Swimmer Page 8

  From underneath the swing canopy the young man said, ‘He’s saying that all three incidents involved somebody he knew; which is leading him to worry that the next time it happens, if there is a next time, somebody else he knows will come to a watery finish, which is something he is very anxious to avoid.’

  ‘I know that voice,’ said Jim. He walked over to the garden swing and lifted the canopy. Underneath it was sitting a good-looking young man with a spiky blond haircut and mischievous blue eyes. ‘Michael Tosca, class of ’95. Mr Verbal Diarrhoea himself. Do you know something, Susan, this guy used to sit in the front of my class and never stop talking from nine o’clock in the morning till four thirty in the afternoon. What are you doing here, Michael?’

  ‘I work for Miss Silverstone these days, Mr Rook. Secretary, personal assistant, driver, bodyguard, diary planner, tofu gofer, cook, cleaner of Oriental rugs and burnisher of crystal balls.’

  ‘I thought you were going to go into politics.’

  ‘I was. But I couldn’t stand the chiseling and the bribery and the pork-barreling and the general hypocrisy. It didn’t pay, either. No money in it. Then I met Susan at a party one weekend and … well—’

  ‘And well what? I’m waiting with bated breath.’

  ‘It’s another story, that’s all,’ Susan put in. ‘Besides, Michael has found a way to control his talking these days, haven’t you, Michael?’

  ‘That’s right. Once in a while I spend a whole day saying nothing at all. It’s very refreshing for the spirit, and it allows you to express yourself in ways you wouldn’t normally dare to.’

  Jim pointed his finger at him. ‘Don’t tell me. You’re that obnoxious mime artist – whatever your name is, Medlar Tree.’

  Michael lifted his beer can in salute. ‘Right first time, Mr Rook. Nobody could ever pull the wool over your eyes, could they?’

  ‘I hate mimes. Why do you think humans have the power of speech? If we don’t speak to each other, we might as well be monkeys.’

  ‘Monkeys are cool.’

  ‘Sure they’re cool. But you wouldn’t want to spend the evening talking to a roomful of orang-utans, would you?’

  ‘I don’t know. You should meet some of my friends.’

  Susan came up to Jim and linked arms with him. ‘I’ll tell you something, Jim. Michael helped to save my life when nobody else around me cared anything at all. I don’t know what you taught him when he was in college, but he’s always been so considerate. And gentle, too.’

  ‘Well, you amaze me,’ said Jim. ‘I always had him down as a grade-A smartass.’

  ‘He even wrote that on my report,’ said Michael, with a grin.

  Susan said, ‘You know, we should try another spirit-trace on the beach where this other boy drowned. What was his name? Dennis? If we do that, at least we’ll know what happened for sure.’

  ‘Well … it’s up to you. But I don’t want to put you in any danger.’

  ‘I think I can handle a water spirit,’ said Susan. ‘We were all sent into this world to help each other, weren’t we? And to protect each other from the next world, too.’

  Jim checked his watch. ‘It’s still light; maybe we should start off by the beach.’

  Jim drove them down to Will Rogers State Beach, and they parked and walked across the sand. The sun was shining in their eyes, and the afternoon was windy and warm. ‘He drowned right out there,’ said Jim. ‘According to his friends, he was fit and raring to go and he hadn’t had anything more to drink than a couple of beers.’

  Susan stood still for a moment with her eyes closed. Then she took off her sandals, handed them to Michael, and walked right down to the edge of the surf. Jim followed her, and stood beside her while she stared out over the glittering ocean.

  ‘There’s still something here … some redolence. I can feel it.’

  ‘I can’t feel anything.’

  ‘Yes you can. You’re a sensitive, just like me. Look at the light. Listen to the seagulls. They’re calling out to you, telling you that something happened here, something tragic.’

  The way the seagulls were wheeling and keening, it was easy to believe that Susan was right. Although children were still running along the shoreline and laughing, and dogs were still barking, there was a sense of loss in the air, a sense of tragedy. Maybe it was nothing more than the end of another day. But Dennis Pease had drowned here, late last night, and he was never coming back.

  Michael opened the bag that he was carrying on his back, and Susan took out her crystal. She knelt down, set it on its stand and started to spin it. It caught the sunlight, and multi-colored diamonds danced across the sand. A small girl stopped in her tracks and stared at it, entranced, and a dachshund that had been yipping and snapping and chasing its tail stopped right beside her, and stared at it too with black beady eyes.

  Jim couldn’t be sure. Maybe it was nothing more than the sun going down. But the afternoon seemed to darken, and the color of the sky grew more intense. The sound of the surf rasped ever more sharply in his ears, like sandpaper. Above his head the gulls continued to circle and cry, around and around, as if they couldn’t leave the flickering light around the crystal, no matter what.

