‘Only a joke, was it?’ Lamson asked, his anger inflamed with indignation at the old man’s ill-concealed contempt for him. ‘And I suppose it was only a joke when you followed me here as well? Or did you have some other purpose in mind? Did you?’
‘P’raps I was only tryin’ to make sure you came to no ’arm. Wouldn’t want no ’arm to come to you now, would I? After all, you bought that ’ead off o’ me fair an’ square, didn’t you? Though it does seem an awful shame to me to toss it into the canal there. Awful shame it’d be. Where’d you get another bit o’ stone like that? It’s unique, you know, that’s what it is right enough. Unique. Wouldn’t want to throw it into no canal, would you? Where’s the sense in it? Or the use? Could understand if there was somethin’ bad an’ nasty about it. Somethin’ unpleasant, like. But what’s bad an’ nasty about that? Don’t give you no nightmares, now, does it? Nothin’ like that? Course not! Little bit o’ stone like that? An’ yet, ’ere you are, all ’et up an’ ready to toss it away, an’ no reason to it. I can’t understand it at all. I can’t. I swear it.’ He shook his head reproachfully, though there was a cunning grin about his misshapen mouth, as if laughing at a secret joke. ‘Throwin’ it away,’ he went on in the same infuriatingly mocking voice, ‘Ne’er would ha’ thought o’ doin’ such a thing— old bit o’ stone like that. You know ’ow much it might be worth? Can you even guess? Course not! An’ yet you get it for next to nothin’ off o’ me, only keep it for a day or so, then the next thing I knows, ’ere you are all ready to toss it like an empty can into the canal. An’ that’s what you’ve come ’ere for, isn’t it?’
‘And if it is, why are you here?’ Lamson asked angrily. The old man knew too much—far, far too much. It wasn’t natural! ‘What are you?’ he asked. ‘And why have you been spying on me? Come on, give me an answer!’
‘An answer, is it? Well, p’raps I will. It’s too late now, I can tell, for me to do any ‘arm in lettin’ you know. ’E’s ’ad ’is ’ands on you by now, no doubt, Eh?’
Lamson felt a stirring in his loins as he remembered the dream he had woken from barely two hours ago. But the old man couldn’t mean that. It was impossible for him to know about it, utterly, completely, irrefutably impossible! Lamson tried to make himself leave, but he couldn’t, not until he had heard what the old man had to say, even though he knew that he didn’t want to listen. He had no choice. He couldn’t. ‘Are you going to answer my questions?’ he asked, his voice sounding far more firm than he felt.
The tramp leered disgustedly.
‘’Aven’t ’ad enough, ’ave you? Want to ’ear about it as well?’
‘As well as what?’
The tramp laughed. ‘You know. Though you pretend that you don’t, you know all right. You know.’ He wiped one watering, red-rimmed eye. ‘I ’spect you’ll please ’im a might bit better ’n’ me. For a while, at least. I wasn’t much for ’im, even at the first. Too old. Too sick. Even then I was too sick. Sicker now, though, o’ course. But that’s ’ow it is. That’s ’ow it’s got to be, I s’ppose. ’E wears you out. That ’e does. Wears you out. But you, now, you, you’re as young as ’e could ask for. An’ fit. Should last a while. A long, long while, I think, before ’e wears you out. Careful! Wouldn’t want to drop ’im now, would you?’
It seemed as if something cold and clammy was clenching itself like some tumorous hand inside him. With a shudder of revulsion, Lamson looked down at the stone in his hand. Was he mistaken or was there a look of satisfaction on its damnable face? He stared at it hard, feeling himself give way to a nauseating fear that drained his limbs of their strength.
‘I thought you were o’ the right sort for ’im when I saw you on that lane,’ the tramp said. ‘I’m ne’er wrong ’bout things like that.’
As if from a great distance Lamson heard himself ask what he meant.
‘Right sort? What the fucking hell do you mean: the right sort?’
‘Should ha’ thought you’d know,’ he replied, touching him on the hand with his withered fingers.
Lamson jerked his hand away.
