The doll who ate his mother: a novel of modern terror

by Ramsey Campbell

  He leaned forward at Clare, gripping his knees; she sat back involuntarily. “I’ve tried to describe that expression for years,” he said. “You’ve seen lads of that age. There he was, picking his nose while nobody was watching, staring out the window, looking a bit aimless and bored. And all of a sudden, just as we came to Mulgrave Street, this other expression came welling up—welling up, and I don’t care if this sounds melodramatic, like poison. It was the unhealthiest look of anticipation I’ve ever seen in my life.

  “But that doesn’t make you even begin to see it. He looked eager, dreadfully eager, to do something he wanted to keep secret even from himself. He looked apprehensive and somehow secretly delighted all at once. His eyes were shifting about as if he were afraid to see himself, and he was licking his lips, really, licking his lips. He didn’t look that way long. We were only a few blocks past Mulgrave Street when the expression went back into him. But believe me, it was hotter than today, yet it took me a while to get warm again. And he had that expression at the spot where your brother was killed.”

  He was gazing at her. “Well, that’s strange,” Clare said, “but even so—”

  “Oh, that isn’t all. That was only what made me begin watching him. And you know, that look was there most of the time. Not as blatant as that, obviously. But it was there, a kind of tension and anticipation. He was waiting for something.

  “Now, I never thought it related to the school. School doesn’t make kids look like that. Once or twice the expression looked as if it might surface. I pointed it out to some of my friends, but all they could think of was he’d left his glasses at home, his eyes were strained. But he never wore glasses. I’d found out that about him, and his name, Christopher Kelly. Nobody else seemed to see what I saw in his face. I began to get as tense as he looked, with waiting.

  “The first thing that happened was the cat. This cat lived in one of the houses opposite the school, or it may have been a stray that begged its meals round there. It used to come and howl outside the playground, and we’d feed it when the masters weren’t looking. We were trying to entice it in to have it off with the school cat, though I don’t think anyone was even sure what sex it was.

  “One day it got run over. Someone was waving a sandwich at it through the railings, and it came straight across the road and under a car. The driver just left it twitching in the middle of the road. Most of the younger boys were terribly upset. Most of the older ones too, though we tried not to show it. But not Kelly.

  “He stood and watched that cat twitch and die. And then he held on to the railings and watched the dead cat. I think he’d have stood there all day if a master hadn’t made him leave off. As it was, he must have stood there for ten minutes, because the masters were busy cheering people up. When they took the cat away he was still trying to see, past everyone else who was trying not to hear the shovel scraping it up.”

  He squirmed a little at the memory, but his amusement was less faint now: Clare could see he enjoyed storytelling. “That wouldn’t have been much by itself,” he said. “I mean, he was a nasty morbid child, but nothing that could bring me back to Liverpool this way. But there was something else. What he did to the school bully.”

  Clare felt herself grow tense. This was what had brought Edmund to see her. He was about to give form to the figure which had loomed up through the orange glow, peering in at her.

  “The bully’s name was Cyril,” Edmund said. “With a name like that, perhaps he had to be a bully. He was in my year, but he behaved years younger. He was a big lout, though. He picked a fight with me once, I think because someone had dared him. He got in a couple of good ones before I knocked him down,” and he tapped the dent in his nose.

  “He had to pick on Kelly sooner or later. Kelly was a fat boy, you see. Now the whole school had one playground, juniors and seniors together. It was supposed to make the older boys take responsibility for the younger. But most of the time you got the older ones bullying the younger or feeling them up, and those of us who didn’t tended not to interfere. So it meant that Cyril could follow Kelly around the playground every day, calling him Billy Bunter, Fatty Arbuckle, trying to nudge him into a fight.

  “Now Cyril was a butcher’s son. He always used to smell of raw meat, him and his clothes. When he was younger we made fun of that, holding our noses, you know. That probably helped make him a bully.

