Leviathan

Connor was the last to return from the War, a fact not lost on the villagers although they discussed it only in his absence. Of the seven local young men who’d volunteered, one returned fit and well to a hero’s welcome, two came back to rest under the silver birches in the graveyard beside the grey stone church, and three would stay forever in those distant fields in which they’d fallen. Connor, the seventh, appeared one misty April morning five months after the Armistice, limping up the steep hill from the Railway Station with his kitbag over his shoulder, in appearance the same man who’d waved goodbye to friends, family, and neighbors almost four years before.

“Where’s he been hiding all these months?” said the grocer to his customers.

“In the army glasshouse,” said the landlord from behind the bar of The Ram’s Head. “I reckon he’s been locked up.”

“In the infirmary,” said the sweating blacksmith to the regular loafers around his smithy. “A man can’t suffer like that without something breaking inside of him.”

Connor gave them no clues, at least not immediately. He returned to his childhood room above the family farm’s stables, helped with the animals, drank at The Ram and bought his tobacco at the grocer’s shop. The limp seemed not to bother him and everybody knew it could have been much worse; they only had to read the five names freshly carved into the stone memorial in the village square. But how different was his return from his leaving, they commented: no flags, no cheering crowd, no brass band.

Perhaps that helped to explain why he never replied to people’s greetings as he walked around the village and the fields, or why he never attended Sunday Mass anymore. Curious eyes noticed how he spent less time at the family farm and more on the hills around the village, hills that separated deep glacial valleys carved millennia before. They noticed how he sat on the crags above the neighboring valley and followed the construction of the new reservoir dam and the empty village whose abandonment it had caused. What was the attraction?

Connor himself couldn’t answer that. Sitting on rough rock slabs, with rain trickling down his neck and wind scouring his face, he stared down at the deserted houses, pub, church, school; at narrow winding streets bereft of people or animals but not the persistent birds whose cries rose up to him. These departed villagers, given no choice by the Water Board, had been dispersed like seeds on the wind—even the dead had been lifted from their resting places. Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, these cities needed their clean water and it seemed that not even centuries of history or land rights could stop that.

Again and again he felt drawn to this spot and as weeks became months he tracked the stone blocks carried up the valley on horse and cart and lorry before they were steam-craned into place onto the dam’s immense curved retaining wall. Each block fitted to the next like sandbags above a forward trench. The wall, buttressed by soil like an artillery piece’s embankment, rose ten yards tall, twenty, thirty. Connor was there when the workers laid the final coping across the top and heard their cheers as the last slab dropped into place. He watched them finish the curving overspill channels either side of the dam, and finally the circular, turreted intake tower near the center of the dam’s curved wall like some neo-Gothic trespasser.

Yet as the dam had grown so had his nightmares, until every night he woke screaming. Worse than earlier dreams of pounding guns, screams, bone and blood; instead there was silence. Pressure. Darkness. A soft cold blackness that filled his throat and lungs and pulled him down. He’d wake with the blankets wrapped around his thrashing body and see his mother standing wide-eyed in the doorway with the oil lamp in her hand.

Concerned, she helped him write his application letter to the Water Board, a letter that mentioned his War record, dispatches from the front, and the two medals that he kept at the bottom of his kitbag along with the pistol he’d taken from an enemy trench. The letter didn’t mention his drinking. Nor the full reasons for his months in hospital. Those medals and his references earned him an interview in Manchester and the offer of a job at the new reservoir, once it was filled, as Night Watchman and Sluice Operator.

With that letter folded into his pocket, Connor walked up to the crags and looked down on the old village. The engineers had diverted side streams and brooks into the natural bowl formed by the surrounding crags. Restrained by the new dam wall, rising water lapped at second-story windows, its gun-metal surface rippled by the wind. The church tower rose above the submerged roofs of smaller houses and its spire and weathervane would be the last sign of the village to disappear. Its old bell, still visible through the belfry, would finally be stilled. Connor imagined the houses sleeping beneath the water, unseen currents pushing at doors and windows, eyeless creatures wandering abandoned rooms, claws scuttling across stone-tiled floors. He shivered and pulled his jacket tight.

The following week, Connor followed the assistant chief engineer, a middle-aged man of florid complexion and blunt expression, across the top of the dam’s wall. “The job will demand constant attention, Connor, without slacking or daydreaming, and dedication beyond the wit of those drunks down there.”

