Swimmer (15 page)

‘In five of these cases, witnesses said that they saw hands coming out of the water and pulling the men to their death; and in one case a cavalry sergeant said he actually saw a figure “all made out of water, so it looked like it was glass”. They called the figure the Swimmer, and for a long while many soldiers refused to ford river crossings or go bathing in streams, in case the Swimmer got them too.

‘After the seven died, however, no more soldiers were lost, which led to the story going around that the Swimmer must have been Stephen Andrews' spirit, back from his watery grave, come to take revenge on the so-called friends who had left him to drown.'

‘And you think that the girls who drowned in the fifties were victims of Esther Jordache?' asked Jim.

‘No question at all, except that I never told anybody about it. I would have been accused of having a very sick imagination and causing the parents even more grief than they'd suffered already. I make my money out of writing about modern myths and legends, Jim, and everybody enjoys a good spooky story. But nobody really wants to believe that they're true – especially when young children are involved.'

‘So what you telling us, man?' asked Washington. ‘You saying that Dennis and Dottie and this little Mikey guy were all attacked by some Swimmer, too?'

‘It certainly seems like it. Especially since you and Jim here have actually seen some kind of watery figure for yourselves. It's a young woman, you think?'

‘No doubt about it,' said Jim. ‘It was impossible to tell for sure, but I'd guess nineteen or twenty.'

‘In that case, who do you know of that age who has recently drowned?'

‘Nobody recently.'

‘How about a year ago? Or two or three years ago? Or longer?'

‘The only one I can think of was nearly eleven years ago, my first year at West Grove College. It happened right in the middle of the annual swimming gala. After the formal races there was a kind of free-for-all in the pool – high spirits, that's all. But a young girl dived off the top board and struck her head on the bottom of the pool. There were so many students in the pool that nobody noticed her until it was too late. What was her name? Jane Something. Jane Tullett, I think.'

‘Were you there when this happened?' asked David DuQuesne.

‘Oh, sure. Practically the whole college was there.'

‘And she was in your class?'

‘That's right. She was suffering from dyslexia, but I was trying out a new reading technique with her – covering up one eye to stabilize her vision – and she was responding very well.'

‘So she might very well have regarded you as something of a father figure? Somebody who was supposed to take care of her?'

‘Well, only in a very general sense … just like any teacher. But she was a very affectionate girl, I remember. Very enthusiastic in class. Very keen to learn.'

David DuQuesne said, ‘I think you should start by having Susan here try to contact Jane Tullett, to see if her spirit is still accessible. If it is, you should ask her if she's responsible for these drownings … and if she admits that she is, you should ask her why she's doing it. You should try to find out if there is anything that you can do to put her at rest.'

‘We could try, for sure,' said Susan. ‘But it can be incredibly dangerous, trying to contact somebody who's out to get their revenge on you.'

‘I don't know what else to suggest. It's equally dangerous to let a spirit like this go unchallenged. Spirits can get a taste for killing, like serial murderers. It gives them a sense of power … of still having some influence in the physical world. You just don't know who she's going to drown next and when she's ever going to stop. She may try to get her own back on
everybody
who was there that day.'

‘My God,' said Jim. ‘There were hundreds.'

Michael had been unusually silent while David spoke, but now he gave an emphatic shake of his head and said, ‘No. Absolutely not.'

‘Absolutely not what?'

‘I am absolutely not going to allow Susan to contact this Swimmer. It's far too much of a risk. She could be injured, or driven out of her mind, or even killed. She doesn't have the psychological strength for it. It's taken her over a year to recover from the last experience – a whole year of nightmares and delusions and terrors that nobody else can even begin to imagine. So the answer is no – and nothing that you can say is going to change my mind.'

David DuQuesne looked sober. ‘If Susan doesn't do it, then you'll have to find somebody else who will.'

‘Isn't there any other way of stopping it?' asked Laura. ‘Some kind of exorcism, or a spell, or something like that?'

