She ignored the pain in her chest. “Wayne ... what about Wayne?”
“The man in the car?” he asked, then realized that he didn’t have to ask. “I’m afraid ... afraid he’s dead, ma’am.”
“He’s messed up real bad ... stuck in there,” the younger man said as they eased her into the back seat of their big old car.
Sandy cried then, cried as the older man laid something more over her, and cried as they started the car and drove on in the night. Much later, when she got control of herself, she asked them where Enfield was.
“Nothing there anymore, ma’am,” the older man replied. “They drowned it more than forty years ago; it’s under the Quabbin.”
“There’s an Enfield in Connecticut, Dad, down by Hartford,” the younger man added.
Sandy heard him, but it didn’t matter anymore.
THE TRICK by Ramsey Campbell
In twenty years of writing, Ramsey Campbell has written some 175 short stories, most of which have seen publication in a wide range of magazines, anthologies and fanzines. Campbell has the distinction of having appeared in all but one of the DAW series Year’s Best Horror Stories to date—this under three different editors, proving there is no personal bias in these selections.
The avowed intention of this series is to present the best horror stories published each year. Breaking an unwritten rule that requires an editor to include only one story by a given author in an anthology (unless under a pseudonym), The Year’s Best Horror Stories has on three previous occasions included two stories by the same author in the same collection. Those authors have been Harlan Ellison, Brian Lumley, and Ramsey Campbell. With almost a dozen new stories published during 1981, Ramsey Campbell has again written two of the best horror stories of the year.
“The Trick” appeared in the ill-fated attempt to revive Weird Tales as a paperback series. Its title was changed without the author’s knowledge, and at Campbell’s request I have restored his title (and corrected the spelling of his name) for its appearance here.
As October waned Debbie forgot about the old witch; she didn’t associate her with Hallowe’en. Hallowe’en wasn’t frightening. After the long depression following the summer holidays, it was the first of the winter excitements: not as good as Guy Fawkes’ Night or Christmas, but still capable of excluding less pleasant things from Debbie’s mind—the sarcastic teacher, the gangs of boys who leaned against the shops, the old witch.
Debbie wasn’t really frightened of her, not at her age. Even years ago, when Debbie was a little kid, she hadn’t found her terrifying. Not like some things: not like her feverish night when the dark in her bedroom had grown like mould on the furniture, making the familiar chair and wardrobe soft and huge. Nor like the face that had looked in her bedroom window once, when she was ill: a face like a wrinkled monkey’s, whose jaw drooped as if melting, lower and lower; a face that had spoken to her in a voice that sagged as the face did—a voice that must have been a car’s engine struggling to start.
The witch had never seized Debbie with panic, as those moments had. Perhaps she was only an old woman, after all. She lived in a terraced house, in the row opposite Debbie’s home. People owned their houses in that row, but Debbie’s parents only rented the top half of a similar building. They didn’t like the old woman; nobody did.
Whenever children played outside her house she would come out to them. “Can’t you make your row somewhere else? Haven’t you got a home to go to? “We’re playing outside our own house,” someone might say. “You don’t own the street.” Then she would stand and stare at them, with eyes like grey marbles. The fixed lifeless gaze always made them uneasy; they would dawdle away, jeering.
Parents were never sympathetic. “Play somewhere else, then,” Debbie’s father would say. Her parents were more frightened of the witch than she was. “Isn’t her garden awful,” she’d once heard her mother saying. “It makes the whole street look like a slum. But we mustn’t say anything, we’re only tenants.” Debbie thought that was just an excuse.
Why were they frightened? The woman was small, hardly taller than Debbie. Boys didn’t like to play near her house in case they had to rescue a football, to grope through the slimy nets, tall as a child, of weeds and grass full of crawlers. But that was only nasty, not frightening. Debbie wasn’t even sure why the woman was supposed to be a witch.
