The Collected Short Fiction

by Ramsey Campbell

  Nowhere to hide it, Dutton thought. In her pram—but her pram had been empty. The top of his head was rising, floating away; it didn't matter. Betty's hand wobbled at the edge of his vision, spilling wine towards him. He grabbed the bottle as her eyes closed. He tried to drink but couldn't find his mouth. Somehow he managed to stopper the bottle with his finger, and a moment later was asleep.

  When he awoke he was alone in the dark.

  Among the bricks that were bruising his chest was the bottle, still glued to his finger. He clambered to his feet, deafened by the clattering of bricks, and dug the bottle into his pocket for safety, finger and all. He groped his way out of the house, sniffing, searching vainly for his handkerchief. A wall reeled back from him and he fell, scraping his shoulder. Eventually he reached the doorway.

  Night had fallen. Amid the mutter of the city, fireworks were already sputtering; distant chimneys sprang up momentarily against a spray of white fire. Far ahead, between the tipsily shifting walls, the lights of the shops blinked faintly at Dutton. He took a draught to fend off the icy plucking of the wind, then he stuffed the bottle in his pocket and made for the lights.

  The mud was lying in wait for him. It swallowed his feet with an approving sound. It poured into his shoes, seeping into the plastic bags. It squeezed out from beneath unsteady paving-stones, where there were any. He snarled at it and stamped, sending it over his trouser cuffs. It stretched glistening faintly before him as far as he could see.

  Cars were taking a short cut from the main road, past the shops. Dutton stood and waited for their lights to sweep over the mud, lighting up his way. He emptied the bottle into himself. Headlights swung towards him, blazing abruptly in puddles, pinching up silver edges of ruts from the darkness, touching a small still dark object between the walls to Dutton's left.

  He glared towards that, through the pale fading firework display on his eyeballs. It had been low and squat, he was sure; part of it had been raised, like a hood. Suddenly he recoiled from the restless darkness and began to run wildly. He fell with a flat splash and heaved himself up, his hands gloved in grit and mud. He stumbled towards the swaying lights and glared about whenever headlights flashed between the walls. Around him the walls seemed as unstable as the ground.

  He was close enough to the shops for the individual sounds of the street to have separated themselves from the muted anonymous roar of the city, when he fell again. He fell into darkness behind walls, and scrabbled in the mud, slithering grittily. When he regained his feet he peered desperately about, trying to hold things still. The lights of the street, sinking, leaping back into place and sinking, sinking; the walls around him, wavering and drooping; a dwarfish fragment of wall close to him, on his left. Headlights slipped past him and corrected him. It wasn't a fragment of wall. It was a pram.

  In that moment of frozen clarity he could see the twin clawmarks its wheels had scored in the mud, reaching back into darkness. Then the darkness rushed at him as his ankles tangled and he lost his footing. He was reeling helplessly towards the pram.

  A second before he reached it he lashed out blindly with one foot. He tottered in a socket of mud, but he felt his foot strike metal, and heard the pram fall. He whirled about, running towards the whirling lights, changing his direction when they steadied. The next time headlights passed him he twisted about to look. The force of his movement spun him back again and on, towards the lights. But he was sure he'd seen the pram upturned in the mud, and shaking like a turtle trying to right itself.

  Once among the shops he felt safe. This was his territory. People were hurrying home from work, children were running errands; cars laden with packages butted their way towards the suburbs, honking. He'd stay here, where there were people; he wouldn't go home to his room.

  He began to stroll, rolling unsteadily. He gazed in the shop windows, whose contents sank like a loose television image. When he reached a launderette he halted, frowning, and couldn't understand why. Was it something he'd heard? Yes, there was a sound somewhere amid the impatient clamour of the traffic: a yawn of metal cut short by a high squeal. It was something like that, not entirely, not the sound he remembered, only the sound of a car. Within the launderette things whirled, whirled; so did the launderette; so did the pavement. Dutton forced himself onward, cursing as he almost fell over a child. He shoved the child aside and collided with a pram.

  Bulging out from beneath its hood was a swollen faceless head of blue plastic. Folds of its wrinkled wormlike body squeezed over the side of the pram; within the blue transparent body he could see white coils and rolls of washing, like tripe. Dutton thrust it away, choking. The woman wheeling it aimed a blow at him and pushed the pram into the launderette.