With that, the engineer pointed towards Tin Town, the temporary settlement that the workers had built down below: row upon row of white-walled, red-roofed corrugated iron huts beside the spillway. A few workers had stayed behind to dismantle their homes and Connor could see them at work now with hammer and wrench and crowbar. A terrible reputation had dogged the temporary town but soon there would be nothing but flattened earth and new grass to mark the spot. For a moment Connor wondered how tall stood the grass above the trenches and redoubts and observation posts that had been his temporary homes for four years.

Now the engineer reached the center of the retaining wall and turned right to cross the railed walkway that led to the freestanding intake tower. The walkway rang and shook under their boots; Connor glimpsed down through the metal latticework at the rippling surface far below. His hands tightened on the railing.

Up close, the circular, turreted tower resembled something from a fairy story, all rough sandstone topped by a dome of verdigris copper. But inside could have been the control room of a modern steamship, all brass piping, electrical wiring, cranked valve handwheels and pressure dials the size of dinner plates. Light glinted from polished metal. From the center of the control room floor rose a dull steel pipe four feet across and capped with a domed brass crown held in place by hexagonal nuts as big as Connor’s fist.

“The heart of the reservoir,” said the engineer, laying his hand flat on the crown.

Standing across from him, Connor did the same and felt a trembling vibration rising through the steel pipework, like blood rushing through veins.

“This goes down more than forty yards,” said the engineer like a proud parent, “through water and soil and bedrock, straight as a die and built to last decades and to carry millions of gallons of clean water to the cities every day. And this will be your responsibility.”

As the engineer continued, Connor pictured this pipe driving down through the reservoir and into the earth, could picture the water gushing in through the four inlet valves set at different heights, valves that he would be operating using those hand-cranked control wheels depending on the readings of those shining pressure dials and their fluctuating indicator needles.

“At least one valve must always be open,” the engineer went on, “no matter how low the water level. Can you tell me why that might be?”

Connor thought a moment. “The cities’ taps will run dry.”

“There is that, aye, but there must always be water in the sump of the workings, to equalize the pressure.” The engineer leaned closer to him. “When it’s full the reservoir holds five hundred million gallons. Can you imagine the weight and mass of all that liquid? The pressure at the very bottom of the dam?”

Connor closed his eyes. He could imagine that, just as he could imagine the streets and lanes of the abandoned village deep down below, could almost feel the weight of the water on his own skull right now.

“Even brass and steel might crumple and break,” said the engineer.

“And then?”

“Then those millions of gallons would split the dam and flood down the valleys, taking whatever stood before them.”

Connor knew of the three villages and small town that lay downstream of the dam. And all the livestock in their fields and byres. His responsibility. For a moment he wondered if he could do this.

“You’ll sit here.” The engineer pointed to the high wooden desk that held two ledgers beneath a wall-mounted telephone. The engineer opened the first ledger. “You’ll record anything that happens on your shift in this book—anything, no matter what.”

“And the other book?”

For the first time, the engineer smiled. He patted the second ledger. “This is your Manual of Works, instructions for every dial, valve, machine and pipe. Your work Bible, may the Lord forgive me. And, like the Bible, it must be studied every day, because eventually, when I and the workmen are all gone, you’ll be alone here each night.”

Twelve hours alone in here, thought Connor as he looked around the control room. But there was something attractive in that solitude. And something that had drawn him to the reservoir ever since his return.

On the first Saturday evening in October, Connor stood alone on the dam wall’s parapet and looked down along the valley, past fields and drystone walls and scattered woodland and towards the setting sun. Then he turned and saw the filled reservoir in its cradle of dark crags, the surface black in the fading light. The electric bulbs of the tower glinted off brass and steel.

Connor savored this moment of complete calm and peace broken only by bird cries and the splash of wind-driven water against stone. The pounding roar and crash of artillery seemed so distant now but he knew they were still there beneath the surface of his memory, waiting. He took a deep breath, crossed the walkway and entered the intake tower for his first lone shift. Following the checklist, Connor checked the pressure gauges for each of the four main inlet valves, then the main pressure and a score of smaller indicators; he lifted the telephone and heard the tone from the exchange, then recorded that fact and all of the readings in the ledger.

By now daylight had faded and he sat alone at the table under the bare bulb. He heard the constant background thrum of water, the whine and click of small mechanisms below him, the sub-valves and bypass loops and regulators. The ticking clock. Something inside him began to relax.

