Don’t let yourself get dragged under!’

  The water in the living-room was almost nine feet deep, and it was churning around and around in a violent whirlpool. Jim could reach up with one hand and actually touch the ceiling,
and the water showed no sign of going down.

  ‘Stay here! I have to find Washington!’

  ‘Don’t leave me, please!’

  ‘I have to!’

  Jim took a huge breath and dived down under the water. In the racing whirlpool, everything was weightless: chairs, lamps, books, ornaments. He saw a dark shape on the far side of the room and he swam toward it, even though the water kept rolling him over sideways and forcing him violently toward the walls.

  He managed to swim up to an overturned sofa and climb on to it, kicking himself up to the ceiling for more air. Above the surface, the noise in the living-room was thunderous, and it looked as if even more waves were gushing into the broken windows from the pool. Jim took another breath and went back down.

  At first he couldn’t see Washington anywhere, and he was afraid that the current had whirled him back around the room. But then he saw a leg kicking behind the immense wide-screen television, which had been slewed around and into the corner. He swam nearer and heaved the television aside, and there was Washington, with the television cable twisted around his ankle, struggling to get himself free. Jim tried to unwind it, but it was tied so tightly that his fingers couldn’t get a grip and he was unable to budge it. Washington grabbed wildly at his sleeves. Bubbles came flooding out of his mouth and Jim heard him let out a muffled cry of desperation. He tugged at the cable again and again but he still couldn’t work it free.

  He wrenched Washington’s hands away from his sleeves and propelled himself off to one side, kicking against the wall to give himself more momentum. He could see Washington staring at him wide-eyed in panic, but there was nothing else he could do. He swam toward the side of the room where he had last seen Gabriel’s table overturned, and there it was, lying on its side. He groped all the way around it until he found the drawer, and tugged it open. Sheets of paper were dragged out into the whirling water, as well as pencils and envelopes. But Jim saw the fish-like gleam of Gabriel’s scissors and that was all that he wanted. He picked them up, dropped them, picked them up again, and half stumbled and half swam back to Washington against a current that battered him even harder than it had before.