The Influence

by Ramsey Campbell

  Derek forced his eyes open. “I’ve got to find my daughter.”

  “You can tell us about that at the station, sir, and perhaps we’ll be able to help. Please don’t be long.”

  How was it possible that they didn’t know about Rowan? Had someone called them to the graveyard before Derek had phoned the police? They waited by the gate, murmuring in Welsh. They must be giving him a chance to come to terms with what he’d seen, but he could tell they had their doubts about him. If he made them check that he’d called earlier, surely they would let him go for now. The pulse in his throat felt like a threat of sickness as he turned towards the gate and stepped into the shadow of the willow. The tree seemed to gulp the lights of the streetlamp and the vehicles. The shadow closed around him like black water, deep and chill, and a small pale hand took hold of his arm.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  As soon as the station receded into the fog Rowan scrambled onto the nearest seat. Whoever had closed the door from outside wouldn’t see her now. She’d eluded Vicky and anything else that might have followed her from Gronant. She would be safe until Chester, where she would have to change trains.

  Faded brownish seats swayed in the dingy light that clung like frost to the grimy windows. The train smelled old and stale and damp. As far as she could see, she was alone except for the driver. Cars reeled back and forth beyond the connecting doors as if they were striving to line themselves up, and made her feel unstable. She could trust the train, but she wished she could see where she was going—wished that the fog would give her even a hint of home.

  She tried to rub the window clearer, but even when she tried to breathe on the glass she could make no mark. The grime was on the outside, and beyond that was the fog. Clumps of wet grass swelled out of the fog, sketching fields and a golf course, and then the bay came sweeping towards the railway and ran beside it for miles. Last time she had been able to see Waterloo, but now there was only the fringe of the sea, grey sluggish waves that looked weighed down by fog. She felt as if the familiar names, Waterloo and Crosby and Bootle and Seaforth and Litherland, had been wiped out by the weather. Soon fields pushed the sea away to be swallowed by the fog.

  Her staring out had made the train appear flat, thin as cardboard, so shabby that it seemed on the point of wearing away to nothing. It made Rowan feel hardly there, hardly anywhere, in danger of being unable to fend off the memory of last night, the nightmare she needed to forget until she was safely home. Even when bushes flared out of the fog, green leaves turning yellow and orange and red, they seemed no more real than a film projected on the screen of the window. The prow of a ship loomed over the train, the keel beached in dank grass. It was a restaurant Hermione had promised to take her to when she was older. The next moment it had folded into the fog as if it had never been there at all.

  Buildings broke through the fog on the side of the track away from the retreating sea, windowless brown buildings like cartons with too big an idea of themselves. Beyond them she glimpsed headlights drowning on the road along which her father had driven her to and from Hermione’s, and then the road was obscured by houses with long narrow gardens dark as moss, boxed in by brick walls. Lit windows displayed scenes misty as television commercials: a man dabbing at his just-shaved face, a woman rocking a baby in her arms beside a cot, an old man dodging from room to room of a house and switching on all the lights. It was too early for children to be up, she thought, and wouldn’t anyone who got onto her train at Flint want to know why she was? The train rushed into the station, and she was wondering whether to hide in the toilet when she realised that the train wasn’t slowing. It raced through the chalk sketch of a station and out into the fog.

  So long as it stopped at Chester, she needn’t mind where else it did. A scrapyard ragged with fog sped by, a motorcycle glared at her out of the murk, dripping trees raw with autumn reared up, buildings that looked lost at sea sank into the fog. Houses crowded toward the railway as it approached Shotton, and the train blared its horn at the station. Only Chester mattered, Rowan told herself, but suppose the train wasn’t meant to carry passengers at all so early? Suppose it wouldn’t start to pick them up until it was past Chester? She pressed her face against the glass as the train sped into Shotton, and willed it to stop here as well, just to reassure her. The houses slid away, making room for a platform the colour of fog. The train wasn’t slowing; nobody was waiting. Rowan sat back, rubbing her face to try and rid it of the cold flat sensation of the window, and a figure rushed at her across the platform, trailing fog.