‘You dirty old sod!’ he snapped, fear and disgust adding tension to his voice. ‘You—you…’ He did not want to face the things hinted at. He didn’t! They were lies, all lies, nothing but lies! With a sudden cry of half hearted annoyance, both at the tramp and at himself for his weakness, he pushed past and ran back along the towpath. He ran as the rain began to fall with more force and the sky darkened overhead. He ran as the city began to come to life and church bells tolled their beckoning chimes for the first services of the day.
‘I can’t understand you,’ Sutcliffe said as he collected a couple of pints from the bar and brought them back to their table by the door. ‘Excuse me,’ he added, as he pushed his chair between a pair of outstretched legs from the next table. ‘Right. Thanks.’
Loosening his scarf, he sat down with a shake of his tousled head.
‘Like the Black Hole of Calcutta in here,’ he said. He took a sip of his pint, watching Lamson as he did so. His friend’s face looked so pale and lifeless these days, its unhealthiness emphasized by the dark sores that had erupted about his mouth.
‘In what way can’t you understand me?’ Lamson asked.
There was a dispirited tiredness to his voice which Sutcliffe could tell didn’t spring from boredom or disinterest.
Folding his arms, Sutcliffe leant over the table towards him.
‘It’s two weeks now since you last went out with Joan. And that was the night we all went to the Tavern. Since then nothing. No word or anything. From you… But Joan has called round to your flat four times this week, though you weren’t apparently in. Unless you’ve found someone else you’d better know that she won’t keep on waiting for you to see her. She has her pride, and she can tell when she’s being snubbed. Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t like you to think I’m interfering, but it was Joan who asked me to mention this to you if I should bump into you. So, if you have some reason for avoiding her, I’d be glad if you’d let me know.’ He shrugged, slightly embarrassed by what he’d had to say. ‘If you’d prefer to tell me to mind my own bloody business I’d understand, of course. But, even if only for Joan’s sake, I’d rather you’d say something.’
Suppressing a cough, Lamson wiped his mouth with a handkerchief, held ready in his hand. He wished he could tell Sutcliffe the reason why he was avoiding Joan, for a deliberate avoidance it was.
‘I haven’t been feeling too good recently,’ he replied evasively.
‘Is it anything serious?’
Lamson shook his head. ‘No, it’s nothing serious. I’ll be better in a while. A bad dose of flu, that’s all. But it’s been lingering on.’
Sutcliffe frowned. He did not like the way in which his friend was acting these days, so unlike the open and friendly manner in which he had always behaved before, at least with him. Even allowing for flu, this neither explained the change in his character nor the peculiar swellings about his mouth. If it was flu, it was a flu of a far more serious nature than any he’d ever had himself. And how, for Christ’s sake, could that explain the way in which his skin seemed to have become coarse and dry, especially about the knuckles on his hands?
‘Have you been eating the right kinds of foods?’ Sutcliffe asked. ‘I know what it can be like living in a flat. Tried it once for a while. Never again! Give me a boarding house anytime. Too much like hard work for me to cook my own meals, I can tell you. I dare say you find it much like that yourself.’
‘A little,’ Lamson admitted, staring at his beer without interest or appetite as three men wearing election rosettes pressed by towards the bar. One of them said:
‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it wasn’t something all these Asians have been bringing into the country. There’s been an increase in TB already, and that was almost unheard of a few years ago.’
‘It’s certainly like nothing I’ve ever heard of, that’s for sure,’ one of the other two said.
&nbs
p; As the men waited for their drinks, one of them turned round, smiling in recognition when he saw Lamson.
‘Hello there. I didn’t notice you were here when we came in.’
‘Still working hard, I see,’ Lamson said, nodding at the red, white and blue National Front rosette on the man’s jacket.
‘No rest for the wicked. Someone’s got to do the Devil’s work,’ the man joked as the other two smiled in appreciation of his joke. ‘It’s the local elections in another fortnight,’ he added.
Collecting their drinks, the men sat down at the table beside Lamson and Sutcliffe.
‘I overheard you talking about TB. Has there been a sudden outbreak or something?’ Lamson asked.
