“Don’t touch, Charles,” his mother said at once.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“And,” she said, “please don’t speak to your mother in that fashion.”
“Take no notice, son,” Bobbie advised. “He was just having a joke.”
“I’d like us to leave now, please,” Charlie’s mother said. “I think everyone’s seen enough.”
When Charlie turned to follow her he caught sight of a movement above the neck of the embedded body beside him, as if a face like a featureless stain had swung to watch. She must be causing it, there and in the cavities the other fleshless bodies had in place of heads. He tried not to look, especially back, while he trotted after her. It was only his father who was close behind him. The church was meant to be a refuge, and no footsteps other than the family’s were clattering across the stone floor to the exit, however many echoes there might be. Outside all the clothes on the lines might have been miming agitation that his mother was trying to conceal. “I think we’ve been down here long enough,” she said.
Long enough for what? Rather than ask, Charlie hurried after her to the lift, where the sight of a face peering through the small window had lost some of its appeal. As the lift creaked upwards his father consulted the guidebook. “They took the heads somewhere for safety,” he said.
As Charlie wondered who was being kept safe and from what, his mother said “I’d like to put them behind us, thank you, Edward.”
“How far?” Charlie blurted.
“I’ve been surprised at you today, Charles. I hope you won’t let us down any more.”
She strode to poke the button for the traffic lights, and his father hung back to murmur “They thought something might be catching, Charlie. That’s why they took the heads off, to protect people.”
Who might something catch, and why? As Charlie made to ask, his mother doubled her frown at them. “Come on, Charlie,” his father muttered. “We don’t want you ending up in more trouble.”
Once they’d joined the queue at the bus stop Charlie’s mother grasped her handbag every time a moped raced through the increasingly gridlocked traffic. The bicycles buzzing like wasps didn’t bother Charlie, but he could have done without the face that kept looming at the window of the lift across the road. Very eventually a bus appeared in the distance, and less than ten minutes later it arrived at the stop.
From the bus he watched cars inch past one another, their drivers reaching to pull side mirrors inwards. The ruse would have amused him more if he hadn’t seen one reflected face swell up like a worm emerging from a hole as the driver hauled at the mirror. Having leafed through the guidebook, his father said “Who’d like to go up to a park?”
“Let’s,” Charlie’s mother said at once.
The picture in the book showed a railway platform made of steps alongside an equally steep train. When the bus came to an official stop at last and his father led the way to the station, however, Charlie saw an ordinary horizontal platform leading to a tunnel, where he tried to enjoy the sight of a blank-faced train worming its way towards him out of the dark. At first there wasn’t much to see when the train moved off, though a toddler in the next carriage kept poking her head up to peer at him. Her breath on the window between the carriages blurred her face and turned it grey. He tried to focus his attention on the tunnel, where he couldn’t see any holes in the walls – nowhere that anything could creep or struggle or bulge out from.
A wind boarded the train when, having escaped into the open, it reached the top of a hill, and Charlie’s mother tugged his zip under his chin. At a restaurant between the station and a park they had a pizza big enough for the three of them. Plastic sheets around the dining area didn’t just obscure the view but made the face of anybody who came near seem to take shape only gradually and not quite enough.
There were views from all sides of the park. The guidebook fluttered like a captured bird while Charlie’s father named buildings and piazzas and streets. The boy was more taken with Vesuvius, a hump the colour of its own dark smoke across the bay. “Would you like to use the telescope, Charles?” his mother said, but the notion of looking through a hole that brought things closer didn’t tempt him. As she pocketed the coin for the slot machine he saw a face struggling through a gap in a mass of foliage behind her. Only the leaves were active, and the statue was on the far side of the bush.
“We can take a ferry tomorrow,” Charlie’s father said on the way back to the hotel, “to somewhere your mother should like.” Charlie thought she’d heard more than was intended – perhaps a rebuke. Nobody spoke much until they were up in their room. As soon as his father started looking in the Frugoguide she said “I’d like to eat wherever’s nearest.”
“I hope that won’t be its only merit,” said his father.
“I hope some things mean more to you than your stomach.” Her glance at Charlie made it plain what should. “Time for a rest before we go out,” she said to bring all discussion to an end.
Charlie tried to lie still on his bed while his parents did on theirs beside him. He might have liked to see their faces, which were turned away from him. His father’s hand lay slack on top of the side of his mother’s waist, and Charlie had a sense that it was inhibited from moving, just like him. He struggled not to think this might be how it would feel to be embedded in a wall. You’d have to move eventually, however you could. He strained to keep his restlessness discreet, but once his bed had creaked several times his mother said wearily “We may as well go for dinner.”
The nearest restaurant was just two doors away from the hotel. It was an osteria, which sounded too much like a word for panic. Two mirrors the length of the side walls multiplied the room full of small tables. A waiter set about befriending Charlie, calling him signor and pouring him a sip of lemonade to taste as Charlie’s father sampled the wine. He told Charlie that his choice of spaghetti Bolognese was the best dish on the menu, so that the boy felt obliged to finish it, though it wasn’t much like his mother’s recipe. As his parents drank the liqueur that came with the bill she said “I’ll be happy to come here every night.”