  He ran helplessly forward, trying to retrieve his balance. Mud trickled through the burst plastic in his shoes and grated between his toes. He fell, slapping the pavement with himself. When someone tried to help him up he snarled and rolled out of their reach. He was cold and wet. His coat had soaked up all the water his falls had squeezed out of the mud. He couldn't go home, couldn't warm himself in bed; he had to stay here, out on the street. His mouth tasted like an abandoned bottle. He glared about, roaring at anyone who came near. Then, over the jerking segments of the line of car roofs, he saw Maud hurrying down a side street, carrying a bottle wrapped in newspaper.

  That was what he needed. A ball of fire sprang up spinning and whooping above the roofs. Dutton surged towards the pedestrian crossing, whose two green stick-figures were squeaking at each other across the path through the cars. He was almost there when a pram rushed at him from an alley.

  He grappled with it, hurling it from him. It was only a pram, never mind, he must catch up with Maud. But a white featureless head nodded towards him on a scrawny neck, craning out from beneath the hood; a head that slipped awry, rolling loose on its neck, as the strings that tied it came unknotted. It was only a guy begging pennies for cut-price fireworks. Before he realised that, Dutton had overbalanced away from it into the road, in front of a released car.

  There was a howl of brakes, another, a tinkle of glass. Dutton found himself staring up from beneath a front bumper. Wheels blocked his vision on either side, like huge oppressive earmuffs. People were shouting at each other, someone was shouting at him, the crowd was chattering, laughing. When someone tried to help him to his feet he kicked out and clung to the bumper. Nothing could touch him now, he was safe, they wouldn't dare to. Eventually someone took hold of his arm and wouldn't let go until he stood up. It was Constable Wayne.

  "Come on, Billy," Wayne said. "That's enough for today. Go home."

  "I won't go home!" Dutton cried in panic.

  "Do you mean to tell me you're sending him home and that's all?" a woman shouted above the clamour of her jacketed Pekinese. "What about my headlight?"

  "I'll deal with him," Wayne said. "My colleague will take your statements. Don't give me any trouble, Billy," he said, taking a firmer hold on Dutton's arm.

  Dutton found himself being marched along the street, towards his room. "I'm not going home," he shouted.

  "You are, and I'll see that you do." A fire engine was elbowing its way through the traffic, braying. In the middle of a side street, between walls that quaked with the light of a huge bonfire, children were stoning firemen.

  "I won't," Dutton said, pleading. "If you make me I'll get out again. I've drunk too much. I'll do something bad, I'll hurt someone."

  "You aren't one of those. Go home now and sleep it off. You know we've no room for you on Saturday nights. And tonight of all nights we don't want to be bothered with you."

  They had almost reached the house. Wayne gazed up at the dormant bonfire on the waste ground. "We'll have to see about that," he said. But Dutton hardly heard him. As the house swayed towards him, a rocket exploded low and snatched the house forward for a moment from the darkness. In the old woman's room, at the bottom of the windowpane, he saw a metal bar: the handle of a pram.

  Dutton began to stru
ggle again. "I'm not going in there!" he shouted, searching his mind wildly for anything. "I killed that old woman! I knocked her head in, it was me!"

  "That's enough of that, now," Wayne said, dragging him up the steps. "You're lucky I can see you're drunk."

  Dutton clenched the front door-frame with both hands. "There's something in there!" he screamed. "In her room!"

  "There's nothing at all," Wayne said. "Come here and I'll show you." He propelled Dutton into the hall and, switching on his torch, pushed open the old woman's door with his foot. "Now, what's in here?" he demanded. "Nothing."

  Dutton looked in, ready to flinch. The torch-beam swept impatiently about the room, revealing nothing but dust. The bed had been pushed beneath the window during the police search. Its headrail was visible through the pane: a metal bar.

  Dutton sagged with relief. Only Wayne's grip kept him from falling. He turned as Wayne hurried him towards the stairs, and saw the mouth of darkness just below the landing. It was waiting for him, its lips working. He tried to pull back, but Wayne was becoming more impatient. "See me upstairs," Dutton pleaded.