Soon his shifts settled into a rhythm so that he knew the control room and its mechanisms as well as he knew his own body; he registered only when something was missing or delayed. Occasionally, when the telephone rang, Connor would crank one of the big sluice-valve control wheels and hear water cascading into the main pipe far below him—not just hear it but feel it through his hands on the wheel, through his feet, as the whole tower trembled. Sometimes he laid both hands on the domed crown of the main pipe, closed his eyes and let the vibration of the churning water resonate through his body.

Then, as oncoming winter gripped the countryside and ice crept across the reservoir, Connor noticed a slight change to the rhythm, new sounds drifting up from below: a scraping, soft at first, like small stones washing against the base of the steel pipe. Then, occasionally, came a deep boom, muffled by the water but channeled up to the domed crown in the center of the control room. “Air pockets,” said the engineer on one of his visits; “trapped air bubbling up through the workings.”

“That must be it,” said Connor.

Next came a distant, muted creaking, the sound of metal complaining under pressure, but Connor put it down to the cold weather, the steel contracting. But he imagined the abandoned village below him: icy water swirling through deserted streets, drawn toward the greedy mouths of the sluice gate valves. Secure in his lighted room, he avoided the windows that faced the water, especially during the deep winter nights when he arrived at the tower in darkness and left before the sun rose. But sometimes, as he walked up to the reservoir, he seemed to hear not just the echoes of his own steps but a sense, a suspicion, of a presence behind him. When he turned there was only the worn path in the darkness.

The feeling returned when he was forced to leave the tower to inspect the incoming streams’ sluice gates that dotted the water’s edge. Bending down to the manual screwgates, he heard pebbles and scree shift behind him. When he spun around he saw nothing, not even an animal. He stood in darkness, with the water splashing around his boots and the wind rushing over the crags, and realized how insignificant he was in this landscape. How vulnerable.

The next night, reluctantly, he took the looted enemy pistol from the bottom of his kitbag and stowed it in his jacket.

“There’s a storm coming,” the voice on the telephone told him on the last day of January. “High winds, hail and snow. Watch the level.”

The supervisor’s warning came as little surprise since Connor had tramped through almost horizontal snow to start his shift; the valley channeled the wind up the slope and the surrounding crags funneled it all onto the reservoir. Before he’d crossed the swaying walkway, Connor had watched the hail and snow hissing onto the water’s black surface less than a yard below him—the reservoir had never been so full. What must the pressure be like at the bottom?

Now he checked sluice valves’ gauges and saw all four of them half-open as normal. The main pipe down to the cities must be roaring with water but all he heard and felt were the dam’s usual background respiration, that distant vibration muted by the increasing wind outside.

Then suddenly, that same booming echo from before, but much louder this time, loud enough to jolt the whole room. Disturbed dust floated down from the ceiling. And again, the sound rose up through his feet and legs and shook the domed crown in the room’s center.

Air pockets, he told himself and forced his hands to unclench. Probably the weather has—

The room shook as if hit by some giant’s fist, sending the hanging electric bulb swaying. Connor braced himself against the domed crown and felt it shuddering. Then he glanced left at the pressure gauges and saw the needle of the first sluice valve, the deepest and lowest in the pipe, start to drop. Less pressure meant less water through the sluice valve. And more water in the reservoir itself.

He looked at the vertical level gauge and saw the floating arrow near the top of its glass tube. Any more water in the reservoir and the excess would overtop the spillway funnels and course down the curving stone channels built either side of the dam wall. The excess water would fill the river and flood a few fields but that should be the worst of it. Still, with the supervisor’s words loud in his ears, he knew he had to fully open the valve.

Grasping the sluice’s hand-crank, a brass wheel more than a foot across, he tried to turn it but it wouldn’t move. Connor set both hands on it, braced his feet against the stone floor and used all his strength; the sluice grated open perhaps half an inch but no more. He stood there, panting, and watched the pressure gauge falling towards zero.

What could it be? Silt in the valve? Debris?

Of course it was the lowest and deepest valve, close to the reservoir’s bed, so there might be some silt, surely not enough to do this. It must be some random debris fouling the mechanism. But so long as at least one of the other three valves remained open the dam was safe.

Then from below came another booming echo. The domed crown rang, reminding him of the church belfry far below. Then came a grating, creaking sound, that complaining squeal of metal under too much strain. Turning to the gauges he saw the indicator in the second sluice valve, this one set ten yards up from the bed, start to fall. Bracing himself, almost afraid to try, he went to turn the crank. Nothing but the screech of reluctant metal. As he watched the second pressure gauge dropping, he pictured the water backing up in the reservoir. When he glanced at the vertical level gauge he saw the floating arrow at the very top of its tube, the maximum. Soon the spillways would do their job. He hoped nobody was out near the river tonight.

