The Nameless

by Ramsey Campbell

  After the auction, Barbara couldn't relax. She might have given a party in her suite--she'd done so last time, and her bed had been spirited away at once--but she was too busy meeting editors in order to promote the NewtonBrown novel. Between meetings she tried to stroll. Invisible choirs sang Schoenberg in Bryant Park, jewellers' displays ------------------------------------244

  on East Forty-seventh glittered as if they were still crystallizing, reflections of skyscrapers sagged and melted on the giant curved slope of the Monsanto building. She couldn't go very far from the hotel, for she was afraid that Ted might call.

  Still, though she felt tired and edgy, her restlessness had paid off. The interest in the Newton-Brown book was intense, and she could conduct the auction from London. She had only to meet an editor to discuss Ted's novel, and then she could change her reservation to the next available flight home.

  She was on her way to freshen up when the phone rang. It was Cathy Darnell, a friend who was also the editor who had been looking at Ted's novel. "Come up," Barbara told her. Was she early because she was anxious to buy the novel? Barbara had skimmed through it on the plane, but had been too worried to judge it properly; she had been wondering how Angela would react if she rang her flat and heard a man's voice. Suppose she thought that the cult had intercepted her call? Barbara could only hope that Ted would be able to persuade her to the contrary.

  Soon Cathy appeared, in a long loose dress and a ponytail. The September mugginess looked to have condensed among the down on her upper lip. They kissed politely, then Barbara hurried to the bathroom, across whose threshold time leapt forward several decades.

  She was halfway through washing, her eyes stinging with soap, when the phone rang again. "I'll get it," Cathy called.

  Barbara rinsed her face quickly and turned off the water in time to hear Cathy say, "I'm sorry, this line isn't too good. Could you repeat your name?"

  All at once Barbara was apprehensive. She hurried out of the bathroom, rubbing her face with the towel. Before ------------------------------------245

  she could reach the phone Cathy said, "Yes, I have it now. Could you just hold on one moment, please."

  She turned wide-eyed to Barbara, one hand deafening the phone. "It's Laurence Dean," she said, pronouncing it Law. "He wants to speak to you."

  Of course Barbara knew who he was--he'd produced several phenomenally successful films--yet she felt wary; she had nearly finished her business in New York, she wanted to go home. "What does he want, do you know?"

  "You'd better ask him that yourself. He's very strong on doing things properly."

  His soft Californian voice sounded gentlemanly, but very quiet; Barbara had to strain her ears. "I plan to be in New York early next week, Mrs. Waugh," he said, "and I believe you will be there. I wonder if you would be free to meet."

  "Well, I was rather intending to go back to England tomorrow." Cathy was gaping at her, gesturing at her to change her approach. "Did you want to discuss anything in particular? Sorry, hold on just a moment," she said, for Cathy was gesturing wildly.

  "He won't commit himself except face-to-face," Cathy said when she was sure he couldn't hear. "If you try to pump him he'll lose interest. But believe me, he never calls an agent unless he's very interested in one of her properties. You have to meet him, Barbara. It's got to be something big."

  "That's all very well, Cathy. I'm sorry, please go on," she told the phone.

  "I've been reading some books which I believe you handle," the faint voice said patiently. "I think it might be useful for us to meet."

  "Which books do you mean?"

  Cathy clapped a hand to her forehead in dismay and ------------------------------------246

  closed her eyes. "I believe you have a client by the name of Paul Gregory," the faint voice said.

  "Yes, that's right." She felt helpless, trapped by his interest. When he suggested they meet on Tuesday she agreed, then opened her mouth to snatch back her agreement just as he rang off. Her dismay must have been visible, for Cathy said, "Did he beg off? Oh, Barbara, I told you he would."

  Barbara told her what he'd said as they went downstairs, following the curlicued iron banisters into the leathery gloom of the lobby, where publishers sat talking. "Barbara, that's terrific. I'm sure this is the first time he's ever committed himself to that extent. It sounds like a very big deal."

