“Why, you fat bastard?”
Had he not been so focused on his grievous beating (and were his ears not ringing from the shots fired), perhaps William would have noticed the arm, the final functioning part of Jimmy Gums’ anatomy, before it could reach out and vise his neck just as it had done of the younger Zatel.
Following a gargled scream, the forest was at last silent. The trees watched on and the night was sated, having claimed the flesh of its share of killers for one evening.
Slippery When Wet
Swish. Swash.
The frayed braids of soaking mop cord slid across the miniature floor tiles, leaving sudsy trails in their wake.
Swish. Swash.
Only halfway to go, Earl Boigne thought to himself. The slurping noise of the wet mop swabbing the floor echoed in the deserted cavern that housed the YMCA indoor pool. It was well past business hours and Earl was right on schedule. The oversized lap clock that hung at the far side of the pool told him that in twenty minutes it would be ten o’ clock.
It would take him ten minutes to finish mopping the deck and lock up, and another ten to make it home in time to catch the nightly re-run of Townies. The sloshing of the neon yellow, wheeled water bucket resonated softly off of the painted concrete walls.
It would be fair to say that Earl was more than used to his nightly cleaning routine, which had changed little in his fifteenth year of being the janitor at the YMCA. Or, as the most recent of spike-haired managers had carefully termed the position: Facilities Specialist.
Earl snorted.
He didn’t give a damn what you called it, just as long as the paycheck kept coming every other week (And as long as he didn’t have to go fishing brown trout out of the pool more than just as often).
Earl pushed the rusty-wheeled bucket around the corner of the pool and chased after it with his mop. He whistled an old show tune lightly as he dragged along the red pole to which the mop head was affixed.
As his swab swished across the gray tile, Earl turned to shove the bucket with his foot and lost his balance on the slippery floor. By some stroke of luck, the mop caught the tile just right and stopped him from tumbling headfirst into the pool. While he let out a deep breath, he saw movement out of the corner of his peripheral vision. He paused and looked over at the pool. Had something just moved the heavy plastic sheeting that lay draped across the surface of the water tank?
Not long after Earl had assumed the title of Facilities Specialist, the Y had purchased a pool cover that, by day, sat wound up in three enormous hand-crank spools. At night, each of the covers was unrolled and pulled across the surface of the water, hiding its depths in darkness.
On more than one occasion, Earl had pictured someone, usually himself, trapped beneath the covering and struggling to find his way to safety. And he had nearly just put that theoretical situation to the test. He could imagine the look of terror on the face of the poor adolescent lifeguard who would wind the tarp back up in the morning and find a bloated, waterlogged surprise. He chased the image from his mind. There had been only one death on record in this pool. One that Earl knew of, anyhow. But that hadn’t had anything to do with the damned surface mats. Early in the decade, some poor kid had fallen into the shallow end and knocked himself unconscious. It had been an undeniable tragedy, but as all things eventually go, Earl hadn’t thought about the event in years.
“H-Hello,” Earl stuttered, clearing his throat. He knew that it was absolutely absurd to think that he had seen actually anything. He was the only living being left inside the building at that time of night. The manager had left, as always, after closing at eight-thirty. Earl was the only other staff member with keys to the facility.
Earl shook his head and forced a chuckle. “Earl, you old knucklehead,” he said loud enough to convince himself of his solitude. “There ain’t a soul in here, and you know it.” And indeed he did know it. It was his first order of business each night to double check all three of the recreational facility’s separate levels to make sure that no rogue members remained, stubbornly chastising themselves via treadmill for their love of fast food.
Forcing his eyes back to his work, Earl saw that the water from his mop had begun to puddle. With a well-practiced sweep of his arm, he spread the water about evenly, coming over it once again to pick up any excess fluid. Earl made his way around the final bend and into the last stretch of tile leading up to the lengthy side of the aquatic rectangle. The bucket’s squeaking wheels skittered again along the uneven grout joints of the floor.
