The Grin of the Dark

by Ramsey Campbell

  'The main operation will be elsewhere.' It must be, and I struggle to ignore the distraction, because it's aggravating a fear of losing control of my words. 'Here, look,' I say, dragging out my wallet to produce my credit card. 'This is who I am.'

  He lowers his head like a bull and inverts his grimace. 'Does it work?'

  I almost demand how much he knows and from where. 'What do you mean?'

  'Meant to think it's real, am I? That's supposed to be your name and you're supposed to be a writer. Can't be much of one if you have to bring your book and I've never heard of you.'

  My words are coming apart in my head, and I'm not sure that my rage will help me assemble them. 'How long are you going to keep this nonsense up?' I snarl, tramping forward. 'What do you want to happen to my son?'

  'Depends what he's been up to.' The guard protrudes his stomach as he adds 'That's if you've even got a son.'

  How many of his random comments are going to happen on the truth? 'This is getting nobody anywhere,' I say and snatch out my mobile. 'I'm calling the police.'

  'That should be fun.'

  'I neam it,' I assure him and fight to regain at least verbal authority. 'Do you really think a crinimal would call them?'

  'A what?'

  'Crimimal. Criminimal.' My mouth forms into a mirthless grin that tries to bite back the gibberish. I brandish the phone and shout 'Watch.'

  'Wonder who you're really calling.'

  'I'll show you the numb, the number.'

  'That's another of your tricks, is it? You should be on the stage.'

  I thrust the mobile at him, which only makes him advance his stomach further. I'm about to devote all my energy to pronouncing 'You call it' when the phone sets about wishing us a merry Christmas. For a moment I don't know why the displayed number is familiar, and then I recognise Mark's. I almost drop the phone, I'm so desperate to speak to him. 'Where are you?'

  His response is a laugh and then more of them. He must be amused because we asked each other the question in chorus, but he sounds close to hysteria. 'I'm stin the buildnig,' I gabble, which I'm afraid may tickle him afresh. 'Where are you?'

  'Here.'

  'Don't joke juts snow,' I plead, and the handbell – the device in a white plastic box above the door, at any rate – begins to clang.

  The guard opens the door about a foot. I can't see past him, but I hear Mark say 'Is Simon there?'

  'I'm here, Mark. This fellellow thinks I'm a burlgar, would you believe. He won't let me out.'

  While this is directed largely at the guard, it's Mark who responds. He begins by laughing rather too much, and then he raises his voice. It sounds frenzied, perhaps with hilarity. 'Help, anyone,' he cries. 'They've caught Simon Lester. They've trapped him.'

  'No need for that, son,' the guard murmurs. 'Keep it down.'

  'Help, help.' The rebuke increases Mark's hysteria, mirthful or otherwise. 'They've got Simon Lester in there and they won't let him go.'

  'Do you think a crininal would cause a scene like that?' I demand. 'Make sense.'

  'Help. Help.' By now Mark's cries are painful to hear. 'He's shut up and it's nearly his birthday.'

  The guard swivels his slow head towards me while continuing to block my escape. 'Is that right?'

  I can scarcely understand him for Mark's pleas. 'It is, and I wanted to get my work out of the way.'

  I don't know what moves him: my insistence on the truth, or Mark's protests, or some motive of his own? As if he's suddenly gained weight he inches forward with lingering ponderousness and edges the door open. 'Go on before I change my mind,' he says and tells Mark 'Here he is for you. Stop that now. This is a quiet neighbourhood.'

  I'm barely past the door when it slams behind me. Mark seems eager to speak, but doesn't until we reach Gower Street. As we turn towards the station he says 'That was fun.'

  'What was?' I ask, perhaps too sharply. When he doesn't answer I say 'What happened after you ran off?'

  'I lost them.'

  'You didn't see who it was, you mean?'

  'I think I did.'

  'What did they look like?'

  'Like him,' Mark says and jabs a thumb over his shoulder.

  I twist around, but the street is deserted. It takes me a moment to realise 'You're talking about the man who wouldn't let me out.'

  'Right, him.'

  'How much like?'

  'I'm not sure. I only saw him for a moment and he was making a face.'

