The Grin of the Dark

by Ramsey Campbell

  Mark is sitting at my desk. Has he been using my computer in my absence? He can't have logged online without my password, and in any case I don't know why I should be apprehensive. Perhaps it's simply that the notion that anyone else has used the computer makes my work seem vulnerable – and then I notice the book in front of him. It's Surréalistes Malgré Eux. 'Look what someone did,' he says as he hands it to me.

  I can see no difference when I open the book. Did I fancy that the text might have changed somehow? I'm about to give up leafing through it and ask Mark what he's so impatient for me to find when I reach the pages that deal with Tubby Thackeray. The margins of both have been pencilled solid black.

  While this may be a suitably funereal tribute, I don't like having a book defaced. 'You did this, did you, Mark?'

  'I saw it in a film,' he says with a wide smile that I find wholly inappropriate. I'm about to start by telling him so when I realise that the blackness of the borders isn't total after all. Both side margins contain words so faint they're scarcely legible. Before I've finished straining my eyes I'm unconvinced the additions are worth deciphering.

  grate

  mind

  mined

  pourtal

  vorpal

  portle

  trope

  troop

  troupe

  let

  it

  owt

  ownly

  con

  necked

  links

  recht

  lynx

  wrecked

  sub

  con

  shush

  first

  foot

  your

  Bill

  of

  men

  tall

  health

  all

  fools!

  yer

  round

  first

  for

  noll

  edge

  first

  be

  last

  carol

  carroll

  itty

  bitty

  god

  I'm opening my mouth when I wonder if the annotations are even more meaningless than they appear. 'Mind out, Mark,' I say and pull the desk drawer open. On top of the small stack of posters is the one signed by Thackeray Lane. The wispy script of the first name, before the signature degenerates into an elongated capital, is indeed the same as the handwriting in the book. This seems capable of scrambling my thoughts until I see the explanation. 'Why did you do this, Mark?'

  He looks inexplicably confused. 'I told you – '

  'You said you got it from a film. About a forger, was it? Full marks for learning fast but not for what you learned. You'll have me thinking films can turn people into criminals. Maybe you can tell me what all this is supposed to mean.'

  Before I've finished speaking, Natalie is in the room. 'What has he done now?'

  'All I did was highlight the writing for him,' Mark protests as his eyes grow wider and moister. 'That's how they sent secret messages in a film.'

  It doesn't sound like a terribly secure method. Rather than criticise the film I wait for him to meet my gaze. 'Are you telling me you didn't write this?'

  'I swear I didn't. I only wanted to make it easy for you to see. I looked through the paper and saw it. I was trying to read about Tubby but I couldn't read much.'

  I feel like a clever lawyer for remarking 'I didn't know you could read French at all.'

  'My computer helped.'

  I'm defeated, not to mention bewildered. 'Well, thank you for this,' I have to say, although gratitude isn't involved. 'I'm sorry I spoke to you like that. Blame jet lag if you want.'

  As his grin returns Natalie says 'Now we both really think you should go to bed.'

  'I'm glad you're home, Simon,' he says and heads for the bathroom. I hope Natalie may agree with or add to his remark, but she only takes the book out of my hand. With little more than a glance at the inscribed margins she says 'How on earth could you think he wrote this?'

  'He might have copied it from somewhere. I know he didn't now.'

  I'm hopelessly unsure what else I know. The package was damaged when Joe brought it to me in Egham, but how could he have been the forger? The only other possibility seems to be that the autograph on the poster is fake. I've no idea where this explanation leads; it's as distractingly meaningless as too much else that I've encountered since beginning my research. I'm exhausted enough that I sink onto my desk chair. 'Don't say you're going on your computer now,' Natalie objects.

  'I should drop Rufus a quick line. There may be a misunderstanding with the bank.'

  'You've got time. We'll talk when Mark's asleep.'

  I attempt not to find this too ominous. Dozens of emails are waiting: reports that messages I never sent have been returned, offers of Viagra and other drugs, requests for me to help Nigerians or Gulf War veterans in secret financial transactions by sending every detail of my bank account. I delete them all before informing Rufus that I've gathered plenty of material about Tubby and that the bank has made a decidedly unauthorised donation. 'Maybe they mistook me for our friend Tickell,' I add, though it doesn't feel much like a joke.