  She had only a glimpse as the train swept by, of a figure in uniform with grey hair trailing over its shoulders. She was glad that the train hadn’t slowed after all. Then, as her car raced under a bridge at the end of the platform, she heard a door slam farther down the train.

  Surely nobody could have boarded at this speed, but someone was back there. Rowan crouched on the seat and peered around it, through the connecting doors. Fog flooded by on both sides of her, sweeping away telegraph poles and greying tufts of grass. She could see no movement beyond the door except for the pitching of the carriages. She pushed herself away from the upholstery, which felt soft and damp, and was swaying to her feet in the aisle when she saw a figure coming towards her down the train.

  It was wearing a dark uniform with a peaked cap. At first that was all she could see as her mind chased its tail in panic, telling her to run and hide, see first, run and hide… The two carriages between her and the figure seemed to shrink around her vision, twisting it as they jerked back and forth. He must be the guard, she thought, and he’d been on the train all the time. If he didn’t let her phone her parents he would surely call them himself, and they would promise to pay her fare. Why then was her panic growing as she watched the figure swing itself towards her down the carriage that looked starved of sunlight, dying of the lack? It was moving almost like a monkey, grabbing the backs of seats on either side and swinging itself between them up the aisle, its long grey hair streaming under the peaked cap. It reached the first set of connecting doors, and she saw it clawing at the glass before it managed to slide them back. It skipped forward into the carriage next to hers, and she saw the face beneath the cap. Despite the ragged hair that trailed over its shoulders, it had a baby’s chubby face.

  Perhaps it was so old that it looked like a baby again; perhaps that was why the round face, pale as a snail’s belly, was slack and drooling. She knew only that it summed up everything she was terrified of. She watched helplessly as it swung closer, raising its legs so that she saw its thin bare ankles, white and blotchy as though with mould, above the shoes that seemed in danger of falling off every time it swung. She saw how delicately it had to take hold of the seats, because its blackened nails were half as long as its fingers. It was just a few seats away now, too close for her to escape even if she could move. Then it looked straight at her, and its small pinkish eyes lit up as a wicked smile puckered its toothless mouth.

  Rowan choked on a scream and flung herself away from the end of the carriage, and almost sprawled full length. She fled along the lurching aisle, not so much supporting herself on the seats as fending them off. She almost fell again as she lunged at the door to the next carriage before it was within reach. The motion of the train helped slide the door open for her, and she glanced back in terror to see how much distance she’d gained. The uproar of the train must have blotted out the noise of the far doors, for the baby’s face was grinning at her from beneath the peaked cap perched on its matted hair and licking its lips with its swollen loamy tongue, close enough to touch.

  This time she couldn’t even scream. She flinched across the roaring gap between the cars, swayed on the narrow walkway as the next carriage lolled out of alignment, squeezed past the door as it jerked open, clutched the inner handle with both hands as the train threw the door shut again. She leaned all her weight on the handle to keep the door shut, but it felt as if she might be dislodged at any moment. Praying that the door wou
ld stick, she raised her head unwillingly and looked through the glass.

  The baby face was flattened against the window of the door across the gap. The blackened tongue stuck out of the slackly grinning mouth and squirmed against the glass. The peaked cap had slipped forward, almost hiding the gleeful eyes. It only wanted to terrify her, she told herself desperately, just as Vicky had wanted to. She thought of letting go somehow, of being able to sail away from the train like going through the binoculars, and clung to the handle as if it would hold her back from the temptation. Then she saw long cracked mottled fingernails creeping around the edge of the other door, in the moment before the car went dark.

  A trench had closed around the train, high chiselled walls patched with sodden moss and weeds. The train was racing into Chester. If she could keep the door shut until it reached the station, surely she might be safe—but she had just remembered what lay between the trench and the station when the train rushed into it, into the tunnel.

