Silent Children

by Ramsey Campbell

  He found one on Whitton Avenue. As he looked up the address of the nearest overnight refuge, a couple of pensioners taking their extravagantly long-haired dog for a walk stared at him and murmured and stared over their shoulders as well. Apparently people who looked like him weren't supposed to use phone directories, or perhaps the couple thought he was planning to rob the coin box. He shouldn't have to suffer their contempt or another night in a refuge; he deserved better—he'd earned a little of the peace he had brought to all the children he'd taken responsibility for, the kind of responsibility no one else dared take. The word on all the doors in the photograph was supposed to mean him, and however unfair it was, it made him part of the house. It made him feel as though the man in the picture was trying to take his place.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Janet had just called her in from the back garden when Leslie saw Jack's car in the road. She made herself sip coffee that seemed unusually and unhelpfully hot while she chatted to Janet about how Ian was doing better at school, showing more interest in studying English, not seeing so much of his friends she disapproved of. Of course she was really talking about Jack, and hoping that he didn't regret last night any more than she did.

  They'd slept in their own rooms overnight, and confined themselves to smiles and pleasantries this morning, and been wary of touching each other too much. Before he'd gone out, supposedly to research his new book, she had sensed there was something he wanted to tell her. She sipped Janet's coffee and eventually saw off enough to feel justified in abandoning it. "Will you have another?" Janet immediately said.

  "Thanks, but I'd better start seeing to the things one does on Sundays."

  "I understand. You've another hungry chap to take care of."

  As Leslie let herself out of Janet's house, sunlight on the driver's window of Jack's Nova caught her like a flashbulb, and she heard a shiver pass through a series of trucks on the distant railway; otherwise the suburb might have been holding its breath on her behalf. She unlocked her door, all her keys jangling, and stepped across the threshold. "I'm—"

  It was the sight of Ian that caused her to falter. Despite all her problems with him she had never wished him away, but at that moment she almost did. "Want some coffee?" he said along the hall.

  Before she could wonder aloud if he shouldn't be somewhere else, at least getting some fresh air, Jack came out of his room. His face was so guarded that her own stiffened in response. "Ian?" she called.

  "Want some?"

  "Not right now. I forgot to get a Sunday paper. Could you run down to the shops, no need to run, I shouldn't think?"

  "Leslie?"

  "Just a second, Jack," she said, but his expression wouldn't let her wait that long. "What is it?"

  "Can we talk?"

  "That's what I—if you can just let me—"

  "I should talk to both of you."

  "Should you?" The proposal seemed so unrelated to anything she had tried to prepare herself for that she didn't know how to feel. "Well, if you think..."

  As he left the stairs he stretched out a hand but didn't quite touch her, instead indicating the front room. "Care to join us, Ian?"

  "Anybody having coffee?"

  "Go on since you've made some," Leslie said, apparently the quickest way to move him.

  "In that case I'll take some too," Jack said.

  She could tell he wanted it no more than she did. They both glanced at the couch before taking a chair each. Having taken turns to risk a smile, they concentrated on the doorway. By the time Ian appeared in it, bearing two mugs of coffee and a glass of the cranberry juice he'd taken to liking since Jack had arrived, she'd begun to feel coated with static. She took yet another sip of coffee, one that tasted like a preamble to bitterness. "So, Jack."

  "Sure." The word seemed to imply anything but certainty, and he took a gulp of coffee that must have hurt. "I wish I knew how bad..."

  When he pressed his lips together hard enough to pull up the flesh of his chin she said "However bad it is we're used to coping, aren't we, Ian?"

  Ian shrugged and thought better of it. "Sure."

  "So give us a chance, Jack. If we can help, tell us how."

  "You already have. That's kind of the problem. You've helped with my book."

  "Which—" Leslie said, and realised aloud "Your next one."

  "You got it, the one I want to write next. I think—okay, I think it ought to be about this guy Hector Woollie and what he did."

  "Including here."