  "Oh, it's the horrors, is it? Come on now, quickly." Wayne stayed where he was, but shone his torch into the mouth, which paled. Dutton stumbled upstairs as far as the lips, which flickered tentatively towards him. He heard the constable clatter up behind him, and the darkness fell back further. Before him, sharp and bright amid the darkness, was his door.

  "Switch on your light, be quick," Wayne said.

  The room was exactly as Dutton had left it. And why not? he thought, confident all at once. He never locked it, there was nothing to steal, but now the familiarity of everything seemed welcoming: the rumpled bed; the wardrobe, rusted open and plainly empty; the washbasin; the grimy coinmeter. "All right," he called down to Wayne, and bolted the door. He stood for a long time against the door while his head swam slowly back to him. The wind reached for him through the wide-open window. He couldn't remember having opened it so wide, but it didn't matter. Once he was steady he would close it, then he'd go to bed. The blankets were raised like a cowl at the pillow, waiting for him. He heard Constable Wayne walk away. Eventually he heard the children light the bonfire.

  When blackening tatters of fire began to flutter towards the house he limped to close the window. The bonfire was roaring; the heat collided with him. He remembered with a shock of pleasure that the iron bar was deep in the blaze. He sniffed and groped vainly for his handkerchief as the smoke stung his nostrils. Never mind. He squinted at the black object at the peak of the bonfire, which the flames had just reached. Then he fell back involuntarily. It was the pram.

  He slammed the window. Bright orange faces glanced up at him, then turned away. There was no mistaking the pram, for he saw the photograph within the hood strain with the heat, and shatter. He tested his feelings gingerly and realised he could release the thoughts he'd held back, at last. The pursuit was over. It had given up. And suddenly he knew why.

  It had been the old woman's familiar. He'd known that as soon as Betty had mentioned the idea, but he hadn't dared think in case it heard him thinking; devils could do that. The old woman had taken it out in her pram, and it had stolen food for her. But it hadn't lived in the pram. It had lived inside the old woman. That was what he'd seen in her room, only it had got out before the police had found the body.

  He switched off the light. The room stayed almost as bright, from the blaze. He fumbled with his buttons and removed his outer clothes. The walls shook; his mouth was beginning to taste like dregs again. It didn't matter. If he couldn't sleep he could go out and buy a bottle. Tomorrow he could cash his book. He needn't be afraid to go out now.

  It must have thrown itself on the bonfire because devils lived in fire. It must have realised at last that he wasn't like the old woman, that it couldn't live inside him. He stumbled towards the bed. A shadow was moving on the pillow. He baulked, then he saw it was the shadow of the blanket's cowl. He pulled the blanket back.

  He had just realised how like the hood of a pram the shape of the blanket had been when the long spidery arms unfolded from the bed, and the powerful claws reached eagerly to part him.

  The Companion (1976)

  When Stone reached the fairground, having been misdirected twice, he thought it looked more like a gigantic amusement arcade. A couple of paper cups tumbled and rattled on the shore beneath the promenade, and the cold insinuating October wind scooped the Mersey across the slabs of red rock that formed the beach, across the broken bottles and abandoned tyres. Beneath the stubby white mock turrets of the long fairground facade, the shops displayed souvenirs and fish and chips. Among them, in the fairground entrances, scraps of paper whirled.

  Stone almost walked away. This wasn't his best holiday. One fairground in Wales had been closed, and this one certainly wasn't what he'd expected. The guidebook had made it sound like a genuine fairground, sideshows you must stride among not looking in case their barkers lured you in, the sudden shock of waterfalls cascading down what looked like painted cardboard, the shots and bells and wooden concussions of target galleries, the girls' shrieks overhead, the slippery armour and juicy crunch of toffee-apples, the illuminations springing alight against a darkening sky. But at least, he thought, he had chosen his time well. If he went in now he might have the fairground almost to himself.

  As he reached an entrance, he saw his mother eating fish and chips from a paper tray. What nonsense! She would never have eaten standing up in public—"like a horse," as she'd used to say. But he watched as she hurried out of the shop, face averted from him and the wind. Of course, it had been the way she ate, with little snatching motions of her fork and mouth. He pushed the incident to the side of his mind in the hope that it would fall away, and hurried through the entrance, into the clamour of colour and noise.