‘As far as I can tell, a Swimmer isn't susceptible to the usual kind of sanctions that affect the demons of heaven and hell. A Swimmer is a purely modern phenomenon. After Jo-Anne Millar died, all of the parents of the synchronized-swimming team held a church service and prayed that the spirit of Esther Jordache should find eternal peace. They even had Cardinal O'Heenan to give a special blessing. But the drownings went on regardless.'

‘That's our only hope, then – negotiation?'

‘There's no other way of stopping a Swimmer, except for depriving it of water until it loses its strength altogether, and that's pretty much impossible. There's water just about everywhere – swimming pools, lakes, ornamental fountains … even lawn sprinklers and domestic faucets. A Swimmer needs less than seven gallons of water to take on a physical shape; that's what the human body displaces.

‘No … your best answer is to contact this girl's spirit and try to find out why she's suddenly acting so vengeful. You may be able to satisfy her with some form of atonement, or an apology, even. Even the dead can be reasonable, if they realize that you really care about them.'

‘You sound like you've been involved in this kind of thing before,' Jim remarked.

David DuQuesne gave him an odd, complicated smile. ‘As I told you, Jim, I'm a dealer in myths and legends. But just like everything else in this world, some of those myths aren't completely mythical and some of those legends aren't totally legendary.'

‘I'm still not letting Susan contact this Swimmer,' Michael insisted.

‘All right, then. Do you know anybody who can contact the other side as successfully as Susan? Somebody who's psychically sensitive, but mentally strong?'

‘No, I don't,' Michael admitted. ‘But I'll find somebody, I promise you. There's no way that I'm going to let Susan have anything more to do with this. No way at all.'

‘Susan?' asked Jim; but Susan reached out for Michael's hand and said nothing.

‘All right,' said Jim. ‘Nobody's forcing anybody to do anything. But Dottie's in intensive care and there could be dozens of people's lives at risk, so if we're going to find a sensitive to contact the Swimmer we'd better get our shit together.'

Washington stared at him, wide-eyed.

‘
Act
,' Jim corrected himself.

O
n the way back down the steps, David DuQuesne laid his hand on Jim's shoulder and said, ‘I wish you luck with this, Jim You're going to need it. It's fortunate that only a few people ever get to find out what's really going on in this world of ours.'

‘Tell me what really happened to you,' said Jim. ‘Something must have led you into this business.'

‘Oh … It was a long time ago, when I was a kid. We lived in Pennsylvania then, not far from a railroad track. When we went to school in the morning, my brother and I could either cycle to the nearest grade crossing, or else we could go through this drainage pipe that went right under the railroad embankment. The tunnel was dark and dripping and real scary, especially in the winter, and you had to crouch down to go through it, but it saved us almost a mile.'

‘Jim? You coming?' asked Michael impatiently. ‘Susan's feeling cold.'

‘Be right with you.'

‘I won't hold you up,' said David DuQuesne. ‘Maybe we can talk another time.'

‘No, no – just tell me what happened in the tunnel.'

‘The local kids used to say that years ago a man had gone shack-wacky and murdered his wife and three babies, ripped them apart with a skinning-hook. The sheriff sent out a search party, but he hid in the tunnel under the railroad. Anybody who went in looking for him was torn into pieces: dogs, deputies, you name it. He literally dismembered them, and ate their livers, raw. Forget about Hannibal Lecter: this guy was the real thing.

‘They never found him, and the story went that he lived rough in the woods for years – but now and then, when he was hungry, he would go back to the tunnel and lie in wait for anybody who used it as a short cut. Mad Frank Butler, that was what they called him.'

David DuQuesne was silent for a while, his eyes so narrow that he looked almost as if he were blind.

‘What happened?' asked Jim.

‘It was February. I was off school with the measles. My brother Philip went to school alone. Four o'clock came, then five, then six. My mother called the school to find out if Philip was staying late for drama class. The principal told her that he hadn't been at school all day … and they had naturally imagined he was sick too.

