Swimmer (18 page)

The water in the living-room was almost nine feet deep, and it was churning around and around in a violent whirlpool. Jim could reach up with one hand and actually touch the ceiling, and the water showed no sign of going down.

‘Stay here! I have to find Washington!'

‘Don't leave me, please!'

‘I have to!'

Jim took a huge breath and dived down under the water. In the racing whirlpool, everything was weightless: chairs, lamps, books, ornaments. He saw a dark shape on the far side of the room and he swam toward it, even though the water kept rolling him over sideways and forcing him violently toward the walls.

He managed to swim up to an overturned sofa and climb on to it, kicking himself up to the ceiling for more air. Above the surface, the noise in the living-room was thunderous, and it looked as if even more waves were gushing into the broken windows from the pool. Jim took another breath and went back down.

At first he couldn't see Washington anywhere, and he was afraid that the current had whirled him back around the room. But then he saw a leg kicking behind the immense wide-screen television, which had been slewed around and into the corner. He swam nearer and heaved the television aside, and there was Washington, with the television cable twisted around his ankle, struggling to get himself free. Jim tried to unwind it, but it was tied so tightly that his fingers couldn't get a grip and he was unable to budge it. Washington grabbed wildly at his sleeves. Bubbles came flooding out of his mouth and Jim heard him let out a muffled cry of desperation. He tugged at the cable again and again but he still couldn't work it free.

He wrenched Washington's hands away from his sleeves and propelled himself off to one side, kicking against the wall to give himself more momentum. He could see Washington staring at him wide-eyed in panic, but there was nothing else he could do. He swam toward the side of the room where he had last seen Gabriel's table overturned, and there it was, lying on its side. He groped all the way around it until he found the drawer, and tugged it open. Sheets of paper were dragged out into the whirling water, as well as pencils and envelopes. But Jim saw the fish-like gleam of Gabriel's scissors and that was all that he wanted. He picked them up, dropped them, picked them up again, and half stumbled and half swam back to Washington against a current that battered him even harder than it had before.

Washington's head had fallen back, although his eyes were still open and a fine trail of bubbles was still pouring from his mouth. Jim dug the point of the scissors under the television cable and cut through it in three quick snips. Then he pulled Washington out from the corner, and dragged him toward the broken windows, walking across the floor with the slow dancing gait of a deep-sea diver. He knew that he simply didn't have the strength to take Washington up to the surface and he could only pray that the water gushing in through the windows had begun to subside.

He reached the windows, treading on sodden carpet and broken glass, heaving Washington's inert body after him. The air in his lungs was almost exhausted and he felt as if his eardrums were going to burst. Then – with one last effort – he staggered out through the window and found himself standing in the back yard with the water only knee-deep.

He lifted Washington's head out of the water and managed to manhandle him across to the side of the loggia, above the waterline, his arms and his legs dragging. The living-room behind him was filled with raging foam, like the wake of a ship. By now the swimming pool was almost completely drained, and water was still gushing
upward
out of the pool and across the yard, as if it were eager to fill the living-room right up to the ceiling.

Jim dropped Washington into the recovery position and started to massage his chest, but it was only a few seconds before Washington suddenly retched, and regurgitated half a gallon of swimming-pool water.

‘Washington? Can you hear me?' Jim shouted at him.

‘I can hear you, man,' Washington coughed. ‘I can hear you.'

‘Are you okay? I have to get Laura out of there.'

‘Go get her, man. I'll be all right.'

‘You're sure about that?'

‘Just be careful, man. Somebody tied that cable around my ankle. Somebody did it deliberate.'

‘Did you see who it was?'

‘I didn't see nobody, man. I only felt them. There was somebody in the water with me, but I never saw who it was.'

‘Well, just take it easy, okay?'

Jim waded through the water outside the living-room windows and stood for a moment looking at the dark, foaming whirlpool in front of him. It looked as if it were defying all the forces of nature … but supposing there were forces of nature that were far greater than the ones we understand?

He filled his lungs with air, and then he plunged without any more hesitation straight into the wall of water that filled the space where the window had been. It was like being hit by a water-cannon: he was instantly knocked off his feet, and thrown against the corner of a large white display cabinet, in which smashed-up ornaments and silverware were jangling and bobbing.

His hip was bruised, but he managed an ungainly upward swimming motion until he reached the gap between the surface of the water and the ceiling. There was less than a foot of air-space remaining, and he was so close to the ceiling that he could hold on to the chandelier to keep him afloat. Two of the chandelier's bulbs still burned, giving him enough light to see Laura at the other end of the room. She had managed to keep her grip on the top of the door, and he shouted to her, ‘Laura!' and waved. ‘Do you think you can swim over here?'

‘I don't know! I can try!'

‘You haven't seen Gabriel, have you?'

She shook her head. ‘I think I heard him shouting, but I don't know where he is!'

‘Okay … just start swimming toward me! Watch out for the current, it's running every which way!'

Laura hesitated for a moment, and then she launched herself away from the door. Immediately she was swept around to the left side of the room, screaming, her arms frantically thrashing to keep herself from going under.

‘It's okay! It's okay! Just keep trying to swim toward me!'

‘I can't, I'm going to –
blllggghhhbbllee
! I can't!'

‘You can! Come on, Washington's okay! We're going to get you out of here too!'

Laura steadied herself for a moment by placing her hand against the wall. Then she called out, ‘I'm coming! It's okay, I'm going to make it!'

She plunged back into the whirlpool and this time she managed to strike out toward him, using the powerful current to help her rather than trying to struggle against it. She was carried toward him so quickly that he didn't know whether he was going to be able to catch her or not, and when he lunged out to snatch her arm he felt the chandelier lurch in his hand. He caught her wrist, but his hand slipped, and he only just managed to grip her fingers.

