Nobody is at the junction with the short cut or beyond it. The main road leads past industrial properties, behind which are side streets Bill could use to head me off. Whenever I give in to looking back, I’m alone on the pavement. The occasional lorry hurtles past, but I can’t help thinking the drivers are perched too high to find me of any significance. I meet no buses; I don’t even see a stop. At least I haven’t seen Bill or the rest of the gang—do I need to think it’s one?—by the time I arrive at the next side street that passes under a bridge.
I hear water trickling as I hurry beneath the arch. Although it’s loud, I can’t locate the source; it must be amplified by the acoustic. Beyond the arch a ramp leads up to Sandhills Station, which consists of little more than a couple of empty platforms, open to the sky. Nobody can sneak up on me, and I’ll hear anyone who climbs the ramp unless they’re bent on silence.
I’m in the midst of High Rip territory. Many of the massive warehouses along the dock road belong to that period, and so do most of the streets between them. Might any of the surfaces retain a trace of blood? At least one historian speculates that the disinterred object from which Blackstone Street took its name was a primitive altar. As for the streets that have cleaned up the slums on the inland side of the railway, I’m not far from fancying that the timeless gloom that’s inundating them has risen from the canal.
My reverie is interrupted by a train to Liverpool. As the staccato of the wheels eases towards silence it almost covers up another series of sounds. I would take them for footsteps if they weren’t so soft and wet. There must be some kind of spillage on the ramp. As I board the train, the platform at the top of the ramp darkens and begins to glisten. The whole station does, with a downpour that veils the windows of the train.
The carriage is unoccupied except by a remnant of cigarette smoke. The journey to Moorfields—on this line, the station nearest my apartment—should take less than four minutes. As the train gathers speed the wind rakes threads of water on the windows close to horizontal. The glass remains not much better than opaque, so that I imagine more of the landscape than I’m seeing. To my right across the aisle is a parade of dockland warehouses interspersed with boxy industrial units, but before any of this was built the sandhills gained a reputation for nude bathing. Washington Irving described the swimmers he once watched there at twilight as “resembling seals or some unrecorded form of marine life.” Originally the area was covered by an ancient forest through which a stream flowed down from Everton, close to my parents’ house. A pale object is taking and losing shape out there, and for a moment that shows I’m less than fully awake I wonder if it could be a face. It’s another gap in the clouds above the river, but there is indeed a face. One is peering at me from the next carriage.
Is it Bill with his bat? When I twist around on the seat, nobody is visible. The carriages are swaying in and out of alignment, but not enough to hide a watcher. I grip the back of the seat and stand up as steadily as the train will allow. Beyond the unlatched doors, which are inching open and shut, the next carriage appears to be deserted. Surely the likes of Bill wouldn’t feel any need to hide, and I’m sinking onto the seat when a figure begins to rise to its full height beyond the glass.
While it isn’t silhouetted, I’m unable to distinguish much about its shape, except that it’s so hulking that it still looks crouched. Its face is pressed against the farther window, but this doesn’t bring the features into focus. I hope only breath has turned the window moist within the outline of the head, because the sight is too reminiscent of the underside of a snail flattened against glass. The arm that’s supporting me has begun to shiver with tension or worse, and I’m about to move without any idea of how or where until my body robs me of the chance. I’ve gone blind.
A blaze of sunlight through the clouds has found the train, that’s all. As I blink my eyes clear I seem to glimpse the shape beyond the doors recoiling from the light, shrinking from it in the fullest sense. In another moment I’m able to see, even if my vision is as faded as an old photograph. There’s nothing at the window between the carriages other than a smear on the glass—a broad grey roundish patch of moisture, unnecessarily reminiscent of mould. It’s featureless except for an elongated horizontal crescent of unmarked glass low down on the patch. If that’s the outline of a mouth, it’s as wide as one in a bad dream.
My arm is trembling again. I grab the seat across the aisle and dig my fingers into the upholstery on either side of me. Apart from the grey smear, which has grown teeth composed of moisture trickling across the empty grin, I can see no sign of an intruder. Perhaps the light is keeping it back, I dare to think, however irrational the notion is—and then darkness rushes up behind me to engulf the train. We’ve entered a tunnel.
