Free Creatures of the Pool by Ramsey Campbell

immense and slow for me to identify them as such. I would very much prefer not to encounter it—to learn anything about its shape or nature—and I struggle to cry out, to dredge myself up from the dream. While it seems to take not much less than forever, I succeed in projecting a feeble shriek into the darkness.
    At once I’m afraid that it will attract some part of the presence to reach for me. Dreams have no logic, or perhaps panic doesn’t, because the thought raises another cry. Itmanages to travel beyond the dark, and I flounder in pursuit until I see the darkness of my room. I would be reassured by its dim but familiar outlines and the amicable winking of the colon of the clock if the cries hadn’t followed me out of the dream. They’re no longer mine.
    It’s past three o’clock. No doubt everyone is asleep except me and whoever is uttering scream after scream, but how can anybody sleep through that? I kick off the quilt and lurch to the window, where I fumble at the lock. The sash slides up, spattering the sill with traces of rain. The cries sound as if they’re streets away. I want to believe they’re the natural call of some animal—an urban fox, perhaps—but they’re all too recognisably human, even if I can’t tell the gender. They seem close to exhaustion by terror or agony or both. If anyone besides me can hear, how can they bear not to find out what’s wrong? Are they too afraid to see? That’s how I’m behaving, which is almost as awful as the screams. I blunder away from the window to switch on both lights in the room.
    They provide no relief. They simply make the screams more real. I’m dragging yesterday’s clothes on when the cries falter, and I can’t help hoping they’ve come to an end. Their source must have been drawing breath, because in a few seconds they recommence, sounding more outraged and agonised than ever. I shove my feet into socks and shoes and almost forget to lock the window before dashing out of the apartment and slamming the door.
    If the slam awakens any of my neighbours, they aren’t apparent as I run downstairs. Apart from my footfalls the building is silent, and I’m able to hope that someone more qualified than I feel has dealt with the problem outside. When I emerge into the temporarily rainless street, however, the cries are just as atrocious, and my whole being shrinks from imagining what they express.
    They’re behind the building, away from the river. They aren’t in Castle Street, which is deserted except for a few empty cars. The street is staked out by pairs of traffic lightsmindlessly juggling colours and staining the drowned sanctuary stone, which glows like luminous moss before it turns the colour of a false daylight and then flares a warning red. As I sprint down Cook Street I hear the baying of a police car. I’m willing it to head for the scene of the crime when the siren shrinks into the distance and is gone.
    Why haven’t I called the police? I might feel absurd for calling them twice in a night, especially if the same policeman answered, but the truth is that the screams haven’t let me think. I even forgot that I was meant to be waiting at home in case my father rang the landline. The doormen who bar undesirables from the restaurants on Victoria Street have left their posts, and the deserted road stretches to the site of the Old Haymarket, where a car with its roof lights flashing swings around the roundabout at the tunnel entrance. “Police,” I yell despite the distance, “police,” and then I realise that the lights are reflections of streetlamps. As I leave Victoria Street for the narrow lane of Temple Court I hear the rattle of a window behind me. “Shut your row,” a man bellows, and the window slams like a lid.
    How can anyone respond that way? He sounded as if he thinks he owns the night as well as wherever he lives. He has left me feeling more alone than ever between the shuttered shops that occupy the lowest floor of the