Creatures of the Pool

by Ramsey Campbell

  “I can’t speak for anyone else,” the American complains, “but I’ve no idea what all this is about.”

  “Gav will fill you in,” my father says and rides ahead.

  James Maybrick was a cotton broker who often stayed in London with one of his brothers. Six months after Jack the Ripper’s last recorded crime, Maybrick died of arsenic poisoning in the riverside mansion into which he’d moved with his wife and children the previous year. Just over a century later, a Liverpool man produced a diary that was signed Jack the Ripper. Numerous references in the diary lead the reader to conclude that it was written by James Maybrick.

  I’ve barely finished relating this when the woman and her companion start to disagree about the authenticity of the item. The man who took it to a London literary agent said he’d had it from a friend who wouldn’t tell him where it came from and who’d died, you might think conveniently, the previous year. Yes, but experts have tested the paper and confirm that it’s a real Victorian journal. Fair enough, but why are nearly fifty pages missing at the front? Maybe they contained things that someone didn’t want the rest of us to read. Not so likely considering what was left in, and mightn’t the writer have needed a Victorian journal to convince the experts and just cut out pages that were already used? He made it look as if they were written by the same person, because the diary starts in the middle of an entry, but it’s pretty convenient to have Whitechapel on the first page to explain why he killed women there. The experts say the ink is the kind Maybrick might have used, and you can’t buy it any more. Maybe, but they don’t say the writer made a mistake about Michael Maybrick. It’s full of verses like the ones the Ripper sent the police, and the writer says he’s as good at poems as his brother Michael. Only Michael never wrote any. He was well known as a composer and set verses to music. For James Maybrick not to know this is as likely as that Sir Arthur Sullivan’s brother would believe Sullivan wrote the words of The Mikado when Gilbert did.

  By now we’re abreast of the offices that have occupied Exchange Station since the railway went underground along a new route. My father is still playing outrider, as if he’s looking for danger ahead, and the woman turns to me. “What do you think?”

  I think the diary reads like the work of someone trying to sound like the Ripper of the letters that have been public for many years—the work of a writer dreaming of publication. The narrator keeps forgetting how sophisticated or otherwise his language is meant to be, and addressing not just himself but the reader. In the last entry he writes “I place this now in a place were it shall be found” but is compelled to add several sentences before signing himself “Yours truly Jack the Ripper.” How artificial is all that? Later the man who made the diary public signed an affidavit that it was forged and then denied it was, supposedly because someone had scared him into keeping the legend alive. I don’t want to undermine my tour, and so I say “I think there are arguments on both sides.”

  This satisfies neither the woman nor her companion. As we overtake my father the man asks him “Do you think the diary’s real?”

  “We’ll never know. That’s how legends work. It’s another tale like Liverpool’s full of. You should wonder who dreams them all up.”

  A drain beside the kerb emits a gurgle that could be mistaken for mirth as I lead the way to Exchange Street East, which is almost opposite the station. Maybrick’s office used to be in Knowsley Buildings, a gloomy Victorian hulk close to the far end, now the site of modern offices. A security man behind a desk in the lobby gives me a resigned look of recognition. As I direct the tour across the side street to a stubby alley between two Victorian office blocks, my father pedals ahead.

  The alley opens into Exchange Flags, a wide square enclosed on three sides by offices and on the fourth by the back of the town hall. The square is dominated by a central group of black statues, spotlit from high on the white facades and radiating pale shadows like stains seeping up through the flagstones. In Maybrick’s day the square was known as the Change. Cotton dealers conducted their trading on it, and I invite my audience to imagine Maybrick in the midst of a multitude of shouting men crowned with bowlers or, like him, top hats. What might he have been plotting while he fought to make a profit? Was he unsuccessful because his mind was deep in its own dark, making plans unsuspected by his rivals? Was the greatest clamour around him in the Change or inside his head?

