The Naming of the Beasts

Basement one was bigger than the street level - or at least the part of the street level that we’d seen. This was the gym’s reception area, with a counter in the centre of an open space, a quarry-tiled floor, a set of signs pointing away towards AEROBICS, WEIGHT TRAINING, PILATES STUDIO. With the lights blazing and the whole room deserted, it looked more like a stage set than a place in the real world - and thinking of it like that made me wonder whether someone or something was about to make an entrance. The irrational feeling of unease, even of fear, that had stolen over me upstairs came back even more strongly now. I had to fight the urge to look over my shoulder. The sense of threat was palpable. Something brushed faintly against the edges of my awareness, on the wavelength reserved for the dead.

‘There,’ said Trudie, pointing to a sign that read OLYMPIC POOL. Her voice trembled a little. Clearly I wasn’t the only one having a bad time of it down here.

We followed the sign to a double door, where there was a pause while I found the right key. Opening the door released a rush of chlorinated air. We stepped through into a smaller anteroom, with doors on either side bearing the male and female symbols and an open archway straight ahead, darkness beyond. We looked around for light switches but couldn’t find any. Somehow that seemed sinister. Why hide the light switches? What didn’t they want us to see?

Whatever it was, I had the sense that it was directly ahead of us, that what we’d come here to find was only a few steps away, on the other side of the arch. As if to confirm that, I was suddenly aware of the rhythmic slap of water against stone very close by. We’d found the pool.

‘Let’s go back,’ Trudie whispered from just behind me. I shook my head, as much to clear it as to disagree with her. This was absurd. The place was empty, and there was nothing down here to be afraid of. True, it might be haunted, but we were both exorcists. We were well placed to deal with anything that might be waiting beyond that archway.

‘We’ll just . . . take a look,’ I said with an effort. ‘And then we’ll come away.’

‘We won’t see anything,’ Trudie pointed out querulously. ‘It’s too dark.’

I put an end to the discussion by taking ten steps forward, passing under the arch and into the larger space beyond. I was walking on tiles again, hollow echoes rising with each step. A faint phosphorescence in the water showed me the edge of the pool now as my eyes began to adjust to the darkness.

In fact, it wasn’t completely dark. Even though we were below ground level, there was a light well in the centre of the room that must lead up through the centre of the building to the sky far above. Muddy radiance filtered down; seemed to hang in the air in granulated drifts.

But the light from the pool was unconnected to the light that came from above. It was stronger now, more defined, and there were eddies of movement within it. I was aware of two things: the first was that Trudie was standing at my side; the second was that my death-sense, which had been registering faint scrapes and whispers ever since we first came down the stairs, flared up now into a thousand-throated shriek like an air-raid siren.

It froze me in place for a second, and in that second Trudie walked past me to the edge of the pool. Silhouetted against that faint unsteady glow, she stared down into the depths. A strangled cry escaped her mouth. Her knees gave way and she almost fell. Lunging forward to catch her, I saw what she was seeing.

It was only incomprehension that saved me from falling myself. It took a couple of seconds for the movement below me to resolve itself into coherent shapes, and a couple of seconds more for my mind to process those shapes into meaning.

There were people moving around at the bottom of the pool, lots of them. They were visible by their own faint light, like so many Chinese lanterns burning under the water. Some wore armour. Others wore long, pale gowns that left their arms bare. All had sandals on their feet. One carried a short staff like a badge of office, which he brandished emphatically as he talked. And he was talking a lot: to the armoured soldiers, to another man dressed almost identically, to a woman whose long black hair was held back by a comb. They listened respectfully, all eyes on him as he gestured, turned, gestured again.

It was a convocation of ghosts - a caucus, a parliament of the dead - and it was impossible on a great many levels. But why did the sight of it fill me with such dread? Why was it suddenly impossible to draw a breath?

Trudie struggled free from my grip and backed away from the water’s edge, throwing up her hands as though to protect herself against some physical attack. I would have been happy to do the same thing, but I couldn’t move. Darkness was seeping in again from the edges of my vision, bringing with it an incandescent panic that swept away thought, deactivated muscles.