The Pretence

by Ramsey Campbell

  He wasn't sure how much of a question this might be until she displayed the coins, which reassured him for as long as he failed to notice what was odd about the tollbooths. Surely most of the barriers beyond the narrow booths used to be automatic, but now every cabin was occupied, and every face turned in unison to watch the car. He had an uneasy sense that he was close to recognising some of them—far too many if not all—or was that a result of their expressionless official look, which was identical not just among themselves but with everyone who'd interrogated him since he'd come home? He had to choose a booth before anyone could find his hesitation suspicious, and he drove towards the exit in the middle of the line. "Nobody say anything," he almost didn't think to mutter. "If anyone has to talk I will."

  The attendant was a woman or a man with long nondescript hair—the smooth bland inexpressive face gave no indication of gender. Slater was on the way past the booth to the toll basket when the window above him slid back and the attendant leaned over the sill. "A moment, please."

  The pale voice seemed sexless too. The lack of any character made the attendant seem to sum up all the officials Slater had encountered recently—an ominous summation. He saw the barrier twitch like a warning not to proceed. "What's wrong?" he blurted.

  "What do you think is?"

  "Nothing if you say so."

  He didn't care how much this sounded like a plea so long as it let them past the barrier. The eyes gazing at him were so pale or so reflective of the sky that he couldn't distinguish the pupils. "May we ask where you're going?" the attendant said.

  Retorting that it was nobody's business but the family's wouldn't make the attendant go away. Slater didn't know when all the faces in the other booths had turned to watch him. "Out for a run," he said.

  "Not running away, are you?"

  "What would I be running from?"

  He had a nervous sense of having said too much—that the trick was not to suggest anything was amiss, even by implying that it couldn't be. The blank gaze rested on him for an indeterminate time before the attendant said "What are you taking where you plan to go?"

  "Where am I, back at immigration?" Instead of demanding this Slater said "Just my family. You can see."

  The attendant didn't look away from him. The blankness seemed to spread out of the eyes as the face withdrew into the booth, and Slater could have thought the features had grown altogether too indefinite. "Can we go now?" he blurted.

  "Wherever you think."

  He couldn't even tell which booth the muffled voice came from. Melanie handed him the coins to throw into the metal basket, and as the barrier wavered upwards he thought he heard a sound on both sides of the car, a murmur less than words—less than a sigh. A glance in the mirror as he drove onto the motorway showed him the row of narrow boxes, each peopled by a figure that looked as if it was propped up. While all of them appeared to be gazing after the car, he couldn't make out an expression or indeed a face. Then the windows of the booths turned pallidly opaque as if a single breath had settled on them, and he fixed his attention on the way ahead.

  There was very little to distract him from the road. Either frost or fog must be rendering the fields so pale. In the distance, far beyond the point at which perspective pinched the road invisible, he saw how the land rose against the sky at the horizon. It put him in mind of an act of defiance— whose, he didn't know. However remote it seemed, they had to reach it long before dark. When Tom spoke Slater stared ahead as if the boy had held his peace. "Dad," Tom insisted, "there's somewhere."

  "We don't need to eat, do we? Wouldn't we rather be where you asked for?"

  "We don't," Amy said. "If we stop we'll never see the sun."

  In any case the Traveller's Return was shut if not abandoned, and Slater didn't spare the inn another glance. "See where we're heading?" he said. "That'll bring us closer."

  Perhaps this was premature. Even if the motorway could hardly lead straight to the mountain, driving as fast as he felt able to risk didn't appear to be reducing the distance. No doubt the mountain was too far away to begin to gain stature just yet, but it looked as if the dull sunken sky was holding it down. He'd lost all awareness of gripping the wheel and treading on the pedal when Tom said "How far is it now, dad?"

  "As far as you see." Surely Slater could do better than that, and he said "Don't worry, we've plenty of time."