  I'm supposed to be writing to the bank. I log onto the site for their address and grin with the opposite of humour at my balance, which is still flourishing a minus sign. Could Tess of the bank have told me that they weren't able to restore my credit until I wrote to them? It's her job to make herself clear. By the time I've finished emailing, Mark has said good night from the hall. Instead of checking for Smilemime I switch off the computer. 'Can we talk now?' I say. 'I'm pretty shagged.'

  I must be, otherwise I would have avoided the word. Natalie lets me interpret her gaze before she relents, if she does. 'What would you like to say, Simon?'

  'I didn't know about Willie Hart, and that's the truth.'

  'What didn't you?'

  'She's no more a man than I am a woman, but what's anyone expected to think with a name like that?'

  'Maybe you ought to have looked a bit closer.'

  'I'm not saying she didn't look female. She certainly did,' I say with, to judge by Natalie's expression, too much enthusiasm before I understand her remark. 'I swear it didn't say she was short for Wilhelmina when I read it.'

  'We've had quite a lot of swearing tonight, haven't we.'

  'Not as much as I feel like.' I visualise this as an intertitle but say aloud 'I believed Mark, didn't you? I hope you'll believe me.'

  'Why didn't you tell me while you were there?'

  'I wanted to face to face.'

  'I'd rather have heard it from you than from my parents. They made it sound like some grubby little secret they were ashamed to have to tell me.'

  'I hadn't met her then.'

  'How do you – ' Natalie's mouth stiffens around the last word. 'You've discussed it with them, have you?'

  'Disgust is more like it. Theirs, I mean.'

  Natalie shakes her head as if too many words have settled on it. 'Just tell me. Leave the random stuff where it belongs.'

  'All right, they did their best to make me betray myself.'

  'What did you have to betray, Simon?'

  'Not a thing,' I say, fending off a memory of three naked girls with Tubby's gleeful face. 'I'm saying they tried. Are we happy now?'

  'I couldn't say what you are. Maybe you can tell me.'

  I might object that she wanted me to rid the conversation of this kind of tangential link, but I say 'I mean is there anything else you want to know? Anything at all.'

  'How was she?'

  'As professional as they come.' Hastily I add 'The time I didn't spend watching her grandfather's films she was telling me about him and his career.'

  'Poor you,' Natalie says with, I suspect, at least as much mockery as sympathy. 'Sounds as if you never went to bed.'

  'Oh, I did quite a bit of that too.'

  Natalie makes for the door, and I'm
afraid that language has tripped me up again until she says 'That's where I'm going. You're not the only one in need of sleep.'

  'Sorry. I didn't realise wondering about me would keep you awake.'

  She halts with her hand on the doorknob. 'Mark has been.'

  'You should have told me. What's been wrong?'

  'I hope he's just been missing you. Perhaps whatever's kept waking him up will go away now you're home, since he won't tell me what he's been dreaming.'

  At least her hope is encouraging. 'I'll let you get in first, shall I?'

  'I'd appreciate it.' As she opens the door she murmurs 'I'm glad not to be on my own again.'

  'I'll be here,' I promise and switch on the computer.

  She bolts the bathroom door as I reach the newsgroups. Perhaps the splash of water in the sink would deafen her to any other sound, but I grab my mouth to trap whatever noise I might emit. I clutch my face hard enough to bruise it while I stare at Smilemime's latest message. I minimise the image and don't restore it until I hear Natalie switch off the bedroom light, by which time I've thought to let go of my aching face. Various members of the groups have already responded – 'Nobody cares who any of you are' and 'Why don't you all go forth and multiply, in other words fuck off' and 'I'd like to meet you and separate your head' – but nobody has on my behalf. It makes me feel spied upon by more people than I want to imagine.