The route is underground now all the way to Moorfields. We’ll be there in less than two minutes—in as unbearably long as that. I’m about to retreat towards the driver’s cabin, even if I stop short of seeking refuge with him, when I recall what I hardly noticed as the train arrived. It’s being driven from behind. The intruder is between me and the driver. There’s still no visible activity, and I wonder if the artificial light is enough to hold my fellow passenger in check. Then the lights flicker, and in a moment the train is as dark as the tunnel.
I know these electrical failures are common and never last more than a few seconds. They’re the equivalent of a missed heartbeat or two, even if mine feel as if they’ve stopped for good. As I hold my breath or lose the ability to breathe, I hear a noise besides the insistent clatter of the wheels. It sounds as if a large object has slithered into the carriage.
I gasp, not only because the lights have come on. The doors between the carriages are swinging shut, and the nearer one bears a wet mark. Despite its shape or lack thereof, it could have been left by a large hand. I let go of the seats and back away, struggling to be ready for a figure to spring into view on one side of the aisle or the other. But it’s darkness that pounces as the lights fail once more.
It brings the slithering closer. I throw out my hands for support, because I’m in danger of losing my balance, and my fingers sink into two objects—the tops of seats. I’ve just realised that I’m presenting myself like a target held in place by my own hands when the lights flicker. Do I glimpse a squat form dodging out of view? The lights steady again, revealing a trail of marks along the aisle. If they’re footprints, the kindest word for them would be unequal. The trail ends where I thought I saw movement, halfway between me and the next carriage. There’s only that much space behind me. Before I can retreat, the carriage is flooded with twice the light. We’ve arrived at Moorfields.
I don’t look away from the aisle as I back and then sidle towards the exit doors. I’ve seen no further movement in the carriage by the time the train finishes coasting to a halt and sets about parting the doors. The instant they’re wide enough I bolt onto the platform. I very much wish it weren’t deserted, especially since the nearest passage to the world above is at least fifty feet away. The train shuts its doors, and I really don’t need them to twitch open again as encouragement for me to run. Nothing has emerged from the train by the time I reach the rudimentary corridor. As I dodge into it the train moves off, and I can’t be certain that a shape squeezes out between the doors I used. I’m even less sure amid the racket of the train that the glistening object flops onto the platform like an expulsion of mud before it starts to reform.
I don’t look back. I dash for the stairs midway along the corridor between platforms. Was I wrong about the light? Has the pursuer adjusted to it, perhaps out of determination not to let me escape? I sprint up the stairs two at a time—I try to make it three and almost miss my footing. They bring me to a bank of escalators with daylight at the top. Though the light is a hundred feet or more away, it emboldens me to glance downwards. I immediately regret the error, not least because I’m transfixed by my attempts to distinguish what’s below.
It’s a hand, or rather part of one. It’s clut
ching the tiled corner of the passage as though about to haul the body into view. Once more I’m put in mind of a snail, and not just by the colour and texture of the flesh. The fingers are extending along the wall—they’re visibly lengthening. Only the prospect of seeing their owner in any more detail lets me dare to turn my back and reel onto the escalator.
I’ve barely set foot on it, grabbing the rubber banisters as the metal step almost leaves me behind, when the sunlight far above me dims and goes out. As I sprint up the sluggishly ascending steps I feel as if I’m trying to overtake the light or call it back. I’m six steps up, having taken them in three precarious strides, when a weight lands with an expansive leathery thud at the foot of the adjacent escalator.
I can’t look. I seize the banisters again—they’re crawling upwards at two different speeds—and risk trying to clamber three steps at once. My foot skids off the topmost, and only clinging to the restless banisters saves me from sprawling backwards. Two steps at a time will have to suffice. I climb a pair, and then another. Then I hear footsteps—at any rate, the large soft impacts of objects doing duty as feet—that have begun to mount the next escalator.
