Submersion Read online

  Part I

  Prologue

  As one door closes, another door opens.

  A truth.

  In the chamber, that is exactly what happens.

  A form of torture.

  An endless opening of doors and walking over a threshold, only to be presented with another door; opening that and crossing another threshold; opening another; crossing another.

  And another.

  And another.

  And another.

  Tell me more about it, Tris, the girl asks.

  She is innocent. She thinks this is a game. A ghoulish tale, handed down. A nightmare before bedtime, an accompaniment to the slightly sour milk and plain biscuit she takes with her; drips and crumbs on her bedding.

  Tell me what happens next.

  They get into your mind, I tell her, they find out what you are searching for – the whom or the what you have been looking for – and then they put it in there. In the chamber of doors. They put it just beyond the next door. And each time you think you are going to reach it, each time you open a door and step forward, it’s still behind the next door. It’s still just out of reach. So you go through another and another.

  And another.

  Why don’t you turn back? Why don’t you stop and turn back?

  Innocent, innocent girl.

  You cannot turn back, I tell her, pulling up the duvet to her neck, getting her to lie down.

  Why not? Why can’t you turn back?

  But I cannot tell her. I will not tell her. Let her think it is a story; let it shriek like a night-terror through her somnolent body, at the very worst.

  Nobody knows, I say, because nobody has ever stopped and looked back.

  A lie.

  But a lie I will unravel another time.

  Tristan

  The street we live in is partially under water. There used to be a road, a place to drive and park a vehicle or walk on foot, but the way was flooded a few years ago and our road has become a river.

  Each house has a small wooden boat moored out the front, supplied by the authorities shortly after the water levels exceeded the steps up into our homes and invaded our ground floors and cellars.

  All the houses in the street are at least three storeys high, some four or five. For many years, even before the flood, fear of the dogs stopped people living in their lower quarters – it was safer to be at least one staircase away from danger and absolute suicide to expose yourself to the chance of being cornered in a cellar, with no escape route. Those days are gone now; the killer packs extinct. Yet, because of the flooding, people continue to live from the first floor up.

  The ground floors of older buildings remain submerged, whilst all new builds are constructed on stilt-like structures. In some wealthier areas, the effect can appear quite beautiful, with elegantly designed architecture soaring out of the still waters. But you can’t see these rich places – our small wooden boats can’t get you that far, so to most of us the image is just a rumour, just a dream of what might be out there.

  Where we live, there is just one such new building, standing above the other houses on its metal stilts. At the very end of Cedar Street: the Cadley residence, a house very much out of place there. It’s called the Cadley residence, after the first family who lived there. The building itself was commissioned by one Gerald Cadley, father of the house – built in the days of the dogs, still standing in the years of the floods. The Cadleys are long gone, and the house is now owned by a strange old hoarder known locally as Old Man Merlin. But I will come back to him later in my story.

  The tale I have to tell lives in the past, present and the future, but I will begin with the now.

  I am Tristan Jones. Tris to my friends. I live at 31 Cedar Street, about halfway along the murky water-road. It isn’t my house – it belongs to Agnes Taylor. Agnes is my landlady, friend and lover, depending on who asks. If Elinor – Agnes’ twelve-year-old daughter - happens to be asking, then I’ll give my middle answer.

  I met Agnes when Elinor was just seven, rescuing her from death on the night of what we call locally the Great Drowning; her rescue is another tale I will return to.

  Initially, I stayed out of necessity – the excessive water levels meant I couldn’t leave even if I wanted to. Now, it’s almost impossible to go. The water is still everywhere, at differing levels, some parts shallow, some parts deep, and we only have our small wooden boats to travel from street to street. Some left after the floods, those who still had the means and the money, seeking drier land, but no one has returned. No one that I know of. And in their absence, the rumours have grown wilder and fear has kept more of us from venturing further. Fear, and something else that the water brought us – poverty.

  But these weren’t my only reasons for staying - I had come here looking for someone; that’s why I had sailed into Cedar Street in the first place.

  After eight days, whatever caused the disaster settled and the authorities finally managed to intervene. But years of neglect, damage and changes to our environment meant the water remained – systems that should have allowed even this mighty deluge to eventually drain away were no longer functioning. Even years later, they still weren’t – although there was one advantage to leaving things to nature and keeping our streets immersed. The people knew it and the authorities knew it, too – the dogs.

  ‘Didn’t they all drown?’ twelve year-old Elinor will ask, wide-eyed, story-keen.

  ‘Yes,’ I’ll reply. ‘They all drowned. Every single one of the wretched beasts!’

  Elinor will grin with the sheer delight and terror that reigns in her imagination, remembering so little of the chilling reality that was suffered at their rabid claws and jaws.

  ‘And not one of them could swim?’

  Now, there was a question – a question without an absolute answer. A question I could only respond to with a shrug of the shoulders or a tap on the bridge of my nose.

  ‘No one knows,’ I will say, with a shrug, with a tap-tap-tap on the snout, ‘but rumour has it there’s something in the water, something keeping ‘em dead!’

  The torrid, instant onslaught caused horrific damage to the city, especially on the south side, and there was much to repair. Initially, the more urgent work was focused on – the search for life amongst the worst of the wreckage and welfare calls to those who had survived and were safe, especially those more vulnerable. So, I stayed to help with the former and then sat with a terrified Elinor whilst Agnes dealt with the latter. And then, when the real work began - the work to rebuild the city and form some kind of normal living in this post-flood world - I could no longer go. I was too involved and leaving was too difficult.

  We bonded quickly, Elinor and me. I’d saved her, after all, so she was eager to like me, to love me, eventually. I told her all the stories I had collected over the years and she listened intently, her face a mirror to her mind, reflecting the emotions my tale-telling aroused.

  We are still that way; the roles of story-teller and story-addict remain at the core of our relationship.

  ‘Tell me another, Tris,’ she will insist and I will indulge.

  Sometimes I will go too far; when I am tired or have got carried away, I will veer into darker territory and unleash descriptions not entirely suitable for her twelve years.

  ‘Is that really what happened, Tristan?’ a frail-sounding, whispered version of Elinor will ask, features ashen with fear.

  And I will have to retreat and place verbal plasters over the tiny scratches my words have left on her soul.

  ‘Just me getting a little carried away,’ I will insist. ‘And they are all just stories.’

  Yet, this isn’t strictly true – some of them, the graphic, dread-inducing ones that slip out unintended, are usually more fact than f
iction. But my twelve-year-old friend doesn’t need to be burdened with that.

  After the initial damage – to lives, families, property and goods – had been rectified as much as it could, Agnes asked me if I wanted to stay on with her and Elinor. She didn’t question where I came from or why I, a stranger, happened to be around to help when the disaster struck.

  ‘I trust your face,’ she had told me, and I decided I trusted hers, too. Liked it, even.

  So, I stayed and that’s the reason I give when questioned - Agnes. There are others, like the man I came looking for, but this is the only one I ever give.

  On the day my story starts, I had to take Elinor to school. Agnes had left early, taking the boat with her to the Black Sea. Agnes worked near the shore of the Black Sea; in a local government office with a view of the dark, thunderous roll of the ocean.

  That is where it all started - the flooding, a massive jaw-like wave, high as a house, rolling in to swallow the people. It was where the worst of the damage occurred, the greatest loss of life. The sea had simply opened up its mouth like a hungry beast and consumed the shore and its inhabitants. But, with the monster returned to the deep, calm folds of the ocean, the area had been rebuilt and Agnes appeared to have no fear of working so close to it. No fear of its fatal, merciless reprisal.

  And she found new things to occupy her thoughts, anxieties and anger.

  ‘I can see those workers, catching seafood with those nets,’ she told me, regularly, talking about a group of young men and women she had been watching from her office window. For weeks, she’d observed them fishing dangerously close to the shore, recalling daily updates upon her return home. ‘There don’t appear to be any safety measures in place. And their boss, I know him. He makes a good return on this business, I’m certain. It’s not right,’ she’d complain, hinting heavily that something needed to be done about the situation. That maybe I should somehow get involved, but those days for me were long over. This shoreline fishing was a treacherous job and there had been some casualties, but I told Agnes she just needed to keep her head down in that little office and keep her nose out of things that didn’t concern her. ‘But people have died. Young people,’ she replied, every time.

  ‘We need the money you bring in,’ I reminded her, with equal frequency. ‘So, don’t get involved. Just keep yourself to yourself and we’ll all be better off that way. If the man in charge makes money, then he has influence, and you don’t want him to use that against you.’

  Agnes would give me a look that said where has your fight gone, but left it there. She knew I was right. We all knew what happened when you let your inquisitiveness get the better of you. And, I needed to keep a low profile when it came to the authorities. I didn’t want them asking questions, poking into my business, delving into my history. I didn’t want them to find out why I had come to this place or what I had come looking for. What I was still hoping I’d find, one day.

  As a consequence of Agnes’ office job, I saw Elinor off in the mornings, before heading off to my own job.

  As there was only one boat per house, I borrowed Papa Harold’s from next door. Papa Harold lived to the left of us, and his was a name Agnes and her family had used for him since before she can recall. He was definitely called Harold, but was no relation of theirs through blood, only the familiarity and longevity of association. He was also a hermit, so I was free to use his boat. In return, we looked after him, venturing out into the world on his behalf, bringing him groceries, clothing and news, whenever we had access to it.

  ‘When did you last leave your home, Papa H?’ I asked him once, taking in his weekly order of food supplies.

  ‘Never. My mother was taken by a vicious pack, back before the flooding. My father never let me out and by the time I was old enough to consider it myself, I had no inclination. I’ve always done okay, thanks to Agnes and her lot.’

