Creatures of the Pool

by Ramsey Campbell

  It’s nobody but me, in a mirror beside the door. As I swing around, sunlight glares through the window into my eyes. For some moments I can see only a blurred shape in a full-length frame, which puts me in mind of an impressionistic portrait. I slit my eyes and crouch towards it, rendering the figure squatter but no clearer. Why am I wasting my time like this? There are far more important issues to clarify. I grasp the brass doorknob and haul the door wide, to be met by stares from several visitors to the gallery. I’m no painting, and they’ve no right to look at me that way. Before I can begin shouting like my father I stalk to the stairs.

  I take out my mobile as I emerge from the building. I’m in the shade of the portico and about to call Lucinda, if she’s above ground, when a movement on the far side of the road catches my attention. While nobody is in the entrance to the gardens, at least two figures with umbrellas are to be seen. One—the woman wearing spectacles that might as well be opaque—is leaning on hers at the foot of a statue, in the shadow of the plinth, while the other is beneath a tree just inside the wall. Though the lawns must be as waterlogged as a swamp, the loiterer on the grass seems entirely at home. She has lifted her umbrella to observe me—that was the movement I saw. Despite the shade of the foliage, she seems to feel too much sunlight has reached her, because she jerks the umbrella down and her head up. As she does so, a large object falls to the ground. Her whitish dress—spotted brown with mud, I think, as well as an intentional pattern—bulges far too shapelessly while she stoops to retrieve the item. For a moment I have the unappealing fancy that she’s clapping a sodden divot to her cranium. Certainly the wig she plants on her naked greyish scalp isn’t much less muddy and bedraggled than the grass.

  As the umbrella tilts forward and wrinkled shrunken eyes peer from beneath it I have to resist the impulse to retreat into the gallery. You can’t use mobiles in there or in any building along the row. I step back until the watchers are just visible between two pillars, and manage to control my shaky finger enough to key Lucinda’s number. It rings and rings again, so that I’m preparing to be answered by an automatic voice when she says “Yes, Gavin.”

  She sounds uneasy, but all I need to learn just now is “Where are you?”

  She doesn’t respond immediately. I’m about to repeat the question when she says “Up near my house.”

  “How long are you going to be there?”

  “How long do you want me to be?”

  “Till I get there.”

  “Yes, but how long are you likely to take, do you think?”

  I squint between the pillars. The figures with the umbrellas are standing utterly motionless—I could imagine their feet have sunk into the mud they seem to like so much—but I won’t be using the path through the gardens. “As long as the bus takes when I get it,” I tell Lucinda.

  “I’ll meet you at the stop. The one by, the one at the top of Edge Hill.”

  “I’m on my way,” I promise her and myself.

  I could have been while we were talking. I used our conversation as an excuse not to venture out of the meagre refuge of the colonnade. I tramp down the steps to the street in a rage. If anybody were nearby I would point out the watchers, so long as they weren’t the same breed, but there’s nobody close enough to accost. The figure beneath the tree lowers its large head without benefit of a neck to watch my progress, but that’s the only movement in the gardens as I stride uphill and around the corner of St George’s Hall.

  All the way along the pillared building I’m aware of the tunnel underfoot. I feel as if each of my footsteps is being imitated in the dark down there. I hurry past the stone lions and around the far end of the building. A convoy of buses, some dwarfish and others twice their height, is mounting the hill that descends from the site of the Fall Well to its licensed namesake. I have to pass the entrance to the underground to reach the bus stops, but at least a horde of commuters is emerging from the main line station across the road. I hurry past the tiled corridor, along which I seem to hear a heavy body stirring as if my footsteps have awakened it—someone homeless, perhaps. I’m nearly at the pedestrian crossing that leads to the buses when an object nods out of hiding above me, around one of the stone posts that flank an entrance to the gardens. Despite or rather because of the sunlight, it’s a raised umbrella.