  Down by the shoreline Jim saw six or seven boys, their images jumping and fading like a worn-out movie. They were laughing and tumbling, and kicking water at each other. Then two of them picked up surfboards and rushed into the waves. One of them had lanky hair, tied back with a bandanna, and a large, triangular nose. Even though he was only intermittently visible, Jim recognized him at once as Dennis Pease.

  ‘Don’t do it, Dennis,’ he said, under his breath, although he knew how futile it was. If there was only a way to turn the clock back to yesterday night. But Dennis’s carefree image went on bounding into the water, and Jim could even hear the faintest echoes of his voice, whooping and laughing. He had always been such a bright, wild, enthusiastic boy, ready for anything.

  Michael said, ‘I can never get used to these spirit-traces, they’re so weird. Look at it: that happened last night, that really happened, and there they are, doing it all over. Makes you wonder if you ever get any rest, even when you’re dead, or whether you spend the rest of eternity acting your life out again and again, like some kind of never-ending loop.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Jim, peering out across the ocean. The waves seemed to be almost black, like a glistening, restless sea of Indian ink. He could see Dennis rising up on one foamy crest after another as he paddled further and further away from the shore. Don’t do it, Dennis. But Dennis had already done it, and his drowned body was already lying in the West Grove Mortuary.

  Susan arched her head back so that she was staring up at the sky. ‘Show yourself!’ she demanded. ‘I know you’re here! Why don’t you show yourself?’

  The wind began to rise; flecks of spume began to fly off the tops of the waves. But Dennis and his friends kept on plowing out into the ocean, and Jim could hear them calling and whistling to each other as they went.

  ‘Maybe it was just an accident,’ he said. ‘Anybody could drown in a surf like that.’

  But Susan turned to him, her white face lit up in harlequin colors by her rapidly spinning crystal. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘There’s a presence here. I can feel it. It’s coming toward us, from the north-east, and it’s coming very quickly.’

  ‘You can feel it?’

  ‘It’s just like the wind. Hold my hand, Jim, it’s almost here. I want you to tell me everything you see.’

  When the apparition appeared, however, Jim was speechless. It came running over the sand, so light and fast that he could barely see it. A young woman, almost completely transparent, running toward the ocean with her hair streaming behind her.

  ‘She’s there!’ he told Susan, tugging at her sleeve. ‘For Christ’s sake, can’t we stop her?’

  Susan unexpectedly gripped his hand, and very tightly. Michael glanced at them; and there was an odd, possessive look in his eyes. But when he saw Jim l
ooking at him he immediately turned his head away and stared out over the surf.

  Dennis had paddled so far out that Jim could see only the tip of his red metallic-flake surfboard; and occasionally his head, with the red bandanna tied around it. But he could clearly see the water-woman, swimming toward him. She left a trail in the sea, she lit up the tops of the waves, leaving a ghostly arrow-shaped wake behind her, phosphorescent green and glittering sapphire-blue. She swam as straight as a torpedo, and almost as fast; so that even when she was only a few feet away from Dennis he still hadn’t seen her. Why should he? Who expects an invisible woman to come swimming toward them at eighteen knots?

  Dennis must have sensed something, however, because he turned his head around, gripped his surfboard a little tighter, and shouted out, ‘Guys? Is everything okay? What’s the matter?’

  It was then that the young woman’s luminous trail disappeared deep under the water, so that Jim could see only the faintest greeny-blue glow of her. There was a long moment’s pause, and then an arm suddenly rose up, an arm made completely out of water, and clamped its hand over Dennis’s face. ‘Help me!’ he screamed out. ‘Vinnie, help me, I’m drowning! Help me, Vinnie! Something’s pulling me down!’

  His friend turned his head around wildly; but the troughs were so deep and the white spume was blowing as thick as blossom; and he couldn’t see anything at all. Jim, on the shoreline, saw only a rapidly dimming radiance, which died away as the spirit dragged Dennis deeper into the ocean. There was a moment’s pause, and then Dennis’s metallic-red surfboard came flying out of the ocean, almost vertically, like a Polaris missile. Jim kicked off his shoes and started to pull open the buttons on his shirt.

  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.

  Seven

  At 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:

  ‘Out of hope’s eternal spring

  Bubbled once my mountain stream

  Moss and sundew, fern and fell,

  Valley, summer, tree and sun,

  All rose up, and all are gone.

  ‘Now by the spring I stand alone

  Still are its singing waters flowing;

  Oh never thought I here to greet

  Shadowy death who comes this way

  Where hope’s waters rise and play!’

  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.