Creatures of the Pool

by Ramsey Campbell

  The umbrellas have sunk again, and their bearers have started to peer out of hiding, by the time I reach the top of James Street. The crash of thunder feels like an insubstantial pursuer leaping on my back. The pursuit is altogether more substantial, and I seem to hear at least one participant bounding after me. I’m dashing downhill and across the flooded road to the station when I realise how horribly wrong I’ve gone because of panic. Underground is the last place I want to be.

  Nothing would be more welcome than an exodus of passengers, but there’s nobody in sight ahead. Mustn’t there be staff inside the building? As I sprint for it I skid on the streaming pavement and almost collide with the first of a rank of bus shelters, but the leaps behind me don’t hesitate—indeed, I think they’re growing longer. I’ve just regained my balance when a bus swings uphill from the Strand.

  Its headlights don’t quite touch me, and by the sound of it they don’t slow down my pursuers. All the same, the bus is a refuge—must be. I stumble around the shelter and thrust my arm out as far as it will stretch, but the bus doesn’t lose any speed. I’m at the wrong stop—I need the lower one. I dash for it, waving my arms, and as the outsize wipers flail the rain they seem to be imitating me or gesturing me away. Before I reach the middle shelter the bus is past the lowest. I’m almost desperate enough to stagger in front of the vehicle, hoping I’m less of a blur to the driver than he is to me. Instead I lurch at it as it speeds alongside. I’m about to pound on the doors when they fold inwards. “Slow down, pal,” the driver says. “I didn’t want you getting any wetter than you are, that’s all.”

  I clamber on the platform and am immediately afraid of being followed by a final leap. “Shut them, then,” I gasp, “or you’ll let it in.”

  His wide but low forehead breaks into furrows that appear to squeeze his eyes small. Perhaps he’s offended by being told how to do his job, and I’m close to renewing my demand by the time he shuts the doors. As I fumble for money I croak “Did you see all that?”

  “Just saw you, pal,” he says and sends the bus uphill.

  Chapter Forty-one

  THE KEY

  The bus is climbing James Street when the driver says “Good one.” He’s enthusing about the latest flash. As far as I can distinguish through the sweeps of the wipers and the constant renewal of rain on the windscreen, the square around the monument and all the roads that lead to it are utterly deserted. Has the lightning sent the creatures back where they came from? Traffic lights halt the bus at the corner of the square, and the driver stares at me until I wonder if he expects me to go back under the dome. I retreat in confusion and return in more of it once he says “Don’t forget your change, pal.”

  I grab it from the metal trough beneath his window as the bus turns along Castle Street. Another glare of lightning displays figures huddled in doorways of offices and banks and restaurants. Quite a few are clutching dormant umbrellas, but they all look reasonably normal. “Some that strive to quit the darkness are indistinguishable from the mundane mob, even to their own eyes.” Did I read that among my father’s extracts from John Strong, or did my mother read it to me? I feel as if I dreamed it, and I want to believe that’s the case with my encounter at the monument, because my mind does seem unable to escape some kind of underlying darkness. I don’t think it’s only the gloom of the storm.

  I perch on the edge of the front seat, brushing trickles of water out of my eyes again and again. The bus swings into Cook Street and speeds downhill to Victoria Street, where buildings of Victoria’s vintage seem to blanch at my approach. An onslaught of thunder backs up the lightning and sets car alarms twittering in Mathew Street, alongside the musical cellars. I wish I were hearing my blackbird, however much night it evokes; how long will the Frugone salesman take? The headlights of the disturbed cars blink a warning, which I feel I’ve understood once the bus turns down Sir Thomas Street to Whitechapel.

  Yet again I’m back where I saw whatever I saw. I could imagine that I’m compelled to keep retracing the past—not only mine. The city is exerting the compulsion through its layout and the smallness of its original boundaries, but how reassuring is that? The entrance to the underground parking gapes like a cave as the bus swerves up Roe Street, where passengers crowd out of a shelter. I scrutinise every wet face, especially those that widen their eyes at me. Do they think I’m as irrational as I’ve begun to feel? I have to struggle not to look back at them once they sit behind me, so close together that they might all know one another. The bus climbs past the site of the Fall Well and turns along Lime Street, and I’m at my stop.