  Recounting all this feels like continuing someone else’s dream. My father has cycled through the shadows around the statues before halting to listen to me. In a moment I’m aware of a surreptitious movement above and behind him. The nearest statue is betraying signs of life. Its blind eyes, so black they might never have seen the sun, have started to water.

  As a trickle of liquid escapes from the side of its mouth I hear a whisper almost underfoot, and the flagstones break out in a black rash. I’m distracted by thoughts of the plague—of the fear the townsfolk had that it would rise out of the earth however deep its victims were buried—until two people jerk open their umbrellas and the rain begins to tap on my scalp as though it’s impatient to waken my mind. My father is already cycling across the square, calling “Here’s a bit of shelter.”

  It’s a passage one storey high that leads through an office block to Chapel Street, the continuation of Tithebarn Street down towards the river. It only just shelters the tour as we huddle in the middle while the July downpour intensifies, veiling both ends of the passage with translucent bead curtains that swing inwards to find us. “Seems like you should provide umbrellas,” the American says to me.

  The leaping of rain in the square and in the equally deserted streets has begun to subside. Is it worth leading the way past the cellars where the Allies had their local headquarters, close to Maybrick’s office? Apparently the pressure of monitoring Japanese and German communications made some of the personnel imagine they heard voices in the earth beyond the walls. As the shrill hiss that encloses the passage diminishes to a whisper, my father says “Hands up whoever’s voting to go to a pub.”

  In one way I’m glad of the rain, because I’ve just realised that I omitted part of the tour. From St George’s Hall we should have turned along Lime Street to the Royal Mail sorting offices, where builders digging the foundations unearthed coffins lined with lead. The detour to the library must have driven the route out of my mind, but I feel as if I’ve made almost mindlessly for the river. Before I can own up, the Ripper fan says “How about the Slaughterhouse?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t drink,” says the American.

  This earns him a chorus of sympathy, ironic or otherwise, and I see my father readying a remark. I’m not swift enough to head him off from drawling “Ain’t a man ever laughed at the Milkshake Kid and lived.”

  The debunker of the diary peers out at the square, in which just the odd raindrop twitches on the flagstones, and tells his companion “Maybe we’re best going for the train.”

  As they turn away I promise anyone who’d like to know “You can join another of my tours free when it’s not raining.”

  “Tell us when that’s going to be,” says the woman.

  True enough, the city seems to have acquired a monsoon season. “Remember I do the High Rip Trip as well,” I say, “and during the day I’m Pool of Life Tours.”

  The party disperses into the square, past the statues that appear to be dreaming of flexing their watery muscles. I’m disconcerted to realise that although my head count outside the library and since then was correct, I’ve kept including my father. Presumably someone stayed in the library, and I wonder if it was the unidentifiable informant who knew more than me about Frog Lane. The American stays with me, and I’m afraid my father may find more opportunities for teasing. He cycles past the stealthily restless statues and the monumentally silent Town Hall, however, and I follow, alert for bits of yesteryear that may be to my companion’s taste. I can’t show him the sanctuary stone in Castle Street, where it indicates one limit of the oldest market, because
it’s hidden by a limousine double-parked alongside a cash dispenser in a classical facade. There’s no trace of the enormous hand that used to be erected on market days, supposedly symbolising or appealing to some element of the Pool. I point out the stone figures nesting high on the Victorian frontages, mermaids and mermen and serpentine monsters that might almost be dreams that have risen from the banks and restaurants at street level. I summarise the history of Derby Square at the end of the street, where my father is riding around a giant statue of Victoria under a dome that drips like an umbrella. The monument is where the tour begins and ends. Part of the Castle of Lyverpull occupied the site of the square, and later St George’s Church did, a reference my father elaborates upon. “There used to be graves under the church,” he says, “only the coffins came up through the floor. Seems like the Pool got into them even though it was filled in. The town covered up the graves so fast hardly anyone saw what was in them.”

  “I should hope so.” Having paused to emphasise his disapproval, the American says “May I ask who’s supposed to be running this tour?”