  At least he'd stopped short of claiming they had all the time in the world. For the moment the sullen sunless glow looked permanent enough, but how instantaneously had darkness fallen last night? He couldn't help reflecting that the sky was just the underside of a vast blackness. He hoped nobody would ask what time it was, not least since this would show that he wasn't alone in having forgotten a watch. When he peered at the clock on the dashboard, the digital fragments that ought to form numbers had collapsed into chaos. If he'd gone in for praying he might have begged for the computer not to let the family down any further. He found the children in the mirror and saw Amy opening her mouth. "I know what should bring it, Tom."

  "What?" the boy said as though he would have liked to trust his own skepticism.

  "If we sing."

  Slater took her to mean it would pass the time. Her brother seemed to want to be convinced, and when she set about humming the melody he added words. "In something town where I was born ..."

  Slater was too intent on the road to think how to make the words more precise. Once Melanie joined in he supposed he ought to, though only with the fragments he could bring to mind. "All in the merry month of May" was the line that appealed most to him, and he sang it whenever it came around, and did his best to fend off some of the other words by humming over them. "And death was drawing nigh him..." While he didn't want to ask if anybody knew another song, especially since he couldn't think of one himself, he was long past judging how often they'd revived the ballad by the time they came in sight of a road that led off the motorway towards the mountain.

  The side road meandered between fields that lay low in a mist, if frost wasn't holding them down. The route reminded Slater of any number of places he and Melanie had taken the children when they were younger, unless they'd visited the places before the children were born. Why was the mountain taking so much time to rise ahead? "Oh mother, mother, make my bed, for I shall die tomorrow..." Melanie had fallen silent, and only the children were pronouncing the words. "Here we are," she said as if she was advising not just them but the landscape.

  The bulk was indeed a mountain now, blocking off the way ahead. The slopes weren't much less pale than ice and spiky as an enormous uncontrolled crystal. The road appeared to peter out beyond it, sinking into a frozen field. Alongside the road at the foot of the mountain was an extensive car park. "It's just for us," Tom said.

  Slater parked the Astra and waited for the family to join him on the deserted expanse of bare earth. The car emitted a sound he could almost have found plaintive as he activated the electronic locks. Impulses like those had no emotions or sentience, he thought, and looked hastily for something else to think. The notice beside the car park was largely illegible, and he couldn't deduce what it would have said. ME TO MY PA—he couldn't even judge where the clumps of letters would have fitted into the disintegrated message. The signpost indicating the path up the mountain said only I AM TO LATE, which he found just as incomprehensible. Perhaps it had never been in a language he recognised. "There's our way," he said.

  The path took the route of a vanished stream. It bent almost at once, but he didn't bother glancing back at the car, which was already out of his mind. The smooth pale rock walls were at least twice his height, and the low sky added to the sense of climbing up a tunnel. For the moment the ascent was gentle. As Tom and Amy raced ahead Melanie called "Don't go too far."

  "Can't we go to the next bend?" Amy protested.

  "To see if we can see," Tom cried.

  "Just stay in sight," Slater told them, finding Melanie's hand. He didn't think they would be able to see the
sun from the bend ahead, where the walls were higher than ever. Was he helping Melanie climb, or was she aiding him? He couldn't recall when they had last been up a mountain, but they seemed to be equal to the task. Quite soon they caught up with the children, who were waiting impatiently at the start of the next few hundred yards of path. "It's still not there," Tom complained.

  "It just means we need to go higher," Melanie said and gazed at Slater until he agreed.

  Tom scrambled up the path with Amy at his heels, and their parents followed hand in hand. Were the walls growing paler as the path approached the sky? Slater mustn't imagine that the children were borrowing the pallor—at least, not unless they were climbing into a portent of the clouds, which seemed to be threatening to make them look less substantial. "Be careful," he shouted.

  The walls flattened his voice, and Tom's came back even flatter. "There's nothing to be careful of."