  “Well, I wanted to see what Kelly would do, you can imagine. I followed them all over the playground. Cyril kept it up for a week at least. Until one very hot day, when he smelled like a butcher’s all by himself. And Kelly turned on him. Cyril had said something. “You look like a tub of lard,” something like that. And just as if he were answering a remark, Kelly looked at him and said, ‘You stink.’

  “That was odd, you know. Kids aren’t that unemotional. He looked just as if he’d had the thought and said it. Of course Cyril thought he’d got his fight at last. So he said, ‘You what?’

  “‘You stink,’ Kelly said.

  “Well, Cyril brought his arm back to belt him across the mouth. He’d flung his jacket off, and Kelly must have got the whole of that butcher’s smell. And I saw that expression come rushing into his eyes. I think I might even have warned Cyril, if there’d been time.

  “You’ve seen kids fight. Girls fight worse than boys, they tell me. But you haven’t seen anything like this. Cyril never managed to hit him at all. Because Kelly went straight under his guard and fastened his teeth in his upper arm, just above the elbow.

  “And he wouldn’t let go. Cyril tore at his hair and clawed his face, but he wouldn’t let go. They must have been able to hear Cyril screaming in the school, because half the masters came running. The one on playground duty was strolling about with a book, but he threw that book away and ran over so fast he knocked someone down. But even he couldn’t get Kelly to let go, not until he dragged him off. When he did, Kelly took a piece of Cyril’s arm with him.”

  He searched Clare’s face for horror. She was wondering how she would have coped if it had happened at her school. “The worst thing,” he said, “which I think you need to hear to understand, is that when he’d dragged him off, the master had to hold Kelly’s nose and take hold of his jaw to force him to open his mouth.”

  “God,” she said. “Poor kid.” She realized she meant both of them.

  “Kelly’s mother came to the school that afternoon,” he said. “If she was his mother—she was pretty old. A woman, anyway. Our classroom was opposite the headmaster’s study. My desk was by the window. I could see Kelly and the head sitting in there, waiting. Then the woman and Kelly’s class teacher came in. The head had told us to close all the windows, so we couldn’t hear. But we could see him telling her what had happened. Then she began to tell him something.

  “I don’t know what that was. But I saw the effect it had on the class teacher. They’d moved Kelly to the back of the room, where I couldn’t see him, and the head was out of sight round the window. But that teacher—I’ve never seen anyone so crippled with horror. He just stood there going white. The woman was pointing her thumb back at Kelly as if she couldn’t bear to look at him, and the teacher was staring back at him as if he were trying to feel pity but couldn’t get through the horror. He was off school for weeks after that, that teacher. He was always fond of his kids.”

  What could a child of eleven have done, so to affect a teacher who was fond of him? Clare felt the horror now, close to her amid the murmur of the evening. Suppose it had been one of her class—what could be so horrible about a child? “Didn’t you ever find out what she’d said?” Her voice shook before she could take hold of it.

  “Never. That was his last day at that school, you see. Oddly enough, he moved to a school near where I lived. And I left school for good a month later. I saw him once or twice on buses. In fact, it was wondering what there was in his past to make him behave as he had that got me interested in the kind of thing I write about. But when I saw him on the buses, that e
xpression of his had gone. I thought the business with Cyril must have cured him. Now I’m sure he was simply biding his time.”

  Clare stared behind her at the open window, at the murmuring dark. He was somewhere out there. He had leaned toward her in the orange light, peering, hurrying back to the lamp standard in the mirror and stooping. “You’ve got all that written down, haven’t you?” she said harshly. He couldn’t have Rob to use in his glib storytelling.

  “Does it show? I’m sorry if I seemed unfeeling. I’ve had twelve years to think about it, remember. I send off the chapters as soon as they’re written, in case they want revisions.” He was searching her face anxiously; his nose twitched. “As you say, it’s my job,” he said. “I told you this in all good faith. You know his name now, which is more than the police do. I can’t stop you telling them.”

  He looked like a child confronted with betrayal. “Of course I won’t tell them,” she said impatiently.

  “Then you’ll help me? It isn’t only for my book. He needs to be caught for his own sake as much as anyone’s.”

