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Authors: Ramsey Campbell

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BOOK: Creatures of the Pool
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“Who is it?” my father demands.

“It’s us, Mr Meadows. Deryck,” Lucinda responds, and slips past me on the stone border to take my mother’s hand. “I’m Lucinda.”

“Well, I’m sure I’m glad to meet you.”

My mother gives me a blink that hints at reproof, but she’s not the only one who has been kept uninformed. “Since when has the house been for sale?” I want to know.

My father hurries out of the front room with a haphazard armful of books and magazines and sheets of paper. “It’s the damp. It gets to your throat,” he croaks as if to demonstrate.

“That doesn’t sound like much of a selling point.”

“They can have a damp course put in if they want.”

As I wonder why anybody wouldn’t, my mother says “Come in, you two. It’s still drier in than out. I’m Gillian.”

A series of hollow boxy clatters fills the narrow hall as my father runs upstairs. I could almost fancy he’s fleeing the intrusion, but he dumps his burden somewhere and is down just as fast. “I didn’t get the chance to tell you, Deryck,” Lucinda says. “I’m in a little place on top of Edge Hill.”

“Sounds like you’re near the tunnels.”

“Nearer than I thought. They’ve found another one and they’re clearing it now.”

I feel as if she and my father are reminding me of my job. In the early 1800s Joseph Williamson employed dozens of workmen to excavate a labyrinth of tunnels under Edge Hill, and nobody’s sure why. After his death the tunnels were found to extend for at least a mile, but the explorers retreated for fear of becoming hopelessly lost in the dark. Since then many of the tunnels have been blocked by debris. Recently the Friends of the Tunnels have devoted themselves to reopening
the labyrinth. I’ve yet to work out how to include the tunnels in a tour. “About time they left well alone,” says my father. “They want to remember how old Joe the Mole used to carry on. Half the time he’d no sooner have a tunnel dug than he got his men to brick it up.”

“What are you saying that means?” Lucinda wonders.

“Think about it,” he says, but to me, and tramps into the front room.

The pile he took upstairs was just a sample of the apparent chaos. Books and magazines and photocopies and printouts are strewn all over the already crowded room, on the tapestried fat suite of furniture and beside it, around the television and the player heaped with discs of Westerns, on the dresser wherever there’s space between the best china, even on the mantelpiece, among the photographs documenting my progress from a round-faced baby to my present lanky popeyed big-nosed self. As he selects another armful by some principle I can’t fathom, my mother says “Well, I’m glad you’re clearing up after I’ve been asking you for weeks. Would everyone like a cup of tea?”

“I’ll do it,” he declares and hurries to the kitchen with his burden, which he dumps on the table. He’s about to fill the kettle from a large plastic bottle out of the refrigerator when he turns on my mother. “You haven’t been refilling this, have you?”

“I wouldn’t dare. It isn’t worth the trouble,” she assures him before murmuring “He’s got a thing about the tap water. It tastes like it always has to me.”

“Nothing to boast about,” my father mutters and, having spilled a few drops from the bottle into his hand to touch his tongue to them, sets about filling the kettle.

“This is just silly,” my mother says and strides into the front room, where she transfers all the material that’s occupying the sofa to my father’s chair. “Now you can sit down,” she says and asks Lucinda “Have you come to hear Deryck holding forth as well?”
“I’d be interested to hear what he has to say.”

“I wouldn’t take too much notice of some of it. I don’t know where he’s been dreaming up—”

My father appears in the doorway, and his frustration homes in on me. “You could help.”

“Tell me how.”

“Saints help us, Gill, what have we brought up? Grab all you can carry,” he directs me, “and put it where you’re told.”

However rough his mockery is, it isn’t far from welcome. I’ve been growing uneasy that since we arrived he hasn’t adopted a single playful voice. As I pick up a pile of books I’m disconcerted to feel how damp the carpet is; even the cover of the volume on the bottom of the pile seems to be. “I could too,” Lucinda says. “It’s part of my job.”

“He’ll do,” says my father.

“What job is that?” my mother asks Lucinda.

“I’m in the central library.”

“I used to work with books when there were more bookshops. Philip Son and Nephew. I was there for—” My mother’s wistfulness abruptly deserts her. “The library’s the council, isn’t it?” she realises aloud. “Careful what you say, Deryck.”