Perhaps it was her house. “Keep away from my house,” she told nearby children when she went out, as though they would want to go near the drab unpainted crumbling house that was sinking into its own jungle. The windows were cracked and thick with grime; when the woman’s face peered out it looked like something pale stirring in a dirty jar. Sometimes children stood outside shouting and screaming to make the face loom. Boys often dared each other to peer in, but rarely did. Perhaps that was it, then: her house looked like a witch’s house. Sometimes black smoke that looked solid as oil dragged its long swollen body from the chimney.
There were other things. Animals disliked her almost as much as she disliked them. Older brothers said that she went out after midnight, hurrying through the mercury-vapour glare toward the derelict streets across the main road; but older brothers often made up stories. When Debbie tried to question her father he only told her not to be stupid. “Who’s been wasting your time with that?”
The uncertainty annoyed her. If the woman were a witch she must be in retirement; she didn’t do anything. Much of the time—at least, during the day—she stayed in her house: rarely answering the door, and then only to peer through a crack and send the intruder away. What did she do, alone in the dark house? Sometimes people odder than herself would visit her: a tall thin woman with glittering wrists and eyes, who dressed in clothes like tapestries of lurid flame; two fat men, Tweedledum and Tweedledee draped in lethargically flapping black cloaks. They might be witches too.
“Maybe she doesn’t want anyone to know she’s a witch,” suggested Debbie’s friend Sandra. Debbie didn’t really care. The old woman only annoyed her, as bossy adults did. Besides, Hallowe’en was coming. Then, on Hallowe’en morning—just when Debbie had managed to forget her completely—the woman did the most annoying thing of all.
Debbie and Sandra had wheeled their prams to the supermarket, feeling grown-up. On the way they’d met Lucy, who never acted her age. When Lucy had asked “Where are you taking your dolls?” Sandra had replied loftily “We aren’t taking our dolls anywhere.” She’d done the shopping each Saturday morning since she was nine, so that her mother could work. Often she shopped in the evenings, because her mother was tired after work, and then Debbie would accompany her, so that she felt less uneasy in the crowds beneath the white glare. This Saturday morning Debbie was shopping too.
The main road was full of crowds trying to beat the crowds. Boys sat like a row of shouting ornaments on the railing above the underpass; women queued a block for cauliflowers, babies struggled screaming in prams. The crowds flapped as a wind fumbled along the road. Debbie and Sandra manoeuvred their prams to the supermarket. A little girl was racing a trolley through the aisles, jumping on the back for a ride. How childish. Debbie thought.
When they emerged Sandra said, “Let’s walk to the tunnel and back.”
She couldn’t be anxious to hurry home to vacuum the flat. They wheeled their laden prams toward the tunnel, which fascinated them. A railway cutting divided the streets a few hundred yards beyond the supermarket, in the derelict area. Houses crowded both its banks, their windows and doorways blinded and gagged with boards. From the cutting, disused railway lines probed into a tunnel beneath the main road—and never reappeared, so far as Debbie could see.
The girls pushed their prams down an alley, to the near edge of the cutting. Beside them the remains of back yards were cluttered with fragments of brick. The cutting was rather frightening, in a delicious way. Rusty metal skeletons sat tangled unidentifiably among the lines, soggy cartons flapped sluggishly, a door lay as though it led to something in the soil. Gree
n sprouted minutely between scatterings of rubble.
Debbie stared down at the tunnel, at the way it burrowed into the dark beneath the earth. Within the mouth was only a shallow rim, surrounding thick darkness. No: now she strained her eyes she made out a further arch of dimmer brick, cut short by the dark. As she peered another formed, composed as much of darkness as of brick. Beyond it she thought something pale moved. The surrounding daylight flickered with Debbie’s peering; she felt as though she were being drawn slowly into the tunnel. What was it, the pale feeble stirring? She held onto a broken wall, so as to lean out to peer; but a voice startled her away.
“Go on. Keep away from there.” It was the old witch, shouting from the main road, just as though they were little kids. To Debbie she looked silly: her head poked over the wall above the tunnel, as if someone had put a turnip there to grimace at them.
“We’re all right,” Sandra called impatiently. “We know what we’re doing.” They wouldn’t have gone too near the cutting; years ago a little boy had run into the tunnel and had never been seen again.
