Creatures of the Pool

by Ramsey Campbell

  I shove the chair backwards so fast that it ends up in the hall. The waltz continues tinkling as I poke the button of the intercom, to be told “Police.”

  The voice is all too familiar, even if I don’t know which name to give it. I hold down the button to admit the caller and am heading back to silence the waltz when there’s a knock or at least a thump at the door. The fist sounds not just large but unexpectedly soft, and he must have pretty well leapt upstairs. I open the door to see the policeman with the dented nose—Maddock, if I’m not mistaken. His face does look damp, but there’s no other evidence of his exertions unless I count his scowl. In a bid to lighten the mood I remark “On your own today?”

  “He went to the bog.”

  I suspect they feel entitled to use whichever toilet is convenient, and I’m glad his partner didn’t choose mine. As I shut the door behind us he says “Got visitors?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Don’t want anybody wet, is that it?”

  It takes me an uneasy moment to recall the bag of umbrellas beside me. “They’re for my tours,” I tell him.

  “Having a singsong?”

  Perhaps I’m supposed to acknowledge his attempts at jokes, but the shrill piano is picking my thoughts to bits. “Just the computer,” I say and make for it. Before I can quell the waltz he comes into rather too much of my workroom. “Let’s have a look,” he says as I grab the mouse.

  I feel suspect for stepping back and furious as a result. He flattens one large leathery hand on the desk and lowers his head, swelling the ridged stump of his neck. “Research for your job, is it?” he says and begins to sing to the accompaniment. “The mermaids down below…”

  His singing voice is a sepulchral croak. I remember Lucinda murmuring the lullaby, and find I’m reluctant to learn what name Maddock might substitute for Jack. Of course that’s absurd to the point of grotesqueness, but I cut off the music by closing the page. “Anyway, that isn’t why you’re here.”

  As he steps into the corridor a bathroom tap delivers a gout of water that it must have been storing up. He frowns along the corridor before heading for the main room. “He’s not, is he?”

  “Who?” I have to ask, and “What?”

  “Here.” With as little patience Maddock adds “Your old man’s not come back.”

  “If he had I wouldn’t have called you.”

  “Could have since. This looks like his mess.”

  I take a deep breath that keeps in quite a few words and say “Would you mind showing a little more respect for my family?”

  He turns among the cartons to stare at me. “We’ll be doing our job. Anyone complaining?”

  “Not without a reason.” I cross the room and sit in a chair to demonstrate whose home this is—whose castle. I won’t have it invaded by threats that can’t even own up to their nature. “Be careful there,” I tell him.

  He takes a hefty step towards me, and I wonder how much he and his partner are creatures of the night, used to dealing with the kind of violence that takes place after dark and with the breed of people responsible. It seems I’m less courageous than I would like to dream. As my forehead begins to feel like an omen of an injury I realise how disinclined the authorities will be to take my word against the one of even this policeman. “Would you want anyone to talk about your family like that?” I try asking.

  “What are you saying about my family?”

  “Nothing. That’s what I said.”

  “Don’t be fucking clever. You’ve got no audience now. What are you thinking about them?”

  “Still nothing. I don’t know the first thing about them. All I—”

  “I’ll tell you the first thing,” he says, and a grimace that may conceal some kind of humour widens his mouth. “They lived beneath you.”

  Does he mean socially? His hostility suggests it. The safest response I can find is “Who?”

  “Weren’t you listening? The first ones. The sort you and your old man are supposed to be interested in.”

  “Then I am if you want me to be,” I say in the hope of placating Maddock. “Tell me about them.”

  “Like I say, they lived down below.”

  It isn’t just the echo of the song that disconcerts me. “Where?”

  “Not in your basement. That’d be a laugh,” Maddock says without demonstrating what kind. “Some cellar round here, though.”

  “How long ago are we talking about?”

  “When the old bitch was on the throne who didn’t want to know what women had to do to feed their kids.”

