Demons by Daylight

by Ramsey Campbell

  The coach seemed stalled for ever; the air-conditioning insinuated a faint nauseating whine into Kirk’s ears. Muted conversations hemmed him in as at a sick-bed. Just before he leapt up and screamed, the coach pulled out. He couldn’t sleep; Anne was there. He stared out with burning eyes at cardboard houses exhibited beneath sodium lighting, then at last the first unlit road where the headlights wiped darkness from vignettes of lonely mansions, caught scurrying small forms and brushed over mysteriously empty cars in laybys, and suddenly he remembered: he could question Anne’s Auntie Ethel and discover Anne’s address! — if Anne hadn’t warned her in advance. He gripped the stone bench to absorb its chill and be weighed down by what reality was left, but already he was flying helpless through the Pier Head on the Sunday afternoon, past old women screaming at old women screaming the Gospel, youths jeering as they aimed from the roof of the police station, unwashed waiting children dragged along by unwashed parents, over the worn boards littered with cigarette-packets and knot-holes surrounded by arrested ripples, onto the bus to Bidston, where the “No Spitting” sign had received the obvious amendment, and out into the sun; for a moment the leaf-shadows which strayed about the pavement were the dapplings of light on the Dee beneath Caldy Hill. He strode toward the house, but his steps faltered. The memorable cry of the gate’s hinges was silent, the empty socket of the bell-push was somehow filled by a new screw. The door opened.

  A girl of Kirk’s age smiled and turned her head shyly; she was not Anne. “Could I speak to Mrs Ethel…?” More than that he didn’t know.

  “I’m an Ethel but I’m not married yet! Who told you I was?” She wavered so near the edge of shrillness that she must be compensating; she looked directly at him, and he saw why. One side of her face was covered by a purple birth mark.

  He caught at the burning wood of the door-frame and managed not to fall; he clutched the concrete bench and fell, knowing what was to come. His mouth opened and forced deeper into chaos, like a kiss. “You don’t have relations — in Southend?”

  “Why yes, my sister’s there.”

  “Married with a daughter?” The door-frame flaked beneath his fingers like a block of salt; the grit of the concrete bench coated his hands — he was merging into it, a memorial to chaos.

  “Good Lord no, not yet! She’s younger than I am, she’s staying with our friends down there. Though I do hope she will be married one day. Me too if it comes to that. Did you meet her on holiday? I think she’s got her eye on our friends” son. She didn’t tell you about me, did she? You must come in and have a cup of tea.”

  “I have to go. It’s the wrong address,” Kirk faltered and almost ran from the garden. On the pavement he looked back. She was staring at him sadly. He closed his eyes and stepped into the road. She must think he’d fled the birthmark, but there was nothing he could say. A car swept by on each side of him, and he remembered: thus she would lose her husband. He beat at the wake of the car and staggered gasping to the pavement. What could he say? She’d think he was insane. At last, from the shadow of the trees, he glanced back. The door was closed.

  The bus back to Woodside felt more solid now than when he’d caught it, perhaps draining its solidity from the concrete bench, in which, like everything, he’d once again ceased to believe. As he was carried from Bidston to his flat he began to suspect how all was staged for him. That night he prowled, even though term began next day, until the night-rain lashed him back; he started at laughing girls on motor-cycles borne by a V-shaped spray, he stared into the black hypnotic mirrors of the flagstones, seeking Anne, who was nowhere. He couldn’t understand; he was no scientist or mystic; the knowledge that Anne had never been filled him with a doubt of everything he’d taken for granted. At last he sank into bed and was whirled into sleep, dreaming of Anne so vividly that her smile, her voice, her scent, her warmth were more real than the jagged alarm, the slits of light in his room and the hall, and the two letters on the hall table.

