The Collected Short Fiction

by Ramsey Campbell

  “What?” Jonathan was distracted enough to wonder.

  “They’re a what now, are they?” said the boy whose chin flourished a lone hair. “Thought it was a who you lost.”

  “She died,” Jonathan said, hoping that would silence them. “My grandma.”

  “Was she old?” That sounded sympathetic until the greyish-lipped boy added “Did she smell?”

  “Bet she does now,” his friend said.

  “He was right after all. She’ll be a what by now.”

  “Like the dead cat we found with maggots for eyes.”

  “Looked like he was laughing about it.”

  “Those girls didn’t laugh much when we threw-”

  That was the last Jonathan heard as he dodged almost blindly through the crowd in search of somewhere he could be alone to talk to his grandmother. A smell of something like tobacco drifted out of the toilets, but even if they’d been deserted, how could he have invited her to follow him in there? He sneaked into the main school building by a side door and dashed along the overheated corridor to sit on the hard seat attached to his desk. “They don’t know anything about you, grandma,” he murmured urgently. “You’ll never be like that. They were just making it up.”

  He couldn’t hear her voice, he reassured himself, but remembering was close to hearing. “Never speak ill of the dead or they’ll come back and haunt you. They’ll come back and show you how ugly you’ve made them.” When the bell shrilled he bruised his knees on the underside of the desk. He reached the hall in time to mingle with the others so that the staff wouldn’t realise he’d skulked into the school rather than being healthy in the yard. Throughout the headmaster’s address, and intermittently in all the lessons, he kept hearing his grandmother’s words and could only respond with last night’s prayer. More boys giggled each time he had to mutter. The teachers must be restraining themselves because of his grandmother - he had no idea how he might have responded if they’d spoken rather than merely frowning at him.

  Tattered clouds like cobwebs laden with grime raced to meet him as he hurried home. They left the sky behind them no less dark. He let himself into the house and switched on the dimness before venturing upstairs. “You didn’t hear anything bad today, did you, grandma?” he whispered at her door. “God wouldn’t let you. Please God don’t.”

  There was no sound from her room. If she’d been listening, the floorboards would surely have made her presence as apparent as they were making his. He was suddenly convinced he had been talking to nobody at all - for how long, he didn’t know. He grabbed the chilly scalloped brass knob and threw open the door.

  The room looked yet more enormous for its emptiness. He could have imagined all the heavy mournful furniture was huddling against the walls. A wedge of murky twilight had managed to slip between the ponderous sombre curtains to emphasise the isolation of the bed, on which a fat faded patchwork quilt was drawn over a flattened stack of pillows. “Aren’t you there, grandma?” Jonathan barely said.

  Perhaps he glimpsed the shadow of a cloud that was drifting unseen past the window, but the quilt appeared to stir as if something it concealed was trying to take shape and draw breath. He peered into the dimness until he grasped how terrified he was to see. Flinging himself backwards, he dragged the door shut and fled downstairs. “I’m sorry, grandma. I didn’t mean to-” he cried, and interrupted himself. “Please God don’t let her,” he repeated while he spread his schoolbooks across the kitchen table and attempted to work.

  He didn’t know how his mother might react to his writing about his father. It could wait until the weekend, when Jonathan would be staying with him. The boy chanted his prayer as an accompaniment to copying a map of the world, and fell silent only when he heard Trudy and his mother at the front door.

  Their wide smiles were virtually identical. “So how was your day?” Trudy asked.

  It seemed safest not to be specific. “Just stuff.”

  “What did you learn, then?” said his mother.

  All he could remember was praying. “More stuff.”

  “Never mind if you’d rather not tell us.” Her smile drained into her face as she remarked to Trudy “I expect we’d hear it all if my mother was doing the asking.”

  Could his grandmother take that as a criticism? “I’m just…” Jonathan mumbled, and ran upstairs. “See, I said mum wants to be like you,” he whispered from the top stair, and repeated his plea to God several times before descending to the kitchen.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you,” his mother assured him. “Eat up your dinner and forget what I said.”

