The Grin of the Dark

by Ramsey Campbell

  Why just me? I hope his problem is slowness, not reluctance. My mother halts beside the nearest row in which a plump white shape gives the impression of waiting for a show or more of an audience. 'Somebody's been making snowmen,' she cries.

  Doesn't that need its own explanation? I rest my hand on the sodden backs of the upholstered seats and sidle along the row. 'What are you playing at now?' my father complains.

  He could be addressing me or my mother, who is making for the shape that's slumped against the wall three rows ahead. The swaying patch of light contracts and brightens, though not as much as I would like. It's enough to confirm that the objects lolling in the seats are composed of snow. The one I'm closest to may have the beginnings or the remnants of a face. I turn to my mother, and then I choke down the noise my open mouth wants to make.

  Either my eyes are adjusting to the dimness or the edge of the light has strained as far as the front of the auditorium. I can just distinguish a line of figures on the stage, half a dozen of them linked together somehow. They're draped in costumes as white as their large heads, and are standing utterly still, waiting to be noticed. I'm desperate to prevent my mother from doing so. 'I think we should – '

  The light flickers like my nervousness made visible. 'Hang on a tick, Simon,' my mother interrupts and thumps the back of a seat with the flashlight. While the impact sounds soggy, it has an effect. The light goes out, burying the auditorium in darkness.

  I'm stumbling sideways towards the aisle – I have to reach her before anything worse can happen – when my father shouts 'Don't play games with that. Put it back on.'

  'I'm trying.' A series of muffled thumps demonstrates how. 'You were meant to be changing the batteries,' my mother reminds him. 'They're dead as I don't know. They're dead.'

  'You've just done that, you stupid woman.'

  'It'll be all right,' I attempt to convince everyone, not least myself. 'Stay where you are. Keep talking if you like so I can find you, mum.'

  Perhaps the prospect of drawing attention in the blackness fails to appeal to her. She falls silent as I shuffle blindly along the row, grasping a spongy handful at each step. I haven't reached the aisle when she discovers her voice. 'Is that you, Simon?'

  I've bruised my shin against a folding seat that has dropped horizontal since I passed it, and so my response is less amiable than it might be. 'I'm coming,' I mutter.

  'Which of you is it?' she insists, and I realise that she may not be referring to my progress before she adds 'Don't keep trying to make me laugh. It's not fair when it's so dark.'

  'You heard your mother, Simon.'

  'It isn't me,' I say, but under my breath. What does her behaviour imply about her state of mind? Am I seeing a pack of whitish shapes ahead, or are they the remains of an after-image? I can't judge how close they are, which disorients me so badly that I have to remind myself where the aisle is; I feel as though I'm groping through a maze rather than along a straight line. I will my mother to speak so that I can locate her, and then I wish she hadn't when she says 'Is that your face?'

  'That's it. The end,' my father shouts. 'Keep still, Sandra. I'll get you myself.'

  'I don't like that. It feels like it's going to – Oh, my hand's gone in.'

  My body jerks as if it's expressing the panic that has begun to surface in her voice. I hitch myself desperately to the end of the row. As I lose my hold on the last seat and lurch into the darkness, I collide with someone far too plump. I'm embraced by softened swollen arms without affection before my captor speaks. 'That's where you are, is it? Want to knock me down?'

  'I just want to help her. Let go,' I tell him, and hear my mother gasp. Perhaps she's startled by the sudden flood of light. It would be more welcome if the stage hadn't lit up as if we're about to be treated to a private performance.

  The clouds have parted, and moonlight is slanting through several holes in the roof. Surely they explain the snow that's piled on the seats. My mother is within arm's length of one of the heaps, the lump on top of which displays a rictus where her gloved hand must have plunged in. She moves towards the aisle as I disengage myself from my father's quilted grip. Before I can reach her, she turns towards the stage and sees the object of most of the light. 'What are they?' she says and quite as uncertainly 'They're funny, aren't they?'

