Dark Screams: Volume Two Read Free

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 Illustrated
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, God,
Glenn 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.
    Glenn had a splitting headache. He chewed a third Excedrin, took a deep breath, and reached down for the chain cutter. Then he got out of the car, walked to the admissions gate, and cleaved the chain that locked it. The chain rattled to the concrete, and the gate swung open.
    And now there was nothing between him and the monster in the swimming pool.
    He returned to the car and threw the clippers inside, shucked off his shoes, socks, and trousers. He let them fall in a heap beside the station wagon, but he kept his blue-striped shirt on. It had been a present from Neil. Then he carried his mask, fins, and snorkel into the pool area, walked the length of the pool, and laid the gear on a bleacher. Rain pocked the dark surface, and on the pool’s bottom were the black lines of swimming lanes, sometimes used for area swim meets. Ceramic tiles on the bottom made a pattern of dark blue, aqua, and pale green.
    There were thousands of places for it to hide, Glenn reasoned. It could be lying along a black line, or compressed flat and smooth like a stingray on one of the colored tiles. He looked across the pool where the false ladder had been—the monster could make itself resemble a ladder, or it could curl up and emulate the drain, or lie flat and still in a gutter, waiting for a human form to come close enough. Yes. It had many shapes, many colors, many tricks. But the