‘It took the search parties three days to find all of him – or most of him. They found his bicycle in the tunnel, and his books all torn up and bloody and strewn through the undergrowth. His body … well, they didn't tell me then, but I read about it later. He was literally torn to shreds. They never found his feet. Can you imagine that? They searched an area of four square miles and they never found his feet.'

‘Did they ever discover who did it?'

David DuQuesne shook his head. ‘Maybe it was Mad Frank Butler … maybe it was some maniac pretending to be him. But you can understand now why I developed a serious interest in urban legends. There are things happening in our cities and our towns that defy all rational explanation. But that doesn't mean they're not happening, and that doesn't mean that innocent people are not being killed or seriously injured.

‘You have to find the Swimmer, Jim. Susan's right, it's going to be very dangerous. But what's the alternative? More of your students being scalded? More of your friends being drowned in their bathtubs? She's taking her revenge out on
you
, Jim, no question about it, as well as other people who were there when she went under. And what's the most painful form of revenge? Not drowning Jennie, or you, but drowning the people you care for the most. She won't stop, Jim, I can promise you that. She won't stop until you've lost everybody you love.'

‘Jim!' called Michael.

‘I'm coming,' said Jim. He took hold of David DuQuesne's hand and squeezed it. ‘You've been a great help, David. From the way that Susan was talking about you, I had the impression you were going to be kind of – well,
aloof
.'

‘Oh, I can be aloof. I can be
very
aloof, especially with all the fruitcakes and loony-tunes who try to get in touch with me. If I hear one more alien abduction story, I'm going to retire to a monastery. But when Susan called me and told me about the Swimmer, I knew you had a genuine problem – and there's no justification for being aloof when people are in mortal danger.'

Jim went down the steps and climbed into his car. As they drove away, he turned back and saw David DuQuesne standing stiff and straight on the verandah, like the captain of a sinking liner. Jim felt a sharp pang of sympathy for him. Just like Jim, he had come into contact with the demons of this world, only to find himself burdened with a dread responsibility – a responsibility which he could never escape, no matter how much terror it brought him.

He returned to his apartment building feeling fractured. As he walked along the corridor, he smelled a pungent aroma of garlic, onions and soy sauce. Mervyn's door was ajar – and, as he passed, Mervyn suddenly appeared in a turquoise silk kimono with his hair drawn up in a Japanese-style bun on top of his head. His chubby cheeks were white with rice powder, and he had used black eye-pencil to make his eyes look slanted. ‘Jim! I've been expecting you!'

‘Hi, Mervyn. You're looking very geisha.'

‘Gay, yes. Not so sure about the sha. You're back late. I was beginning to fret.'

‘We had an accident at college today. One of my students was scalded in the showers. She's at Sisters of Mercy, in intensive care. Then I had some other business to take care of.'

‘You haven't forgotten, I hope?'

‘Sorry, forgotten what?'

‘I'm cooking you a special farewell supper on a Japanese theme.'

‘Oh, yes. Sure you are.' Mervyn had invited him weeks ago, and what with packing everything up, and the prospect of losing Karen, and most of all the Swimmer, it had completely slipped his mind. ‘Give me a couple of minutes to straighten myself out and I'll be right with you.'

‘Listen – if you don't want to do this, I won't be upset.'

‘For God's sake, of course you'll be upset. Look at all the trouble you've gone to.'

‘Don't forget to give me that list of TT's dietary requirements, will you? And Her Majesty's food bowl.'

‘Sure thing. I'll give you the vet's number, too. Just in case she needs worming or anything disgusting like that.'

‘Jim … I've cooked you a wonderful ethnic meal, complete with rice crackers, warm sake, vegetable tempura and
koto
music. Don't let's start talking about worming.'

‘Mervyn … you really shouldn't have done this.' He was almost glad that his visit to David DuQuesne had obliged him to turn down Karen's invitation to dinner. Mervyn would have been desperately hurt if he hadn't showed.

Mervyn flapped a pale, plump hand. ‘Don't be ridiculous. We've been friends for how long now? If I can't give you a modest
sayonara
, then for God's sake.'