Blocked | Downpipe

The image on her screen made her sit back on her heels. It wasn't leaves. It wasn’t a tennis ball. Wedged in the bend of the pipe, glistening with slime, was a small, leather-bound notebook.

She looked out the window at the downpipe. It was no longer silent. It was humming a low, gurgling song. And she understood, with a cold, certain horror, that she hadn't unblocked the pipe. She had opened a door. downpipe blocked

“Right,” she muttered, channeling her aunt’s can-do spirit. “Easy.” The image on her screen made her sit back on her heels

The real trouble began when she decided to clear the blockage from the bottom. She crouched by the splash block, unscrewed the first joint of the pipe, and peered into the darkness. A single, fat woodlouse scuttled out. She pushed her phone camera into the gap and took a picture. Wedged in the bend of the pipe, glistening

Her first thought was vandalism . Her second was evidence . Her third, as she wrestled the pipe apart with a wrench, was a rising tide of irrational dread.

The notebook came free with a wet pop. It was about the size of a passport, the brown leather warped and puckered. The pages were pulpy, the ink a faded, bleeding blue. She carried it inside and laid it on the kitchen table, next to a mug of cooling tea. The first page was blank. The second, too. On the third, written in a tight, frantic cursive, were the words: The water knows where you sleep.

Her smile vanished. She read on. The journal wasn’t a diary. It was a logbook of obsession. A previous owner of the house, a man named Tobias Crane, had become convinced that the water in the drains was not just water. He called it “the grey.” It was a sentient, malevolent seepage, a slow intelligence that moved through the pipes of the town, pooling under floorboards and weeping from faucets. He wrote of hearing whispers in the toilet cistern, of finding fish bones in the shower drain, of a low, rhythmic knocking that travelled through the waste pipes, like a heart beating in the walls.