Although it’s descending, it seems not to matter. Perhaps the pursuer is little better than brainless, or perhaps it has been relishing my attempts to escape. Its spongy tread sounds more than able to match my pace. It’s springing up the stairs with a terrible effortlessness despite their contrary motion, as though its legs are abominably long. Any moment now it will overtake me, and I’ll have to see it on its way to head me off, unless it plans to stretch its arm across the division of the escalators and capture me with an elongated hand.
I can only flee upwards as the stairs and the banisters threaten to leave me behind. The pursuit is almost at my back—I have the sudden awful thought that it must be capable of leaping from escalator to escalator—when I hear voices, which I take to be violently arguing until I grasp that only their language, or at least the repetition of redundant words that makes up much of it, is fierce. In a moment the speakers appear at the top of the escalators: three girls shouting to be audible above the stereos plugged into their ears. While I wouldn’t like to share a train journey with them, just now they’re as welcome as the sunlight that has returned beyond them. As they loiter at the top I hear a body floundering down the next escalator. There’s a large loose thump at the bottom, and almost immediately one at the foot of the stairs. The pursuer may have retreated into the subterranean tunnel, but as the escalator brings me abreast of the girls I feel bound to call “Better watch out. There could be something nasty down there.”
“Left something, did you?” one girl shouts, and another offers “Dirty sod.”
Perhaps I’m as unreliable as they seem to think. Certainly I have an odd sense of climbing away from a dream or its source. I might feel more as though I’m returning to the real world if the sunlight weren’t so intense as to border on blinding, especially where it’s reflected from the rain that coats the streets. I’m walking straight into the light, which gives me very little chance to discern faces or even shapes in the homebound crowds. I’m anxious to be home myself, both for refuge and to see how my mother is. Once I’m reassured in those ways I may be able to ponder what I’ve just experienced, if it was anything more than my lack of sleep run wild.
The shadows in my narrow street give me back my vision and some nerve. A drip catches the back of my hand as I unlock the door beneath the merman. Shutting the door makes me feel on the way to safe. The old desk greets me with a rattle of its inkwell while I make for the stairs. As I climb them I hear a radio, and by the time I reach my apartment the news is audible along the hall. I let myself in time to hear the final headline. “Police are becoming increasingly concerned about the whereabouts of Deryck Meadows from Everton.”
“I hope that helps,” a voice calls—not the voice I’m expecting. I shut the door behind me and wait for a response. None comes, but it takes me some moments to wonder if the comment was addressed to me. “Lucinda,” I say, “where’s my mother?”
Chapter Thirty-five
HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN
“I was going to ask you that, Gavin.”
Lucinda has appeared at the end of the hall. She looks doubtful and somewhat concerned, and not only those. As I go to her I see that my father’s computer tower has returned to my workroom, where the eye of the answering machine is lidlessly alert—the number of messages. Beyond the bag of umbrellas the trail of waterlogged research leads to the main room, where more of the contents of the boxes are scattered on the carpet. “Have you been looking at those?” I’m prompted to ask.
“A bit. I’m glad you’re back,” Lucinda says as if this follows, then seems to contradict herself. “I thought you might be Gillian.”
As we share a soft embrace that grows firmer I say “How long have you been here?”
“Twenty minutes?”
“And there wasn’t any sign of her? She didn’t leave a note.”
“I can’t see one, can you?”
“Then I don’t expect she’s gone far. Maybe she wanted something from the shops.”
Lucinda lifts her head from resting it against my neck and meets my eyes. “So long as she hasn’t gone because of me.”
“Did she know you were coming?”
“I didn’t say when we spoke.”
“Then it can’t have been you, can it? It wouldn’t have been anyway,” I add, ashamed of my clumsiness. “She’d like you to be here.”
“And where have you been?”
“Just to see an old friend of my father’s. Her mother did most of the talking but I don’t know how much was made up. I think I ended up as confused as she was.”