“Seconded,” Charlie’s father said, though Charlie didn’t think she had been inviting a vote.
The boy might have shared their enthusiasm except for the word for the restaurant. It was engraved on the frosted window, and the O was a transparent oval like a hole a face would have to squash itself through. From the table at the back of the restaurant the letter resembled a hollow full of the darkness outside, and Charlie had glimpsed more than one face in it during the meal. Perhaps they’d belonged to people with an eye to dining, though they hadn’t come in. “And I’m sure you’ll want to see your friend again, Charles,” his mother said.
She hurried him back to the hotel and up to the room, where she said “Face and teeth.” Once he’d washed the one and brushed the others she dealt him a kiss so terse it was barely perceptible, and his father squeezed his shoulder. As Charlie lay under the quilt with his eyes shut he heard his mother say “I’m quite tired. You go down to the bar if you want, of course.”
“No need for that,” his father said before the low voices moved to the bathroom, where Charlie heard him murmur “Don’t keep making that face.” He imagined putting a face together like a jigsaw, a fancy preferable to the dreams he felt threatened by having. Eventually his parents finished muttering and went to bed. They weren’t with him as he tried to find his way home through the town, where all the signs were as incomprehensible as the answers people gave him. In any case he didn’t like speaking to anyone he met, however expensively dressed they were; they looked too thin inside their elegant costumes, and he couldn’t make much of their faces. Perhaps there were none to be seen – not yet, at any rate. When they began to squirm up from the holes in the collars he stuffed the quilt into his mouth to mute his cries. Having to explain to his parents would be even worse than the dream.
At breakfast the English couple came over. “Bobby has
something to say to you,” Bobbie said.
“I’m sorry if I caused any upset down below.”
“Don’t be saying things like that at breakfast. In the catacombs, he means,” Bobbie said as though apologising for a child. “Did he go too far, son?”
“He was joking. You said.”
“So long as you don’t forget,” Bobbie said and turned to Charlie’s mother. “We’ve been putting you down for a teacher.”
“We both are,” his father said.
At least all this helped distract them from how little the boy ate. After breakfast the family walked down to the harbour, to find the sea had grown so boisterous that the ferries had been cancelled. Now that Charlie saw all the windows in the boats he was happy to stay on land, even though he hadn’t noticed any faces at them. “There’s always Pompeii,” his father said.
Opposite the main railway terminal was a kind of market, men hoping to sell shabby items that cluttered the pavement. One peddler had a dog, presumably not for sale. Its bony piebald face poked out of a discoloured plastic cone around its neck, and it bared uneven yellow teeth in a silent snarl. On the train Charlie tried to forget it and anything it brought to mind. The clocks on the stations were some help, since every one showed a different incorrect time. “They’ve stopped time,” his father said as Charlie imagined he might have told the delinquents he taught creative writing in the unit at the school. Perhaps because modern history was her job, his mother didn’t seem to think much of the idea. Charlie wasn’t sure how to feel about the notion, but then this was true of much in his life.
Beyond the gates to Pompeii, where a woman’s face nodded forward in the ticket booth, was an entire ruined town. Sightseers clustered like flies around the nearest buildings, where the open fronts were covered with wire mesh as if to cage the occupants – figures that Charlie wished he could mistake for statues lying on shelves. “Not more mummies,” his mother protested.
“They aren’t, Charlie. They’re just casts.”
Weren’t those the husks worms left behind where they crawled out of the earth? “What does that mean?” Charlie had to ask.
“They’re plaster.” This seemed reassuring until his father added “They’re the shape of whoever was there when the volcano caught them. All that was left were hollows where they’d been, and that’s what the plaster was put in.”
Too many if not all of the contorted figures looked about to writhe and creep towards their audience, and the idea of dead shapes that had grown in holes didn’t appeal to Charlie either. He followed his parents into the town, where the streets were the colour of bone – of the shapes in the cages. The face that poked out of an unglazed window belonged to a girl somebody was photographing. After that Charlie kept alert for cameras, which often brought faces out of holes in the walls. He was glad his parents had forgotten to bring their cameras because of disagreeing over what to pack.
Lunch was no excuse to leave, since they’d bought sandwiches and drinks on the way from the station. They picnicked in the amphitheatre, where Charlie’s father attempted to entertain him with a speech about someone called Spartacus who’d lived in Vesuvius and set people free. The passing spectators seemed more amused than Charlie’s mother did, and Charlie didn’t know which of his parents to side with. “Sorry if that was too much like school,” his father eventually said.
“Perhaps Charles thinks it hasn’t anything to do with him.”
“All history does, Charlie. It isn’t just behind us, it’s part of us.”
Charlie didn’t care for either of his father’s notions, which stayed with him as he trudged through the crumbling skeleton of a town. His father wanted to show him and especially his mother frescoes and mosaics recommended by the Frugoguide, but the boy was distracted by more faces at windows than there were amateur photographers. He wished he’d thought sooner to unzip his jacket, since as soon as he did his mother said “I think that’s the best of the day.”
