Swimmer (11 page)

Susan gripped his wrist and stopped him. ‘Jim, there's nothing there. It seems like it's real but it's only a trick of the light. Dennis is dead, Jim. If you swim out there now, you won't find anything at all. No Dennis, no spirit. No surfboard.'

She cupped her hand over the crystal to stop it from rotating. Then she picked it up and handed it to Michael, and Michael slipped it back into its black woven bag. Again Jim caught that look in his eyes, almost as if he were warning him off.

Susan said, ‘I'm sorry, Jim. I don't think there's any doubt at all. This student of yours was drowned by the same water spirit that drowned Mikey … and from everything you've told me, the same spirit tried to drown your friend Mervyn too.'

‘So what is it? And what do you think it wants?'

‘I don't know. It's not an ethnic manifestation, like a Native American river spirit. Ethnic spirits can be incredibly powerful, and they would flood a whole town rather than drown one poor struggling student. It's not a regular ghost, because a regular ghost wouldn't be able to use the water to take on a physical shape. Like, ghosts are just smoke and mirrors. They're all
suggestion
, rather than physical fact. Cold spots, smells, pictures rearranged … that's all ghosts are good for. I mean, they're frightening enough, but they can't do you any real harm.'

‘So this is like that heap of rubbish that came alive and strangled that old man in Encino? An urban legend?'

‘That's my guess, anyway. It's like the phantom hitch-hiker in the back of the car; or the Blair Witch; or the guy who had himself sewn up inside an armchair so that he could fondle the woman he loved whenever she sat down.

‘Let's put it this way. Not all spirits are old. Not all evil influences are ancient, no matter what H. P. Lovecraft had to say about it. There are new spirits being created every day – every time something horrible happens. A homicide, a car smash. Somebody committing suicide. Most of the time they don't do anybody any harm … but now and again they want revenge for the way their lives were cut short.'

‘So what do we do now? How do we find out what this water spirit is?'

‘I think we'll have to pay a visit to David DuQuesne. He's the expert. It'll probably cost you, though.'

‘I don't mind that. I just want to find out how I can stop this thing before any more of my class get hurt.'

‘Okay, I'll see what I can do. The last I heard, he was living up in Topanga Canyon someplace. I have a couple of friends who should know how to find him.'

Jim dropped Susan and Michael back at Franklin Avenue. Before she left him, Susan took hold of his hand and gave him a kiss on the lips. ‘I'll call you later, all right, as soon as I've gotten in contact with David DuQuesne.'

Jim unlatched the passenger seat and folded it forward so that Michael could climb out.

‘Something on your mind?' he asked. ‘You were giving me some pretty meaningful looks down there on the beach.'

‘Nothing in particular,' said Michael. ‘I just want you to be careful, okay?'

‘Careful about what?'

‘You know what I'm talking about. Susan. I'm asking you to keep your relationship on a strictly business level. She's still very breakable.'

‘She looks tough enough to me.'

‘Hidden fault-lines, Jim.'

‘All right. But I wasn't thinking of starting anything with her, believe me. I'm already involved with somebody else.'

‘A lot of guys say that. But she's hard to resist.'

Jim started up his engine. ‘Maybe you should stick to miming, Michael. Nobody can legislate fate.'

‘A word to the wise, that's all. You don't know what you could be getting yourself into.'

Jim drove away, leaving Michael standing on the sidewalk. He couldn't think what Michael was trying to warn him about. Susan was undeniably attractive, in a strange, sensual, other-worldly way. She had a look in her eyes that made him think that she had been to places and thought of things that most girls wouldn't even dare to go to or think of. But it was more like the bright, cold attraction of the moon. His heart still belonged to Karen, even if she wouldn't join him in Washington.

He started to sing Santana's ‘Black Magic Woman', but after a couple of blocks the words died away on his lips.

A
t college assembly the next morning, Dr Ehrlichman, the principal, led some simple and poignant nondenominational prayers for Dennis and his family, and even Dr Friendly had his handkerchief out.