  I won't ask what kind, despite a sudden irrational notion that Mark is referring to the guard. Before long the thought makes me look back again to confirm that the street is still empty. 'Is that clown following us?' says Mark.

  'Nobody is that I can see.' I do my best to leave it at that, but feel prompted to remark 'I think I've had enough of clowns for a while.'

  'Which ones? Not Tubby.'

  'Perhaps even him for a little while.'

  This silences Mark all the way to the station. The bulbous mirrors by the ticket barrier inflate his face, which might be reproachful or incredulous – hard to tell, since he isn't speaking. Once we've descended to the platform, at the far end of which several revellers are blowing party hooters and executing a fat random dance, his muteness forces me to say 'When I said clowns I was thinking of the circus.'

  'Is there one? Can we go?'

  'You liked what you saw so much you want more.'

  'Don't you?'

  'I think I could live without it.'

  This time there's no doubt that his expression is both disbelieving and censorious. 'I thought you liked Tubby.'

  'I don't understand. What does what we saw when you came round have to do with him?'

  Mark laughs a shade uncertainly. 'He was it,' he says as a hooter rasps derisively and sticks out its paper tongue. 'He's what we saw.'

  'On the video, you mean.' When Mark nods I'm able to laugh. 'Sorry, I thought you meant at the circus.'

  He more than matches my laughter. 'How could I mean that?'

  'It was a bit like him in some ways, don't you think?'

  'I don't know,' Mark says and giggles again. 'I didn't see it.'

  'When didn't you? What do you mean?'

  I can't tell if he's amused by the questions or by my emitting far more syllables than they need. 'Ever,' he manages to say. 'We never went.'

  He's making some kind of joke. However unfunny I find it, it needn't bother me. 'What did we do, then?'

  He grins as if he thinks I'm the joker. 'Walked all over the park like it was a maze, but the circus wasn't there. And then mum called you and picked us up.'

  I feel as if everything – his widening grin, the vast cold breath of an approaching train, the revellers protruding extra tongues as if they're portraying frogs – is about to vanish like an image that can no longer keep up its pretence. I clutch at a memory that seems capable of saving me. 'Hold on, Mark. She asked how it was and you told her it was funny.'

  'The film was. Tubby's film.'

  'I know which film we saw.'

  My words are carried off by the wind of the train – I'm not even sure I hear them for its thunder. I can only follow Mark into the carriage. As he sits opposite me I expect him to be grinning more widely than ever, but his eyes look concerned despite his mouth. 'You were only kidding about the circus, weren't you?' he says.

  'That's right, just kidding,' I say and wonder which of us is deceiving the other, if we aren't both part of an elaborate trick, but by whom? The revellers wave us off, sticking out their eager tongues in a raucous chorus. 'Let's be quiet now,' I say as the train speeds into the dark.

  The harder I struggle to recall details of the circus, the more I seem to be imposing similarities on my surroundings. At Farringdon someone ducks his head between his legs, but he isn't about to stand on it. As the train pulls out of Barbican a man starts miming a comic song, except that the window must be robbing him of sound. At Moorgate a lanky man in flapping clothes runs alongside the carriage, but he can't be so tall
that he needs to crouch to grimace at us. At Liverpool Street a child is sitting on a man's shoulders – just sitting, not hopping up to stand on them before perching on the man's head. At Aldgate I try to establish who's laughing without the slightest pause for breath somewhere down the carriage, but lurching to my feet shows me nobody. Perhaps I should have concentrated on the platform, since I'm left with the fancy that the faces and expressions of the spectators on it were too nearly identical. Light after light sails by in the tunnels between stations, so that the windows seem to flicker like an old film. Whenever I catch Mark's eye he renews his grin as if he's savouring my joke all over again – mine or someone else's. Such thoughts are dangerous: they make everything feel untrustworthy, Mark included. If I somehow imagined the circus, how much does it matter? Thackeray Lane seemed uncertain whether he'd had a similar experience. Perhaps if I write about both I'll be able to grasp them or at least my own. Writing is one way to make sense of the world. Just now I want nothing more than to be at my desk, where I'll be able to regain some kind of control.