  The high roof with its bare iron girders reminded him at once of a railway station, but the place was noisier still. The uproar—the echoing sirens and jets and dangerous groaning of metal—" trapped, and was deafening. It was so overwhelming that he had to remind himself he could see, even if he couldn't hear. But there wasn't much to see. The machines looked faded and dusty. Cars like huge armchairs were lurching and spinning helplessly along a switchback, a canvas canopy was closing over an endless parade of seats, a great disc tasselled with seats was lifting towards the roof, dangling a lone couple over its gears. With so few people in sight it seemed almost that the machines, frustrated by inaction, were operating themselves. For a moment Stone had the impression of being shut in a dusty room where the toys, as in childhood tales, had come to life.

  He shrugged vaguely and turned to leave. Perhaps he could drive to the fairground at Southport, though it was a good few miles across the Mersey. His holiday was dwindling rapidly. He wondered how they were managing at the tax office in his absence. Slower as usual, no doubt.

  Then he saw the roundabout. It was like a toy forgotten by another child and left here, or handed down the generations. Beneath its ornate scrolled canopy the horses rode on poles towards their reflections in a ring of mirrors. The horses were white wood or wood painted white, their bodies dappled with purple, red, and green, and some of their sketched faces too. On the hub, above a notice made in Amsterdam, an organ piped to itself. Around it Stone saw carved fish, mermen, zephyrs, a head and shoulders smoking a pipe in a frame, a landscape of hills and lake and unfurling perched hawk. "Oh yes," Stone said.

  As he clambered onto the platform he felt a hint of embarrassment, but nobody seemed to be watching. "Can you pay me," said the head in the frame. "My boy's gone for a minute."

  The man's hair was the colour of the smoke from his pipe. His lips puckered on the stem and smiled. "It's a good roundabout," Stone said.

  "You know about them, do you?"

  "Well, a little." The man looked disappointed, and Stone hurried on. "I know a lot of fairgrounds. They're my holiday, you see, every year. Each year I cover a different area. I may write a book." The idea
had occasionally tempted him—but he hadn't taken notes, and he still had ten years to retirement, for which the book had suggested itself as an activity.

  "You go alone every year?"

  "It has its merits. Less expensive, for one thing. Helps me save. Before I retire I mean to see Disneyland and Vienna." He thought of the Big Wheel, Harry Lime, the earth falling away beneath. "I'll get on," he said.

  He patted the unyielding shoulders of the horse, and remembered a childhood friend who'd had a rocking horse in his bedroom. Stone had ridden it a few times, more and more wildly when it was nearly time to go home; his friend's bedroom was brighter than his, and as he clung to the wooden shoulders he was clutching the friendly room too. Funny thinking of that now, he thought. Because I haven't been on a roundabout for years, I suppose.

  The roundabout stirred; the horse lifted him, let him sink. As they moved forward, slowly gathering momentum, Stone saw a crowd surging through one of the entrances and spreading through the funfair. He grimaced: it had been his fairground for a little while, they needn't have arrived just as he was enjoying his roundabout.

  The crowd swung away. A jangle of pinball machines sailed by. Amid the Dodgems a giant with a barrel body was spinning, flapping its limp arms, a red electric cigar thrust in its blank grin and throbbing in time with its slow thick laughter. A tinny voice read Bingo numbers, buzzing indistinctly. Perhaps it was because he hadn't eaten for a while, saving himself for the toffeeapples, but he was growing dizzy—it felt like the whirling blurred shot of the fair in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, a fair he hadn't liked because it was too grim. Give him Strangers on a Train, Some Came Running, The Third Man, even the fairground murder in Horrors of the Black Museum. He shook his head to try to control his pouring thoughts.

  But the fair was spinning faster. The Ghost Train's station raced by, howling and screaming. People strolling past the roundabout looked jerky as drawings in a thaumatrope. Here came the Ghost Train once more, and Stone glimpsed the queue beneath the beckoning green corpse. They were staring at him. No, he realised next time round, they were staring at the roundabout. He was just something that kept appearing as they watched. At the end of the queue, staring and poking around inside his nostrils, stood Stone's father.