“Just do as you’re told. Get away.” The head hung above the wall, staring hatefully at them, looking even more like a turnip.
“Oh, let’s go home,” Debbie said. “I don’t want to stay here now, anyway.”
They wheeled their prams around the chunks that littered the street. At the main road the witch was waiting for them. Her face frowned, glaring from its perch above the small black tent of her coat. Little more of her was visible; scuffed black snouts poked from beneath the coat, hands lurked in her drooping sleeves; one finger was hooked around the cane of a tattered umbrella. “And keep away from there in future,” she said harshly.
“Why, is that your house?” Debbie muttered.
“That’s where she keeps her bats’ eyes.”
“What’s that?” The woman’s grey eyebrows writhed up, threatening. Her head looked like an old apple, Debbie thought, with mould for eyebrows and tufts of dead grass stuck on top. “What did you just say?” the woman shouted.
She was repeating herself into a fury when she was interrupted. Debbie tried not to laugh. Sandra’s dog Mop was the interruption; he must have jumped out of Sandra’s back yard. He was something like a stumpy-legged terrier, black and white and spiky. Debbie liked him, even though he’d once run away with her old teddy bear, her favourite, and had returned empty-mouthed. Now he ran around Sandra, bouncing up at her; he ran toward the cutting and back again, barking.
The witch didn’t like him, nor did he care for her. Once he had run into her grass only to emerge with his tail between his legs, while she watched through the grime, smiling like a skull. “Keep that insect away from here, as well,” she shouted.
She shook her umbrella at him; it fluttered dangling like a sad broomstick. At once Mop pounced at it, barking. The girls tried to gag themselves with their knuckles, but vainly. Their laughter boiled up; they stood snorting helplessly, weeping with mirth.
The woman drew herself up rigidly; bony hands crept from her sleeves. The wizened apple turned slowly to Sandra, then to Debbie. The mouth was a thin bloodless slit full of teeth; the eyes seemed to have congealed around hatred. “Well, you shouldn’t have called him an insect,” Debbie said defensively.
Cars rushed by, two abreast. Shoppers hurried past, glancing at the woman and the two girls. Debbie could seize none of these distractions; she could see only the face. It wasn’t a fruit or a vegetable now, it was a mask that had once been a face, drained of humanity. Its hatred was cold as a shark’s gaze. Even the smallness of the face wasn’t reassuring; it concentrated its power.
Mop bounced up and poked at the girls. At last they could turn; they ran. Their prams yawed. At the supermarket they looked back. The witch hadn’t moved; the wizened mask stared above the immobile black coat. They stuck out their tongues, then they stalked home, nudging each other into nonchalance. “She’s only an old fart,” Debbie dared to say. In the street they stood and made faces at her house for minutes.
It wasn’t long before Sandra came to ask Debbie to play. She couldn’t have vacuumed so quickly, but perhaps she felt uneasy alone in the house. They played rounders in the street, with Lucy and her younger brother. Passing cars took sides.
When Debbie saw the witch approaching, a seed of fear grew in her stomach. But she was almost outside her own house; she needn’t be afraid, even if the witch made faces at her again. Sandra must have thought similarly, for she ran across the pavement almost in front of the witch.
The woman didn’t react; she seemed hardly to move. Only the black coat stirred a little as she passed, carrying her mask of hatred as though bearing it carefully somewhere, for a purpose. Debbie shouted for the ball; her voice clattered back from the houses, sounding false as her bravado.
As the witch reached her gate Miss Bake from the flats hurried over, blue hair glinting, hands fluttering. “Oh, have they put the fire out?”
The witch peered suspiciously at her. “I really couldn’t tell you.”
“Haven’t you heard?” This indifference made her more nervous; her voice leapt and shook. “Some boys got into the houses by the supermarket and started a fire. That’s what they told me at the corner. They must have put it out. Isn’t it wicked, Miss Trodden. They never used to do these things. You can’t feel safe these days, can you?”