  Barbara tried to look pleased, but she was grateful for the gloom among the plants and dark panels. On the lobby newsstand a small headline said California cultists charged; there was always something to remind her, it seemed. "We'll go out for a drink," Cathy said firmly. "You've been cooped up in here for a while."

  She took her to a bar on Sixth Avenue. Scraps of Bartok drifted through the traffic, from Bryant Park. A film crew had roped off several blocks of the avenue, where Ricky Schroder was emerging from Radio City Music Hall. Barbara found the self-assured professionalism of the eightyear-old face rather chilling.

  The bar was small and dark. A few men sat drinking at the polished counter and watching a television set on which everyone looked raw as pork. Between the drinkers' elbows were dim smears, reflections of their faces. The women sat in a booth and ordered black russians. After a couple of sips Cathy said, "Can I help?"

  "I don't think so, Cathy. Thanks for asking. It's domestic, nothing to do with business." ------------------------------------247

  "So let's talk business. I liked Ted Crichton's novel a lot. It needs work, but I'll happily make you an offer."

  A blurred pink President of the United States snapped into the television frame. The newscaster's loud voice kept becoming entangled with Cathy's. "That's good news," Barbara said, trying to concentrate on her job. "Are there particular areas of the book you think need work?"

  "He'll have to work on the early chapters. It's the later scenes that really sold me on the book--you know, from where the private eye finds out her best friend is in league with the organization. But that's a bit too abrupt as it stands. He needs to leave a few clues early on. Right now it looks as if he thought of it late in the writing."

  "I'll tell him." Several people smeared with television pink were being led into a courthouse, hiding their faces from the cameras. "Or you could write to him care of me. He isn't officially a client of mine."

  "You'll agent him now, won't you?"

  "I've always felt one shouldn't agent one's friends. It complicates the relationship in all sorts of ways." She was trying to listen to the newscaster. When Cathy began to speak Barbara gestured her to keep quiet, and was dismayed by the violence of her gesture. The courthouse and the furtive disheveled figures had been swept away, the newscaster was chattering about pollution. "What did he just say about not being able to find out someone's names?" Barbara demanded.

  "I couldn't say. I wasn't listening."

  "Something about people being brought before a court which had to charge them without knowing all their names."

  "Oh, that would be those freaks in California. Didn't you hear about that? No, I guess you were too deep in your auction. Well, it was sort of a legal precedent--the police couldn't find out most of their names, and they had to give them aliases so that the court could charge them." ------------------------------------248

  Barbara's arms were beginning to stiffen with tension; she put down her glass. "What else do you know about them, Cathy? Can you tell me everything you remember?"

  "I didn't take much notice. It's a weird place, California. But these were a kind of colony of freaks, I believe, who were into some very bad things, black magic and torture and that sort of stuff. There kept being rumors about them, but nobody could track them down until just now. That's one thing I do remember. The police had the impression that some of them made sure they were found, because they were scared of the things they were getting into."

  Barbara found she was shivering, even before Cathy said, "The part that upset me was that some of them had children. I mean, can you imagine how those k
ids are going to grow up?"

  Barbara tried to pick up her drink, but had to leave it before she shook it over the side of the glass. "Who could tell me more about them?" she managed to ask.

  Cathy peered at her. "This is important to you, isn't it? All right, stay here while I make a phone call. I've got a few contacts in broadcasting."

  Barbara was grateful that Cathy hadn't tried to question her further. The heads of the men at the bar nodded forward as their right hands lifted their drinks; the rest of their bodies might have been paralyzed. Wrestlers grappled in the air, and she couldn't tell if the patches of red on the raw flesh were leaking color or blood. Eventually Cathy beckoned her to the alcove at the far end of the bar. "How badly do you want to know?" she said.

  "Very badly." Barbara had to hold on to the counter, her nails skidded on polished wood. "Please let me speak to them," she said urgently.

