Swimmer Read online

  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.’

  ‘Hey, don’t go blaming yourself, man,’ said Tarquin. ‘You never let us down, never, specially when Dr Friendly told us we was all irreversible lame-brains. If you say there’s a water spirit, then we believe you, there is a water spirit, and this vacation we’re going to stay away from anything watery, believe me.’

  ‘Oh, come on now,’ put in Washington. ‘You going to tell me you going to go through the whole summer vacation without taking one single shower?’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. Showers is different. You never heard of nobody drowning in a shower, did you?’

  ‘Anybody can drown in less than a half-inch of water,’ Jim interrupted them. ‘Talk to Nurse Andrews, she’ll tell you. When you breathe in water, a froth of mucus bubbles up in your lungs, and that’s what makes it so hard for you to breathe.’

  ‘No shit.’

  ‘No, Washington. Just froth. But as I say – be very careful, and if you’re not sure if it’s going to be safe to swim, then don’t. I hope I don’t spoil your summer, but it would be even more spoiled if you were drowned.’

  He looked around the class. He would miss this room, and all the faces that he had seen in here, staring up at him expectantly. ‘There’s one last thing I’d like you to do for me before we finish. I’d like each of you to write me a four-line poem. Subject: doesn’t matter. Anything that interests you. Anything that sums you up … the kind of person you are. Then I’d like you to sign it for me. I’d like to walk away from here today with something a little more than memories.’

  He walked down between the rows of desks. ‘Where’s Dottie? Anybody seen Dottie?’

  ‘She went for her jog,’ said Laura. ‘She always goes for a jog before class. Her dietician said it was the only way she was ever going to take control of her weight problem.’

  ‘Weight problem? I never knew Dottie had a weight problem.’

  ‘She thinks she has a weight problem. That’s as bad as having a real weight problem.’

  ‘Well, she’s cutting things close. The semester’s officially over in an hour.’

  ‘Want me to go look for her? She’s probably hit the showers by now.’

  Jim shook his head. ‘Don’t worry about it. If she doesn’t have time to write me a poem, I’ll ask her to send me a postcard.’

  Silence fell over the room. There was a lot of frowning and a lot of lip-chewing and a lot of head-scratching. Only Nestor
Fawkes seemed to be writing steadily, and he was one of the least gifted students in the class. Tarquin kept popping his fingers as if he were writing a rap (which he probably was), and Stella kept on sighing at her sheet of paper like a parent sighing at a disobedient child.

  Jim sat at his desk and started writing a letter to Karen – a last-ditch effort to persuade her to change her mind.

  You don’t meet soulmates more than once in a lifetime, Karen. As Victor Hugo wrote, ‘When two souls, who have sought each other for however long in the throng, have finally found each other, there is then established for ever between them a union, fiery and pure as they themselves are, a union which begins on earth and continues for ever in heaven.’ Or, hopefully, in our case, Washington, D.C.

  Only five minutes had passed, however, before Jim heard feet loudly slapping along the corridor outside. The classroom door burst open and Clarence the janitor came in, his face sweaty and his eyes wide, holding a mop.

  ‘Clarence? What’s wrong?’

  ‘You better come real quick, Mr Rook. Something’s going on in the showers.’

  ‘The showers? What are you talking about?’

  ‘It’s the female showers, Mr Rook. The whole place is full of steam and there’s somebody screaming.’

  Jim immediately tossed down his pen and crossed the room. ‘Stella, get on that mobile phone of yours and call for paramedics – now! Tell them to go to the girls’ showers, fast as they can. Tarquin – Eugene – Laura – you come with me!’

  They ran together along the corridor until they reached the showers outside the college gymnasium. Clarence was right. Steam was billowing out of the open outer door, and a girl was screaming inside at the top of her voice. A knot of terrified girls were gathered outside, some of them crying.

  ‘What’s happening?’ asked Jim. ‘Who’s in there?’

  There was another scream, which ended in a high-pitched, agonized wail. ‘Oh my God, it’s Dottie,’ said Laura.

  Jim went through to the inner door. It was shut, and when he took hold of the metal doorhandle he burned his hand. Steam was hissing viciously out from underneath the door, and the window was totally fogged up.

  He tried kicking the door, but it opened outward, and it was made of solid varnished oak. ‘Give me a towel!’ he shouted, as Dottie started screaming again. One of the girls passed him a towel, and he made himself a thick glove out of it. He took hold of the doorhandle again and pulled it as hard as he could.

  At first he couldn’t budge it, but he tugged it again and again, and at last he managed to open it an inch. The steam that came blasting out of the shower room was scalding, and he was already dripping with sweat. The noise, too: it was like standing next to a locomotive.

  ‘Here, Mr Rook!’ said Washington, jostling his way through the frightened crowd of students with an aluminum baseball bat. He forced it into the gap that Jim had already managed to open, and between them, grunting, they gradually levered the door wide enough to get in.

  ‘Be careful!’ Jim shouted. ‘Steam is like boiling water, it can take your skin right off!’

  At that moment, Dr Ehrlichman arrived outside. ‘Jim? What’s going on? What the hell is all of this steam?’

  Dottie let out another agonized scream, and Jim said, ‘Make sure those paramedics are on the way! Give me another towel! Does anybody have another towel?’

  ‘I’m going in with you, man,’ said Washington.

  ‘Don’t. This is my responsibility, not yours.’

  ‘What did the Three Musketeers say? “All for all and everyone for everybody else.”’

  ‘All right, then,’ said Jim, wrapping another towel around his head, like a hood. ‘But stay well behind me and watch out for that steam.’

  ‘Jim! Wait for the fire department!’ ordered Dr Ehrlichman.

  But Jim had already squeezed his way through the gap in the door and entered the showers, with Washington hunched up close behind him.

