Twisted By The Pool

Tomorrow I will reach my eighteenth birthday, which means tomorrow you will take me to the gallows.  Though you are executing me for the death of my brother, I tell you this: I did not murder him; in fact, he still lives, though in a degenerate form.  I told my story once.  Your blank stares, knowing smirks and outright laughter showed me how hopeless my situation was.  I go now to my death, if not guilty of my brother’s murder, then perhaps complicit in his... transformation.

***

My father’s family settled early in the village of ****, fortunately claiming a vast area of old growth forest and rolling hills that covered a wealth of coal.  My great-grandmother was extremely wealthy and, since her own children had already passed and my father was without siblings, when she passed away everything went to him.

We moved to the estate when I was 13 and my older brother Edward was 17.  It was the height of summer.  I remember our motorcar chugging down the main (and only) street of the small village.  The inhabitants must have thought it too hot to venture outdoors: the aging porches and dirt street were inhabited only by a couple of mangy hounds and dancing heat-devils.

I got my first glimpse of a local when we pulled into the drive leading to my great-grandmother’s house.  A man was scything the tall grass that grew along the drive but stopped to stare at us with naked suspicion as we drove past.  I could not place it at the time but there something unsettling in that stare, something that set my teeth on edge.

We drove to the house and stopped in front in a great cloud of dust which immediately coated my sweat-slick face.  Entering the house was like walking into another world.  It was dark and seemed as cool as an icebox compared to the oven outside.  The walls were covered in dark oak paneling, the fixtures all gilt and shining.

The entire staff of the house was assembled in the foyer.  They looked as if they all could have been related.  Each had a certain pointed-ness of physiognomy, an almost canine protrusion of the jaw that lent them, to me, a frightening air.  They all also had a slightly twisted posture, as if their legs did not quite carry them the same way mine did.  My father later told my brother (who later told me) that the local people had been inbred for many generations, so any slight inherited malformation would have been magnified over the years.  At my age I didn’t entirely understand that; all I knew was that their appearance made me feel uneasy.  Over the following weeks I grew used to their appearance however, and my brother and I became friendly with most of the staff, the groundskeeper in particular.

Locals aside, the landscape was breathtaking, and seemingly made for young boys.  Edward and I covered miles at a time, exploring the ancient forest.  Sometimes the groundskeeper, Leland Groat, would tell us of an interesting place to see and we would set out across the hills to discover it.  As boys will do, we pretended to be Indians, or pirates, or soldiers as the occasion took us.  By the end of summer there was not a spot within five miles of the house that we did not know intimately.

One day, while in the village with my father, I overheard two men talking.  I heard one of them mention a place called ‘The Mires’ and the other said something about ‘the thing in the pool’.  The men were acting very secretive so I didn’t ask my father about it, but when we returned home I immediately sought out Leland.

I found him chopping wood behind the house.  He had his shirt off and sweat glistened on his broad but oddly twisted back.  The axe frightened me a little so I walked wide around him and approached him where he could see me.  When he noticed me he smiled and dropped the axe, panting a bit.  He wiped his brow with a dirty handkerchief and said “Whut kin ah do fuh you tuday, young suh?”

I smiled in return and said “I heard someone mention a place called The Mires today, Leland.  Have you ever been there?”

Leland’s mouth immediately twisted into a fearsome scowl.  “Where ya’ll done heard o’ thet place, boy?” he growled at me.

  I was truly frightened.  I hadn’t noticed before how he towered over me.  I could feel the heat radiating off his body.  I took an unconscious step backward, stammering “Well, it was, I mean, it was just, just two men talking in town.”

Leland seemed to remember he was talking to a child and calmed himself down.  “Well, dun’t you be lisnin to them fools in the village, young suh,” he said.  He tried unsuccessfully to look me in the eye several times, then turned back to his axe.  He picked it up, but only leaned on it, staring into the forest.  “Nup, ya dun’t wanna be messin’ about with thet place, you or your bruthuh.”  He turned and managed to make his eyes meet mine.  “Ya’ll stay away from theah, ya heah?  I mean it, ya dun’t go down theah, nevah.  Nevah!  Got it?”

“Yes... yes sir,” I said, still frightened but confused from his rapid change of mood.  Leland went back to chopping and I wandered slowly back to the house, alternately watching Leland and the woods, trying to see deeper into the tangled depths of either.

That night I told Edward about what I had heard and Leland’s reaction.  “Oh, we must see this place now,” he exclaimed.  “Where do you suppose it is?  Leland said down there... do you suppose it’s down in Cree Valley?  It makes sense... we should go tomorrow night!  Father already said we could sleep in the yard, it’s perfect!”  I couldn’t fight against Edward’s enthusiasm.  He could always convince me to do things I knew were probably wrong.  After another half hour of excited planning, he almost had me convinced this was a good idea.

The next afternoon Edward and I were hiking the familiar trails of the forest, heading into Cree Valley.  It was a bit beyond our usual haunts, and by the time we found a trail that seemed to go in the right direction the sun was already riding along the treetops.

We soon came across a well worn trail that paralleled the brackish stream in the bottom of the valley.  The stream had scrubbed away at the valley for eons, but at some point in its geological life the surrounding hills had been uplifted causing the valley to be pockmarked with stagnant pools and dead end creek beds.  Flies and mosquitoes were thick, their droning a backdrop to the sighing of the wind in the tops of the huge sycamores and oaks.

