The Collected Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell Part 11

"Frankie's clothes!" she cried, trying to claw at his face. "What have you done with them?"

"I told you I'd find your trunk, my girl," he laughed, beating her off. "I thought I'd do something for the bonfire, like dressing up the guy."

She sat down at the table and sobbed. Everyone was watching aghast, embarra.s.sed. Our eyes were readjusting; we could see each other's red-hot faces. Suddenly, terrified, I looked towards Joe. He was kneeling by the bonfire, thrusting matches deep. My eyes searched the shadows. Near the hedge stood a Guinness bottle which should have held a rocket. Desperately, I searched beyond. A figure was creeping along the hedge towards Joe. As I discovered it, it leapt.

Joe twisted round, still kneeling, as it reached him. The fire caught; fear flared from Joe's face. His mouth gaped; so did mine as I struggled to call the others, still watching the kitchen. The figure wore trousers and a blazer, but its hands-- My tongue trembled in my mouth. I caught at one boy's arm, but he pulled away. Joe's head went back; he overbalanced, clawing at the earth. The rocket plunged into his mouth; the figure's other hand fell on the bonfire. Flames blazed through its arms, down to the rocket's fuse. The brick dug into my face; I'd clapped my hands over my ears and pressed my head against the wall. The girl ran screaming into the house. I couldn't leave the wall until I understood. Which is why each pebble is embedded in my forehead: I never left that wall. Perhaps subconsciously Joe had meant to spill the paraffin; who knows? But why had his father given it to him? Perhaps Joe had wanted it to happen, but what justice demanded that revenge? I reject it, still searching for the truth in each face before my desk while I work to release them from backgrounds like my own and Joe Turner's. The office tomorrow, thank G.o.d.

When the strongest of us went unwillingly towards what lay by the bonfire, away from the screams and shouting in the kitchen and the smoking Guinness bottles, we found a papier-mache hand.

The End Of A Summer's Day (1973).

"Don't sit there, missus," the guide shouted, "you'll get your knickers wet!"

Maria leapt from the stone at the entrance to the cave. She felt degraded; she saw the others laugh at her and follow the guide-the boisterous couple whose laughter she'd heard the length of the bus, the weak pale spinster led by the bearded woman who'd scoffed at the faltering Chinese in front, the others anonymous as the murmur bouncing from the bus roof like bees. She wouldn't follow; she'd preserve her dignity, hold herself apart from them. Then Tony gripped her hand, strengthening her. She glanced back once at the sunlight on the vast hillside tufted with trees, the birds cast down like leaves by the wind above the hamburger stall, and let him lead her.

Into blindness. The guide's torch was cut off around a corner. Below the railed walk they could sense the river rus.h.i.+ng from the sunlight. Tony pulled her blouse aside and kissed her shoulder. Maria Thornton, she whispered as an invocation, Maria Thornton. Good-bye, Maria West, good-bye forever. The river thrust into blind tunnels.

They hurried towards the echoing laughter. In a dark niche between two ridged stalact.i.tes they saw a couple: the girl's head was back, gulping as at water, their heads rotated on the axis of their mouths like planets in the darkness. For a moment Maria was chilled; it took her back to the coach- the pane through which she'd sometimes stared had been bleared by haircream from some past kiss. She touched what for a long time she couldn't bring herself to name: they'd finally decided on Tony's "manhood." On the bus she'd caressed him for rea.s.surance, as the bearded woman's taunts and the Chinese gropings grew in her ears; n.o.body had noticed. "Tony Thornton," she intoned as a charm.

A light fanned out from the tunnel ahead; the tallow stalact.i.tes gleamed. "Come on, missus," the guide called, "slap him down!"

The party had gathered in a vault; someone lit a cigarette and threw the match into the river, where it hissed and died among hamburger-papers. "I am come here to holiday," the Chinese told anyone who'd listen.

"Isn't it marvellous?" the bearded woman chortled, ignoring the spinster pulling at her hand. "Listen, c.h.i.n.ky, you've come here on holiday, right? On holiday. You'd think English wasn't good enough for him," she shouted.

"Oh, Tony, I hate this," Maria whispered, hanging back.

"No need to, darling. She's compensating for fear of ridicule and he's temporarily rootless. He'll be back home soon," he said, squeezing her hand, strong as stone but not hard or cold.

"Come on, you lot," the guide urged them on, holding his torch high. "I don't want to lose you all. I brought up last week's party only yesterday."

"Oh, G.o.d! Oh, hoo hoo hoo!" shrieked the boisterous couple, spilling mirth. "Hey, mate, don't leave me alone with him!" screamed the wife.

The party was drawn forward by a s.h.i.+fting ring of light, torn by stalact.i.tes like tusks. Behind her Maria heard the couple from the niche whisper and embrace. She kissed Tony hungrily. One night they'd eaten in a dingy cafe: dog-eared tablecloths, congealed ketchup, waitresses wiping plates on serviettes. At another table she'd watched a couple eat, legs touching. "She's probably his mistress," Tony had said in her ear; gently he showed her such things, which previously she'd wanted to ignore. "Do you want me to be your mistress, Tony?" she'd said, half-laughing, half-yearning, instantly ashamed-but his face had opened. "No, Maria, I want you to be my wife."

Deep in shade a blind face with drooping lips of tallow mouthed. Peering upwards, Maria saw them everywhere: the cave walls were like those childhood puzzle-pictures which once had frightened her, forests from whose trees faces formed like dryads. She clung to Tony's arm. When they were engaged she'd agreed to holiday with him; they'd settled for coach-trips, memories to which they had returned for their honeymoon. One day, nine months ago, they'd left the coach and found a tower above the sea; they'd run through the hot sand and climbed. At the top they'd gazed out on the sea on which gulls floated like leaves, and Tony had said "I like the perfume." "It's lavender-water," she'd replied, and suddenly burst into tears. "Oh, Tony, lavender-water, like a spinster! I can't cook, I take ages to get ready, I'll be no good in bed-I'm meant to be a spinster!" But he'd raised her face and met her eyes; above them pigeons were shaken out from the tower like handkerchiefs. "Let me prove you're not a spinster," he said.

The guide carried his torch across a subterranean bridge; beneath in the black water, he strode like an inverted Christ. The faces of the party peered from the river and were swept glittering away. "Now, all of you just listen for a moment," the guide said, on the other side. "I don't advise anyone to come down here without me. If it rains this river rises as far as that roof." He pointed. But now, when he should be grave, his voice still grinned. "I don't like him," Maria whispered. "You couldn't rely on him if anything happened. I'm glad you're here, Tony." His hand closed on hers. "It can't last forever," he told her. She knew he was thinking of the hotel, and laid her head against his shoulder.

"So long as the roof doesn't cave in!" yelled the boisterous man.

"Cave in!" the guide shouted, resonating from the walls; the faces above gave no sign that they'd heard. "Ha, ha, very good! Must remember that one." He poured his torch-beam into a low tunnel and ushered them onward. Behind her on the bridge Maria heard the couple from the niche. She lifted her head from Tony's shoulder. Thinking of the hotel-the first pain had faded, but in the darkness of their bedroom Tony seemed to leave her; the weight on her body, the thrust inside her, the hands exploring blindly, were no longer Tony. Yet she wasn't ready to leave the light on. Even afterwards, as they lay quiet, bodies touching trustingly, she never felt that peace which releases the tongue, enabling her to tell him what she felt. Often she dreamed of the tower above the sea; one day they'd return there and she'd be wholly his at last.

The vault was vast. The walls curved up like ribs, fanged with dislocated teeth about to salivate and close. Behind her, emerging from the tunnel, the other couple gasped. Stalact.i.tes thrust from the roof like inverted Oriental turrets or hung like giant candles ready to drip. The walls held back from the torch-beam; Maria sensed the faces. In the depths dripped laughter. The party cl.u.s.tered like moths around the exploring torch. "Come on, lovebirds, come closer," the guide echoed. "I've brought thirty of you down and I don't want to have to fiddle my inventory." Maria thrust her fingers between Tony's and moved forward, staying at the edge of light.

"Now before we go on I want to warn you all," the guide said sinisterly. "Was anybody here in the blackout? Not you, missus, I don't believe it! That's your father you're with, isn't it, not your husband!" The boisterous woman spluttered. "Even if you were," the guide continued, "you've never seen complete darkness. There's no such thing on G.o.d's earth. Of course that doesn't apply down here. You see?" He switched off the torch.

Darkness caved in on them. Maria lost Tony's hand and, groping found it. "Oh, G.o.d! Where was Moses!" yelled the boisterous couple. The young girl from the niche giggled. Somewhere, it seemed across a universe, a cigarette glowed. Whispers settled through the blackness. Maria's hand clenched on Tony's; she was back in the bedroom, blind, yearning for the tower above the sea.

"I hope we haven't lost anyone," the guide's face said, lit from below like a waxwork. "That's it for today. I hope someone knows the way out, that's all." He waved the torch to draw the procession. Laughing silhouettes made for the tunnel. Maria still felt afraid of the figure in the dark; she pulled Tony towards the torch. Suddenly she was ashamed, and turned to kiss him. The man whose hand she was holding was not Tony.

Maria fell back. As the light's edge drew away, the face went out. "Tony!" she cried, and ran towards the tunnel.

"Wait," the man called. "Don't leave me. I can't see."

The guide returned; figures crawled from the tunnel like insects, drawn by the light. "Don't be too long, lovebirds," he complained. "I've got another party in an hour."

"My husband," Maria said unevenly. "I've lost him. Please find him for me."

"Don't tell me he's run out on you!" Behind the guide the party had reformed within the vault; Maria searched the faces shaken by the roving torch-beam, but none of them was Tony's. "There he is, missus!" the guide said, pointing. "Were you going to leave him behind?"

Maria turned joyfully; he was pointing at the man behind her. The man was moving back and forth in shadow, arms outstretched. The torch-beam touched his face, and she saw why. He was blind.

"That's not my husband," Maria said, holding her voice in check.

"Looks like him to me, love. That your wife, mate?" Then he saw the man's eyes. His voice hardened. "Come on," he told Maria, "you'd better look after him."

"Is husband?" the Chinese said. "Is not husband? No."

"What's that, mate?" asked the guide-but the bearded woman shouted "Don't listen to the c.h.i.n.k, he can't even speak our language! You saw them together, didn't you?" she prompted, gripping her companion's arm.

"I can't say I did," the spinster said.

"Of course you did! They were sitting right behind us!"

"Well, maybe I did," the spinster admitted.

"Just fancy," the boisterous woman said, "bringing a blind man on a trip like this! Cruel, I call it."

Maria was surrounded by stone faces, mouthing words which her blood swept from her ears. She turned desperately to the vault, the man stumbling in a circle, the darkness beyond which anything might lie. "Please," she pleaded, "someone must have seen my husband? My Tony?" Faces gaped from the walls and ceiling, lines leading off into the depths. "You were behind us," she cried to the girl from the niche. "Didn't you see?"

"I don't know," the girl mused. "He doesn't look the right build to me."

"You know he isn't!" Maria cried, her hands grasping darkness. "His clothes are wrong! Please help me look for Tony!"

"Don't get involved," the girl's escort hissed. "You can see how she is."

"I think we've all had enough," the guide said. "Are you going to take care of him or not?"

"Just let me have your torch for a minute," Maria sobbed.

"Now I couldn't do that, could I? Suppose you dropped it?"

Maria stretched her hand towards the torch, still torn by hope, and a hand fumbled into hers. It was the blind man. "I don't like all this noise," he said. "Whoever you are, please help me."

"There you are," the guide rebuked, "now you've upset him. Show's over. Everybody out." And he lit up the gaping tunnel.

"Wonder what she'd have done with the torch?" "The blind leading the blind, if you ask me," voices chattered in the pa.s.sage. The guide helped the blind man through the mouth. Maria, left inside the vault, began to walk into the darkness, arms outstretched to Tony, but immediately the dark was rent and the guide had caught her arm. "Now then, none of that," he threatened. "Listen, I brought thirty down and thirty's what I've got. Be a good girl and think about that."

He shoved her out of the tunnel. The blind man was surrounded. "Here she is," said someone. "Now you'll be all right." Maria shuddered. "I'll take him if you don't feel well," the guide said, suddenly solicitous. But they'd led the blind man forward and closed his hand on hers. The guide moved to the head of the party; the tunnel mouth darkened, was swallowed. "Tony!" Maria screamed, hearing only her own echo. "Don't," the blind man pleaded piteously.

She heard the river sweep beneath the bridge, choked with darkness, erasing Tony Thornton. For a moment she could have thrust the blind man into the gulf and run back to the vault. But his hand gripped hers with the ruthlessness of need. Around her faces laughed and melted as the torch pa.s.sed. They'd conspired, she told herself, to make away with Tony and to bring this other forth. She must fall in with them; they could leave her dead in some side tunnel. She looked down into the river and saw the sightless eyes beside her, unaware of her.

The guide's torch failed. Daylight flooded down the hillside just beyond. Anonymous figures chewed and waited at the hamburger-stall. "All right, let's make sure everybody's here," the guide said. "I don't like the look of that sky." He counted; faces turned to her; the guide's gaze pa.s.sed over her and hurried onward. At her back the cave opened inviting, protective. "Where are we?" the blind man asked feebly. "It feels like summer."

Maria thought of the coach-trip ahead; the Chinese and the girl unsure but unwilling to speak, the bearded woman looking back to disapprove of her, the boisterous couple discussing her audibly-and deep in the caves Tony, perhaps unconscious, perhaps crawling over stone, calling out to her in darkness. She thought she heard him cry her name; it might have been a bird on the hill. The guide was waiting; the party shuffled, impatient. Suddenly she pushed the blind man forward; he stumbled out into the summer day. The others muttered protests; the guide called out-but she was running headlong into darkness, the last glint of sunlight broken by her tears like the sea beneath the tower, the river rus.h.i.+ng by beneath. As the light vanished, she heard the first faint patter of the rain.

At First Sight (1973).

'To you,' someone said.

Valerie squirmed. Across the pub table they were swapping jokes, dirtier and funner. At her side Len looked embarra.s.sed. When they'd all met from the office to celebrate Tony's twenty-first they'd paired off outside the pub; seeing Valerie unescorted, Tony had called Len, who'd been trying to merge with the mist of this last night of October. He'd sat with her for two hours, but the third time he'd rammed his finger through a beer-mat her smile of encouragement had drooped. Val was a mirror; if someone stood before her mute then her tongue would fail her too. She looked away from the dulled diamond facets of the tankards multiplied into the froth, beneath the second ceiling of smoke, to the clock above the bar: only five minutes to go, thank G.o.d. Someone knocked a table; gla.s.s shattered. She regarded the mist which breathed on the panes, and from the corner of her eye saw something rising, falling back.

'To you,' he said.

At last her eye caught his; he was seated at a table near the bar, and as she looked he rose and lifted his gla.s.s to her. Dark sleek hair straight as his comb's teeth, dark intense eyes, swarthy face ten years older than her own, black belted raincoat; the bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned leather teenagers at his table stared and laughed. Val saw the black glove which raised the gla.s.s toward her, and stood up. 'To you,' she responded.

Around her smoke puffed out and curled, mixed with laughter; she sensed Len looking up at her, looking away.

The man reached behind him, gripping the table with his other black-gloved hand. 'To us,' he called.

Val hesitated. Behind her Len said: 'Look, can anyone do this?' flipping a beer-mat high with his fingers, catching it in mid-air. 'To us,' she called, and behind the man saw the teenager lean forward, catch his glove and start to pull it free, shouting 'What's this then, mate, Marks and Spencer's?' Her heart throbbed; her skin iced. The man turned, put down his gla.s.s and gripped the boy's wrist. The boy looked up, and his face drained. The black raincoat swallowed him like fog; the barman doused the lights to move the drinkers; three men staggered to the bar for a last order. The lights blazed. The man and the boy were gone. The two remaining teenagers exchanged glances, then made for the door, which was swinging itself into place. Outside the disturbed mist swirled and closed again.

