Creatures of the Pool

by Ramsey Campbell

  “I expect he does real work too. I think he thinks I’m giving the public too many tales and not enough history, or maybe not the kind he wants.”

  “That’s rubbish too. I want everyone to know that Gavin’s always told the truth.”

  “Storytelling can be a kind of truth, can’t it?” the presenter says. “May I ask if you’re his mother?”

  “I am, and proud of it. And I hope anyone who’s listening with any imagination will support his work. Show the bureaucrats they can’t take the soul out of the city just because it doesn’t suit their idea of the place. His tours are keeping Liverpool alive.”

  “Have you been on many of them? Ten seconds.”

  “I’m going to,” my mother says with some defiance.

  “Gillian from Everton and Gavin from I’m not quite sure where.”

  “What does he mean by that?” my mother apparently feels I should know. “Shall we listen to the radio in case they talk about you?”

  A young woman reads the news in an accent so Irish it revives one of the ancient ways Liverpool was pronounced, and I think she’s saying inspectors have raided a school until I deduce that they gave it a rating. While the newsreader informs us that some of the oldest buildings in the city centre are inexplicably unoccupied, my mother wanders into the hall. “Have you tried to read these? I did but it made me feel—”

  “What?” I’m forced to prompt.

  She shakes her head, dislodging an uncertain laugh. “I can’t describe it, unless that’s what they mean by water on the brain.”

  I have an unhelpful random notion that the incomprehensible documents on the hall floor resemble explanations of the images of old Liverpool above them—interpretations I’ve no chance of understanding. The newsreader is saying that an application to exhume James Maybrick and compare his DNA with a sample taken from the supposed diary has been turned down, and I feel as if the authorities are making sure the legend stays alive. The news ends with a jokey item about a party of clubbers who saw a horde of frogs last night in Whitechapel. My mother giggles at this through the weather forecast—more and worse rain—and the travel report, which mentions that the railway loop under the city has been closed because of water. Her mirth trails off and dies of a hand over her mouth as the presenter says “Before the news we were hearing about tours of the city. Hank Waterworth, you’re in charge of them, yes?”

  “How dare he say that? You are all by yourself,” my mother declares, almost drowning the presenter’s voice. “I believe you want to talk about Gavin Meadows and his crime tours,” he’s saying.

  “I don’t know that I do. Mr Meadows and his tours are no longer included in our tourist package, and they don’t carry our recommendation.”

  “You don’t need it,” my mother assures me while the presenter says “You used to support them, didn’t you? What’s changed?”

  “I didn’t, no. My predecessor did, but I can’t talk about her.” Having given the listeners a moment to imagine why, Waterworth says “I didn’t find they were up to the standard it’s my job to expect.”

  “Anything specific?”

  “A whole lot too much. Mr Meadows is liable to cut his tours short because he hasn’t planned them right, and he doesn’t seem any too sure of the information he’s trying to put over. Some of it you can’t tell if it’s real or he’s making it up, and I don’t know if he can tell either. Visitors to our city deserve better than that for their money.”

  “He doesn’t deserve ours,” my mother protests, so that I only just hear the presenter say “Have you had any feedback from the public?”

  “I guess the word is out, because his tours haven’t been too popular lately. Some of his customers are saying what I’ve told you, and we’re hearing other criticisms as well. The property owners who live where he’s been taking his High Rip Trips, they don’t care to have their neighbourhoods turned into criminal districts. The way I hear it, some of them mean to find out if the law can stop it.”

  “Is that true, Gavin?”

  While I open my hands and the distance between them the presenter says “I wonder if any of our listeners have been on the tours.”

  “I’d welcome hearing from them if they have. Let me take this opportunity to publicise a tour we recommend. It’s the Histrionic History Hunt, and it starts every day from the square behind the town hall. If it’s wet there’s a bus.”

  “Did you hear the call before the news?”

  “I won’t comment on it, except it sounds as if Mr Meadows is desperate for publicity, and maybe that reflects on the kind of service he’s offering.”

