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Authors: Ramsey Campbell

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BOOK: Creatures of the Pool
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They sound raw and weary, yearning for an end. The lane seems to channel them towards me as I venture to the corner. Figures dressed in very little confront me across Whitechapel—women as still as the stone that frames them. They’re dummies in the window of a sex shop. The screams are to their left, but my view is blocked by a cage around roadworks. I
have to force myself to head that way, not least because the screams aren’t the only sounds I can hear.

Beyond the roadworks Whitechapel leads to the Old Haymarket. Even the taxi rank outside a shopping mall is deserted. The only object anywhere on the pavements is lying at the intersection with Richmond Street, which leads to the theatre square. The object is a body, and it’s naked.

If it’s male, it’s horribly incomplete. That would explain the screams, but not the chorus of croaking. The legs are splayed towards me, and a glistening shape lies between them, separate from the body. The abdomen is heaped with items, wet with them. The mouth is as wide as lockjaw, but the shrieks are growing feebler, and the victim appears incapable of any movement other than an uncontrollable twitching of the stomach. I stumble forward, groping for my mobile with a shaky hand.

I shouldn’t have moved. The torso jerks, or the mass that’s strewn over it does. Perhaps this was all I saw twitching. The creature between the legs hops towards me with a croak, and another springs over the victim’s chest to land in the gaping mouth as if the cries have served their purpose. I’m hardly aware of lurching forward to determine whether the horde of creatures is on top of the body or inside it or both.

I’m so anxious to see and equally to avoid seeing that I barely hear a rush at my back. It sounds like water, and my assailant doesn’t seem a great deal more solid. All the same, the pavement thumps my forehead before I’ve time to catch my balance. Is the stain that spreads around my vision more than a shadow? I’ve hardly glimpsed it when I’m engulfed by my personal dark.

Chapter Ten
R
EPRESENTING THE
L
AW

It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. That’s the message my head is repeating, verbally and otherwise, while various parts of my body throb in agreement. The waves of light flicker so much that they could just be pain made visible. I can see little more when my eyes falter open, because my face is pressed against a dark unyielding blur. That’s the pavement, but is it so dark at the edge of my vision because whoever attacked me is standing over me? Perhaps I’m next for the treatment that was dealt to the screaming victim. My body prickles, aggravating the roughness of the pavement and discovering a sweaty trace of rain on my back. The world rolls upside down, or at least I do, confronting the attacker.

There’s nobody above me. When I plant my hands on the damp pavement and waver into a sitting position, the huge soft drum that’s my head barely lets me determine that nobody is to be seen anywhere around me—nobody, not even the screaming victim. The city seems as quiet as stone, and straining my ears until my head redoubles its painful pulse only brings an undercurrent of sound, the omnipresent urban murmur. I rise or rather wobble to my feet and dodge unsteadily around the enclosed roadworks before stumbling to the lane I came along and then to the one that leads to Williamson Square. Neither of them shows me a corpse, and across the road Sir Thomas Street is just as innocent of any, like the entire length of Whitechapel with its patina of rain. Why am I wasting time? I drag out my mobile so hastily that it almost ends up in the gutter, a prospect that leaves me nearly blind with pain.

A few fumbles at the keys recall the police. “Just put me through,” I snap at the operator, because the pulse in my skull won’t let me describe the situation twice. Either she’s spurred by my urgency or she wants the police to deal with me, because with almost no delay a man says “What’s the problem, please?”

I should have rung 999. Surely this is still an emergency, and more to the point, I’m sure I recognise the voice. It’s the policeman to whom I spoke at such length about my father. What would my father do in the circumstances? The pounding of my head drives me to adopt the thickest Scouse accent I can summon up. “Mergencee,” I declare. “Youse need—”

“Who is this?”

“Youse don’t need me name. Dere’s no time, like. Dere’s been—”

“Is this Mr Meadows?”

My skull seems to grow enormous, or the pain does. He must have recognised my number. “Mr—” I blurt, but that won’t work. “It is, yes.”

As if to compensate for my abandoning my Liverpool sound, his Lancashire accent becomes more pronounced, emphasising the distance between us. “What’s this about, Mr Meadows?”

The best I can produce between jabs of pain is “I was trying not to confuse you.”

