Swimmer (29 page)

‘What's this? “Physician, heal thyself”?'

‘No … it's “Teacher, learn your own lessons.”'

Jim stopped, and Michael almost bumped into them. He looked at Susan, and for the first time he recognized what it was that made her so attractive. Her face was silvery-pale and her eyes were full of magic. Apart from her figure – full-breasted, narrow-waisted – she had the same quality as the moon, when you look at it through binoculars or a telescope. Shining, unreachable, strange. The moon gives you no answers at all, yet you can never take your eyes off her.

All of a sudden, it didn't seem to matter so much that Karen wasn't coming to Washington with him. All of a sudden, it seemed that life could have new possibilities.

‘So what are we doing?' asked Michael. ‘Are we going after this swimming-person or what?'

Jim raked his hand through his hair. ‘Yes … we're going after her. There she is … I can see her on the corner. Let's go.'

They reached Ocean Front Walk. The boardwalk was still blazing with light and blaring with rap music and dreamy long-legged roller-bladers were still making circles around the strollers and the talkers and the hawkers and the buyers. Jim almost lost sight of Jane's spirit; but then he saw her cross over the boardwalk like the last flickering flame of a candle before it dies out. She was making her way across the sand toward the ocean, where it was dark, except for the pale luminescence of the foam.

‘She's headed for the beach,' he told Susan. ‘I think she's aware that we've been following her. She wants to get her revenge on us for setting fire to her, and she's looking for all the strength she can get.'

‘Jim … if she gets close to the ocean, and she turns into the Swimmer, you won't stand a chance.'

‘I still have to talk to her. I still have to try to make a deal.'

‘Jim, I haven't known you very long, but there's one thing I know about you. You're definitely not the suicidal type.'

‘I'm not talking about suicide. I'm a teacher. I'm talking about taking responsibility, making amends.'

‘Being a martyr.'

‘Jane Tullett is suffering, Susan, and she's been suffering for ten years. I don't excuse what she's done to get her revenge. But I understand how she feels – how her spirit feels, in any case; and I also understand that I have to try and stop her.'

‘All right,' said Susan, ‘but I'm coming with you.'

‘No,' said Michael. ‘Absolutely, totally not.'

‘You're afraid of what might happen?' Susan asked him.

‘Of course I'm afraid. It's not just you.'

‘Well, I'm sorry … this had to happen sooner or later, didn't it? One day we had to make a decision. And this is it. This is the day.'

‘You'll die,' said Michael miserably.

‘Michael, everybody's going to die someday.'

But Michael wouldn't be appeased. ‘You'll die, and
he'll
die with you, and what will be the good of that?'

Jim looked out toward the ocean, where the sun had long since disappeared, leaving a last blood-colored smear across the horizon. He saw a slight judder of light, and he knew that it was Jane. She was leading him on, like a will-o'-the-wisp … leading him out to the greatest body of water on the planet, where her strength would be unsurpassed.

‘One last appeal,' said Susan. ‘This isn't your responsibility: you didn't drown Jane and you don't have to take the blame for it, let alone die for it.'

‘I know,' said Jim. In actual fact he was deeply frightened, but he couldn't see any other way out of it. What if Washington had been drowned today, and Laura? What if Tarquin and Joyce and Christophe were killed? He couldn't allow it. So long as there was any chance that he could protect them, he would. In a remedial class like Special Class II, you always had to be very much more than a teacher. You had to be a surrogate parent, and a friend.

They crossed the sands, which were soft and surprisingly hot, even so long after the sun had gone down.

‘Can you still see her?' asked Susan.

Jim could make out an attenuated figure standing at the water's edge. She appeared to be looking out toward the black, swelling breast of the ocean. The sea grumbled and seethed and sucked at her feet, yet she remained where she was, staring westward. Jim wondered if she were still thinking about the days when she was alive, and missing them so badly that she could hardly bear it.

Susan said, ‘Jim – please don't—' but he walked up to Jane's spirit and stood beside her. He didn't say anything at first. He noticed that the wind blew
his
hair while hers remained perfectly untouched.