Earl pulled the mop out of the sudsy water and turned again to face the pool. A small ripple shifted the center mat that lay across the surface. Earl dropped the pole end of the mop in surprise. It rattled loudly on the tile surface. The resonating sound surprised Earl again. He hurried to recover his cleaning instrument from the floor, and took a step back from the edge of the tank. His eyes had definitely not been playing tricks on him that time. He stood there, mop at the ready, for the better part of a minute, studying the immobile plastic mat which separated him from thousands of gallons of the unknown.
“Bubbles,” Earl said. “Get a hold of yourself. Damned thing just had an air pocket beneath it.” He scolded himself for overreacting. Christ, Earl. You’re fifty five-years-old. You don’t need to be going and giving yourself another heart attack. He reached inside the pocket of his coveralls and pulled out the translucent orange bottle that Dr. Struthers had prescribed. He shook one white pill out and popped it down dry. Then he took deep breaths and counted slowly to twenty.
Earl got his anxiety under control and glanced back up at the foot-long hands of the clock on the wall. He was a couple of minutes behind schedule. Don’t you dare rush, he told himself. He steadied his mop and went back to work.
He felt his heart quicken when he caught himself again looking toward the sheathed swimming pool. The whole idea of covering the swim tank at night had never made any sense to Earl. What on earth would a thin sheet of plastic keep out of the pool? It had always seemed a bit odd to him, but had never before seemed as disconcerting as it did right then.
Earl cast a quick glance behind him and decided that the deck area was clean enough that no-one would notice if he decided to call it a night. His heart and his nerves both agreed with his brain on this judgment call, and he quickly pushed the bucket toward the custodial closet which doubled as his office. The door had a slot on it for a permanent placard that used to read Custodian, but that the new manager had replaced with a much more title-sensitive strip of duct tape, upon which was hand-written in marker: Facilities Specialist.
He usually shook his head and cursed the man, but tonight Earl didn’t feel like wasting any time with pleasantries. He jiggled the key ring loose from his belt and opened the lock hurriedly. Earl slid the roller-bucket through the door, neglected to even dump it into the floor drain, grabbed his hat and coat off of his desk, and exited his office in under a minute. He was walking toward the double-doors that led out of the pool area and into the locker rooms when he heard the deep, churning gurgle drifting toward him from the opposite end of the room.
Earl stopped in his tracks and listened.
“You’re hearing things, old man,” he said aloud. But what if he wasn’t? Again the image of some poor helpless fool stuck beneath the surface of those thin, yet light-impermeable sheets. His mind saw someone struggling for air and clawing to find the gap in the overlain sections of plastic mat, struggling futilely in the aquatic darkness. He had just heard someone fighting for oxygen.
“No, you didn’t,” he told himself quietly. And he almost believed it. “Time to go home.” Earl resumed walking toward the exit and stopped mid-stride. He pushed the air in his lungs out through his nostrils and waited. He turned to give one last look at the Olympic-sized water tank before he stepped through the doors and hurried into the locker rooms.
With the keys to the front door in his hand, Earl gave the area surrounding the front desk a last glance before reachi
ng up to turn off the lights. He paused for a moment and walked around the front desk to the glass-walled waiting area where parents could watch their children play in the pool. It gave Earl a full view of the swimming room, if at a bit of a distance. Though he felt a little bit foolish staring at it, Earl’s eyes were drawn to the area like magnets. He reminded himself that tonight was going to be the second part of an especially funny Townies episode from the night before.
The sheet of plastic that encased the water shook violently. Earl blinked and stood in shock. He narrowed his vision for a moment and decided that he was not making this up in his head.
“Oh my god,” Earl whispered, “there’s someone in the pool.”
Earl’s legs were backpedaling faster than his body could compensate balancing for and he tumbled to the floor. He thought he heard a crack in his left forearm upon landing, but the adrenaline that had flooded his system blocked out any immediate pain. Rolling onto his knees, Earl stepped up into a run.
Normally Earl would have had enough sense to ask himself how it was possible that a person could stay submerged for well over an hour and still be alive, but at the moment his only thought was that someone needed his help. Probably some dumbass kid that had been dared to sneak into the pool after hours, and that Earl had missed in the facility inspection.
