The Ghost Quartet

Chapter OneI sit here by our swimming pool, with one eye on my son in the water and the other on the seagulls lazily drifting, circling on high. Actually they're not just drifting; they're climbing on thermals off the nearby fields, spiraling up to a certain height from which they know they can set off south across the bay on their long evening glide to Brixham to meet the fishing boats coming in to harbour. And never once having beaten a wing across all those miles, just gliding, they'll be there in plenty of time to beg for sprats as the fish are unloaded.It's instinct with those birds; they've been doing it for so long that now they don't even think about it, they just do it. It's like at ant-flying time, or flying-ant time, if you prefer: those two or three of the hottest days of summer when all of a sudden the ant queens make up their minds to .y and establish new hives or whatever ant nesting sites are called. Yes, for the gulls know all about that, too.The crying of gulls: plaintive, sometimes painful, often annoying, especially when they're flight-training their young. But this time of year-well you can always tell when it's ant-flying time. Because that's just about the only time when the seagulls are silent. And you won't see a one in the sky until the queen ants stream up in their thousands from all the Devon gardens, all at the same time-like spawning corals under the full moon-as if some telepathic message had gone out into an ant aether, telling them, "It's time! It's time!"Time for the seagulls, too. For suddenly, out of nowhere, the sky is full of them. And their silence is because they're eating. Eating ants, yes. And I amuse myself by imagining that the gulls have learned how to interpret ant telepathy, when in all probability it's only a matter of timing and temperature: Ma Nature as opposed to insect (or avian) ESP.And yet . . . there are stranger things in heaven and earth- and between the two-and I no longer rule out anything . . .My son cries out, gasps, gurgles, and shrieks . . . but only with joy, thank God, as I spring from my deck chair! Only with joy-the sheer enjoyment of the shallow end of the pool. Not that it's shallow enough (it's well out of his depth in fact, for he's only two and a half), but he's wearing his water-wings and his splashing and chortling alone should have told me that all was well.Except I wasn't doing my duty as I should have been; I was paying too much attention to the seagulls. And well--Well, call it paranoia if you like. But I watch little Jimmy like a hawk when he is in the water, and I've considered having the pool filled in. But his mother says no, that's just silly, and whatever it was that I think happened to me out on the moors that time, I shouldn't let it interfere with living our lives to the fullest. And anyway she loves our pool, and so does little Jimmy, and so would I, except . . .Only three weeks ago a small child drowned in just such a pool right here in Torquay, less than a mile away. And to me- especially to me-that was a lot more than a tragic, if simple, accident. It was a beginning, not an end. The beginning of something that can never end, not until there are no more swimming pools. And even then it won't be the end for some poor, unfortunate little mite.But you don't understand, right? And you never will until you know the full story. So first let me get little Jimmy out of the pool, dried, and into the house, into his mother's care, and then I'll tell you all about it . . .Have you ever wondered about haunted houses? Usually very old houses, perhaps Victorian or older still? Well, probably not, because in this modern technological society of ours we're not much given to considering such unscientific things. And first, of course, you would have to believe in ghosts: the departed, or not quite departed, revenants of folks dead and long since buried. But if so, if you havKaye, Marvin is the author of 'The Ghost Quartet' with ISBN 9780765312518 and ISBN 0765312514.