"Nixon, Joan Lowery - Mary Elizabeth 01 - The Dark and Deadly Pool" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nixon Joan Lowery)

Joan Lowery Nixon: The Dark and Deadly Pool


1

Moonlight drizzled down the wide glass wall that touched the surface of the hotel swimming pool, dividing it into two parts. The wind-flicked waters of the outer pool glittered with reflected pin-lights from the moon and stars, but the silent water in the indoor section had been sucked into the blackness of the room.
I blinked, trying to adjust my eyes to the darkness, trying to see the edge of the pool that curved near my feet. I pressed my back against the wall and forced myself to breathe evenly. I whispered aloud, "Mary Elizabeth Rafferty, there is nothing to be afraid of here! Nothing!" But even the sound of my own wobbly words terrified me.
I remembered how glad I'd been to get this summer replacement job at the Ridley Hotel health club. The Ridley is one of those super-beautiful hotels with fresh flowers in silver urns on all their gigantic carved tables and sideboards, and paintings that are the real thing, and a whole collection of sterling pieces which they plan to use if the President ever stays there, which so far he hasn't.
Their health club was designed by an interior decorator in coral and green with loads of looming ficus trees and palms, and white-blossomed "closet plants," and giant-leaved philodendron—all in huge brass planters— which right away tells you that nobody really goes there to get healthy. There's a small room with weight equipment; separate dressing rooms for men and women, with a large sauna in each; a bubbling Jacuzzi; and the pool, which is magnificent. Even though the salary wasn't anything to cheer about, I eagerly agreed to five days a week of scrubbing the tiles around the pool, manning the desk in the health-club office, and keeping a sharp eye through the office window-wall on the swimmers in the indoor section of the pool.
As Mom told me, it was the perfect job for someone who had grown too tall too fast and had been politely dismissed from her first summer job at a hamburger chain because she knocked over too many filled glasses of cola and stumbled over too many table legs.
And, as usual, Mom was right. During the three days I'd been working at the health club, no one seemed to pay attention to a little clumsiness—except for the first day on duty when I fell into the swimming pool—but let's not talk about that. And so far no one here had asked me if I played basketball or what the weather was like "up there" or if I got my red hair from being so close to the sun. At least, here at the health club I wasn't made to feel like an ungainly klutz.
"What you need is confidence in yourself," Dad had said. "A summer job should help you gain confidence."
"We hope it will help you learn to appreciate yourself," Mom had wistfully added. "Mary Elizabeth, you have got to begin to think good, positive things about yourself. Concentrate on all your best qualities."
"That's a blank." I said.
Dad put an arm around my shoulders. "You're a wonderful girl, and the world is filled with wonderful things for you. Just concentrate on what you can put into life and what you want from it."
"What do you want?" Mom asked.
"A tall boyfriend," I said flippantly. I wasn't going to tell them what I dreamed of being someday. It was an impossible dream. For that matter, I supposed that a tall boyfriend was too. I thought about some of the tall guys I knew at school. They were all dating girls who were under five feet two. "Might as well make him handsome, while you're at it," I added.
Mom sighed and began to say, "Be serious. You don't understand what we're trying to—"
But Dad held up a hand and said, "All right, sweetheart. If that's what you want right now, keep your goal in mind and don't settle for less." He kissed the end of my nose. "We're proud of you. Good luck with your new job."
I may have flubbed the first job, but here I was with a second-chance five-day-a-week job that lasted from three in the afternoon until eleven at night, when the health club closed.
It was a good job, and I liked it, with one exception: those few terrifying minutes at closing when I was alone in that echoing, cavernous room with the dark, lonely pool.
The first two nights I had to shoo out a few dawdling guests—politely, of course. Then I checked both the men's and women's dressing rooms to make sure everyone had left, locked the door to the outside deck, and turned out the pool lights and club lights in the office. In the dark I secured the office door with a loud click that shuddered through the steamy silence, then trembled across the twenty feet between the office door and the door to the corridor leading from the club to the side lobby of the hotel. I frantically slammed and locked the large door to the health club, grateful to be out in the brightly lit corridor, glad to be leaving that humid, watery darkness, and thankful that no one had heard those little gasping noises I'd been making. I couldn't help feeling ashamed that I was behaving not like a sixteen-year-old with my first real job, but like a child who was afraid of being alone in the dark.
