Swimmer (27 page)

Susan said, ‘When you've done that, you take your gasoline cans and you get out of the bathroom double-quick. That's when Jim will throw his cigarette lighter into the bathtub and set the Swimmer alight. Hopefully, the fire will be more than enough to evaporate her.'

‘And if it isn't?' asked Jennie.

‘I said “hopefully”. This is a big risk – not just physically, but spiritually too.'

Jim said, ‘The most important thing is to think and act quickly and clearly. Whatever you see – no matter how strange and frightening it is – try to keep your cool. Your survival may depend on it.'

‘Hey, man, I'm cool,' said Washington. ‘I'm
always
cool. You know that.'

‘Okay then, let's get started. Michael – you want to bring those jerry-cans over here by the side of the bath? I'll start running the water.'

The plumbing in Jim's apartment building dated from the 1930s, and it took nearly five minutes for the bath to be filled up to the halfway mark, with the pipes shuddering and groaning in protest. All the time, Washington talked quietly to Laura, and Laura kept on nodding, but the rest of them were too tense to say anything.

Eventually, Jim turned the faucets off, and tightened them as hard as he could. He didn't want Jane to have more water than she needed to form herself into the Swimmer. Water, after all, was the element which gave her spirit its power to take on a human shape, and drown them – and the more water she had at her disposal, the more powerful she would be.

‘That's it. Let's take the lids off those jerry-cans and have them ready. Don't forget – as soon as the Swimmer rises out of the water, splash your gasoline and run. And whatever you do, don't drop your can.'

‘We got you.'

They shuffled themselves into a semi-circle around the side of the bath. Jim caught sight of himself in the mirror beside the bath and thought how ridiculous they all looked, five grown people standing around a tub of water, holding hands. Anybody who accidentally walked in would have thought they belonged to some nutty sect – Druids or Culdees or the Ancient Order of Bath Worshippers.

Susan closed her eyes and said, ‘Jane Tullett, I am calling you through from the spirit world. I am calling you to meet us where death and life converge. I have people here who wish to talk to you; and a very special person who needs to tell you how deeply remorseful she is about the way you died.

‘Listen to me, Jane. I know that you're angry. I know that your spirit never seems to be able to find the repose that it seeks. But I am offering you a way out. I am offering you rest and contentment. Come through, Jane. I know that you can hear me. Come through and meet us face to face, so that we can give you the peace you so desperately crave.'

There was a long silence, during which the only sound was the swish of traffic from the streets outside and the deep, dyspeptic grumblings of the waterpipes. Then Jim heard a noise like nothing he had ever heard before. It was soft and high and incredibly unsettling, like somebody running their moistened finger around the rim of a brandy glass. Only it was much eerier than that: it had elements of the wind in it, blowing under a doorway in a deserted house. It had elements of the sea in it, churning in the darkness of a winter's night. It had elements of crying, and pain, and utter loneliness.

‘I can hear you, Jane,' said Susan. Jim felt Susan's thin, silver-ringed fingers closing tightly around his. ‘I can hear you coming closer. Come on, Jane, don't be afraid. We're here to help you, not to harm you.'

‘
You could have saved me
…' breathed an unearthly voice. It sounded so close that Jim jolted in shock. Not only was it close – it was close
behind
him.

‘…
You let the water take me, and you didn't do anything
…
you stood by and let me drown
…'

Jim could actually feel Jane's freezing cold breath on the side of his neck. He turned around, and there she was, only just visible, standing less than two feet away, a faintly shuddering outline. He could see her wet hair sticking to her scalp. The water ran in a constant cascade from her nose and her lips, and the droplets coursed down between her bare thighs and ran between her toes. She had been drowned: so she would always be wet, until she found her release.

‘She's here,' said Jim, clutching Susan's hand even tighter. ‘For Christ's sake, she's right behind us. Breathing down our necks.'

‘I can't feel her,' said Susan, twisting her head around in a panic. ‘I can't feel her – tell me where she is!' Jim grappled her hand and laid it on Jane's almost-transparent shoulder. ‘She's here … can't you feel her? She's standing right here.'