  “I don’t think we can say he asked his mother to ring on his behalf.”

  “I’m not saying that. Are you?” When the presenter stays silent Waterworth says “The item on your news sounded like a stunt to me.”

  “Which was that?”

  “About frogs in Whitechapel. The only person I’ve heard talking about them is Mr Meadows. Maybe it’s some kind of tale he wants the city to swallow. Can I give out the Histrionic History number?”

  “They didn’t broadcast yours,” my mother complains, and she barely waits for Waterworth to depart before she says “What a hideous man. Some of the time he didn’t even make sense. What was all that about frogs?”

  “It doesn’t matter now.”

  I can live without the memory her question threatens to rouse, but the radio does that as well. The presenter plays Paul McCartney’s “Frog Song” as a preamble to saying “Now here’s Pen from Page Moss. Is it right you saw the frogs last night in Whitechapel?”

  “Two of us did.”

  “What did you think you saw?”

  “We didn’t think,” Pen objects. “My friend Teeny said it was one thing but I told her she was mad. It was people dressed up.”

  “That does sound like a stunt. We’d heard you saw actual frogs.”

  “Not that big,” Pen says with a titter that incorporates a shudder. “I told Teeny they must been partying like us, only fancy dress.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She’d had more than me,” Pen finds it necessary to establish. “She saw them first and she thought there was a circus in town. Thought they were a parade. They wouldn’t have been hopping along and I wouldn’t even call it walking in all sorts of ways if it was a parade, would they? You wouldn’t have one that late either. And she said stuff like they were bigger than she thought or not so big, and she wasn’t even sure what they really looked like. I told you she’d had a lot.”

  “I won’t ask of what. So how are you saying they looked?”

  “They were all sorts of sizes. She was right about that. You’d have thought some of them were babies, only it must have been how far away they were. They had to be kids, though. They shouldn’t have been up so late.” On the far side of a pause she adds “I don’t think they were all meant to be frogs. Things out of the sea, some looked like, only they were more like out of your dreams.”

  “Not mine,” the presenter wants us all to know. “And where were they again?”

  “Going down into the underground parking off Whitechapel. We stuck around to see them drive out, but it came on to rain again and we never.”

  “So long as you had a good time. I hope you weren’t driving. I should say we’ve been told there was nothing on CCTV.”

  That’s the end of Pen, whose place is taken by a woman advertising boat tours of the docks. My mother gives me a look that seems to be waiting to find an appropriate expression and says “What did you think of all that?”

  I’m by no means sure I want to. The anecdote has left me aware how reassuring I found the idea of having only imagined the body in Whitechapel and the creatures spilling forth from it. Now the memory feels capable of rising up to acquire reality, and I’m looking for an answer to suppress it when the landline rings. “Mr Meadows?” the caller says. “Finbar here at PC Tec. We’ve got your computer on the bench. You’d better come and have a look.”r />
  Chapter Thirty

  DISAPPEARING SITES

  The monumental monarch appears to be ignoring the fugitive who dashes out of the law courts. I barely glimpse the figure, who’s clad from head to foot in shiny black and hooded too, before half a dozen policemen close around him, if it’s a man. They have so much trouble keeping hold of him that I can’t see their captive for the mass of them as they drag him back into the courts. “Slippery customer,” one remarks.

  The white concrete building looks muddy under the storm cloud that has reared up from the sea. Behind the courts there’s a short cut past a rickety wire fence around a few acres of overgrown mud like a revival of the ancient marsh. As I dodge around a corner of the fence the mud begins to hiss and glisten and seethe. It’s enlivened by the latest downpour, and I sprint for the bus station where the first dock used to be.

  It gives by no means enough cover, since the imaginative architects omitted a roof. Would-be passengers huddle at the backs of glass shelters, where the wind and rain easily find them. At least a bus I want is waiting in its bay. Some of the windows must have been open recently, since many of the seats upstairs are wet. The left-hand front seat isn’t, and as I sit down I take out my mobile. “This is Gavin Meadows. Any news of my father?”

