Silent Children

by Ramsey Campbell

  What had Ian been up to now? Nothing, Leslie suspected, that she wanted Jack Lamb to hear as his introduction to her household. She unlocked the front door and gave it a push. "Go right in," she said, and faced Mrs. Nolan, only to find her staring into the house. Before Leslie could turn she heard a little girl's cry along the hall.

  She felt as though her keeping the secret of the house had caused it to manifest itself. As she swung round she had to grab the doorframe for fear of losing her balance. At first she couldn't see the child whose cry she'd heard, because Jack had stepped over the threshold and was blocking her view. "Hey, guys, what's been happening here?" he said.

  The response was a rush of small feet. As if his appearance had proved too much for her, a little girl in a white dress and wearing a solitary sandal bolted out of the kitchen. He held up his hands to show they were harmless and dodged aside, and she shoved past Leslie onto the path. When her unsandalled foot caught on an edge of the jagged paving she fled one-legged, each hop jarring a whimper out of her. "Come here, Crys," Mrs. Nolan said in a voice too loud to be addressed solely to her, and flung Leslie's gate open so hard it rebounded from the wall. "Come here, love. What have they been doing to you? What's he been doing?"

  It was clear from the look she aimed at Leslie that she wasn't referring to her own son. The mute accusation only aggravated the rage Leslie turned on Ian. "Just what have you been up to?"

  He hadn't quite managed to produce the expression of bored innocence his friends had achieved. "Showing her where it happened. She wanted to come."

  "Sweetbreads to that, Ian, gonads. I can see how much she wanted to be here, so you explain—"

  Mrs. Nolan was louder. "What did he do to you, Crys?"

  "Excuse me, Mrs. Nolan, but I see four boys in there. I don't think there's any reason to assume it was all Ian's doing. If you'd like to come inside we can sort this out, I hope."

  Crystal flinched against her mother and clung to her. "Not in there," she pleaded.

  Leslie saw Jack not knowing what to do except stay in the hall and look neutral. The prospect of his tenancy was receding fast, and she felt angrier than ever, not least with herself for regretting that so much in the midst of everything else. "We'll go in the front room," she made herself suggest.

  "We'll be going nowhere in there, Crys. One little girl may have come to harm, but you won't be another. Get out of it, Shaun, and bring the other two while you're at it. I don't want you near this house again."

  Ian's friends obeyed readily enough by their standards, Shaun carrying a sandal like a trophy. They were passing the stairs when Jack stretched out a hand. "Listen, maybe you should stick around till this is sorted out."

  "It's all right, Mr. Lamb, let them go. I'll get the truth out of my son."

  "I wouldn't like to think what you'd get out of him or anybody who wants to live in that place."

  Though Mrs. Nolan meant that for Ian and his mother, it was Jack who responded, levelling his fingers at himself. "Could be I'm one."

  "Might do some good to have a man about the house," Mrs. Nolan said to nobody in particular, and to Jack "Have you got any idea what kind of place this is?"

  "I believe I've figured that out, yes."

  "God forgive you, then, if you have. You're as bad as her, and look how it's affecting her boy. Come away, Crys, and you, Shaun, and the two of you as well. You can be a bit less friendly with him in the future, Shaun. We don't want you ending up like him."

  Leslie's anger nearly forced her mouth open, but a row in the street would only leave her feeling worse. She watched Mrs. Nolan herd her children along Jericho Close, the other boys trailing behind. When she saw Mrs. Lancing hurry down her garden to accost Shaun's mother, Leslie closed the front door with a gentleness that felt like a slow-motion slam.

  At least she wasn't angry with Jack. "I don't mean to sound rude," she said to him, "but what do you think you've figured out?"

  "Did I read about your house?"

  "I don't know what you may have read. I don't know you that well."

  "This is where a little girl..."

  "Was murdered by a man called Hector Woollie while he was doing building work, and he buried her under the kitchen."

  She'd wanted to get it said, but her brevity sounded callous to her, as though the secret of the house was becoming simply a part of her life. She thought she'd alienated him until he gave her a careful smile. "That's what I thought," he said.