  "This isn't the person you need." To the phone she said, "All right, have her call Barbara Waugh collect at the Algonquin Hotel." She replaced the receiver and smiled ------------------------------------249

  as if Barbara should be happy. "She'll call you in a couple of hours."

  That sounded like eternity. "Can't I call her now?"

  "Well, I don't think so. She's a contact of my contact. I mean, it's three hours earlier in California. She's most likely on her way to work." She held Barbara's arm as though she could stop it from shaking. "Try to relax. Tell me about it if it would help."

  "No, I can't." She would only imagine worse things if she talked about it now. "I can't," she said dully.

  "Never mind. Come and finish your drink." But if someone was meant to call her at the hotel, Barbara had to go back there at once. When Cathy saw that she couldn't steer her into the booth she followed her onto the street. "I'll walk with you as far as the Algonquin. We can talk about the Crichton deal next week if you'd rather, when you've dealt with this other thing. Don't let it get on top of you, all right? My mother used to say something I've always found to be worth remembering--nothing is ever as bad as you think it is." ------------------------------------250 ------------------------------------251

  251

  Thirty-one

  When Barbara hurried into the Algonquin the gloom settled on her eyes at once. The lobby was crowded; pale balloons of faces came bobbing in clusters out of a gloom that felt thickened by their hubbub. Her hand brushed the cold greasy leaf of a potted plant, her other hand touched a face at the level of her hip, a face that felt like dough. It must have been a child.

  Barbara struggled to the newsstand, but couldn't find the headline that she'd seen. Perhaps it was on an inside page that had been exposed by mistake. She bought a copy of each newspaper and made for the stairs, which were often quicker than the elevator. Though her eyes were adjusting, she still felt threatened by the crowd who could see her but whom she couldn't see.

  She had almost passed the desk before the clerk saw her. "Mrs. Waugh, there was a call for you." ------------------------------------252

  Cathy had been wrong: her contact had called while Barbara was away from the hotel. No doubt now she had gone out reporting, and Barbara couldn't even find out who she was; Cathy wouldn't be home for hours. But the clerk consulted a note and said, "A Mr. Crichton called you from London about half an hour ago."

  Why couldn't he have left a message? Barbara ran along the corridor toward her suite, past glossy black doors, giant negatives set in the white walls. In each of them she looked close to developing, a running smudge with paler blurs for face and limbs. In one of the rooms a muffled phone was ringing. When she managed to unlock her door, after a flurry beneath the bulbous gaze of the peephole, the phone was still ringing, but it wasn't hers.

  She threw the papers on the floor of the sitting room and began to dial at once. Halfway through she faltered, muttering as though she were having a nightmare, for she had forgotten her home number. Six three eight, she muttered, six three eight, and was beginning to wonder how one called directory information in England when she remembered the number. She dialed once and listened to what sounded like the jangling of rusty springs, dialed again and heard a phone ringing, presumably hers. There was no reply.

  She remembered the number of Ted's flat without difficulty, but it was no use. Thousands of miles away but close against her ear, his phone rang on and on. Her watch showed nearly one o'clock, which meant the time was approaching six o'clock in London. She'd dialed Melwood-Nuttall fast and accurately, and the office phone had rung several times, before she remembered this was Saturday: nobody would be there.

  She replaced the receiver gently, to help herself not to lose control, then she gazed at it as though it were a bomb. ------------------------------------253

  It glinted back at her, a black lump of silence. By now the time in California was ten o'clock, and perhaps the reporter had been given the message to call her. What had Ted wanted to tell her? Whichever of them called first might stop the other from calling.

  She began to search the newspapers, to prevent herself brooding. Soon the floor around her was covered with shootings, bombings, kidnappings. At last she found the headline on a back page, but the report said far less about the cult than about its leader, a man whose name was now known to be Jasper Gance.

  Or perhaps it was Kaspar Ganz. That was the name under which he had posed as a psychiatrist in order to visit Death Row on the pretext of doing research. The more atrocious the crime, the more anxious he had been to interview the murderer. After he had been exposed he'd been examined by a psychiatrist himself, who had diagnosed a morbid fascination with sadism and mutilation. Ganz or Gance had been imprisoned shortly before the Second World War, but after the attack on Pearl Harbor he had been drafted. Since then nothing had been heard of him until now.

