Part 2 (1/2)

”Seventeen years old!” Glenn had said, reading from a copy of the Barrimore Crossing Courier. ”What a waste!” He was sitting in his Barcalounger in the den, and Linda was on the sofa doing her needlepoint picture for Sue Ann Moore's birthday. Neil was on the floor in a comfortable sprawl, putting together a plastic model of a s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p he'd bought at Brookhill Mall that afternoon. ”Says here that she and a boy named Paul Buckley decided to climb the fence and go swimming around midnight.” He glanced over at Linda. ”Is that Alex Buckley's boy? The football player?”

”I think so. Do you know, Neil?”

”Yeah. Paul Buckley's a center for Grissom High.” Neil glued a triangular weapons turret together and put it aside to dry, then turned to face his father. Like Glenn, the boy was thin and lanky and wore gla.s.ses. ”Wanda Shackleford was his girlfriend. She would've been a senior next year. What else does it say?”

”It's got a few quotes from Paul Buckley and the policeman who pulled the girl's body out. Paul says they'd had a sixpack and then decided to go swimming. He says he never even knew she was gone until he started calling her and she didn't answer. He thought she was playing a trick on him.” He offered his son the paper.

”I can't imagine wanting to swim in dark water,” Linda said. Her pleasant oval face was framed with pale blond hair, and her eyes were hazel, the same color as Neil's. She concentrated on making a tricky st.i.tch and then looked up. ”That's the first one.”

”The first one? What do you mean?”

Linda shrugged uneasily. ”I don't know. Just... well they say things happen in threes.” She returned to her work.

”I think the City should fill in that swimming pool.”

”Fill in the pool? ” There was alarm in Neil's voice. ”Why?”

”Because last June the Happer boy drowned in it, remember? It happened the first weekend school was out. Thank G.o.d we weren't there to see it. And two summers before that, the McCarrin girl drowned in four feet of water. The lifeguard didn't even see her go down before somebody stepped on her.” She s.h.i.+vered and looked at Glenn. ”Remember?”

Glenn drew on his cigarette, staring through the rain-streaked winds.h.i.+eld at the pool. ”Yes,” he said softly. ”I remember.” But at the time, he'd told Linda that people-especially kids-drowned in pools, ponds and lakes every summer. People even drown in their own bathtubs! he'd said. The city shouldn't close Parnell Park pool and deprive the people of Barrimore Crossing, Leeds, Cooks Springs and the other surrounding communities. Without Parnell Park, folks would have to drive either to Birmingham or go swimming in the muddy waters of nearby Logan Martin lake on a hot summer afternoon!

Still, he'd remembered that a man from Leeds had drowned in the deep end the summer before Gil McCarrin's daughter died. And hadn't two or three other people drowned there as well?

”You think you're so d.a.m.ned smart,” Glenn whispered. ”But I know. You killed my son, and by G.o.d you're going to pay.”

A sullen breeze played over the pool, and Glenn imagined he could hear the water giggle. Off in the distance he was sure he heard Neil's voice, floating to him through time and s.p.a.ce: ”It killed me, Dad! I didn't drown... I didn't drown... I didn't... I-”

Glenn clamped a hand to his forehead and squeezed. Sometimes that made the ghostly voice go away, and this time it worked. He was getting a whopper of a headache, and he opened the glove compartment and took a half-full bottle of Excedrin from it. He popped it open, put a tablet on his tongue and let it melt. Today was the last day of August, and tomorrow morning the city workmen would come and open the big circular metal-grated drain down in the twelve-foot depths of the deep end. An electric pump would flood the water through pipes that had been laid down in 1945, when the pool was first dug out. The water would continue for more than two miles, until it emptied into a cove on Logan Martin lake. Glenn knew the route that water would take very well, because he'd studied the yellowed engineering diagrams in Barrimore Crossing's City Hall. And then, the last week of May, when the heat had come creeping back and summer was about to blaze like a nova, the pipes would start pumping Logan Martin lake water back through another system of filtration tanks and sanitation filters and when it spilled into the Parnell Park swimming pool it would be fresh, clean and sparkling. But it would not be lifeless.