  The steam was so dense that he could hardly see where he was going. It was blasting out of all the shower-heads, and the noise it made was deafening. There was a row of cubicles all along the right-hand wall, each with a reinforced-glass door. Jim went quickly along from shower to shower, checking each one, his towel pulled down to protect his forehead and eyes from the heat.

  Dottie screamed again, and this time it sounded as if she was suffering unbearable pain. Jim hurried along to the very last cubicle, and through the steamed-up glass door he could make out a reddish shape, arms flailing, head waving wildly from side to side.

  ‘Dottie!’ he yelled. He tried to pull open the door but it was jammed tight. ‘Dottie, it’s Jim Rook! Push the door open! Try to push the door open!’

  But all Dottie did was to thrash her arms even more furiously, as if she were trying to beat something off. The pressurized hissing of the steam was so loud that he couldn’t even be sure that she had heard him. He pulled the door again, but it wouldn’t budge. Either the heat-expanded frame had clamped it tight, or else somebody had deliberately wedged it.

  ‘Oh God! Aaaahhhhh! No! No, don’t do that! Aaaaaaahhhhhh, don’t do that!’

  Jim turned to Washington and said, ‘Give me that bat.’ Washington handed it over, and Jim lifted it high behind his head.

  ‘Dottie! I’m going to break the door! Turn your face away! You hear me, Dottie?’

  Dottie gave another wail, but Jim wasn’t sure what it meant. All the same he swung the bat around and cracked it right into the middle of the door. He made barely any impression – only a small, crystallized crater. He swung again, and again, and again, and only succeeded in pitting the door with even more craters.

  ‘Aaaaahhhhh! Please! Oh God, no! Aaaahhhhhh!’

  Without a word, Washington took the bat from Jim’s hands. He stepped back, hefted it up once, twice, and then swung it around and smashed the door into thousands of glittering, tumbling fragments.

  So much steam billowed out of the cubicle that in the first few seconds Jim couldn’t understand what he was looking at. Then, as it cleared, he saw Dottie right in front of him, jerking in agony like a badly handled marionette. Her face was scalded bright red, and her eyes were so swollen that she couldn’t even see. All over her body, her skin was burned and scarlet-blotched and hanging off her in thick, tattered ribbons.

  Yet it wasn’t poor agonized Dottie who made Jim’s hair prickle with fright. It was the figure who was standing in the shower behind her, almost invisible, and thickly clouded with steam. A figure made of nothing more than boiling water, with a surface that rippled and rolled. It was a girl’s figure, not much taller than Dottie, but much more slender. It was running its boiling hands over Dottie’s shoulders and down her back and forcefully caressing her stomach and her upper thighs, and every time it did so, Dottie screamed and shivered and flinched. She must have felt as if she were having kettlefuls of boiling water poured slowly over her, over and over, until her skin shriveled and her nerve-ends shrank. And all the time Jim could hear a low, underlying bubbling sound – just like the sound of a saucepan of water when it boils.

  He hesitated for a split second and took a deep, steadying breath. Then he threw himself forward and tried to snatch Dottie out of the shower. But the figure instantly swung its arm out, and lashed his face with boiling water. He staggered back against the wall, feeling as if his cheeks were on fire.

  Washington yelled out, ‘Let her go, you mother!’ and tried to grab Dottie too – but this time the figure retaliated with a huge, scalding splash, and Washington screamed out, ‘Shit! You burned me, you bitch!’

  As if to enrage them even more, the figure took hold of Dottie in a tight embrace, and slid its steaming, watery arms all the way down her, so that she let out a high, penetrating shriek of pain.

  Coughing, wincing, Jim looked down and saw that the shower tray was filled ankle-deep with steaming hot water, because the drain was blocked with a sodden blue towel. He suddenly remembered what had happened to Mervyn, and h
ow Mervyn had escaped drowning – by pulling out the plug. He dropped to his knees in front of the shower, covering his face with his hands.

  ‘Mr Rook!’ said Washington, in panic. ‘You all right, Mr Rook?’

  Dottie screamed yet again – but as she did so, Jim lunged forward and plunged his hand into the nearly boiling water in the bottom of the shower. He seized the sodden towel that was blocking the drain and heaved it out, tossing it across the room. It landed with a thick slap against the opposite wall and then dropped to the floor.

  With a sharp, enthusiastic gurgle, the water in the shower tray began to drain away. As it did so, the figure began to drain away too. It stood still for a moment, its surface still. Then it shuddered a deep and appalling shudder. Its ankles were drawn down the drain, faster and faster, and then its lower legs, and then its knees, and in seconds it had been sucked away completely, bubbling and boiling, leaving nothing but a glutinous froth. The last that Jim saw of it was a curl of transparent hair, as liquid as a memory, and a waft of steam; and then they too slipped into the drain and disappeared.

  For a fraction of a second, he saw the spirit standing in the shower cubicle, staring at him hollow-eyed. Then she turned and vanished straight into the tiled wall.

  Dottie collapsed in the shower, amid the broken glass. She had stopped screaming now, but she was shivering violently with pain and shock. Jim didn’t want to touch her, in case he made her burns even worse, but he tugged the towel off his head, went over to the washbasins and soaked it in cold water. Then he carefully draped it over her.

  Laura came into the shower room, white with distress. ‘Dottie … oh my God, is she going to be all right?’

  Washington leaned close to Jim and said, ‘Was that the thing you was warning us about? The water spirit? Jesus! You didn’t tell us it was a hot-water spirit!’

  ‘Paramedics coming through!’ somebody shouted, and three paramedics came bustling into the shower room, one of them wheeling a trolley.

  ‘What happened here?’ one of them asked Jim as his partners knelt down beside Dottie and examined her.