The Swimming Pool

Slate grey clouds rolled in from across the water, silhouettes of birds flew for cover in the threat of a cold night and biting winds. An abandoned hotel sat in the middle of the fury of the wind and the animals scurrying for safety; the hotel stood without a guest passing through its rooms for a little over a decade. On browning grass and thick weeds that reached for the sky like a beggar, the hotel sat, out of place like it had been built as someone’s afterthought. A building created from a dream, but for the life of them, the person couldn’t remember how the dream ended. It ended like this thought Olivia, being forgotten and left to the elements. Her father, whose blind optimism scared Olivia at times, looked at the hotel like he’d found a treasure of gold hidden under the floorboards. In reality, Olivia saw nothing but decay and wanted to cover the floorboards over, light a match and never look back. Looking forward, her father had bought the hotel from a realtor who rushed the papers as soon as her father expressed interest in the property.

‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ Her father asked, throwing his voice into the wind only for Olivia to catch his words with a roll of her eye.

‘It reminds me of tooth decay.’ She shouted back.

‘Yes, lots of rooms for vacays. Couldn’t agree more, Oli.’

Sighing into the wind, Olivia Brown took in the hotel; its stained walls, cracked foundations, and gloom left her wondering if her father was sane to buy into such a lost hope as if the building had been forgotten in the night only for Olivia and her father to happen upon it in the morning. If it were up to Olivia, she’d give it back to its rightful owner, the night and the elements that looked ready to consume it whole. One bite at a time.

Three floors, ten standard rooms, four suits, one grand ballroom Olvia noted wasn’t that grand. A kitchen that housed more rodents than pans and a peculiar frozen block of a pool on the bottom level. Skating her hand across its icy surface, Olivia tried to make out her reflection in its murky waters.

‘How did it freeze over?’ Olivia asked, taking in the further decay of the small swimming pool on a clipboard she had titled ‘Dad’s broken life.

‘Apparently, this section of the property uses another water main; the pipes must have frozen over. Not to worry, the realtor recommended some chemicals that may do the job and a new hosing system.’

Peering into the frozen pool, Olivia tried to see the bottom, but all that stared back at her was darkness.

Stripping the rooms bare, chasing out rodents, and organising carpenters, electricians, plumbers, and painters took up most of Olivia’s father’s time; the one job he assigned her was the pool. To pour the chemicals that smelt like burning plastic and wait for the ice to melt. Wait. Wait. Wait. The darkness that filled the pool no longer worried Olivia; instead, she spent most of her days away from the chaos of the hotel carving drawings into the top layer of thick ice. Ice seemed to surround Olivia like an unintentional snow globe she found herself at the centre of; the pond across from the hotel remained frozen over, frozen pipes, frozen pool, frozen dreams, she thought. Never to thaw out. But day by day, little by little, carving by carving, the ice began to melt. Inch by inch, Olivia got closer to the darkness below, hoping the last person to plumb the building hadn’t accidentally hooked the sewage line up to the pool, and the dark shadow under her feet wasn’t a mess of checked-out guests. Speeding up the process, Olivia’s father had rented eight industrial-sized heating fans to melt the pool, laying on the rusted pool benches Olivia liked to imagine she was on holiday somewhere warm while they ran- sending a pleasant heat throughout the small room Olivia didn’t even mind when it got too hot for warm clothes. Shedding down to her limited wardrobe of summer clothes, the reminiscence of laying by the pool on a tropical day could almost convince her mind once she closed her eyes and pretended the constant whirl of the fan motors were nothing more than a summer breeze drifting through palm trees.

Drifting off into a comfortable sleep, Olivia didn’t hear the stirring from the darkness below. To most, the shadow or patch of darkness would look like nothing more than a chemical spill- a tainted cut to the clear water below. But this darkness wasn’t so simple; it had been asleep frozen to be destroyed by the previous occupants only for their calls of help to get lost in fatal injury. The darkness below wasn’t darkness at all but a living, breathing thing that would soon awaken and rise Olivia from her dreams into the reality of a nightmare below her feet.

Shards of ice began to break, like stones falling from a great height; the sound woke Olivia from her daydreaming. The ice bobbed in the water t, and from the depths, a blackened tentacle gripped the edge of the pool. Pulling itself free from its prison, the monster, a mass of tentacles, locked its large head on Olivia. Two yellow eyes focused on her own, rows and rows of sharp teeth pulled back from its mouth.

‘Thank you for freeing me from the water.’ Its voice sounded like a thousand people speaking at once.

‘Wh-what are you? Am I still dreaming?’

‘No, but I have been for too many years. They left me to die in that child’s pool. Funny things, humans. And now a child has saved me, thank you, dear girl.’ Its colossal body settled on top of the water; stretching his large neck from side to side, the creature set its yellow eyes on her once more. ‘It’s only fair that for freeing me, no harm will come to you. I have much work to do; I best be on my way.’

‘And to my father.’

‘What?’ The creature asked, its mind elsewhere.

‘You can’t hurt my father either; he owns the hotel or any of the people in it. Please, you can’t hurt any of them.’

Running a purple tongue along its razor-sharp teeth, the creature nodded. ‘Fine, but I am famished. Getting frozen will do that to you.’

‘Why did they freeze you? Down there?’ Olivia looked at the swimming pool; the water seemed almost transparent with the creature out of its depths.

The creature drew closer to Olivia; its mess of tentacles and body came to her resting place. Its large head nearly brushed the ceiling, lowering its head down, the creature flashed its teeth- its tongue running along each tooth’s peak. ‘I took something. Something that upset one of your humans, and he tricked me. Promised me something better, but well, you know how that story ends.’

Olivia nodded to keep herself from shaking. Its almost human eyes made Olivia wish it would go back to wherever it came from. ‘And now what are you going to do?’

The creature swallowed, its tentacles moving about it like an agitated toddler. ‘To do what I need to do. I don’t think you’ll want to know how this story ends. Goodbye, Olivia.’

The creature moved with frightening speed to the door and threw it out into the darkened hallway. A silent scream hung from Olivia’s lips as she stared into the darkness and imagined two yellow eyes staring back.