  "I couldn't very well not deal with that, I guess. Tell me, or maybe you'll need time to study it, would that be a problem?"

  "I imagine you'd get closer to the truth than the paper bothered to."

  "I could include something about how the paper treated you if you like."

  "I think we might, do you, Ian?"

  "Reckon so," he said as if he wanted to sound even more American than Jack.

  "Then if you've been waiting for permission you can stop, Jack."

  "Well, okay. Thanks. Only..." He raised the mug toward his face but lowered it, refusing its concealment. "I have to say I didn't wait. I already started researching."

  "We forgive you." She gathered that was what he wanted, so much that she had to say "When did you begin to plan it?"

  "Maybe the first time I saw your house."

  So this was the secret that had been making him anxious, or his fear that she would feel betrayed had. "I suppose that comes with what you are," she said.

  "You're saying I'm..."

  "A writer, what else? You have to take ideas where you find them, I can understand that. You can't feel as guilty about that day as I do, or you shouldn't. I wouldn't expect you to have told me as soon as you got the idea for a book, but I should have told you the kind of place I was bringing you to."

  "The kind of place that may change my career, and I never felt more at home."

  If Ian hadn't been present she would at the very least have taken Jack's hands. Instead she ensured there wasn't too awkward a pause by saying "What would you have written otherwise?"

  "More horror, I guess. That's how I used to get the dark stuff out of me. True crime is a whole different area. I don't know yet how it's going to work."

  "I'm just a reader, but if there's anything I can do..."

  "One thing maybe you both can. Did you ever meet the guy?"

  "Mr. Woollie, you mean."

  "Hector Woollie, right. Did you meet him?"

  "A few times. Most of the time we were staying with my parents," Leslie said, and was ambushed by a shiver.

  "Don't talk about it unless you want to."

  "I'm not sure I can tell you anything useful. He seemed just like a builder. He took me in, and I wouldn't say I'm stupid. I did think he was a bit too eager to make you laugh."

  "How about you, Ian? What did you make of him?"

  "Never met him. I was at mum's parents' or at school."

  "Hey, no need to be disappointed. I guarantee you wouldn't want to meet him. Listen, Leslie, if you figure I'll be reviving anything I shouldn't, I can still back off."

  "I wouldn't want to be the girl who killed a book."

  Perhaps that was too coy for Ian, who grabbed his glass and the empty mugs. Once he'd escaped to the kitchen Leslie held Jack's gaze with hers. "Was last night another kind of research?"

  "Are you serious?" he murmured, even quieter than her. "Only the best kind. Only finding out how good we were together."

  "We were, weren't we." She leaned forward and squeezed his hands. "I'll try and remember more to tell you," she said. "I'll just have to keep reminding myself Woollie's dead and can't touch us."

  "I'll vote for that," said Jack.

  TWENTY-TWO

  "It is you, isn't it, son? You've been so quiet I thought you'd gone for good."

  "It's me and nobody else, dad."

  "Where have you been all this time?"

  "Far away. Maybe I should take you there. Maybe that's where we both ought to g
o."

  "Are you content, son? Are you happy?"

  "If I was any happier I'd burst."

  "We wouldn't want that, would we, son? Your mother wouldn't like the mess. It'd be a laugh though, wouldn't it?"

  "There's nothing like a laugh to make things right, dad. You taught me that and a lot more."

  "So long as things are right for you, son. That's all I ever wanted. I always had you in mind."

  "I know, dad. You mightn't have been so bothered for those children if you'd been happier with me."

  "We shouldn't blame ourselves for the past. It's what you are now that counts. You've been reborn, is that it?"

  "You don't mind, do you?"

  "How could I when you've come back to me? I feel born again myself. I did when I came out of the sea, and now here I am lying in the sand again."

  "You oughtn't to stay here much longer, dad. You don't want people hearing you talking to me."

  "Where am I supposed to go tonight? I can't sleep at the shelter again, not when that woman left her handbag open with a bag of change in it. She looked like she had plenty, and she's there for the benefit of folk like I'm having to pretend I am, but she mightn't see it that way."