  I want to laugh hysterically at it. I want to shout, despite the renewed dryness of my mouth, and point until everybody within earshot is aware of the lurker. Suppose it has fellows I’m unaware of? Suppose some of them are capable of mingling with the crowds around and inside the bus shelters? I might feel safer avoiding that area and staying as much in the open as possible until I catch the bus. I retreat uphill, where a single-decker to Edge Hill has been halted by traffic lights. When I thump on the door the driver turns his head away on its thick neck and gazes along Lime Street as if he’s looking for the vanished waxworks. Before I can redouble my assault the lights release the vehicle, and I’m all the more furiously frustrated by having to wait to cross. As I glare at the entrance to the gardens, the umbrella sinks like a shell protecting a mollusc.

  Once buses finish ignoring the red light I dash across the junction. It used to be nicknamed the Bay of Biscay after the winds that often carried refuse up from the market, unless some kind of marauder did. On the far side Lime Street appears to be sinking into history—at least, the kebab shops and cheap outfitters are interspersed with disused cinemas, one of them transformed into an equally derelict nightclub, and an abandoned amusement arcade. The sorry block comes to some point in the extravagantly florid façade of the Vines public house, beyond which stands the Adelphi, just a few years under a century old but the third hotel of that name to occupy the site. The enormous ground-floor lounge was based on the stateroom of the Titanic. I don’t want to be reminded of aquatic matters, even when a glance over my shoulder reveals no pursuers with umbrellas, only the odd ill-dressed pedestrian shambling after me. I hurry around the corner and up Brownlow Hill to the nearest bus stop.

  The hotel blocks my view along Lime Street. Before any Adelphi was built, the Ranelagh Pleasure Gardens occupied the place. Strolling players would perform there, which puts me angrily in mind of Nicholas Noble’s gang. I’m within a minute’s walk of both a Maybrick residence by a lunatic asylum and Blake Street, the home of a man who died in 1883 of being kicked in the stomach by a policeman. No motive was recorded, though the practice was known as bursting or wellying your victim, terms still in use. I’m grateful to be rescued from history by a double-decker bus that swings around the corner. I’ve paid my fare and am clambering the stairs when the blackbird in my pocket starts to sing.

  I sprawl on the left-hand front seat upstairs and snatch out the mobile. The caller’s number is withheld, and I keep my answer neutral. “Gavin Meadows.”

  “You’re still available, then.”

  It isn’t Lucinda. It isn’t either of my parents or the Frugone salesman. It isn’t Wrigley or Maddock—it’s not even as welcome as either of them. “I haven’t gone underground if that’s what you mean, Hank.”

  The retort is less satisfying than I’d like, and so I demand “Why, are you planning to send me another crew?”

  “Rest assured we shan’t after your latest behaviour.”

  “Well, that’s something.” My rage has fallen short of my response, and I’m provoked to add “What behaviour, may I ask?”

  “Letting down the party it was never my idea to send.”

  “So whose were they?”

  He’s silent while the bus passes the main university building. The terracotta Gothic frontage has developed an exoskeleton of scaffolding and canvas, above which a clock tower and a spire indicate the latest onset of black clouds. Students flock across the road to a rudimentary block of shops—a coffee bar, a sandwich shop, a Frugo Corner. I’m about to repeat my question when Waterworth says “I’ve told you more than once that I won’t discuss council employees with you.”

  “You can tell me who’s sa
ying, saying I did what?”

  “Your tour group waited and you never showed.”

  “That’s a lie. I was there. I’m still drenched.” With rising fury I enquire “Where were they?”

  “Where they were asked to be, and all of them say you weren’t.”

  “You’ve met them all, have you?” I feel as if I’m dreaming aloud. Perhaps he doesn’t think I expect an answer, and I have to prompt “Met any?”

  “There was no need for me to meet with them. We spoke and that’s enough.”

  “I’m not surprised they didn’t show their faces. You’d know why if you saw them.”

  The bus has climbed past boxy outposts of the university to the upper margin of the Moss Lake. As it turns along Crown Street Waterworth says “I’ve no idea what you mean by that. This city believes in inclusiveness. So you did see your party and chose to let them down.”