  One he knew: his only letter to Anne. A blotched grid (“No Such Address”, “Gone Away”) had encroached on his careful writing, and beside it someone had scribbled: “Arlen Street not built yet!!” No, it wasn’t possible; if he hadn’t been with Anne for a week, where had he been? Had he strode round Liverpool arm in arm with air, talking to himself? Then he chilled; without his glasses he couldn’t have known if the crowds had edged away from him and branded him insane. But no, this betrayed Anne. He’d held her, felt her tongue, her body; no ghost could be so solid. Or if her body had been illusion — He didn’t want to think; he rushed upstairs, the letters crushed in his hand, and wrested open the wardrobe door. The brown back of the wardrobe was still solid. He found the shirt into whose pocket he’d thrust the photographs Anne had given him. The pocket was empty. As he fought the nylon folds a hint of Anne’s perfume seemed to touch the air. He lifted the shirt and inhaled; no perfume, only a trace of his own sweat. He slumped on the bed. Before him lay the ruthless grid. His hand crept toward it. No, don’t! he cried on the concrete bench. But already he’d torn the letter to shreds, and on the bench his hand went limp in his pocket, its fingers slackly touching the other letter, Adrienne’s.

  On the bed he opened the letter; the writing on the envelope was not Adrienne’s, but the postmark he knew. Inside was a folded note in French and another envelope, addressed to him by Adrienne. He didn’t feel equal to the French; he wrenched open the second envelope. “My dearest Kirk — you have not yet written, and I have been thinking; I would not want you to come to Paris without knowing all about me. I should have said before. I cannot get about so well, that is what I want to say. You have seen my photograph and I hope you like it, but maybe you did not guess that I have to use a wheelchair — ” Trembling, Kirk laid the letter on the tangled sheet and unfolded the note. It was from Adrienne’s father: she had been rushing to post this letter to Kirk; the road had been busy, and when the wheelchair had overturned, the car had been unable to brake — On the bench he stuffed the letter back into his pocket, certain once more that all was illusion. Everything was too pat. Adrienne’s death was the ending of a movie, Auntie Ethel was the stock sympathizer with romance, Anne was his true love — it was all too scripted for words, he thought, not realizing that only life dares stage such coincidences. When he left the flat as if stepping from one dream to another, he was overwhelmed by unreality: twigs intricately depicted on the sky; a milk-van rounding the corner on cue; a train drawing its whistle along the skyline — you couldn’t tell him all that wasn’t staged to impress him. By his own mind, of course: a brilliant hallucination. No wonder he felt sick on the bus to college; his body was fighting to correlate the illusion of movement with the conviction of stasis, as in a Cinerama film. The college corridors were prolonged into the impossible perspectives of a surrealist painting. In the classroom, between the black speckled plane of the blackboard and the canted dim reflection of the chatting groups, he was amazed by the talent that had contrived the improvised conversations: six separate improvisations, all for him. Then Shirley entered through the doorway, left. He beckoned her over, anxious to know what lines she’d been given. As she approached he lost control; he burst out laughing. “How very intriguing,” she said, turning away; she shouldn’t have said that, he’d have liked his moment of triumph. When the lecture began —

  No, that was enough. There was no need to recall how absurd he’d found the idea of being taught by an hallucination, how he’d fled Liverpool and the ghost of Anne in every street, taken refuge in London where at least he’d never seen her — for he could only fall through his memories of her into a void; if she had not been real, how could he trust any evidence presented by his senses? Yet he was troubled to recall that he’d had the illusion of starving in London until he’d taken a job on the buses, a choice whose source he couldn’t determine. Sometimes he felt that he’d dreamed Anne, and sometimes, on the rim of the void, that she’d dreamed him. If so, she’d abandoned him to decades swept bare as by a night-wind, wa
lks through streets where light existed only to carve shadows, glimpses of couples, always young, meeting outside cinemas which he would never enter. By now the void was visible through her; soon she would tatter and fade like mist, and the void would close in. He was dying.

  “I’m ever so sorry I was so late,” Anne said. “You know I don’t like travelling in London. I just had to wait for one of those lovely taxis.”