“How were you going to do that?”

“I thought you might think I was calling about my father. Is there any news of him?”

“You just said you weren’t calling about him.” The policeman lets my head pound several times before he says “We told you we’d inform you if there was.”

“Has anybody been to see my mother?”

“I couldn’t tell you without checking. Is that why you rang?”

“No, it’s because somebody, I think somebody’s been murdered.”

“That’s why you put on a silly voice.”

“No.” I grope through the pain for an explanation. “I was confused,” I try saying. “I was attacked. Knocked out. Knocked down.”

“How long ago was this?”

You could use the pain in my head for a metronome, and it barely lets me read the time on my mobile. “Maybe quarter of an hour,” I say. “There was a body but it’s gone.”

“Where are you calling from?”

“Frog Lane.” My headache has befuddled me, or the atrocious memory has. “It isn’t called that now,” I say. “I run historical tours, that’s why. It’s Whitechapel.”

“Which town?”

As long as he recognised me, how can’t he know? “I haven’t gone anywhere. Liverpool.”

“Please stay where you are and don’t touch anything.”

He has nothing more to say to me. Presumably he’s busy sending a car. I pocket the mobile and hold on to the barrier around the roadworks. I should like to close my eyes in the hope that it might ease my headache, but it would make me feel open to attack. The city murmurs all around me like a subterranean flood. I can’t hear any vehicle, even one without the siren it surely ought to be sounding. I’m sure rain is imminent, unless the climate has grown so wet that there’s always water in the air. The police need to examine the scene before the next downpour washes away any evidence. Just because I mustn’t touch anything, that doesn’t mean I can’t look.

I stumble forward to squint at the pavement where the body was. The flagstones are cracked and tilted by years of parked cars and vans and trucks. They’re moist with rain and stained with oil, but I’m able to distinguish faint tracks. A trail that I’m sure was left by the dragging of a body is flanked by prints that must have lost shape in the rain. They lead towards the tunnel at the Old Haymarket, but once they’ve crossed a deserted taxi rank beyond the last shops
they veer away from Whitechapel, along the approach to an entrance that lets shoppers drive under the theatre square to collect goods from beneath the stores on Church Street. Has the corpse been abandoned in the underground area? I can’t see any tracks to suggest whoever moved it has emerged. If they do before the police arrive, shouldn’t I photograph them with my mobile? I’m venturing towards the entrance when my headache gives me a moment to reflect that I’m better staying out of sight. Before I can retreat, a police car screeches into the approach road and halts, blocking my way. “In there,” I call, pointing past the car.

The front doors fly open, ejecting officers who resemble bouncers in a different uniform. The driver’s broad nose is dented in the middle, and his colleague looks quite as ready for the fight the driver must have had. “In the car,” he grunts.

Is that how he usually speaks to the driver? I share his urgency but am shy of aping his brusqueness. “I’m sure they’ve gone in there,” I say under my breath. “Have they got a car, do you think? Maybe one of you should—”

“In the car.”

This time it’s the driver, and I grasp that he’s addressing me. “Let me just show you—”

“Car.”

It’s the turn of the man whose nose has yet to be broken. “They’ve left tracks,” I protest. “Hadn’t you better, I mean, in case—”

“Car.”

Both guardians of the law have said it now. Each repetition feels like a flare of pain in my head, and the latest goads me to say “You don’t seem to understand. Suppose—”

There’s only one way for them to use fewer words. The man with the unbroken nose steps around the car, and they close in on me. They’ve moved just two weighty paces in unison before their wide faces, which look flattened and blanched by the glare of the streetlamps, break out in drops that trickle over their skin, and their uniforms begin to
glisten. As if they’ve brought it with them, the black sky is releasing a cloudburst. “This is what I was afraid of,” the drumming of rain on my skull drives me to object. “Can’t you see—”

“Car.”

Do they mean to overcome me by speaking in chorus? I suspect it was inadvertent, and the scowls they’re training on me are designed to pretend it didn’t happen. My mouth struggles to contain a giggle that may border on hysteria. As my face works like a schoolboy’s, the men stretch out large hands that drip luridly illuminated water. The hands look like a threat of bruising if not worse, and all at once I’ve had enough of the downpour and the men’s monolithic refusal to listen. Before they can grab me I make for the vehicle. “Fair enough, car. As you say, car. Right you are, car. Where would you like me? Up front or behind?”