  I hope his fury is directed at the past, not at me. “Victoria,” I risk saying.

  “That’s the twat. Long as they stayed underground the city pretended they didn’t exist. That’s except for the sods that used them, like your mate Maybrick.”

  “He’s not my anything.” I’m suspicious enough to add “What makes you say he is?”

  “You were looking at stuff about him and his brother.”

  “You’re saying James went to, to people like your ancestor.”

  “That’s the tale my cousin got. Know what I reckon is the worst?”

  I’m by no means sure I want to, but there seems no way to avoid saying “I don’t.”

  “They made them leave the lights off.”

  “Out of hypocrisy, you mean? I believe the Victorians—”

  “Not that crap,” Maddock says and looks capable of spitting in the nearest carton. “So they couldn’t see people like my gran’s gran.”

  “Wouldn’t you call that hypocrisy?”

  “Don’t you want to know either?” Maddock says, wiping his wet mouth with the side of his fist. “They couldn’t stand looking. And maybe it let them make her into anything they wanted.”

  His entire face writhes as if it’s seeking a new shape, and perhaps I’m too anxious to speak. “Is that why you do what you do?”

  His face settles on an expression or at least an ominous blankness. “Like what?”

  “Working for the police so you can save other people from being exploited.”

  “She did it herself. All she could do. That’s what she was. There’s still plenty—” He glares at me, widening his eyes as if he has wakened from talking in his sleep. “That’s it,” he says, which sounds like a warning until he adds “That’s why we joined up.”

  “Not just you, then.”

  “Me and my cousin.” When I fail to grasp the point that he apparently regards as obvious he says “Terry Maddock.”

  “So you’re Constable Wrigley or whatever you are.” This isn’t too well put, and I stumble onwards. “You two must be very unusual.”

  Wrigley’s glare is back. “What’re you saying about us?”

  “Just that there can’t be many relatives together on the beat. I’m surprised the city hasn’t made something of it.”

  “Who’s going to tell them?”

  His confidences aren’t just unwelcome, they’re menacing, especially when he takes several heavy steps towards me. “So what did you get from your old man?” he says.

  When he extends a large hand that still looks moist from wiping his mouth I show him the mobile. I bring up the inbox and display my father’s message. “What language’s that meant to be?” Wrigley objects. “Looks like he doesn’t want to be found.”

  However painful it is, I have to suggest “Maybe he doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

  Wrigley widens his eyes until they bulge while, I assume, he memorises everything about the message, and then he makes for the hall. “We’ll see,” he says. “We’ve got his number.”

  I’m still worried that the message may leave the police less inclined to search. I wish I’d tried harder to put them off from coming here, especially since there seems to be no reason for the visit. “How soon will you be able to track it down, do you think?”

  “Depends. If we come up with him we’ll let one of you know.” As I shut the door and follow him to the stairs he says “You
can stay up. I know the way.”

  “I need more boxes.”

  “Still taking after your old man, are you?” Wrigley says and doesn’t wait for an answer. He turns the first bend in the stairs with a fluid movement that looks close to reptilian. As he stumps down to the lobby the ridges of his token neck seem to swell, and I could imagine that he has grown broader and more squat, as if the weight of his thick torso has redistributed his flesh. He doesn’t bother holding the street door open, perhaps because a harsh voice from the car parked on the pavement is summoning him. As I emerge the car screeches away, swerving riverwards while I head for Frugo Corner.

  I tramp back hugging cartons, through crowds of office workers hurrying home ahead of the rain that has brought the black sky low. The side streets are emptier, and mine is entirely so apart from a dark shape I glimpse slithering under the door to the basement. It’s a shadow cast by headlamps, which swing away from the intersection as I fumble for my keys. I struggle upstairs with the boxes and drop them in the main room, and then I take out my mobile. Too much is unresolved just now.

