The Sunken Gallery

The algae-slick tiles of the Havenbrook Community Pool echoed with the shrieks of children long after the last kickboard had been stored. I wasn’t a lifeguard, but my sister, Dana, had been one for years, and she’d given us a key to the maintenance gate, a privilege that let me and my eight-year-old nephew, Toby, swim in the serene twilight hours when the chlorine stink settled and the water turned the color of old glass.

That evening, the main pool was a mirror, unbroken but for the drifting motes of dust that caught the sodium lights. Toby was in the shallow end, practicing his underwater somersaults, his giggles muffled by the water. I decided to do a few laps in the deep end, the ‘adult pool’ that was technically closed but still filled, its surface as calm as a held breath. I pushed off from the tiled edge, my body cutting through the lukewarm water, and at the halfway point, just where the bottom sloped away to the darkest blue, I felt a sting on my back, like a rubber band snapping against my skin.

I stopped, treading water, and turned. Nothing. Just the shimmer of the surface and the hollow echo of the changing rooms. But I’d felt it—distinct, unnatural. My ‘sense’—that peculiar itch behind my eyes that told me when something was off with the people I loved—was silent, but this was something else. A wrongness in the water itself. I swam back to Toby, who was now sitting on the edge, his feet dangling.

‘Did you feel that?’ I asked, shaking water from my ears.

Toby shrugged. ‘Feel what?’ He pointed to the deep end. ‘Maybe it was the filter. It does that sometimes.’

But I knew. The filter made a low hum, not a slap. And I had the distinct impression that something had brushed past me, something with impossible fingers. I told myself it was just a cramp, a ghost of muscle memory. But as we packed up our towels, I noticed the water in the deep end rippling, even though no one was in it.

That night, I couldn’t shake the sensation. I dreamed of the pool, not as it was, but as a vast, tiled hall, its walls lined with murals of swimmers frozen in mid-stroke, their eyes black and empty. And in the center, a lone figure, pale, with hair like seaweed, reaching out to me. I woke with a gasp, the phantom weight of a hand on my shoulder.

I dismissed it as a nightmare. But the next evening, when Toby and I returned—compelled by an unspoken need—I saw her. A woman in a floral swimsuit from decades past, sitting on the high dive, her feet just skimming the water. She looked at me, and her eyes were the color of the deep end, a bottomless green. I blinked, and she was gone.

I tried to tell Dana, but she laughed. ‘The old pool has a history, sure. But it’s just concrete and chlorine.’ She mentioned that the pool had been built over an old reservoir, and that the original builders had had to pump out gallons of water to lay the foundation, but that was it.

But I couldn’t let it go. The sense that had never failed me before was now screaming, not about a person, but about a place. I decided to come alone the next night, just as the moon was rising over the diving boards. I stood at the edge of the deep end, my toes curling over the gnawed tiles. And then I dove.

The water was colder than it should have been, and as I swam to the exact spot, I felt the pull—a gentle tug at my ankle, like a child’s hand. I stopped, treading water, and looked down. Through the distorting lens of the chlorinated depths, I saw something that shouldn’t exist. Beneath the pool’s floor, there was a room. A sunken gallery, its walls lined with huge, corroded pipes, and floating in the center, the woman, her hair drifting like underwater foliage. She was mouthing silent words, pointing at a mural that was slowly fading.

I swam up, gasping for air, my heart pounding. I knew I had to get out, but a morbid curiosity held me. I dove again, this time with goggles, and saw the mural clearly: it depicted a group of workers, their faces contorted in terror, huddled around a flood of water that was engulfing them. The woman, I now realized, was one of them—she was the one pointing, warning the others of the deluge that was coming.

I surfaced, my lungs burning, and clawed my way onto the deck. I lay there, trembling, as the night air chilled my skin. I looked back at the pool, and the water was perfectly still again. But I knew. The woman was a victim of a construction accident, her body never recovered, and her spirit had been trapped when the pool was built over the reservoir. She had been trying to warn someone, anyone, for over fifty years.

I never returned to that pool. I couldn’t. And every time I see a still body of water, I wonder if she’s still down there, pointing, waiting for someone to listen. The sunken gallery remains, hidden beneath the chlorinated veneer, and I can only hope that whoever builds the next pool will do their dredging with care, lest they wake something that should have been allowed to remain buried.

But even now, as I write this, I feel a dampness on my back, as if the pool is trying to reach me through space and time. And I wonder if some places are just painted over graves, and if you swim too long, you might start to dissolve into the memory of the dead.

I haven’t told Toby why we can’t go swimming anymore. I just tell him we’ll find a new place, one without a past. But deep down, I know there is no pool on earth that is truly empty. They are all just reservoirs of forgotten stories, and sometimes, they demand to be heard.