  At least it's clear that the line of figures is formed out of snow under the largest gap in the roof. The trouble is that their shapes aren't random enough. Who would have gone to the trouble of modelling them in here? Perhaps it's the effect of shadows as well as of the pallid light, but some of them could indeed be draped in robes, while others might be sporting icy headgear. I like the third shape even less, since it lacks a head. I could do without fancying that a head is about to rise into view and plant itself on the white neck. At this distance I can't see what the others have for faces, and I'm not anxious to. 'It's just snow,' I tell everyone – the three of us, that is, because the boxes are deserted, however much the moonbeams suggest the presence of etiolated watchers in the gloom. 'We'd better get out while there's light.'

  'Yes, come out of it,' my father orders.

  Perhaps my mother doesn't care for his tone. She limps sideways to the aisle less rapidly than I would prefer. At every other step her body tilts as if she's delivering a bow to the spectacle onstage. I take her arm as she leaves the row at last. 'Get a move on,' my father says and stumps towards the exit. I help my mother after him and try to ignore the sound behind us – a whispering too faint to be identifiable. Then it grows louder, though surely not closer, and there's a soft flat thud.

  I have to look, because my mother has twisted around to see. The sixth figure has sloughed its face, a pale lump that is lying inches away from the edge of the stage. I've barely distinguished this when the front of the next head slides off. As it plops onto the stage the clouds shut off the moon.

  There's further movement on the stage. It sounds as if the entire line of figures is collapsing – shifting in some way, at any rate. My mother halts as though the darkness has frozen her, and when I take a firmer hold on her arm I realise she's trying the flashlight. 'Don't bother with that,' I say too much like my father, except not as steadily. 'We can still see.'

  We barely can. As I steer her towards the exit a section of the lobby is just visible beyond my father's bulky silhouette. 'Move yourself if you want us to,' my mother tells him.

  He doesn't budge. Has he chosen this moment to demonstrate that he's too old to be ordered about, or can he hear the noises I'm hearing? I do my utmost not to take them as any kind of a response to my mother's words. It sounds as if the shapes against the walls are collapsing as well, slowly and at length, unless they're stirring in some other fashion. I'm preparing to urge my father aside when he finishes peering at my mother, who is giving the flashlight a last try. In a few paces hindered by her limp I'm able to make out the exit to the street beyond the lobby. I know she can't safely walk any faster, but I feel as if we're shackled by the dark.

  My father blocks the way into the lobby in order to check that we're following, and my mother repeats her command. As we follow his grudging retreat I keep my eyes on the exit. I won't be distracted by the fancy that a pale lump is pressed against the window of the box office. I'm ushering my mother across the frozen mass of misshapen footprints to the car when she says 'That was an adventure, wasn't it?'

  My father glares at this and me as he crouches into the Mini. 'I'm glad you liked it,' I feel bound to respond.

  She climbs in beside my father and twists her head around as I open the rear door. 'Better shut it up, do you think? We don't want children getting into mischief.'

  I can't see any children. I can see the car looking out of place on the abandoned street and isolated by the nearest working streetlamps several hundred yards away. I hurry across the treacherous pavement to seize the edge of the board and tug hard. The door resists for a grinding instant and then yields, which dislodges some kind of loose fabric that brushe
s my fingertips. It doesn't really feel like a farewell kiss from a moist puffy mouth. The door slams with a clank of the bar, and I manage not to fall in my absurd haste to reach my parents. My father has already started the car, and swings it away from the kerb almost before I'm seated. 'What would you like to do now, Simon?' my mother says.

  She seems so unaffected by the recent panic that I wonder if her memory has lapsed. 'I suppose I should be thinking of heading back to London.'

  'No sooner thought than done,' my father declares.

  As the car puts on speed, the forsaken theatre surges after us, or at least its reflection in the mirror flares up with renewed moonlight. The building seems to brighten in proportion with the distance before it vanishes like an image expunged from a screen. We've simply turned where the road forks, but my mother says 'Where are you taking us, Bob?'

  'Where I was asked.'

  Is he proposing to drive to London? 'I didn't mean you should take me literally,' I say, attempting to laugh.