Glenn chewed a second Excedrin, crushed his cigarette out in the ashtray. This was the day. Tomorrow would be too late. Because tomorrow, the thing that lurked in the public swimming pool would slither away down the drain and get back to the lake where it would wait in the mud for another summer season and the beckoning rhythm of the pump.

Glenn's palms were wet. He wiped them on his trousers. Tom Dunnigan had drowned in the deep end on the fourth of July, during the big annual celebration and barbecue. Glenn and Linda had been eating sauce-sloppy barbecues when they'd heard the commotion at the pool, and Linda had screamed, ”Oh my G.o.d! Neil!” But it was not Neil who lay on his stomach as the lifeguard tried to force breath back into the body. Neil had been doing cannonb.a.l.l.s off the high dive when Tom's wife had shouted for help. The pool had been crowded with people, but no one had seen Tom Dunnigan slip under; he had not cried out, had not even left a ripple in the water. Glenn got close enough through the onlookers to see Tom's body as the lifeguard worked on him. Tom's eyes were open, and water was running between the pale blue lips. But Glenn had found himself staring at a small, circular purple bruise at the back of Tom's neck, almost at the base of the brain; the bruise was pinp.r.i.c.ked with scarlet, as if tiny veins in the skin had been ruptured. He'd wondered what could have caused a bruise like that, but it was so small it certainly wasn't important. Then the ambulance attendants wheeled Tom away, covered with a sheet, and the pool closed down for a week.

It was later-much later-that Glenn realized the bruise could've been a bitemark.

He'd been feeding a chameleon in the pet store when the lizard, which had turned the exact shade of green as the gra.s.s at the bottom of his tank, had decided to give him a bite on his finger. A chameleon has no teeth, but the pressure of the lizard's mouth had left a tiny circular mark that faded almost at once. Still the little mark bothered Glenn until he'd realized what it reminded him of.

He'd never really paid much attention to the chameleon before that, but suddenly he was intrigued by how it changed colors so quickly, from gra.s.s-green to the tan shade of the sand heaped up in the tank's corner. Glenn put a large gray rock in there as well, and soon the chameleon would climb up on it and bloom gray; in that state, he would be invisible but for the tiny, unblinking black circles of his eyes.

”I know what you are,” Glenn whispered. ”Oh, yeah. I sure do.” The light was fading. Glenn looked in the rear seat to check his gear: a snorkel, underwater mask, and fins. On the floorboard was an underwater light-a large flashlight sealed in a clear plastic enclosure with an upraised red off-on switch. Glenn had driven to the K-Mart in Birmingham to buy the equipment in the sporting goods department. No one knew him there. And wrapped up in a yellow towel in the back seat was his major purchase. He reached over for it, carefully picked it up, and put it across his lap. Then he began to unfold the towel, and there it was-clean, bright, and deadly.

”Looks wicked, doesn't it?” the K-Mart clerk had asked.

Glenn had agreed that it did. But then, it suited his needs.

”You couldn't get me underwater,” the clerk had said. ”Nossir! I like my feet on solid ground! What do you catch with that thing?”

”Big game,” Glenn had told him. ”So big you wouldn't believe it.” He ran his hands over the cool metal of the speargun in his lap. He'd read all the warnings and instructions, and the weapon's barbed spear was ready to fire. All he had to do was move a little lever with his thumb to unhook the safety, and then squeezing the trigger was the same as any other gun. He'd practiced on a pillow in the bas.e.m.e.nt, late at night when Linda was asleep. She'd really think he was crazy if she found what was left of that tattered old thing.

But she thought he was out of his mind anyway, so what did it matter? Ever since he'd told her what he knew was true, she'd looked at him differently. It was in her eyes. She thought he'd slipped right off the deep end.