After prayers, Jim stepped up on to the rostrum and said, ‘Whenever we lose somebody close to us, we question the natural justice of the world we live in. Many people believe that there is no natural justice, only fate. They think that all we can do when a friend like Dennis leaves us is to grieve for him, and then pick up the pieces of our own lives and carry on, and, whenever we can, remember him.

‘But I don't subscribe to that. I believe that the world has forces of good and forces of evil, and that whenever something tragic occurs, like the premature passing of a fellow student, then the evil that caused it must be found, and faced up to, and destroyed.

‘As you know, the police suspect that Dennis may have been deliberately drowned, and they are conducting their own investigation. For my part, I'm going to be doing everything I can to find out what happened to him. But as you leave for your summer vacation, I want you all to promise me one thing – all of you – and this is relevant to what happened to Dennis.

‘I want you to be extra vigilant whenever you're swimming or whenever you're anyplace near water. I don't yet know what's happening exactly, but you may be in danger of being drowned, the way Dennis was.'

Dr Ehrlichman came up to him and put his hand over the microphone. ‘Jim … what the hell are you telling these kids?'

‘Dr Ehrlichman, they have to be warned. It may sound screwy, but believe me, every one of these students is at very real risk.'

The assembled students began to murmur and whisper and shuffle their feet. Dr Friendly slowly shook his head from side to side, as if to say, Here we go, another wacky Jim Rook performance,' and to show that he couldn't wait for this last day to end, so that he would never have to suffer Jim's eccentricities, ever again.

Jim said, ‘Okay … I've said what I needed to say, in any case. Now I want to dedicate a few words to Dennis, if you don't have any objection.'

Dr Ehrlichman gave a theatrical sigh. ‘No, Jim. I guess that's your privilege. But whatever you're going to say, I hope it makes some kind of sense.'

‘Oh, it does, believe me. It's a poem by Kathleen Raine. It used to be one of Dennis's favorites.'

Jim approached the microphone again, and said simply, ‘For Dennis,' and recited:

From the balcony at the rear of the auditorium, Dottie Osias let out a loud wail of anguish and collapsed into sobs. Many of the other students were crying openly too. Jim stepped away from the rostrum, and said a silent prayer to himself that he wouldn't ever have to do this again.

Special Class II was deeply subdued that morning. They were affected not only by the shock of Dennis's death but by the sadness of leaving college and each other after one of the most demanding years that Jim could remember – but one of the most rewarding, too. This year's entry had struggled heroically and often tearfully to overcome their stumbling reading, their catastrophic spelling and their slack-jawed lack of comprehension – not only that, but the sense of social isolation that comes from being so inarticulate. It was no good being as pretty as Stella Kopalski if you didn't know the difference between ‘finance' and ‘fiancé'. But Jim had given them the greatest single gift that anybody would ever give them: the ability to express themselves, and the power to say exactly what they wanted to say.

Washington Freeman III tilted his chair back and shifted a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. ‘What was that you saying in the auditorium, Mr Rook? All about staying away from the water, and shit?'

‘Washington, this is your last day here. Your last few hours of remedial English. Can you try to make this the very last time that you end a sentence with the words “and shit”?'

‘Do what I can, Mr Rook. But you don't know how hard it is when practically everybody else in the known universe keeps on saying “shit” and shit.'

‘It don't matter Washington saying that, Mr Rook,' put in Tarquin, who was wearing beetle-like sunglasses and a shiny black T-shirt, which made him look like a cross between Stevie Wonder and a giant insect. ‘The only job that Washington's ever going to get is cleaning out the johns at McDonald's … so what other words is he ever going to need?'

‘I'm going to be a Corvette salesperson, fool,' Washington retorted. ‘What I don't know about Corvettes ain't been invented yet.'

‘Who cares? All I need to know about Corvettes is that you ain't got one.'

