Creatures of the Pool

by Ramsey Campbell

  “I made sure.”

  “What a, I honestly don’t know what to call him. No wonder you’re on edge with somebody like that investigating.”

  “I should be. I ought to be out searching.”

  “Would you like me to drive? It’d cover more ground.”

  “How can you? Somebody needs to be here.”

  Presumably she realises my harshness is directed at the situation, not at her, because she says “I meant I could drive around by myself.”

  “Can I borrow your phone first?” I don’t want to block mine, but the precaution seems to be redundant; there’s silence from the house and just my father’s message on his mobile. “Call me,” I tell it. “Just please call.”

  “So shall I go?” Lucinda says. “I’ve made dinner. A big casserole. I found some nice fish.”

  “Thanks. I’d be in a worse state without you,” I say, which seems comprehensively inadequate. “A lot worse.”

  The afterthought earns me a wry smile and a swift hug. I listen until I hear the door to the basement shut behind her—I’ve never noticed how much it sounds like the street door—and then I watch from the window as her headlights crawl up into the premature twilight. As the beams swing away a pale object appears to dodge back into the abandoned offices—a reflection, of course. I wash Maddock’s clammy glass, which seems to rouse my thirst, so that I have to fill one for myself. I’m rather more than sipping from it as I switch on the radio in time to hear the latest bulletin.

  My father isn’t included, and it’s too soon for my mother. The final item relates to a study conducted by researchers at the oldest Liverpool university, demonstrating that the emotions of the subjects—Liverpudlians—display patterns very similar to waves and tides in the Mersey. It sounds more like a story than a study, and the newsreader jokes about taking water with it. As the presenter of the evening show begins an interview with the curator of an exhibition of objects washed up on the Mersey shore—a stone knife, an ancient medallion depicting an eroded shape walking on water, a skull so distorted by the actions of the river that its species has yet to be identified—I shut off the radio and look for distraction. My father’s research is all I can find.

  The table is strewn with information about Joseph Williamson. During a period of just over thirty years he lived in no fewer than six of the houses he built above his tunnels. Some of the houses were at least as deep as they were high, four storeys with four basements. The historian James Stonehouse described some of them as “built as if by a blind man who felt his way.” At least one contained a room with no door or windows, and the chaplain of the local blind asylum lived in the first house Williamson built. The blind had their own Liverpool church, and I’m reminded that members of the congregation used to pray to be saved from activities only they could hear beneath the church, originally located behind the Empire theatre in Lime Street and later housed in Hope Street, by the margin of the Moss Lake. My mind is chattering with history once more, and I drain the glass to have an excuse to go and refill it. Soon enough I’m back to Williamson, however.

  I know he lived in the cellar of the last house he inhabited, dying of water on the chest ten years after he lost his wife. Stonehouse wrote that a tenant heard “very unaccountable and strange” noises beneath her house, but I haven’t previously encountered the suggestion that Williamson began tunnelling because of sounds he’d heard beneath his own first cellar. Another tenant complained of damp in her house and was startled soon afterwards when a head appeared through the floor. It must have belonged to one of Williamson’s army of workmen, some of whom surprised the diggers of a Victorian railway tunnel by appearing from an unsuspected subterranean passage. Still, I can do without imagining how an intrusive head might look.

  My father has underlined sentences from Stonehouse. A woman who met Williamson in the street described him as “not walking but stumping.” His habitual outfit might have belonged to a tramp. He referred to his father as “the greatest rip that ever walked on two feet,” though how else would the elder Williamson have walked? Some of the tunnels led to “yawning chasms, wherein the fetid stagnant water throws up miasmatic odours.” Why would the builder have left these sections accessible while bricking others up as soon as they were excavated? Stonehouse says that Williamson seemed “driven to play the explorer and yet fearful of his goal.” He never let anyone tour the excavations, a point my father has underscored twice, until in the year before he died Williamson gave a letter of authority to a physician. “Dr. Watson is not to be interrupted in his walks on my premises, either on the surface or under the surface.” It was signed J. W., E. H., beside which my father has scribbled “Eh?” and “One for Sherlock.” Williamson believed that his employees “worked all the better for their throats being wetted.” Stone from the excavations was used for building his houses and St Jude’s Church on the ridge, midway between the highest of his tunnels and my parents’ house.