  The narrow street is pulsing with the buds of trees in front rooms. When I was little my father used to drive us on a tour of the Christmas suburbs, but if I feel like a child again it's from helplessness. My mother gazes at me in the mirror and says 'He's like this now.' At least, I think that's what she mouths, and I'm about to voice another protest when my father claps his hands like a magician or the solitary enthusiastic member of an audience. 'There, I was right,' he tells anyone who doubted it, and grabs the wheel again. 'Here we are.'

  An unlit building brings the street to an end. Trees flicker on either side of the car as if they're close to giving up their existence, and I'm afraid we've returned to the Harlequin. Are we approaching it from the back? No, we've arrived at a junction, the far side of which is occupied by a railway station. 'The line to London comes through here,' says my father.

  'Aren't we driving Simon to the proper station?'

  'He's in a rush and I want to get you home.'

  His stare in the mirror is warning me not to interfere. At least I can say 'I'm glad I dropped in.'

  'We are,' my mother assures me. 'Hurry up Christmas with everyone we're thinking of.'

  I mumble amiably rather than commit Natalie and Mark. My father delivers a handshake so terse it's little more than the memory of one, but my mother clutches the back of my neck and pulls my head between the front seats to receive a fierce kiss. I'm turning away from the car when my father shoves his door open and rears up like a Jack-in- the-box to crane over the roof. 'If you're thinking of coming again,' he says so quietly that I barely hear him, 'next time don't get your mother in a state.'

  The brake lights give a Christmas wink as the Mini vanishes around a bend, and I venture into the station. It's unstaffed. The ticket office in the token hall is so thoroughly shut that I have to peer at it to establish that it isn't just a patch on the dim wall. I can't see the name of the station anywhere on the lightless platform. Wires shiver alongside the glimmering railway lines in a wind that lends unnecessary animation to a solitary poster in the booking hall. The text has been scratched out, and the vandal has also erased more than the face of the figure prancing in the foreground. The damage has lent the performer a disproportionately swollen white head above the baggy costume, and someone has inked a black grin as wide as the otherwise featureless expanse. The ragged outline works as though the eyeless substitute for a face is struggling to emerge from the poster. All this gives me yet more reason to want to speak to Natalie. I dig out my phone and bring up her home number.

  However late in the day it feels to me, it may not be Mark's bedtime yet. The bell rings twice and falls silent, but nobody speaks. It's partly the desertion all around me, not to mention the restless poster, that makes me blurt 'Mark?'

  'He's on his computer. Why, do you want him?'

  'You were so fast I thought it must be him. I'll have you instead any time, Natty.'

  Her wordless sound reminds me of Bebe even before she adds 'You might want to be a bit careful with saying things like that.'

  'Even to you?' When she doesn't respond I say 'Sorry, have I done something I should know about?'

  'Nothing we need to discuss over the phone,' she says, and I tell myself that it's only the wind that chills my neck.

  TWENTY-ONE - SOON I'LL REST

  When I let myself into the apartment the only sound is my own breath. Mark will be in bed by now, but I'm hoping Natalie has stayed up. 'Hello?' I call not much above a whisper. 'Hello?'

  I might as well be speaking to a dead mobile phone, since there's as little response. The muffled childish giggle in the apartment opposite can't be one, and I don't waste too much time staring across the corridor in case anyone emerges. I bolt the door and tiptoe to Natalie's room. 'Are you awake?' I murmur.

  She isn't, unless she's pretending, which she has no reason to do. She doesn't stir under the quilt in the dark. I want to believe this proves whatever she withheld on the phone is unimportant, but I feel worse than frustrated. I restrain myself from shaking her and trudge out of the room. I ease the door shut and head for my computer. If I have to wait until tomorrow to hear from her, I'll see whether I need to deal with something else.

  I close the door of the main room and mute the speakers. The icons gather and regain their colours with a collective shiver. I hope the chirpy dialling of the modem won't rouse Natalie or Mark. I listen to the silence until I'm sure of it and then check my email. I've had dozens of communications on nonsensical subjects from people with meaningless names. I delete them all unread and open the page for Tubby Thackeray's film.

