The Influence

by Ramsey Campbell

  It was only a glimpse, but it seemed to leap at her. A figure was crawling toward her at the limit of the headlights. It appeared to be using one hand to drag itself along the tarmac while it held something grey to its scalp with the other, like a wig. All the same, it was coming dismayingly fast. With a scream that her fear seemed to deafen her to, Rowan flung herself away from the hotel, where she couldn’t believe there was any refuge, and fled into the dark.

  She thought she fled for hours toward the false dawn over Prestatyn, and she lost count of the number of times she looked back. Hedges clawed at the air as if they had missed seizing her, but she could make out nothing on the road. She seemed hardly to move past the hills and the fields; she felt as if the vast deserted night were holding her back. If anything, the night seemed even deeper when the glow of the town began to tint the fields. At last the road turned toward a bridge over the railway. She leapt desperately up the bridge and glanced back. The tarry gleam of the road was still bare as far as she could see, yet the lights of the town weren’t nearly reassuring enough.

  To her left a street of boarding houses paralleled the railway. She remembered walking through the town once with Hermione: perhaps the memory was why the small hotels looked so blank and unwelcoming in the relentless light. She remembered signs in English, but now they were all in Welsh, and the only one she understood—Y Ffrith, the beach—was no use to her. Supposing she found a hotel that was open, the people there might fail to understand her or even refuse to. She felt abandoned in a foreign country, picked out by the light as not belonging—but there ahead was a link with the world she knew: a telephone box.

  She was searching her pockets for change when she saw that the box only accepted plastic cards. She dug frantically in her pockets. She’d had all the money her father had given her to spend in Wales, but she must have dropped it in the graveyard. She had no money for the train home.

  There was nowhere to go but the station. Surely the staff would let her phone home or do so on her behalf. It was all right to speak to strangers if they were in uniform: you knew what kind of person they were meant to be. She hurried down the glaring lifeless street to the next footbridge, beside the shoe shop. She’d thought it was called the Cosyfeet Station Shop, but now its sign was in Welsh. Upended slippers gaped against the inside of the window like blind pairs of Mickey Mouse eyes. She turned away uneasily and caught sight of the words British Railways at the entrance to the bridge.

  She felt almost home until she read the sign. Mae British Railways Board yn hysbysu drwy hyn nad eu cyfrifoldeb hwy yw’r llwybr hwn… She no longer wanted to meet anyone in uniform; she was afraid they might ask her questions that would mean no more to her than the sign did. She had to force herself to climb the rough shaky planks of the bridge.

  Beyond the bridge, a few streets of small houses and shops led toward the meeting of black sky and black mountains. Even the taxi stand that served the station was deserted. The main street was brighter than the small platform of the station, but she felt exhausted. She trudged down to the platform and peered at the awning that overhung the booking office. Mustn’t Caer be Chester? She sat on a bench on the Caer side of the platform, with her back to a timetable in Welsh.

  She couldn’t sleep, even if she had dared to. She must be so tired that she’d passed beyond tiredness. She would have stared along the line on which the train should appear, except that now she had time to be afraid that the thing she had glimpsed on the road would come crawling down the line in the opposite direction, clutching whatever it had found to cover its peeling head. Whenever the swings in the playground by the tracks rattled their chains she peered nervously, but Vicky was never there. She tried to imagine how mummy and daddy would hug her when she reached home, but the night seemed so unrelenting she thought it might never end.

  It must have been hours later when the dark began to change, seeping forward, growing paler, cutting short the tracks. By the time she realised this was mist, it had merged with the dawn in a greyness that crept down the mountains and closed around the town. Soon it had blotted out the town itself, isolating her on the platform with a few further yards of railway between dripping embankments. If there was any activity in the streets, she couldn’t hear. If anything was hiding from her just beyond the grey wall that felt like growing blindness, she mightn’t know until it was too late.