  At Tower Hill I tramp up the escalator ahead of Mark. In the unassertive light of the puffy whitish sky everything – the roads, the office blocks, the Tower, passers-by in the mood for a new year, ourselves – looks less substantial than I would prefer. That's a problem of my consciousness, but if I'm receiving an imperfect image, how close is it to reality? I need to narrow down my thoughts to put them in order, but we're hardly in the apartment when Mark says 'What shall we do now?'

  'Something by ourselves for a while, I'd like.'

  'Shall we play my Christmas game?'

  'You go ahead. It's just for one person, isn't it?'

  'You ought to see. It's like a maze with no way out.' Perhaps he notices that the prospect fails to appeal, because he says 'Can I watch Tubby, then?'

  'I suppose so. Where's the disc?'

  'In my room.'

  I may take that up with him or Natalie later. 'Go ahead,' I say for now, making for my desk.

  I don't know how long I stare at the blank screen. If I'm looking for peace in its featurelessness, it only reflects my confusion. I need to deal with anything that's waiting. I log on and delete a mass of emails from unknown senders with subject lines I won't even try to decipher. Or did the nonsense conceal words I ought to have recognised? I'm not going to make my skull feel even thinner by straining to recall. I wish I didn't have to check the newsgroups.

  Sillent round here now, isn't it? Maybe Mr Questionnabble's deccided he doesn't exist, or maybe he's hoping we'll think he never did. He wasn't at his pubblishers when I went, and Mr Cee Vee who we're suppossed to think is his edditor wasn't either. There was just me, so I win. Anyboddy dissagree? Maybe Mr Questionnabble's too busy just being himself and coppying from www.tubbysfilms.com.

  He's posted the correct address this time. My innards twitch as I follow the link, to be confronted by the improved opening of my first chapter. I scroll through it and see there's more – far more. I clench my teeth until my jaws become a single ache, and then my mouth stretches into some kind of grin as I read the first words of the next chapter.

  Let stalk about Ubby in Howwylud. Hiss firts flim – hiss debboo – scalled 'The Bets Messy Din'. Snowed in, sno din, bcos snows hound, sno sound. Cy lent sinny Ma, C? Bet messy dinno dat or May B thaw tit was all flims worm N 2B...

  It's unbelievably childish nonsense, and as it gets worse I start to clap and laugh. Perhaps my mirth is a little too wild, especially since I can't tell when it starts to be underlined by giggling at my back. I jerk my head around and see Mark in the doorway. 'What are you reading?' he splutters.

  'Maybe it's the new language. Maybe soon we'll all be talking like that.' I scroll through as much as I can stand – by no means all, it looks like. 'It's some idiot's idea of a joke, I suppose. Fun for a while, but here's the real thing,' I say and bring up my chapters on the screen. I open the second one, and then I let go of the mouse before it shatters in my fist.

  Let stalk about Ubby in Howwylud. Hiss firts flim – hiss debboo – scalled 'The Bets Messy Din'...

  It's word for word, and it goes on for chapter after chapter. My eyes feel like hot coals that are about to turn black while my head pounds with the effort to think of an explanation. Mark is laughing hard enough for both of us. I control myself to some extent before I turn on him. 'It was you, wasn't it?' I say through my teeth.

  FORTY-SEVEN - SOMEONE ELSE

  I'm ready with a smile as I hurry down the hall to greet Natalie. 'You look pleased with yourself,' she says. 'Did you deliver your book?'

  'All of it I've had a chance to write.'

  'That's what I was asking. You took it to Colin.'

  'It's in safe hands. It will be. It's safe.'

  She waits to be sure I've finished before she says 'Well, are you going to let me in?'

  I feel as if we've been staging a performance for an audience across the hall. Was there movement beyond the spyhole – a flicker like an eyelid? 'Carry you over the threshold if you want,' I say.

  'No, just let me in. I've had a long day.'

  'They've been working you hard, have they?'

  'It wasn't only work.'

  I stare at her face and her profile and the back of her head, none of which prompts any further explanation, and so I have to ask 'What was it, then?'

  'Oh, Simon.' She moves her shoulders but doesn't turn. 'Perhaps we were finding you something special for your birthday,' she says.

  'We.'

  'That's right, me and someone at the magazine.'