  Now Mr Questionabble's pretending that he's going to be published. Everyboddy shout if they bellieve him when he can't even spell it. Wow, it's quiet round here. And on top of prettending he's got the gaul to tell us we've got to be pubblished before he'll allow us to say annything on here. Well, he can look and see how much I've pubblished now. I'll stake all the monney in the bank he won't like it, though.

  If Smilemime has signed his real name to anything, how am I supposed to find it? Or perhaps I know what he means. I bring up the page for Tubby's Twentieth-Century Tincture, and the one for Tubby the Troll, and the rest of them. Long before the end I've run out of gasps of disbelief. Smilemime has posted a synopsis for every film, including Tubby Tells the Truth, which he summarises as 'Tubby dresses up as a proffessor and shows us how he turned into a commic'.

  He must be especially well informed to be able to describe a film that was never released. I'm about to begin my response with that comment when I wonder where else he may be posting. He seems the kind of person who would frequent newsgroups, and what might they tell me about him? I open the page for the Google groups and enter Smilemime in the search box. There are hundreds of postings, and I've read no more than the title of the most recent when I have to grip my face to keep in the noise I would otherwise make. Whatever it would be, it's no laugh.

  TWENTY-TWO - NO STILLNESS

  I barely sleep. Whenever I manage to doze, my mind lights on Smilemime – on how his messages may be multiplying like a virus designed just to harm me – and I jerk awake. I wouldn't be in bed if Natalie hadn't gone to the bathroom and then wandered somnolently to find me. As soon as she began to fumble with the doorknob I logged off and shut down the computer, and was in time to meet her at the door. I was ashamed of what I'd been looking at, which added to my rage. She was nearly asleep, and wholly so before I joined her in bed, where she nevertheless slipped an arm around my waist. Its comfort is oppressively unhelpful in its lack of awareness. I try to sink into the peace of her breathing, but Smilemime is there, and Tubby's face shining like ice. I feel like an armature composed of nerves that unite in the dark lump of my brain. Perhaps my nerves are making my wrist tingle reminiscently, which is why I give up lying still.

  I inch my arm from under the quilt. I thought I'd scrubbed off the last of the clown's face, and there is indeed no sign of it in the almost imperceptible glow from the sky through the curtains beyo
nd Natalie's side of the bed. Dawn must be on the way, and there's no point in my courting sleep when I'll need to take Mark to school in a couple of hours. If I deal with my tormentor now I'll be able to sleep after delivering Mark.

  As I steal out of bed Natalie emits a faint sigh that could be interpreted as resigned. I pad to the main room, closing doors without a sound, and switch on my computer. Even the burbling of the modem seems muffled, presumably because my senses are. When the Frugonet icons swim up I could imagine that they're floating in my eyes. I blink hard to focus and in an attempt to render my eyes less parched while I type Smilemime in the newsgroup search box. His message is the same, but in more places now. He has been at work while I wasted time in bed.

  Watch out for Simon Jester aka Lester aka Leslie Stone

  Claims he's been pubblished. Says he's seen films noboddy else has. Wants people to think he's an authorrity on films and commedians. You can find him putting on his act at

  www.imdb.com/title/tt1119079/board/nest/30615787

  May show up on this newsgroup. He'll be after information he can claim he found himself and make out he's an expert. Don't anyboddy let him. Noboddy had ever heard of him till he started claiming he knew more than me.

  The message has been posted to newsgroups about the cinema, about silent films, about theatre, comedy, music-hall... At least I drafted a response in my head while I was failing to sleep.

  I'm going to confine myself to facts. My name is Simon Lester. I wrote at least one featured article in every issue of Cineassed. I never write under a pseudonym, even on the Internet. Anyone who helps me with my research will be named in the acknowledgments if they want to be. As for this person, whatever his real name is, I've said all I intend to say about him.

  I copy this before I post it, and once I've loosed it I set about sending it to the other newsgroups, almost forty of them. By the time I've finished, my tendons are twitchy with repetition. I shut my eyes while I recompose the next message I outlined at the edge of sleep.