  Rowan squeezed her eyes shut and clutched the handle so hard that she couldn’t distinguish her hands from the metal. In the midst of the hollow roar of the train she heard a sliding sound, and then something pale pressed into her face. It was daylight, which meant that the train was out of the tunnel, but the tunnel was only the first of two. The second must be longer, because she was still in the dark when the door began to slide stealthily out of her grasp.

  She tried to make herself strong as a stone, prayed that she could be until the train reached the platform, but the door was creeping open with a horrid gentleness, and she no longer seemed able to hold on. She strained to heave the door shut on the long-nailed fingers that she knew were spidering around the edge. They must be capable of reaching for her, seizing her while the pink-eyed baby face flattened itself against the glass until it was ready to drag her into its embrace. Suddenly she wanted to let go, either of the door or of her struggle not to do what Vicky had wanted: she would have given anything to be somewhere else, but now she realised she didn’t know how. Then the grey daylight flew into her closed eyes as the train lurched, and the door slid out of her grasp.

  She felt herself falling blindly, and grabbed at whatever could support her: something soft, covered with cloth. She thought she might never dare open her eyes, but when she did she found she had clutched the back of a seat. She was facing the doors, which had slid shut again. There was no sign of her pursuer except for a grey drooling patch where its mouth had been squashed against the glass. She fled toward the nearest door that would let her onto the platform—if the train stopped.

  Mail vans gleamed as though they had been painted red that morning, and then the station lumbered into view. The train was slowing. Rowan prayed that it would stop, prayed so hard she couldn’t think of words. Fog drifted across the platforms, where she could see blurred figures, most of them in uniform. The sight threatened to paralyze her. As soon as the train was alongside the platform, she jumped.

  She had to run along the platform for fear that she would lose her footing, and it seemed safest not to stop running. She dashed past the uniformed figures without daring to glance at them, but they seemed not to notice her. Nobody was collecting tickets at the barrier. She dodged past the shuttered bookstall and out into the street with a panicky backward glance to make sure she wasn’t being followed. Beyond the station, steps led up to a road above the tracks, and a sign glittering with dew indicated a way to Liverpool across the bridge. She raced to the top of the steps and stared down at the deserted road outside the station, and then she fled over the bridge.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Five minutes after Alison had put down the receiver, she wanted to call Derek back. Even supposing he found Hermione, what could he do besides fly at her for wandering off in pursuit of her obsession instead of taking care of Rowan? Wasn’t he doing exactly the same? He must be so close to his feelings that he couldn’t see the chance that having someone stay at Hermione’s had given him. She dropped the percolator on the draining-board, screwed the cold tap shut, and ran to the phone in the hall.

  The woman who responded announced the number so slowly she must be reading it from the dial. “Is my husband still there?” Alison pleaded. “I’m Hermione’s sister.”

  “Don’t worry, dear, your hubby’s well on his way. Won’t you try and get some sleep? No need for us all to stay awake. I’ll give you a call the moment there’s any news.”

  “Thank you,” Alison said dully, and made herself move away from the phone before she could be tempted to phone her parents. Her head felt large and empty as the house for lack of sleep, with a brain that was uselessly bright as the top floor, but sleeping would be like forgetting Rowan. She filled the percolator and watched it boil, she poured herself a coffee and took a sip that scalded her lips, and then there seemed to be nothing to do except, agonisingly, think.

  She felt as if all the fears that had ever wakened her in the depths of the night had become all that was left in the world. She ought to have insisted on meeting Vicky when she’d had the chance. She would have found out more about her if she hadn’t been reacting against Hermione’s obsession with her. Even so, couldn’t Rowan be at Vicky’s now? Perhaps at this very moment she was dreaming, and daylight would bring her home.