  The moment I alight between two stone lions that stream as if they’ve just risen from the well, the bus shuts its doors and moves off with a swish of water. Have all the passengers turned their waterlogged heads to observe me? Of course they look drowned because the windows are. I dash across the flagged plateau to shelter beneath the portico of St George’s Hall, which revives the chattering of history in my head. The first building on the site was an infirmary that housed a lunatic asylum, close to the location of the courtroom in the Hall—the courtroom where Judge Fitzjames Stephen lost his mind. What may have entered his head overnight that turned him from sympathising with Florence Maybrick to condemning her as a poisoner? He used opium, and perhaps he dreamed of her curious comment that “James took arsenic not to pale his skin”—which Victorians often did—“but to excuse his inhuman pallor.” How could this have driven the judge mad? A flash of lightning urges me onwards, and so does a sense of the railway underfoot. While I didn’t use the underground, that needn’t mean nothing else did.

  As I sprint around the side of the Hall I blink at St John’s Gardens. The only figures I can see are the dripping greenish statues on their plinths, and so I’m pursued just by the thought of the sentries with halberds who used to guard the entrance to the courtroom. What aspect of the past were they meant to conjure up? “All rites have their inception in terror,” John Strong must have written. “The mob enacts them daily, never glimpsing their significance. The more their ancient meanings are forgotten, the more the ignorant shall be compelled to perform the rites.” I feel beset by history or a dream of it, whatever the difference may be, and it’s a relief to leave the Victorian evocations of a bygone era behind at the library entrance.

  A guard frowns at me from behind his counter. With my unkempt hair and stubbly face and sodden crumpled clothes I must look little better than homeless. No doubt I leave wet footprints on my way to the lift. As it bears me to the fourth floor I run my hands through my even wetter hair and shake rain from my fingers, spattering the close grey metal walls. A prolonged muffled rumble seems to reverberate beneath me, but the foundations aren’t subsiding into the heath. The absence of lightning before the thunder reminds me how cut off from daylight I am.

  Two more frowns greet me across the local history desk. “Sorry about last time,” I say, though only to head off any threat to call security, and then I notice that both women are wearing the badge that says WAD under a hovering drip. “What’s that all about?” I’m determined to discover.

  “Today,” the younger woman says. “It’s Water Awareness Day.”

  Presumably I would know this if I weren’t so preoccupied or so much in need of sleep, although it sounds like a joke about my drenched state. In any case I should be learning “Where’s Lucinda?”

  The younger woman opens her mouth, but her colleague is faster. “Not here, I’m afraid.”

  “I can see that,” I say and dilute it with a laugh. “So where?”

  The woman folds her arms so hard that her torso bulges under them. “Shouldn’t you know?”

  “Why, what’s it to do with me?”

  “That’s what I’m asking. Wouldn’t you know if she wanted you to?”

  Rain begins to trickle down to my left eye, and I almost splash the women in my haste to brush away the distraction. “We didn’t have much chance to talk before she left for work. We had a good night but I’d
only just got up.”

  I don’t care how intimate this is so long as it confounds my interrogator, who presses her lips together as hard as she’s hugging herself. It seems to find more favour with her colleague, who murmurs “She’s down in her tunnels again.”

  I rub my streaming forehead. “What do you mean, hers?”

  “It was her idea. Her dream, if you like.”

  I don’t, and her colleague visibly dislikes my being informed, which provokes me to say “But she’s down there for you. For the library, I mean.”

  The younger woman intertwines her fingers as her workmate says “She isn’t, no.”

  My wet clothes feel like a sudden chill rendered solid. “How can’t she be?” I protest. “She works here, doesn’t she?”

