The Claw

by Ramsey Campbell

  'Went where? You didn't let her go up to the house, did you?'

  'Why not? Where else would she get it from?' He was staring irritably at the supplement, as if he couldn't meet her eyes. 'She'll be all right,' he mumbled. 'It isn't far.'

  'You let her go up there alone? After what happened?' Liz felt sick, her legs were rubbery. 'How long has she been up there?'

  'Oh, not long. I don't know exactly.' He heaved himself wearily to his feet. 'AH right, for God's sake, I'll go up if it makes you feel better.'

  He strode up the cliff path. She was meant to see how he was driving himself, exerting himself for her peace of mind. All at once Liz wondered if there was some other reason why Anna had gone up to the house. Maybe she hadn't wanted to stay with him while Liz was asleep. Had something happened between the two of them? She made herself climb faster. Sand trickled from the ragged edge of the path.

  By the time she reached the top, Alan was almost at the house. The windows were blank with sunlight and she couldn't see through them. Apart from the goats, the cliff-top seemed deserted; the flattened grass looked dusty with sand and harsh light, the coast road shimmered away toward the Britannia Hotel, the fields were giant samples of paint, green and yellow. The only thing that struck her as unusual was a glint of glass by the entrance to the pillbox. It was a bottle, a broken bottle of lemonade.

  It was a popular brand. Millions of people besides Anna must drink it. Nevertheless Liz craned into the dim entrance to the long low concrete building and called, 'Anna' down the crumbling steps. She held her breath, so as to hear better and so as to avoid inhaling the stale animal smell that wafted up from the depths of the pillbox. Nobody answered her, but before she could call again, she heard a faint movement from somewhere within.

  She glanced toward the house. Alan had reached the garden path. If she called him, she might be taking him away from Anna – and besides, she was furious with him. Suppose the movement in the pillbox wasn't Anna but whoever had killed the goat? She was dithering while Anna might be in danger. Taking a deep breath of fresh air, she went quickly down the steps.

  When she reached the bottom, at first she couldn't see. Her eyes were full of the dazzle outside. She had to stand there for a moment, one hand on the cold sweaty wall, and close her eyes. In the underground dimness with its rank smell of mould and concrete dust and something else, she heard movement again. Perhaps a goat had strayed down here; she couldn't recall how many she had seen outside. That would explain the bestial smell.

  She opened her eyes as soon as she could and stepped forward, calling, 'Anna.' To her left was a bare room the width of the pillbox. Sunlight blazed in through two small square apertures high up in the wall – gunports, presumably – but it only blurred the edges of the apertures and made the rest of the room more difficult to see. Still, it was clear the room was empty, except for a couple of beer-cans and a crumpled paper handkerchief.

  She turned away, down the dim corridor. Small cells opened off it on both sides, each one lit by one of the square apertures. Sometimes she had to halt and close her dazzled eyes, and then she began shivering as the chill of the place settled over her like fog. Her footsteps and the empty echoes of her voice were shrill. Wouldn't Anna have answered by now? Perhaps she was afraid to admit she was down here after being warned so many times to stay away from it. Surely it couldn't be that she was unable to answer?

  Liz halted again, gripping the edge of the doorway, and squeezed her eyes shut to drive away a flock of overlapping after-images. Concrete dust whispered down from beneath her hand, and in the silence she heard another sound ahead. It couldn't be Anna. Please, let it be one of the goats… She opened her eyes and groped her way forward, though her vision was crowded with vague pale blotches. All at once she was desperate to find the source of the snuffling.

  The next cell on the left was empty, and so was the one on the right. The squares of blue sky looked unreal, part of a different world. As she stepped into the dark area between the sets of doorways, she realized that the corridor ahead wasn't only dim: it was flooded. She must be smelling the stagnant water as well as the goat, for it smelled worse than any animal she had ever encountered. There was something about the smell that she didn't even want to consider.