Our trail veered sharply into a side valley that was already bathed in shadow, though sunset was still an hour away.  After about 50 yards the trail opened suddenly into a clearing, the floor of which was hard-packed dirt.  Beyond the bare dirt was what to my eyes first appeared as a cave mouth set directly in the valley floor.  After a moment I realized it was a pool, languid and dark, utterly still.  Wordlessly Edward and I approached the edge of the pool.  Moving slowly, we simultaneously realized that the forest had grown utterly still.  Not so much as a sigh of wind or the buzz of a fly broke the stillness that seemed to hang over the clearing.  Stealing a glance at my brother, our eyes met for a moment and I read in his eyes the same senseless fear that was swiftly overcoming me.

Seen from a distance of a few feet, the pool was still entirely featureless, as if it were not water but a viscous ichor that had welled up from some subterranean abscess.  Edward moved as if to touch the surface then thankfully stopped.  We might have stood transfixed there forever if we hadn’t heard the sound of approaching voices coming up the trail.  Even so, breaking the spell of the place was difficult, and we barely managed to leap into the brush next to the clearing before four men entered the same way we had.

While coming up the trail they had been conversing happily but when they entered the clearing the conversation died a sudden death.  The men fell into single file and passed once around the entire perimeter of the clearing, passing only feet from where Edward and I lay trembling.  After circumnavigating the pool three times the men stopped on the far side from us and stood facing it in poses that implied quiet contemplation.

In the space of three-quarters of an hour many more men arrived at the pool, each circling the clearing three times and taking his place around the pool.  By the time 30 or so men had arrived the sky was dimming toward twilight.  I could see fireflies in the woods beyond the clearing but none seemed to dare to enter it.

As the sky dimmed, the air above the pool seemed to take on a glow of its own, but a glow that somehow seemed the antithesis of sunlight.  It crawled over the surface of the pool like flame on a puddle of gasoline.  The sky continued trading its healthy glow for the unnatural light above the pool until moonlight began to silver the tops of the trees.

”K’ya’eh!”

Edward and I jumped and I barely stifled a scream when all the men shouted the guttural word simultaneously.  We looked at each other nervously as I began to search around us for a way to back out.  We were deep in the underbrush however and there was no way we could get out without signaling our presence.

”K’ya’eh!”

We jumped again.  This time I noticed a flicker pass through the glow above the pool, as if a ripple had rebounded from the circle of men and rushed back to the center.  The men began repeating the nonsense word more often, and each time I saw the glow react.

Faster and faster now the men repeated the strange word and I began to notice the surface of the pool move.  At first it was just a twitch in the center, but each time the word was repeated it heaved up a bit more.  The men began to accompany the chanting by stamping their feet in an awkward yet compelling rhythm.  I felt myself unconsciously mimicking the mysterious rhythm and forced myself to stop.  Soon I was doing it again, a trance-like feeling washing over me.  The word was repeated almost without a breath in between now, the foot-stamping rhythm rippling through me.  The pool was heaved up to a height of about four feet, a sickly black tentacle writhing slowly in its center.

My eyes wanted to close as my breathing kept time to the awful chant that echoed off the valley walls.  I didn’t feel Edward brush by me as he stood and walked slowly into the clearing, moving as if he were under a spell.  Seeing him broke my own lethargy and I reached out to him, too late.  He joined the circle with all their fervor, stamping out that horrid tattoo and chanting those unnatural syllables.  ”K’ya’eh!”  ”K’ya’eh!”

My fear for him broke the spell over me and I tried to call out to him, but the chanting overpowered me.  I cowered in the bushes, crying at my inability to stop Edward.  I was afraid for him, but I was more afraid for myself.  If only I had been able to overcome the fear that froze me, perhaps I could have saved him!

The black tentacle in the center of the pool rose higher, twisting and convulsing to the rhythm made by the worshipers around it.  The end of the tentacle followed the circumference of the circle of men as if searching.  My sudden premonition came true as I saw it hesitate in front of Edward.  He stared up at it rapturously, chanting and dancing out that horrid tune.

Like a snake striking, the tentacle lunged at Edward, completely enveloping him.  I saw his body within the ooze writhing, twisting, changing.  It held him while he struggled, the chanting somehow doubling in intensity.

Suddenly, as if punctured like a balloon, the tentacle collapsed back into the pool.  Edward stood hunched over, panting like an animal.  His body was twisted, his legs gnarled and bent.  He threw a glance over his shoulder that froze my blood.  His face was a terrible caricature of the face I knew as my brother’s.  Feral eyes glinted above a canine snout, his lips curling in a snarl that revealed twisted fangs.  I recoiled in horror as the creature that used to be my brother leaped into the forest.

***

That is my story.  I somehow made my way back to the house after a day and a half, my clothes torn and my skin scratched and bloody.  Edward was never found and it was assumed by the sheriff that I had murdered him in order to be next in line for our father’s fortune.  I told my story once, but I noticed that the men I was telling the story to had been present that night at the pool.

I go now to the gallows knowing that I, like my brother, am a victim of the pool.  I deeply hope that what awaits me beyond the noose leaves me blissfully ignorant of the shadowy mysteries that lie hidden in the dark corners of the Earth!