  He was able to achieve the first requirement and pretend the second was accomplished. Might she refrain from talking about his grandmother for fear of upsetting him? After dinner he finished his geography homework in the kitchen and then watched some of a television programme about how men were the cause of all conflict. He didn’t mind if his mother and Trudy thought that included him so long as it drew blame away from his grandmother.

  He still had to pray with every breath so as to fall asleep. He wakened in daylight to hear laughter downstairs - the night seemed to have renewed the women somehow. His tormentors didn’t come to find him in the schoolyard, and his classmates had tired of giggling when he felt compelled to pray. He couldn’t have predicted the question with which his mother greeted him that night. “Jonathan,” she said, sitting down at the table to clasp his hands. “Aren’t you happy at this school?”

  “Why?” he blurted in case that gave him time to think.

  “Just tell me. Tell us, Trudy’s your friend too. What’s disturbing you?”

  He could think of nothing his grandmother mightn’t be blamed for. It was Trudy who said “Shouldn’t you explain…”

  “You’re right, I’ve missed a step. Jonathan, your headmaster rang me. He says you keep talking to yourself in class.”

  Barely in time he saw how to tell something like the truth. “I was just trying to get things right.”

  “So that’s why you were reading out your essay the other night. You’ll have to stop doing it at school, though, or you’ll have people thinking you’re-You’ll put them off their own work.”

  He thought he’d convinced her all was well. He was on his way to bed when he overheard her saying “It’s my mother again. Living with her, that’s what’s made him so nervy, and no wonder.”

  He dashed into his room and huddled in the bed to pray. He had to stop when he heard Trudy and his mother on the stairs: if his mother overheard him she would think he was mad - she’d almost said so - while explaining his behaviour seemed capable of making the situation even worse. At last his prayers under the bedclothes gave way to sleep and then to muddy daylight that smelled of hot food.

  His mother and Trudy insisted on kissing him before he could escape from the car. He hastened through the gates to find his tormentors awaiting him. “How many mothers have you got?” enquired the boy with the grubby upper lip.

  His singularly hairy crony imitated his disgusted grin. “Do they both live at your house?”

  “Why shouldn’t they?” Jonathan was confused enough to ask.

  “Bet your grandma wouldn’t like it.”

  “Bet they’re glad she’s dead.”

  “Bet they wouldn’t want to smell her now, though.”

  All Jonathan’s dismay and bewilderment surged like bile into his mouth. “Maybe you will.”

  The boys looked as if he’d shocked them by going further than they dared. “What do you reckon you’ll do?” the boy with the sole hair spluttered.

  “Nothing. You’ve done it,” Jonathan told them and hid in the crowd.

  He wasn’t going to pray to protect them. He didn’t mutter once in class. He mustn’t ask his mother about Trudy in case his grandmother might indeed have disapproved of her - in case that made his mother say things he would have to rectify. Instead he could tell her about his day} except that when she and Trudy came home, holding hands just long enough fo
r him to see, she surprised him by asking “Would you like Lawrence to pick you up from school tomorrow?”

  “Don’t you mind?”

  “Why would anyone mind? That way you can spend a long weekend with him to make up for the last one and Trudy and I will sort out the house.”

  Would that include his grandmother’s room? Tonight he had no sense of her presence. If the room was cleared out, mightn’t that mean she would stay with Jesus, since she would have nowhere to return to? He thought it best to continue praying once he was in bed. “Please God don’t let her hear us saying anything bad about her,” he repeated on the way to sleep.

  He felt as if he’d hidden the implications of his words from himself until he was back at school. He couldn’t see his tormentors when he braved the yard. He left his suitcase full of clothes and other weekend items in the secretary’s office and hurried out to search, only to be found by Mr Foster, who was on yard duty. “There’s a pensive young face.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “No need to apologise for thinking.” As Jonathan wondered if that was necessarily true, the teacher said “Feeling more at home now?”