How eager am I to rationalise the incident on the train? It already feels like a waking dream, and what else could it have been in any world that makes sense? It’s even more absurd to think it wasn’t my own dream. I need to feel rational—not just feel but be. The newsreader finishes a report about flooding in Liverpool—the loop line beneath the city centre has been drained, but engineers fear this won’t last—and returns to the subject of my father. She repeats her headline and reminds me that he has been missing since last week, then adds that until recently he worked at the art gallery and issues a description that sounds disconcertingly like me. That’s all, not even a mention of his bicycle. As the newsreader forecasts further downpours Lucinda says “The radio was on when I got here.”
“Then she can’t be far away.”
“Shall I make dinner for the three of us?”
“If you could.”
It isn’t that I lack enthusiasm for the idea, but rather that I feel as if our embrace and our murmured conversation is trying to maintain a sense that all is or will be fine. As Lucinda turns towards the kitchen she says “Are those Gillian’s?”
She’s gazing at the table, which is strewn with bits of research. There’s the score of an early sixties hit, “The Froggy Hop” by Liverpool band Davy and the Divers, as well as their later ballad “I’d Swim the Mersey for You.” Next to these is a reproduction of Adrian Henri’s painting Christ Feeds the Multitude in Paradise Street, hardly a realistic depiction of the place, since the crowd is overlooked by posters for John West and the signs of fish and chip shops. Some of the beneficiaries of the miracle resemble the seafood they’ve been handed. Soon the street will be part of the Paradise Project, a development that sounded to my father like a science fiction horror film. Beside the page are photocopies of John Lennon’s satirical sketch of a blackbird fly and his cover rough for Sergeant Leper’s Bony Parts Club Band, and I see what Lucinda had in mind; the image of misshapen Liverpool worthies is pinned down by my spare set of keys. “She didn’t take them,” I protest.
“She’ll ring then, won’t she?”
“You’d have heard if she did, wouldn’t you.” This prompts me to ask “Did you check for calls in case anybody didn’t leave a message?”
“I didn’t,” Lucinda
admits, and I hurry to fetch the landline receiver from its stand. I’m keying the digits as I tramp back along the hall. The automated voice tells me I was called and pieces the number together. It’s among the ones I know best. The call was made almost an hour ago from my parents’ house.
I haven’t time to answer Lucinda’s anxiously enquiring look. I jab the key to connect me with the number and strain my ears to hear more than the repetitions of the distant bell. For a moment I think it has been interrupted, as if somebody is fumbling at the receiver, but then it goes on, and on, and still on. I don’t realise I’m holding my breath like a victim of drowning until my head begins to swim. The phone has been ringing for minutes now, and isn’t it simply delaying me? “Someone’s rung from the house,” I tell Lucinda. “I’ve got to go up.”
“I can’t take you.”
My brain feels close to incapable of absorbing any more complications. “Why not?”
“Won’t someone have to be here if Gillian can’t let herself in?”
“I should have thought. Can you call me a taxi?”
My father might have responded with the old joke, but she must realise the situation can’t be lightened that way. When she holds out a hand I feel frustrated by having to explain “On your mobile. I want to keep these clear.”
Once she has called a number she remembers Lucinda tells me “Ten minutes.”
That’s at least twice as long as I would have hoped. I’m sure that my mother was called to the house, but why hasn’t she rung to let me know what’s happening? In search of distraction I glance over my father’s notes about Hope Street, which was built along the edge of the Moss Lake. Some of the residents used to steal corpses from the graveyard that supplanted part of the lake and smuggle them in barrels down to the docks. In 1826 the practice was discovered when, according to a no doubt superstitious sailor, the contents of a barrel bound for Glasgow tried to get out, or perhaps he was just talking about some preservative. Before Hope Hall in that street became a theatre it was a chapel, where a sect conducted secret rituals in the basement until a journalist revealed the activities, supposedly designed to regain some kind of closeness to the ancient earth. The doorbell brings some relief from all this, which has set history jabbering in my skull again, and Lucinda is first to the intercom. “He’s coming now,” she tells a blurred voice and gives me a swift hug. “Let me know what’s up.”
Creatures of the Pool Page 22