  She was sick with apprehension now. The goat must be injured; that was why it was snuffling. She forced herself forward, to get it over with. Empty cells, blurred squares of distant sky, shrill echoes of herself that she couldn't hush. Now she was at the edge of the water that covered the floor, and now she could see why it was darker here: a clump of bushes outside prevented daylight from reaching into some of the cells. At the edge of the darkness, she realized something else. The stench that she had tried not to define reminded her very much of blood.

  Before she knew what she was doing, she was groping forward along the left-hand wall. The water was shallowest at the edges, but even so it soaked her sandals at once. Reflections doubled the doorways, which looked drowned and wavering. Each cell was darker, each step toward the snuffling took her further into the dark.

  She flinched and almost cried out when she glimpsed movement in the next cell opposite, a dark shape creeping away from the entrance. It was only ripples in the water that had spread into the cell. The water made her feet drag – as if her fear wasn't enough to slow her down. There was a dim shape in the next cell across the corridor, but that was just a stain on the concrete floor. So was the dark huddle on the floor of the cell beyond that.

  She was sloshing onward now, pressing on because she'd almost lost her footing. No, it couldn't be a stain. It was an object, a glistening object lying on the dank floor. Surely it must be dim reflections of the ripples that had made it seem to stir. There was no need for her fists and her stomach to clench like this.

  But it had eyes, and they were watching her.

  She stumbled backward, fighting to keep her balance on the slippery floor. It was only some tramp sleeping rough, she told herself desperately: a tramp – that was why he was so thin. So he was naked – why not, on a day like this? But even then she didn't believe herself, not when she could see how his entire body was glistening. The liquid that covered him from head to foot was too dark for water. She had smelled it all the way along the corridor. His bared teeth were glistening with blood too.

  He was rising slowly on all fours, exactly like an animal in its lair. Around him she thought she glimpsed scattered bones, ragged with flesh. His eyes gleamed yellow, his teeth bared further in a grin or a snarl – and then she was running wildly down the corridor, almost falling at the water's edge, one outstretched hand scraped raw by the rough concrete wall. She might have screamed for Alan, but her throat was choked by fear and the smell of blood. She was sure that any moment the thin bloody figure would leap on her back, drag her down on the floor of the dark corridor.

  When she reached the steps she stared back, trembling. The corridor was deserted. She fled up the steps, so clumsily that she fell, bruising her knees. She stumbled into the daylight, away from the pillbox, toward the house.

  Alan was striding toward her, half-dragging Anna. 'She was waiting for the lemonade to chill,' he said angrily. 'I had to go searching for her. She was waiting by the road – she wouldn't wait in the house.'

  He saw Liz's expression and came quickly over to her. 'My God, what's wrong?'

  It would take too long to describe what she'd seen. 'There's someone down there,' she said, pointing to the steps, though her hand was shaking almost as much as her mouth. 'I think he's the one who killed the goat.'

  'Is he, by Christ? Well, we'll soon find out.' Before she realized what he meant to do, he disappeared into the pillbox.

  She hadn't wanted him to go down. There was only one way in or out, and he could have guarded that while she called the police. He'd strode into the pillbox as if he was eager for violence, and now she was afraid of what might happen, down there in the dark. Suppose he couldn't see the creature until it was too late? Suppose it wa
s ready for him – waiting for him? Wind tugged at the grass, sand hissed at the edge of the cliff, the cries of children drifted along from the Britannia Hotel. It was only half a mile away, and so was Jane's house in the other direction, but somehow that only made her feel all the more alone.

  She told Anna to wait where she was, a hundred yards away, then she hurried alongside the pillbox, trying to see through the gunports. But she could see nothing, and worse still, she couldn't hear Alan; her ears were full of the ominous roar of the sea. She wavered between the gun- ports, afraid to cry out a warning in case it distracted him. What had she sent him down there to confront? She couldn't even reach the gunport of the cell where she had seen the figure crouching in the dark, for the bushes were too thick.

  She was still wavering outside the pillbox and straining her ears when she heard movement on the steps. She glanced nervously at Anna to make sure the child was far enough away to be in no danger. But it was Alan on the steps. He stood shaking his feet dry, and gazed oddly at Liz. 'Come on, let's go down and finish the wine if it hasn't been pinched,' he said. 'There's nobody in there. Nobody at all.'