  “I think so, sir.”

  “You can expect a respite from the comedy, at any rate.”

  Jonathan had noticed none. “Which is that, sir?”

  “The comedians. The young teasers you encountered earlier in the week. The school will have to do without their routines for a while.”

  That almost robbed Jonathan of the breath it took to demand “Why?”

  “They appear to have taken up slapstick.” Mr Foster frowned at himself or at Jonathan’s terseness. “They climbed up on a roof they should have known wouldn’t support them, not that they ought to have been anywhere near it.”

  What might they have been fleeing? Jonathan’s grandmother would have said they’d brought it on themselves. Having thanked Mr Foster, who seemed to wonder why, he found a gap between two school buildings to hide in. “Please God look after my grandma now. Don’t let her hear anything else bad,” he added, and “I expect those boys have learned their lesson.”

  He wouldn’t have minded if they had returned to school in time to see his father collect him in the Land Rover. His father had finished work early, having designed enough houses for one week. He’d once said Jonathan’s grandmother’s house was too big for today and itself, which she’d taken as an insult. “We’ll have a lively weekend, shall we?” he said, shaking Jonathan’s hand.

  Jonathan tried as hard as he could tell his father’s lady did. She was called but not spelled Zoh, and kept attempting to make her face even smaller and prettier while she acted girlish with his father or motherly with Jonathan. She and his father took him to restaurants and films and a museum and a game where they had to dodge through a maze and shoot one another with lasers, Zoh emitting a coy reproachful squeal whenever she was hit. Between some of these events he spent time in their apartment, where the rooms were uncluttered and elegantly plain and unobtrusively warm. He was sure they were just the right size, not least his bedroom, but he felt as if the place wasn’t quite reaching him. Perhaps it was the other way round, since he couldn’t stop wondering what was happening at his grandmother’s house.

  Wondering overwhelmed his English homework. The harder he struggled to resolve his uncertainty or to write, the more the page and his brain competed at blankness. He had to welcome the sight of half a car on Sunday, though it was only Trudy who had come for him. He even wished he hadn’t greeted her with “Where’s mum?”

  “Making a welcome-home dinner.”

  Given the looks Trudy was exchanging with Zoh and his father, Jonathan felt all the more anxious to return to his grandmother’s. “See you next weekend,” he said, dealing his father’s hand a shake and disappointing Zoh with one before scrambling into the car.

  The fairground neon of the city centre had faded beyond the old and in some cases unbroken lamps standing guard throughout the suburb when Trudy said “Had a good break?”

  “What from? I don’t need a break from my mum.”

  “Nor from me either, I hope.”

  He felt bound to be polite while he tried to think. “No,” he mumbled.

  “That’s good. Esther and I have had a chance to get a few things clearer.”

  All at once he was certain he knew why they’d wanted him out of the way - knew what he’d failed to realise. “You’ve been talking about my grandma.”

  “Among other issues.”

  “What did you say about her?”

  “Me, nothing to speak of.”

  “What did mum?”

  “Quite a flood. Everything she had to. It wasn’t all bad.”

  “How much was?”

  “Best if you discuss it together. I expect she’d like to share your memories now.”

  She mustn’t until he’d remembered enough to counteract hers. Why hadn’t he written about his grandmother while he’d had the chance? As the car turned along her street he felt like a small animal trapped inside his own head, darting about in search of a way of escape. He would have to flee upstairs and pray his hardest without being heard by his mother, but how long would she leave before coming to find him?

  His suitcase dragged his arm down as he followed Trudy to the house. The shadow of a branch clutched at her wrist when she inserted his grandmother’s key in the lock. He wished he were seeing his grandmother catch hold of her as the door swung inwards, revealing the dark.

  Why was the house unlit if his mother was home? It didn’t feel deserted, and her car was in the drive. He hung back until Trudy switched on the chandelier, illuminating a note in his mother’s handwriting on the third stair. Just run down the road for ingredients, it said.