  "I should have told you when you asked about the room."

  "I can see how you might have decided that wasn't such a good idea."

  "Sorry," she said with a gesture that was on the way to reaching for the latch. "So..."

  "I wasn't planning to go anywhere unless you want me to leave. I'm not like the lady who just left, I hope."

  "I'm sure you aren't," Leslie said, withholding her delight—there was still Ian to be dealt with and taken into account too. "I'd better introduce my son. Ian, I said we're going in the front room."

  "That's okay." As though to reassure her that he was harbouring no reservations about the house or anybody in it, Jack strode into the kitchen and proffered his hand. "Ian, Jack Lamb."

  Ian stared at the hand for only a moment before shaking it. "Hi."

  "You can hear where I'm from, and I've written a bunch of horror books, so now you know all about me."

  "Are you after the room, then?"

  "If you'll both have me."

  Ian gave a shrug that risked betraying some enthusiasm. "Fair enough."

  "Can I take that as a vote for me?"

  A grin succeeded in escaping onto almost half of Ian's mouth. "Expect so."

  "Good deal. I've a feeling we'll have lots to talk about once I've settled in."

  Leslie couldn't be sure if he was gently mocking Ian. "I'll show you the room so you can decide," she said, "and then I'll want a few words with you, Ian."

  "Say, I hope you won't be embarrassed to have me round the place," Jack said to Ian. When the answer was even less than a shrug he turned to Leslie. "May I?"

  Though he'd swung an open hand toward Ian, she had no idea what he was asking. "Why not," she nonetheless said.

  "Okay, so listen, Ian. Let's not pretend I didn't see the situation when I came in. What was all that about exactly? What were you trying to do?"

  "Just playing with her." Ian saw that wouldn't suffice, and made to shrug, but Jack raised his eyebrows. "Teasing her," Ian admitted. "Scaring her a bit."

  "Is that your kind of fun?" Having waited until Ian shrugged, Jack said "Are we going to be honest with each other?"

  "Maybe."

  "Whose idea was it?"

  "All of ours. Shaun said she wanted to come."

  "It's your house though, isn't it? If you hadn't brought her nothing could have happened. Or did you need to see someone being scared like you sometimes are?"

  "I'm not scared," Ian said fiercely.

  "Well, good. No reason why you should be of anything here, is there? And I'm sure your mother isn't either or she wouldn't be living here." Jack looked at her for agreement, then gave her a wry smile instead. "Excuse me. I haven't been in the house more than a few minutes and already I'm taking over the show."

  "You've done nothing I'd call wrong so far."

  "Then I'll just finish. Ian, would you say I saw you at your worst when I came in? Is that right, mom?"

  "He can be pretty decent when he wants to be, can't you, Ian?"

  "I know it. How's this for a deal, Ian? Don't let me see anything bad about you again and you never will about me."

  "Okay," Ian mumbled, if with a shrug.

  "I can tell your mom wants to be proud of you, so let's give her plenty to believe in," Jack said, pretending not to have seen the boy blush. "Maybe I should see the room now, though there'd have to be a huge trick being played for me not to like it."

  Leslie conducted him up past the framed record covers and opened the bedroom door. Sunlight was waiting in the ro
om to demonstrate how white the quilt and the wardrobe and the rest of the furniture were. The subtle pattern of the discreetly green wallpaper looked overexposed or just starting to develop. "Told you," Jack said, kicking off his shoes, and lay back on the quilt, unselfconscious as a child in a holiday room. They hadn't discussed terms yet, Leslie thought, but she knew they would reach an agreement, and so she could acknowledge to herself how glad she was. Little as she liked to agree with anything Mrs. Nolan had said, he seemed capable of having such an effect on Ian that she might indeed be able to use this man about the house.

  THIRTEEN

  "Who's got my teeth?"

  "What's Tom lost now?"

  "Says his feet have gone."

  "His what have?"

  "Feet, I said. Has the wine messed up your ears as well as your eyes now? His feet."

  "Shut up, can't you, and let me sleep."