  Alison gulped coffee and parted the living-room curtains to gaze over at Jo’s. Of course the house was dark at this time of the morning. If anyone saw Alison now they might take her for some old woman, wandering through her rooms because she’d lost the ability to sleep. She stared at the locked-up houses, at Eddie’s car, and then she realised she could borrow it as soon as Eddie came over to carry on decorating, if she hadn’t heard from Rowan by then. She could go over as soon as it was daylight and ask one of them, not Patty, to stay in her house.

  Waiting was harder now that there was something definite to wait for. She poured herself another mug of coffee and wandered from the stony kitchen to the gloomy living-room. The television had closed down hours ago, and the newspaper seemed full of reports about children who had come to harm. Every time she thought of Rowan she experienced a spasm of sharp fear. Though she was afraid to do so and afraid to think why she was, she trudged up to Rowan’s room.

  She would have lain on the bed in the hope that might make her feel closer to Rowan, except that to feel calm would be to risk falling asleep. She gazed at the Muppet poster Rowan had had since she was three years old, the shelves piled so haphazardly with books that it seemed moving any one of them would dislodge them all, the chest of drawers with the toe of a sock drooping from the drawer that would never quite close, eight years’ worth of dolls huddled in the corner nearest the bed. Suddenly the room seemed so empty that she wanted to weep, and she could hardly bear to look at the bed. Then she saw something under the sheet where it was pulled taut over the pillow.

  Rowan must have left it there when she was making the bed. It was a folded sheet of the flowery notepaper Hermione had given her last Christmas. To my mummy and daddy, it said, and Alison had to close her eyes and take several deep breaths before her hands were steady enough to unfold the paper.

  Dear mummy and daddy, I love you and I realy dont mind if you dont buy me things becose you cant aford them, I wish youd told me about father Christmass not being real sooner becose then I wouldnt have ecspected so many presunts, Ill try not to cost you so much and you dont need to give me any pockit mony as long as we can all live together and I dont mind where,

  Lots of love from your,

  Rowan

  Alison stared at the note and the lines of kisses at the bottom, and suddenly her hands were as steady as stone, and as cold. She’d thought for a moment on Thursday night that someone was listening to her argument with Derek, and now she was certain that Rowan had been. No wonder she’d asked to go to Hermione’s. Perhaps now she wasn’t with Vicky at all, perhaps she had run away into the night because she thought nobody wanted her. Alison let out a sob that scraped her throat and resounded in the empty bedroom, a
nd stared upward with eyes that felt like embers. She might have been going to pray, but overhead was only Queenie’s floor, bare and stark. She was taking shuddering breaths that felt like sobs when the phone rang.

  She managed to let go of the note with one hand as she jerked, her heart thudding. She saw herself place the note carefully on Rowan’s pillow. That took two rings of the phone, and then she was running down the shabby corridor and grabbing at the banister so as not to fall on the canted stairs. She snatched up the receiver and heard the pips begin.

  It was a pay phone. It must be Rowan. Thank God you’re safe, she thought, stay where you are and I’ll come and get you, whoever I have to waken so I can borrow a car. The pips choked on a coin, and Derek said “Hello?”

  “Derek.” Her voice felt lifeless in her mouth. “What is it? Where are you?”

  “At the police station. They told me this phone would be quicker, I’d have to wait to use theirs. Listen, love, I’m sorry. Try and keep calm. They found Hermione. She’s dead.”

  Alison leaned her forehead against the metallic leaves of the wallpaper and let out a despairing sigh. “How?”

  “It was what I thought. She was at the graveyard. She’d dug up—you know. They think it must have been too much for her, for her heart. But—”

  The pips cut him off. She imagined him fumbling for another coin, cursing and perhaps wasting time in his haste. She made her hand into a shaky fist and drove it between her forehead and the wall, as if the sensation might help her keep control. She was gripping the receiver so hard that the mouthpiece dug into her lip. She had heard in Derek’s voice that he had something else to tell her, and she was afraid to learn what it was.