  At last she heard a sound, a faint breath that turned into an approaching squeal. She couldn’t tell where it was coming from until the huge blank face of the train loomed out of the mist. She dodged around the booking office for fear that the driver would see her, and huddled against a poster mottled with dew.

  The train screeched to a halt, and there was silence. The train ought to take her to Chester, but how could she make sure that it did? She would have gone to the engineer and told him her plight, except that she couldn’t shake off her fear of foreigners, even in uniform. She tiptoed to the corner of the building and peered along the platform, and saw that a carriage door was open about midway on the train. The windows were grey with condensation, and she could only pray that the car was empty. She darted to the open door and dodged in, and hid between the musty seats.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Derek had never driven so fast into Wales. On the motorway he was up to ninety miles an hour. He slowed to eighty on the Queensferry bypass, and braked to the limit through Shotton and Flint and the occasional village. Now and then he passed a phone box and was tempted to call ahead, but driving made him feel less helpless. All the way into Wales he didn’t see a police station or a single police car.

  He had to slow once he turned off the coast road. Ruins and dark reservoirs sank beneath heaving trees, and he thought how much Rowan loved walking down this valley. He’d take her for a walk here soon, he promised himself, and the promise helped him suppress a surge of panic. He shifted gears to send the car faster up the tortuous road into Holywell.

  Faces peered at him out of Hermione’s shop, but they were only masks. The shop looked dusty in the harsh light from the street, as if it had been locked for months. Dresses Rowan would love to wear hung emptily in the shadows. He’d buy her one, he vowed as he drove up the hill.

  He sucked in a breath as he parked opposite the cottage, for he’d glimpsed a light in Hermione’s bedroom. He slammed the car door and told himself to keep his temper, then he swung towards the cottage. Her window was dark. If he got her out of bed, too bad: she hadn’t had time to fall asleep. He was striding to the cottage when he realised the light had been the reflection of the streetlamp.

  He rang the bell and waited, then he leaned on the button and hammered with the knocker. When he stopped at last, the only sound was of the thin chill wind. His palms were suddenly icy with sweat; his mouth was growing dry. He might have asked the neighbors if they knew where Hermione was, except that although it wasn’t yet midnight, all the cottages were dark. He trudged round to the kitchen window.

  Pots and pans and a drop of water swelling from a tap above the metal sink glimmered as his breath spread grey over the pane. The drip fell, silenced by the glass. Feeling bereaved of ideas as to what to do now, he reached for the handle of the back door. The door was unlocked.

  If Hermione had forgotten to lock it, where had she been taking Rowan in such a hurry? Suppose she had cracked after all? His hand clenched on the chilly metal and snatched the door open. The drip fell again, a sharp dead sound. When he switched on the fluorescent light, the kitchen glared like a walk-in freezer. He hurried into the main room, and a smell of old paper came at him out of the dark.

  He groped for the light switch and stared into the room. Plants bowed their faded heads on the mantel and the windowsill, shadows like cobwebs darkened the whorls of the plaster. The smell was coming from an old photograph album on the Welsh dresser. Remembering that Hermione had forged the message made his stomach writhe as he ran upstairs.

  The rooms were deserted. Rowan’s nightdress lay flat on her bed. He’
d make sure she caught up on her sleep after this, he promised himself fiercely, and faltered on his way down to the phone. Speaking to Alison would release all the fears he was still trying to suppress. Then his eye was caught by the message board nailed above the phone. Among the listings in Hermione’s warily careful script was one for Gwen and Elspeth. Might Hermione have told them her plans for the evening? He grabbed the phone and dialled the Gronant number.

  It had barely rung when it was answered, in Welsh. That and the urgency in the woman’s voice unnerved him. “Can you speak English?” he demanded, and wondered if he’d offended her. “I mean, would you mind? I’ve got the right number, have I? You make stuff for Hermione, don’t you? I’m her brother-in-law.”

  “You mean you’re Rowan’s father.”

  “Yes,” he said, and experienced another rush of panic.

  “Is she with you?”

  “No she isn’t. Why?”