  “I don’t think so. More like I called them up.” Perhaps I’m dreaming aloud again, and I add “The bunch I saw didn’t want the tour.”

  At once I wonder if they could have—if following the historical route and hearing my anecdotes would have affected them somehow. In that case, what may it have been doing to me? I mustn’t imagine that I’ve been as driven by occult impulses as Williamson was. The thought gags me while Waterworth says “I’m ending this discussion. I just wanted to advise you that all employees involved with tourism will be making it clear we don’t support or recommend your tours.”

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to talk about your personnel.”

  The retort is more automatic than angry, because I have a sense that my tours have become redundant, perhaps just by comparison with the search for my parents. The bus has swung up West Derby Street and is climbing towards the swift black sky that lours above Edge Hill. “Thanks for the spank, Hank,” I say as I imagine my father might, and stow the phone in my pocket. I’m hauling myself to my feet as the bus reaches the top of the hill.

  A set of traffic lights turns red to greet it, but it swerves so vigorously into Lucinda’s road that I’m flung back onto the seat. As I grab the bar across the front window again, the bus speeds past the terrace of houses opposite the church. It isn’t slowing for the bus stop, and I’m opening my mouth to shout to the driver when the sight ahead interrupts my breath.

  A triangular flagstoned island occupies the middle of a three-way junction in front of the church. Four police cars are nesting on it around a bench. For a moment I think the bench is the location of the problem, but it’s deserted. The police are in the churchyard. It stands six feet above the road, and I crane to see what’s wrong.

  To the right of the single path, which is flanked by shrubs pruned almost to their roots, policemen waistcoated in yellow are erecting a fence of tape and metal stakes around a pond among the mossy gravestones. A tilted greenish obelisk pokes up from the water, which also contains a pair of rounded stones covered with mud or mould. There are sticks in the water as well, and larger chunks of wood. I’m assuming all these belong to the shrubs until I notice that one of the stones has teeth. So has the other, along with jagged sockets where the eyes and nose were, and the bundles of scrawny items to which the rounded objects are attached aren’t sticks. Are the two incomplete shapes endeavouring to crawl out of the water? Surely the movements, however much they suggest feeble attempts to hop, are simply the effect of ripples a policeman sends through the water by driving a stake into the earth. I’m staring in reluctant fascination at the spectacle when the bus swings away from the church, and I glimpse Lucinda inside the bus shelter beside the terrace.

  “Wait,” I shout and stagger into the aisle, but the driver doesn’t respond. The bus continues downhill towards Edge Hill station, from which the city’s first railway tunnels extended to Lime Street, encountering some of Williamson’s workers in the process or the man himself—someone who came out of the underground dark. As I clatter downstairs the bus crosses a junction and halts at a stop, where the driver delays opening the doors to say “There’s a bell, chum.”

  As soon as the doors fold open I see Lucinda on the far side of the crossroads. She must have been quick—have sprinted, even. A few long-legged strides bring her across it. Her eyes are wide enough to contain a good deal of anxiety, and the pupils are enlarged by the gathering darkness. “Gavin,” she says and somewhat less welcomingly “What were you doing this time?”

  “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

  She falters, though I don’t think my question was especially aggressive. “Why should you?”

  I feel as if we’re accusing each other of having caused the situation in the churchyard, which my mind seems unable or unwilling to recall with more conviction than a dream. I’m about to be more specific when Lucinda says “They called me from the library, Gavin. They said you stole the key to the stacks.”

  “I borrowed it. Did they tell you what they told me about you?” I give her more than a moment to respond, but when she only blinks before widening her eyes as if to exhibit their innocence I say “You aren’t here for them. They don’t know what you’re up to any more than I do.”

  “Is that what they said? I suppose they had to.” She sounds inexplicably wistful, and turns to gaze towards the church. “What’s happening up there?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  Perhaps that’s too denunciatory. She crosses the junction again and doesn’t speak until I’ve hurried after her. “It’s too high to see,” she says. “You’d have to jump. I thought you might have from the bus.”