The worn rubber soles of Earl’s Nike sneakers thudded heavily down the hallway as he trotted faster than he had once attempted in the last half decade. His heart responded fairly well to the quickened pace, for the moment. He rounded the corner in the white-walled passageway leading into the men’s locker room.
The feeling in his arm was returning rapidly, of which he was made aware by the jolts of pain ricocheting back and forth from his elbow to his wrist.
Earl stumbled through the pair of swinging doors and his eyes were drawn immediately to the pool. The water beneath the protective surface was churning with frantic intensity directly in the center of the aquatic pit.
The mat of plastic thrust out at contorted angles as it was torn and pulled at in desperation by whoever was trapped beneath.
“I’m coming,” Earl screamed with shallow breath. His eyes darted across the high walls of the immense room for a piece of rescue equipment. He found it immediately in the shape of an orange, plastic floatation device.
“Hold on,” Earl shouted. “Just hold on, buddy!”
Oh, how his chest hurt. No time to slow down, now, he warned himself. Please don’t let some dumbshit kid die. Not because of me.
Earl hoisted the buoy off its hook and rushed for the pool. And he stopped. What was he going to do, jump in? He was just as likely to get himself drowned too if he did that. He wasn’t exactly a natural Mark Spitz in the water. Earl dropped the floatation device to the floor and spun back to the wall. His heart almost literally skipped a beat when he saw the long aluminum pole with the basket on the end sitting just below where the floatie had hung. He’d curse himself later for not having seen it in the first place.
Earl seized the long pole that he usually reserved for catching the more solid species of pool trout.
The force from the water side of the plastic barrier suddenly stopped. The mat lay still and the water swooshing into the drain gutter calmly subsided.
“No!”
Earl flung the pole toward the nearest gap in the covering with his good arm. “No, hold on! Grab onto this,” he yelled into the depths. His own voice reverberated in frightening tones off the glass and tile.
His mind flushed with panic, and Earl was jabbing so frantically that once again he nearly tumbled into the pool. He regained his footing and pushed the pole into the murky shadows and swung it heavily back and forth. Perhaps twelve of the pole’s seventeen feet were now well beneath the floating barrier.
I can’t go in. I can’t go in. Earl was panicking and he could swear that his ticker was ready give up the ghost at any moment. Please grab the pole.
“Grab it! Grab the goddam stick!” And the force with which the turd trapper was pulled downward in response nearly yanked it clean out of Earl’s hand. He dropped to one knee and tugged with all his might, using both arms.
“That’s it! Pull, damn you,” Earl wheezed. He strained and stretched at muscles that had not seen use since his high-school football days. His calves ached madly and his knee, the bad one, the arthritic one, threatened to collapse beneath the exertion. As if his drowning victim had somehow heard him, the pole began to slide slowly in Earl’s direction. Seconds hammered by in inches.
Pull. You can do it. Pull. His chest still hurt miserably, and air was becoming painful to draw into his lungs, but the thought of his rescue attempt actually being successful lightened his mental burden. Had things been moving any slower, Earl probably would have noticed that his injured hand didn’t appear to be broken, after all. But there was no time for that. After what felt like ages, the aluminum dowel was over halfway out of the water. Earl pulled with determination and finally saw the presence of his drowning victim draw near the surface.
The mat closest to Earl wrinkled forward; the pole’s occupant dragging it toward the lip of the gutter. And then Earl saw a face, and his heart did stop.
The little boy’s skin was pearl white and taut. With his hands wrapped around the wet aluminum, he looked as though he had just spent the last few hours beneath the surface of the Atlantic in the dead of winter. Dark blue ringlets surrounded his eye sockets and mouth. But what had gripped Earl in mid-breath were the boy’s eyes. They were not unlike a fish’s. They were lifeless and unmoving, cold and glossy black.
Earl knew immediately who the child was. And the very impossibility of it nearly made him forget that he was having a heart attack. It was that damned kid that had fallen into the shallows and bonked his head.
