by Guy N Smith
But he had a lot of misgivings about Gabor Pool as he stood there on the lower edge of the shelf beneath the quarry wall and surveyed its black waters. Just as bodies were bodies to him, pools were pools … but this one didn't fit into any category. You got a sort of peculiar feeling that it wasn't as dead as it looked!
He glanced apprehensively at the other police officers who had accompanied him there, hard-bitten CID officers who were familiar with violent crime. The young one, the detective constable, had paled and nearly thrown up when they had literally walked into that body hanging above the path.
It had shaken them all. Maybe if it had been the missing girl it wouldn't have been so bad because they were expecting to find her dead somewhere. It was the unexpected which hit you hardest, destroyed all those self-made rules about remaining emotionless. All the same you had to put on an act. There was both pride and duty at stake.
It was that fear of the unexpected which was troubling Roger Bent now. This pool had that sort of look about it, like a black film across the surface as though to protect some hidden secret. He didn't like the idea of going down there at all; one could almost sense an atmosphere of foreboding but it was too late to back out now. Maybe he could go down, have a quick look around and come up and tell them there was nothing there. If there was then it was unlikely ever to be found anyway.
‘All set, diver?’ The sharp-featured sergeant was putting on an officious air, a façade to mask the revulsion that writhed in the pit of his stomach. Jesus, the birds had made a meal of that naked nut back there! What was it the local inspector had told them. ‘Queer sort of place, Gabor Wood. You'll see what I mean when you get there.’
The sergeant saw it, all right; felt it eating into him and creeping all over his body like a swarm of tiny insects. Maybe if they hadn't found that hanging corpse they needn't have remained but now they were likely to be here for some time.
Bent nodded, began adjusting his breathing apparatus, checked his lamp. The sooner he got it over and done with the better. At forty he was thinking in terms of a desk job but when you got a reputation for being one of the best frogmen in the division they were reluctant to take you off the job.
Slowly, unwillingly, Roger Bent slid over the side of the path, began to lower himself down into the water. Christ, it was bloody cold! He pushed down below the surface, the white beam of his lamp struggling to cut a path through the murky depths. The light reflected back into his eyes like the headlights of a car in thick fog, making visibility difficult but without it he would not see anything at all.
If the child's body was down here then it was surely caught up in something, tangled weed or dumped refuse. There wouldn't be any tree roots because they would not be able to grow through the solid rock and slate. First, though, he had to find the bottom, work from there, follow the base of the cliffs round in a circle. God, how far down was the bottom of Gabor Pool?
Weird shadows that moved and took on strange shapes like underwater monsters circling him, trying to come in on him from behind. Instinctively turning to meet them, cringing, ashamed of his own fear.
It was a silent, dead world down here. Bent was used to that feeling of isolation once one went below the surface but here it was different … almost as though one was never going back to the world above. That was silly, he told himself as convincingly as was possible, all you had to do was to go straight up and …
Noises. At first he thought it was a roaring in his ears caused by the pressure of the water but after a few moments he found himself listening to the sound. Like far-off voices, a crowd of people all talking at once so that it was impossible to pick out words. It was all in the mind, though, like a catchy tune you heard on the radio and you couldn't get it off your brain no matter how hard you tried. For Christ's sake shut up! They didn't.
Think of something else. A naked body, the neck stretched and chafed so that the bone was visible beneath the flesh. The eyes would have been bulging out if the birds hadn't got to them first and left just empty, bloody sockets. And that expression of terror on the dead features was more than just the look of a man who had hanged himself. There was more to it than that … a terror that transcended death!
For fuck's sake, Bent, stop hearing voices and don't think about that guy who organised his own necktie party. Get on with what you're doing and …
The noise was much louder now and it was definitely voices. Bent checked his downward plunge, listened. So cold, the black icy water giving him a sensation of vibrating with the sound, the same kind of force that a depth charge conveys … one from which there was no escape if you were caught up in the blast.
His light seemed to have dimmed but that was ridiculous, he personally checked the batteries before every dive. Yet the light was definitely weaker, creating a host of indescribable shadows on the fringe of its range.
Christ, he was going mad! His nerves were on edge due to the discovery of that suicide. Maybe he'd better go up and tell the sergeant that … no, it was too soon, he'd only been down here a couple of minutes at the most. Or had he? Another inexplicable sensation engulfed him, a curious terrifying sense of timelessness, a disorientation that had him treading water in a circle. Those shadows were like faces … They were faces!
Reflections that came and went before he was able to identify them as though they surged forward then retreated back into the darkness, water nymphs playing their own version of hide-and-seek. It was a trick of the light, of course; a faulty flickering battery.
Roger Bent's surroundings seemed to have changed also, as though some kind of background existed beyond the range of his lamp. He went towards it but it was always backing off like an underwater mirage. But surely his feet would touch the bottom at any second.
Something touched him! He stiffened, turned, but there was nothing there, only those faces which might not have been faces at all. But that light touch on his arm had not been his imagination; an inanimate object could not have held him like that, a quick gentle squeeze.