  He might have been complaining. Perhaps he was dissatisfied with the uneventfulness of the climb if not its apparent lack of a goal. The next bend led to another quarter of a mile of track between walls not much more detailed than the sky. "We'll be there before you know it," Slater vowed, which at once struck him as careless, since it seemed to urge the children up the slope. He and Melanie were on the way to matching their speed when music caught up with him—the Beethoven that wasn't quite a hymn.

  Amy swung around so fast that the dust she stirred up seemed to render her and Tom momentarily immaterial. "Who is it?" she said.

  She sounded as uneasy as she and her brother looked. Of course nobody could summon the family back from their mission, but Slater wished he recognised the number on the screen. He couldn't think of a question other than Amy's. "Who is it?" he demanded.

  He heard a sound that was less than a breath—just electronic restlessness—and then it seemed to form into a voice. "Who else do you think it could be, Derek?"

  "It might be someone who isn't called Derek," he said and mouthed at Melanie "My mother."

  "Don't upset anyone, Paul. We're here and we know who you are."

  Though Melanie spoke so quietly that he almost didn't hear her, his mother apparently did. "I know you like to be Paul. I was only— Her pause admitted static before she said "Just wanting to see how you were."

  "I still am." This seemed unnecessarily clever, and he said more gently "Fine."

  "Well, that was all I wanted. I should think you'd expect your mother to."

  "Of course I would. How is it where you are?"

  "Just the same as you remember."

  "They're looking after you." In case that seemed patronising he added "They'll be there if you need them, Constance and the rest."

  "I've got everything I need." This sounded final, especially when she said "And what are you doing with yourself?"

  "We've gone out for a run on my day off."

  "Where are you running to?"

  He mustn't let this recall the interrogation at the tollbooth. "To the sun, we hope."

  "I'll hope it too, then. I wouldn't mind another look at it. What about the grandchildren?"

  The question seemed so vague that he felt as confused as he took her to be. "We've none."

  Melanie frowned at him, and he was afraid he shouldn't have had the thought, let alone spoken it aloud. "Amy and Tom, you mean," he said hastily. "Your grandchildren. They're here with us, of course."

  Or had they passed out of sight while he and Melanie were intent on the call? No, they'd halted on the path above their parents, and as he found them they stirred, waving at the phone. "They're saying hello to you," he said.

  "It'll be that or goodbye, won't it? Say goodbye for me." With enough deliberation to be making it her last word she added "Paul."

  "Grandma sends her greetings," Slater said and brought the phone back to his face, only to glimpse a movement like an insect's on the screen. At once it vanished, and he realised he'd caught sight of its dwindling— the last of the icon that denoted network coverage. "I haven't got a signal any more," he said.

  Melanie and the children took out their mobiles. "We've gone too," Amy said.

  "Make that all of us," her mother said. "It doesn't matter, does it? We're all here."

  "Granny isn't," Tom observed.

  "She'll be where she wants to be, Tom." No doubt Melanie sensed that Slater couldn't help feeling responsible, because she added "Everyone wanted you back with us, Paul."

  "Or we couldn't have done our concert," Amy said.

  This was surely an exaggeration, however affectionately meant. As the children recommenced their climb he put away his mobile, and thought he saw that the screen was entirely blank. Not least in order to put that behind him he murmured "I suppose she just didn't want to feel on her own."

  "Maybe she's missing Allen," Melanie said.

  Slater felt as if the sky had lurched towards him, bleaching his vision nearly blank. "Who?"

  "Paul." This was a rebuke and incredulous as well. "Your father," she said. "That was another reason we felt you should go and see Eileen."

  Slater had a panicky sense of not knowing where his mouth was or how to use it. When he felt his lips part he had to say "I don't remember."

  The children had climbed out of sight— no, they were waiting again, and when Slater focused his attention on them Tom turned to say "What don't you remember, dad?"

  "About—" Slater didn't know how much he risked by admitting "About my father."

  "He used to call us funny names," Amy said. "Ours but not quite."

