The Best New Horror 2

by Ramsay Campbell

  Jamie shook his head, it was becoming too difficult; Olive looked back impatiently. His father’s “unkindness”, his habitual and quite natural unfaithfulness, was at the root of the whole thing.

  “He wanted to be free,” said Jamie. “Divorced.”

  He was keeping an eye on a seller of knick-knacks with a ribboned tray who now approached Olive. Jamie bounced up and went to shoo the little bounder away. The happy pair stood close together under the sunshade; Susan saw them veiled in a sparkling mist that rose off the water. All around her floated the domes and colonnades of the unreal city. An elderly couple sat on the stone bench and fed the pigeons. She felt sure that they could not see her at all.

  She drifted away to buy a postcard. As she put the letter into her purse she touched the little bottle of Murano glass, cold as the green depths of the sea. Out of the corner of her eye, there by the pillar topped with a crocodile, she caught a flash of apricot satin. She could not make out if they were both there, the young woman and the older one who wore a mask. When she turned her head they were gone. A gentleman bowed to her:

  “Good morning, Miss Field!”

  It was Hadley, the American. He saw her plain and she gave him a grateful smile.

  Soon afterwards James and Olive went off for five days to do Padua. Kidson went with them, of course, and Susan was left in the capable hands of Mrs Porter. She gave no trouble and indeed the good woman seemed to have lost interest in her case. Susan appeared promptly at breakfast with her hair well brushed and it was accepted that she was going to “moon about the pension with a book”. Canon Porter went so far as to lend her his own copy of Travels with a Donkey.

  Susan mooned about heavy with secret knowledge. She could not tell when it had come to her . . . it had not been a sudden revelation. She knew that she must take the risk of telling one of the adults. Her choice had narrowed: the jolly student girls had moved on to Florence. It was easy enough to dawdle over breakfast and then, when they were alone in the courtyard, to move to Hadley’s table.

  Ashton Hadley did have some memory of a scandal in the London papers. It struck him as vaguely indecent that a schoolgirl should accompany Field and his new bride. They were a handsome couple and the sensual aura that surrounded them impressed even Hadley, who liked to think of himself as world-weary. Now here was the young girl, irreproachably English, an adolescent Alice, and in her innocent way she was “making up” to him. Only seven years or so separated this half-formed creature from Olive, who glowed like Venus rising from the waves. He was overwhelmed by painful memories of a family of young American girls, his cousins, who had romped and flirted with arrogant assurance and then married other fellows.

  He had no wish to be unkind; he agreed that he did have a moment to spare and that he knew about old buildings. His lips twitched a little as she swore him to secrecy; he began to be intrigued.

  “There is a lady imprisoned,” said Susan, “in the old palazzo, behind the wall of the writing room.”

  Hadley shut his Ruskin and stared. The girl was perfectly serious.

  “Imprisoned?”

  “She can’t get out. She is being kept there,” said Susan. “She sends . . . messages, through the wall.”

  He began to see that the poor thing was mad. She was very pale and there were shadows under her blue eyes. Hadley was out of his depth, he wanted to hand her over as quickly as possible to a parent or guardian. He thought of the ghastly Mrs Porter and hesitated. It struck him for the first that Susan Field was unusually alone.

  “I know it sounds pretty unbelievable,” she said, “but it is true.”

  “My dear Miss Field . . .”

  “Susan,” she said. “I can show you the evidence.”

  Hadley made a despairing effort.

  “Why would this person be . . . shut up?”

  “I could think of reasons,” said Susan, “but that would be my imagination. I will show you . . .”

  She reached into her white kid purse and carefully laid a number of small objects on the marble table top. Ashton Hadley was drawn to the glass bottle which was old and finely worked. He laughed uneasily and polished his eyeglasses.

  “What’s that?”

  She unfolded it gravely. Across the faded paper of the miniature fan a word was written in bronzed ink: Soccorso.

  “Where did you get these things?”

  “They came through the lions’ heads,” said Susan. “The ventilators high up on the wall of the writing room. They reach right back into some room on the other side of the wall. In the palazzo.”

  She delved into her purse again and drew out three strips of paper with crossed ends slotted together. She held one of these constructions high above her head and it floated, twirling gently, down to the stones of the courtyard.

  “I call them flying fish,” she whispered.

  Hadley retrieved the strip of paper; with a fold at the front and the crossed ends forming a tail it did have a fish shape. It was of blue-green writing paper, not new, and inscribed on the outer surface was another word in the same bronzed ink: Hilfe. The two remaining fish were just as laconic: Help me, said one, Au secours the other. He felt sure that the girl had written these words.

  “Came through the lions’ heads?” he said quizzically.

  “I swear it!”

  She knotted her hands together.

  “No,” said Hadley, as gently as he could. “Susan, it is all a nonsense. Even if someone were there . . .”

  “Someone is there, Mr Hadley!”

