The Collected Short Fiction

by Ramsey Campbell

  Thomas stood drained of all feeling, too drained even to impale himself on the sword. He waited for the blade to cut him down, but Lord Robert was speaking. “Since you desire a companion who will be yours alone, you shall have one.”

  The turnkey had led Thomas through the cellars, his torchlight glancing at huddles of chain and starved flesh. Behind Thomas, Lord Robert’s sword was ready in its scabbard, a fang in a snake’s mouth. When the turnkey had unlocked the door in the depths of the cellars, he’d thrust his light through the opening so sharply that the darkness had almost gulped it up. He’d held the light while Lord Robert had fettered Thomas; then, at a gesture from his master, he’d niched the torch and had fled beyond the new stone wall. Now Thomas wondered dully what that wall had been built to contain.

  The torch was sputtering. The cellar wall gasped feebly as its light drained. Thomas was trying to determine how close the sounds within the fissure were, the sounds of something hard scratching faintly and stealthily against stone — he was trying to think how rats could make so measured and purposeful a sound — when darkness doused everything.

  The chains bruised his thighs, which throbbed. He wished he had moved before. Now, if he moved, he would betray himself to the rats, which would fasten unseen on him. Unseen: that was the worst, as Lord Robert had intended.

  It denied Thomas the chance to fend them off before they reached him. It denied him everything save the sounds of encirclement, the tearing of sharp teeth.

  He moved, spreading the chains on either side of him. Let the rats come, he would best them yet. Without the nagging of the iron links, he could sleep. Lord Robert was starving his body to weaken him, but had forgotten that he had already starved Thomas’s soul. All Thomas need do was let himself sink into the void he had become. Not even rats could awaken him from that sleep.

  But sleep hung back, its presence close yet impalpable as the dark. As Thomas tried to muffle himself in sleep, strove to calm himself so that it could take hold of him, part of him remained doggedly alert to the sounds within the fissure. He tried to judge if they were approaching, to satisfy the sleepless part of him, but each time he had almost grasped their distance the slow drip interrupted, distracting him. The hushed claws scraped in the dark. The drip prodded Thomas awake. Exhausted, he forced himself to listen. The drip pulled his mind down, down into sleep.

  He awoke in the forest. Lips were moving timidly over his cheek. It was Marie. He opened his eyes gradually. Above him, swarms of leaves drifted gently over one another; pools of light rippled over him, soft as breath. He couldn’t see Marie, for she was kissing his forearm shyly. If he raised his head he would see her. He awoke, and a tongue was lapping thirstily at his sword-wound in the dark.

  He roared and kicked out, until the fetters wrenched his ankles. Amid his terror was a deeper horror, that his mind had accepted what Lord Robert had given him in exchange for Marie, accepted it even if only in sleep. He thrust the thing from him, and his hand touched an arm. He felt bone and dust-stubbled wiry muscle, that twitched his fingers away, but no flesh at all. Then the thing scuttled dryly back into the fissure.

  Thomas held himself still, though the links bit into his thighs. The lethargic drip mocked the scurrying of his heart. Now he knew why the turnkey had fled, knew the extent of Lord Robert’s cruelty. Thomas had heard tales of hungry cadavers that roamed from their graves at night, writhed where they lay impaled beneath crossroads, tapped stealthily at doors to be let in. Only Lord Robert could have made a pet of such a thing. Thomas’s folded legs trembled, blazing with pain, but he held himself still, clinging to the silence.

  When the hollow scrape of bone emerged from the fissure onto the cellar floor he began to roar like a beast in a fire, shaking his chains. There was nothing else he could do. In a moment he froze aghast, for his noise might have allowed the thing to creep to his side unheard.

  But it was scuttling back into the cleft. He listened to the aimless shuffling of bone, and thought the darkness was deceiving him until he remembered how the thing had waited for the light to fail. Suddenly he realized why it had delayed until he had fallen asleep. It was as timid as anything else that might crawl from a hole in a rock.