  "There must be other shelters you can walk to in a day, aren't there? Now you've got some money you don't even need to walk."

  "They don't let anyone who looks like me on public transport. Do you reckon they would if I told them I was an actor made up for a film? I'm a celebrity right enough. Maybe I should tell them."

  "That'd be a laugh, except remember you don't want to draw attention to—"

  A sound like the whoosh of an arrow followed by an impact silenced him. He thought a child was playing at archery somewhere nearby until he recalled where he was. He squirmed his arms through the straps of the rucksack and inched his head over the top of the bunker, feeling as though the early sunlight were a lid he had to raise. He was in time to see a second tweedy female golfer take a stroke before they strolled away from him across the grass. He scrambled out of the bunker and limped as fast as his stiff aching legs would carry him after his shrinking shadow across the deserted greens to the road.

  Last night he'd been unable to think of anywhere else to sleep. He was sick of shelters full of people he had to keep reminding himself he wasn't like, but he'd allowed himself to be distracted by Adele's rejection of him. If it hadn't been for the miracle of their son's rebirth, a miracle she deserved never to learn of, Hector might have turned into the vagrant he'd been forced to play. Now that he was no longer alone—no longer the outcast his wife, his own wife, had tried to make of him—he was going to be able to restore himself.

  He headed southwest into Barnet, keeping to the parks and open spaces wherever he could, restraining himself from baring his gums at the people he skirted, all of whom clearly felt they had more of a right to be there than he had. Dogs being taken for walks yapped at him, and once he had to give a wide berth to party of schoolchildren led by a teacher: though not a wail or a complaint was to be heard from them, he didn't want to risk imagining there might be. He heard the children laugh at the spectacle of him, of the shabby unshaven lank-maned old man with his tortoise neck poking up beyond his shell of a rucksack, and nearly spun around in case a toothless grin might earn him more laughter. Then he heard the teacher rebuking them, and did his best to hasten out of sight before he could feel responsible for having caused them any grief.

  A length of road posted with pensioners leaning on wheeled baskets while they deplored the world, including him, eventually let him into a park that greeted him with an increasingly less muted roar—the noise of the motorway that stood above the foot of Mill Hill. As he plodded lopsidedly down a slope patched with grass, past a selection of the unemployed using cans of lager to ensure they didn't grow dehydrated, he felt as if he were descending into a medium that could drown any sound he would rather not hear. He was beginning to trust the promise of calm when he heard a child's wail behind him.

  Pain flared from his left shoulder to his right ear as he twisted his head around. A woman so obese he couldn't judge if she was pregnant was dragging a boy about six years old down the path. The large flowers printed on her dress were half the size of her breasts, which were sagging nearly to her stomach. "Right, that's done it," she was vowing. "No Burger King for you today, you little brat."

  The boy's wail faltered while he took in her words, then it doubled in volume and piteousness. Hector fled toward the motorway, but its noise couldn't blot out the child's woe, and Hector was unable to outdistance him and his mother. Hector was yards short of the foot of the slope, and maddened not just by the wailing but by the jerky dance of the rucksack on his spine, when she shouted "You make one more sound and I'm selling your bike."

  Hector held his breath as if that might silence the boy. When the cry renewed itself, more despairing than ever, he raised his hands toward his ears, then swung around in a crouch. The boy's face was red and distorted and streaked with all its fluids. "That's the finish," the woman yelled. "You're not having your mates round tomorrow."

  Hector had made things worse by looking. His hands closed on the air and hauled him upright. "Stop it now, son," he blurted. "She just wants you not to cry. Give us a laugh instead. See, here's a worm coming out of its hole, a big worm, look."

  He would have thought the boy incapable of producing a worse or louder noise, but that was the child's response to the sight of Hector's tongue squeezing itself between his gums. The woman jerked the boy's thin arm so hard he almost fell over. "Get a move on, you. No cartoons for you today and no MTV. The moment we get home you're going to bed."