  I feel as if I’m in a dream or threatened by one. “Jumped?”

  “Seen. They aren’t letting anyone up.”

  “I’d say there’s been some kind of burst. A water main, it looks like. It’s come up through the graves and smashed some coffins.”

  My words can’t reduce the memory to themselves. I could imagine she’s able to see what I’m unable to avoid recalling—the not quite lifeless twitches of the corpses in the water—until she makes the reason for her moment’s silence clear. “It must be the tunnel they reopened this afternoon,” she says. “The friends were right, it leads up there.”

  I can’t tell how she feels about this—apprehensive or excited or both? I also wonder “Leads from where?”

  “One of Williamson’s houses down the hill. There was always a story that he and his wife had an underground way to the church. They used to appear there and nobody saw where they’d come from.”

  “Never mind that,” I say, because it’s yet another remnant of history to add to the chatter that’s trying to invade my consciousness. “Where did all the water come from? How can it have come uphill?”

  “It was underneath the section they were clearing. We heard it start to break through and got out just in time. The entire tunnel and all the ones connected with it must be flooded. Just think, Gavin, you could have had a drowned girlfriend.”

  Her mouth widens with a smile, but I’m not quite able to respond. We’re opposite the churchyard, where a policeman has just clapped a hand over his mouth as he recoils from stooping to some object. The next moment drops spatter my forehead, and I have the thoroughly unwelcome notion that they’re from the water that has burst through the grave. Or are my brows exuding them? I stop short of imagining they’ve welled up from my brain as Lucinda retreats beneath the bus shelter and I recognise the start of yet another downpour. It isn’t only because we’re too close to the graveyard and its exposed contents that I say “Aren’t we going in your house?”

  Lucinda looks away from the swarm of police in the churchyard. Wistfulness, if that’s what it is, has resurfaced in her eyes. “Come on, then,” she says. “You’ll have to see.”

  Chapter Forty-four

  A LITERARY PROPOSITION

  As I follow Lucinda up the garden path, which resembles a track through a marsh rather than between the halves of the small lawn, something starts to flap at my back. It puts me in mind of some undefined but vast shape that h
as awakened in a dark place. The sound gives way to pattering, an amplified version of the onset of the rain. The police are erecting a tent to conceal the remains in the graveyard. Lucinda glances towards it and hurries to unlock her front door.

  The wide high-ceilinged hall is white as innocence. At least, the walls would be except for the afternoon darkness, which appears to have soaked into the turfy green carpet that extends along the hall and up the stairs. Pots of ferns are lined up along the skirting-board of the party wall. I’ve seen those before, but not the photographs that decorate the hall and climb beside the stairs as if they’re striving towards the skylight. As I realise that all the photographs were taken underground, Lucinda says “I want to see.”

  When she runs upstairs I have a sense of her ascending towards the light. She’s in the front bedroom by the time I realise that she means to look into the churchyard. I hurry after her, not only in case she finds she would rather not be alone with the view. Another sound besides her soft footsteps is audible in the room—a surreptitious lapping of water.

  I’m halfway up the stairs when the skylight begins to vibrate. I could be gazing at the underside of an aquarium. As soon as I reach the landing I see what I heard in the bedroom. A water bed draped with a leafy quilt, from beneath which a pair of pillows peeks, occupies a good deal of the floor. The vibration of my footfalls sets it in motion again as I join Lucinda at the window.

  Two policemen are struggling to raise the tent against the downpour, and I’m reminded of a giant umbrella. The pool around the tottering obelisk has grown turbulent with rain. Surely that’s the only movement or at least the only source of any, however restless the glistening bones appear to be. That’s just water surging over them; they can’t really be putting on translucent flesh. I’m grateful when the tent hides them, even if I might have liked to be sure what was happening to them. The sight of the policemen stepping well back doesn’t help. “Poor things,” says Lucinda.