  “Gavin Meadows. Any news of his father.” Though this rouses no answer I’m able to hear, Wrigley or Maddock says “We can’t tell you where he is.”

  “How is that possible? You’re the police.”

  “Can’t work miracles. Either his phone’s dead or he’s somewhere there’s no signal. Him or it, all right?”

  It’s far from that. “But you know where the message came from, surely.”

  “Working on it.”

  I should have accepted the Frugone salesman’s offer. “You’ll let me know as soon as you do, won’t you?”

  “We’ll be telling somebody. You’re not the only one that’s interested.”

  I could retort that I’m a damn or a stronger sight more than interested, but I need to say “Don’t try to reach my mother at the house. She’s staying with me.”

  The bus moves forward with a jerk that unravels skeins of water on the window in front of me, and I end the call. As the bus swings into the triple carriageway at the mouth of the Pool I wipe greyness from the moist chill glass. Rain washes rain off the windows to replace rain with rain, so that the south docks—Albert, Wapping, Queens—are reduced to vast unstable hulks of brick or granite, and I can barely distinguish the grey conical tower like the gnome’s house my father once assured me it was—the policeman’s lodge at the Wapping gates. On the landward side the bus is paced by the reddish sandstone bulk of the Anglican cathedral on the ridge above a quarry that became a graveyard. The docks give way to a casino and a marina opposite a rank of small commercial buildings cut off at the pavement. Past them the blocks seem increasingly temporary, little more than oversized prefabs left over from the years after the blitz. Some of them exhibit signs that swim into legibility, and the sight of a P and a C sends me to the stairs, jabbing the bellpush.

  At least the storm is on its way upriver. As the cloud unlids the sun the bus stop rediscovers its shadow, which puts me in mind of a drowned flag that has risen to the surface of the pavement. Opposite the Herculaneum, the southernmost dock, a tunnel gapes in a sandstone ridge crowned with Edwardian terraces. It’s a remnant of the overhead railway. A minute’s walk back towards the Pier Head brings me to the boxy premises of PC Tec, where the first initial of the logo perches on the last letter of the word. Beyond the white metallic door that contains the only window, a wide room is scattered with wire stands full of computer accessories. The stands jingle as I make for the counter, and the oldest of the men behind it—Finbar—greets me. “Thanks for coming so quick, Mr Meadows. I didn’t want to do anything till you’d had a gander.”

  I recognise his long wrinkled leathery face and greying ponytail, but not the outsize horn-rimmed spectacles in which his eyes appear to float. “What have you been doing to it?” he says so reprovingly I’d like to believe it’s a joke.

  “Such as what?”

  “You’d think you’d been giving it a bath,” he says and unbolts a flap in the counter. “See for yourself. It’s exactly how I brought it in.”

  His ponytail wags at me like an extra rebuke as I follow him into the back room. Numerous computers, variously eviscerated, are laid out on benches against the walls. Some are connected to monitors, and Finbar leads me to a tower that’s lying on its back below a calendar of naked women rising from the waves. I think he means to show me something on the monitor to which the tower is hooked up until he points an accusing finger at the exposed innards. “How did that happen?”

  The hard disc glints and dulls as I step closer. It isn’t a trick of the light; the disc is glistening with moisture, patches of which appear to shift within the metal and subside. “That’s what I was trying to save it from,” I protest. “It’s this insane weather.”

  “Nothing crazy about rain. Only people can be that.”

  I seem to have offended him in some unidentifiable way. As he takes a drink of water from a paper cup that was standing beside the computer I have to ask “Is everything lost?”

  “There was something when I powered it up. Don’t ask me how that’s possible. Your web site, was it?”

  “It wasn’t mine.”

  “Some kind of aquarium, was it meant to be? Something was swimming, or somebody was. And some of them were climbing out, if you call that climbing. Maybe it’s the state it’s in that made them look like that.”

  I’m not entirely certain that I want to learn “Like what?”

  “Show him.”