  It was less timid now that it had tasted its victim. The tentative dry groping retreated into the cleft when Thomas shouted and rang his chains against the stone, but each time it came closer to him. Soon it failed to retreat even as far as the wall. He roared and shook the chains desperately, but his noises seemed to be snatched away at once and muffled, scarcely echoing. They hardly stirred the air, which hung damply upon him, dragging him down into sleep.

  He sawed his wrists against the gyves to fend off sleep. Then he clutched his wrists, gasping. He had almost drawn blood and offered it for feasting. When he touched the sword-wound and found it moist, he plastered it with gritty mud from the floor. He hammered his elbows against the wall to keep himself awake. Nearby in the blindness he heard bone scrabbling toward him over the floor.

  The dark nestled against him, urging the bony claws forward. It settled insidiously about his mind and held him more tightly than the gyves, imprisoned him outside time, choked off his furious sounds. It pressed faces of bone and working muscle against his eyes, jarring him awake. It flooded his mind entirely, while the thirsty bones crept closer.

  Lord Robert returned to Thomas several hours after leaving him. He motioned the turnkey to precede him beyond the partition wall, then he took the nervous torch from the man and gestured him out. Holding the torch above Thomas, he gazed down at the slumped unmoving figure from which iron links spilled.

  “You have days yet, perhaps weeks,” Lord Robert said. “The last man to wear your chains lived for a month, for the others heard his screams. They found your new companion crouched over him like a spider, and you will know it has a spider’s appetite. The wall was meant to help it hoard its attentions for those who most deserved them. I am glad they were kept for you.”

  Thomas did not move. “You are not dead,” Lord Robert said, “nor yet so weak that sleep may shield you from me. Show me your face while I prepare you further.”

  Still Thomas squatted, huddled into himself. Lord Robert thrust the torch into its niche and stooped to Thomas, grasping his hair. The tip of the scabbard touched the floor.

  As the hilt inclined toward him Thomas snatched the sword. His chains betrayed his movement, the hilt rang dully against the wall, but the razor-keen blade pierced Lord Robert’s groin.

  The point glanced from bone and, slipping upward, emerged beside his spine.

  Though Lord Robert screamed and writhed heavily, Thomas held the hilt fast until his captive fainted. Presently the turnkey’s scared face peered in. The door slammed at once, and Thomas heard the key turn.

  Lord Robert found himself propped against the wall next to Thomas, impaled on the sword. His cloak lay across Thomas’s knees. Thomas gazed at him while he moaned. “I shall call the turnkey,” Lord Robert said, not daring to move on the sword. “He will free you and escort you unchallenged from my castle and my domain. None shall pursue you.”

  “The turnkey has imprisoned us both,” Thomas said, lifting the blade. “Stand up. You will be my bait. We shall see if your sword will destroy your pet.”

  Lord Robert obeyed. He stood before Thomas, moving with minute delicacy on the axis of the sword. Sweat poured down his face. When Thomas withdrew the blade slowly until the point was flush with his captive’s back, Lord Robert moaned but stood firm.

  “Let him come now,” Thomas said. Within the fissure an impatient desiccated rattling had ventured almost to the edge of the light. “He will have to come as many times as I need to impale him. We shall live until that is done.”

  Lord Robert was gazing down, seeking in Thomas’s eyes some sense of what was to come, when Thomas threw the cloak at the torch and gave them both to darkness.

  The Sunshine Club (1983)

  Will this be the last session?" Bent asked.

 
I closed his file on my desk and glanced at him to detect impatience or a plea, but his eyes had filled with the sunset as with blood.

  He was intent on the cat outside the window, waiting huddled on the balcony as the spider's cocoon like a soft white marble in one corner of the pane boiled with minute hectic birth. Bent gripped my desk and glared at the cat, which had edged along the balcony from the next office." It'll kill them, won't it?" Bent demanded." How can it be so calm?"

  "You have an affinity for spiders," I suggested. Of course, I already knew.

  " I suppose that ties in with the raw meat."

  "As a matter of fact, it does. Yes, to pick up your question, this may well be the last session. I want to take you through what you gave me under hypnosis."

  "About the garlic?"

  "The garlic, yes, and the crosses."

  He winced and managed to catch hold of a smile." You tell me, then," he said.