I knew I had to grow up, and the only way to do it was to conquer this childish fear. So on this, the third night at work, I deliberately waited outside the locked office door, next to the dark pool. I pressed my back against the cold rough-textured wall and quietly willed myself to relax. I squeezed my eyes shut while I took two deep breaths. It worked I My breathing slowed, and my shoulders relaxed against the wall. But droplets of sweat trickled down my backbone, and my bare legs were clammy from the humidity in the room.
As I waited, shapes crept out of shadows and became familiar patio chairs and tables and potted palms and ferns. Shining tiles edged the pool, and the surface of the black water gleamed like polished jet stone.
I had to smile. It wasn't so bad here in the dark. This room was a crazy place in which to be alone, but I could manage. I was proud of myself. I would never let that unreasonable fear get to me again.
When I heard the splash outside I first thought it must be my imagination. It was a small noise, not the wild splashing the kids made, and certainly not the loud belly-flopping splash caused by some of the overweight hotel conventioneers who were under the impression they were diving I listened carefully and stared into the darkness, stepping to the very edge of the pool.
A shadow at the bottom of the pool, blacker than the dark water above it, slipped under the glass divider and quivered in my direction like a shimmer of lightning. I watched u come, too terrified to move, too frightened to scream, as the shadow loomed upward, ripping the water Hands clutched at the edge of the pool, one of them grabbing the toe of my sneaker, which was in the way; and a face—eyes and mouth gaping and gasping—met my own
I screamed, and an echoing scream came from the mouth below mine. With a loud gulp of air and thrashing of water, the face disappeared under the dark surface. I could see the shadow quickly slip under the glass wall and enter the outside part of the pool
I stumbled and tripped to the office door, dropping the keys. Somehow I managed to find them, get the door open, and turn on the office light. Sprawling across the desk, I grabbed the telephone and rang the hotel's security office number
"Yo," a deep voice answered.
I couldn't mistake the voice. It came from Lamar Boudry, Ridley chief of security, who styled himself a Symbol of Controlled Confidence and who periodically roamed through the corridors and lobby of the hotel like a marked patrol car. His impressive appearance in black, from his tightly cropped hair and moustache down to his shining black shoes with elevator heels, silently informed the guests they could retire with ease, knowing they were well protected at the Ridley Hotel.
"Mr. Boudry," I shouted, "it's me, Liz Rafferty! Help me! There's someone in the swimming pool!"
"Tell him it's closing time, and he's got to get out." Lamar Boudry yawned loudly into the phone and my ear.
"I can't tell him anything! He grabbed my foot, screamed in my face, and disappeared under the water!"
"Can you describe him? Did he have webbed fingers or green fangs?"
"I'm not kidding, Mr. Boudry! Come and help me!"
"I've got both the inside and outside pool area on camera right now, Liz, and I don't see anyone there, except you in the office."
"But outside—"
"Nobody's outside. Place is empty."
"Somebody must have sneaked in!"
"No way to get over those walls." He yawned again. "I saw you turn off the lights in the club ten minutes ago. How come you're still hanging around there?"
"Well, I—that is, I wanted to get over being scared in the dark, and I—" I stopped and took a deep breath. "Let me start over. It sounds like—"
"It sounds like you've got a big imagination. Maybe the hotel should get you a night-light."
"Mr. Boudry! Aren't you even going to come down here and look?"
"I'm looking, I'm looking. That's what these monitors are for. Why don't you just lock up now and go on home?"
"No!" I thumped a fist on the desk and managed to upset ajar of pens and pencils, which rolled off the desk and over the floor. "Whoever was in the pool might be hiding somewhere around here, and I can't lock up the club with him in it!"
"Okay, okay," Boudry drawled. "Tina hasn't checked out yet. I'll send her down to look around. And I'll keep an eye on the area through the cameras."
"Thanks," I mumbled, and hung up. I flipped on all the switches, so that the entire area—inside and outside —was colored in intense artificial light. The pool became a bright-blue jewel. The trees and shrubs that rimmed the outside tiles dripped in lemon-green. With the black sky beyond, the club resembled one of those garish paintings on black velvet that were sold on vacant lots along Highway 6 and Westheimer.
The door to the club swung open and Tina called out, "Help has arrived. Where are you, Liz?"
I skidded across the pencils, managing to steady myself by hanging onto the door frame as I swung out of the office to face Tina Martinez.