  "And he'd tell us poems," Tom said.

  "And sing us songs like the one we sang for you."

  As Slater gazed uphill he was no longer sure what he was perceiving. He was hardly even aware of Melanie until she said "Is that enough?"

  In some way it seemed to be. He had an almost indefinable impression that he could leave the memories behind, as if they were no longer necessary to him. He felt close to weightless with shedding the burden that he hadn't even realised he was carrying. What else might have to go? He could have thought his sense of liberation had released the children, who ran with no visible effort up to the next walled-in bend. "Come and see," Tom shouted, and Amy called "We're nearly there."

  In a moment they were hidden by the bend. "Wait for us," Melanie protested.

  Slater did his best to keep panic out of his voice, as he thought she had with hers. "You heard your mother."

  "You can hear us," Tom responded, and from further off Amy contributed "We'll sing."

  "In what's its name where we were born..." Their voices were muffled by the walls if not the sky, and Slater had no time to wonder how they could have come up with the identical alteration of the lyric. He didn't try to grasp what else they sang; he was too concerned with holding on to Melanie as they followed the memory of a stream. In too little time to be worth mentioning they were at the bend, from which he saw Tom and Amy at the top of the path with their backs to him. Beyond them there appeared to be nothing at all.

  Before he could take a breath to call out, the children vanished off the path. "It's all right,"* he blurted, clutching Melanie's hand. "I can still hear them." Surely he could, even if no words were audible as he urged or was urged by her up the path. The sky didn't recede, and he could have thought the blank surface was waiting for them. When he stepped off the end of the path onto the summit the landscape seemed to fall away on every side, and he could have fancied that it brought the sky closer. All that mattered was seeing the children ahead.

  They were standing on the peak, which was flat and oddly regular, practically a rectangle, with as little colour to it as the sky. There was room on it for Slater and for Melanie as well. From the height the fields that extended in every direction looked paler still, and might have been competing with the sky for featurelessness. He couldn't recall when he'd last seen a colour. He was trying to think that only the distance was robbing the world of its details when Tom said "How did we come?"

  "Dad drove," Amy s
aid with a laugh, not as lofty as she might have wanted it to be. "Don't you remember?"

  For some moments Slater was able to believe that nothing was wrong except their inability to see the road. Their ascent could have led them around the opposite side of the mountain, after all. The trouble was that he could see no roads anywhere, and searching for them had brought another issue to his notice. The horizon was unnaturally close, no more than half as remote as it should be, if even that. The flatness of the land gave it nowhere to hide, and he didn't know how far or how often he'd turned around in the hope of seeing he was somehow mistaken before Melanie said "What are you looking for?"

  "I don't need anything else," he said, fixing his gaze on her and the children. "You're all here."

  Although he was determined to make that the answer, he couldn't help glancing away from them. At once he wished he hadn't, because the horizon was visibly shrinking towards the mountain. His panic felt as if his insides had dropped out of him, leaving him empty of any resource. If the family weren't seeing what he saw, might that provide any reassurance? He was struggling to think how to distract them when Tom said "It's snowing, isn't it?"

  While he didn't sound entirely convinced, he seemed willing to be. Slater gripped Melanie's hand—perhaps he had never let go of it—and strove to see as Tom was seeing. Surely the blankness that was advancing all around them could be an uncommon species of snowstorm, however much it looked as if the sky was consuming the world. He had to strain his vision to distinguish that the oncoming mass consisted of innumerable flakes. He was about to risk telling Tom he was right when Amy said "Suppose we'd better go back before it gets us."

  At that moment Slater saw too much. Yes, the vast inexorable mass was composed of countless fragments, but they weren't snowflakes. Only their pallor had misled him. They were shards of the landscape, which was disintegrating. They put him in mind of pixels into which the world was splintering, an image reverting to its simplest components. It left them nowhere to go, but how could he tell Amy or anyone? Before he dared to speak, Tom complained "We haven't seen the sun."