‘You're going to be fine!' he reassured her. ‘All we have to do now is dive down and swim out through the back window!'

‘I don't understand!'

‘There's no water in the yard – only in the house!'

She still couldn't grasp what he was saying, but that wasn't important. They had to escape from the living-room now before the water rose any higher. They could worry about scientific impossibilities later.

Jim held her hand as tight as he could. ‘Ready?' he asked her. ‘Take a real deep breath!'

But before they could dive, the water exploded in between them and a gray head reared out, its eyes bulging, its mouth gushing like an ornamental fountain.

Laura screamed and let go of Jim's hand. The whirlpool instantly washed her away, so that she struck the opposite wall. The gray head stared at Jim for one hideous moment, gargled, and then disappeared under the water again.

‘G
abriel!' Jim shouted. He thrust one hand under the water to see if he could reach him, but Gabriel was gone.

Jim called over to Laura, ‘Hold on! I have to go down and see what's happened to Gabriel!'

‘Don't leave me again!' Laura shrieked at him. ‘The water's getting higher!'

‘Hold on – I have to go down just one more time!'

It wasn't that he believed there was any chance that Gabriel was still breathing: he had been under the water far too long. But the way that he had plunged back beneath the surface had suggested to Jim that he had been dragged by something more than the current. He had to see for himself. He had to know. In the end, he was the only one who could save the people around him from being drowned, one after the other, and that was too great a responsibility for him to shirk.

He wanted more than anything else to grab hold of Laura and swim right out of that room. He hated the idea of being a martyr. But there was nothing else he could do.

He released his grip on the chandelier and dived beneath the surface. Only one light bulb was still glowing, and it was much darker under the water now. Not only that, the whirling current had filled the water with thousands of fragments of soggy paper, so that it was like swimming through a dense snowstorm.

He touched Gabriel before he saw him: the medium's cold dead fingers trailed across his cheek like crabs' claws and he couldn't stop himself from letting out a small belch of bubbles. There was no doubt that Gabriel was drowned. He stared at Jim as he rolled and tumbled through the paper snowflakes and his eyes were completely blind.

Jim looked urgently right and left. Maybe he was mistaken, and Gabriel had sunk so quickly because his stomach was full of water. But then he saw a shadowy shape, only nine or ten feet away from him, circling with the current. He saw two legs flickering, and hair waving.

He was short of breath, but he pushed himself one more time, swimming wildly across the room. When he reached the opposite wall, however, there was nobody there. He turned around and around, dog-paddling hard to keep himself stabilized.

No – if the Swimmer were here, she wasn't showing herself. He had to get out of here now, and make sure that Laura was safe. The Swimmer would have to wait for another time.

He started to kick for the surface, but as he did so he felt something scrabble at his ankles and then catch hold of them tight. Not something –
somebody
. He tried to struggle free, but he could feel two strong-fingered hands pulling him back down to the bottom again.

He looked up. Only three feet above him
he
could see the single remaining light bulb, wavering and dipping through the turbulent water. He tried to kick again, but he was being dragged down too strongly. He looked down, and through the chaos of paper he saw the watery, glistening head of Jane Tullett, with her transparent face and her waving hair and her shadowy eyes. She was staring at him with intense hatred, and deliberately drowning him.

For a split second he thought, Maybe, if she takes me, she'll leave my students and my friends alone.

But he knew that he couldn't deliberately allow himself to be drowned. Apart from the fact that his instinct for self-survival was overwhelming, what guarantee could he possibly have that the Swimmer would consider his death was revenge enough?

The Swimmer's hands climbed up his ankles until she was clasping him around his knees, and then his thighs. Although she was so transparent, she was overwhelmingly strong, and no matter how much he struggled he couldn't break free. She felt extraordinary – as slippery as if she had been oiled all over, so that when he tried to pull her hands away he couldn't get any grip.

God, he thought, she's really going to drown me. I'm really going to die, in somebody's flooded living-room, and nobody will ever believe it. He thought of Karen, dressed in black, coming to his funeral.

He twisted himself over on to his hands and knees. The Swimmer slid around behind him, and slipped her hands around his throat. She didn't squeeze him hard enough to choke him, but the pressure on his Adam's apple made him feel that he desperately needed to inhale.

With all the strength he could summon up, he started to crawl across the living-room floor, with the Swimmer floating above him, her hands still clasping his throat. He didn't know if he was capable of making it all the way across the room, but at least he had to try. The Swimmer tried to pull him back, but he kept on crawling forward, his lungs aching for lack of oxygen, but refusing to breathe in. With every step he dug his fingers into the wet shagpile carpet to give him purchase; or seized the side of one of the sofas; or gripped the legs of the tipped-over table.

As he neared the end of the room, the Swimmer tried to strangle him even harder, until his vision was misted with scarlet. But he reached the broken window, where the water was still pouring in, and he crawled over the broken glass until dozens of tiny fragments were sticking into his hands and knees and the foaming water turned pink with blood.

The Swimmer clutched his throat in one last terrible squeeze and for a moment he was convinced that he couldn't make it. But then he felt the sharp edge of the window-frame beneath his knees, and he toppled out into the back yard, where the water level had dropped to nothing but a few inches, and the Swimmer toppled out with him.

Instantly she released her grip, and all he felt was water gushing over his back, as she lost her physical shape. He fell sideways and looked up, and she was crouching down beside him – at least her spirit was, the insubstantial, glistening spirit that only
he
could see.

‘No more,' he croaked at her. ‘Don't drown anybody else.'

But the hatred on her face was undiminished. She stared at him with her shadowy eyes for a little while longer, and then she stood up and walked into the darkness. The only sign of her going was the way her invisible feet made quick, pattering splashes in the water.