Dead Souls
Page 22
I do not think about her in the day while I’m at work, I do not think of her at all before I reach the first escalator. As I descend, her wide face comes to me again and I remember her size, her clothes, the way she stood, although nothing about any of it was remarkable. I look at the heads in front of me for her dark hair, and search the up escalator just in case she’s travelling the other way.
There were no forewarning signs, nothing that registered as peculiar. The worst of the matter is that I was merely a bystander caught up in a freakish and improbable moment. It was not me she singled out; chance alone brought me into close proximity with her, and my unsought for witnessing has left me with a memory I can’t get rid of, one as persistent as the foulest of stains.
****
She’d know me instantly if I came upon her again, and just as on that Friday night, the crowd down there would no longer exist; my attention would be hers alone. I don’t want to see her basilisk face a second time, but I would re-live the moment in the hope that I could shroud it in innocence, assign its strangeness to some freaky shunt in my own thinking, then, the vividness of the experience might fade.
I think about the second girl often. I wouldn’t recognise her again, a tired-faced blonde, anonymous, hurting. I imagine her at home, in a flat in north London, somewhere small perhaps, with scatter cushions on a deep sofa. She lives with her boyfriend; a restless man, impatient of her feelings. She dyed her hair blonde to please him, and it didn’t in particular. He’s tired of her and tired of living in London, although he’s not ready to admit it yet. She’s still hopeful that there’s something of value in the grimy city for them. They’re pleasant to people, they work hard and live quietly. Nothing they see in the newspapers, no knifings, no muggings, have anything to do with them.
****
Nothing should be remarkable in a city like London, nothing, or perhaps everything. The dark haired woman was standing just at the curve of the tunnel before the second down escalator comes into view. Her back was to me, her left shoulder close to the wall. I saw her as an obstacle to negotiate, saw the crowd in front of me swarm past her like water around a rock. I was irritated by her unusual stillness; it was a stupid place to stop. I took her to be a foreigner confused in the crowd and watched her as I approached.
I saw the blonde young woman in front of me pass close by her. I never sensed that anybody behind me saw what happened; I was aware of no sudden intake of breath except my own.
The dark woman’s head swivelled. Her black hair swung across her shoulders. I saw her profile; her neck stretched outwards, her jaw slightly open. She jutted her head towards the blonde, and opening her mouth wide, coughed twice with huge vigour, straight into the girl’s nose and eyes, a barking hideous noise, a twisted and queer manifestation of violence. I saw the jugular vein in her neck bulge with the effort.
The blonde, not changing pace looked round at her attacker and scuttled sideways. I saw her face contort fleetingly with revulsion that within a single heartbeat had changed to fear. She stumbled slightly, turned away, and moved quickly onto the escalator.
****
I’d never seen a random act of violence before and felt the horror it evokes. The idea of a cough as a weapon startled and revolted me. If the standing woman had clawed the face of the blonde in one vicious movement it could not have been more aggressive, more predatory.
The queer act, the more perverted for its randomness, contaminated only a moment in the blonde girl’s life, and yet I knew she would fail utterly, as I would, to ever describe its impact. On the Underground a woman coughed at me, she might say.
How rude, never mind, you’re home now.
You don’t understand. It was intimate, deliberate, violent.
That’s London life, for you.
****
As I stepped onto the escalator behind them, the blonde, running hard on the metal steps, was about three-quarters of the way down. With a dainty and repulsive little kick of her booted foot, the dark woman began to hurry to shrink the distance between them. I knew she was not yet finished with her prey. I hurried too, determined to reach the victim before she disappeared into the crowds beyond. I’d touch her arm, tell her I’d seen it, tell her I’d felt it. Then I’d melt away, a stranger in the underground again, but having left her with a tiny thread of comfort in knowing she hadn’t imagined it, should he sneer at her story.
As I drew level with the attacker, I had a strong compulsion to look right into her eyes, but I feared I’d see Medusa or something worse. And she, knowing by my face I’d witnessed the thing, would vomit the psychotic maelstrom she carried with her over me. I held my breath as I moved past her.
The fleeing woman was still in my view, but by the time I’d stepped off the escalator she was far ahead of me in the Northern Line crowd. I stopped; I had to turn right for Docklands. This was not my business; I needed to forget it. Things happen in London.
The Northern Line crowd surged around me carrying the dark creature with it. I didn’t move. About twenty yards in front of me, she stopped too. I found myself unconscious of the crowd, the guardsmen, the noise. I knew before she ever turned her head to find me that she’d sensed I’d tried to come between her and the blonde.
On turning, she found me instantly, the only other traveller unmoving in the swarm, and as I gazed at her, I was glad I hadn’t looked at her close up minutes before on the escalator.
Her beautiful face was broad and strong boned, but across it, as she glowered at me, a ripple of seething anger moved in a visible wave from her forehead to her mouth. There was something occult-like and compelling about the moment. I saw her mouth twist in contempt, I saw her register my face, hesitate, and look back quickly to locate the blonde. She turned to stare at me again, her eyes brimming with something baleful far past hatred, then she turned away and moved on quickly.
