Read Online Creatures of the Pool by Ramsey Campbell - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ramsey Campbell
Tags: Fiction
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from you.”
I feel childish for observing that it’s ten minutes short of midnight. If her watch isn’t fast, her anxiety must be. I let a last hope turn my gaze on the street, but it’s deserted; even the shadow at the window of the office has vanished while I wasn’t looking. “I’ll phone them now then if you like.”
Of course liking doesn’t come into it, and I feel more childish still. “Go on, Gavin,” she says. “Tell them what I told you and give them my number.” This sounds like a preamble, and she adds “Tell them they can come and see me if they like. I won’t be sleeping till I know what’s happened. You have to stay there, promise me you will, but I wouldn’t mind not being on my own.”
Chapter Nine
W HAT THE N IGHT SPAWNS
I wish I’d said it was an emergency, but I suspect the police wouldn’t think it was much of one. Instead of 999 I called the number for Merseyside Constabulary, where the operator put me through to a policeman who seemed frustratingly remote. He made it clear that he found this an odd time to report a missing person and wondered why I hadn’t waited until morning, so that I had to use my mother’s concern as an excuse. He was surprised I wasn’t with her, even once I’d explained about the landlines; if my father couldn’t contact us on one, wouldn’t he try the other? I described him and his bicycle and said he’d been researching local history for his web site. Since the policeman was as unfamiliar with its address as with mine and my mother’s, I gathered that he and his whereabouts were far from local. When I mentioned that my mother would appreciate a visit, I wasn’t sorry that it wouldn’t be from him.
He won’t be conducting the search. Having established that someone will contact me if there’s any news, I’m left with an occurrence number so protracted that it feels as if my father’s disappearance may be crushed into insignificance by the weight of the multitude of reports. I listen to the rest of the phone-in, which turns into an argument about workers’ rights and responsibilities. There are no more calls in response to my father’s, but should I have told the police about the earlier ones? I did say that when I last heard from him he was under a railway bridge, and that’s really all I know. I shut the computer down and head for the bathroom.
I leave the mobile and the landline receiver in the corridor.There’s little space to keep them with me now that some of Lucinda’s toiletries have moved in, and the phones might be affected by the damp that sometimes seems to linger in the bathroom. In the midst of the buzz of the electric toothbrush I imagine that the mobile stirs on the floor, but it must be my nervous eagerness to hear, unless someone’s in the corridor between the apartments. Having finished foaming at the mouth, I send some water on a journey to its source and fill a glass from the bedewed tap before retrieving the phones on my way to bed.
Although I’ve shared it with Lucinda just a few times, it feels deserted. I lay the phones next to the clock on the bedside table, where the colon between digits almost an hour past midnight blinks insistently as I tug the cord above the pillows. Darkness swallows me, but it contains no sleep. I’m lying with my face towards the table and the window, and soon I hear a whisper that becomes a liquid chorus. The rain sounds torrential, almost blotting out the uneven sluggish tread of someone in the street. At last the presumably drunken wanderer grows inaudible, and at some point the rain does, because I’m asleep.
I would rather not be. I’m in utter darkness and wet with it too. Am I swimming blindly or groping my way along a tunnel? I’m being drawn towards a presence so unimaginably vast that I can sense its eager awareness of me. I’ve no idea how close it is or where. I’ll find out by touching it, because it apparently has no need to breathe, unless its breaths are too
I feel childish for observing that it’s ten minutes short of midnight. If her watch isn’t fast, her anxiety must be. I let a last hope turn my gaze on the street, but it’s deserted; even the shadow at the window of the office has vanished while I wasn’t looking. “I’ll phone them now then if you like.”
Of course liking doesn’t come into it, and I feel more childish still. “Go on, Gavin,” she says. “Tell them what I told you and give them my number.” This sounds like a preamble, and she adds “Tell them they can come and see me if they like. I won’t be sleeping till I know what’s happened. You have to stay there, promise me you will, but I wouldn’t mind not being on my own.”
Chapter Nine
W HAT THE N IGHT SPAWNS
I wish I’d said it was an emergency, but I suspect the police wouldn’t think it was much of one. Instead of 999 I called the number for Merseyside Constabulary, where the operator put me through to a policeman who seemed frustratingly remote. He made it clear that he found this an odd time to report a missing person and wondered why I hadn’t waited until morning, so that I had to use my mother’s concern as an excuse. He was surprised I wasn’t with her, even once I’d explained about the landlines; if my father couldn’t contact us on one, wouldn’t he try the other? I described him and his bicycle and said he’d been researching local history for his web site. Since the policeman was as unfamiliar with its address as with mine and my mother’s, I gathered that he and his whereabouts were far from local. When I mentioned that my mother would appreciate a visit, I wasn’t sorry that it wouldn’t be from him.
He won’t be conducting the search. Having established that someone will contact me if there’s any news, I’m left with an occurrence number so protracted that it feels as if my father’s disappearance may be crushed into insignificance by the weight of the multitude of reports. I listen to the rest of the phone-in, which turns into an argument about workers’ rights and responsibilities. There are no more calls in response to my father’s, but should I have told the police about the earlier ones? I did say that when I last heard from him he was under a railway bridge, and that’s really all I know. I shut the computer down and head for the bathroom.
I leave the mobile and the landline receiver in the corridor.There’s little space to keep them with me now that some of Lucinda’s toiletries have moved in, and the phones might be affected by the damp that sometimes seems to linger in the bathroom. In the midst of the buzz of the electric toothbrush I imagine that the mobile stirs on the floor, but it must be my nervous eagerness to hear, unless someone’s in the corridor between the apartments. Having finished foaming at the mouth, I send some water on a journey to its source and fill a glass from the bedewed tap before retrieving the phones on my way to bed.
Although I’ve shared it with Lucinda just a few times, it feels deserted. I lay the phones next to the clock on the bedside table, where the colon between digits almost an hour past midnight blinks insistently as I tug the cord above the pillows. Darkness swallows me, but it contains no sleep. I’m lying with my face towards the table and the window, and soon I hear a whisper that becomes a liquid chorus. The rain sounds torrential, almost blotting out the uneven sluggish tread of someone in the street. At last the presumably drunken wanderer grows inaudible, and at some point the rain does, because I’m asleep.
I would rather not be. I’m in utter darkness and wet with it too. Am I swimming blindly or groping my way along a tunnel? I’m being drawn towards a presence so unimaginably vast that I can sense its eager awareness of me. I’ve no idea how close it is or where. I’ll find out by touching it, because it apparently has no need to breathe, unless its breaths are too
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