  Why has my father marked these references? Was his mind wandering, as it may be now? Surely my mother can appeal for help with him, or could she be too embarrassed? The silence of the phones that are lying on the table feels like news I may not want to learn but need to know. All I can do while I wait is read, and here’s another piece about Williamson.

  Although it’s by Stonehouse, it wasn’t published in his lifetime. Apparently Cornelius Henderson, an artist who was a tenant of Williamson’s and painted his portrait, threatened to sue, and so the essay didn’t see print until 1916, in the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire. What was the problem? The only significant difference between the two pieces—certainly the only one to which I can imagine anybody objecting—is that in the posthumously published article Stonehouse refers to Williamson as a troglodyte.

  My father has ringed the word three times and written “Strong” next to it. Is that an adjective or a name? When I’ve finished staring at the word I put the page aside. Underneath are reproductions of a painting and an old photograph. Without the accompanying text on each page, I mightn’t grasp that they’re portraits of the same man. The painting is by Henderson and shows little more than the subject’s head and shoulders; the frame cuts off the arms and the trunk well above the waist. The head seems rather too large for the eyes, which are gazing to the left as if a vision has engaged them. The image is a good deal more idealised than the photograph of Williamson seated splay-legged in a chair, a walking-stick under one hand, a clay pipe in the other. In his crumpled suit and misshapen tall black hat, he looks as if he may well have spent time underground. The large eyes in the broad leathery face are narrowed at the spectator, who could think they aren’t used to the light. The photograph was found under the floorboards of Williamson’s last dwelling.

  Some commentators doubt that it’s a photograph of him. The first photographic studio in Liverpool didn’t open for business until the year after his death. If it’s a fake, why would anyone have made it, let alone hidden it under a floor? It reminds me of the discovery of the Maybrick diary, if only to aggravate my confusion. I could think that the city has buried not just secrets but products of the imagination, although whose? As I examine the portraits side by side, the painting watches the photograph as if that’s the vision Williamson experienced. The narrowed eyes of the photograph trap my gaze until they seem to twitch as a preamble to widening. I’m not far from seeing the frame of the image as a bath in which the grotesque figure is supine. The idea that it could bob up towards me won’t let me move, even when I seem to distinguish a dark glint between the eyelids where I hadn’t noticed one before. My imagination is taking hold, or is something taking hold of it? When I hear Williamson’s fingernails scrape the sides of the bath I gasp as though I’ve come to the surface of whatever medium has engulfed me. The scrape is the sound of a key in the lock.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  NIGHT AND WATER

  “Come in, Gavin.”

  “Shouldn’t somebody stay out?”

>   “I wouldn’t have thought so.” Lucinda gazes up at me from the bath as she murmurs “Why?”

  “In case we need to hear.”

  “What would we?”

  “The phone. The other phone. The bell.”

  “I’m sure we won’t miss them. I just thought a bath usually helps us to relax.”

  Perhaps that’s meant to remind me I’m not alone in being tense. She’s had to put up with my preoccupied silence over dinner, even if it was preferable to my stumbles in and out of conversation. Then there were my attempts to wash up, punctuated by the clang of dropped utensils and the smashing of a plate from the set my parents bought for the apartment. The local news interrupted the evening every hour, but never with a mention of my parents, and I felt as if the programmes I tried to watch on television—a report on how inadequate British flood defences are, a documentary about unsuspected forms of subterranean life discovered by potholers after examples were washed to the surface—were marking time until the next bulletin. I couldn’t open any wine in case Lucinda had to drive, not that her searching my parents’ neighbourhood and its outskirts for an hour had produced a result. Eventually we tried playing the City of Culture board game, but the questions on cards that the dice turned up—asking us to identify the work of Liverpool artists and composers and poets and writers, occasionally of books—made me feel threatened by the chattering of history and imagination. I still do, and perhaps the bath will be a refuge, or surely Lucinda’s embrace is. “I’ll leave the door open,” I tell her.