“You all right?” a guard asked. “You look ill.”
I pointed, and before I spoke, I sensed the uselessness of any words. I could still see them both, now on the up escalator towards the northern line. “That dark headed woman...”
“Where?”
“That one,” I stabbed the air with my finger repeatedly, and sensed the guard move away a pace. “She’s following the blonde about three quarters of the way up, the one with the light coat. She mustn’t catch her.” I sounded ridiculous. “She’s hunting her.”
“Nothing will happen, there’s cameras up there, you know.” I turned to look at the guard then, and found him smiling.
****
I think now the few seconds of my own encounter with the dark contaminator gave the blonde enough time to escape. I hope so. I imagine her walking into the light and warmth of her flat. She throws her bag and coat on the floor, puts her trembling hands to her face and sobs. She feels fouled. A woman, she begins, and then stops. Hellish images come to her, as they still do to me - demons from some arcane region in the human psyche quicken and take shape in her mind. The encounter cannot be told, and her journey through the bowels of London is tainted from that day forward, like mine is.
****
the dead must die
Ramsey Campbell
As soon as I push the doors open I know I am in the presence of evil. The lobby walls are white as innocence, but the place stinks of deceit. It is crowded with lost souls who wander aimlessly or talk to one another in low voices as though they are in church. Sensitivity to atmospheres is yet another gift which the mass of mankind has abandoned. I breathe a prayer and cross the threshold, steeling myself against the unhealthy heat which refutes the pretence of healing, the disinfectant stench bespeaking the presence of corruption, the closeness of so much unredeemed flesh.
Except I single myself out I may pass unnoticed. I silently intone the Twenty third Psalm, and am halfway through the fifth verse when I reach the lifts. I step into the nearest, thumbing the number of the floor to which I have been called. The doors are closing when they spring back as if possessed, and two men dressed like c
hoirboys push in a trolley laden with a draped form that is sucking up blood.
The doors shut, embracing the heat which now I understand is meant to dull the senses, and the lift shudders as though revolted by the burden it is being made to carry. But the cage rises, humming smugly to itself, and I close my eyes and attempt not to breathe in the stink of devil’s incense that reminds me I am in a place which might be a chapel of rest if it were not teeming with unholy corrupt life.
“Aren’t you well?” one of the surpliced attendants says.
His clammy breath in my ear is like a shameful kiss. I step back from him and shake one finger at the thing on the trolley, mumbling “Can’t stand...”
“You get used to it,” he says with a laugh which I gather is intended to express sympathy but which shows me that he sees no deeper into me than I desire. I pray God that all his kind here will be as gullible, as indeed their employment in this place suggests.
The lift stops, and I button the doors open, resisting the instinct to let them close and burst the dangling sac of blood. The temptation to perform good works in haste, at the expense of the greater good, is one of the Adversary’s subtlest tricks. As the attendants rush the trolley away the other lift releases a stream of visitors in the direction I am pointed by an arrow on the wall. I let them pass so as to move more swiftly to my goal; but when I emerge I see the way is guarded.
A uniformed woman sits at a desk in the corridor like a wicked child cast out of a schoolroom. She is playing the scribe, noting on a clipboard the names of all who pass. Some she appears to have turned back, for they are slumped against the walls, their faces sagging with the heat. I grip my case more firmly and stride forwards, silently repeating the psalm, and the woman raises first her face and then her eyebrows. “Visiting?”
“As you see.”
She shakes her head like a beast that has been struck across the face. “Whom?”
“Paul Vincent.”
“Relative?”
“A caring relative.”
She lowers her gaze to her list as though my emphasis has crushed her. “Name?”
“George Saint.”
Presumably this is as nothing to her, for she merely grunts and sets it down. When I make to pass, however, she emits a more bestial grunt and bars my way with a hand luxurious with fat and jewellery. “Two visitors maximum even in the private rooms. You’ll have to wait.”
I see myself driving a nail through her outstretched palm, and I press my free hand against my thigh. “I have come a long way to be here.”
“Then I imagine you’ll be staying for a while.” When I refrain from contradicting her she says, “You needn’t be afraid you won’t see Mr Vincent again. He’s our star patient, getting better every day.”
That is a taunt even if she is unaware the Adversary is using her voice. “When his wife wrote to me,” I say loudly, “she said he was not expected to live.”
“These days we can perform miracles.”
Perhaps the triumph in her voice means only that she suspects I would have profited by my brother’s death. I retreat for fear of venting my wrath upon her, and I am beyond the lolling visitors when the door of Paul’s room opens and my niece Mary looks around for me.
“Yes, it was him,” she calls into the room. “Hello, Uncle”
I interrupt before she can arouse suspicion by pronouncing my name from my former life. “Mary. I must wait until someone makes way for me.”
“I’ll stay out here if you want to see dad.”
The guardian of the corridor turns to ensure that she doesn’t re-enter the room, and I wait until Mary comes forward. I have not set eyes on her for fifteen years — not since she would sit on my lap while I told her about Our Lord — and if I had any doubts about my mission they vanish at the sight of her. She is paler and thinner than she ought to be, and I believe I glimpse a knowing look in her eyes before she says, “Dad will be pleased you’ve come to see him.”
