77 Shadow Street

3

The Basement Pool

Whether upon arising at four o’clock in the morning, as now, or after work, Bailey Hawks preferred to swim laps with only the underwater lights, the rest of the long room dark, the pool a great glowing jewel, bright watery reflections fluttering like diaphanous wings across the white ceramic-tile walls and ceiling. The pleasantly warm pool, the astringent scent of chlorine, the slish-slish of his limbs parting the water, the gentle swash of wavelets lapping at the pale-blue tiles … The tense expectation that preceded a trading day and the mental fatigue that followed one were sluiced from him when he swam.

He got out of bed before dawn to exercise, have breakfast, and be at his desk when the markets opened, but rising early was not the cause of the exhaustion that he felt by every Friday evening. A day spent investing other people’s money could sometimes leave him as weary as any day of combat when he’d been a marine. At thirty-eight, he was in his sixth year as an independent wealth manager, after having worked for a major investment bank for three years following his military career. During his first year at the bank, he’d thought that eventually, as success built his confidence, he would be less oppressed by the responsibility to protect and grow his clients’ assets. But the burden never became lighter. Money could be a kind of freedom. If he lost a portion of someone’s investments, he would be throwing away a measure of that client’s liberty.

When Bailey was a boy, his mother called him “my guardian.” His failure to protect her was an embedded thorn, perpetually working its way through his mind all these years later, too deep to pluck out. He could atone, if at all, only by reliable service to others.

At the end of his fifth lap, he touched bottom with his feet and turned to face the farther end of the long rectangle of shimmering water, where he had entered by the submerged steps. The pool was five feet deep, and Bailey stood six two, so when he leaned back against the coping to rest before doing another five laps, the water rose not quite to his shoulders.

He smoothed his wet hair back from his face—and saw a dark form coming toward him underwater. He hadn’t been aware of anyone entering the pool after him. The rippled surface spun the quivering light and wavelet shadows into purling patterns that severely distorted the approaching figure. When you were submerged, the greater resistance made progress harder than doing laps on the surface, but this swimmer bored through the water as if he were a torpedo. The exertion needed to make such headway should have forced the man to breach for air before he could complete a hundred-foot length, but he appeared to be as fully at home underwater as any fish.

For the first time since his days in the Marine Corps, Bailey sensed mortal and imminent danger. Wasting not an instant second-guessing his instinct, he turned, pressed his palms flat atop the coping, and levered himself out of the pool, onto his knees. Behind him, someone seized his left ankle. He would have been pulled back into the water if he hadn’t kicked furiously with his right foot and struck what seemed to be his assailant’s face.

Released, Bailey scrambled to his feet, staggered two steps on the matte-finish tile, and turned, suddenly breathless, overcome by the irrational fear that he was in the presence of something inhuman, one mythical monster or another that was not merely mythical anymore. Nothing confronted him.

The underwater lamps were not as bright as they had been. In fact, the quality of the light had changed from crisp white to a sullen yellow. The blue water-line tile appeared green in this sour glow.

The dark shape moved under the surface, sleek, swift, streaking back toward the steps. Bailey hurried along the apron, trying to get a better look at the swimmer. Now acid-yellow, the pool appeared to be polluted, clear in some places but cloudy in others. Discerning details of the person—or thing—in the water proved difficult. He thought he could make out legs, arms, a basic human form, yet the overall impression was of something deeply strange.

For one thing, the swimmer didn’t frog kick, which was almost essential for making way underwater without swim fins, and he wasn’t using a breaststroke, either. He appeared to undulate with the muscular sinuosity of a shark, propelling himself in a way no human being could.

If Bailey had been more prudent than curious, he would have snared his thick terry-cloth robe from the hook on which it hung, slipped into it and his flip-flops, and hurried to the nearby security room in the west wing of the basement. Devon Murphy would be on duty there. But Bailey was transfixed by the eerie nature of the swimmer, by the otherworldly mood that settled on the room.

The building shuddered ever so slightly. A low rumble rose from the earth under the Pendleton’s foundation, and Bailey glanced at the floor in front of him, half expecting to see hairline cracks opening in the mortar joints between the tiles, though none did.

With the brief shaking, the light in the pool changed again, from the pustulant shade of disease-darkened urine to red. Short of the steps, the swimmer turned with the serpentine ease of an eel, heading back toward the end of the pool from which Bailey had fled.

Where clear, the water was the color of cranberry juice. Where clouded as if from disturbed silt, it resembled blood, and that vile stain now spread more rapidly through the pool.

The fluttering watery reflections on the glossy white tiles of the walls and ceiling morphed into tongues of faux fire. The long room grew dimmer, murkier, and shadows swelled like billowing smoke.

Nearing the farther end of the lap pool, the swimmer became harder to see, although still visible in the fouled water. No man could have swum three lengths so quickly without once needing to surface for a breath.

The shuddering lasted five or six seconds, and half a minute after it subsided and after the building grew silent, the pool lamps phased from red to yellow to white again. The faux fire licking along the glossy walls became dancing wings of light as before, and the room brightened. The cloudy water turned crystalline once more. The mysterious swimmer had vanished.

Bailey Hawks stood with his hands fisted at his sides, dripping into the puddle in which he stood. His heart knocked with less force than it might have when he was under enemy fire, back in the day, but nevertheless hard enough for him to hear it hammering.