Chapter 2 - The Bathtub Incident

Later that evening at nine-thirty, John attempted to call his daughter but received no luck. He watched his usual football highlights on TV. Liverpool, his diehard team ever since his father had deemed it so, had won in today’s game. John had missed the match on the account of the funeral but caught parts of the match most notable, as the football channel reeled shot, after shot, until at last Liverpool had scored a goal, clutching a one-nil victory over Newcastle.

The living room was dark, the way John liked it and only the erratic light from the tv illuminated the room. Over the roaring celebration being played on the tv, which involved five, no, six players to pile on top of their goalscorer, John heard something splat in the bathroom down the hall.

The sound caused him to snap his neck and peer hopelessly down the black hallway that led past the kitchen and into the bathroom. The door to the bathroom was masked behind a veil of shadow, but John was sure it was still closed. The sound that had caught his attention was muffled, same as all sounds trapped behind an inch of wood. Another splat, only this time John recognised it to be more than just a simple splat, instead, it sounded like water dripping on the tile.

His first thought was that someone was in his bathroom, perhaps a burglar or more probably some animal that had crept in through the bathroom window. Did he leave it open? After the initial fear of danger subsided, that same predictable innate fear anyone experiences when they hear a noise in their house, John landed on it being some fault with the plumbing. Maybe a pipe burst and was now leaking water onto his bathroom floor like some garden sprinkler?

He muted the tv and silently waited for the sound the reveal itself to him again. Seconds stretched into what felt like minutes before the sound of sloshing water met John’s ears, the same sound that arises when sitting in a filled tub and you lift your leg from the tub’s waterline—causing the water to slosh and trickle down. Someone, or something, was in his bathtub. John felt his face flush and his heart uptick like it did with the police officer earlier. He stood out of his leather armchair clumsily, feeling his knees protest under the sudden movement.

“Hel—” He went to call out, then reconsidered. Now John could hear the screeching whistle from the shower's curtains rails. He moved reluctantly across the beige quilted carpet and into the hall. The bathroom door came into view as John's eyes grew accustomed to the dark interior of the hall, and in that valley of darkness, he listened. His feet slowly leading him to the thing that occupied his bathroom.

John thought about going to a neighbour’s house and telling them what he heard. But then imagined the shame when they discovered the cause of the noise was nothing more than a tap running, or a toilet blockage. Whatever it was, it was going to make him laugh when he discovered it. John reached for the door handle, then froze.

The perfume fragrance of ‘light blue’ drifted heavenly through the cracks of the door, his wife Lucy’s scent. John paused to let the smell swallow him, remembering all the times he’d buried his face into his wife’s supple neck to drown in that smell.

The sound of falling water suddenly erupted from inside, like a person getting out of the tub. John listened obediently; his eyes closed as hot tears began to trickle down his face. It had all been a dream, his wife had not died nearly a year ago but instead was simply getting out of the bathtub. John would feel the door retreat from him at any moment, to reveal the slender body of his wife hidden beneath a snowy white towel. John heard breathing. Was it his breaths? Or the breaths of the thing on the other side of the door?

His eyes still closed, he held his breath to find out, the room fell silent. John opened his eyes slowly, fearing the thing on the other side of the door would be looking at him, and if it were his wife, and she had indeed been dead for almost a year, John envisioned what that might look like. Her pearly glazed eyes staring out at him. The black flesh forming around her mouth like rotten lipstick and instead of ‘light blue’, he would smell something much more potent than flowers. His eyes shot open. The closed door to the bathroom stared back. He exhaled.

He had been daydreaming, the pale cream varnish that coated his bathroom door shimmered from the distant light projected from the tv. He waited for another sound, any sound, so he could burst into the room and unmask the thing inside once and for all. But no sound came. John listened so hard he could hear the static hum from the muted tv down the hall behind him. He touched the door handle and turned it. It was cold, colder than he could ever remember it being.

