THE WATER BABY CHAPTER NINE

"You can see me?" I asked, knowing it was a stupid thing to ask.
"Well, of course I can. That's why I asked who you are. You look like my foster sister who died recently."
"Your foster sister?"
"Yes. Sarah, who was the only blood daughter of my foster mother."
"How did she die?"
"It was tragic. She was pushed in a pool."
"I was pushed in a pool?!" I exclaimed.
"What do you mean, you?" She put an emphasis on the 'you'.
"Okay, this may be hard to believe, but I am the spirit of your dead foster sister."
The girl's eyes bulged. "Really?" She asked.
"Yes." Then I went on to tell her all about being in a different universe; and being in Suspended Animation, and dying while I was still suspended.
When I finished, she looked at me with unbelieving eyes.
"Prove it." She said. "Prove that you're the spirit of my foster sister."
"I can't do that. You just need to believe me. What's your name?"
"Sophie."
My heart skipped a beat, and thudded to the ground with a screeching halt. "S-Sophie?"
"Yeah. Apparently, that's why your mother fostered me. Because I'm called Sophie. She was pregnant a while ago, with a girl that she fancied calling Sophie. But she miscarried. And she never got over it, so she decided to foster someone called Sophie, because she had no chance of ever getting pregnant again."
It was taking it a while for everything to sink in. I suppose it was the same for Sophie.
"Sophie," I said. "I need your help."
"What?"
"I need your help. I need to find out what has happened in the last six months, and how I was Suspended, and why. I also need to know how come I'm in a different universe."
Sophie bit her lip, I was strongly reminded of the late Sarah.
"Okay, I'll help you. But how?"
Then, as if answering her question, a little white light came out of nowhere and filtered in the middle of the room. I was suddenly looking at a load of blue stuff. I realized I was looking at a pool; it was transparent, which meant I was looking at an image of a pool.
In the image, I watched myself walking up to the pool. I stood there for a few minutes, looking into the water. A car drove up beside me. I turned to see who was inside; the car door opened, and an arm shot out. Suddenly, I was tumbling backwards into the pool. After I'd disappeared, as sudeen as it arrived, the image disappeared.
On the bit floor where the light was filtering onto, a piece of paper lay. I picked it up, and read it aloud. It said:

"First clue."

I wondered what that meant. I looked at Sophie, who looked just as confused as I felt.
"Maybe it's the first clue, because you've been told how you died. Now You need to find out who killed you."
I blew upwards. "Good idea." I looked at the piece of paper, and turned it over. "Hey, there's something else written here."

"Visit the Water Baby."

"The Water Baby? What the Hell does that mean?"
Sophie shrugged. She turned to sit back down on her bed. "Look, there's another bit of paper here."
She picked it up, and read it aloud:

"Second clue. Go to the attic."

"That means we need to go to the attic," I said.
"Let's go."

When we arrived at the attic, it was empty.
"Well, now what?" I said, to no-one in particular. I turned to Sophie, but she was gone. In her place, was a small man, with a long silvery beard.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"I am the Water Baby."
"What?"
"I know what you're thinking. You expecting me to literally be a baby who lives in water. Well, in my natural form, I am. This is the form I take when I am out of water."
I looked blankly at him.
"Ah. You're wondering what you are doing here. As you went up the stairs leading to the attic, you crossed an anomaly."
"A what?"
"An anomaly. That means you walked through a rip in the air, which allows you to enter parallel universes. In this case, you walked into a Parallel Universe in which you were put in Suspended Animation, and you died when your tube ran out of oxygen. Plus, you walked into another Universe in which you died by being pushed into a pool."
He saw the look on my face.
"Yes. You was Suspended in another Universe. You are in another Universe now, where you died by being pushed into a pool, and not because the Tube you was Suspended in had ran out of oxygen."
"How do you know all this?" I managed to ask.
"I am the Water Baby. I bet you never knew this, but under water there are loads of anomalies hanging around, so, obviously, I'm forever going in and out of diffrent Universes."
"Well, where did Sophie go? She was right behind me, going up the stairs."
"Well, I must warn you, one anomaly leads to thousands of different Universes, Sophie probably went to a diffrent Universe to the one we're in right now."
"How do I get back home?" I asked. "The Universe from which I came?"
"To do that you must go through millions and billions of anomalies."
"Then I'll do it," I answered. "I'll go through different anomalies to go home..."

Find out what happens next in Chapter Ten...