“No need. I’m not a spy for them,” Lucinda says.

My father’s impatience appears to have left the conversation behind some time ago. As soon as I straighten up with all the items I can risk carrying, he heads for the stairs. At the top he veers into the back bedroom. Around a desk bearing a computer, shelves and much of the floor are loaded with research. Last time I saw the room I was glad he was keeping his mind alive since his retirement, but now I’m seeing evidence of an obsession. “Put them anywhere there’s space,” he says and demonstrates, then lowers his voice. “Why’s she here?”

I wonder if he means to hide his research from her—from any stranger. “Because I am.”

“You’re stuck with her, you mean.”

“I wouldn’t put it like that, no. Would you say you’re stuck with my mother?”

“We’re both stuck with what we turn each other into,” he says and grimaces for silence as we hear footsteps on the stairs. He scowls downhill at the Collegiate, a Victorian Gothic building patched at the back with aggressively anonymous concrete. “There’s another place the city’s taken care of,” he complains. “Left it to rot till the arsonists got in. I’ve seen places on the stage look more real than that.”

He pokes at the computer mouse with a plump stubby thumb, and his site fades into view on the monitor. It shows the oldest engraving of Liverpool, with a few dozen buildings clustered between the Castle and, closer to the river, St Nicholas’s Church. Just a couple of streets are distinguishable, leading virtually from the water’s edge to the wild slopes that rise to Everton and Edge Hill. The image dissolves into an engraving in which the streets have spread alongside the Mersey and the Castle has been ousted by a church above a dock that extends a pier into the river. The pier and most of the buildings apart from the church of St Nicholas fade away, erased by a photograph of the familiar waterfront around the Liver Building and its gigantic tethered birds, and then the skyline starts to crumble. In a few seconds only a wasteland remains, from which question marks rise like huge serpents slithering out of the earth.

I have to be impressed by my father’s computer skills, which are certainly in advance of mine. We’re still on the home page when my mother and Lucinda look into the room. “We thought we’d bring you boys your tea,” my mother says, then notices the display on the screen. “If they’re going to play with their toys we’ll go down again, shall we? It’s a long time since I’ve had a really good chat about books with someone who knows about them.”

“Is that your site, Deryck?” Lucinda says, handing me one of the four Don’t Knock the Dock mugs. “I’ve been wanting to see what was on it.”

“Why?” says my father. “Watch where you’re putting that, Gill.” He moves his mug away from the keyboard and squints over his shoulder at Lucinda. “Where’d you hear about it?”

“Gavin told me.”

“You’ve been advertising it wherever you ride,” I point out to him.

“I’ve got to change it after the stuff I’ve been finding out lately,” he says and presses his lips wide and almost grey as if he thinks he’s said too much.

“Will it be a bit more balanced?” my mother hopes aloud.

Perhaps he thinks that she’s suggesting he’s the opposite. As he continues to mum, invisible fingertips try the window beyond the computer—rain does, at any rate. It lets Lucinda change the subject as she gazes downhill under the blackened sky. “Do you think they saw Springheel Jack from here?”

He’s another urban legend I’ve yet to incorporate in a tour—the leaping figure that was said to have haunted Victorian Liverpool and London. Some reports even suggested he could be the Ripper. He was rumoured to have appeared in Aigburth, close to where the Maybricks lived, and was last seen about a hundred years ago, springing the length of High Park Street on the slope below my parents’ house. “I know they did,” says my father.

“Who?” my mother is anxious to learn.

“My mam and dad. They were at this window. Saw him jump from one end of the street to the other like a frog, and they couldn’t even move when they saw him coming. My dad used to say he was glowing like the lights you see on marshes, and his eyes were too. He jumped over our roof and they never saw him again, but my mam screamed for an hour and couldn’t sleep for weeks. She said she felt as if he was trailing a fog behind him and left some of it in the house. Sometimes I think that’s what started me off.”

As I conclude he means his interest in lost Liverpool history, my mother protests “Well, you’ve never said any of that before.”

While he’s feeling informative I take the chance to remind him “You said you’d show me everything you’ve found.”

“I can’t now,” he says, scowling around the room without looking at anyone. “It’s in a mess.”

“I hope you aren’t blaming me,” my mother says. “I’m sure I haven’t touched one single thing.”

