The Drowning Ground

by James Marrison

  ‘Different?’ I said. ‘Different how?’

  Griffin raised his eyes, so he was looking straight at me. ‘It was like I were looking at someone else,’ he said defiantly. ‘It didn’t look like her at all, and it was like she didn’t know who I was either or even know where she was. But there was this sly look on her that I’d never seen before. She looked older somehow.’ Griffin nodded to himself. ‘Yes. It was like someone older was staring at me through a young girl’s face. That’s the only way I can think to describe it. But I wanted to slap that look right off her. I think I even raised my hand. I just couldn’t bear to look at it any more. It was worse even than all that wet fur and the sound of that animal dying in the water. And then the expression was gone. And I was looking at her again. I was looking at Rebecca.’

  Griffin stopped talking. He suddenly looked tired. He blinked. It was very quiet. Griffin pushed the pot away from him and started moving towards the door. I followed. He turned off the light. At the far end of the garden I could make out Mrs Griffin through the kitchen window, carrying a basket of laundry; she disappeared into another room. Griffin looked at the empty window for a moment and then started to walk back towards the house. Halfway there I stopped him.

  ‘And this barn?’ I said. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Near Chippy.’

  ‘Chipping Norton?’

  ‘Yeah. Near Bliss Mill. Frank sold the whole lot – it’s an estate now. Industrial estate.’

  ‘And that barn?’ I said anxiously. ‘Is it still there?’

  Griffin shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

  We walked on. ‘I didn’t know what to do,’ Griffin said. ‘I didn’t know what I had seen. I couldn’t really believe it, you see. And when it was all over I did my best to try and forget it. I was going to tell Frank. But she begged me. Begged me not to tell her old man. And after a while I agreed. Not for her sake, though. I did it for him. I did it for Frank.’

  ‘But you told someone, didn’t you?’ I said.

  Griffin nodded.

  ‘Who?’ I said. ‘Who did you tell?’

  45

  My car sped through the gathering darkness towards Chipping Norton. Glimpses of trees and fences and fields became engulfed in frozen fog. The car shifted and wobbled as I took the small roundabout into town too fast.

  I reached for my phone and called Graves. ‘I think I might know where the body is,’ I said as calmly as I could manage. ‘Of one of the girls. Maybe both.’

  ‘Where?’ Graves said quickly. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘I think that they may have been hidden somewhere in an old barn. A barn on some land Hurst used to own. I’ll explain everything later. Have you talked to Hooper yet?’

  ‘I’m on my way to his house right now.’

  ‘All right. You must talk to him. Then let me know what he says.’ I hung up before Graves could ask me anything else. A few minutes later, I finally found the turning. The small road began to slip downhill. The lead-covered dome of the old tweed mill stood on the crest of the hill. There was a car rental office. Beyond it stood a number of almost plastic-looking warehouses divided into units.

  The road ended abruptly and was blocked with a metal beam suspended in the air like a checkpoint. Next to it was a long oblong trailer set down permanently in the concrete. I got out of the car, stepped into the cold and peered inside, where a young man was sitting with his boots propped up on a metal table.

  I rapped hard on the door with the side of my fist and when the man still did not respond I pushed open the door. Startled, he stared up wildly. The chair began to slip and squeak beneath him, and at the last minute he made a desperate lunge for the table, jogged the edge and knocked his tea all over the newspaper in front of him.

  He looked helplessly at the tea dripping on to the floor while I explained what I wanted. Then he politely introduced himself as Richard Rose, shook my hand and sponged up the worst of the spilt tea with paper towels. After that he grabbed his coat, keys and a torch, and we headed towards the buildings at the back.

  ‘So it’s still there, then?’ I said. ‘The barn’s still there?’

  ‘Yep. It’s listed,’ Rose said. ‘Council won’t let ’em knock it down, though we could do with the space. There’s been some talk about converting it into flats, but you know what the bloody council are like. Take forever, that lot.’

  We walked past locked buildings that were long and wide. Spread out neatly in front of us were parking spaces.