  “Suppose someone comes in?”

  “I hope someone does,” I say and then realise our mistake. “They can’t with no keys.”

  Once I’ve undressed in the bedroom, I have to leave the phones in the hall. Lucinda sits forward as I return to the bathroom, leaving the door minutely ajar. She’s certainly entitled to a massage. The water redoubles its ripples while I climb in behind her and splay my legs on either side of her. I’m kneading her shoulders and kissing boss after soft boss of her spine when she says “You haven’t asked about last night.”

  “What about it?” I say, moving my hands towards her neck.

  “Where I was. I expect it’s not important with everything else.”

  “You are,” I say and grip her shoulders. “Where?”

  “Not quite so hard, Gavin. The new tunnel.”

  I’m conscious only of asking “What were you doing there?”

  “That really is a bit hard.” She squirms in my grasp until it slackens, and then she says “Taking pictures.”

  “Since when have you been involved?”

  “You don’t have to stop. I only said too hard.” Once I’ve recommenced massaging she says “I wasn’t there for the Friends. I’m just a librarian seeing to the record.”

  “So what’s it like down there?”

  “They had to row me in a rubber boat. I’m back, though, and you didn’t have to fetch me from the underworld.”

  I seem unable to judge how soft her neck is within my grip. “What did you see?”

  “We couldn’t go too far because it’s partially blocked and they can’t clear it until the water goes wherever it has to, but there’s definitely another section that leads towards the church by my house. That’s enough now, thanks. Do you want me to change round?”

  “If you like.”

  She rises with such suppleness that I could fancy she’s about to vault over me like a circus performer. As I shuffle squatly forward, she sidles past and then closes her legs around mine. Her touch on my shoulders is so gently lingering that her soft grasp feels larger than I know her hands are. I’d like to relax into the rhythm of her fingers, which seems to be adopted by surreptitious ripples in the water, but perhaps I need an extra element. “Aren’t you going to sing tonight?”

  “I’m feeling a bit hoarse. You don’t want me croaking in your ear.”

  “Shall I see if we’ve got some medicine?”

  “I expect it just needs watering. I’ll have a glass before we go to bed.”

  I’m beset by ripples as she flexes her legs, distracting me from the impression that her massage has adopted the tempo of a waltz, although it reminds me to ask “Where did you hear the song you sang last time?”

  “The score’s in the archive. I thought you might like it. One more buried bit of Liverpool for you to use.”

  I’m not sure how, even if she has my tours in mind. “You know who wrote it, then.”

  “Stephen Adams, wasn’t it? Liverpool’s most prolific songwriter before the Beatles.”

  Is she suggesting he wrote the words? That’s another local myth to be blamed on James Maybrick or the version of him that has been kept alive. I shouldn’t make Lucinda talk when her voice does seem to have acquired an undercurrent of hoarseness. I devote myself to extracting any stiffness from her shoulders, and then we lie quiet until I feel close to falling asleep. A chill from the water or from the prospect sends me out of the bath.

  Lucinda climbs out with a whisper of ripples, and I’m ready with a towel. Once we’ve finished drying each other I retrieve the phones while she carries glasses of water into the bedroom. By the time I follow she’s under the quilt, which bares her erect nipples as she stretches out her arms. “Are you sure?” I murmur. “If your throat isn’t in such good shape…”

  “If you’re going to end up in my condition you will anyway, Gavin.”