Roger Bent had only ever once panicked underwater in his life and he still had nightmares about that. They had been searching a disused canal for a missing body when he had come upon a sunken barge. He had explored it, thinking that perhaps the corpse might have become wedged in it, when a heavy rotting timber had slipped and trapped his foot. Oh God, that feeling of being imprisoned in the depths of a stagnant watercourse, shoals of minnows suddenly appearing as though to mock him. Larger fish lurking beyond his reach, content to bide their time until his oxygen ran out and then they would come to feed. Like the birds had on that swinging body up in the wood above!
Now he was starting to panic again. He'd surface, tell the sergeant there was nothing at all down here. Sod it if there was because the child would be dead anyway and what was the point in transferring her from one grave to another? They buried people at sea, didn't they?
Bent had made his mind up to abandon his search there and then, was already kicking out on an upward course when a terrible realisation struck him. He wasn't moving; just going through the motions but remaining stationary as though an invisible anchor was holding him down! And the voices were louder, rising to a crescendo, an ear-splitting shriek that had him attempting to cover his ears, trying to close his eyes in an effort to shut out the faces, but he could do neither. It was as though he was the victim of paralysis!
They were no longer just vague shadows. They were people. Children, boys and girls, their young faces screwed up into unbelievable expressions of malevolence that was directed at himself. He felt the full force of that hate in waves of underwater vibrations that were icy cold, numbing his body. He thought he screamed but he could not be sure.
Now he saw the bodies below the faces; wasted, almost skeletal frames from which white flesh peeled away in trailing ribbons, a shoal of hideous water witches spitting their venom at him, shaking puny fists angrily then flitting back into the shadows. Bent tasted the bile in his throat, wondered how much longer his oxygen w
ould last because he had no idea how long he had been down. And still he could not move, compelled to float and stare at the scene which his dimming light conveyed. The whispers were louder, escalating into piercing shrieks that vibrated and tortured his brain. With a supreme effort he managed to move his arms, clapped his hands over his headgear in an instinctive futile attempt to shut the noise out. He wanted to die, anything to be away from this dreadful place.
Suddenly this banshee-like vocal attack stopped. It was some seconds before Roger Bent was aware of this for the echoes continued to wail inside his head. He saw the multitude of faces again as though they were massing to attack, congregating in a bunch so that it was impossible to determine how many of them there were. Demonic fury rising to a pitch, starting forward so that the diver was cowering in anticipation of the full spate of their venom. Then, just when it seemed that they were about to come at him, they checked. Their expressions changed, the anger dying and being instantly replaced by … fear! And before he realised what was happening they had melted back into the darkness, leaving him alone.
He found that he could now move freely, flexed his shaking limbs and prepared to surface. Any second those awful underwater entities might return and if that happened then there was no hope for him. He had to get away.
Then his light picked up something else. He tensed, almost fled but his curiosity dominated. Certainly it wasn't those … things; it was too big, much slower. Just floating.
His brain had slowed down. It took him several seconds to recognise what he saw as a human corpse, that of a young girl, doubtless the very child for whom he had been searching in this nightmarish pool! With an effort he pulled himself together, became a police officer once again, matter-of-fact, trying to throw those hideous apparitions out of his mind. For surely they had only been in the mind, brought about by this terrifying atmosphere of watery evil.
He approached it. It was the girl all right, but God, something had been at her! She was facing away from him so that he could not see her face, just a slightly overweight naked body. There were huge gouges in the back and buttocks as though she had been savaged by an animal, the loose flesh trailing in the water, and in one place her spine was visible. She was trailing thick weed as though she had been caught up somewhere and had only just broken free, and one foot was missing, a stump that ended with ragged sinews and splintered leg bone.
Bent had to steel himself otherwise his reasoning would have snapped. Something had been eating her but that was none of his business. His duties were to find and bring the missing person to the surface; then it was up to the pathologist. This way he steadied his nerves, reached out for her, but even as his fingers touched her dead flesh she rolled, turned over, and in that instant Roger Bent was screaming hysterically inside his headgear. It couldn'tbe, it was impossible!
For the body was no longer human, the flesh scaly and dark green with a mass of yellow spots all over it, the head that of a massive fish, evil jaws with small sharp teeth, malevolence that defied description. Eyes that saw him and watched him, dead eyes that somehow moved and lived!
Roger Bent had spent enough time below water to be familiar with almost every species of freshwater fish. Even at the height of his terror he recognised this one as a pike, but of unbelievable proportions. Logically it could not exist but neither could those sinister nymphs who had mocked him only seconds earlier. It was all in the mind. But it wasn't, it was real!
His beam reflected evilly on the fish's body and he estimated its length at about four feet, the same as the girl whose rear anatomy had turned over to become a monster fish.
He could smell it, too, which was impossible because nothing could penetrate his breathing apparatus otherwise he would have drowned; a mingling of stenches, odours of putrefaction and excreta, a sort of liquid mustiness that reeked of something very old. And most dominant of all a permeating odour that every policeman recognises - the smell of death!