  “I’d tell you who’s not,” my father retorts, “if I knew your name.”

  The American gives him a long look and me a longer one. “I’ll be calling you,” he informs me and marches down James Street towards the giant birds perched on the Liver Building to survey the river.

  My father widens his mouth in a grimace at the comment, though presumably the call will be about a free tour. Rain is pooling at the foot of the steps to the monument, and I wonder if that was how the church floor looked as the coffins prepared to appear. “Come back to my flat,” I say, “and we’ll have a talk.”

  “You want to think about selling while all the money’s coming up from London. Make yourself a profit and buy somewhere bigger further out.”

  Is he regretting the deal he made on my behalf with a friend on the council when Liverpool offices converted into flats were both rare and cheap? “You haven’t told me what was so important at the library,” I point out.

  “I’ll show you.” His eyes flicker as if the streetlamps are guttering with age. “Don’t worry,” he says. “Not here.”

  He’s glancing about at the hotels and offices and sternly concrete law courts that surround the square. The streets are deserted except for a possibly homeless person in the shadow of a doorway opposite James Street Station. Though his shapeless clothes are so sodden they’re glistening, he seems too drunk or too resigned to his lot to move out of the way of a persistent drip that runs under the lintel. Perhaps his battered umbrella isn’t worth raising; half the crook of the handle is gone, and spokes protrude through the torn canvas. Even if he’s watching us, that’s no reason for my father to pedal skittishly forward. “When are you coming to see us?” he urges. “Gillian was asking. Everything I’ve got is at the house.”

  I should visit my parents more often, and I tell him so. “Maybe you can help me with something else now. Atrocities in Frog Lane, do they ring a bell?”

  His head jerks as if he’s heard one tolling through the oldest streets. Perhaps he’s reacting to the first drops of an imminent downpour, but he looks anxious not to be overheard, which isn’t remotely like him. “I’ll show you everything I’ve found,” he says, “when you come to us.”

  “Don’t you want to shelter at the flat till this goes off?”

  “Who says it will? I’ve got to get rid of this.” I gather that he means his body when he calls out “Getting too bloated. I feel like the old frame’s ready to let me down. The quack’s got me on so many pills, if I threw up I could open a pharmacy.” He leaves me with this flash of his usual humour, and I watch his admittedly plump form dwindle towards the sanctuary stone, which is hidden by water now. The figure in the doorway opposite the station lifts its wet blurred face to the drip. As I run homewards along Castle Street while my father vanishes across Exchange Flags, I feel as if I’m alone in needing protection from the renewed deluge.

  Chapter Three

  IN TRIDENT STREET

  The merman carved above the door to the apartments is spilling rain from his cornucopia. Whatever he originally bestowed must have been eroded long before the offices were transformed into homes. Despite his age he has retained his scales and most of his upraised tail, but his face is little more than a grey pockmarked hollow. Only the eyes remain, and they’re large and blind, as if he’s dreaming of a new face or something even less imaginable. Although it seems unlikely that I could be wetter, I dodge the jagged stream from the stone horn as I twist my key in the lock dwarfed by the imposing door.

  The lobby sports a massive old black desk adorned with a pen in a well, together with an inkpot and a blotter and a wind-up telephone. Perhaps all this was left as a reminder of the building’s origins. The desk faces the white discreetly arched corridor that divides the pair of ground-floor apartments, each of which boasts a door impressive enough for any breed of official. Behind the desk a door leads to the basement, where I hear a muffled throaty sound that must be the exhaust of a vehicle in the car park. As I make my soggy way up the marble stairs, which are a little wider than the thick carpet, I overhear activity on the middle floor. In one apartment rats clatter over bare boards, or rather someone is frenetically typing, while across the corridor there’s the hollow downpour of a shower. In the rooms opposite mine on the top floor my bearded neighbour—a cellist with the Philharmonic—is saying “Don’t be so wet” at such a volume that I could take it personally. I unlock my door, and then I hesitate, gripping the handful of brass doorknob. By the sound of it, a considerable amount of rain has found its way into my flat.