  So it wasn’t his mother he sensed waiting in the house. At once he was sure what to do. His grandmother’s condition was Trudy’s fault - she’d encouraged his mother to say all she could. Had his mother even finished? Perhaps she might have more and worse to say if Trudy stayed. He used his luggage to push the front door shut and dumped his suitcase in the hall. “Come and see something,” he said.

  “Is it a surprise?” Trudy said, widening her eyes and raising half her mouth.

  “You’ll have to say,” he told her and turned hastily to the stairs.

  The house felt as breathless with anticipation as he was. The creak of stairs counted the seconds and confirmed Trudy was following. The chandelier seemed to lower itself like a huge murkily luminous spider while the door of his grandmother’s room held itself still as a trap. On the landing he halted, uncertain whether he’d heard the faintest sound beyond her door - a shuffling that grew thinner, increasingly less suggestive of feet, as it approached. “What is it, Jonathan?” Trudy said.

  “Your surprise. Come and look.”

  On the whole she seemed pleased he’d grabbed her hand. She accompanied him willingly enough, even when he seized the icy knob and flung open his grandmother’s door. “You put the light on,” he said.

  “Of course, if you want me to.” Making it clear that she was puzzled but determined, she stepped through the doorway and pressed down the switch with a fingertip. “What am I meant to be seeing, Jonathan? It’s just a room.”

  “Have a better look,” he said, though he was tempted to believe her: the room was emptier than last time he’d seen it -the bed had been stripped to its stale piebald mattress. His grandmother wouldn’t want to lie on that; perhaps she was hiding in one of the massive wardrobes, though she’d disliked games she considered to be childish. He urged himself into the room and swung around to catch Trudy’s hand again. “Let’s look in-”

  His voice froze in his throat as he saw what was crouched behind her in the dimmest corner of the room. It could almost have been a swollen bunch of sticks, except that it was patched with rags of clothes or skin. Lolling on top of it was an object that looked pinched with chill and peeling with damp and distorted by worse than either. It hadn’t much he would have liked to call a
mouth or a nose, and was crowned with lumps of dust or hair. He might not have recognised it if his grandmother’s eyes hadn’t been glaring out of a section like an irregular piece of old toadstool. He hung onto Trudy and nodded at the corner. “There,” he whispered.

  She kept her gaze on him. “What now, Jonathan?”

  “What you wanted. It’s behind you, look.”

  “You mustn’t do things like that. Even if you’re still upset it isn’t very pleasant, is it? You can tell me what’s wrong. I’d like you to, it’d make me feel more like family. Just talk.”

  He saw his grandmother’s eyes bulge in the remnant of a face while the rest of her crouched smaller and lower as if she was about to spring. He tried to drag Trudy to confront this - he was growing desperate enough to reach up for her head to twist it round. “I will if you look.”

  He felt her grow tense and make herself relax. She was beginning to turn her head when the shape in the corner unfolded itself and tottered to its full height. It jerked out a hand with little in the way of fingers, and he thought it was going to fasten on Trudy’s shoulder. The next moment the light was gone, and Trudy clutched at him. “Did you-”

  He wriggled free and dodged out of the room, snatching the door shut. If Trudy switched the light on she would come face to face with the thing she’d made of his grandmother, and otherwise she would be alone with it in the dark. It was suddenly apparent to him that his grandmother didn’t want anyone to see her as she was now, and he wondered what she might do to gain control of the light-switch. He was hanging onto the doorknob with both hands when the front door slammed. “I’m back again,” his mother called. “Where’s everyone?”

  “Could you come up?” Trudy responded rather less than steadily. “I’m shut in and I can’t seem to find…”

  “Where are you? Hold on.” Jonathan’s mother ran upstairs and halted at the top. “Where’s Trudy?” she asked him. “What are you-”

  “I’m in here, Esther.”

  “What on earth do you think you’re doing, Jonathan? Let go at once.”