‘Maybe we could come to a compromise,' he said.

She turned and looked at him contemptuously. ‘
A compromise? Jennie Bauer drowned me and you stood by and let her do it. Now you've tried to burn me, so that I can never walk in this world again
.'

‘Jane … no matter what you think … what happened to you was the result of one person's malice, Jennie Bauer's. Nobody stood around and laughed when you were drowning. We didn't even know it was happening … and up until yesterday, we didn't even know that you hadn't drowned by accident. I swear it. Everybody at West Grove was so cut up about it. You should have seen your funeral. They were crying buckets.'

‘
You're lying to me. You're trying to make me go back to the spirit world. Well, I happen to hate the spirit world. It's so claustrophobic. Nothing but seniors with no eyes talking about golf, and hospital procedures, and how they found their husbands lying dead in bed, right next to them
.

‘
I was so young, Mr Rook. Nobody should have taken my life away from me. How can I ever get any of those years back again? Living, learning, falling in love. If only people knew how precious life is
.'

‘That's my point, Jane. That's why I followed you here tonight. Life is so precious, and there are no more precious lives than those of my students, like you once were. So I'm going to try to make a very special deal with you. I'm going to ask you to take my life, mine alone, in full and final settlement of all of the grudges you hold against me and the students of West Grove Community College, and all of their friends, and their mentors.

‘In other words, Jane, if I give you my soul, and my memories, and everything that makes up Jim Rook, will you swear to leave my friends and my former students well enough alone?'

Jane laughed. Even out here on the beach, it sounded like somebody laughing in another room. And of course, metaphorically, she
was
in another room. She didn't exist here and now, like Jim did, but
then
and
there
.

‘
You want me to take you, Mr Rook? I'll take you, gladly. Come on … let's go down to the ocean … let's go down to the water's edge
.'

Jane's spirit held out her hand and Jim took it. It felt prickly and electrical, as if it were charged with static. His heart was beating in long, slow thumps, and he could scarcely hear the noise of the surf as Jane's spirit led him right to the very edge of the ocean.

‘
Take off your clothes
,' she told him.

‘What?'

‘
Take your clothes off. You won't be needing them any more
.'

‘Come on, Jane, I'm your teacher. I can't do things like that.'

‘
You
were
my teacher, in another age. But now you're Jim Rook, who allowed me to drown. Take off your clothes
.'

Reluctantly, Jim unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it on to the sand. Then he struggled out of his pants and tossed them away too.

‘
Everything
,' Jane insisted.

Jim glanced back toward Susan, who was standing on the sand only seventy-five feet away, with Michael close beside her.

‘Listen—'

‘
As you came into this world, so you will go out, into the next
.'

‘But—'

‘
No
.' Jane wouldn't take ‘but's. So, as deftly as he could, Jim pulled down his red Hawaiian undershorts and threw them back across the beach, too.

‘
Now
,' said Jane, taking hold of his hand. Her fingers were as cold and wet as half-melted ice cubes. ‘
Let's take a walk in the water, shall we?
'

‘I need to know for sure,' asked Jim, as he waded into the water up to his knees. ‘Does this mean that you're going to leave my friends and my students alone?' Jane's spirit kept on tugging him on, tugging him deeper. Soon the water splashed up between his legs and he gasped, feeling very naked and very vulnerable.

‘
This means that you've decided to take the blame for what you did, that's all
,' said Jane, pulling him deeper, and even deeper. ‘
Once you've paid the price, all of the others will have to pay the price, too – the same as you
.'

Jim wrenched his arm free. The water was almost up to his armpits, and every wave made him surge up higher. ‘This was supposed to be a deal – you were supposed to take me, instead of them!'

‘
Do you really think that I could forgive you all so easily?
' said Jane. ‘
I will never forgive you – any of you – till hell freezes over
.'