  As I’m reminded how my father kept quiet about his dismissal, the younger librarian says “She’s taken a few days off.”

  I stand as if I’m stuck in a marsh until the older woman says “Can we help you in some other way?”

  Although it sounds more like a challenge than an offer, I’m equal to it. “As a matter of fact,” I say, reaching in my pocket, “you can.”

  My hand closes on the page of John Strong’s thoughts, and I feel as if I’m rescuing them from a swamp. “Let me show you this,” I say. “I’d be interested to hear your comments.”

  Perhaps this isn’t the best way to talk about the sight of me groping in my trousers. The older woman in particular seems to find the proposal unattractive. “Here you are,” I declare, planting the photocopy on the counter.

  Both women recoil as though I’ve presented them with something monstrous. I’ve no idea if they’re reacting to whatever word I may have said aloud. The page is no longer a page; it’s a soggy mass of pulp. When I attempt to unfold it, the folds come apart like dough. All the print has seeped through, filling every surface with a tangle of blurred symbols; there are even some on my fingertips. “It was him,” I insist and clutch my throbbing forehead. “It was John Strong.”

  The librarians stare at the ragged scraps of paper exuding rain onto the counter. I’m vainly attempting to locate a single identifiable fragment of text when the older woman says “Do you want those?”

  I hardly know what I’m saying or how hysterically it may make me laugh. “They’re all yours with my compliments.”

  She scrapes the sodden fragments into a waste bin and uses a tissue to dab with distaste at the moisture they’ve left behind. “Better collect the requests,” she says.

  There’s a box of slips of paper at the far end of the counter. Most of the books are kept behind the scenes, and readers have to request them. As the younger woman empties the box and picks up a key on a wooden tag I have a desperate inspiration. “Can you let me through?”

  The older woman frowns as I advance to the barrier that guards the inner room. “You’ll need an admission ticket.”

  “Lucinda made me one.” As I grope in my breast pocket I’m appalled by the possibility that the storm has reached in there too. No, the pocket is relatively dry, and the mobile and the wallet containing all my cards are safe. I slip the reader’s ticket, which is doing without an apostrophe, out of its plastic sheath and lay it on the counter. “See,” my nerves goad me into saying, “I didn’t make that up.”

  She waits for me to sign the admission book and lingers over comparing my signature with the version on the card, unless she’s disapproving the drop of water that my head let fall on the page. I worsen matters by dabbing at the damage with my thumb, which turns the first letter into a C and renders the end of Gavin indecipherable. I’m wondering whether I should sign again by the time the librarian pushes the button to release the barrier.

  Her colleague has trundled a trolley into the stacks and locked the door behind her. Just three tables are occupied, each by a solitary reader. Two are facing the stacks, but one has a view of the counter. How observant is he? I need an excuse to be in this section, and I head for the catalogues, only to find that the solitary name I can think of is John Strong. I need to ask for something else—any book will do. My gaze snags on Cod, having drifted over the spines of other stumpy catalogues: Ado to Ago, Are to Ask, Ate to Ave, Bed to Beg, Bog to Boo…William Colquitt will provide me with some cover, and I copy the details of his book of poetry out of Cod to Come. As I turn away from laying the request slip in the box, the man who’s facing the counter pushes back his chair.

  Though it feels unappealingly moist, I sit on the chair as he lumbers to the barrier. Whatever books he’s left, they’ll help me not to seem unduly watchful. Perhaps they can hush the clamour of syllables in my skull, fragmented words I must have glimpsed: Frog to Front, God to Gog, Moat to Mob…Perhaps the books will even stop me wondering too much about Lucinda’s whereabouts and why she’s there, since I’m not supposed to use my phone while I’m in the library. I drag the nearest book towards me and open it with too much of a thump.