Inside the bathroom was the mirror, hanging smartly above a sink, the ceramic toilet, and ultimately the bathtub. John looked around the stagnant room with a heavy scrupulous eye. Everything was where it should have been. The baby blue shower curtain was drawn but John noticed the tub held no water. The bathtub mat that flanked the tub was bone dry despite the sloshing of water John had heard mere moments ago. He had imagined the whole thing; he was still gripped in the claws of loss even after these long months.

He glanced over his shoulder at the long distance he had travelled. Had he dreamt it all and sleepwalked over here? The tv was still muted. ‘No, no sleepwalking John. Just hearing noises that aren’t there.’ At the prospect of what that might mean, panic struck him.

The ordeal reminded John of the time he experienced something similar shortly after his wife’s passing, only that one had been much less…convincing. When John was getting ready to attend his wife’s burial, he brushed his teeth in front of the mirror when he suddenly heard the toilet seat drop behind him. The noise was so loud he exercised a yell. He looked up into the mirror, casting a timid look over his shoulder, and saw the toilet had been lowered. He hadn’t lowered it himself and his wife’s words drifted subconsciously to the forefront of his mind from some years lost past: “John, you left the seat up again!”

John had shaken the phenomenon away almost instantly then, but now, in the confines of his bathroom, he contemplated. He sniffed the air like a police dog hunting for the scent of drugs riding it, desperately trying to get another whiff of Lucy’s perfume. The air was scentless and fragrant-free.

*

The next morning John awoke to the sound of birds singing happily outside his bedroom window. A single fraction of light beamed radiantly across his bed coverings like a hot finger. Sleepily unaware of last night's events, John drunkenly reached over to touch his wife, only for his hand to meet open air. He lay there a moment, allowing his mind to tick over and recall all that happened with the bathroom.

He got up, avoiding his usual morning routine of showering, and headed straight for the kitchen. After some breakfast which comprised of eggs on toast—sunny side up or not all, he finished his coffee and tried to call his Angie again. The phone rang on and on until at last the default operator informed him: “I’m sorry, but the person you are trying to call, is not available. If you would li—” John hung up.

Perhaps he would go visit Angelina after he had visited the graveyard. For reasons unbeknownst to John, he had a sudden urge to be back at that cemetery. Part of him wanted to visit Michael. But the other part of him, the more convincing part, just wanted to make sure his wife was still buried below six feet of dirt. It was silly of course but the phenomenon of last night seemed all too real to discard any possibilities. Lucy…or something close to Lucy, had been in his tub last night, he was sure. He was not a superstitious man and far from being a man of faith. Yesterday, he had flung Jesus into his glove box after all, but if Lucy had come to visit him last night, by God or by some other supernatural way, then he was going to visit her in return. The third possibility on how he heard all those things he did last night, hung before him like a fly, only to be swatted away entirely.

He arrived at the cemetery within the next hour and as he was walking up the gravel path to Michael’s grave; the one grave among a sea of graves without a tombstone. John fetched a cigarette. He didn’t usually smoke this much and after combining yesterday’s smokes with today’s, he was already eight cigarettes lighter with the day still young.

John sucked at the cigarette hungry, tasting its rich tobacco culminate with coffee and eggs already on his breath, and blew. Michael’s grave was little more than a mound of dirt compared to other tombstones.

“Those things give you cancer and kill you, you know?” Shouted a soft crisp voice from afar. John looked up, bewildered to find the girl with the beanie hat and blue tongue jeering at him. John feigned a stifled laugh. The sight of her again so soon sent rivulets of anger to charge up John’s nerves. He walked slowly to meet her at the bench she was sitting on, the same bench as yesterday, taking great care to control his anger from showing. It was just a kid after all.

Unremarkably the girl watched him approach with a sort of excitement. Her lips were pierced tightly into a grin, a grin you’d find patched on a rebellious toddler. In her hand, she clutched a cherry red slushie as opposed to the previous blue one, and John considered her tongue would look close to normal if she were to jab it at him again.