  Eleven

  Coming home from the hotel on Tuesday, Liz stayed on the road, away from the beach, and made Anna hold her hand round the succession of blind corners. Grasshoppers buzzed like static in the untrimmed verges, cows plodded after one another through the fields; a procession of clouds passed along the horizon, so slowly that they looked pasted on the blue sky. It was the kind of day when Liz normally liked to go exploring with her family, to villages that only the locals seemed to know, or to drive through the Broads, to cruise through the changing landscape, woodland and marshes, herons and windmills and lone houses among the trees; she often wished she could bear to travel by water. But she didn't want to see Alan, nor to go home.

  After leaving the pillbox, he'd spent hours trying to persuade her that she'd imagined what she'd seen. She would have been only too glad to believe that herself. She had been on edge, admittedly; after seeing the dead goat under the hedge, it was no wonder she'd been expecting something even worse. Could she really have distinguished so much in the dark? Alan had found nothing, and that was enough to make her agree not to call the police yet again. The trouble was that everything he said only succeeded in making her feel more alarmed – because he seemed to blame Anna.

  She couldn't understand him. Did he blame the child for what Liz had seen in the pillbox? For the bloody face she'd seen on the window? For her nervousness? Perhaps he didn't know himself; perhaps he was trying to conceal what he felt. But that didn't make it any less unpleasant. Just now Liz felt she didn't want to know him.

  At least he was likely to stay out of her way while she made cakes for tomorrow's afternoon tea. Jane was coming, Rebecca, Gail, if she could get away from the hotel – and Alex, heaven help them all. Every second Wednesday they met in a different house. Rebecca's was untidy and welcoming, no doubt just as it would have been if it were full of the children she could never have; Alex's was spotless as a show house, and as cold – no wonder her photographer husband went away so often, and for so long. Gail's cottage was like an annexe to the hotel, the phone always calling her back to the desk. And Jane's was even untidier than Rebecca's, strewn with bits of food and Georgie's nappies, a house out of control. The last tea had been at Jane's, and Jane had invited Alex, which was the only reason Liz had invited her now.

  They were home now. In the sunlight, the hedge and the pillbox looked as innocent as everything else – which meant that nothing seemed innocent at all. Alan was in the long room, replaying his cassette of the Nigerian documentary. At least Anna wouldn't go pestering him, not while the claw was there – when was he going to take it to London? – and no doubt he would leave them alone, as he was busy. 'We're home,' Liz called, and ushered Anna through to the kitchen. 'Would you like to play in the back garden?' she said to the child.

  'No, I don't want to. I don't like it.'

  'Don't you, darling?' Liz did her best to sound casual. 'Why not?'

  'There's a man out there.'

  'Oh, I don't think there is.' The garden was as it should be – paths, flower borders, grass – and she could see nobody beyond the hedge. She opened the back door. 'There isn't, look. There's nobody.'

  'He's lying down where you can't see him.'

  Liz hoped that the child hadn't seen her clench her fists. She stared along the side of the house, then strolled carelessly to a point on the lawn from which she could see through the hedge. She could see nobody, but that was no longer reassuring. 'I can't see anyone,' she said, 'but you can stay in and help me, if you'd rather.'

  For a while they made cakes. Anna chopped up fruit carefully, proud that her mother let her use the big knife. Liz smiled to herself as she watched the child, but she was also watching the garden. Everything seemed too intense: flowers bobbed and shook their heads at her, the hedge shuddered in the breeze. She wished she could see beyond the hedge.

  She had just put a batch of scones in the oven when Alan came in. 'Have you nearly finished?' he said. 'I've got something to show you.'

  He led her to the long room, after she'd made sure that Anna went into her playroom. 'Sit down and watch this,' Alan said. 'You'll see why in a bit.'