  "His feet have what?"

  "How do I know? Gone like your ears and your eyes and the rest of the lump on top of your neck. Watch out the old women don't put it in the soup with the rats and all the stuff they get out of bins."

  "What's gone now? It's full of thieves, this place is. They'd steal the lice off your head if you hadn't been sprayed. Smuggled a few of those in past the security last night all the same, I did. You've got to have some company. If you're quiet enough you can hear the tiny blighters talk."

  "Isn't anybody listening? It's my teeth is gone, can't you hear? I'm naked without them."

  "The lot of you shut up. Shut up, for Christ's sake."

  "He isn't here. He stays upstairs, him. Got more sense than to come down here and smell us lot. He'd fall off his cross with the pong of some of us."

  "What's someone saying about teeth?"

  "It's old Tom. Couldn't be anybody else. Says they've run off like his pockets were supposed to have last week."

  "Don't you go saying it's like my pockets. I just couldn't find them, that's all. Someone woke me in the middle of the night and got me all confused, and I'd still value knowing who. Teeth aren't pockets. They was under this pillow and now there's nothing, look. All of you look."

  "We're looking. Might find some of your brain as well if you're lucky. It rolls out of your ear in the night, you know, and then one of the old women has to stuff it back in so you can wake up. I saw her doing it. She's your favourite, the one with the hairy blob under her chin who always gives you extra rats' tails in your soup."

  "Don't you try confusing me. Bill Buncle. I'm not confused. I know someone nicked my teeth, and I'm having them back."

  "There they go, under Carl's bed. Chatter chatter chatter."

  "What's under my bed? God, it's a beetle, a bloody great beetle."

  "It's your boot, you daft drunk sod."

  By now the wakeful voices had strayed out of the middle of the dormitory beneath the cathedral and ended up beside the wall. "Shut up and let me sleep," he snarled at the owner of the boot, but it was no use. When at last exhaustion had proved stronger than the aching of his raw gums and the throbbing of his blistered feet and the relentlessness of the caged tube of light above him, a dim glow that clung like a coating of dust to the ranks of restless sleepers huddled under blankets, he'd seemed to sleep for hardly a minute before being wakened by a shrill wailing, a cry that had threatened to become so much worse he'd thought it must be Biff. Even when he'd managed to remember that there were no children in the place, the impression had persisted as the dull glow beyond his eyelids held his eyes. The world outside was full of children, and how could he avoid them all? The notion of their helpless suffering made him want to pull the rough blanket of the narrow trestle bed over his face, but he knew the women who ran the refuge wouldn't let anybody linger in bed, and he mustn't draw attention to himself: he had to pass for just another of the sweepings of the streets. He wasn't like them, and that was why he could pretend to be. Pretending to the extent of sharing the communal toilets and showers with them didn't appeal to him, however. He eased his stiff legs off the bed and pulled it away from the wall to retrieve the rucksack it had been protecting, and picked his way through the maze of grumbling dozers to the stony corridor.

  The showers faced the toilet cubicles and the urinals with their pouting lower lips across a double line of sinks along the centre of the white-tiled room. The light on the tiles was as sharp as the smell of disinfectant in the air. Apparently none of the cubicles had ever benefited from a bolt on the door, and so he jammed his rucksack against the hinged inside of the door of the cubicle farthest from the corridor before lowering his clothes and trusting his buttocks to the scrawny plastic seat, which tried to sidle from beneath them. As in all the refuges he'd used, the paper on the roll was clinically harsh, the kind he'd dreaded every morning as a child but which Adele wouldn't have in the house or the care home. Adele had been all softness—her plump body, her yielding breasts, her hugs, her large dark eyes constantly on the lookout for a way to help someone. Never mind had been: still was, and now—

  Footsteps were approaching the tiled room. He pressed his buttocks together and shut down his thoughts in case they somehow drew attention to him. The light quick footsteps halted at a urinal, where he would have expected the early riser to greet the day with a resounding hawk and a copious spit. Instead he heard an eventual trickle that sounded too thin for a grown man's, at the end of which the footsteps veered toward the middle of the room, and somebody began to whisper in a small high voice.