  ‘Sure I’m not going to get you into trouble?’ I said.

  ‘No, you’re all right.’

  Rose led me towards the back of the furthest one and strode towards a chainlink fence. Set within it, so small that you could hardly see it, was a gate.

  ‘For the gardeners when they come round in the summer,’ Rose said as he searched for the keys. ‘Strimming.’

  He snapped open the padlock, and we had to crouch to get through. Rose seemed content to come along with me, and, looking up at the stone barn rising on the top of the hill, I was content to let him.

  We strode quickly across the field, leaning into the wind, which rose as we moved closer to the top of the hill. The barn stood almost exactly in the field’s centre, and from the bottom of the hill it looked like a slab of black in the moonlight. A faint sound came from the edge of the field – a stream.

  We walked around to the doors at the front. Pieces of broken stone were scattered throughout the long grass and snow; brown leaves had piled up between the fragments. At the front, leaves had clustered and frozen around the barn’s broken doors. The doors were hanging off their hinges, and we squeezed through them to get inside. There was a smell of damp and closed-in dankness. At the far end was the water trough. Something big rustled and fled into the darkness.

  ‘So what are we looking for?’ Rose said loudly.

  ‘I’m not really sure,’ I said. ‘But water. I think water.’

  Rose shone the torch upwards. At one point the entire roof had collapsed, and it had been replaced with corrugated iron, which had rusted almost completely away. The walls were whitewashed inside, and the stalls had collapsed and fallen in on themselves, while some of the huge central beams had cracked and lay in broken mounds on the floor. I paused, listening. Somewhere, down from the other end, was a faint sound of trickling water.

  I took Rose’s torch and flashed the strong beam ahead of me along the broken walls, stepping over the disintegrating pieces of wood and broken stones. Halfway along another piece of timber blocked my way. We stepped over it and peered into the darkness.

  The beam of the torch danced along the floor. Old coils of rope. Large empty bags of fertilizer or feed. Briars and weeds grew wildly through the cracks in the ancient cobbled floor. I took another couple of steps towards the back. A large pile of toppling firewood had been set by one wall and forgotten about, and on top of it was a white broken window frame lying on its side, covered in cobwebs and dusty earth. I took another few steps and shone the torch closer to the ground, hearing the water more clearly now. I moved closer to the far corner of the barn. The moonlight fell through a small window and faded at my feet. More pale light shone through the broken roof. I could smell the stone-infused water down below now. I shifted a couple of old pallets and bags out of the way, hurling them roughly to one side.

  ‘What is it?’ Rose said from behind me.

  ‘A well,’ I said.

  A long time ago there must have been bricks built into a tall circle. A pump of some kind. But they were gone now. All that remained was a pit that had been bored deep into the ground. I knelt down and reached in. I could just touch the surface of the water with my fingertips. It was very cold, and there seemed to be a current pushing against my fingers as the water coursed its way beneath the earth.

  I looked at the water for some time. Uncertain. ‘Must be a natural spring running beneath us,’ I said finally. ‘Probably that’s why they built the barn here in the first place.’

  Rose
shifted impatiently behind me and sneezed. He didn’t seem at all interested. ‘You know, I should be getting back,’ he said.

  ‘Just one second,’ I said.

  I stared at the water, thinking. I could phone and get some people out here first thing in the morning. Or I could know. I could know right now before sending anyone on a wild goose chase. So was I going to do it?

  For a few moments I couldn’t decide. I’d probably come down with a bout of pneumonia if I went ahead and did it. I sighed. I always end up going ahead and doing stupid things.

  I thought of Gail Foster’s mother and the promise I had made to her. Fire and now water. It was like some kind of test. I laughed at myself as I stared at the well. I found that I was already unloosing my tie. I stood up, took off my coat and handed the torch back to Rose. If I was going to do it I would have to do it now, before I changed my mind.

  ‘I want you to help me out a bit more, Richard,’ I said, ‘if you don’t mind.’