  I only meant she might prefer to sleep in case that helps her recover. Perhaps she’s run down from working late last night, unless she caught something in the tunnels, but she hasn’t lost her energy; in fact, she puts me to shame. Am I distracted by hoping to hear a bell? I feel as if she’s opening her legs too wide in an attempt to compensate for my flaccid performance. As she entwines her limbs about me, I’m impressed by how much of me she’s able to encompass, unless that’s my imagination. She digs her fingers into my shoulders but takes care not to use her nails, which I can’t even feel. Her eyes widen with a plea or an exhortation until my thoughts seem to be drawn into their depths, leaving my mind empty of anything but her. Her tongue is unusually eloquent tonight, however silent; it seems to have a message for every part of my mouth. I’ve no sense of how long we rock together like victims of a storm at sea, but at last the waves of her soft firm flesh conjure forth my miniature flood. She holds me tight—it feels as though she’s attempting to render her limbs sturdier—while I gasp like somebody rescued from drowning. Eventually she releases me and turns over. Once I’ve tugged the cord to let the darkness down she takes my hand and guides it around her waist and slips her fingers between mine.

  Her body feels almost as soft as sleep, and soon they’re one. How can I follow her into unawareness when my parents are at the mercy of the night? If they were together and anywhere safe they would let me know, or might they think it’s too late? Surely the police have to be searching for them, and I’ve no idea where I could; I would simply be another wanderer in the dark. Can’t I at least make a call? When I start to inch away Lucinda’s fingers grow firmer, increasing their hold on me. She needs her sleep before she goes to work, especially since she was up so late last night, or rather down. She has more of a job than I have just now, and I should keep still on her behalf.

  At some point, and then more of them, the stillness closes like deep water over my mind. Whenever I waken I feel reprehensible for having dozed, and lie straining my ears until sleep overtakes me afresh. Sometimes I hear howls of pursuit—the sirens of police vehicles—or the shrill barking of car alarms. Once I’m roused by a harsh rhythmical noise as it passes the apartments, and I imagine a squat shape croaking in time with its ungainly waltz along the street, though it must be the sound of some mechanical fault. More than once I hear rain assailing the window, reawakening my concern for my parents. Lucinda strokes my palm until the storm sinks away, and I feel as if her long fingers are playing the instrument of my hand, performing a silent lullaby to coax me to join her in sleep. I must be well on the way,
since her fingers aren’t nearly as long as that, and fish aren’t swimming in and out of my mouth; it’s just the lingering taste of dinner. The thought of unseen depths seems capable of rendering them not much less than palpable, and they swallow up my mind.

  Breathing wakens me—no, its absence does. At least Lucinda is still clasping my hand, however attenuated her fingers have grown. Even this is a memory that must have been misshapen by a dream, and I’m alone in bed. When I turn over to reach for the glass on the bedside table, I see the phones have gone. This sends me stumbling out of the bedroom, calling “Where are you? Where’s—”

  “I’m just about off to work,” Lucinda says from the kitchen. “Would you like any breakfast? We’re out of milk, but we could have porridge the old way with water.”

  “It’s all right, thanks,” I say, because I feel bloated and tense. Part of this will be anxiety, but I wonder if I’ve caught her illness. “Should you be going in if you aren’t well?”

  “I think it was just an overnight thing.” Her voice does sound restored to normal. “It seems to have taken itself off,” she says. “Anyway, I can’t give in to it at the moment. I’ve too much to do.”

  “Where are my phones?”

  “I’ve got them safe,” she says and takes them out of her pockets. “I’d have put them back on my way out. Perhaps you’ll hear today. I’ll be thinking my hardest about it.”

  Does she mean as a substitute for prayer or in case she comes up with an idea we’ve overlooked? Suppose some reference buried in one of the cartons is the key to my parents’ whereabouts? As I peer at the nearest box Lucinda says “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

  She hugs me as hard as she can, and I respond even more forcefully, but my attention stays on the topmost document. “There he is again,” I mutter.