  Somebody has. The corridor light is on, and all the doors I closed on my way out are wide open, displaying the no longer untidy bedroom, the bathroom where the mirror has grown opaque, the toilet keeping itself to itself, the spare room that’s several kinds of a library besides a workroom, and ahead the largest room—a kitchen and dining area for half its space, leaving the rest for leisure. I ease the door shut behind me and pace towards the bathroom, where the sound of water is.

  A figure is just distinguishable in the mirror. Beneath the patina of steam its nakedness seems mysterious, close to a dream. I don’t need to dream about Lucinda, because another few paces bring me the sight of her and all the details the mirror omitted: her hair towelled wild as the sprite’s her face resembles, her long slim limbs, the brown mole that barely flaws the underside of her left breast, her trim triangular blonde bush. Her pink lips grow full of a smile, and she says “I thought we might be glad of a bath.”

  “I didn’t think you were that dirty.”

  “Later,” she says, and more maternally “Let’s get all those off before you have to take to your bed.”

  This can’t help being erotic, but as she gives me a hand at undressing she rewards the effect with no more than a brief promissory squeeze. The result begins to subside as I realise she has erected a rack in the spare room with her clothes draped over it and space for mine. “We’d better move that,” I say. “We don’t want damp getting into the computer.”

  “Stupid girl,” Lucinda says. “The blonder the dumber. I shouldn’t have left this door open either.”

  “Never mind,” I say, though the nearest of the framed photographs of old Liverpool along the corridor have acquired a mist that adds to their nostalgia. “Let’s shift the rack.”

  She turns off the bath, which isolates a vigorous bubbling of water in the kitchen—the percolator. Once we’ve frogmarched the rack into the toilet, I arrange my drenched garments while Lucinda carries mugs of coffee to the bathroom. We soap each other in the intimately cramped bath, but she’s visibly preoccupied. As I sponge her shoulders she murmurs “Your father doesn’t like me, does he?”

  “I’m sure he does or he’d have said.”

  “Why did he want to know where I live?”

  “Don’t worry, he won’t be planning to stalk you. He’s been a bit odder than usual recently, but he’s as harm
less as I am.”

  “I hope that’s entirely.” The glint fades from her greenish eyes as she says “I still don’t understand why he would ask.”

  “Maybe he was trying to find out if you’re living here.”

  “You know I like having my own place now I’ve got one.”

  “I wasn’t trying to move you in.” Unless you want to, I refrain from adding, since I know she values her independence after having lived most of her life with her parents in Tuebrook, even her university years. Instead I say “So what happened before I arrived?”

  “Just what I said. He wouldn’t be told we didn’t have something.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell me what it was either? I thought you were all about providing information.”

  She lets go of my shoulders and hides her hands under the foam. “I’m sorry if you think that’s all there is to me.”

  “You know I don’t.” I trace her delicate spine with a finger and then lift her face by its chin. “You’re beautiful and funny and articulate and erudite and I can’t count the other things I don’t even know about yet. And I’m very lucky to have you in my bath.” Having roused her smile, I risk adding “And you are a mine of information too, you know.”

  She releases a barely audible sigh, and I feel a hint of it on my face. “It wasn’t even published. I did check. We used to have a book by the same author but it seems to have walked.”

  “Didn’t you say there wasn’t a space on the shelf? If it never existed, how could there have been?”

  “Your father said we’d brought it for him from the manuscript archives. He kept insisting he’d copied some of it.”

  “Did he say who’d brought it?”

  Lucinda stands up and takes hold of the showerhead. Foam streams between her breasts and glitters in her navel like a jewel from the sea and lends a lacy pattern to her bush. “Me,” she says.

  I have no answer to this, especially while she’s fixing my gaze with hers as she stands above me like an apparition risen from the waves, brandishing the shower in lieu of a trident. “Maybe he dreamed it,” she says.