“No,” Earl whispered. His grip relaxed on the pole, and it slid quickly down below the surface, taking its rider with it. Lights flashed before Earl’s eyes and he fought to keep his balance. Heart, he thought instinctively. Heart, start. He fumbled through his thoughts to remember what Dr. Struthers had beat into his brain. Stop. Start. Heart. That was it. Stop what he was doing. Start his heart by pounding on his chest. It was a ‘simple enough thing to remember’ Struthers had told him. Sure, you try remembering just how simple it is while you’re in the process of dying.
Earl brought his fist to his chest with as much force as he could muster. Again. Again. Again. He tried to clear his mind, but those terrible eyes kept lashing out at his consciousness. Earl’s body listened to his pleading. His breathing steadied, and he couldn’t tell the exact moment when, but his heart had resumed its rhythmic post.
Earl fought to get his feet beneath him. He rolled over and climbed to a standing position. It just isn’t possible, he thought. His gaze was drawn to the pool’s surface, which had returned to what looked like normal; all three rolls of thick plastic sat motionlessly in place. Earl felt his blood pressure rapidly begin to rise again. Whatever it was that he had pulled from the water tank, it had not been alive. That little boy was buried years ago and that was a matter of fact.
But if his eyes had previously deceived him, they continued to do so. Long, stringy wisps of steam had begun to rise from the overlain gaps in the water cover. It was steaming. Not once in fifteen years had Earl ever seen the pool steam like that. Sure, when someone had opened the doors in the middle of winter, the climate difference had caused the thick air to steam outward, but this was different. This was the deep, searing hiss that accompanied boiling water.
Earl blinked his eyes in rapid succession and watched as the plastic sheathing above the water began to tremble and writhe. Bubbles belched out from the edges and into the wastewater gutters. The thing was convulsing like a volcanic washing machine. The air had grown distinctly hot, and Earl found that sweat was running down his face in front of his ears.
“What is this?” he croaked. And then a holler, “What is this?”
The slick surfaces of the mats creased in the mi
ddle and slid downward as if cinderblocks had been dropped into the middle of each. The far edges of each sheet were drawn toward the center and devoured by the bubbling and boiling water.
Earl’s brain finally decided that it might be a good idea to get his body as far away from this place as quickly as was possible. His legs were moving beneath him before he even realized it. Steam poured from the entrance to the men’s locker room. Earl took a series of ragged breaths and dashed through the twin doors. Immediately, he saw the source of the thick vapor. The showers were all running full blast. Earl had seen the locker room plenty foggy, but again, not as bad as it was now. The water pelting the concrete shower floors was also boiling hot.
Not stopping to inspect, Earl made for the door exiting the locker room. It didn’t budge.
“No!”
Earl pounded at the door with his good fist, and then felt the urge to hit himself. He had the keys. He reached down to where the retractable ring usually hung and found that it was missing. How was that possible? He’d had them when he left his office…And when he was shutting the place down…And when he had fallen…
Earl didn’t have to physically see them lying on the floor in front of the viewing window to know that it was exactly where they were. The crack he’d heard when he’d fallen had not been his arm; it had been his keys falling from his pants and to the floor. He hung his head. He was stuck. And he was starting to get dizzy.
Earl dug into his baggy pocket for his bottle of nitroglycerine. With trembling hands, he managed to pop the top. Little compressed capsules spilled out and onto the floor. Earl managed to keep hold of one, which he pressed to his lips. Chest heaving, he sank to the floor with his back pressed against the steel security door. He found himself staring directly into the hoary face of the swimming pool’s drowned inhabitant.
Earl had seen corpses before. This thing, this apparition, did not have the waxy shine of dead skin, but an inhumanly sharp luminescence. The little boy with the frosted skin was glowing. Jet-black orbs burned into Earl’s eyes. He tried to scream, but found that he could not. Earl was pulled into the stare and he was suddenly aware of being back in the pool room again.
Chasing the Sandman Page 6