The Black Lagoon

It wasn’t a drowning like the ones you see depicted in films; it doesn’t work that way. No flailing of arms, no spluttering. He simply seemed to vanish somewhere close to the centre of the pool. It was so dark they couldn’t be sure exactly, but at some point that strange, inky water had taken him, quietly and permanently.

The others panicked at this realisation, and ran, leaving Peter alone.

Like a confused dog, he lumbered helplessly at the water’s edge from one side of the lagoon to the other, and back again, an increasing state of terror rising within him.

‘Ed!’ he called out into the thick darkness, ‘Ed! Ed!’

For just a second, wide-eyed, he stopped pacing and stopped calling and stopped breathing. The moonlight shone off the water and the reflection was a black mirror; a perfectly still sheet of glass that glinted with malevolent defiance. The air was thick with dark and silence as though the whole world had been suddenly engulfed by a black hole and the strange notion occurred to Peter then that the shadowy, polluted water had expelled his brother; simply banished him; eradicated him for being too pure and for having had no business there in the first place.

‘Ed!’

He was crying now – frantic, and in a state of consuming panic. He kicked off his trainers and splashed into the water himself, disrupting the smooth, self-assured glimmer of the surface that had no intention, it seemed, of being disturbed.

It took him too. Conversely though, not in an act of extradition. Rather he was taken in penance for the foolishness and futility of his sins.

***

The Blue Lagoon was a title of which the townsfolk did not approve. This so-called beauty spot, it seemed to them, was a mocking caricature of itself; a spoof; a farce. It never ceased to amaze them that people would travel for miles to see it and the grim irony of this was not lost on them.

The lagoon was a blip; a manifestation of something that did not belong out there in the quarry. What looked on the surface something like vitality and harmony, had come about in fact as a result of the rape and pillaging of the land in those parts, that had been happening now for centuries. First for lead, then for limestone and a succession of other minerals razed and picked and scraped up and from the ground with toil and machines.

And so behind the expansive and remote green and crags of the peaks – a wonder, and a haven - lay this poison, this pollution. It polluted the land and the air – and yes, the water – but it polluted too the people – through their skin, into their lungs and bloodstream and even, it seemed, into their genes – passed fourth; bred; consumed; inhaled; seen.

To live in the centre of this paradox had had a strange effect on the people; to live in the crossfire between stark, harsh nature and stark, harsh industry. To exist in the glory and majesty of the peaks; and yet to survive, in monetary terms, from the destruction of them. It was a jarring complicity. They were injured in no-man’s-land because it would have been impossible to align with either one side or the other.

So underneath the surface, in this fairly ordinary town, festered something insidious. A disruption; a special strand of chaos that seemed to take on its own life force and manifest in peculiar and ugly ways; in the odd mannerisms of the landscape, which had been altered and now behaved strangely; and in the quiet, devious actions of the people who inhabited it. People like the Murray twins who often seemed on the surface like quite ordinary children.

That particular afternoon, after they had finished their schoolwork, the twins had taken their usual route over to Larkspur Hill. After a rather laborious climb in blistering July heat, they arrived at the top and sat down on the grass to rest.

‘We’ve all done it Ed.’

‘We’re in a lockdown. You did it in the day. When it was blue.’

They surveyed the town below as they spoke. It was a little after four and the sun was blazing heavily down on them. It often felt like they had spent more of their childhood up on that hill than they had at home. During lockdown though, because they were only allowed out for an hour, they usually tried to save their walk for the afternoon.

‘We won’t get caught. No-one is patrolling after dark. It’s just ten minutes. Ten minutes of your life and we’re in, that’s it. We’ve all done it. It’s just your turn.’

Ed’s skin was so pale that he often looked ill. He wasn’t; he was a healthy boy. He just looked fragile, with his porcelain skin and dark circles under his large, blue eyes; eyes that shone brightly, as a child’s eyes should, but always seemed to carry behind them an elusive fleck of mournfulness. He looked at his brother. He was worried.

‘It will be cold. You know I’m not a strong swimmer. That thing has the same PH level as bleach for Christ’s sake. Are you honestly going to make me do this Pete?’

‘God you’re so annoying. You don’t understand anything. You do it, ten minutes, and we have an easy life. Tommy and Jack will let us go around with them – even you. No trouble. If you don’t, we’ll never hear the end of it, either of us. You’ll hear chicken noises as you walk to your lessons when we go back to school. You’ll find broken eggs in your rucksack – they did that once to Sean Tilling -‘

‘ – it’s so stupid.’ Ed interrupted angrily. ‘Why should those idiots dictate anything? They can barely read.’

‘That’s just how the world works. You have to keep the peace with people like that, you have to do what they want sometimes. If you don’t, it will be me too you know? The noises – the eggs. That’s unfair – that I get that just because my brother is too proud and just and scared to do one simple thing.’

Ed looked at his brother then with resignation and a strange, calm air of inevitability settled over him. He didn’t give a flying fuck about Tommy or Jack or any of those morons, but if Peter asked him to do something -

‘Ah – just the twinnies we were looking for,’ a voice materialised, seemingly from nowhere, behind them. ‘Awright lads? Are we on for tonight then?’

Peter jumped into alertness. He pronounced, self-consciously,

‘Awright boys?’

Ed observed his brother sadly.

Tommy took a seat on the patch of grass beside him and threw an arm around his shoulder. Jack and another boy loitered around behind, grinning stupidly and ready to receive instruction if necessary.

‘Are you ready then Eddie-boy? I know it’s a bit fucked up that you’ve got to do yours when it’s dark, but what can we do in a bloody lockdown, eh?’

Ed wasn’t afraid of Tommy. Or Jack – or the other one whose name he couldn’t remember. He wasn’t afraid of being pushed around a bit, he didn’t care about chicken noises in the corridor and he was unconcerned about the strong arm still clutching his left shoulder. He simply didn’t work like that. He knew his brother though.

He turned and looked at Tommy with a face of stone and said, ‘We’ll see you at one.’

‘Wheyyyy, that’s the spirit Eddie-boy!’ He jumped up and ruffled Ed’s sandy hair before doing the dab - the most ludicrous action, Ed thought to himself, for someone of his age and stature.

‘Yeah boy. Good for you. We’ll see you at one up at the lagoon,’ and as quickly as they had appeared, they were gone.

Peter was staring at the grass.

‘Thank you,’ he mumbled quietly.

Ed did not acknowledge this.

‘Hour’s nearly up, we’d better make our way back’.

The twins had gone to watch, some weeks before, when the council decided for a fourth time to dye the lagoon black. They weren’t supposed to of course, they should have been inside, but they knew the lanes and pathways so well that they managed effortlessly to find a spot where no-one would be aware of their presence.

The day was perfect; the lagoon shimmering blue; the whole thing – the lagoon, the dye – an anomaly; a perversion.

It was a sight to behold. Two people in hazmat suits stood at the edge and started to pour thick, inky liquid into the water. That patch blackened but it took what seemed like hours to spread through the rest of the blue, like cancer eating slowly and visibly away at the light. It spread out in large, asymmetrical wisps – forming black tentacles that took possession of the colour and brought it systematically back into patches of dark until finally the lagoon was completely black.

Peter was fascinated and intrigued, naturally, by the lifelike shapes forming and shifting through the water, and watched intently.

For Ed though, the spectacle signified something more – a visceral reflection of the corruption that permeated their town. But really though he considered as he watched you can’t possibly pollute something that is already polluted. It occurred to him too that the lagoon looked much more itself – somehow – after the black had taken hold. It became less of a distortion. A double negative that made a positive.

He had set his alarm for twelve, knowing that from their bedroom in the attic it would be unlikely to disturb their parents. On hearing the incessant beeping he woke up immediately, and switched it off quickly so as not to alert anyone else. He sat up and paused for a second, waiting to ensure that no-one had heard the noise before stepping heavily and begrudgingly out of his bed.

He crept over to where Peter slept still, hearing his long, deep, dreamfilled breaths – rhythmic and comforting. Ed looked at his brother’s sleeping face. He looked young and vulnerable. Those things that worried him during his hours of wakefulness – Tommy Wilcox and his posse; where he sat in the canteen at lunchtime – wherever he was now, these banalities had not followed him.

Ed was tempted to leave his brother there; to crawl back into his own sheets; back to his own dreamscapes. But he was painfully aware that morning would arrive for them both and the thought of Peter’s panic when he awoke to find that the night had evaded them was enough for him to know that the inevitable was looming. So he shook his brother brusquely on the shoulder that protruded from the edges of his thin, summer duvet.

‘Pete. Pete. It’s time to go,’ he hissed with assertion. ‘Wake up and let’s get this bloody façade over with’.

Peter groaned. Then, on realising what was happening, snapped into alertness. He looked at his brother.

‘Oh fuck. Ed, I –‘

‘Don’t. It’s fine. Let’s just get it over and done with.’

Peter stared at him with immense gratitude. Why should he care about any of those others when he had a brother like Ed?

The two of them dressed in silence, pulling up jeans and stretching jumpers over their heads; bending down and tying the laces of their trainers.

When it was time to leave, they crept carefully down the stairway that led to their bedroom, opened the door at the bottom and proceeded to creep along the landing, past where their parents were still sleeping soundly. They had decided to go out through the kitchen and via the garden as they had much less chance of being spotted that side than if they went through the front.

The day had been so hot that some of the warmth had lingered into the night, sealed beneath the atmosphere under a thick layer of cloud so neither the moon or stars were visible.

They had both brought torches, which were switched on immediately when they arrived at the lane past the end of their garden. It was perfectly quiet. As the two of them meandered along the streets and pathways that led to the quarry, they did not talk. The only sound was that of their footsteps and breathing as they walked, and the occasional chirp of a cricket or call of an owl somewhere in the distance.

When they arrived at the lagoon, and scrambled over the ineffectual fence that surrounded it, there was no sign of Tommy or the others anywhere.

‘It’s nearly one,’ said Peter, looking at his watch, ‘Maybe they won’t come and we can just go back to bed’.

Ed said nothing. He stared out over the pitch-black water, knowing confidently that they would appear. It smelt synthetic, plasticky. This was not as a result of the dye - it always smelt this way, and there were often rumours in the town of dead animals in that water; and even human excrement.

He bent down and put his hand in the water. It was very, very cold.

Suddenly, Tommy’s booming voice sounded out from the fence a few meters away. The lights from torches and mobile phones shone clumsily around the quarry and the sound of their deep voices echoed ineptly around the walls of limestone that surrounded the lagoon.

‘You showed, Eddie-boy! Fuck I’m tired – let’s get on with it and get back to bed. You know the drill. Clothes off. Swim to the other side and back, and you’re in. Easy peasy pudding and pie.’

He laughed moronically.

‘For God’s sake,’ hissed Ed. ‘Keep your voices down and switch those torches off – the whole town will know we’re here.’

He bent down and proceeded to start untying his laces.

Peter looked at him, then looked at Tommy and Jack and Matt, then back to his brother. He looked at the inky water, and was overcome suddenly by an immense sense of sadness; a deeper sadness than could be accounted for – or understood – in his thirteen-year-old heart. A heart that was pounding rapidly. Inside, words – protests – objections – were rising, swelling, bubbling toward the surface. He was no longer breathing.

Speak Peter. Come on, just speak. Just tell them to stop, tell them it’s stupid. Speak!

But it was too late. The words did not materialise and Peter watched helplessly as his brother, naked now, winced – taking his first few steps into the water.

Ed rushed forward and propelled himself into the pool in the hope that the shock of the cold on his body would subside and he could get it done as quickly as possible. He gasped sharply at the initial submersion.

Tommy and the others cheered brainlessly as the shadowy silhouette of his white body was engulfed by the black water. Peter grimaced.

The boys quietened and for a while, the rhythmic Slosh. Slosh. Slosh. of Ed’s body moving carefully through the water was the only sound that penetrated the night. It seemed to last for hours, though it can’t have been more than a few minutes. The boys at the edge of the lagoon were lulled by it and it took them a while before they realised that they couldn’t hear it anymore.

Tommy looked at Jack, puzzled, and almost vaguely annoyed. He frowned stupidly.

‘Where are you Eddie-boy? Have you reached the other side yet?’

Silence.

‘If you think you’re being funny you can fuck off,’ he called out, ‘I’m tired. Get back here so that we can go to bed.’

The only voice of reply was his own echo as it bounded across the quarry.

A little further along the edge of the lagoon, Peter was starting to feel a swell of dread rise within him.

‘Ed!’ he hissed out into the darkness, ‘Ed! This isn’t funny. Come back now will you?’

Jack shone his torch across the water and the four of them were alarmed to see that there was nothing there. It was as though the water hadn’t been disturbed in weeks, as though Ed had never been there at all.

Tommy looked afraid now.

‘If he thinks he can fuck with us he’s got another thing coming.’ He chuntered. ‘I’m not playing your stupid game, freak.’ He called out over the water, ‘I’m going the fuck back to bed.

Come on boys.’

Then the three of them ran, scrambling back over the fence and disappearing into the darkness.

Peter was alone now, at the lagoon’s edge, shrouded in the thick darkness of the night. He was sobbing.

‘Ed! Ed!’ he called repeatedly.

But his brother did not appear.

After kicking away his trainers he splashed, maladroit, into the water himself. He propelled himself frantically into the centre of the lagoon, calling out continually and taunted by the echo of only his own desperate cries.

He could see barely a thing – in front, behind, above, below him was all darkness. The walls of the quarry indecipherable, the clouds still distorting the night sky. He had entered a world comprised only of shapes and shadows and the panic in his chest rose and rose and rose. The water around his body felt thicker than water should, heavy with disease and corruption and anger. Peter felt the pressure of it baring down all over him, pulling him with conviction beneath the surface.

It was darkness, and bitter chemicals, and though he tried to push himself upward, he knew that the night he had left behind had gone from him and that this cold, hostile blackness was now his only reality.

Eventually, he succumbed to it, and in those last seconds before he drifted out of consciousness entirely - forever - he held in his mind an image of his brother’s kind, wise eyes and the flecks of sadness that seemed so often to appear in them. A sadness that he had never understood until that last fateful moment.