  “You’re her father, aren’t you?” she said, and almost as accusingly “Then why are you calling?”

  He’d meant to avoid harming Hermione’s reputation, but he had to know the truth. “She’s supposed to be staying with Hermione, but we haven’t heard from them all day. I thought you might have an idea where they are.”

  “They were here. I’m Gwen, by the way.”

  She fell silent, and then she said “Hermione left Rowan with us while she was meant to be visiting someone down at the inn. But nobody there knows about it, so it doesn’t look as if she was.”

  He was afraid to ask what she was leaving unsaid, but he had to. “Where’s Rowan?”

  “Do you know a friend of hers called Vicky?”

  “Yes,” he said, and his forehead suddenly felt tight as drying paper.

  “Then you must know where she lives,” Gwen said with relief. “That’s where Rowan is.”

  “How do you mean? Who took her there? Vicky lives somewhere round Waterloo. How can Rowan have gone all that way and not come home?”

  “No, she lives round here. I’m sure that’s what she said. It was Rowan who wanted to go to her house,” she said defensively.

  “You let Rowan go out at night with someone her own age and didn’t even ask where they were going?”

  “I’m sorry, I know I should have. We’ve no children of our own. Elspeth has been driving round for hours. She said she was going to ask at some of the houses.”

  He could hear how upset she was, but that seemed to steal feelings he felt more entitled to. “You should have called the police. I will.”

  “Where are you in case Rowan comes back here?”

  “Hermione’s.”

  “Will you be staying there?”

  “Yes,” he said as if she had trapped him, and made her dictate her address. He pressed the receiver rest down with his thumb while he found the police number on the message board, and dialled with a carefulness that felt like putting off the moment when he would have to speak.

  Whoever answered questioned him so slowly and closely that he sounded half asleep. Was he the father of the missing child? What was the child’s name? What was the child’s address? Was that where he was calling from? Where was he calling from? What was he doing there? Was that the address the child was missing from? Who had told him that the child was missing? What reason did he have to think she was? Had he checked her friend’s address? Every question drew Derek’s forehead tighter around his raw fears. “We’ll send someone as soon as we can,” the policeman said at last, and Derek could only phone Alison.

  The phone rang once in Waterloo. “Who’s there?”

  Her haste caught him by the throat. “It’s me. I’m at Hermione’s. They aren’t here. They went to visit the women who work at the shop, then your sister went off somewhere. They let Rowan go with this Vicky without getting her address. I’ve called the police.”

  “You think that’s necessary?”

  “It might be, mightn’t it? I mean, wouldn’t you have? Just in—just to be safe.”

  “Of course I would have, for that reason. Vicky has relatives over there, hasn’t she? She must have, to have been there when Rowan first met her. Someone must know who. Will you stay at Hermione’s in case someone calls? I’ll be here, obviously.”

  “Call me if you get lonely.”

  “Don’t say that or I will be. Let’s not call each other unless there’s news, all right? Keep the lines clear.”

  “Good night for now then, Ali. Don’t—” He swallowed his advice to her; it would only make her feel worse. “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you. And Rowan loves us both, and we’ll all remember this night when she grows up.”

  “You’d better believe it,” he said fiercely, and patted the rest until it cut her off. He wondered suddenly if Rowan might have left a note, but all he could find in her room was her diary. On today’s page she had written that Hermione had shown her a photograph that looked like Vicky. The idea fed his panic, the sight of her painstaking script made him feel close to weeping. He was still searching the cottage, though by now only to prevent himself from brooding, when the police arrived.

  Had the child and her friend ever gone off like this before? Had he any reason to be suspicious of the friend or any relative of hers? Had he any idea where the child’s aunt might have gone? Could he provide them with a photograph of the child? There was a framed one in Hermione’s room. “Don’t worry, sir, we’ll be in touch as soon as there’s anything to report,” the policeman who was driving said.