  “I don’t know.” All right, she was wrong to condemn him for doing his job: she was still uneasy. The spell of his story was wearing off, and she knew that something had been missing. “I see how all you’ve said fits together,” she said. “But I can’t see why you’re sure he was the man who killed my brother. I can’t see how you can have been sure enough to come down from London.”

  “Because of your brother? That wouldn’t have brought me by itself,” he said. “Don’t you read the papers?”

  “I buy them mostly for the crosswords. Why?”

  “Because your crash wasn’t the only thing. There was an old lady and her dog, nearly four weeks ago.”

  Thursday,

  August 7

  He was lying in the earth.

  There was a house on top of him.

  He was gazing down at the earth beneath which he lay. He began to dig. He had to find himself, beneath the moist sucking earth and the wriggling insects. He felt the dark, still house alert above him, behind his back, and dug faster in panic, spitting out mouthfuls of earth. He could feel himself coming closer, coming up out of the earth. When he saw himself, the two of himself would be one. He forced his face deeper into the earth, seeking impatiently.

  The man awoke snarling. He lay in the dark for a moment, then snatched at the light. He didn’t like lying in the dark. It was too much like lying in earth. He lay trying to subdue his heart.

  He wouldn’t be able to sleep again. He never could, after the dream. Somewhere a bell tolled four in the morning. He laughed, a mirthless grunt. He didn’t need to be told. That was always the time of the dream.

  He went to the window, but darkness lay thick as mud in the backyards; a dim glow crawled on the houses. He closed the window and drew the curtains, but the flat was already too hot. When he tried to read he was constantly aware of the dark beyond the curtains, sucking him down.

  The book struck the wall and fell, broken-winged. He thrust himself into some old drab clothes, which always felt right for this hour. He had nearly slammed the door of the flat when he caught the handle and eased it quietly shut. Then he tiptoed downstairs and out of the house. He would have used the fire escape outside his window if it hadn’t been for the dark in the yard.

  The inert sodium light hung about him. The gravel beneath the trees squealed underfoot. A breeze touched him, but the light never moved. He had to reach somewhere, or flee somewhere. Of course he knew where. Abreast of Mulgrave Street he halted, staring past Christ posed like a starving diver on the wall.

  He wasn’t going there. Whatever was up that street, he wasn’t going. It was pulling at him, pulling him into the desire to cross the carriageway and walk up the deserted street among the windowless houses, pulling him into a tiny intense point of impulse, stretching him as if through a pinprick in darkness. He felt pulling every time he passed the street. But it was worse now; it felt like the time he’d eaten dope. He climbed back out of himself in panic, grabbing at the orange light, the breeze, the trees along the central reservation, the squeaking gravel.

  The gravel. The gravel had squeaked as he’d walked across toward Mulgrave Street, moments before the car had come hurtling at him. He heard the car thud against the lamp standard, the scattering of glass. He saw the car thump the tree, the dark eyecatching splash of blood. He turned his back on Mulgrave Street and began to hurry toward North Hill Street, opposite.

  It was all right. He hadn’t hurt anyone, after all. The crash hadn’t been his fault. He had been preoccupied. What he had done afterward hurt nobody. He walked past shuttered corner shops, past the dark open mouths of a launderette, their lids ajar. Beneath the flat hats of the lampposts hung conical drops of cold white light.

  This was no good. He was simply becoming more restless. His mind was shifting uneasily, snatching feebly at passing thoughts, vainly searching the deserted street for something to grasp. He hurried into one of the side terraces of little two-bedroomed houses. The houses were closer; he might feel less isolated. They must have outside toilets, like his childhood home.

  Beneath the white glare of the streetlamps, curtains hung faded, dead. Between the lamps the houses lay under shadow like dusty glass. The icy light stood close to him; he felt all the more isolated. His footsteps tapped on the still houses.

  He emerged onto High Park Street. It was wider, and emptier. Even the sodium glow of Princes Road at the end seemed more welcoming. He hurried toward the orange carriageway. Beyond the trees he saw a disused church, its blackened rose window like a fossilized plant behind barbed wire.