  A convulsion widened the boy's mouth, and Hector held up his hands that wouldn't quite stop being claws. "Pardon me, madam, but you're just upsetting him. He'll never stop if you keep saying things like that."

  The woman stared at him as though he had revealed himself to be even worse than his appearance, then she stumped at him, her flesh from her swollen ankles to the pouches of her face wobbling at every step. "Piss off out of it, you smelly old tramp. What do you think you are, a social worker?" she demanded, yanking the boy past him. "As for you, just wait till I get you home. I'll teach you to make a show of me."

  Hector limped after her, extending his crooked fingers. "Madam, please don't take it out of him because of me. Poor little soul, he hasn't done anything to deserve—"

  She turned on him, dragging the boy on the toes of his sandals. "If you don't piss off right now," she warned, so loudly that several of the drinkers on the grass laughed and applauded, "I'll get the police to you and we'll see what you deserve."

  He'd already drawn too much attention, and he didn't want to begin to imagine what he might have brought upon the helpless miserable child. He watched the woman march out of the park and turn the corner of a narrow nondescript street, the boy at the end of her flaccid balloon of an arm having to scamper and stumble and scamper again to keep up, and then he lurched under the motorway. Its roar trailed over him and rose above him to wait on the far side of the pedestrian tunnel, so that he felt as if he couldn't shake it off—as if it were adding itself to the weight of his rucksack, which might have been his guilt rendered solid.

  He'd fled at least a mile through a tangle of streets before he felt sufficiently unobserved to give himself some reassurance. He limped under a railway and heard the lines squeal at him, and dodged into a park where he could sit on the banks of a stream. Nobody was watching as he took out the photograph album. The stream carried on its introverted monologue while he gazed at the picture until he was sure of it and himself. "I know you're there, son," he murmured. "I'll be with you soon. I'm not mad, am I? I'm not going mad."

  TWENTY-THREE

  Wembley, England. An average day in an average suburb. Small neat houses, small neat lives. Bright summer sunlight. Children playing; children visiting one another's homes.

  But there's one house where a child came to visit and

  "Yeah, ri
ght," Jack muttered, and needed little more reflection to add "Crap." Having deleted the sentences, he raised his eyes so that his mind wouldn't be deadened by the blank screen. Beyond the back gardens separated by a narrow alley, the roofs and their dormant chimneys dovetailed with a sunned blue sky. Miles above them the silver brooch of an airliner slipped off the wadding of a cloud, and from the main road he heard the rattle of the rear door of a truck. Otherwise the streets outside his open window were as silent as the airliner; there wasn't a child to be heard—not because the children of the suburb were afraid to make a sound within earshot of Leslie's house, but because they were at school.

  Wembley, England. An early afternoon in summer. The small, neat suburban houses doze in the heat and stillness. Soon the children will be home from school to wake them up. But one child

  "Useless," Jack told himself, and sent the fragment of a paragraph back into the nothingness that had produced it. He knew he didn't have to keep his opening lines in the final version—they could just be his route to the material he would keep—but these seemed less meaningful than the hollow clatter of the keyboard, they felt like an absolute failure to grasp what he ought to be writing. Did he need to rid himself of habits he'd learned from years of writing fiction as distanced from reality as possible? Or was his problem simply that there was no point in struggling with the first lines when he'd yet to come up with a title he liked?

  At least selecting a title would let him feel he was writing. He opened a file for titles and gazed at the sky, which had taken its clouds off. He managed to ignore the faint impatient hum of the word processor until he had a thought worth typing, and it was followed by another that brought its close relative along.

  THE HOUSE THAT CAN'T FORGET

  THE LEGACIES OF MURDER

  INHERITORS OF MURDER

  They were pretty good titles, but not for this book. It wasn't just about Leslie and her house, not even mostly. No wonder he was having trouble with the book if he couldn't keep his mind on its theme. Maybe he needed a title to remind him: