Swimmer by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page A

doesn’t mean that you have to be a detective and a marriage guidance counselor and a psychiatrist and a teacher, all rolled into one.’
    â€˜You’re beginning to sound like Karen.’
    â€˜Well, if that’s what she’s been telling you, it doesn’t surprise me.’
    â€˜Okay … I guess I’ll just have to be happy with what we’ve managed to do today.’
    â€˜Come inside for a drink,’ Susan suggested. ‘I can show you my collection of spiders.’
    Susan lived on the top floor of a narrow Spanish-style house, heavily shaded by trees. There was a small damp yard in the back, with a mossy wall all around it, and statues of naked Greek athletes, and a small circular fountain. Susan’s two-bedroom apartment was richly decorated with arts-and-crafts wallpaper, and hung with dark velvet drapes. All of the furniture was old and eccentric, especially a huge armchair with two grotesque faces on the arms, their eyes bulging and their tongues lolling out; and there was a smell of stale incense everywhere.
    â€˜This is pretty much for show,’ said Susan, kicking off her silver sandals and lying back on a gilt chaise-longue. ‘Personally I prefer the minimalist look. Walls painted cream, no chairs, and futons in the bedroom. But when people come to talk to a sensitive … well, they expect gothic.’
    Medlar Tree went to the kitchen and came back with a large chilled bottle of Chilean Sauvignon. He poured them each an enormous glassful and then lifted his own glass in a silent toast.
    â€˜What are we supposed to be drinking to, Medlar Tree?’ asked Jim.
    Medlar Tree put down his glass. He mimed that he was swimming. Then he mimed that he was thrashing around and drowning. He stood still, with his eyes closed, as if he were dead. He stood like that for almost thirty seconds and Jim said, ‘What—’ but Susan shushed him.
    Eventually, Medlar Tree lifted up both hands so that they covered his face. Jim thought: Where have I seen this before? Then, very slowly, Medlar Tree opened his face, like a book opening. For one moment, so brief that Jim couldn’t be sure if he had really seen it or not, Medlar Tree’s face looked exactly like that of the spirit-girl that he had seen climbing out of the pool. The hairs on the back of Jim’s neck fizzed with shock.
    â€˜Clever, isn’t it?’ laughed Susan. ‘But it’s only a party trick. Hypnotic suggestion. He’s very good at it, aren’t you, my dearest Medlar Tree?’
    Jim raised his glass. ‘Okay … I’ll drink to that particular trick. And I’ll drink to you, Susan. At least you showed Jennie that she wasn’t imagining things.’
    They spent over an hour together, before Susan had to go off for her orchard-therapy session. They talked and drank wine and laughed. Medlar Tree still brought him close to committing mimicide, but Susan seemed to think so much of him that it was hard for Jim to be openly hostile. It took strength, though, especially when Medlar Tree scowled at him from behind Susan’s back, and pushed his fingers up his nostrils to make himself look like Lon Chaney in
The Phantom of the Opera
.
    â€˜When did you first realize you were sensitive?’ he asked Susan.
    â€˜When I was six. I was walking with my mom along Hollywood Boulevard when I heard this woman screaming. I looked around, and there she was, a middle-aged woman in a beige flowery dress, standing by the side of the road, screaming. Except that her face looked completely calm and her mouth was closed.
    â€˜About two seconds later, she stepped out into the road, right in front of a bus. It hit her and she went flying through the air like she was showing everybody how good she was at cartwheels. She was dead, of course.
    â€˜At first I couldn’t understand why nobody had heard her screaming. It was only two or three years later that I had a similar