“Blame my head. There’s too much sloshing round in here.”

Has he lost confidence since he retired? I want to restore it if I can. “The Frog Lane atrocities,” I say. “How about those?”

“You’ve got me there,” he says and gazes at Lucinda. “Has he got you?”

“They don’t ring any bell with me, Deryck.”

Perhaps he has forgotten that he invited her to use his first name, because his stare doesn’t waver. “Penalty to you, Gav. You’ve turned up something your friend doesn’t know.”

“If they’re going to bring football into it I’m leaving them to it,” my mother says, though surely she remembers I’ve no interest in the game. “Shall we go and sit down while there’s space?”

Lucinda gives her a faint smile without otherwise moving as I say to my father “I’m sure you said last time we met you’d tell me about Frog Lane.”

“When was that?” says my mother.

As Lucinda and I agree on silence my father says “I went on one of his walks.”

“Well, you never told me you were meaning to. I would have liked to have gone.”

“It wasn’t planned,” I say. “We just—”

I’ve blundered ahead of any useful words, and my nerves aren’t helped by the sight of Lucinda opening her mouth until she says “I know what I’d be interested in seeing.”

“Let me guess.” Having closed his eyes so tight that they look capable of vanishing, my father says “The bottom of the pool.”

His eyes seem to flinch as he blinks. My mother has switched on the overhead light, because the sky has grown so dark that it felt as if some chilly medium had begun to invade the room. “If you’ve got any pictures of that,” Lucinda says, “I’m sure we’d like to see.”

“Not even any of the things they dredged up and didn’t tell the town about. Buried them instead, and quick.” Before I can ask about this he says “Go on then, let’s hear your request.”

“Whatever you have from John Strong.”

“Who’s that?”

My mother might almost have glimpsed someone in the streets steeped in darkness, but she’s sharing my bemusement. “He was a pathetic nasty character who convinced a few vulnerable people that he had some kind of power over them,” says Lucinda. “I don’t think it was even his real name.”

“He knew things nobody else knew or didn’t want to admit they did,” says my father.

“We still aren’t in on the secret,” I say for my mother as well.

“He was an occultist of the worst kind,” Lucinda says. “He was up to his tricks in Liverpool just after the last war, apparently. He ran some kind of cult and published a book about his beliefs. Published it himself, though you’d wonder who for when he had so much contempt for everyone.”

“If that’s all you think of him,” my father says, “it’s more of a wonder you’re so interested in him.”

“I’d just like to see what you say you copied in the library so I can—”

“It’s not on the computer.”

“You’ll have it somewhere, won’t you?” my mother says as if she’s determined to participate. “Shall I help you look?”

“I’ll tell you where I know it is, and that’s the library.”

“Look,” I say, “Lucinda told you—”

“You can believe her or you can believe me.”

“I’m really sorry if you thought I was unreasonable, Deryck.”

Perhaps that’s a little stiff, but as far as I’m concerned she has no need to apologise, any more than my father needs to retort “You mean I was.”

“I wouldn’t necessarily put it that way. I expect you were carried away by your enthusiasm.”

As my mother readies a question my father demands “What are you trying to get at?”

“Simply what I said. You’re so committed—”

“More like I should be, eh? I’ll bet Gill thinks that sometimes too.” As my mother wards off the idea with her hands he says “Tell us how I managed to copy all those pages out of something you’re telling us never existed.”

“I don’t think I went quite that far.”

“A damn sight more than far enough. Do you want them thinking I dreamed it there at your library table? You brought it me, so don’t pretend you’ve forgotten. Don’t bother trying to confuse me at all.” As she parts her lips he says “I never invited you in.”

Perhaps he only means the room, but even that’s too much. “I’m afraid you get both of us,” I say and would stop there if his gaze at Lucinda relented. “Or neither.”

“Right now that’s no choice.”

“I could wait outside if you like,” Lucinda says.

“I don’t like at all.” I’m infuriated to see him considering the offer. “I couldn’t be sorrier,” I tell my mother, “but you’re going to have to excuse us.”

“You haven’t drunk your tea,” she rebukes some or all of us.

Does she honestly think this can alter the situation? I’m dismayed by the notion that in her own way she’s becoming as odd as my father has grown. As he turns back to the screen Lucinda tells her “I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again.”

BOOK: Creatures of the Pool
6.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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