The Shuttered Pools

The first time I noticed the swimmer, I thought the chlorine was playing tricks on my eyes. It was late summer, the kind of heat that makes the air shimmer over the tarmac, and my parents had dragged me and my cousin Lena to the Sunstone Bay Resort in the Algarve. We’d only ever been to Wales before, so this was a revelation: endless buffets, a pool that curved like a turquoise comma, and at night, the whole place hummed with crickets and the clink of glasses.

We arrived at the hotel around seven, the light still thick and gold. Dad did his usual inspection of the room, checking the taps and the air conditioning, while Mum insisted on unpacking immediately. Lena and I just wanted to get into the water. The pool was almost empty – just a middle-aged couple paddling in the shallow end and a thin man doing slow, deliberate lengths. I remember thinking he swam with an odd grace, his head barely cutting the surface, his strokes silent. We splashed around for an hour, then went up to change for dinner.

Our room was on the third floor, overlooking the pool. When we came back, the door was slightly ajar. Dad swore, pushed it open, but everything was in place. Except – my sunscreen was on the dressing table, not in my washbag. Lena’s wet swimsuit, which she’d hung on the towel rail, was now folded neatly on the edge of the bath. I said nothing. I figured housekeeping had been in, even though we’d only been there a few hours. But a cold knot tightened in my stomach.

Dinner was at a dimly lit restaurant across the road, all stone walls and candlelight. I couldn’t focus on my grilled sea bass. I kept replaying the image of the swimmer, the way his shoulders rolled. When we walked back, the pool was a black mirror, and I saw a shape – just a suggestion of a shape – glide from the deep end to the ladder. I blinked, and it was gone. Lena saw me staring. ‘What?’ she said. ‘Nothing,’ I lied. But I didn’t sleep well that night. The air conditioning hummed like a swarm of bees, and I dreamed of water filling the room, rising over the bed.

The next day, the swimmer was there again, doing his lengths. I was floating on a lilo, half-dozing, when I noticed something odd. He never surfaced. Not once. His face never broke the water. His strokes were rhythmic, but his head stayed submerged, and where his legs should have been kicking, there was just a faint, churning disturbance. I slid off my lilo and swam to the edge, my heart hammering. When I stood, dripping, he was at the far end, and I saw his face had no features – just a smooth, pale expanse, like the belly of a fish. I let out a sound that was half scream, half gasp. The couple looked up, annoyed. The swimmer vanished. I scrambled out and grabbed Lena’s arm. ‘I’m not going back in,’ I said. ‘What are you talking about?’ she said. ‘There’s something in the pool.’

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I sat by the window, watching the pool. The moon was a shallow coin, and the water seemed to glow faintly. I saw the swimmer again, but this time he wasn’t swimming. He was standing on the pool deck, facing my window. He raised one hand – or what I thought was a hand – and pointed directly at me. Then he lowered his arm and stepped into the water without a splash. I pulled the curtain shut and didn’t sleep.

The next morning, I told Dad. He laughed. ‘Probably a prank from the hotel staff. They love to spook tourists.’ He wasn’t unkind, but he dismissed it. I started to feel like I was going mad. I avoided the pool, but I couldn’t avoid the water. It was everywhere – in the bathroom tap, in the ice cubes at the bar. Every time I heard a splash, I flinched.

On the third night, I decided to confront the swimmer. I couldn’t stand the fear anymore. I crept downstairs, past the closed bar, to the pool. The air was thick with the smell of chlorine and something else – something faintly organic, like rotting seaweed. The water was still. I stood at the edge, my reflection wavering. Then I saw him, underwater, directly beneath me. He was looking up at me, and now I could see his face – it wasn’t blank, it was wrinkled, like a prune, but with two sunken black holes for eyes and a mouth that was stretched into a smile, but the smile was wrong. It was too wide.

He reached up. His fingers, long and webbed, broke the surface. They closed around my ankle. I tried to pull back, but he was strong. He pulled me in. The water closed over my head. I felt him drawing me down, and I saw what he was – a thing that had once been human, but had been in the water so long that its skin had become translucent, its limbs elastic. His mouth opened, and I saw row upon row of needle-thin teeth. He whispered, and his voice was like the trickling of water over stones. ‘You came back,’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting.’

I woke up on the pool deck, coughing up water. The sun was rising. The pool was empty, serene. My ankle was cold, and when I looked down, there was a faint red mark, like a bruise in the shape of a hand. I never told anyone. I never went near the water again. But I know he’s still there, beneath the surface, waiting for the next tourist who thinks the pool is just for swimming. And every night, I hear the soft, rhythmic strokes of his arms cutting through the water, even when the pool is empty, and the shuttered pools have been drained. He’s patient. He can wait.