The Dark and Deadly Pool

Winner of the Indiana Young Hoosier Book Award

FICTION

A Candidate for Murder
The Dark and Deadly Pool
Don’t Scream
The Ghosts of Now
Ghost Town: Seven Ghostly Stories
The Haunting
In the Face of Danger
The Island of Dangerous Dreams
The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore
Laugh Till You Cry
Murdered, My Sweet
The Name of the Game Was Murder
Nightmare
Nobody’s There
The Other Side of Dark
Playing for Keeps
Search for the Shadowman
Secret, Silent Screams
Shadowmaker
The Specter
Spirit Seeker
The Stalker
The Trap
The Weekend Was
Murder
!
Whispers from the Dead
Who Are You?

NONFICTION

The Making of a Writer

Moonlight drizzled down the wide glass wall that touched the surface of the hotel swimming pool, dividing it into two parts. The wind-flicked waters of the outer pool glittered with reflected pin-lights from the moon and stars, but the silent water in the indoor section had been sucked into the blackness of the room.

I blinked, trying to adjust my eyes to the darkness, trying to see the edge of the pool that curved near my feet. I pressed my back against the Wall and forced myself to breathe evenly. I whispered aloud, “Mary Elizabeth Rafferty, there is nothing to be afraid of here! Nothing!” But even the sound of my own wobbly words terrified me.

I remembered how glad I’d been to get this summer replacement job at the Ridley Hotel health club. The Ridley is one of those super-beautiful hotels with fresh flowers in silver urns on all their gigantic carved tables and sideboards, and paintings that are the real thing, and a whole collection of sterling pieces which they plan to use if the President ever stays there, which so far he hasn’t.

Their health club was designed by an interior decorator in coral and green with loads of looming ficus trees and palms, and white-blossomed “closet plants,” and giant-leaved philodendron—all in huge brass planters—which right away tells you that nobody really goes there to get healthy. There’s a small room with weight equipment; separate dressing rooms for men and women, with a large sauna in each; a bubbling Jacuzzi; and the pool, which is magnificent. Even though the salary wasn’t anything to cheer about, I eagerly agreed to five days a week of scrubbing the tiles around the pool, manning the desk in the health-club office, and keeping a sharp eye through the office window-wall on the swimmers in the indoor section of the pool.

As Mom told me, it was the perfect job for someone who had grown too tall too fast and had been politely dismissed from her first summer job at a hamburger chain because she knocked over too many filled glasses of cola and stumbled over too many table legs.

And, as usual, Mom was right. During the three days I’d been working at the health club, no one seemed to pay attention to a little clumsiness—except for the first day on duty when I fell into the swimming pool—but let’s not talk about that. And so far no one here had asked me if I played basketball or what the weather was like “up there” or if I got my red hair from being so close to the sun. At least, here at the health club I wasn’t made to feel like an ungainly klutz.

“What you need is confidence in yourself,” Dad had said. “A summer job should help you gain confidence.”

“We hope it will help you learn to appreciate yourself,” Mom had wistfully added. “Mary Elizabeth, you have got to begin to think good, positive things about yourself. Concentrate on ail your best qualities.”

“That’s a blank,” I said.

Dad put an arm around my shoulders. “You’re a wonderful girl, and the world is filled with wonderful things for you. Just concentrate on what you can put into life and what you want from it.”

“What
do
you want?” Mom asked.

“A tall boyfriend,” I said flippantly. I wasn’t going to tell them what I dreamed of being someday. It was an impossible dream. For that matter, I supposed that a tall boyfriend was too. I thought about some of the tall guys I knew at school. They were all dating girls who were under five feet two. “Might as well make him handsome, while you’re at it,” I added.

Mom sighed and began to say, “Be serious. You don’t understand what we’re trying to—”

But Dad held up a hand and said, “All right, sweetheart. If that’s what you want right now, keep your goal in mind and don’t settle for less.” He kissed the end of my nose. “We’re proud of you. Good luck with your new job.”

I may have flubbed the first job, but here I was with a second-chance five-day-a-week job that lasted from three in the afternoon until eleven at night, when the health club closed.

It was a good job, and I liked it, with one exception: those few terrifying minutes at closing when I was alone in that echoing, cavernous room with the dark, lonely pool.

The first two nights I had to shoo out a few dawdling guests—politely, of course. Then I checked both the men’s and women’s dressing rooms to make sure everyone had left, locked the door to the outside deck, and turned out the pool lights and club lights in the office. In the dark I secured the office door with a loud click that
shuddered through the steamy silence, then trembled across the twenty feet between the office door and the door to the corridor leading from the club to the side lobby of the hotel. I frantically slammed and locked the large door to the health club, grateful to be out in the brightly lit corridor, glad to be leaving that humid, watery darkness, and thankful that no one had heard those little gasping noises I’d been making. I couldn’t help feeling ashamed that I was behaving not like a sixteen-year-old with my first
real
job, but like a child who was afraid of being alone in the dark.

I knew I had to grow up, and the only way to do it was to conquer this childish fear. So on this, the third night at work, I deliberately waited outside the locked office door, next to the dark pool. I pressed my back against the cold rough-textured wall and quietly willed myself to relax. I squeezed my eyes shut while I took two deep breaths. It worked! My breathing slowed, and my shoulders relaxed against the wall. But droplets of sweat trickled down my backbone, and my bare legs were clammy from the humidity in the room.

As I waited, shapes crept out of shadows and became familiar patio chairs and tables and potted palms and ferns. Shining tiles edged the pool, and the surface of the black water gleamed like polished jet stone.

I had to smile. It wasn’t so bad here in the dark. This room was a crazy place in which to be alone, but I could manage. I was proud of myself. I would never let that unreasonable fear get to me again.

When I heard the splash outside I first thought it must be my imagination. It was a small noise, not the wild splashing the kids made, and certainly not the loud belly-flopping splash caused by some of the overweight hotel conventioneers who were under the impression they
were diving. I listened carefully and stared into the darkness, stepping to the very edge of the pool.

A shadow at the bottom of the pool, blacker than the dark water above it, slipped under the glass divider and quivered in my direction like a shimmer of lightning. I watched it come, too terrified to move, too frightened to scream, as the shadow loomed upward, ripping the water. Hands clutched at the edge of the pool, one of them grabbing the toe of my sneaker, which was in the way; and a face—eyes and mouth gaping and gasping—met my own.

I screamed, and an echoing scream came from the mouth below mine. With a loud gulp of air and thrashing of water, the face disappeared under the dark surface. I could see the shadow quickly slip under the glass wall and enter the outside part of the pool.