“Oh yes, I think I can.”
“You can’t mean that, Miss Trodden. Nobody’s safe, not with all these children. If they’re so bored, why doesn’t someone give them something to do? The churches should. They could find them something worth doing. Someone’s got to make the country safe for the old folk.”
“Which churches are those?” She was smirking faintly.
Miss Bake drew back a little. “All the churches,” she said, trying to placate her. “All the Christians. They should work together, form a coalition.”
“Oh, them. They’ve had their chance.” She smirked broadly. “Don’t you worry. Someone will take control. I must be going.”
Miss Bake hurried away, frowning and tutting; her door slammed. Shortly the witch’s face appeared behind the grimy panes, glimmering as though twilight came earlier to her house. Her expression lurked in the dimness, unreadable.
When Debbie’s father called her in, she could tell that her parents had had an argument; the flat was heavy with dissatisfaction. “When are you going trick-or-treating?” her mother demanded.
“Tonight. After tea.”
“Well, you’re not. You’ve to go before it’s dark.”
The argument was poised to pounce on Debbie. “Oh, all right,” she said grumpily.
After lunch she washed up. Her father dabbed at the plates, then sat watching football. He fiddled irritably with the controls, but the flesh of the players grew orange. Her mother kept swearing at food as she prepared it. Debbie read her love comics, and tried to make herself invisible with silence. Through the wall she could hear the song of the vacuum droning about the flat in the next house.
Eventually it faded, and Sandra came knocking. “You’d better go now,” Debbie’s mother said.
“We’re not going until tonight.”
“I’m sorry, Sandra, Debbie has to go before it’s dark. And you aren’t to go to anyone we don’t know.”
“Oh, why not?” Sandra protested. Trying to trick strangers was part of the excitement. “We won’t go in,” Debbie said.
“Because you’re not to, that’s why.”
“Because some people have been putting things in sweets,” Debbie’s father said wearily, hunching forward toward the television. “Drugs and things. It was on the News.”
“You go with them,” her mother told him, worried again. “Make sure they’re all right.”
“What’s stopping you?”
“You’ll cook the tea, will you?”
“My mother might go,” Sandra said. “But I think she’s too tired.”
“Oh God, all right, I’ll go. When the match
is finished.” He slumped back in his armchair; the mock leather sighed. “Never any bloody rest,” he muttered.
By the time they began it was dark, after all. But the streets weren’t deserted and dimly exciting; they were full of people hurrying home from the match, shouting to each other, singing. Her father’s impatience tugged at Debbie like a leash.
Some of the people they visited were preparing meals, and barely tolerant. Too many seemed anxious to trick them; perhaps they couldn’t afford treats. At a teacher’s house they had to attempt impossible plastic mazes which even Debbie’s father decided irritably that he couldn’t solve—though the teacher’s wife sneaked them an apple each anyway. Elsewhere, several boys with glowing skulls for faces flung open a front door then slammed it, laughing. Mop appeared from an alley and joined the girls, to bounce at anyone who opened a door. He cheered Debbie, and she had pocketfuls of fruit and sweets. But it was an unsatisfying Hallowe’en.
They were nearly home when Mop began to growl. He balked as they came abreast of the witch’s garden. Unwillingly Debbie stared toward the house. The white mercury-vapour glare sharpened the tangled grass; a ragged spiky frieze of shadow lay low on the walls. The house seemed smoky and dim, drained of colour. But she could see the gaping doorway, the coat like a tent of darker shadow, the dim perched face, a hand beckoning. “Come here,” the voice said. “I’ve got something for you.”
“Go on, be quick,” hissed Debbie’s father.
The girls hesitated. “Go on, she won’t bite you,” he said, pushing Debbie. “Take it while she’s offering.”
He wanted peace, he wanted her to make friends with the old witch. If she said she was frightened he would only tell her not to be stupid. Now he had made her more frightened to refuse. She dragged her feet up the cracked path, toward the door to shadow. Dangling grasses plucked at her socks, scraping dryly. The house stretched her shadow into its mouth.
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