  “They may be confined for a good reason,” he said, “by relatives. Someone old perhaps, or unbalanced. What do you want me to do?”

  He could see that what she wanted from him was some piece of knight-errantry.

  “I would like to know who sent these things,” she said. “Perhaps we could help the lady.”

  “Why must it be a lady?” demanded Hadley. “Why not children playing games?”

  Why not, he thought, a certain young person trying to attract attention.

  “Look here,” he said slyly, “I think you read rather a lot.”

  “No,” she said, “not as much as people think.”

  “You’ve read Jane Eyre I expect?”

  “The mad wife in that book is frightening and horrid,” she said, blushing.

  “And you think this . . . lady is not?” he said, smiling.

  “You don’t believe me!”

  Susan lifted her chin proudly; she swept all the evidence back into her purse. The Signora looked into the courtyard from the kitchen and turned back to give a stream of instruction to one of the maids. As Susan hurried off Hadley called:

  “Wait, Miss Field!”

  She lowered her head and went away without a backward glance. Hadley was already late for his appointment with Monsignore Venier, head of an architectural committee, but he spent a moment outside the Pensione Guardi staring up at its junction with the Palazzo Castell-Giordano. The larger building, stemming mainly from the seventeenth century, was not of much interest to him and it was not open to the public. He felt sure that certain relicts of one or other of the families still lived in its draughty chambers. On his way to the Accademia bridge he glanced at the palazzo’s modest façade, in a side canal, almost a backwater. It would be easy enough, with his architectural connections, to make some enquiries and satisfy the poor girl’s curiosity.

  Susan had known all along that Hadley would fail her. Her appeal to him had been simply a nod in the direction of rational behaviour. In her bedroom for several days now she had kept a small lamp with a glass shade burning before a picture of the Madonna. Her white purse did not seem right for such an expedition but she put all her evidence into the right hand pocket of her sailor blouse and a stump of candle into the other. When the Pensione Guardi sank into its long siesta she took the lamp and set out.

  The writing room was full of moving shadows. She was very much afraid and cast a last long glance at the tapestry picture for reassurance. �
�Go along, silly goose!” whispered the masqueraders. She went up close and laid her hand upon the satiny expanse of the lady’s cloak. Then she slipped into the recess and wrestled with the heavy key until it turned in the lock.

  The door grated open an inch at a time and behind it there was a misty thread of daylight. She was in some kind of no man’s land between high walls; there was a strong odour of sea-damp and rotting wood. The place reeked of Venice. There were two ways to go: the stairs, which were pitch black, and a kind of landing, greenish and slippery, where light struggled down from above. She went this way for a few steps and fell down, desperately trying to save the lamp.

  The little guttering flame did not go out; she looked into evil-smelling depths, full of the roar of water. Slowly she drew back and moved to the stairway. The surface of each step was hazardous, covered with lumps of fallen masonry. She went up slowly, pressing against an inner wall. There was no banister; the staircase seemed to hover over an abyss.

  Her fear, which had been a little in abeyance, returned in a sickening black wave. She trembled at every step. There was nothing anywhere that she could bear to touch. Beyond the feeble light from her lamp the world was sharp and hard with a cutting edge or else damp and foul. An icy wind played on her face and neck. She was terrified that she might have to stop, sink down on the filthy stairway and cry for help. She pictured Mrs Porter, gloating like a harpy at the daughter of a mad mother, and it gave her strength. One step, two and a whiff of perfume came to her on the cold wind. There was a door at the top of the stairs and a thread of golden light under the door. Susan dragged herself upwards and laid a timid hand on the door; it swung inwards at her touch.

  Light and warmth flooded over her. It would have been wrong or at least disappointing if she had been accompanied by Mr Hadley; she knew all this was for her alone. There was soft carpet under her muddy shoes; she bumped against a chair; her cold hand touched velvet. The Lady shone more brightly than the candles; she was all softness, her satins and pearls glowed with an inner light.

  “Cara mia . . .”

  Susan ran to her embrace and it was dreamlike, incorporeal. At the same time she was aware of her own body, naked under her clothes; she drew back a little and the Lady did the same. They were parted yet they spoke together in shared thoughts and broken phrases. Susan had been very brave; the Lady knew how much she had suffered. Rescue? Yes, rescue for both of them. It was a new beginning; a world waited for her, full of warmth, adventure, love.

  “But is it life?” asked Susan.

  A long life, came the answer. She found herself gazing into one of the mirrors in the secret chamber. There was no sign of her own reflection or of the Lady but she saw a huge bed, a four-poster, with filmy curtains drawn back. Propped up on her pillows there was a very old woman, a stranger, her features peacefully composed.

  “She was the sister of my soul,” said the Lady. “You will be guarded just as tenderly.”

  Susan put out a hand towards the mirror and said in a loud shaking voice:

  “Am I allowed to say no?”

