Creatures of the Pool

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Book: Read Creatures of the Pool for Free Online
Authors: Ramsey Campbell
Tags: Fiction
saw Springheel Jack from here?”
    He’s another urban legend I’ve yet to incorporate in a tour—the leaping figure that was said to have haunted Victorian Liverpool and London. Some reports even suggested he could be the Ripper. He was rumoured to have appeared in Aigburth, close to where the Maybricks lived, and was last seen about a hundred years ago, springing the length of High Park Street on the slope below my parents’ house. “I know they did,” says my father.
    “Who?” my mother is anxious to learn.
    “My mam and dad. They were at this window. Saw him jump from one end of the street to the other like a frog, and they couldn’t even move when they saw him coming. My dad used to say he was glowing like the lights you see on marshes, and his eyes were too. He jumped over our roof and they never saw him again, but my mam screamed for an hour and couldn’t sleep for weeks. She said she felt as if he was trailing a fog behind him and left some of it in the house. Sometimes I think that’s what started me off.”
    As I conclude he means his interest in lost Liverpool history, my mother protests “Well, you’ve never said any of that before.”
    While he’s feeling informative I take the chance to remind him “You said you’d show me everything you’ve found.”
    “I can’t now,” he says, scowling around the room without looking at anyone. “It’s in a mess.”
    “I hope you aren’t blaming me,” my mother says. “I’m sure I haven’t touched one single thing.”
    “Blame my head. There’s too much sloshing round in here.”
    Has he lost confidence since he retired? I want to restore it if I can. “The Frog Lane atrocities,” I say. “How about those?”
    “You’ve got me there,” he says and gazes at Lucinda. “Has he got you?”
    “They don’t ring any bell with me, Deryck.”
    Perhaps he has forgotten that he invited her to use his first name, because his stare doesn’t waver. “Penalty to you, Gav. You’ve turned up something your friend doesn’t know.”
    “If they’re going to bring football into it I’m leaving them to it,” my mother says, though surely she remembers I’ve no interest in the game. “Shall we go and sit down while there’s space?”
    Lucinda gives her a faint smile without otherwise moving as I say to my father “I’m sure you said last time we met you’d tell me about Frog Lane.”
    “When was that?” says my mother.
    As Lucinda and I agree on silence my father says “I went on one of his walks.”
    “Well, you never told me you were meaning to. I would have liked to have gone.”
    “It wasn’t planned,” I say. “We just—”
    I’ve blundered ahead of any useful words, and my nerves aren’t helped by the sight of Lucinda opening her mouth until she says “I know what I’d be interested in seeing.”
    “Let me guess.” Having closed his eyes so tight that they look capable of vanishing, my father says “The bottom of the pool.”
    His eyes seem to flinch as he blinks. My mother has switched on the overhead light, because the sky has grown so dark that it felt as if some chilly medium had begun to invade the room. “If you’ve got any pictures of that,” Lucinda says, “I’m sure we’d like to see.”
    “Not even any of the things they dredged up and didn’t tell the town about. Buried them instead, and quick.” Before I can ask about this he says “Go on then, let’s hear your request.”
    “Whatever you have from John Strong.”
    “Who’s that?”
    My mother might almost have glimpsed someone in the streets steeped in darkness, but she’s sharing my bemusement. “He was a pathetic nasty character who convinced a few vulnerable people that he had some kind of power over them,” says Lucinda. “I don’t think it was even his real name.”
    “He knew things nobody else knew or didn’t want to admit they did,” says my father.
    “We still aren’t in on the secret,” I say for my mother as well.
    “He was an

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