  I don’t want to disturb Lucinda more than I have to while she’s at work, and so I text a solitary word: Later? I add a jolly face and send the message, and am separating the Chinese boxes I’ve brought home when the phone on the table jerks and chirps. Presumably she’s busy, because her message is almost as terse as mine. Mabybe not tonight, it says, and I take the extra consonant to indicate her haste. I needn’t think it shows that she doesn’t care enough to correct the word. I still need to call my mother. I should have done so earlier, but for various reasons I’m afraid to raise her hopes too much.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  THE NIGHT’S THOUGHTS

  When my eyes grow too hot to be soothed by handfuls of water I abandon trying to make sense of my father’s research as I box it up. I trample the empty cartons until I see this leaves faint stains on the carpet, and then I have to make several trips to the basement bins. On the middle floor someone is singing a muffled song in the bath, but otherwise the building seems as good as deserted. At least nobody sees me keep waving my arms at the underground lights to ensure I’m not left in the dark. The frantic shadow that vanishes under a parked car belongs to my hand, of course. At the top of the ramp the metal door clatters as tendrils grope beneath it, but that’s just the latest downpour.

  It’s too late to expect to see Lucinda, and it’s her turn to get in touch. I’ve told my mother about my father’s message, and she seemed to do her best not to feel too immediately hopeful, despite having answered the phone before it could ring twice. I lock the apartment and take a shower, though I’m close to having had enough of water; my labours gave me such a thirst that I feel bloated with drinking from the tap. Perhaps I miss Lucinda more than I’m willing to admit, because I find the caresses of the shower unexpectedly intimate; I wouldn’t need to be much drowsier to imagine that trickles are fingering my back. As I towel myself a blurred shape moves back and forth behind the condensation on the mirror—my own face.

  I return as much water to the plumbing as I can expel, and then I trudge to bed. The window above it is swarming with rain. Even with the curtains drawn, the dimness that fills the room at the tug of a cord appears to shift like the depths of a river. When the movements begin to infect the outlines of objects in the room or rather my perceptions of them, I close my eyes tight and pull the quilt up over my face.

  Rain fumbles at the window, and then I hear an outburst of yapping and shouts. Nobody is hunting in the streets; some drunks must be setting off car alarms, unless they have dogs with them. An intermittent raucous noise is harder to identify, but however much it resembles croaking I conclude that it’s made by rusty hinges and a wind. Perhaps it’s a door in the building opposite. It doesn’t matter so long as I can sleep.

  I still feel bloated. As slumber starts to close around me I could fancy I’m drowning in my flesh. I’m drifting in the midst of a flotsam of thoughts salvaged from my father’s research. In Mesolithic times the coastline shrank inland two hundred metres every day; no wonder the tribes were desperate to placate the water by any means they thought might work. I’m reminded of the bull that was baited at the inauguration of the first Liverpool dock. In 1780 a doctor and his wife had themselves buried up to their necks in Colquitt Street, presumably to demonstrate some cure, but did they see how they resembled an ancient sacrifice? At a dinner in 1806 for the Prince of Wales at Liverpool Town Hall, the toasts included the Lancashire Witches and Neptune’s Maggot. In those days criminals were still incarcerated in the dungeons of the tower at the foot of Water Street, though it was soon demolished. More than one prisoner ended up in the asylum opposite the heath where Lucinda’s library is now. Whenever they were forced to bathe they would rant about how the dank cells had let in not just water but its denizens. No doubt ducking was part of their treatment, and my father thought it was almost a city tradition: in 1777 Mary Clarke was flung into a dock, apparently because the assailants had mistaken her nature, and decades later female prisoners in the House of Correction on Mount Pleasant, up the slope from the home of the young Maybrick brothers, were routinely pumped upon or subjected to the ducking-stool. There were seawater baths where the docks are now, and bathers complained that intruders were gaining entry to the private cubicles and using them as hideouts—lairs, as one bather oddly put it. The High Rip violence started opposite the Flashes, the vanished pond that used to serve a ducking-stool. In the days of the Rip and the Ripper, pits full of water beyond Everton Brow were used as public baths. The onslaughts of rain that shake my bedroom window remind me of the storms that repeatedly flooded the town less than two hundred years ago. Back then house numbers and street names were painted on the buildings, and I imagine someone wandering the unpaved muddy streets in a storm. He’s blinded by water, and in any case the signs have been rendered illegible by rain. The dream feels like my haphazard attempts to find connections in my father’s research. Perhaps in some sense the processes are the same.