  So the other one of Mr Questionabble wants me to meet him somewhere now and if I don't it shows I'm not telling the truth, except everyboddy can see it's beccause I'm telling it he wants to meet me and shut me up. Here's what I'll prommise. I'll meet him if someboddy who can prove who they are comes allong to keep the peace, but it has to be somewhere I sellect. I wonder how many of us there'd be then. Less than he wants us all to think. His name's nearly Less, which gives him away again, and Colin Vernon's his CV, he'd like us to believe. If you want an idea of his real CV and the kind of films he's mixed up in, have a look at the site where he's performming with three girls. They do things you couldn't dream of. He looks like he's dreamming himself. Dream on, Mr Questionabble. Just don't bother dreamming of tricking me. That's me in the middle of the web, and I've got tricks I havven't even thought of yet. Better get off it while you can, beffore you're stuck. You wouldn't want that for Christmass.

  THIRTY-SIX - LISTENERS

  We should never think history is fixed. That's as untrue of the cinema as it is of any other area of study, especially now that so much we thought was lost is being rediscovered. Sometimes we might feel as if the collective unconscious has repressed a memory. We can see why Stepin Fetchit became an embarrassment, though not in the French sense, but how long will anyone even remember him? By now the world has forgotten both how hilarious audiences once found Max Davidson and how his brand of Jewish humour was declared unacceptable. Of course some groups might prefer to pretend that Jewish comics never parodied their race, but the awkward truth is that he did for one. Now that he's safely embalmed in the form of extras on Laurel and Hardy DVDs, perhaps history can come to terms with him. Some resurrections may be harder to keep quiet, however. The films of Tubby Thackeray caused ructions during the First World War, and they're still difficult to contain within their genre. Comedies they may be, but his uniquely anarchic brand of slapstick seems to have tempted contemporary viewers to throw off too many conventions. Some resisted, some gave in, but nobody was comfortable with him. It's time to find out whether today's audiences will be more in sympathy with the films he made with director Orville Hart...

  It reads as if I'm trying to delay discussing Tubby. I'm attempting to place him in a context, even if it's reluctant to accept him. The rest of the chapter sketches his and Hart's careers and speculates about Tubby's influence on the director's later work. It's as much as I can manage until I'm free of jet lag and able to do justice to the notes I made in California. I change several phrases and several details before emailing it to Colin. For a moment I have a sense of achievement, and then it's crowded out of my head.

  By the time I went to bed last night, Natalie was asleep. When I awoke, having very eventually managed to doze, she and Mark had gone. I keep feeling prompted to ring her about Smilemime's latest, but for any number of reasons this seems inadvisable. At least my bank balance has been restored, though I've yet to receive an explanation. Just now I'm more anxious to understand how Smilemime could have made the allegation.

  I want to believe it's just another deranged fantasy. Is it a coincidence too outrageous for any fiction to risk, or could there be a reference somewhere online to my stay at Limestones? I've emailed Willie Hart a link to Smilemime's message and asked whether she has any idea where he might have gained the notion, but she has yet to respond. I find references to several Simon Lesters like alternative versions of me on the net, but none of them owns up to any mischief. Even when I expand my search to include adults-only links, my name brings up no sex sites, and so how can Smilemime have tracked me down to one? I won't let him go unchallenged any longer.

  Don't bother trying to threaten me with nonsense. And stop making allegations everyone can see are lies. I hereby invite you to post a link to the site. In fact I insist. If it isn't in your reply, be aware what that tells everyone about you, that's if anyone is even reading this.

  Of course I mean if anyone is reading Smilemime's messages. The instant mine is sent I realise my mistake. I sit up so abruptly that the chair backs away from the desk. I'm not just frustrated. As the message was set loose on the Internet, someone burst out laughing beyond the apartment door.

  It's my chance to learn who lives opposite. I leave the chair twisting like a dervish as I sprint along the hall. I'm not sure how derisive the receding laughter sounds. I grab the latch and fling the door open. At once there's silence in the empty corridor. The stairs are deserted too. I dodge to the door that faces Natalie's. As I peer through the spyhole, an eye swells to meet mine.

  It's my reflection, which is why it seems closer than the far side of the door. I'm raising my fist to knock when I hear a voice inside the apartment. 'He's a silly, isn't he?' it exults. 'What a goose. A Christmas goose.'