  Everyone knew the horrid tale of Sheila Mackie, his mother – dragged from her bed by three rabid dogs, two taking an ankle each in their vice-like, snarling jaws, a third biting into her neck and following the other two, as they dragged her off. They didn’t sniff out the baby wrapped up in the covers. It was a particularly notorious attack, as rarely did packs get into the upper quarters of houses. They tended to scavenge in cellars or ground floors, and staircases were gated to keep them out, but Sheila Mackie, exhausted from looking after her baby boy, had neglected to secure hers. A body was later found in nearby woods, but the face had been gnawed off and it was never established if this was his mother or not. If there was a method of being scientifically certain, it wasn’t used for Sheila; resources were in too short supply to waste on the dead. They were rarely wasted on the living.

  ‘Ready?’ I asked Elinor.

  We were both on the first floor landing, dressed in our waterproofs. It wasn’t the most glamorous look for a young girl – thick rubber boots that were merged into a waterproof bodysuit, greenish-black in colour, zipping right up to her chin. Mine was similar, but the black hue had faded to brown with time. As well as keeping us dry, its purpose was to protect us from disease and infection. No one was sure how safe the water on the river-road was. Over the years, it was rumoured to have been treated with all number of poisons and powders.

  ‘Why would they do that?’ Elinor had asked me and the answer was simple.

  ‘The dogs,’ I told her. The answer to most things was almost always the same: the dogs.

  She had accepted it without question. Most of us did – the dogs were license to do so many things. Poisoning the waters of our flooded streets, limiting food and resources, decimating our landscapes and the shadowy activities of government. And other terrible crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes that could not be put right or apologised for. It was always down to the dogs.

  ‘Right, face-masks on,’ I instructed that school morning.

  It’s the one part of our get-up that Elinor grimaced at, the part she truly hated. The masks were rubber like our boots, with an oval window at the front. Papa Harold said their design dated back to an old war, used to protect people from poisonous gas. Their history just made Elinor hate them further.

  ‘You must wear it, Elinor. I have to keep you safe,’ I explained every time. ‘What would your mother say if anything happened to you? How would she feel?’ It’s a response that worked every single time and the restricting mask was always in place in seconds.

  Fully protected, we descended the stairs to the waterlogged ground floor. Here, we waded through the dirty flood, weaving through the steel columns that had been installed to hold up the ceiling and stablise the house – columns I had been responsible for in many other homes across the city. Finally, we made our way to Papa Harold’s boat, which was moored just outside our house.

  ‘Ready?’ I asked Elinor, once she was settled in the boat, a traditional one-word question she always answered with a firm nod. I took this as my signal to grab the oars and begin our slow row towards Elinor’s school.

  I didn’t have to take Elinor all the way there. A fifteen minute row would take us to the nearest pick up point, from which she would board one of several speedboats which took her the rest of the way.

  ‘Speedboats, eh?’ Papa Harold had chuckled, when Elinor had first told him of her early morning transport. ‘We had buses in my day.’

  ‘Double-deckers?’ she had responded, remembering what he had told her, showing her in old books he’d kept, lighting-up with the joy of story. ‘Before the roads were rivers?’

  ‘Yes, before all that.’

  Being just seven when the city had flooded, Elinor had limited memories of vehicles on them, but she had been to the transport graveyard that was north of Cedar Street. A cemetery of abandoned cars and motorbikes, battered buses and coaches, at the heart of which was a twisted pile of rusting train carriages.

  But her daily journey to school took Elinor west.

  A ghost town, is what Papa H would have called the streets that Elinor travelled through. A
shell of a once thriving city now boarded up, rats scuttling along the stairs and escalators instead of customers, squatters moving in and pillaging any decaying stock that remained.

  From Cedar Street, I steered us left until we came to a crossroads; it was a right turn from there and a further ten minutes through a winding residential street, until we met our destination: the speedboat stop. It was from here that the ghost town part of her journey began. I had travelled with her several times, but also knew the area from old. Remembered when it was still up and running. Takeaways, restaurants, boutiques, newsagents, hairdressers, record stores, shoe shops – all were in plentiful supply, rich with offers, and richer in takings. But all that had now gone; the colours of a more affluent past now greyed.

  The speedboat stop was a rough construction of scaffolding poles and planks of wood, assembled in front of three boarded up businesses. In my teenage years, these had been a fish ‘n’ chip shop, a Chinese takeaway and a florist. The signs had long ago faded and the windows hidden behind more than one layer of hardboard to protect it. Given the damage from the floods, rats, squatters and looters, it wasn’t clear what the boards were actually protecting. To keep the makeshift platform in place, bolts kept the scaffolding poles at the rear anchored to the walls of the derelict shop-fronts.

  ‘You don’t have to wait,’ Elinor told me that morning.

  When we arrived, the platform was populated by three of her school friends; the speedboat was not in sight.

  ‘It’ll be here in a minute or so,’ she reassured me, wanting my permission to alight from our borrowed boat and be left to without parental supervision.

  I nodded my agreement and watched as she stood, steadied herself and stepped from the boat to the platform, a foot-width of grey water separating the two. The wood was wet and dark with damp and I feared she would slip, but she was fine. She read the concern in my face.

  ‘I’ll be fine, Tris,’ she told me and, having given her permission to leave the boat, I realised I had outstayed my welcome.