Creatures of the Pool (27 page)

Des swings to face me. “And what was he up to, I’d like to know.”

“Who’s he saying gave him a kicking?” Mick shouts.

“Fellers like us, he means,” says Bill.

“Excuse me, you don’t know what I mean.”

“He’s saying we’re too thick to understand his crap,” Des declares not far short of my face.

“Try to understand I’m only looking for my father.”

“Well, you won’t find him round here or any bastard else we don’t know.”

“What’s he saying we done now?” Bill bellows.

“Sounds like he thinks we done his dad,” says Mick.

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

This is said for me alone to hear, but it gets to Des. “You want to watch what you’re saying about us,” he says, and so does the archway. “You heard him right, Mick.”

“Not at all. Really, if you’d like people to think you’ve evolved…”

I shouldn’t have said that. Any remark seems potentially dangerous, but so does keeping quiet once Des calls “We don’t want him going home disappointed, do we?”

It’s the cue for his neighbours to advance. As Bill lifts the bat in my direction and lets it sink like a dowser’s wand, I step back. “I’ve a train to catch,” I say and walk not too cravenly fast downhill.

Even if I was doing my best not to sound scared off, I shouldn’t have told them where I was going. Immediately beyond the bridge a branch of the road angles towards the station past a tract of industrial land, but it’s deserted and too remote from any traffic. I head for the docks until I reach the next main road, and glance back from the corner. Des and Mick are standing like sentries on the near side of the bridge, but there’s no sign of Bill.

I want to think he’s satisfied with warning me away. Surely he wouldn’t have used the short cut I avoided, which joins the main road a few hundred yards ahead. However little traffic there is, would he really attack me in daylight—even in the meagre light that penetrates the clouds, which are unbroken again? I mustn’t let apprehension hinder me, and I hurry towards the station. Perhaps a bus will come to any rescue that I need.

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 clutching 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.”