Susan kept her hand where it was. ‘I can feel … coldness,' she whispered. ‘I can feel
wet
.'

‘That's right. Until she can find somebody to release her, she's always going to be the same way she was the morning she died.'

Jane's spirit figure glided around them like the dancing reflection from a swimming pool, until she stood close behind Jennie, and touched her hair with her invisible fingertips.

‘
Didn't any of you like me?
' she whispered, turning and looking at Jim with her watery, transparent eyes. ‘
Don't tell me there wasn't one single person in that whole college who liked me?
'

‘I can hear her,' said Jennie. ‘I can hear her talking!'

‘Jennie … stay calm,' said Jim. He squeezed her hand to reassure her. Then he turned to Jane and said, ‘Of course people liked you. You were one of the best students I ever had. You were bright, you were popular, you were always laughing.'

‘Yes, and every other girl was jealous because I was going steady with George.'

Jennie looked blindly around her, trying to see where Jane was standing. ‘You're right, Jane, we
were
jealous, and I was the most jealous of all. But that was a long time ago, Jane, and we were all very much younger then, and the things that seemed to be important when we were nineteen … well, they don't seem to matter very much, not today.'

‘
Not to you, maybe. But then you didn't lose your life, did you?
'

‘I've said I'm sorry. It was more of an act of passion than anything else.'

‘
What was? What was an act of passion?
'

‘I was angry, Jane. George always wanted you, instead of me, and I could never understand why. I thought that I was much prettier than you, my folks were better off. But George always came back to you – even after he'd been flirting with all of those sophomores. He should have been mine, Jane. Couldn't you see? He should have been mine.'

‘
So what are you telling me?
' asked the spirit, in a voice like a chilly draft.

‘So I pushed you under. You don't know how often I confessed it. I confessed it in dreams. I confessed it when I was praying at church. I drowned you, Jane, because I believed that if you were dead George would suddenly realize how much he didn't miss you and how much he really loved
me
.'

‘
And did he?
'

‘Did who what?' asked Jennie. She was growing increasingly flustered and frightened.

‘
Did George realize how much he didn't miss me, and how much he loved you?
'

Jennie hesitated, and two large tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘No. He missed you very, very badly, and he never noticed me, ever.'

Jim said, ‘Jane … you can see how much Jennie regrets what she did. I'm asking you now to forgive her. I'm asking you to forgive all of us. We failed you, I can see that now. But don't take it out on innocent people like Mikey and Dennis and Dottie. They never did anything to you.'

Jane moved further around, to the end of the bathtub. ‘
Water
,' she said. ‘
Were you thinking of taking a bath?
'

‘We were thinking of nothing else but you, and how we could put you to rest.'

‘
Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you, to put me to rest? Then you could conveniently forget that Jennie deliberately drowned me, and the rest of you stood around and watched me while they broke my breastbone, and still didn't manage to save my life? You wouldn't have to worry any more about what I could have been, if I had lived
.'

‘Jane … nobody's trying to evade their responsibilities. But it's all over; and it was ten years ago; and little kids like Mikey don't deserve to drown because of something that happened to you.'

‘
You may be right
,' said Jane, in a voice that sounded like somebody speaking into an empty washing machine. ‘
But who am I to judge? Once the water takes you, you become water. And nothing on earth can ever exist without water. Water can take your life away in a matter of seconds – look at me. But it gives life, too. It's the greatest single force in the world.
'

‘Jennie here wants you to know that she's truly sorry for what she did to you. She hopes that she can make it up to you somehow.'

‘
She wants to make it up to me, for drowning me, when I was only nineteen years old? With my whole life in front of me?
'

‘Jane – listen to me, I'm begging you. If there's anything that we can do, please tell me what it is. But I can't see any more of my students hurt – nor my friends, either.'

‘
You should have thought of that on the day you drowned me
.'