  Kirk’s eyelids trembled. The young man with the sports-coat was no longer alone; Anne was with him, swinging one leg and clapping her hands as the Liverpool coach entered the square. She wore her cotton frock, each flower as Kirk remembered it; it was like emerging from darkness into sunlight. For a moment he thought he’d gone mad. “I’ll be leaving before you know,” Anne told the young man, “it’s ever so sad.” And instantly the continuity clarified. The young man’s hand covered a flower. For a second Kirk was ready to fight him for Anne. But he knew he was powerless. They had yet to meet.

  The coach dozed to a halt and the queue shuffled forward. Kirk stood up and almost fell; his stone legs had disintegrated. He dragged his case through the concrete dust. Anne’s escort lifted her luggage onto the rack as she seated herself behind the driver. An old couple sat in the seat behind Anne; Kirk knew he must sit there. He groaned; his toes scrabbled like imprisoned insects. The old couple conferred over the view across the aisle and moved to the seat opposite. Kirk plunged into the place they had vacated. He struggled with his case, and a hand took the handle from him. “Allow me,” said the young man. Anne smiled and waited until the case was safe. Crushed, Kirk sank into his place.

  The driver slammed his gate. From the front seat came an outburst of confused and hurried leave-taking, silenced by a kiss. Kirk closed his eyes. When he opened them at the first jerk of the bus, he met Anne’s gaze. But it was merely passing over him as she craned to wave to the young man. She hadn’t recognized Kirk; she couldn’t. The bus rushed through the pale planed streets and Anne regarded herself in a pocket mirror. Had her ghost cast a reflection? He would never know. It was unimportant; here she was before him in the flesh; he had only to lean forward and speak, the one thing he couldn’t do. Though he knew her love she had never met him; she was a stranger. And he no longer trusted strangers.

  Half-an-hour later, in a landscape of lopped trees grey as the pedestals of monuments, he leaned forward. One of Anne’s fingers followed the curved corner of her book, lifting to turn; the golden sunlit down on her forearm was warm as her arm in his. His hand lost its grip between the headrests; his lips collapsed together as he fell back, aching. His breath proved the window. Something should happen to bring them together, but he knew nothing would; she wouldn’t drop the book, this time it was up to him to plunge into the past, to reinstate reality. “Excuse me — ” he cried, thrust forward by the brake. Anne’s face appeared in the gap; her eyes were wide; she smiled encouragement. Perhaps she saw him as a cache of memories, of the past she loved. His mouth worked. “Do you — do you know where we are?” he stammered. “I think we’re in Stratford,” she said, and returned to her book as he muttered thanks. Oh, God, he thought, she was close enough to touch and yet he’d lost her for ever.

  Metal glinted in the sky; a steel curve formed on the horizon and passed above them with a sigh. The streets of the new Stratford were lifeless: slabs of concrete left to whiten in the sun; the silver panels of the meal dispensers flashed cold as scalpels as they passed. A love song ebbed from a portable tv; an athlete padded alongside the coach for a few seconds before falling back. For Kirk he, at least, had not been robbed by time of familiarity. It was time which had thrust between them, wearing out his body, setting Anne before him like a fragile perfect doll. Yet for a week they had wandered outside time. If only he could release them once more —

  Then he thought he knew. Firm as it had felt, it had not been Anne’s body he had held to him; it had been their spirits, essences — he couldn’t find the right expression — which had met, somewhere outside time. Their bodies were the clocks which marked the end of their love. Destroy their bodies and they would be reunited. But could he take the final step? He answered himself: what other step could he take? He stood up tottering behind Anne; each limit of him was trembling as if ready to release him. Ahead green grassy banks streamed toward him and were gone, like time; beyond the grey stumps started into sight. “Anne,” he whispered. She glanced up from her book, puzzled. He clutched the head-rest; if only he could touch her, just her hair! “Anne, I know you don’t know me — ” Her mouth opened. He stammered out: “We met fifty years ago! You went back into the past somehow and we met on a coach, maybe it was here — your case was falling off the rack and I helped you — I love you, Anne!” It’s no use, he thought. Her eyes widened; her pink parted lips moved — and Kirk stumbled forward, drove his elbow into the driver’s face and wrenched the wheel hard over.