With that, she sank down below the surface. For one moment Jim was left on his own, treading water to keep himself afloat. Ahead of him, the Pacific rollers surged and grumbled. Behind him, the lights twinkled all along Ocean Front Walk, and beyond. He suddenly began to wonder what he had got himself into. He turned around and began to struggle back toward the beach, as fast as he could.

‘
Jim!
' Susan shouted. He could only just hear her calling him over the endless seething of the surf and the fluffing of the wind and the distant, intermittent sound of rap music. ‘
Jim, look out behind you!
'

He was only waist-deep in the water now, and he was wading up the beach with an extravagant, hip-swiveling walk. But he turned around and looked behind him, and it was then that he saw a dim green phosphorescent glow approaching him, at speed. It was like an illuminated Jaws.

‘
Jim, she's right behind you! Get out of there!
'

Jim was splashing through the shallows now, panting with effort. He turned around – and to his horror the Swimmer was less than twenty feet behind him: a figure made of foam and phosphorescent spray, with a face contorted by the hunger for revenge.

‘
Get out of the water, Jim!
' Susan screamed at him, and came hurrying across the sand with Michael right beside her.

‘Susan!' Michael shouted. ‘Susan, for God's sake be careful!'

Jim had nearly reached the beach. But as he splashed through the last few yards, he heard a deep sucking sound and the water was suddenly dragged backward, beneath his feet, as if the tide were going out. He found himself running on flat wet sand, and he knew that if he could reach the boardwalk he would be safe. The Swimmer couldn't run across a hundred yards of dry sand without her physical shape being simply
absorbed.

He turned around again. The Swimmer had reached the water's edge, and now she was standing still, although her stare of hatred was unrelenting. Susan and Michael came jogging up to Jim and Michael gave him his pants, which he had picked up from the beach.

‘Thanks, Michael.'

‘No problem. She didn't accept your offer, then?'

‘Oh, she gladly would've drowned me,' said Jim, struggling to force his wet sandy legs into his pants. ‘But she still wants her revenge on everybody else. There's no stopping her – she's going to go on drowning people until she's punished everybody who was standing around the pool that day, and a few more besides. And the trouble is, who's going to believe us?'

The water slid further and further out, and the sucking sound grew deeper and harsher. Jim looked along the shoreline, right and left, and he began to realize that the tide was going out much further than he had ever seen it before. The Swimmer stayed where she was, but behind her, the ocean was beginning to rise, higher and higher, and a massive wave was beginning to form.

‘Jesus,' said Michael. It was bigger than any wave that Jim had ever seen before. It was dark and tumultuous, and it made a rumbling noise that was already beginning to shake the beach beneath their feet like an earthquake. Still it grew higher – millions and millions of gallons of ocean, piling itself up.

‘I have the distinct feeling that we ought to be getting out of here.'

‘I have the distinct feeling that you're right. Let's go.'

As they started to hurry toward the boardwalk, however, Jim heard a cataclysmic thundering sound. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that the giant wave was racing toward the shore – a boiling, churning avalanche of water that was already higher than the buildings along Ocean Front Walk.

‘
Run!
' Jim shouted, and seized hold of Susan's hand. Ahead of them they could see people on the boardwalk looking around in bewilderment, wondering what the thundering sound was.

They ran, tripping and stumbling, their feet sinking into the sand. But they were only halfway across the beach when Jim felt a blizzard of sand and spray against the back of his neck. He glanced around again and saw that the wave was almost on top of them. It rushed toward them like a mountain on wheels.

‘Hold on tight!' he yelled, gripping Susan's hand even harder. ‘Whatever you do, don't let go!'

‘
Michael!
' Susan shouted, reaching out for his hand too. But the next thing they knew the wave had collapsed on top of them, tons and tons of furiously seething water. It felt to Jim as if a building had fallen on top of him. He was driven to his knees, and then he was dragged up the beach, rolling over and over, hitting his shoulder against a volleyball post, colliding with a low concrete wall, and then being swept right across the boardwalk. His hand was snatched away from Susan's and he found himself fighting alone to keep himself from being drowned.