When he picked up the telephone he heard nothing—no tone or signal, no matter how hard he pressed the receiver down and up. From across the room he saw the indicator in the third sluice-gate dropping and knew without trying that he could never turn that cranked wheel to open the flow.

Now came a rumbling vibration from either side of the tower, rather than below, as the spillways channeled the excess. He tried to remember how much water they could carry, per minute, before they overflowed too, and he even reached for the Manual before the table shifted violently and threw both ledgers to the floor. On his knees now, he heard the wind howling outside and the hail blasting the windows like shrapnel; he’d never been in a storm so strong that it could shake a solid masonry tower like this.

Then the wind dropped for a few seconds but the tower kept on shaking.

It’s not the wind, he realized. And no storm could wrench these sounds out of a solid structure: the groaning of steel beams, metal grating against metal, stone cracking. The sounds of a battlefield but stretched and drawn out over minutes. As if something tore slowly and deliberately at the fabric of the dam itself. Again he remembered the engineer’s words and pictured the immense pressure deep below; if that last valve closed then the dam could fail and all those millions of gallons of water would sweep down onto—

Drawn to the gauges like a moth, he saw the last indicator start to fall. From below him, but much closer now, came that now-familiar booming, a metallic crash and then a wailing like some injured beast. The fourth and last of the sluice valves lay only a few yards under the tower and the sounds carried clearly and shook the building until fine cracks appeared in the plaster walls. The electric bulb shattered.

He knew what he had to do. Reaching for the battery lantern, then into his jacket pocket for the gun, he stepped out into a vortex of swirling white. Hail and snow blasted his face and he raised his arm to protect his eyes. Leaning into the wind, he dragged himself across the metal walkway that sang under his feet. He looked over the wall’s parapet and saw the twin channels of the spillways churning white as they funneled the overspill. Turning, he looked past the tower and across the reservoir’s dark surface. As his eyes adjusted, he saw water threshed by the wind and drawn into waves and fine spray that plastered his cheeks. A roaring filled his ears.

The electric lantern’s beam of bright white light cut through the swirling snow. He lifted it over the walkway’s railing and pointed it under the tower. In the water directly beneath the tower stood the darker column of the descending main pipe and its protective stone casing. The final sluice valve lay only a handful of yards down there. Whatever had been crawling up the outside of the pipe, crushing the valves as it rose, must be close to that spot, near to—

There: a paler mass sliding through the water just below the surface. Light glistened along its sinuous back as it seemed to wrap itself around the pipework. A deep wailing resonated in Connor’s mind, the submerged cries of a thousand men as they drowned under mud and rain in forgotten trenches and flooded craters. And just for a moment he seemed to register two wide, unblinking pale eyes that stared up at him and refracted the lantern’s light into glittering shards. Eyes the color of his own.

The pistol recoiled in his hand as he fired again and again into the water. Leaning over the railing, his feet slipped on the icy metal walkway and he fell, somersaulting, into the choppy water below. Letting go of the gun and lantern, he thrashed his limbs and tried to keep his head above the surface. The cold water gripped him and pulled him down once, twice, three times. As his strength ebbed, Connor looked up from under the water and saw the patterns of snow and hail falling on the surface above him, concentric circles overlapping, and it was the most beautiful sight. Whatever creature he had seen, whatever he had shot at, had vanished now and he felt no hatred towards it. He remembered a golden sun above fields of green and a blue river. Gradually the light faded, his body relaxed and he slipped away.

— # —

The next morning, they found his body on the northern edge of the reservoir, half-embedded in snow and ice. Despite all the talk, they buried him in the small graveyard beside the grey stone church, next to his comrades, and etched his name into the memorial alongside theirs, for there was a general mood, unvoiced, that the War had somehow been responsible.

When, in the spring, the engineers could finally drain the reservoir and discover why none of the valves opened, they found each of them crushed and bent. ‘Storm damage’, concluded their report, ‘as a result of unsettled debris and unforeseen pressure’.

There was nothing else, all things considered, that they could say.

© 2023 Tom Brennan

About the Author

Tom Brennan is an Irish/British writer who lives with four cats (all related) on the bank of the River Mersey; he likes to watch the ships glide past and enjoys reading and creating a wide variety of fiction, across all genres. His stories have appeared in the UK, Canada, the US and Australia, in print, audio and electronic publications.