  Here was a fuller version of the psychiatrist's report than had been published at the time, and Barbara was appalled that Ganz had ever been released. He believed that the worst murders were inexplicable in terms of the psychology of the criminals. One of the criminals he'd interviewed had described a sense of being either close to something or part of something which the act of torturing had never quite allowed him to glimpse--a sense that he was trying to assuage a hunger which was larger than he was. Ganz had argued that he and all the rest--Gilles de Rais, Jack the Ripper, Peter Kiirten--had been driven to experience the worst crimes they could on behalf of something outside themselves. Perhaps the crimes formed a ------------------------------------254

  pattern over the centuries, or perhaps they were stages in a search for the ultimate atrocity. The psychiatrist had assumed that all this was Ganz's method of justifying his own fascination, an elaborate fantasy as unlikely to be acted out as Sade's had been--but now, the newspaper report continued, it was clear that Ganz had managed to convince others of his ideas.

  Surely this could have nothing to do with Angela, surely she couldn't be involved in anything like this, and yet Barbara was growing desperate to hear her voice again, to be reassured by how normal she sounded. The newspaper said nothing about children, but it mentioned that Ganz was supposed to have sent disciples abroad to spread his word and his practices, in order to make it more difficult to stop them entirely. What had Ted been so anxious to tell her? Why couldn't he phone?

  The television! Its news would be more up-to-date than the papers--she ought to have switched it on at once. She hurried to it, papers tearing underfoot, and began to switch channels. Here were the victims of a game show, a middleaged couple emoting nervously and leaking color. Here was Godzilla treading on a factory, here were commercials in Spanish, but she was hurrying back to the phone through a rustling of newspapers, for she had realized where Ted might be.

  Her inspiration dulled at once: she had to persuade herself to finish dialing. Ted might be there, but it seemed most unlikely that he was. Nevertheless he had the key to her office in the set she'd given him. Suppose he'd found Angela and had decided that the office was the safest plac
e to hide her over the weekend?

  When the distant phone began ringing, drifting in and out of focus, she imagined it resounding through her empty office, except that the receiver was picked up at once. "Er, Mrs. Waugh's agency," a faint voice said. ------------------------------------255

  It was a female voice, a young voice, a young girl's voice. Barbara sat forward, closing her eyes as if that would project her wish more vividly. "Who is that?" she said as loudly as she could.

  The response was faint as a voice on the wind. Static engulfed it at once, and Barbara could hardly believe it had said "Angela." She was on the edge of her seat and bruising her face with the receiver. "Angela," she cried, "is that you?"

  But the young girl was no longer answering. Somewhere in the distance beyond the static, voices seemed to be arguing or conferring. Barbara clamped her free hand over her left ear, and heard what sounded like the rapid throbbing of a machine inside her skull. A blurred voice came through the static without warning. "Who's speaking, please?"

  "I'm Barbara Waugh and you are in my office." At least she was able to translate her trembling into cold rage. "You had better tell me who you are at once."

  "I'm sorry, Barbara. It's Louise. I've been clearing some correspondence. Hannah wasn't very well last week."

  Her voice grew momentarily recognizable. Of course the young girl had said Hannah, not Angela. Presumably Louise had been falling behind with her work in Barbara's absence, but it seemed not to matter now. Barbara thought of a question to ask her. "Have we heard from Ted Crichton lately?"

  "Yes, he called yesterday. He wanted to know if you were coming back earlier than you'd said. I expect he's hoping for news of his book."

  And no doubt that was why he had phoned the Algonquin. She said good-bye to Louise and sat wondering what to do. Shadows crept over the buildings outside the bay window, the face of a Puerto Rican newscaster jerked onto the screen, newspapers rustled whenever Barbara moved. ------------------------------------256