  It sounded like a child, perhaps more than one. Had someone who worked in the refuge let their children use the toilet? Children would surely make more noise than that unless they knew he was in the cubicle—of course, they could see the rucksack under the door—and were discussing him. Except that the more he strained his ears, so hard his face ached almost as fiercely as his gums, the more he thought there was only one voice, one child whispering to itself. Why was it making sure he couldn't distinguish its words? Suppose the child's life was so dreadful that it couldn't be articulated even in a whisper? He didn't think so—he was beginning to suspect a trick. He craned forward and seized his rucksack, and then he did the unexpected: he snatched the rucksack away and threw the door open and lurched out of the cubicle as if he'd been tugged by his tube of limp flesh that even Adele had never seen, not even while they were labouring at making their son in their dark bed. The shackles of his trousers had sent him stumbling away from the cubicle before he grasped that no child was to be seen in the tiled room.

  Yet it was still whispering, and now he could hear its message. "Biff," it was repeating, "Biff." Was Biff able to whisper at last to make up for all the screams he had uttered in life? Was he trying to convey that he'd found peace? "Biff," Hector called, tugging his trousers high enough to let him shuffle to the centre of the room. In a moment he saw the mouth that was whispering to him—the stiff greenish circular mouth of a plughole into which water was trickling.

  Had whoever was responsible crept out of the room? He couldn't recall having heard them leave. Perhaps the whisper had been a trick they'd tried to play on him so that he would betray himself—but of course that made no sense, and he mustn't start thinking such things just because he wasn't fully awake. He was supposed to act confused, not be it. He twisted the tap, bruising his fingers, until the whisper gurgled into silence. He was so intent on hushing it wasn't until he looked up that he noticed two of the vagrants he was trying to resemble staring at him from the corridor, each with a hand on the other's arm.

  They must think him as mad as one of Adele's residents. The idea clenched on his mind, robbing him of the ability to move—and then he remembered that he was meant to be an outcast people would prefer not to have near them. He took hold of his waste tube and wagged it at the men, calling "It's good morning from me and good morning from him." When they looked suitably disgusted and convinced of his daftness he retreated into the cubicle and sat on the unstable seat, his heels pressed against the door through the rucksack. Once the showers began
to hiss and splash he managed to finish his own activity without emitting any sound that would remind anyone he was there. At the least stained of the sinks he confined himself to washing his hands and face while he gripped the rucksack between his ankles. He dried himself on the plain rough towel he'd been issued, and dabbed at the sodden cuffs of the overcoat he'd worn even in bed, and spat a little blood into the sink before heading for the breakfast hall.

  He could think of so little to say to any of the loudmouths and ranters and babblers who wandered in after him that he was glad when it was time for prayers and hymns. Behind the counter at the end of the wide cardboard-coloured room full of trestle tables, women put aside their ladles and spatulas to hold up their prayerful hands while a blurred smell of porridge and bacon descended upon the gathering like the promise of a reward for their devotion. He wasn't about to pray or sing hymns—no matter how desperately he'd prayed, it had done Biff no good. Instead he murmured "Now I lay you down to sleep ..." in the midst of the prayers and sang it for a hymn, and didn't care if the priest in a polo-necked shirt who was leading the chorus noticed. At last it was time to shuffle to the counter as if his trousers were still around his ankles. The woman with the spatula gazed at him out of her pale toby jug of a face topped by a froth of white curls that spilled down the back, and eventually declared "New face."

  How could she know he'd made himself one? His picture shouldn't have been in the paper for weeks. He felt as though it had fitted itself over his altered features—that she was watching it stiffen them into itself. His mouth had begun to grow unworkable before he understood her. "Came here yesterday," he said.

  "Let's have a name, then."

  "Bert. Bert Walker."

  "You won't be wanting to hang around me."

  Her gaze hadn't shifted—he wasn't sure she'd even blinked. The queue behind him was trying to distract him with several impatient voices. "Why not?" he demanded.