”We'll see about that.” There was cold sweat on his face now, because the time was near. He started to get out of the station wagon, then froze. His heart was pounding.

A police car had turned into the parking lot, and was heading toward him.

Oh, Jesus! he thought. No! He visualized Linda on the phone to the police: ”Officer, my husband's gone crazy! I don't know what he'll do next. He's stopped going to work, he has nightmares all the time and can't sleep, and he thinks there's a monster in the Parnell Park swimming pool! He thinks a monster killed our son, and he won't see a doctor or talk to anybody else about-”

The police car was getting closer. Glenn hastily wrapped the towel around the speargun, put it down between the seat and the door. He laid the chain cutter on the floorboard and then the police car was pulling up right beside him and all he could do was sit rigidly and smile.

”Having trouble, sir?” the policeman on the pa.s.senger side asked through his rolled-down window.

”No. No trouble. Just sitting here.” Glenn heard his voice tremble. His smile felt so tight his face was about to rip. The policeman suddenly started to get out of the car, and Glenn knew he would see the gear on the back seat.

”I'm fine!” Glenn protested. ”Really!” But the police car's door was opening and the man was about to walk over and see- ”Hey, is that you, Mr. Calder?” the policeman sitting behind the wheel asked. The other one hesitated.

”Yes. I'm Glenn Calder.”

”I'm Mike Ward. I bought a c.o.c.ker spaniel puppy from you at the first of the summer. Gave it to my little girl for her birthday. Remember?”

”Uh... yes! Sure.” Glenn recalled him now. ”Yes! How's the puppy?”

”Fine. We named him Bozo because of those big floppy feet. I'll tell you, I never knew a puppy so small could eat so much!”

Glenn strained to laugh. He feared his eyes must be bulging with inner pressure.

Mike Ward was silent for a few seconds, and then he said something to the other man that Glenn couldn't make out. The second policeman got back into the car and closed the door, and Glenn released the breath he'd been holding.

”Everything okay, Mr. Calder?” Mike asked; ”I mean... I know about your son, and-”

”I'm fine!” Glenn said. ”Just sitting here. Just thinking.” His head was about to pound open.

”We were here the day it happened,” Mike told him. ”I'm really sorry.”

”Thank you.” The whole, hideous scene unfolded again in Glenn's mind: he remembered looking up from his Sports Ill.u.s.trated magazine and seeing Neil going down the aluminum ladder on the left side of the pool, down at the deep end. ”I hope he's careful,” Linda had fretted and then she'd called to him. ”Be careful!” Neil had waved and gone on down the ladder into the sparkling blue water.

There had been a lot of people there that afternoon. It had been one of the hottest days of the summer. And then Glenn remembered that Linda suddenly set aside her needlepoint, her face shaded by the brim of her straw hat, and said the words he could never forget: ”Glenn? I don't see Neil anymore.” Something about the world had changed in that moment. Time had been distorted and the world had cracked open, and Glenn had seen the horror that lies so close to the surface.

They brought Neil's body up and tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but he was dead. Glenn could tell that right off. He was dead. And when they turned his body over to try to pound the life back into him, Glenn had seen the small purple bruise at the back of his son's neck, almost at the base of the brain. Oh G.o.d, Glen had thought. Something stole the life right out of him.

And from that moment on, maybe he had gone crazy. Because he'd looked across the surface of the pool, and he had realized something very odd.

There was no aluminum ladder on the left side of the pool down at the deep end. On the pool's right side there was a ladder-but not on the left.

”He was a good boy,” Glenn told the two policemen. There was still a fixed smile on his face, and he could not make it let go. ”His mother and I loved him very, very much.”

”Yes sir. Well... I guess we'll go on, then. You sure you're all right? You... uh... haven't been drinking, have you?”

”Nope. Clean as a whistle. Don't you worry about me, I'll go home soon. Wouldn't want to get Linda upset, would I?”

”No sir. Take care, now.” Then the police car backed up, turned around in the parking lot and drove away along the wooded road.