  "Please sit down for a moment," I said, moving around my desk and intervening between him and the cat." How was your day?"

  "I couldn't work," he muttered." I stayed awake but I kept thinking of how it'd be in the canteen. All those swines of women laughing and pointing. That's what you've got to get rid of."

  "Be assured, I will." I'll have you back at the conveyor belt before you know, I thought: but there are more important fulfilments.

  " But they all saw me!" he cried." Now they'll all look!"

  "My dear Mr Bent—no, Clive, may I?—you must remember, Clive, that odder dishes than raw meat are ordered every day in canteens. You could always tell them it was a hangover cure."

  "When I don't know why myself? I don't want that meat," he said intensely." I didn't want it."

  "Well, at least you came to see me. Perhaps we can find you an alternative to raw meat."

  "Yes, yes," he said hopelessly. I waited, staring for a pause at the walls of my office, planed flat by pale green paint. Briefly I felt enclosed with his obsession, and forced myself to remember why. When I looked down I found that the pen in my hand was hurrying lines of crosses across the blotter, and I flipped the blotter onto its face. For a moment I feared a relapse." Lie down," I suggested, "if it'll put you at your ease."

  "I'll try not to fall asleep," he said, and more hopefully, "It's nearly dark." When he'd aligned himself on the couch he glanced down at his hands on his chest. Discovered, they flew apart.

  "Relax as completely as you can," I said, "don't worry about how," and watched as his hands crept comfortingly together on his chest. His sleeves dragged at his elbows, and he got up to unbutton his jacket.

  He'd removed his hat when he entered my office, though with its wide black brim and his gloves and high collar he warded off the sting of sunshine from his shrinking flesh. I'd coaxed his body out of its blackness and his mind was following, probing timidly forth from the defences which had closed around it." Ready," he called as if we were playing hide and seek.

  I placed myself between the couch and the window in order to read his face." All right, Clive," I said." Last time you told me about a restaurant where your parents had an argument. Do you remember?"

  His face shifted like troubled water. Behind his eyelids he was silent ." Tell me about your parents," I said eventually.

  " But you know," said his compressed face." My father was good to me.. Until he couldn't stand the arguments."

  "And your mother?"

  "She wouldn't let him be!" his face cried blindly." All those Bibles she knew he didn't want, making out he should be going to church with her when she knew he was afraid-"

  "But there was nothing to be afraid of, was there?"

  "Nothing. You know that."

  "So you see, he was weak. Remember that. Now, why did they fight in the restaurant?"

  "I don't know, I can't remember. Tell me! Why won't you tell me?"

  "Because it's important that you tell me. At least you can remem her the restaurant. Go on, Clive, what was above your head?"

  "Chandeliers," he said wearily. A bar of sunset was rising past his eyes.

  "What else can you see?"

  "Those buckets of ice with bottles in."

  "You can't see very much?"

  "No, it's too dim. Candles-" His voice hung transfixed.

  "Now you can see, Clive! Why?"

  "Flames! F- The flames of hell!"

  "You don't believe in hell, Clive. You told me that when you didn't know yourself. Let's try again. Flames?"

  "They were-inside them-a man's face on fire, melting! I could see it coming but nobody was looking "Why didn't they look?"

  His shuddering head pressed back into the couch." Because it was meant for me!"

  "No, Clive, not at all. Because they knew what it was."

  But he wouldn't ask. I waited, glancing at the window so that he would call me back; the minute spiders stirred like uneasy caviar.

  "Well, tell me," he said coyly, dismally.

  "If you were to go into any of a dozen restaurants you'd see your man on fire. Now do you begin to see why you've turned your back on everything your parents took for granted? How old were you then?"

  "Nine."

  "Is it coming clear?"

  "You know I don't understand these things. Help me! I'm paying you! "

  "I am, and we're almost there. You haven't even started eating yet."

  "I don't want to."

  "Of course you do."

  "Don't! Not "Not-"

  Outside the window, against the tiger-striped blurred sky, the cat tensed to leap." Not when my father can't," Bent whispered harshly.