  I can't judge how near it is. I'm not even certain of its gender. Its words sound like an extension or translation of its laughter, especially when it adds 'Did he see himself on the screen? Was he doing all those funny things? What a funny face.'

  I mustn't fancy that any of this refers to me. I simply want to know who's speaking. I'm brandishing my fist only because I'm about to knock, but the monologue beyond the door arrests it. 'Who had nothing on, then? Were they laughing at his dangly bits? He can laugh as well. They had nothing on and no danglies.'

  What disturbs me most is the lack of any audible response. Is anybody there except the speaker? When the voice enquires 'He didn't mind everyone seeing him, did he?' I've had enough. I knock so hard my knuckles feel skinned raw.

  For the second time there's instant silence. It might be pretending that I never heard a voice. I give it a few moments, more than I think it deserves. 'Hello?' I call and make to knock again. The door is snatched open, and as I lose my balance I almost punch a woman on her pointed chin.

  She's inches taller than me. She's wearing a chunky white robe that barely covers the tops of her stiltish pallid shins. She thrusts a mobile phone into her pocket before I can determine whether she was speaking to it or about to do so. Her long face ducks towards me as if it's gaining too much weight to hold upright. 'He was nearly off,' she mutters.

  Am I hearing the same voice? At least I may be seeing the explanation of the monologue. In the room at the end of the hall decorated with framed posters, a kind of sling hangs from the ceiling. The sling is stuffed with a large toddler in a white towelling one-piece suit that covers its hands and feet and most of its head. Beyond the doorway to the room the edge of a television screen is displaying some activity. 'You were talking to him,' I blurt.

  I'm not sure this explains much, especially if she wanted the chil
d to sleep. Perhaps my tone betrays my doubts, because she jerks her head high and sweeps her long black hair away from her face. 'Why shouldn't I? What's he got to do with you? What did you hear?'

  I won't be overwhelmed by the choice of questions. 'Enough,' I murmur.

  Why is she speaking so quietly when she wasn't before? Except for the sight of her I could imagine that a man is whispering. 'I expect it's how people talk to their children when they think nobody else is around,' I concede.

  Her stare grows keener. Her eyes are very black and white. 'Have you got any?' she says low.

  'Why, are you after some more?' I keep that to myself and say 'A little boy.'

  'You don't look the type. Still, you can never tell.'

  'Tell what?' I'm provoked to demand.

  'I'd have said you were on your own.'

  'I'm nothing of the kind.'

  I attempt not to be distracted by the toddler as it bounces up and down in the sling as if to demonstrate how much it's entertained. The scrap I can distinguish of the image on the screen suggests a web site rather than a television show. 'So how old is your son?' says the woman.

  'He's not my son. That is, I didn't have him.' To judge by her expression, I might as well not have added that. 'No good as a playmate, I'm afraid,' I say. 'Too old.'

  Her lips part unevenly, revealing large teeth. 'Who for?'

  'For whatever his name is.' When pointing at the toddler, whose bouncing seems unusually silent, gains me no information I say 'I'm surprised you haven't met Mark or his mother.'

  'Why should we have?'

  'Maybe it's me, but where I come from we like to know our neighbours.'

  'We're enough,' she says more toothily still. 'You seem to want to know a lot when you haven't said who you are.'

  'You can see,' I tell her, but she only widens her eyes. 'I mean you can see where I came from.' Her gaze doesn't waver, and I turn to indicate. As I wobble to a halt I feel as if my head or my surroundings are continuing to spin, because while I've been in conversation, if it can be called that, the door to Natalie's apartment has shut without a sound.

  I have to glance down to confirm I'm dressed, which might make this less of a nightmare if I had keys in my pockets. I tramp across the corridor to give the door a manful shove. It resists as if some rubbery obstruction has lodged against the far side, and then it yields. I could imagine it has flattened the impediment, but there's nothing on the floor. I reach around the door to latch it open, only to find I already have. It seems easier to confront the neighbour than my own bemusement. 'There you are,' I say. 'I'm here.'