  Derek was staring at the hole in the dark where the taillights had been when a woman in her sixties looked out of the next cottage, tying the cord of her dressing-gown. “You’re Hermione’s brother-in-law, aren’t you? Anything wrong?”

  “She took my little girl to Gronant and nobody knows where they are,” Derek said, feeling as if every repetition made the situation worse.

  “Will you come in for a cup, or shall I sit with you? I’m up anyway. My husband has to go to work.”

  “You couldn’t sit in her cottage for a bit, could you? I just thought where Hermione may be, but it’s not worth telling the police if I can go myself.”

  “I’ll have to see the old man off first.”

  Derek called Alison. “No news yet, love. The police are on it now. The lady next door is going to be here while I see if I know where your sister is.”

  “Are you going to tell me where?”

  “I think she may have gone after that locket,” he said, trying to be vague.

  Her silence made him yearn to be holding her, except then she would have sensed his panic. “You may be right,” she admitted. “Don’t be any longer than you have to be, will you? Next time I may take more notice of what you say about her.”

  “So long as you don’t stop taking notice of yourself, love,” Derek said, and sent her a kiss. The plastic felt clammy against his lips. He was lingering by the phone when a milkman came to let Derek know his wife would be around as soon as she was dressed. Soon she arrived with her knitting, and Derek gave her Alison’s number in case there was news. “No need to rush, I’ll be here,” she said.

  The wind had dropped. Mist shrank the fields beside the road and waited at the limit of the headlights. The idea that Rowan could be out on a night like this almost forced him back to Hermione’s, where at least his would be the voice she heard if she phoned for help—but if Hermione had really had a photograph of Vicky, might she have found out where the girl lived? While he struggled with his doubts his body went on driving, treading on the brake when he saw a small figure step back against the hedge ahead, but it was a gatepost leading to darkness. The road climbed toward Gronant, and as it rose out of the fog he saw lights fluttering under the trees against the sky at the top of the slope. People must be searching, he thought, and tried to be hopeful—and then he saw that the lights were on top of a police car and an ambulance.

  As he drove up the slope he felt as if he were leaving his heart behind. He had to park before he reach
ed the vehicles, because his hands no longer felt able to control the wheel: he’d seen two men carrying a stretcher through a gate. As he stumbled uphill, headstones wavered like failing neon as the pulse of light touched them. He was almost at the gate when a policeman with a flickering blue face blocked his way and said something in Welsh, and then “Can I help you, sir?”

  The men had laid the stretcher down and stepped into a grave. They were going to lift out a body onto the stretcher, as if life were somehow running backwards. “What’s happening in there?” Derek stammered.

  “I’m not at liberty to say, sir. Please move on.”

  “I’ve got to see. I may know her.” Derek could hardly speak for praying that it wouldn’t be Rowan on the stretcher. “That’s my wife’s family’s grave.”

  A second policeman came forward, and conferred with his colleague in Welsh. Eventually the one who’d stopped Derek said “You’d better see if you can identify her.”

  Derek had already seen enough, and hated the surge of relief he experienced. The body that the men were heaving out of the grave was certainly not Rowan’s. He hurried across the graveyard, his bluish shadow leaping feebly ahead, and halted by the willow. Hermione looked as if she were screaming in a nightmare from which she was unable to waken. One of the attendants was trying to close her mouth, and Derek was afraid he would have to break her jaw, especially when the blue light made it seem to jerk. He might have fallen into the willow if a policeman hadn’t gripped his arm. “It’s my wife’s sister,” he muttered.

  The attendant pulled a sheet over her face, and she was carried to the ambulance. As a policeman brought planks from near the gate to cover the trench, Derek lurched forward and glanced in, then recoiled from the sight of the bald blackened shape that lay crouched in the whitish lair of the box. The policemen closed the coffin and arranged the makeshift lid over the grave and then, grotesquely, placed No Parking cones at the corners farthest from the marble pillar. The sight made Derek nauseous, and he had closed his eyes when a policeman said “If you’d like to follow us when you’re ready, sir, you can make your statement at the police station.”