‘Not TB,’ the man said. ‘We’ve just been talking to an old woman who told us that a tramp was found dead in an alleyway near her house earlier this week. From what we were able to gather from her, even the ambulance men themselves, who you’d think would be pretty well-hardened to that kind of thing, were shaken by what they saw.’
‘What was it’’ Sutcliffe asked. ‘A mugging?’
‘No,’ Reynolds—the man who had spoken—said with a dull satisfaction. ‘Apparently he died from some kind of disease. They’re obviously trying to keep news about it down, though we’re going to try to find out what we can about it. So far there’s been no mention in the press, though the local rag—Billy’s Weekly Liar—isn’t acting out of character there, especially with the elections coming up. So, just what it is we don’t know, though it must be serious. Sickening, is how the old woman described him, though how she got a look at him is anybody’s guess. But you know what these old woman are like. Somehow or other she managed to get a bloody good look—too good a look, I think, for her own peace of mind in the end! According to what she told us there were swellings and sores and discolourations all over his body. And blood dripping out of his mouth, as if his insides had been eaten away.’
Lamson shuddered.
‘What’s the matter?’ Sutcliffe asked as he lit a cigarette.
Lamson smiled weakly.
‘Just someone stepping over my grave, that’s all,’ he said. He took a long drink of his beer as the three men drained theirs. Putting his glass down, empty, Reynolds stood up. ‘We’d better be off back to our canvassing or someone’ll be doing a clog dance on our graves. And we’ll be in them!’
As the men left, Lamson said that he could do with a whisky.
‘Just because of what you heard about some poor old sod of a tramp?’ Sutcliffe asked.
‘It’s not him,’ Lamson replied. ‘God help his miserable soul, but he was probably better off dead anyway.’ Though what he said was meant to sound offhand, his voice lacked the lightness of tone to carry it off successfully. Realizing this, he pushed his glass away. ‘I’m sorry—I must seem like poor company tonight. I think it would perhaps be better if I set off home. Perhaps we’ll meet up again tomorrow night? Yes?’
‘If you say so,’ Sutcliffe replied amicably. ‘You do look a bit under the weather tonight.’ A Hell of a lot under the weather, he added silently to himself. ‘Anyhow, now that you mention it, it’s about time I was on my way as well. I’ll walk along with you to my bus stop. It’s on your way.’
As they stepped out of the pub, Sutcliffe asked if he had been sleeping well recently.
‘What makes you ask?’
‘Your eyes,’ Sutcliffe said as the wind pushed against them, a torn newspaper scuttering along the gutter. ‘Red-rimmed and bleary. You ought to get a few early nights. Or see if your doctor can prescribe some sleeping pills for you. It’s probably what you need.’
Lamson stared down the road as they walked along it. How cold and lonely it looked, even with the cars hissing by through puddles of rain, and the people walking hurriedly along the pavement. There was a smell of fish and chips and the pungent aroma of curry as they passed a takeaway, but even this failed to make him feel at home on the street. He felt foreign and lost, alienated to the things and places which had previously seemed so familiar to him. Even with Sutcliffe he felt almost alone, sealed within himself.
As they parted a few minutes later at Sutcliffe’s stop outside the Unit Four on Market Street, his friend said:
‘I’ll be expecting you tomorrow. You’ve been keeping far too much to yourself recently. If you don’t watch out you’ll end up a hermit, and that’s no kind of fate for a friend of mine. So mind you’re ready when I call round. Okay?’
Lamson said that he would be. There was no point in trying to evade him. Sutcliffe was too persistent for that. Nor did he really want to evade him, not deep down. He pulled his coat collar up high about his neck and started off purposefully for his flat.
There was a gloom to his bedroom which came from more than just an absence of light, since even during the day it was there. It was a gloom which seemed to permeate everything within it like a spreading stain. As soon as Lamson stepped inside he was aware of the gloom, in which even the newest of his possessions seemed faded and cheap.
He looked at the stone head.