  To his right, beyond the locked gates of Princes Park, ducks squawked amid the mud and litter of the lake. Otherwise, everything was silent, even the carriageway. He stood on the pavement of Princes Road. Opposite him, across the reservation, Princes Avenue led out of the city; the two halves of the dual carriageway bore different names. Somehow it reminded him of himself. He laughed, almost snarling.

  He walked along the reservation, back toward his flat. The trees creaked stealthily in a breeze. He would have to pass Mulgrave Street again. During the day it didn’t matter, but at this hour it made him feel helpless. Already it was pulling at him.

  He couldn’t stand the silence, nor the trees, whispering around him like visitors at a sick-bed. He began to kick at the gravel and to roar wordlessly. He hoped he was waking people up; if someone looked out to protest, he would be less alone. No, nothing less than a crash or a car theft would bring them to their windows. If they were listening, no doubt they thought he was drunk.

  He was a block from Mulgrave Street when he saw the face at the ground-floor window.

  It was laughing at him. It had come to the window to jeer. The wide mouth in the flat, drooping, almost noseless face hung open; the pink tongue lolled out, shaking; the small eyes stared at him. He had to cross to the pavement before he made out that it was a bulldog.

  He stared at it, over the garden into which someone had hurled a stray brick at a flower. The dog panted at him, dribbling; its claws scraped in the crack beneath the just-open sash. He felt a rush of pure cold hatred. The flat dripping face and wobbling fat body were unbearable. It shouldn’t be there in the window, jeering at him.

  He opened the gate slowly, minutely. Then he began to creep toward the window, hardly moving at all. He no longer felt the pull toward Mulgrave Street. It took him minutes to stoop to the flowerbed. As he straightened up the dog growled softly.

  He crept across the lawn, placing his feet delicately, silently. The dog kept glancing away from his gaze, shaking its head. Its low growl grew louder, never faltering. It was gathering itself to bark as he threw up the sash and smashed its face with the brick.

  He gazed down over the sill. His actions already felt like a memory. The dog lay twitching on the Persian carpet, fat and raw; its blood added to the pattern. When it had died he glanced behind him. Trees and orange lamps queued both ways along the
deserted carriageway. Quickly he climbed into the room.

  He heard the old woman almost at once.

  “Rex?” she was calling. “Rex?” She was just beyond the door ahead of him. He heard a bed creak as she stood up. Slippered feet shuffled toward the door. He had heard how her voice wavered. There was no need for him to run.

  When she switched on the light it seemed to freeze her, like a flashbulb. She stared at him, her mouth and eyes gaping. Then she stumbled forward, one hand clawing viciously toward him. She gave a wordless furious shriek. She had taken two steps when her face squeezed tight with pain and she doubled over as if a hook had caught her heart. He gazed at her as she fell. He might have spoken, but his mouth was full.

  He listened to the silence of the house. Then he went over to her. She was dead, no doubt of that; he could tell by the way her arm flopped on the carpet when he let it go, the way her head rolled when he pushed at her cheeks. He squatted beside her, pondering the way the wrinkles of her face seemed looser now.

  He stepped over the dog and peered out of the window. Still there was no sound or movement on the carriageway. He thought of switching off the light. No: fingerprints. He had one foot on the sill when he turned and stared at the old woman’s body. After a moment he reached out and drew the curtains tight. Then he went back across the room.

  Thursday,

  September 4

  “There’s a Mr. Edmund Hall and a lady to see you,” Mrs. Freeman said.

  “All right, all right,” George Pugh said irritably. “Tell them I’m coming in a minute, will you?”

  He gazed over the stalls at the screen. Ryan O’Neal and the girl with the boxer’s name gazed at each other, in love; a long hair danced between them, trying to get out of their way. A giant purple thumb groped along the bottom of the screen, trying to tweak away the hair; faint cheers from the front stalls urged it on. The lovers gazed, oblivious of the struggle. The hair leapt off the screen; its tip waved a defiant farewell from the edge. Its fans in the front stalls applauded.