  Could that be Mark's father? I'm not going to enquire. Presumably whatever she bought is in her handbag, unless it's hidden in the car. 'I hope it didn't take you away from your work too much,' I say.

  'Don't worry, I had fun all day. I hope you will for the rest of it. It's our first New Year's Eve, remember.'

  I was wondering if she has been celebrating and with whom. Perhaps that's unfair, since she has to drive soon. I'm about to tell her at least some of this when she says 'Where's Mark?'

  'Deep in his labyrinth last time I checked.'

  'Which in everyday language is...'

  'Playing his game,' I translate as he opens his bedroom door.

  I make myself face him. His smile outdoes mine, but I'm not sure what that means. 'All right, Mark?' I risk asking.

  'What wasn't?' Natalie says at once.

  'There was a bit of a row, wasn't there, Mark? That's to say I made one. Some kind of virus has got onto my computer and turned my work into rubbish.'

  'Oh, Simon, no. I'm so sorry.'

  If I were still confused I could imagine she's apologising for infecting the computer. 'It doesn't matter,' I assure her. 'I told you, Colin and Rufus will have it all. They can copy it back to me.'

  'Did you scan for the virus?'

  'It's gone.' Though the programme Joe installed didn't identify it, the downturned mouth of the token face on the circular icon was transformed into a broad smile to the sound of a peal of electronic bells. 'I only wish I could have sent it back where it came from.'

  'Have you any idea where?'

  'Someone who's been trying to undermime my reputation ever since I started writing about Tubby. Undermine, I mean.'

  I follow this with a laugh, but perhaps Natalie doesn't notice. 'Who?' she says.

  'I don't know yet. I'm hoping the university can track them down. The kind of monster the Internet lets loose, or maybe it creates them. See, Mark, I've been fighting monsters too.'

  'I've been watching Tubby.'

  Since I apologised for blaming him for the gibberish on my computer I've been hearing gleeful laughter from his room. It sounded so maniacal and mechanical I ascribed it to some kind of monster. It can only have been in his game, which he must have replaced with the disc containing Tubby's stage performance. Nevertheless I'm glad when Natalie interrupts my thoughts by saying 'If you men will excuse me, I'm going to have a shower and get changed.'

  Mark hurries b
ack into his room and I return to my desk. There's no email from my publishers. When I phone the office yet again I'm answered by the same routine about the turn of the year. Nobody could have diverted my chapters, but I'm still trying to gain some objective assurance – however unlikely, given the date and the lateness of the hour – when Natalie reappears in an elegant black dress and matching stole. As she brings herself up to date with an overcoat she says 'Everyone ready for the occasion?'

  As much as I'm likely to be, I am. Mark is a good deal more eager. He emerges from his room as silent as he's been in there, but with a smile he may not have let down since he went in. He's hurrying to call the lift when Natalie says 'Our neighbours send their best, Simon.'

  'Which are those?'

  'The ones you were wondering about,' she says and points at the door opposite.

  For a grotesque moment I think she's including the baby I saw jerking like a spider on a fattened thread. 'The parents, you mean.'

  'Hardly.' She looks as if I've made a tasteless joke and says no more until we're at the lift. 'Not unless they adopt, and they didn't give me the impression they wanted to,' she murmurs. 'They're a couple, but they're men.'

  'They can't have any babies,' Mark giggles as the metal door slides back.

  Amid my bewilderment I can find only one question, however inadequate. 'What are they called?'

  'Mr Stilton,' Mark says as if he's struggling to contain an explosion of mirth.

  I manage not to comment until we're all in the grey box. 'A big cheese, is he? How does he smell?'

  'Simon.'

  I ignore Natalie's rebuke, not least because she appears secretly amused. 'What's his boyfriend's name?'

  'Mr Meese,' Natalie says like a challenge.

  I'm trying to decode whatever joke is hidden in the name when the lift opens on the basement car park. One of the pallid lights – I can't locate which – is flickering like a bloodless pulse. Shadows twitch the Punto as if it's no less anxious to be off than Mark. Even Natalie seems to be losing patience with me as she turns to enquire 'Aren't you with us?'

  As I venture out of the lift I grasp an explanation. 'Are you sure they weren't just visitors?'