He hoped that didn’t mean worse was to come. He felt as if the clocks on the stations were holding time back. He couldn’t see the dog in the market opposite the terminal, but if it was about, what else might he have overlooked? Despite the gathering dusk, his father made a detour on the way to the hotel.
The inside of this church was high and pallid, with pillars like polished bones. As the twilight blurred the figures outlined in the windows, their blotchy faces seemed poised to nod forward. Did he glimpse a face beyond the door of a confessional? The box made him think of an upright coffin in one of the kinds of film he wasn’t allowed to watch. When he peered towards it the face was snatched into the gloom, and he heard a bony rattle. “Have you had enough for one day, Charlie?” his father said.
In a number of ways the boy had, but he confined himself to admitting “I’m a bit tired.”
In the hotel room he felt as if his parents were waiting to catch him not just being tired, and he turned his back so that they couldn’t see his face. At the restaurant the waiter gave them the same table and asked if the signor wanted his favourite. Charlie thought it safest to say yes, along with please when his mother’s frown began to gather. A different dish might have been even harder to finish while he was aware of the O on the window. He kept thinking a face was about to peer in at him, and far too often faces did, retreating into the dark before he could distinguish any features they might have. When he tried to ignore the gaping oval he began to fancy that one face too many was hidden in the repetitive reflections on both sides of him.
“Face and teeth,” his mother said upstairs with a toothy grin as a demonstration if not a joke. As well as the mirror on the bathroom wall a round one stood on a shelf above the sink. It magnified Charlie’s reflection, and when he lurched to turn it away he saw his face swell up like a balloon, baring its teeth. He couldn’t help taking the sight to bed, where he was visited by faces that grew bloated, parts of them bulging out of proportion as the heads struggled to emerge from their lairs. Each time he woke he had to jam the quilt into his mouth.
He might have left his plate at breakfast empty if his parents wouldn’t have wanted to know why. When he returned to the table four people were watching him. “Were you disappointed you couldn’t go on your boat?” Bobbie said.
He wasn’t sure how much of a lie to tell. “A bit,” he said.
“It’s your last day, Charles.” Perhaps his mother didn’t mean this to sound ominous, because she added “Would you rather not spend five hours on a ferry? Tell the truth.”
“Don’t mind.”
It was rather that he couldn’t think what he would prefer. When his mother raised her hands like a weary victim of a hold-up his father said “Would you like a surprise for your last day, Charlie?”
The boy wished they wouldn’t keep using the phrase. “If you like,” he couldn’t avoid saying.
“Aren’t I allowed to know either, Edward?”
“We don’t want to give it away, do we, Maur?” Charlie’s father covered the side of his face while he mouthed at her, and Charlie hoped she’d winced only at his dropping half of her name. “That’ll be a thrill for him,” Bobbie said.
Surely the surprise wasn’t more of Pompeii, though the family boarded that train. The clocks on the stations made Charlie feel as if time had abandoned him. His father stood up when the train reached Herculaneum. Weren’t there supposed to be mummies there too? It was only when his father bought bus tickets from a bar outside the station that Charlie realised his treat was Vesuvius.
As the bus climbed out of the town he saw a fair beside the road and felt guilty for wanting to be there instead. The nearer the volcano came, the less of an adventure it seemed likely to be. It loomed above the road like a storm rendered solid while his father read out from the guidebook that the Romans used to believe volcanoes were entrances to Hell. Why would he take Charlie anywhere like that? Did the boy deserve it somehow?
Beyond a ticket booth a man was handing out sticks at the foot of the route to the c
rater. Much of the track consisted of loose flat stones, which made footsteps sound bony and thin, especially all those at Charlie’s back. The path kept promising and failing to grow less steep, and whenever he tried to take more of a breath the wind assailed him with the stench of the volcano. It smelled as if the earth were farting, and if he’d been with other boys he might have been able to laugh.
Near the summit the path led between souvenir stalls. Among the trinkets Charlie noticed skulls, which gave him the unwelcome notion that someone might have brought the heads up from the catacomb to sell. The crater wasn’t reassuring – a vast hollow in which fumes crept out of the black earth, he couldn’t see exactly where, to crawl about as though groping for their own shapes. Charlie didn’t like to wonder what kind of creature Spartacus had been to live here, never mind what he’d set free.
He did his utmost to look pleased with the treat for his father’s sake and to give his parents one less reason to disagree. At last his father asked if he’d seen enough. As they passed between the stalls again a cloud like an emanation of the crater massed overhead. Charlie felt walled in by skulls, which were no less ominous for being plainly manufactured. When a wind followed him down from the summit he could have thought more than the stench of rot was after him. Some of the people toiling uphill had tugged hoods around their faces against the wind, which yanked at the material so that their features thrust up at Charlie. More than one of them bared their teeth, surely only at the wind.
Best New Horror, Volume 25 Page 17