It drew his attention almost compulsively. Of everything it was the only object in the room that had not been affected by this strange malaise. Was it gloating? he wondered. Gloating at the way in which it had triumphed over everything else in the flat, including (or especially) the framed photo of Joan, with her blond hair curled so characteristically about her face? You’re trapped with me, it seemed to say like some grotesque spider that had caught him on its dusty web, smirking and sneering with its repulsively hybrid, goatlike features. Lamson rubbed his hands together vigorously, trying to push the thoughts out of his mind. I must get rid of the thing, he told himself (as he had continually done, though without result, for the past two weeks).
He glanced at his unmade bed with distaste and a feeling of shame.
‘Oh, God,’ he whispered self-consciously, ‘if only I could get rid of the obsession. Because that is all it is. No more. Only an obsession, which I can and must somehow forget.’ Or was it? There was no way in which he could get away from the doubt. After all, he thought, how could he satisfactorily explain the way in which the tramp had seemed able to read his thoughts and know just what it was that he’d dreamed? Or was he only a part of this same single-minded and delusive obsession? he wondered, somewhat hopefully, as his mind grew dull with tiredness. He glanced at his watch. How much longer could he fight against falling asleep? One hour? Two? Eventually, though, he would have to give in. It was one fight, as he so well knew by now, which no one could win, no matter how much they might want to, or with how much will.
In an effort to concentrate his thoughts he picked out a book from the shelf randomly. It was Over the Bridge by Richard Church. He had quite enjoyed reading it once several months ago, but the words did not seem to have any substance in his brain anymore. Letters, like melting figures of ice, lost form and swam and merged as if the ink was still wet, and slowly soaking through the pages as he watched.
When, as was inevitable, he finally lost consciousness and slept, he became aware of a change in the atmosphere. There was a warmth which seemed womb-like and wrong in the open air. It disturbed him as he looked up at the stars prickling the sky, the deep, black, canopied darkness of the sky.
On every side trees rose from the gloom, their boughs bent over like thousands upon thousands of enormous, extended fingers, black in their damp decay. Their leaves were like limpets, pearly and wet, as they shivered in the rising winds.
Before him a glade led down beneath the trees.
Undecided as to which way he should go, Lamson looked about himself uncertainly, hoping for a sign, for some indication—however faint or elusive—as to which path was the one he should take. There seemed to be so many of them, leading like partially erased pencil lines across a grimy sheet of paper through the over-luxuriant grass. Somewhere there was a sound, though it was so dimmed and distorted by the distance separating him from its source. Sibilantly, vaguely, the rhythmic words
wound their ways between the trees.
Finding himself miming them, he turned his back to the sounds and started for the glade. Even as he moved he knew that he had made a mistake. But he knew, also, with a sudden, wild wrenching of his heart, that there was no escape. Not now. It was something which he knew had either happened before or was preordained, that no matter what he did there was no way in which he could escape from what was going to happen next. He felt damned—by God, the Devil and himself.
Crestfallen, as the awfulness of what he knew was about to happen next came over him, he felt a sudden impulse to scream. Something large and heavy rustled awkwardly through the ferns. Fear, like lust, swelled within him. He felt a loathing and a horror and, inexplicably, a sense of expectation as well, almost as if some small part of him yearned for what it knew was about to take place. He began to sob. How could he escape from this thing—how could he possibly even hope to escape from this thing—if some perverse element within him did not want him to be free?
He turned round to retrace his steps up the glade, but there was something dark stretched across his path, barring his way, some yards ahead of him. It turned towards him and rose. Starlight, filtering through the trees, glittered darkly across its teeth as it smiled.
Lamson turned round and tried to run back down the glade, but the creature was already bounding after him like a great black goat. He felt its claws sink into his shoulders as it forced him forwards, knocking him suddenly face down onto the ground. He tried to scream, but his cries were gagged on dried leaves and soil, as his mouth was gouged into them. The creature’s furiously powerful fingers tore at his clothes, strewing them about him. The winds blew cool against his hot, bare flesh as sweat from the lunging, piston-like body ran down the hollow of his spine.
There was a crash somewhere and the dream ripped apart.
The next instant he seemed to blink his eyes open to find the comforting sight of his familiar bedroom in front of him. The book he had been reading when sleep overcame him earlier, lay against his feet on the floor.
The Satyr's Head: Tales of Terror Page 15