Without another word, Jane's spirit figure shimmered down to the end of the bathtub. Jim could see her, but nobody else could, and they all turned their heads warily from one side to the other. Washington looked even more wildly around than the rest of them and kept silently mouthing, ‘Where? Where is that sucker, Mr Rook?'

‘You guys ready?' Jim asked them in a matter-of-fact voice. At the same time, he could see Jane's spirit climbing over the back of the tub and into the water. She disappeared from sight almost immediately, as if she had melted.

‘She's in the water!' Jim shouted out. ‘Get that gasoline ready!'

Michael and Washington hefted up their jerry-cans. They all stared down at the bathwater. It lolled and slopped, but it didn't look as if it had anything in it.

‘Are you
sure
she's in there?' asked Michael.

‘Oh, you bet. I saw her climb in, and I expect Susan can feel her aura.'

‘She's there all right,' said Susan. ‘I can sense these very, very emotional vibrations. She's feeling angry and sad, both at the same time, but mostly angry.'

‘Supposing she doesn't come out?' asked Jennie, still hysterical. ‘What happens if she doesn't come out?'

‘Oh, she'll come out,' said Jim. ‘And if by any remote chance she doesn't – well, we'll have to do what Mervyn did, and pull out the plug.'

‘Well,
you
can put your hand in the water and pull it out,' said Mervyn, ‘because I'm certainly not going to.'

They waited and waited, while the surface of the water gently stirred.

‘I don't think there's nobody in there, man,' said Washington, after almost three minutes had passed. ‘I mean, I can't see nothing.'

‘Wait … don't get impatient.'

‘I'm not impatient. I just don't want to be fooled, that's all … standing here all evening staring at some bathtub with nobody in it.'

‘Ssh,' said Jim. ‘She's probably thinking what to do next.'

‘I can't stand it,' said Jennie. ‘I really can't stand it any longer. She won't forgive me, will she? She's going to go on haunting me for the rest of my life.'

‘Not if this works.'

But another three minutes went by, and still the Swimmer didn't appear.

‘She gone, man,' said Washington, shifting his jerry-can from one hand to the other.

‘I can feel her,' said Laura. ‘It's like Susan says … she's sad and bitter, both at the same time. She wants us to love her but she hates us for what we've done to her.'

‘I think you imagining all of this,' Washington protested. ‘Her spirit was here for sure, I heard her like the rest of you. But she ain't in that bathtub, not now. She long gone. She probably watching us from some other dimension, laughing her butt off.'

He laid down his jerry-can and prodded the surface of the water with his finger.

‘Washington – don't!' Jim warned him.

But Washington prodded the water again and again, and caused no more disturbance than a pattern of ripples. ‘See … there ain't nothing here, man. We all standing around here scared of nothing.'

To emphasize his contempt, he swept his arm into the water from one end of the bath to the other. ‘What did I tell you? There's nothing in here but –
sheee-it!
'

With a shattering splash, a watery figure reared out of the bath and seized Washington's arm, dragging him over the side of the tub and into the water. It pushed him right down to the bottom, kicking and wrestling, and the surface of the bath was a froth of bubbles.

‘Get him out of there!' Susan shouted. ‘Jim – quick! Get him out of there!'

Jim tried to grip the Swimmer's shoulders, but even though the Swimmer was so strong, she was only water, and his hands went right through. He swung his arms and punched at the Swimmer's head, again and again, but it was just like punching the water that comes streaming out of a faucet. Her head splashed, and then went back to its original shape.

All the time, Washington was pinned down on the bottom of the tub, and Jim could see his eyes wide with terror.

‘Pull the plug out!' said Michael.

But Susan said, ‘
No!
If we lose her now, she'll only want to drown us all the more!'

Jim grabbed one of Washington's arms and tried to heave him out, but the Swimmer pushed him away, soaking his shirt and his pants. He tried again, but this time the Swimmer hit him across the side of the head and sent him staggering back across the bathroom. He stumbled, lost his footing and fell against the towel rail, bruising his back.