Joyce Capistrano was fiddling with a piece of paper torn out of one of her files. She couldn't sit in class for longer than ten minutes without producing paper flowers or dancing dollies or lacy mats. She wasn't a particularly pretty girl, although she had huge dreamy brown eyes and glossy brown hair, and one of the sweetest personalities that Jim had ever come across in all of his years of teaching. Over the year, Jim had helped her to conquer an almost overwhelming shyness and a hesitancy in her speech which used to have the whole class groaning and banging their heads on their desks to make her hurry up and finish her sentences.

Jim had never run Special Class II with sentimentality. Any student who had a stutter had to fight it out against teasing and imitation. Any student who couldn't tell the difference between D and B had to write the word ‘bed' on the chalkboard, again and again, while the rest of the class sarcastically chanted, ‘B! E! D!' at the tops of their voices. But there was never any resentment, because every student in Special Class II knew that he or she was no cleverer than any other student: they all had serious problems in communicating, and this was their very last chance to get over them. They also knew from personal experience that nobody in the world outside West Grove Community College would ever make allowances for them, either.

Joyce said, ‘You're really worried about something, aren't you, Mr Rook?'

‘Yes, Joyce, I am.'

‘It's not like all that ice we had in the swimming pool, is it, when Suzie Wintz drowned?'

‘Not exactly. But it's something like it. Something very strange, and very dangerous.'

‘It'll be okay. The summer vacation starts tomorrow.'

‘That's what I'm worried about. Just because college is out, that doesn't necessarily mean that this thing is going to go away.'

‘Well, what is it exactly?' asked Christophe l'Ouverture. As usual Christophe was dressed in a short-sleeved designer shirt, strawberry-colored today, with a matching silk tie. Very fastidious about his clothes, Christophe. His hair was plaited in dreadlocks.

‘I couldn't say this to the whole college this morning: Dr Ehrlichman thinks I'm halfway nuts as it is. But you all know that I can see things … like supernatural manifestations.'

‘Ghosts and shit,' put in Washington helpfully.

‘That's right, Washington. Ghosts and shit. I've been investigating Dennis's drowning, and also the drowning of a little boy called Mikey … the son of one of my former students, Jennie Bauer. Yesterday a neighbor of mine was nearly drowned too. He says he saw a figure come out of his bathwater, a figure made all out of water, and try to push him under. I went to Will Rogers State Beach, where Dennis drowned, and the pool where little Mikey drowned, and I saw the same kind of figure with my own eyes. A water spirit, I guess you could call it. I don't know.'

‘A water spirit?' asked Dottie. ‘You mean like a mermaid or something?'

‘I don't know. Maybe this is how the legends of mermaids originated. But I'm not particularly interested in myths and legends. What really concerns me is that this water spirit seems to be trying to hurt the people who are closest to
me
– my friends and my students. I don't have any idea why, but I know that I love you guys, all of you, and I don't want to see any of you hurt in any way. That's why I'm warning you to be very careful whenever you go near water … the ocean, the pool, the bath, anyplace at all. Because it looks to me like the spirit can take on a physical form anyplace and any time, provided it has enough water to give itself shape.'

‘Wow,' said Laura Killmeyer. She used to walk around the campus with a black cat on the end of a ribbon, quoting lines from
Faust
and the
Codex Daemonicus
. But she had lost interest in becoming a professional witch after she had tried to work a very complicated love-spell on the captain of the track team. She had discovered the very next morning that he had got engaged to the team's red-headed cheerleader. Laura no longer wore silver Romanian coins around her head or painted her eyelashes to look like hairy black spiders, but she was still fascinated by the occult. ‘A
water
spirit! I never heard of anything like that before!'

‘To be frank with you, neither did I. But there it was – or there
she
was, because it's a girl for sure. I saw her climbing out of Mikey's pool, and I saw her in the ocean after Dennis was drowned. I can't lie to you. I'm scared for you guys. And the worst thing is, I think it's all my fault, although I don't know why.'