  Rose, having seen me take off my tie and undo my shirt, suddenly looked nervous.

  ‘It’s not what you think, big boy,’ I laughed in spite of myself. ‘I want you to keep that torch on the water. I’m going to go in there and have a quick peek. It’ll be a minute, no more than that. It’s important.’

  ‘All right,’ Rose said, looking highly relieved.

  I stripped and passed my clothes to Rose, feeling like an idiot in my boxer shorts. Then ever so slowly I lowered myself into the well.

  46

  Even before I touched the water, the cold air rising from its surface began to burn above my knees and then my waist. I lowered myself in farther. My breath sounded harsh and uneven. For a moment, I remained balanced above the well – then I took a deep breath and let go.

  Any kind of preparation for the water had been utterly futile. My entire body went into a spasm. The freezing cold pounced, grabbed hold of my momentarily inert body and began to push me until I almost leapt with shock. I scrabbled at the sides and tried to push myself back up. But the bricks at the sides fell in white powdery clumps and cascaded down, landing in small splashes in the water next to me.

  Rose, seeing me thrashing about and floundering, placed the bundle of clothes on the top of my coat and laid the bundle on the floor. Then he knelt down and stretched out his hand. I gratefully took it, and I pushed my way up, panting, so that I was wedged once more just above the water. I stayed there, shivering helplessly. My teeth chattered in my mouth so loudly that they seemed to echo all around the barn. I tried to gather up enough courage to go back in.

  The surface of the bricks on either side seemed, after the intense cold, almost warm. Up close, I saw that they were slippery, and covered everywhere with an unpleasant green and brownish type of slime. Here and there, especially in the crags and crevices, were large clumps of a thick and sinewy vegetation.

  ‘You all right down there?’ Rose said, shining the torch on the water and looking highly amused.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not.’ I gasped once and then went in again.

  The second time was almost as bad. But I forced myself. I took a deep breath and slipped beneath the surface. I began to claw my way down, holding firmly to the side of the well with one hand, using my other to feel along the walls. I didn’t know how deep the well was, but somehow I’d have to try to reach the bottom, if that was possible.

  Slime, a crevice and nothing. I reached farther down. More slime, another bigger, wider crevice. I searched for as long as I could, then I pulled myself up. I drew air into my lungs and then pushed myself down again. Deeper this time.

  The deeper I went, the more the water seethed and churned beneath me. My arm reached out, my fingers rapidly searched the surface, feeling for anything that could be wedged or tied down there. Weighed down. But there was nothing. I pushed myself back up, gasping, to the surface.

  I waited a whole minute before I went down again, counting down the seconds on my watch. Rose was still kneeling by the side of the well. The water trickled and his voice echoed, bouncing off the walls.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ Rose asked. ‘What’s down there?’

  ‘Probably nothing,’ I said.

  Not wanting to think of what might be there, I thought about the time I had ended up in a fairground when I was a kid. Mickey Mouse and Dumbo and spinning teacups. I breathed in deeply. Once, twice, and then disappeared beneath the surface. Bubbles rushed past my face. This was the last try.

  Down below, it was pitch black, but for some reason the vegetation seemed to grow even more thickly along the well’s walls. Long fronds of some weed, which I could not see, reached out and brushed against my face. I fumbled blindly in the dark. Now deep beneath the surface, I could feel the current of the water rolling around my legs.

  My lungs began to burn and ache. I felt the first beginnings of a rising panic as I sensed the terrible solidity of the bricks around me. But I kept searching. The tips of my fingers ripped through the weeds and slime as I pushed myself farther and farther down. The pressure deep in my lungs rose. My mouth began to fill with water. I had to go back up now. But for a few seconds longer I refused.

  Suddenly, I felt the muddy bottom of the well brush against the soles of my feet. I reached up, came upon a sharp shelf of rock and began to push with my feet. Then I pushed myself further down, around the base of the rock. My arms reached out, searching with one hand while I kept myself as immobile as I could with the other. From what looked like miles away, the orange light of Rose’s torch shone through the water.