  "Go on, go on, Clive! Why can't he?"

  "Because they won't serve the meat the way he likes."

  "And your mother? What is she doing?"

  "She's laughing. She says she'll eat anyway. She's watching him as they bring her, oh-" His head jerked.

  "Yes?"

  "Meat-"

  "Yes?"

  It might have been a choke or a sob." Guh! Guh! Garlic!" he cried, and shook.

  " Your father? What does he do?"

  "He's standing up. Sit down! Don't! She says it all again, how it's sacrilegious to eat blood- He's, oh, he's pulling the cloth off the table, everything falls on me, everybody's looking, she comes at him, he's got her hair, she bites him then she screams, he smiles, he's smiling, I hate him!" Bent shook and collapsed in the shadows.

  "Open your eyes," I said.

  They opened wide, trustful, protected by the twilight." Let me tell you what I see," I said.

  " I think I understand some things," he whispered.

  "Just listen. Why do you fear garlic and crosses? Because your mother destroyed your father with them. Why do you want and yet not want raw meat? To be like your father who you really knew was weak, to make yourself stronger than the man who was destroyed. But now you know he was weak, you know you are stronger. Stronger than the women who taunt you because they know you're strong. And if you still have a taste for bloody meat, there are places that will serve it to you. The sunlight which you fear? That's the man on fire, who terrified you because you thought your father was destined for hell."

  "I know," Bent said." He was just a waiter cooking."

  I switched on the desk-lamp." Exactly. Do you feel better?"

  Perhaps he was feeling his mind to discover whether anything was broken ." Yes, I think so," he said at last.

  "You will. Won't you?"

  "Yes."

  "No hesitation. That's right. But Clive, I don't want you hesitating when you leave this office. Wait a minute." I took out my wallet.

  "Here's a card for a club downtown, the Sunshine Club. Say I sent you.

  You'll find that many of the members have been through something similar to what you've been through. It will help."

  " All right," he said, frowning at the card.

  "Promise me you'll go."

  " I will," he promised." You know best."

  He buttoned his coat." Will you keep the hat? No, don't k
eep it.

  Throw it away," he said with some bravado. At the door he turned and peered past me." You never explained the spiders."

  " Oh, those? Just blood."

  I watched his head bob down the nine flights of stairs. Perhaps eventually he would sleep at night and go forth in the daytime, but the important adjustments had been made: he was on the way to accepting what he was. Once again I gave thanks for night shifts. I went back to my desk and tidied Bent's file. Later I might look in at the Sunshine Club, reacquaint myself with Bent and a few faces.

  Then, for a moment, I felt sour fear. Bent might encounter Mullen at the club. Mullen was another who had approached me to be cured, not knowing that the only cure was death. As I recalled that Mullen had gone to Greece months before, I relaxed-for I had relieved Mullen of his fears with the same story, the raw meat and the garlic, the parents battling over the Bible. In fact it hadn't happened that way at all-my mother had caused the scene at the dining-room table and there had been a cross-but by now I was more familiar with the working version.

  The cat scraped at the window. As I moved toward it, the cat's eyes slitted darkly and it tensed. I waited and then threw the window open.

  The cat howled and fell. Nine storeys: even a cat could scarcely I stood above the lights of the city, lights clustering toward the survive. dark horizon, and the tiny struggling red spiders streamed out from the window on threads, only to drift back and settle softly, like a rain of blood, on my face.

  Just Waiting (1983)

  Fifty years later he went back. He'do been through school and university, he'd begun to write a novel at the end of a year spent searching for jobs, and it had been hailed as one of the greatest books ever written about childhood, had never been out of print since. He'd been married and divorced before they had flown him to Hollywood to write the screenplay of his novel, he'd had a stormy affair with an actress whose boyfriend had sent a limousine and two large monosyllabic men in grey suits to see him off home to England when the screenplay had been taken over by two members of the Writers Guild. He'd written two more books which had been respectfully received and had sold moderately well, he'd once spent a night in a Cornish hotel room with twin teenage girls, and increasingly none of this mattered: nothing stayed with him except, more and more vividly, that day in the forest fifty years ago.