Day 484

When we moved into our last house we had so much work to do.
It was a fixer-upper, real cheap which probably should have tipped us off that something was off.
We already knew that the walls needed plastering, the floor needed repairs in some places etc.
The garden was a whole other mess that we put off for almost a year.

The last several owners came and went in quick succession according to the landlady.
She put it down to drugs, drink and some daft local legend that was taken too seriously.
But mostly the drugs, she claimed that her tenants would claim the swimming pool was screaming.
Something about it being full of corpses.

As far as she was aware there wasn't a pool, the garden was incredibly overgrown though.
She'd owned the building for forty odd years and never found a pool there.
After our year of deliberately ignoring the garden we decided to take it head on.
We began, as one should, with a lawnmower and strimmer to remove all the weeds and grass.

Starting with plain old dirt seemed like the best idea for it but at first all we found was concrete.
Huge slabs of it with smaller coloured pieces moving towards the garden's centre.
They were shades of green and blue, too pretty to remove so our plans changes.
We now delicately uncovered as much of the new found mosaic as possible.

The further in we went the smaller the pieces got and the damper the earth became.
It took on a muggy scent too, like rotting autumn leaves and garbage.
As we came to the apparent end of the mosaic tiles the dirt turned to mud and pond weed.
We debated between calling the landlady and saying we might have found a pool and digging down.

In the end we chose to dig down to get proper proof that the pool was there.
If there were indeed bodies there then getting to them as soon as possible seemed like the best idea.
That night though, after we'd made our decision and headed off to bed, we heard them.
Faint voices coming from the garden, begging for help and fading into gurgles and splashes.

We hardly slept, too concerned about the back door being unlocked and something wandering in.
Morning couldn't come soon enough so as soon as the voices had faded we headed down.
The concrete slabs we'd unearthed and cleaned were covered in wet footprints.
Footprints that led right up to the house, up the wall and around our bedroom window.