Roger Bent had given up trying to reason, his brain a piece of complicated machinery that was slowly grinding to a halt and accepted without question the scene conveyed to it by the eyes. After all, why shouldn't a child's corpse turn into a pike? No reason at all. Maybe he was a fish, too, and hadn't realised it up until now!
That face wasn't a fish's after all, no reason why it should be. It was human … well, almost! If you studied it you saw that the mouth wasn't as big as you'd first thought, sort of hidden in a mass of hair like a beard. Or was it weed like the child had been trailing in the first place? Patchy, like mange, so that the flesh was visible beneath, that same dark green colour as if in the final stages of decomposition. It was, because it stank. All bodies that had been underwater for any length of time stank.
Bent felt the full force of those eyes holding him. He wanted to look at the rest of the body, curious to know whether it was girl, fish, or man, but he couldn't break the stare, was forced to hold it, experiencing a sensation as though his brains were being forcibly sucked from his skull.
Oh Jesus Christ, those bloody water nymphs were starting up again, a mournful wail that almost had him pitying them. They were some distance away and he could only just hear them. They weren't angry anymore, they were afraid!
Those eyes … they were like giant oncoming headlights except that they never advanced, blinding orbs that obscured everything else, had you seeing strange meaningless patterns that might have been a reflection of your own brain. You felt sleepy but your eyelids didn't droop, terror turning to apathy because you didn't care any longer. Everything was too much trouble, you needed somebody to tell you what to do, to help you do it.
That was why Roger Bent thought that the other must be helping him on the upward journey, pulling or pushing - he didn't know which - because he would never have made it on his own. He could not have been bothered to make the effort. Funny about everything that had happened down there … What had happened? Had anything happened at all? Just a deep dark pool with nothing in it. And what was he supposed to have been doing down there? Hanged if he could remember but it couldn't have been anything important.
He felt himself surface, aware of the difference between light and darkness but unable to discern anything else. He didn't particularly want to, anyway. Treading water aimlessly until his fingers touched something, grabbed hold of it; a branch that came right down into the water, hauling himself up, crawling on dry land, groping blindly.
Hands grabbed him. Maybe he ought to fight them off but he couldn't be bothered. Why should anybody want to harm him?
Sod it, these bastards, whoever they were, were undressing him! Now that was a bloody liberty, downright obscene. That was when he struck out, a hard blow that connected, had somebody shouting, grabbing him from behind so he just gave up and let them have their way.
‘Bent!’ The CID sergeant's voice was strained, his features deathly white. ‘Bent, can you hear me, man?’
‘Oh-huh.’ The stripped diver's reply was a lazy drawl; God, he could just have curled up and gone to sleep. ‘I … can … hear you. Who's that?’
Three plainclothes police officers stared at each other in bewilderment, their skin prickling as though they ought not to be touching this man at all. He'd gone down below one of the fittest, sharpest men in the division; come back a mindless blind zombie, barely a shadow of his former self.
‘Bent, what did you find down there?’
‘Uh?’
‘I said what happened down in the pool?’
‘Uh … nothing … down in the pool … nothing at all … just fishes …’
‘My God!’ The sergeant shook his head slowly, motioned to the other two to help Bent get dressed. ‘There's something going on here and I'm going to get to the bottom of it. I'll have that pool drained dry if it's the last thing I do!’
None of them noticed the hunched figure crouched in the bushes on the top of the quarry cliff above them. Grizzled eyes that watched their every movement and understood things that were beyond their own comprehen
sion, festered lips that trembled uncontrollably. For Beguildy was very much afraid.
CHAPTER ELEVEN - PETRONILLA
‘We're leaving now!’ Marie Halestrom was on the verge of hysteria again, leaning up against the front door through which the three detectives had just left. ‘Not another night in this house, not another minute. Another child missing, a police frogman gone out of his mind, and a suicide in the wood. And it's already had its effect on Amanda. The child's changed overnight, withdrawn and morose. She's terrified!’
‘All right.’ Ron Halestrom held up his hands in a token of surrender. ‘I grant you everything's gone haywire. I'm not even going to put forward an argument about coincidences. You take the car and go into town with Amanda. Book in at a hotel and I'll join you later tomorrow.’
‘Why can't you come with us?’
‘A lot of reasons. The police are going to drain Gabor Pool in the morning and I want to be around when they do.’
‘Morbid curiosity.’ Her lower lip curled contemptuously.
‘No, I just want to see this through. I paid a lot of money for this place and I don't see why the hell I should give it up without a fight.’
‘What you really mean is you're going to write some horrible novel about it.’
‘Possibly.’ He smiled. ‘But I refuse to accept that everything that's happened is due to Bemorra's curse.’
‘Then why is Amanda acting like she is? She's not been the same since we found her gibbering away to herself by the Mainwaring grave. Why did she go there? How did she find it in that jungle of a graveyard in the midst of a thunderstorm?’
Halestrom didn't reply because there was no answer to either of those questions. ‘You carry on.’ He turned back towards his study. ‘I'll see you later tomorrow.’