When John got close, he looked deep into her eyes the same way he did his daughter when she had misbehaved, but unlike Angelina, this girl only stared back with that incessant smirk.

“What are you doing here?” He asked.

“Obliviously the same thing you are.” The girl replied sharply before sucking on the straw embedded in her icy beverage. John sniggered. He had never encountered a girl so unapologetic and naively rude before in all his life. He suddenly found himself more interested in this girl than offended.

“May I sit?” John asked gesturing to space beside her. The girl shrugged her shoulders and pulled her lips free from the straw long enough to say:

“S’not my bench.”

John sat feeling the wooden frame strain beneath his weight. The girl smelled like ash and bubble gum. Her long auburn hair remained mostly hidden beneath a crimson beanie this time, and John noticed her fingernails we painted black but chipped, each finger poking from her oversized jacket sleeve.

“So—you here for anyone?” John asked. The girl nodded over at a tombstone a few metres down the line. There was no bench adjacent to that one, so the girl sat here. The tombstone was too far for John to read but he looked at the girl with a new sort of sympathy.

“I saw you yesterday.” He said, “It’s rude to stick out your tongue at people you don’t know.”

“Shouldn’t have been staring at me then.” She replied.

“I wasn’t staring,” John said indignantly. The girl shrugged.

“Do you have a spare fag?” She asked as if the line of discussion was trivial and John was her best friend. John, unable to find words, instead found his hand rescuing his pack of Richmond’s from his trouser pocket. As the girl plucked a cigarette from the packet and lit up using her own plastic lighter, John watched her incredulously.

“How old are you?” he asked as she took a drag.

“Eighteen.” She answered through a cloud of smoke. She offered John the straw to her slush puppy as a sort of repayment for the cigarette, but John refused it with a smirk.

“I thought you said to me those things gave you cancer and kill you?” John asked.

Another shrug.

“Who are you out here for anyway?” She asked dipping the question and gazing at him behind bright baby blue eyes. Eyes that would fully mature into deep turbulent oceans once they peered into the dark world a little more. John coughed at the smoke billowing around his head and gestured to his wife’s grave. The girl furrowed a brow and looked over at Michael’s grave. The same grave she had spotted him visit yesterday.

“Oh, that’s just the son of a good friend of mine.” John clarified.

The girl pushed out her lower lip, seeing the absent tombstone over Michael’s grave

“Two birds, one stone.” She said smiling. John grimaced, confused.

“How’d your wife die?” she quickly added, somewhat ashamed of making a joke.

“Cancer,” John said reflex ably. He had answered that question more times than he had wished. On more occasions than there were seasons in a lifetime.

“She a smoker?” The girl inquired taking another deep drag. John looked at her and noticed the sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of her nose.

“N-no. Never smoked a cigarette in her life.” He answered.

“Harsh.” The girl said taking one last drag from the Richmond.

The two sat there a moment, silently looking around the cemetery together. People moved with the sombre pace of zombies John observed. Each one struck with the sullen expression he saw on his friend Richard while on that podium. The sun was hidden behind a thick cloud that looked pregnant and ready to give birth to rain. The dim sky coated a morbid shade over the entire scene before them.

“What’s your name?” John heard himself ask. He wasn’t sure whether the question sounded as weird as it felt. An old man asking an eighteen-year-old girl her name on a bench was just the red flag he had warned his daughter about growing up.

“Jennifer. You?”

“John.”

Jennifer swapped the slushie from her right hand to her left, then reached out to shake John’s hand. The gesture was weird, formal, yet not formal. A sort of half-joke, like when a boy playfully salutes his friend in a game of army soldiers. John took the smaller hand that was easily swallowed in his and gave it a pump. Jennifer maintained an iron grip despite her small hand and smiled.

“Pleased to meet. John.”

And on that day, John met Jennifer Stone, the first of many interesting individuals that kept him going that little bit longer.