  It’s a book of Scouse slang and colloquialisms. I turn like a schoolboy to the chapter about sex. Getting off at Edge Hill means withdrawal prior to orgasm, while slowing down for the tunnel and going under the Mersey require no elucidation. The Beatles smuggled a reference to fish and finger pie into a song, though hardly anyone outside Merseyside understood its significance. In the seventies phrases from their lyrics became sexual references, however jokey: fixing a hole, nobody came, a ticket to ride (a condom), rubber soul (a black condom), and every girl knew what a boy meant by saying “Let me take you down.” Just now I don’t care to be reminded of a place where nothing is real, and the book hasn’t distracted me from the spawning of syllables: Pond to Pool, Rip to Rite, Seek to Seep…I shut the book and open the next one—an anthology of several centuries of Liverpool art—with a thud that earns a frown from the elder librarian.

  I feel as if I’m miming readership. As I lean forward a wet object wriggles off my scalp onto my forehead. I brush back the drenched lock of hair and wipe my hand on the underside of the seat, having straightened up as though I’ve been struck by a revelation. Here’s A Memory of Everton by George Stubbs, depicting a hunt along the ridge. The horses and their riders are painted in his usual naturalistic detail, but their prey is nowhere to be seen. An untypical trick of perspective makes a small pale cloud appear to be fleeing along the grassy brow against a metallic sky. How close was the location to my parents’ house? There’s no sign of the old beacon, unless its presence is suggested by a hint of greater brightness at the left edge of the picture, towards which the elongated pallid mass is gliding, not leaping. When I start to fancy that the mass looks more solid than a cloud I turn the page.

  The Scientists was painted by Joseph Wright of Derby during his years in Liverpool. In some ways it’s uncharacteristic of the eighteenth-century artist. The title isn’t as precise as usual, nor the activity that’s shown. As with much of his work, figures in a dim interior are only partly lit by candlelight. All three faces are intent on an object almost entirely concealed by their bodies. Is that a flabby whitish elbow on a slab? Is there the gleam of a knife? Perhaps it’s the dimness that makes the eyes in the plump preoccupied faces bulge so much. The picture involves one of Wright’s favourite effects—background details that only gradually become visible. I wonder if the painting is unfinished, since some of the details are so obscure. Whatever they’re meant to signify, those must be masks in niches on the wall, even if the round-eyed wide-mouthed faces appear to be worming out of it to watch whatever operation is in progress. The wall itself is barely visible, though its glistening suggests the place is wetter than a laboratory ought to be. In the top left-hand corner of the canvas a clouded moon may symbolise a light to strive towards. Not only the height of the glassless window leads me to believe that the room is underground, and I’m reminded that the laboratory of the hospital where St George’s Hall now stands was in the cellar.

  I’m glad to be diverted by a muffled rumble at my back. It isn’t thunder, it’s the trolley emerging from the stacks. The libr
arian delivers books to the readers and returns to the counter, where she leaves the key just underneath. She isn’t due to make the trip again for a quarter of an hour, and I’m watching for my chance when her colleague murmurs to her. They must be eager to get rid of me, because the younger woman retrieves the key and takes my request slip out of the box.

  Won’t recent art let me feel less besieged by the past? Here’s a modern sculpture by Arthur Dooley, one of his statues of Christ. Not just the thin arms but the entire grey metal figure reach heavenwards, straining unnaturally tall. Its joints are as spiky as the sunburst of thorns that encircles its cranium, and so is the ground in which its bare bony feet are rooted. Is that meant to be a swamp? The piece is called Reaching for the Light, which fails to quiet the litany of syllables in my brain: Try to Tup, Up to Vale, Wed to Well…Before I can look to see if they’re on the spines of the catalogues, the librarian brings me the Colquitt book. “I’ve finished with these, thanks,” I tell her.

  She watches me dab my forehead and rub my wet fingers together. “Will you be careful, please?” she says. “This is our only copy.”

  “Don’t worry, I always treat books as if they’re my own.” For some reason I’m reminded of the sodden items in my hall. I leaf through the slim volume until she makes for the counter with the other books, and then I think of a reason to read rather than simply pretend while I’m biding my time. I turn to Colquitt’s Description of Liverpool and see lines I recognise: