The Collected Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell Part 12

"That's sweet,' Val said.

He remained on the edge of his book. 'I see you're going out with that man you met at Tony's twenty-first,' he muttered.

Val stared at him. 'No, Len, why?'

'Didn't I see him waiting for you outside here? The day after Tony's party?'

'I don't know/ Val said. 'I think he's been following me. I'm frightened, Len.'

'Good G.o.d.' Len came over to her. 'If you want me to I'll phone the police.'

'I don't know who he is. I may be completely wrong.'

'I drive near your place on my way to work, I think. If you like-what I'm trying to say, I could give you a lift.'

Val's eyebrows lifted. 'I'd like you to,' she said.

'Tony's invited us to a party tonight,' Val told Jane at tea.

Jane raked the sc.r.a.ps into a newspaper. 'I'm going out tonight,' she said.

'I wish you'd tell me where you're going sometimes.'

'Look, Val,'Jane remonstrated, 'we share a flat, we don't share each other. Why don't you find yourself a man?'

Furious, Val drank more heavily that night than she'd intended. Eventually, sharper than the other fragments of the party-a girl trying to support herself with a s.h.i.+ning set of fire-irons which clattered wide and spread a silence, a group gazing up at a painted cavalier, throats taut and gulping Pimm's between slow comments-she discovered that one man had been replenis.h.i.+ng her gla.s.s: mauve s.h.i.+rt, veteran-car tie-pin, horn-rimmed gla.s.ses. He was leading her toward the door; several couples were lying on the carpet.

'It's becoming disgusting,' the man said-but his hands were already cupped toward her. 'I know a country club not far from here.'

'Thanks, but it's getting late,' Val said. 'I must be leaving in a minute.'

'Never mind. I'll run you home.'

'It's kind of you to offer.' But Len wouldn't clutch her, she thought suddenly; he'd be gentle, shy enough to woo her-she'd read his expression when he'd driven her home earlier. 'My fiance is calling for me,' she said.

'You might have told me sooner.'

But she hadn't known sooner. As she waited for the last bus she could see above a football ground on the horizon blue interlocked bars of light, harsh as the razor-edged November night. The night, however, only met the alcohol which weaved within her; it didn't purge her. The bus ar-arived; she was amused when its poles slid from her hands. She sat upstairs. On the sharp glittering pavements lights peered through leaves which rippled, sometimes forming into what might have been a face. Val was warm; imagining the flat ahead, she had an idea.

Her warmth decided for her. It would be her mystery, something to withhold from Jane. Tomorrow she'd tell Len; he might admire her for it, or he might be angry, upset that she'd risked herself; that would be pleasant too. When she reached the flat, climbing past a purring shadow on the ground floor, she raced to the top door.

Before it she quietened for a moment, listening. Their flat had been dark; the building held its breath with her. The door was indistinguishable from the gap of darkness within. She caught hold of the cold doork.n.o.b; it seemed to move beneath her fingers. She laughed and opened the door.

It merged with the darkness. Ahead she saw a grey rectangle; between the houses opposite she could see cranes, their distant heads dipping like dinosaur skeletons. The sky flared pink. On the floor something caught the color and faded; next to it she made out a huddled shape. Reaching behind the door, she found the light-switch.

The room leapt like the closing walls of a toy house. The walls were bare; in the corners of the ceiling a few triangles of flowered wallpaper had resisted stripping; the bare boards stretched to the plaster. She entered, and a figure moved towards her. It was herself, projected on the window opposite.

From there her eyes found the boards beneath the window. Dust hung about her feet like ground-mist, but where she looked a rectangle of board was defined. It must have been a trunk; whoever had lived here last had taken it with him. He'd left only a crumpled grey blanket spread on newspapers, and two wine-gla.s.ses. Val felt disappointed; the room had been drained of danger. Then she saw that the gla.s.ses held dregs. She stooped to examine the crimson globule in each, and on the floor between them and the blanket saw the imprint of hand. No, it couldn't be; to lie like that it must have been boneless. Someone had dropped a glove.

For no reason that she could discover, this did for her what the night could not: the alcohol evaporated, and she chilled. She turned to leave. Then, among the folds of the blanket, she noticed something tangled as if suffocated. She didn't want to touch the blanket. But there was no need. From what she could see between the folds she had guessed what it was. It was Jane's lost stocking.

When she'd locked the door of their flat she sat upright on a chair in the front room. She moved the clock away from the window. Glancing about for something, anything, to distract her, she caught sight of the fingers closing around the girl. She leapt up and tore the calendar to shreds. Then she watched for the hands of the clock to crawl. Behind her the upstairs window was reflected, if the light was on. She thought of Len asleep; she thought of Jane's face when she'd said she had been to the bathroom, and what her face had masked. She knew she'd never see Jane again. By dawn she'd have made her choice; but now, while the night surrounded her and the alcohol swam back, she didn't know what she might do if she heard footsteps descending the stairs: barricade the door, or simply sit and wait.

The Sentinels (1973).

They were the last people Douglas expected to see in the village pub, but their appearance could hardly have been better timed.

'Good Lord,' he called, 'Ken! Maureen! Come and help persuade Barb to drive up to Sentinel Hill.'

'Doug,' Barbara said uneasily, looking to the newcomers for help but finding none: they'd hurried to the table through the sawdust, eager as children kicking sand. She searched the pub: farmers' faces propped on elbows like florid gargoyles, puffing clouds of pipe-smoke which buoyed up a last moth circling the oil-lamp on invisible elastic: ten miles from home and not a face to which she could look for aid.

'Barb, don't be anti-social,' Doug reproved. 'This is Ken and Maureen-I met them at the science-fiction convention. You two want to go Up on the hill, don't you?'

'If the young lady's driving I don't see why not,' Ken said, 'but first I must buy you a drink.'

He took their orders and Maureen sat opposite Barbara, setting a transistor radio between them. 'Why don't you want to go?' she asked Barbara. 'You won't be scared with Doug, surely. The hill's got a terrific atmosphere, more so than this pub.'

Barbara thought of Sentinel Hill. They'd driven past at dusk on their way to the pub: the sloughed stone faces mobile with shadow; a few cars, uniformly grey, from which their pa.s.sengers had climbed to count the stones and count again and descend baffled; a child at the center of the circle prancing awkwardly and, as she'd slowed to let Doug watch, turning to her a cardboard demon's face. 'I can't see any sense in going,' she told Maureen. 'It's warm in here, but it'll be icy cold up there this time of year.'

'I'm sure Doug will keep you warm,' Maureen said.

Barbara watched Ken returning from the bar, his arm beneath the tray supple as a waiter's. 'Ken moves beautifully,' she said to Douglas.

'You can judge better than I.' That morning he'd awoken to rhythmic thuds in the next room; he'd strode across her bedroom, past the framed embroidery, the flowers in a cut-gla.s.s vase fragile as the chime of the bell her mother used to denote dinner, and found her leaping, graceful as a fountain, before a propped ballet manual. She hadn't noticed him; he'd tiptoed back to his side of the bed and The Eighth Pan Book of Horror Stories. 'Barb says you move beautifully,' he told Ken.

'I shall find a way to repay the compliment.'

'How did you two meet?' asked Maureen.

'Quite by accident,' Douglas said. 'Someone invited me to what I thought was an all-night party, only it turned out to be a musical evening. Six weeks ago, that was. I suppose the Brichester SF Group was up in arms about that diatribe in the Herald, Ken?'

'These days we ignore the critics. Let's face it, only fans appreciate sf. Mundanes never will. At least, it'll never be appreciated as literature while the critics insist on setting it apart from the mainstream.'

'I'm a fantasy man myself.'

'I wish he'd read something else,' Barbara said, looking away as the moth toppled inside the oil-lamp: a flare, a wisp of smoke. 'Not that science fiction's any better.'

'Don't start that again,' Douglas warned.

'Fantasy's indistinguishable from sf? At the Convention you'd be shot at dawn!' Ken said. T don't mind fantasy, but I do wish people wouldn't call it sf. Still, it explains why you're drawn to the hill, Doug.'

'Not drawn,' Douglas said, glancing sharply at Barbara, 'just interested.'

'It's like Rollright,' Maureen interrupted. 'Do you remember that girl at the Convention talking about the Druid circle at Rollright?' Douglas thought he did: they had found her asleep on a bed in Dave Kyle's room, her hands full of change for one of the' card-playing writers. It had been Douglas' first Convention: the first night he'd staggered sickly from the Liverpool Group's party, and the next day he'd had to sidle out from lectures as the stage began to slip below his vision. On the Sat.u.r.day he'd met Ken and Maureen in the Brichester Group's room, and then had gone early to bed, hearing someone putting his fist through a pane, the thud of a bottle, what sounded like a mob breaking down a bedroom door. It must have been the strangeness of it all. Even in the horror fans he'd never recognized his visions, the thrill of slipping into its niche the last of a set of magazines, the membranous wings against the moon, the face which peered back from the pool, the pale stone steps descending into darkness. He'd thought when he'd met Barbara that he could reflect his images in her. He was still trying.

'If you're a science-fiction reader,' Barbara was saying to Ken, 'you won't be interested in Sentinel Hill.'

'Fan, dear, not reader.' He was lifting the last of his beer to Maureen's lips. 'I don't want to seem hidebound,' he said.

Maureen caught his hand and wiped her mouth. 'Come on, you two, drink up,' she called. 'I want to play my radio.'

Ken pulled her to her feet and led her toward the door. Their shadows drew across the farmers and refreshed them: gargoyles, yes, but protective as a church. 'Don't let's go tonight,' Barbara whispered. 'Let's go home instead.'

'We will, of course, afterwards. Your parents are away all weekend, after all.' Douglas stood; above his head a flake of ash fluttered in the oil-lamp. 'We don't want to seem unfriendly,' he said.

Beyond the houses in the square outside the pub stretched a field, iced by the moon, sharp as the surface of December air which instantly moulded to her. If they invited Ken and Maureen to her home for Christmas Eve next week perhaps the others wouldn't mind their driving back to Exham now -but no doubt Ken and Maureen would be otherwise occupied. She'd tried her best; she didn't want to make a scene. 'Would you really rather not go to the hill?' Douglas asked.

'I don't want to spoil the evening for everyone. I'm the only one who can drive.'

In the back seat Maureen switched on the radio. Singing, the car swung about and rushed headlong from the village, its lights touching small high empty windows, projecting a tilted ploughshare on a barn. Ahead Barbara saw avenues of bleached trees sweep to meet them, immediately engulfed by shadow, thres.h.i.+ng as they pa.s.sed. On the road stones gleamed like toads; one hopped. She wasn't sure how far ahead the hill would rise. 'I don't like the name,' she said.

'What name?' Douglas enquired abstractedly, moving his arm along the back of the seat.

'Oh, Doug. Sentinel Hill.'

'I shouldn't think you would,' Maureen said. 'They're supposed to guard the hill against anyone who doesn't make a sacrifice to them.'

'I don't know what you mean,' Barbara declared; the bloodless trees waved wildly, a sinister greeting. 'I suppose I've been brought up apart from such things. Who guard? A sacrifice to whom?'

'The Sentinels. You remember, Doug, that girl was saying they make pilgrimages to Rollright from Birmingham on Walpurgisnacht. I gather something like that happens here. Have you been to a Convention, Barabara?'

'She hasn't yet but I hope she will next year,' Douglas said.

'I thought next Easter you might come up to Exham,' said Barbara, 'to stay with us.'

The highest twigs pulled free of the moon like strands of cobweb, and the hill swelled up before her. Above the depression into which her car slowed as if summoned, the ring of shapes stood white and waiting. She could no longer play for time. She turned the car so that it was poised for the road; the headlamps spotlighted a gate into a field opposite, one bar comfortingly askew, pale uncombed gra.s.s beyond, barbed wire atop the gate silver as tips of lightning. 'I'll leave the engine running,' she said. 'We won't be long.'

'Think of the petrol,' Douglas expostulated.

'I don't want the engine to catch cold.'

'I shall bring my radio as protection,' decided Maureen, and dragged Ken toward the figures. Over the tinny jangle and the announcer's voice Barbara heard Ken: 'I hope we're not going to stay all night, this seems a bit futile to me.' The radio faded; soon it would be inside the circle. Barbara felt obscurely disturbed; it seemed like an insult, a blasphemy. Nonsense. The Sentinels were relics, no more.

Douglas took her hand and began to climb. He caught her glancing back; but all he could see was the car, thumping like his heart, and a gate. He felt deliciously unnerved. The moon stood above the circle like the beginnings of a face; ominously still against the tethered trees, the Sentinels surveyed the countryside. On one side of the circle, silhouettes of branches rippled like unquiet muscles; opposite, a figure held its stumps before it like a dog beneath the moon, begging or about to pounce. He hoped Barbara felt frightened too. He wanted her to grip his hand until it hurt.

They met the others in the center of the ring. Their coats were shaken by the wind, the girls' headscarves blew out like flats. 'It's senseless to call them the Sentinels,' Barbara said, 'when some of them are facing inward.'

Maureen surveyed the circle, the rough ambiguous hump each back presented. 'I don't know where you get that,' she called above the radio. 'They're all facing outward.'

'But as we came up I thought-Oh, well. Doug must be affecting me.'

'There is a story, though, that you can't count them,' Maureen continued, craning on tiptoe, clutching Ken's shoulder for support. 'Eighteen, I make it.'

'Seventeen, surely,' Ken argued. 'You must have counted twice.'

'I have eighteen too,' Douglas said. 'Barb?'

'Oh, I don't know. You're all pretty close, I'm sure. Yes, yes, eighteen. No, nineteen.'

'We must split up and go round,' Maureen said. 'Me and Ken, you and Barbara. Here's where we start.' She ran and crowned one figure with the radio. At once a voice sang from its erased mouth.

They followed her, bruising the moon-painted turf. 'We'll go anti-clockwise,' Douglas said. 'One. Two.' The radio's song streamed away on the wind. The Sentinels waited to be discovered. From the road they hadn't looked like this to Barbara: each face set back in a cracked cowl, fragments of the cheeks emerging from shadow like petrified sponge; beneath the cowl, the folds and ridges of what once might have been a cloak, from which protruded hands or wrists held high like the parodied paws of an animal. The heads came up to Barbara's shoulder. 'What were they supposed to be?' she asked, instantly regretting.

'Six. Seven. I don't know. Not human, anyway. Look at those pores. As though they'd suck your soul out. Or something might crawl from one of them.' He thought he remembered a story like that. 'Now, Barb, I didn't mean it. I was only joking.' He embraced her.

She closed her eyes. Not here, she thought, but she opened her mouth. Behind her eyelids floated fear; the moon was steady, waiting patiently, old as the Sentinels. They swayed. Something supported her. Two hands clutched her waist. She struggled and looked down. They were stone stumps. She choked; for a timeless second she was wedged, caught. She slipped on the turf and was free.

'I'm sorry I brought you,' Douglas said. Ken and Maureen pa.s.sed them, counting: 'Now then, we're winning!' Maureen laughed.

The next face was blank as the moon, except for the eyes. They must have been deep indeed; in one a hollow spider tattled in a cobweb, like a loose eye. 'Do we count this?' Douglas wondered, pointing.

Inside the circle, behind the figure, a bud of stone grew from the earth. She couldn't see what it was meant to be.

Douglas drew her to stand by the Sentinel while he tried to connect the protrusion with the figure. Unwillingly she glanced at what stood by her shoulder. From this angle she thought she saw the hint of a mouth; it was grinning. The head was about to turn; the eye would come first, the cob-webbed eye rolling in glee. 'Come on, Doug,' she said unevenly. 'The others want to go.'

'Seventeen, eighteen,' Douglas finished, touching the stone on which the radio was balanced. Beneath the moon the radio's light had dimmed.

'Same as me,' Maureen told Ken triumphantly. 'What did you have, Barbara?'

But Barbara was listening for some sound which should have underlaid the radio's. She stared down the hill toward the road. The gate was gone. 'The car!' she cried, and ran.

She climbed out of the driving seat as they pelted down. 'It's dead,' she said: she seemed on the edge of weeping. She gripped Douglas' hand; he thrust his fingers through hers, happy.

'I trust you're suitably frightened,' Ken said to Maureen. 'One hysterical female will do, I should think.'

'I'm not given to melodramatics.' Barbara gripped Douglas' fingers between her own. 'There's nothing more frustrating than a dead car, that's all. Can you fix engines, Ken?'

'Haven't the faintest, I'm sorry to say. We don't feel the need for a car. We only met you tonight because we took the first bus we saw.'

'I hope it won't be too cold in the car.' Barbara pulled at Douglas' hand.

'You're joking! We must spend the night on the hill.'

'Well, my G.o.d,' Ken muttered.

'Poor Ken,' said Maureen. 'I know we could be safe in bed. Never mind, we must take advantage of the atmosphere, at least for a while.'

As they climbed Barbara looked for a ring on Maureen's finger; there was none. She realized Maureen didn't care about appearances, even flaunted them; it seemed cheap, somehow. She'd changed her own ring over for the weekend. If she saw a car approaching she'd run to it for help. With the engine, she meant. It couldn't be long before they'd be back in Exham. Her thoughts returned there; she'd thought her embroidery was sewn upon her mind, but the threads had pulled free; she couldn't blot out the approaching silent figures, nor Maureen's voice: 'What's happened to my radio?'

Although they were close now, the music was no louder. They reached the crest of the hill, and the music vanished with the light from within. For a moment the radio stood mute, an absurd crown. Then something moved; it must have been the wind. The radio toppled to the turf.

'Well, that is annoying. It really is. I'm sure I haven't used up all that battery,' Maureen said.