When Val returned to the flat she ripped October from the calendar. Each month was an overlapping pictured strip; from January fragments of cardboard flesh had matured into a girl, and in June fingers had begun to take shape around her. Val knew that in December great male hands would clutch her, carrying her into an unknown New Year. For a week in February she'd meant to tear up the calendar; now, still remembering whose present it had been, she treasured it to show that she'd survived. She leaned on a creaking cane chair and said goodnight to Mick Jagger on the wall, to the tambourine hanging above the tv set.

Jane was asleep. Val drew the curtains softly to admit intimations of light. As she undressed she remembered meeting Jane. A party somewhere, each room with its function, drinking in the kitchen, dancing in the lounge which led to the bedroom; she'd glanced in at the dancing silhouettes and recoiled, terrified because she would never know them. She'd retreated to the kitchen, looking for a gla.s.s, and Jane had found her one, saying: 'You must be like me-a friend of a friend of a friend.' On the pillow Jane's face lay, smoothed out like Val's sheets. Two boys had hurried into the kitchen, gla.s.ses at the ready. 'My G.o.d, she was randy,' one was saying. 'She really was. b.l.o.o.d.y randy.' 'I think I'd better go,' Val had said. 'My parents will be wondering.'

'Mine too,' Jane had replied. 'And I'm at the University, for heaven's sake. If only I could find someone to share a flat-'Val had thought of her parents; they'd retreated behind solidified homilies, she no longer knew them-at least something between them reflected back her determination to preserve her ident.i.ty, whatever that might be. 'I might,' she'd told Jane.

As Val stood at the window for a last taste of the night she looked up at the next house: one floor above, a man's silhouette moved in a bright frame. He might be reflected from the flat upstairs-but no, impossible, that flat was empty; he was beyond a door in the building opposite. Val intended to explore upstairs some day in daylight. She crept into bed, thinking momentarily of Len in the pub: a suburban home, early to bed except when he was reading books on office management and economics. He'd no doubt go far, she thought. And the dark man, where was he?Kicked by the teenagers, he might have crawled home to his flat, a whisky from the cabinet to steady him, standing perhaps on a Persian carpet. But something told her he wasn't the one who'd been hurt. He'd beckoned her to worlds of night, cars sweeping down still lanes to a golden country club, and onward to a city glimpsed from a hill at midnight, swarming with far neon fireflies. She was envious, but she slept.

Next day at the office Len caught her eye and smiled tentatively. She smiled back and looking away, hurried between the desks like territories to the Ladies'. Before the mirror she raised one eyebrow; she'd perfected that control and thought it effective. That night at the flat she repeated the performance, and Jane replied: 'Someone called for you while you were out.'

'What was he like?'

'Italian type.' Jane was turning a record cover in her hands; its overlapping three-dimensional photograph s.h.i.+fted slowly but never quite met the eye. 'I said I didn't know when you'd be back.'

'b.i.t.c.h. Anyway I don't know who he was, I don't care.' One of these days, Val thought, they'd fight over a man.

They were behind with the rent; next night Val worked late. The top deck of the bus home was empty. She sat in front, watching Lower Brichester as it pa.s.sed. A sports car swept by, its driver's hair combed by the wind, and at once had left her behind. On the edge of the pavement trees moist with mist rushed toward her; overhanging branches beat the roof like whips toward which flew the bus. At the approach of the bus the packed leaves crawled like insects; as they came close they were tiered by the reflected interior of the bus. Suddenly Val sat forward. The last reflection was printed on her eyes; a dark face, blurred into a coconut by memory, above a seat behind her.

Sheets of sodium light turned through the bus like pages; the conductor was swept forward, playing castanets of change. Val spilled her coins. She groped beneath the seat, ashamed and yet not; she willed him not to go downstairs. She paid. For a moment she struggled to engage him in conversation, but too late; he retreated. s.h.i.+vering, she dared to turn. She was alone on the top deck; its poles gleamed clinically, a single curl of cigarette-smoke floated in the cold air. She was still afraid. If she followed the conductor downstairs now he'd wonder what was wrong. She stood and ran toward the stairs. As she pa.s.sed the seat where she'd seemed to see the face she stretched out her hand and touched the leather. It was cold as the stones of a well.

A gla.s.s was held toward her, half-full of some dark liquid. Her eye refused to look beyond the hand which held the gla.s.s. Then she saw that it was not a gla.s.s; it was a girl, struggling among the fingers, one bare arm thrust out beneath the thumb. Nor was it a hand which held her.

Val sat up in bed. The mist which had walled up the window seemed to have seeped into the room; the furniture was grey and formless. She peered toward Jane's bed. What she could make out was not rea.s.suring; Jane was lying oddly, twisted, shrunken. Val called to her. She didn't answer. The blankets warmed Val's legs, suggesting that she snuggle and forget. She pulled the light-cord. Jane's bed was empty.

The room withdrew from her; she felt isolated with something unknown, hostile. Beyond the tangle of Jane's bed a hairbrush with translucent insect legs. Where was Jane? How little Val knew of her-out of a sight all day at the University, brittle as crystal at parties, only displaying occasional facets at breakfast or tea, calling 'Goodnight then' before they slept; for all Val knew she might betray her to what Val sensed pursuing. It was the night and silence which mused, Val told herself, not her. She found her slippers and got up to look for Jane; they'd make coffee and talk for a while.

The hall was empty. Val tiptoed downstairs; the bathroom was on the ground floor back. As she reached the hall a pa.s.sing car dragged rectangles of light across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s; the shadow of the hall-stand rose up and capered. She'd wait in the flat instead, she decided. Something gave a raw cry; one of the cats which the old lady in the ground floor flat collected, Val told herself, stumbling upstairs.

As she reached their floor she thought she heard movement above her. Could Jane be in the top room? If so, what was she doing? Unwillingly Val climbed and stood before the door; it was inlaid with panels of darkness. She reached for the doork.n.o.b. As she did so she thought: suppose when she grasped the k.n.o.b it was turned from inside? Beneath the door lay a wedge of blackness, like negative light. It wouldn't show if someone was moving toward her. She recoiled and felt the stairwell at her back. Whirling, she ran downstairs.

Beneath their flat door showed the same wedge of darkness. She stood between the hostile room above and the wails below, afraid of what she might find. Then she plunged into the flat and turned on the light.

In bed Jane blinked. 'Where were you?' Val asked harshly.

'The bathroom,' Jane said, and turned over.

In the morning Val was jealous. Of course Jane hadn't met a man last night, but it was as if she had: she was capable of giving that impression. 'd.a.m.n,'Jane said, entering the kitchen in her housecoat. 'I've lost a stocking.'

Val poured the milk for coffee. She was determined to outdo Jane. 'I was nearly engaged last year, did I ever tell you?' she remarked. 'He was a student. He gave me that calendar.'

'What happened?'

Val wished she hadn't started. 'My parents said we couldn't afford to marry. After a while I saw they were right.'

'So? You could have gone to live with him.'

T couldn't. I wasn't ready.'

'At the University they all sleep together now and then. It doesn't mean anything,'

'I've left a cup in the front room,' Val said, and went to stand before the calendar: two months and there'd be nothing of him left.

When she returned to the kitchen Jane was leafing through a fas.h.i.+on magazine. 'I couldn't wear gloves,' Jane said. 'I'd feel suffocated.'

'n.o.body's asking you to,' Val told her.

Val didn't go to the pub that lunchtime; she didn't feel able to support a conversation. As the others donned their coats Tony called to her and Len, who was sitting at a desk nearby with a book propped by his sandwiches: 'I've got an open invite to a party tonight if you're free.'

'All right,' Val said. 'I'll try and get my flat-mate to come.'

'Thanks anyway,' Len answered. 'I'm behind with my correspondence course.'

The door closed and laughter faded. Val watched Len as she turned the pages of her fas.h.i.+on magazine. Planes of air stood between them, flat as the desks. He glanced up at her. 'Good Lord, you must be hungry,' he said. 'Have a sandwich.'