  The notion troubles me until I struggle out of bed to check whether his web site can help me put all the details together. I’m in the corridor before I recall that his computer is useless and not even here—PC Tec collected it hours ago. There’s something else to see; the windows across the street are lit, however dimly. I’m close to my desk when I see that the floor opposite mine is no longer used as an office. Silhouetted figures are performing pliés in a dance class, bending their legs wide at the knee and then rising to their full height. I haven’t previously realised how froglike the exercise looks, and I’m quite glad not to have drawn their attention by switching on the light, even though the rank of figures is at the back of the long room. Their shapes are dismayingly various and rather less than constant, and I have an unpleasant suspicion that every eye, none of which I can distinguish, is watching me. I’ve taken a pace backwards when the tallest silhouette—dauntingly tall—rears up and springs across the room. In a moment it has thrown open the window directly opposite me and leapt onto the sill. It crouches low and launches itself across the space between us. Before I can retreat, its body is flattened like gelatin against the glass while its splayed limbs cling to the wall. Its face slithers back and forth on the pane, dragging out of shape whatever features it has. At least it can’t get in, I think desperately until its substance seeps and then floods under the sash.

  The spectacle jerks me awake, or the frantic movement at the window does. It’s a burst of rain, the sound of which must have caused my dream of Springheel Jack. I don’t need to turn over in bed to confirm that the window is keeping the rain out; I’m just grateful to find Lucinda beside me. Except for her I would be alone with the residue of the nightmare. I wouldn’t have minded her wakening me when she let herself in or when she joined me in bed, but of course she wants me to catch up on my sleep. Presumably it was raining whenever she arrived, since the indistinct mass of her face appears to be glistening, although if she drove into the
basement garage, where would she have been rained on? Perhaps she had a shower and left her face wet. This seems unlikely, and I strain to distinguish more than the silhouette of her head on the pillow. My vision adjusts to the gloom, a process that makes her features seem to rise out of the silhouette rather than simply growing visible. Her eyes are opening to greet me, however much they resemble round lumps that are swelling up from the substance of the head. There’s no further chance of mistaking the face for Lucinda’s. Apart from the eyes and the grinning mouth, which is far too wide and lipless, it isn’t much of a face at all.

  I have a dreadful sense that the intruder will move before I can, unless it’s waiting for me to try. I’m struggling to decide whether to inch away as surreptitiously as possible or to fling myself backwards, assuming I’m able to do either, when something starts to rattle at my back.

  I almost lurch away from it, into the arms of my companion. As I recognise the vibrations of my mobile I flounder towards it off the bed. I make a grab at the light cord and knock it out of reach as an object sprawls on the floor beyond the bed. I capture the cord and tug it almost hard enough to wrench the socket out of the ceiling. The light reveals that the bed is empty even of the quilt, which lies in a heap on the floor beyond it. By this time the phone is declaring its love. I clutch it and poke the key to accept the call and press the mobile against my face. “Hello?” I plead, hardly caring who’s there so long as I hear a human voice.

  “Gavin, I’m sorry. I’ve woken you, haven’t I.”

  “It’s all right.” Indeed, it’s considerably better if my mother actually has. I risk crouching to peer under the bed, where there’s no sign of an intruder. “What’s happening?” I say as calmly as I’m able. “Is there news?”