The dentless officer lunges at me—no, past me—and throws open the door behind the driver’s. As I duck under the roof spiked with raindrops he finds it necessary to give me a hand, which revives the pounding of my head and presses me down into more of a crouch. He slams the door after me, and his unstable dim misshapen blur appears on the other side of the car. He and his colleague regain their bulky shapes as he climbs in beside me while the driver sits at the wheel, and then there’s silence apart from the metallic thunder of rain overhead. “You’re keeping watch,” I say. “There isn’t any other way out.”

Perhaps this sounds insufficiently questioning to deserve an answer, and I raise my voice. “Shouldn’t you put the wipers on?”

“We’ve been watching,” says the driver.

“You’ll have seen what happened, then.” Apparently this too is unworthy of a response, and so I try “You’ll have seen where they went.”

My seatmate turns so that his knees crowd me against the locked door. “Anything you want to tell us?”

“I saw someone killed. Worse than killed.” The policemen look as if they know this isn’t true, and I say hastily “I don’t mean I saw it happen. I saw them.”

“Saw what?” the driver insists.

“They’d been cut open and things put in.” The memory lights up in my head like a glaring slide projected on a screen, and I wish I could extinguish it. “Frogs,” I say. “Live frogs.”

The staccato metallic barrage above my head is slackening, but I’m reminded that the rain must have washed away the trail. The policemen are staring at my words with no expression I can read. “What did you see?” I demand.

The rain pats the roof a few times and streams soundlessly down the windows. The driver might have been waiting for quiet before he says “You.”

“We’ve been watching you,” his colleague finds it necessary to add.

“Did you see who attacked me? Why didn’t you—” Perhaps it’s inadvisable to accuse them, and I interrupt myself. “How long was I out?”

“Depends what you mean by out of it,” says my bulky seatmate.

“You haven’t told us what we want to hear yet.”

“Been having yourself some fun, have you?”

My head throbs with mingled pain and anger as I blurt “Maybe violence is your idea of fun. It’s certainly not mine.”

Have I invited some? My seatmate hasn’t finished watching me as though he’s daring me to make a move when the driver says “Sounds like he still is.”

“Had a bit to drink, have you?”

“I haven’t even had dinner.”

“Had a bit more than a drink?”

“Certainly not. Nothing of the kind. That’s not my scene at all.” Perhaps I should have appeared not to understand, and I fundamentally don’t, which is why I protest “Just what are you accusing me of?”

The driver scowls at me out of his mirrored strip of face. “Wasting our time.”

“If anybody’s doing that, it’s you. Why aren’t you finding the body and the people who did it?”

The man beside me sits towards me, and I’ve nowhere to retreat. As my head throbs as if to warn me that I’ve gone too far he says “There’s nobody. Just you.”

My shoulders thump the window. The windscreen squirms with rain dislodged from the roof, and I feel as though the world has shifted too. “What are you trying to say? I—”

“The camera saw you fall down all by your own self,” says the driver.

Another trickle traces a random path down the windscreen, but it seems more like a fissure in my reality. “Where did you come from?” the driver says. “Got anywhere to live?”

“I live right here in the city. I own my apartment. I’m Pool of Life Tours and a whole lot more. If you mean how I look, I was in bed when I heard what was happening. I put on the first things I could lay my hands on. Give me a breath test if you want. I’ll take a drug test too.”

“No need for that,” my seatmate says, though ominously. “Where do you live?”

“Trident Street. It’s off—”

“We know it,” says the driver. “Long way to hear whatever you’re saying you did.”

“There wasn’t anything else to hear, and for God’s sake, they were screaming.”

“Funny nobody else heard,” says my seatmate.

“Someone did. I still can’t believe he was shouting at them to be quiet.”

“Maybe they meant you,” the driver says.

“Maybe you were sleepwalking and making a row in your sleep.”

“Looked like you were,” the driver says and starts the engine. “We’ll get you home.”

“You’re not just going to drive off without—”

BOOK: Creatures of the Pool
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