  It was the Nigerian documentary. Theatre groups performed in dusty car parks, singers toured shops made out of corrugated metal and tried to sell their records; crowds poured into a mosque and as many gathered outside; camels lined up in a market, women balancing gourds on their heads marched by. After a while Liz had to break off watching to take out the scones, and that was a relief; the way she felt now, the film seemed a jumble of images, too much to take in, especially when she didn't know what Alan meant her to see. As she sat down again, he restarted the cassette. 'What am I supposed to be looking for?' she said.

  'You'll know when you see it.' Nevertheless he was frowning. The cassette ran on – priests and card games in market-places, women with gorgon hair, hundreds of fishermen plunging into a river to net a multitude of fish – and then it was over. 'Just let me run it again,' he said.

  'What exactly are you trying to find?'

  'I wanted you to see without me having to tell you. Well, all right,' he said reluctantly, 'you can look for it too. I remembered I'd seen a shot of a kind of bright red man. I thought it was near the beginning, but I could have been mistaken. I'm sure he's what you thought you saw in the pillbox. You must have got the idea from the film.'

  She could have glimpsed it on Sunday, while she was trying to read. It was the kind of peripheral glimpse her imagination might have seized upon and produced when she was searching the pillbox. She wanted to believe that, she wanted to be reassured, but as he ran the tape back and forth, muttering to himself, she was simply becoming more nervous. Crowds scampered into the mosque then scurried out backwards, fishermen were flung out of the river as though the fish were fighting back. On the mantelpiece the metal claw jerked as the light caught it. Why couldn't he find what he'd seen? What if it wasn't on the tape after all? She was peering desperately at the screen, wanting to plead with him to stop the parade of images, when the doorbell rang.

  Before Liz could get up, Anna had run to the door. 'Hello, Anna,' Liz heard. 'Is your father in?'

  It was Isobel. Today she wore a tailor-made mauve suit: jacket, blouse and slacks. She strode into the long room and nodded briefly to Liz, then she saw that Alan was running the cassette. 'I hope I haven't interrupted you at work,' she said.

  He turned off the sound. 'No, not really. Don't worry.'

  'I was on my way home from Hemsby, so I thought I might drop in. I didn't phone in case that disturbed you. You're searching for something, are you? Is it to do with your work?'

  'No, nothing like that. It's something we thought Liz saw.'

  'I see.' In two words Isobel managed to imply that if he felt obliged to waste his time, he was too old for her to stop him. 'Something on the television?' she said.

  '
Well, no, not exactly. Out on the cliff. She thought she saw a man hiding in the pillbox.'

  'But in fact he was on the television?' She turned to Liz. 'I suppose you were overtired.'

  'We've both been a bit on edge,' Alan said defensively. 'Someone killed a goat on the cliff the other day.'

  For God's sake, Liz cried silently, don't tell her that! Some hangover from his childhood always made him blurt out the truth to his mother, whatever the consequences. 'What do you mean, killed it?' Isobel demanded. 'Ran it over?'

  'Nastier than that,' Alan said, while Liz cringed inwardly. 'It looked as if they used a knife.'

  'But good heavens, you shouldn't let the child stay here while that kind of thing is going on. I'll take her, by all means. I'm sure Elizabeth would welcome a rest.'

  'Thank you very much, Isobel, but I'm sure I can cope.' Liz's mouth was growing unwieldy with resentment. 'Anna's a sensible girl. She knows to stay with me. She's in no danger.'

  'Well, I can't force you. Or the child, if she prefers not to come.'

  Perhaps hearing that they were talking about her, Anna wandered in from the playroom. 'Would you like to come and stay with me for a while and give your mother a rest?' Isobel said.

  Anna must have felt accused, for she looked at Liz for reassurance. 'I want to stay with mummy,' she said, almost pleading.

  'Oh well, that's that. There's obviously nothing I can do.' She turned her back on both of them. 'I came to invite you all to dinner next week,' she said to Alan, making it sound like a challenge.

  'We'd love to come. Wouldn't we, Liz?'

  'Of course we would.' She found it easier to be dishonest while Isobel had her back to her. 'Would you like a cup of tea, Isobel?'

  'I don't think so, thank you. I think it'll be best if I go.' Halfway down the path she turned and gazed at Liz. 'My offer is still open if you should change your mind.'