  When they’d asked the last question Anne lay back and tried to sleep. She hated the hospital ward, the glass panels round each bed as if to enclose a vacuum, the curtains which drew together at the touch of a button, the beds which could turn traitor and convert into stretchers within a minute; she hoped she would dream of the past. The doctor had disliked her being questioned, but she’d insisted on the facts. They told her of the man who’d caused the crash by attacking the driver, killing himself and concussing the driver and several passengers, including Anne. They said he had spoken to her, but she didn’t remember; one never remembers the events before concussion. They showed her a photograph of the old man, but she’d never seen him; so they left her to rest. And yet — Somehow, as she drifted, she felt she’d met him; somehow she referred this to the week she’d lost under concussion. Poor old man, she thought, he must have been miserable to do what he did; mad with his memories, perhaps, now all destroyed. She hoped his last thoughts had been of something beautiful. And quietly, as she hovered on the edge of dream, she began to weep.

  THE ENCHANTED FRUIT

  When Derek returned with the pate for Janice the flat was full of Stravinsky; she was marching about to Jeu de Cartes, familiarising herself with the rooms — the kitchen shining silver in the sunlight, the bathroom where a Picasso thrice eyed the taps, the living-room with bookcase, record-player and prints, the bedroom. She crossed to the bookcase as he entered, and from between God is a New Language and Pop Art withdrew a Carrier cookbook. “Do you cook from this, honestly?” she asked.

  “I’m my own wife. Was this the pate you meant? We’ve a couple of hours before the people start arriving.”

  “Thank God it won’t be a necking party. Do you know I didn’t get to bed till four this morning? The party last night, you wouldn’t believe — Why is it these days you can’t be with people you like?”

  “You sit down and rest,” Derek said. “I’ll take over preparations.”

  “No, I promised. After all, this is your flat-warming.”

  “In that case I may be in the way. Shall I stay or drive around the aesthetic countryside?”

  “You go out, darling. I’ve got this morning’s crossword if I feel lonely.”

  Through the windscreen Derek waved to Janice, tiny in the third window up the row like a strip of film. He steered out of the car-park beneath the apartments, toy cars lined up in their cardboard box, and was carried past his tiny picturesque church, between red-brick perspectives, drowsy trees, into a warm breeze sharp with dust. He was pleased to have this flat outside Brichester, among the lulling leaves, the open fields, somewhere to escape the daily press of Brichester, the false harsh rainbow of the packed cars, the hard bleached University smashing and swallowing ornate facades, churches robbed of dignity by plummeting iron balls, streets where some lone house had struck him speechless with its silent pride, the noble bearing of its age and history. A cart creaked by; its driver nodded to Derek. The car purred onward, its note one with the dreaming fields, the red-brick cottages, the hills on the horizon. On such a day as this Derek worshipped God. Ahead the road r
ose to a bridge; a railway line was threaded through, stretched taut to Brichester, left slack among the first hills on the right. It was good of Janice to hostess his party. He’d met her three weeks ago at the Radio Brichester studio, fending off a randy disc-jockey; “I don’t think we can use a programme on the arts just yet, but we’ll keep you in mind” was still ringing in Derek’s ears, but on an impulse he’d approached her. “Can you show me the way out?” he’d asked, the first question that came to mind. He’d sensed her gratitude. By the time they’d reached the door he’d learned that she appeared on record shows, several evenings a week when she was free from her work with disabled drivers. “I’m for a drink to drown my sorrows,” he’d told her at the door. “Can I tempt you?” And afterward — “Will you walk across town with me?” she’d asked. “I don’t like crowds when I’m alone.” The car poised on a crest and plunged. Janice was gone. The country opened round him.

  Into the hills. Derek let the car bear him where it would, through the countryside across which the sun’s shade was fleetingly drawn: fields sleekly ruffled as cats’ fur, distant grassy slopes where wind-phantoms chased like hunting hounds. The road curved. A wood fell from its edge toward Goatswood. Where it grew thickest a lay-by encroached. Derek turned the car and stepped out.