  I reached out. My eyes widened in the darkness as I felt something that was smoother than the sides of the well. Blindly, my hands ran along it. A rope, or at least that’s what it felt like. There was something attached to it. I felt it. It was soft and somehow even colder than the water.

  Colder than the water.

  Instinctively, I knew what it was. The shock gave me a mouthful of water as I recoiled. But the mud clung to my feet and to my ankles. Fear held me, and for a few terrible seconds I swung my arms in the water in circles and stayed put. But the movement of my arms had caused something to shift in front of me in the water. And suddenly something cold brushed against my face, moved along my lips and from there to the tip of my nose. It moved lovingly up along my forehead and into my hair. Reaching for me in the darkness.

  Desperately, I pushed deep into the mud with my feet, but it was too soft. I twisted my whole body, writhing in vain to push myself free. Panic enveloped me along with the rising, whirling darkness. The black mud had now risen above my ankles, and the more I pushed the higher the mud rose. I thrashed about helplessly in the water, while the current suddenly seemed to pound beneath me, as if the water had sensed my presence and wished to drag me beneath the earth.

  More water entered my mouth. I tried to cough it out, but only another larger mouthful of water slipped down my throat and pushed its way into my lungs. I twisted my head from side to side, aware, but only faintly, that I was screaming.

  I reached forward, not caring now what I touched or tore in the darkness. My fingers dug into something very soft. With my other hand I grabbed at the rock, straining with every muscle. But none of it was any use. The mud’s clutching resistance held me ever more tightly at the bottom of the well. I became dimly conscious of some sound coming from far above me. A suppressed yell or scream. The single orange light from above had gone. There was a sudden tightness in my throat, and a coldness coursed through my entire body. Numbing fear. My back emitted a single shudder in a spasm and then went limp. I struggled weakly, and for a few moments my hands reached for the narrow sides of the well.

  There were a few more moments of a desperate and wild panic. Then, unspectacularly, it ended. My head tilted back. My heart rate slowed. My mouth opened. My eyes rolled back, glassy and empty. The blood rushed from my limbs towards my chest. And the burning searing pain in my whole body seemed to ease. My head began to loll forward, and then my arms drifted to my sides. I fell bac
kwards so that my back bumped and rested against the ancient walls of the well. A moment of languid peace.

  It came to me then with perfect clarity that I had never made it out of the Ford Falcon at all. I was still there, dying in Buenos Aires all those years ago. All the rest of it – my other life in England – had been an elaborate illusion. The illusion of a drowning man. I was still in the car, trapped with the other men. Soon my body would roll twisting into the brown waters of the river delta. It would float and be carried along, drifting ever outwards to the sea.

  And I knew something else. I had found her at last. Not Gail Foster or Elise Pennington. They had never existed. They were just illusions that I had tried to grasp as the water filled my lungs and the current of the river began to take me away from the diminishing lights of the Ford Falcon. Pilar, I thought. Pilar. It’s you Pilar, isn’t it? I knew I would find you. But what have they done to you? Your poor face. What have those animals gone and done to you? I wanted to reach out and touch her face in the darkness before me one last time. I tried to lift my arms. But now they were as heavy as lead. And when I tried to move closer, the mud around my feet caressed my toes and held me, while the pounding of the water subsided into a murmur. Oh, Pilar, I thought, you’ve been down here all this time and I never knew it. But how could I have known?

  And in that moment I remembered her. I remembered the smell of her hair. With my hand outstretched, I touched the base of her neck with the very tips of my fingers. Her skin was stone cold, but I didn’t care. I had found her.

  47

  Buenos Aires, January 1982

  We never knew how los militares had found out where we were staying, but I hadn’t expected them to come for me so quickly, and my brother and I had both been in a kind of daze since Pilar had disappeared. I had been asleep when I heard that loud, unmistakable banging on my front door. I had run bounding down the stairs towards the back porch, but one of them was waiting for me with his shotgun raised lazily at my chest.