  Some of Finbar’s colleagues have left the counter now that they’ve finished or at least interrupted their discussion of last night’s local football matches. Though he looks unconvinced by the suggestion, he switches on the computer. For an instant the screen seems to flicker like an omen of a storm, but the impression vanishes before I can be sure I glimpsed it. “It was there,” Finbar insists.

  “Maybe you were dreaming on the job again,” a workmate says.

  I try to head off Finbar’s anger. “Will you be able to salvage anything?”

  “Can’t say yet. We’ll be in touch, but it won’t be today.”

  As I head for the exit he comes after me, draining the paper cup, which he flings into a bin. He’s bolting the flap in the counter when he says “I know what it looked like.”

  I find I’m reluctant to ask “What?”

  “I was just thinking it could be a swimming pool, but it was too rotten all around it. I think it was an old dock like the one they’re digging up.”

  There’s no point in wondering until the information is retrieved, if it can be. A bus bears me towards the Pier Head and, closer, the building work that has uncovered remains of the original dock. As the bus swings across the carriageway into the bus station, it leaves behind the sight of workmen who have congregated beyond the metal fence to gaze at some object they’ve unearthed.

  A breeze shivers puddles in the bus shelters. Beyond them Hanover Street has been reduced to a narrow lane by the wall around a redevelopment. Cars progress in single file along the dusty lane to an unsignposted dead end. Side streets climb towards the Moss Lake as the rope walks did, but the only one that doesn’t bar the disorientated traffic is opposite the radio station, in front of which is a shelter that has never seen a bus. Inside the shelter three boys barely in their teens are smoking a version of the substance that gave the hempy girls their dreams. When the doors of the radio station part at my approach the boys turn their pale roundish faces to me, stretching their mouths and their eyes so wide that I could imagine I’m sharing their delirium.

  In the performance space beyond the reception desk a folk group is singing a shanty about nymphs. “Can I speak to someone?” I ask the receptionist. “I’m Gavin Meadows.”

  A burst of applause greets this, but the enthu
siasm is for the folk group. “Who are you here to see?” the receptionist says and gives me a pretty blink.

  “Someone from your phone-in. I’d like to get in touch with somebody who called.”

  “I’m afraid we never give out numbers. You’d have to ring and ask them to get in touch with us.”

  I’m about to object to the delay when I grasp that going on the air will let me advertise my tours and my number. “I will tomorrow,” I say while the folk group begins to sing about a maritime storm. As the doors creep shut, the refrain (“Sup water, lads, sup water—We’ll dream beneath the sea”) follows me, but I’m distracted by the sight outside. Three men with whitish faces loosened by age are waiting in the shelter, apparently trusting it to attract a bus. Perhaps their bulging eyes and moist grey nostrils and expressionlessly thin lips scared the boys off.

  Hanover Street brings me to Church Street, and I’m abreast of the caged stone eagle when a glimpse beyond it stops me. I peer through the afternoon crowd to see a prancing shadow vanish into Williamson Square. Dodging through the crowd, I hurry along the side street, only to halt at the corner of the square with something like a laugh.

  The bloated bodies are why the dancers look so spindle-legged. They’re dressed in puffy costumes that may be meant as a joke or a historical reference to one. The outfits seem close to misshapen, or the performers do—Tasha Bailey and her fellow thespians, of whom Nicholas Noble appears the most batrachian. They’re handing leaflets to anybody who will take one. “What are they trying to be?” I say rather more than aloud.

  Noble stares at me and adopts an appreciative grin. “We’re Histrionic History,” he announces. “Just now we’re the Hop Troupe. I thought you were meant to know your history, Mr Meadows. They used to go round advertising the theatre before this place was built up.”

  Does he mean while the area was a marsh? Surely that makes no sense, and I’m about to say so when a couple of middle-aged women beside me start to chant a Beatles phrase as if they’re counteracting his dive into whatever past he has in mind. They’re joining in with my ringtone, and they aren’t helping me to know how to react to the number in the display window of the mobile. It’s my home number.