I detect no guile in this, and pray that her knowingness is only a facade which she feels bound to present to the world. “I hope he can find it in his heart to welcome me.”
“He says it’s up to the individual what they believe.”
For a moment I assume she is defending her father out of misplaced loyalty, and then I grasp that she thinks I was apologising for my faith, though she has no idea of its strength. I must surmise that she is not beyond redemption, however insidious are the influences which surround her. When she says “I’ll wait here” I stride past the desk of the false scribe, repeating the fourth verse of the psalm under my breath, and enter the room.
My brother is lying in a bed, his eyes upturned to Heaven. His wife Penelope sits beside him, holding his hand. Their stillness almost persuades me that I am not needed here, and I succumb to a craven feeling of relief. Then my brother’s head wavers up from the pillow, and his eyes, which are watery and veinous, light up with a blasphemous parody of intelligence and life. “Thomas,” he whispers.
I want to proclaim my outrage with all my voice, but instead I advance to the foot of the bed and gaze solemnly at him. That appears to satisfy him, and his head sinks back. “Thank you for coming, Thomas,” says his wife.
Her gratitude is as bogus as everything else in this evil chamber. She must have felt bound to contact me when my brother was at death’s door. His eyes close, and he expels a long slow breath. “He waited for you,” Penelope tells me.
Though that sounds as if she is holding me responsible for the unnatural prolongation of his life, I am filled with a hope that it has come to an end. His wide, pasty face has collapsed as though it is no longer anything but a mask, and he has folded his hands on his chest. Then his hands stir, betraying their mockery of piety, as his chest rises and falls. He is dead, yet he breathes. He has joined the Undead.
How can God’s daylight allow such a thing to be? When I attempt to recall how long it has been since I last saw the sun, it seems to me that the sky has been overcast for weeks before I was called to my brother. And the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit, and there is no sunlight to combat the room’s Godless light, which celebrates the flush of my brother’s cheeks that gives him the appearance of a whore rouged with the blood of her victims. I turn away in revulsion and confront his wife, who says “I didn’t know if you would come. I wasn’t even sure we had your right address.”
Nor have they, God be thanked. “I felt I had to,” I confess.
“You’re still born again, then. You’re still of the same mind.”
“We are all of His mind, however we regard ourselves. There is no birth nor death but proceeds from Him.”
At least she has the grace to look embarrassed, though only because in these faithless days God is the dirtiest of words. “We’ve become quite friendly with the Beynons,” she says defensively. “The donor’s family.”
The heat and stink coagulate in my throat, and for some seconds I cannot swallow for the thought of my brother with part of a corpse sewn up inside him. “Have you visited the grave?” I croak.
“Whose?”
“What you call the donor.”
“Why, no,” she says as though it is I who am in the wrong. “We don’t want to intrude.”
“Where is he buried?”
“She. Kidneys don’t have a sex, you know. She’s in the churchyard near where you used to have your flat.”
“A short walk from where I am staying. If there is no objection I shall pay my respects.”
“I expect you’ll do whatever you think is right,” she says in a tone which suggests I ought to be ashamed of doing so. “I hope you don’t mind staying in a hotel, by the way. I’ve my hands full getting the house ready for Paul to come home.”
She must take me for a fool if she imagines I assume that otherwise I would be welcome in her house, when everything about myself is a reproach. I succeed in sounding casual. “When is that to be?”
“The doctors say Sunday.”
The word should choke them. “I shall be in church.”
“Come over afterwards to say goodbye to Paul if you have time.”
She clearly hopes the opposite, and I may let her think her wish is granted. Sometimes a venial sin is justified in the prosecution of His work. “I have troubled you enough for the nonce,” I tell her. “Beynon, you said. What Christian name?”
She seems reluctant to answer, but perhaps she senses that I am prepared to demand the information of my brother, for she replies “Bernadette.”
It is indeed Christian — the name of the saint to whom His Blessed Mother chose to appear — which makes the mutilation yet more blasphemous. “May God watch over you and Paul,” I curse, and retreat into the corridor.
Only Mary and the guard remain. The guard is studying her clipboard as though it holds a sacred text, while Mary leans against the wall. As I approach, her eyes open and her pale, undernourished face attempts to counterfeit a smile. “How was dad?”
I needn’t lie. “I am more concerned with how you are, Mary.”
“I’m all right. I’m fine,” she says, failing to conceal her evasiveness.
I raise my case against my chest so that neither she nor the guard can see what I am carrying, and reach in. “Will you wear this to please me?” I say, and hand Mary the twin of the cross which I never remove.
She hesitates, and I feel as if the Adversary has seized me by the throat. If she is unable to take hold of the cross I shall know she is already a victim of the Undead. Then she holds out a hand palm upwards and suffers me to lay the cross on it. “It’s a bit heavy,” she complains.
The childishness of her protest convinces me that she is still fundamentally innocent, and I offer up a silent prayer of thanks. “Wear it always,” I exhort her. “If anyone tries to dissuade you, do not hesitate to contact me.”