In The Water

a reminder, and a story

Thank you to all the new subscribers, it’s lovely to see that the audience for Maps is still growing. This is a periodic mention that there is a paid subscription option for Maps, but it’s a voluntary way of showing support and helping Maps continue, rather than a conventional subscription.

The newsletter is and will be free to all subscribers, and I’m going to continue to post stories to Substack Notes, which is how many of you have probably found this place.

As a thank you to paid subscribers, I’m currently serialising a full novel to those subscribers (anyone joining now will have access to all the previous chapters), and from time to time I’ll drop something else in like a full short story (i.e. longer than the Maps entries, most of them published over the years, some of them from Stoker-nominated anthologies and one that was reprinted in Year’s Best Horror). I do very much appreciate the support that some of you have given through that route - but also the support from all of you who follow, like, comment and read the stuff here. You’re all lovely people.

Anyway, you come here for the stories, don’t you. So here you go. Stay spooky.

IN THE WATER

If you’re lucky, as a child you might have got to spend time at the hiking camp that’s up on Saddleback Mountain in Maine. When you arrived, you spilled out of the car and breathed in the smell of the balsam fir, carried on the cold clean air, and you feel as if you are in a place where you could start again, become what you want to be but didn’t know until then.

A stream runs near the site, splashing and babbling over rocks as if it’s playing. You stand by its bank and close your eyes, and it almost sounds like it’s speaking to you. When you cup your hands and drink the ice cold water, it’s like being baptised into something. You plunge your hands back in, and throw the water over your face, shudder from the cold but feel as if you’ve just washed off the cares and worries of a lifetime.

Have I ever felt this happy, you think to yourself, and then no: not happy. Content. At peace. When the rain falls at night you’re safe in a tent, wrapped up and warm, but you also feel safe in the rain, it’s drum on the tent like a lullaby, white noise letting you drift off into sleep. In the morning you see rabbits and birds you can’t name, and when you walk, you feel as if there is air between you and the ground. You look up, and the winds catch the clouds and move them fast above you, and you feel as if maybe they are still, and you are the one who is moving, spinning.

At one point you wander off on your own, not very far, probably within shouting distance, and you know you ought not to but can’t resist. You follow the stream down a little way, jumping from one bank to the other, or dancing across stones to reach the other side.

The stream turns, and you turn with it, and round the corner, hidden by the fir trees, is a small pool where the stream widens before narrowing round another bend. A woman is swimming there, or rather she is twisting and turning and splashing and diving, just like the water and the spray. You pause, feeling like you’ve interrupted, and decide to step away, but she turns like an otter and sees you there.

You want to stammer an apology but the words freeze in your mouth as she looks different, sparkling, as if she is made of a million points of light. Then she starts to fall apart, outwards in spray and splash, like a wave breaking, white water and jewelled drops and a mist of spray, and then it all falls back into the water with a sound like the rain made, and she is gone. There is nothing but the stream, and the pool, and the pines, and you.

There are gods in the mountains and gods in the trees and gods in the clouds. And you know that there are gods in the water, because that time, when you were young - you saw one.