  There was a gentle sigh and the presence was withdrawn. She stood alone in the midst of a small hot room under the leads of the palazzo. It had been a lady’s dressing room; the candles were long burnt out, the only light came from her own oil lamp, still burning on a commode, and from the curtained door to a roof-garden. In the dusty mirror she saw a faint reflection, a girl who might become invisible at any minute. Who was there left in all the world to care for such a girl? A faint glow of light arose in a corner, near the inner door that led into the palazzo. Susan spread her arms and cried out softly:

  “Oh come back! Come back! Don’t leave me!”

  The light grew around her and the Lady smiled. For a moment she was displaced, afraid, shrinking down inside herself, then some mysterious balance was achieved; they were one. In the glass there was Susan, bright-eyed, smiling now, smoothing her tangled hair. She could hear people outside on the landing. “Are there others?” “Our true servants . . .” She saw her own hand reach out firmly and open the door into the palace.

  *

  The search for the young English girl, Susan Field, went on for several months. The Venetian authorities were, in their own way, more thorough and more discreet than the Anglo-Saxon visitor might have expected. Even so it was a harrowing experience for young Field and his new wife. As the days went by, poor Olive Field, her bloom quite gone, became increasingly nervous and distressed. She went home alone, accompanied only by her maid, another bad omen for the marriage.

  Ashton Hadley watched poor James Field trying to do his duty. He felt an obscure satisfaction when Jamie raised his fists to a senior police official who again questioned Susan’s innocence. A young girl’s disappearance suggested to the Venetians, at least, elopement or abduction as alternatives to violation and murder. These suspicions tainted the victim herself and dishonoured her family. There was only one fate for a lost girl and that worse than death. Female suicides were generally supposed to have been seduced and abandoned. Hadley stood by James Field on three occasions when they were called to examine the bodies of drowned women.

  Hadley took the opportunity of insulting the egregious Mrs Porter. When she offered information about the family tragedy which had resulted in Susan’s trip to Venice he called her a scandal-monger and a pharisee. She went thumping out of the writing room where this encounter had taken place and Hadley gave way to despair. In fact he blamed himself for the girl’s disappearance. He knew that he would be haunted for a lifetime by his failure to respond to her last appeal.

  The writing room had changed since the day Susan was lost. There seemed to be more light; the door in the wall stood open and its tapestry panel had been removed. Signora Ruffino had come first to Hadley with her anxiety as he sat reading in his bedroom. It was nearly midnight and the girl had gone; she was nowhere in the Pensione. Soon the Porters would return from the opera and the alarm would have to be raised.

  He spoke at once of the door in the wall. Yes, the English Miss had mentioned this entry into the old palazzo. Was it possible that she had gone exploring? The Signora crossed herself and talked of the cloaca. They went at once, secretly, taking lamps. The Signora called him to witness that the key was in the lock; it usually hung upon the wall.

  So they came into a tiny courtyard, crowded by the extension of the building that was now the Pensione. There was a gaping hole that led to the cloaca, a deep, swift underground waterway that carried waste into the canals and eventually into the sea. If Susan Field had come exploring it was possible that she had slipped into this oubliette and drowned, her body being swept away. There were marks on the slippery green paving stones but it was difficult to say when they had been made.

  Hadley had turned his attention to the staircase at the junction of the two buildings. He called Susan and her name reverberated between the high walls. Who lived in the Palazzo Castell-Giordano? Signora Ruffino knew of the aged Contessa and a few servants. The room at the top of the staircase had been the antechamber to an old altana or roof terrace where the ladies went, in former times, to bleach their hair in the sun.

  At last Hadley made the ascent as quickly as he could and held his lamp for the Signora, gamely following. The door at the top of the stairs had a broken catch and yielded to his touch. He held up his light on the threshold: the room was empty. He stepped in gingerly hoping for footprints in the dust but the room was not especially dusty. It was not a bedroom but it had the quality of a boudoir, a particularly feminine room, old and long disused.

  Hadley set down his lamp on a commode; the Signora brought hers to a higher shelf and opened the door to the roof terrace revealing stone urns for plants and old wooden cages from which the birds had flown. In silence they looked about for clues and stared apprehensively at the inner door. Hadley noticed the lions’ heads: there they were, repeated on this side of the wall, quite low down in the low-ceilinged room. They could be reached by standing on a chair.
Absently he drew open the drawers of the commode and found in one a few sheets of writing paper . . . the wrong shade.

  “Signor Hadley . . .” said the Signora quietly.

  She had picked from the velvet surface of a chair two or three long golden hairs tangled with a scrap of black thread. It was all they ever found and there was nothing to say that the hair had not come from the head of some long-dead lady of the Castell-Giordano household.

  Then light appeared under the inner door and Hadley dared to knock. The door was opened by an old man in antique servant’s dress of solemn black. He was Baldassare, the Major Domo; the female servants had heard noises and sent him to investigate. He heard their urgent appeal but shook his head. No, a young English girl had not been seen. The palazzo was in mourning; the Contessa Giordano had at last given up the ghost.

  They apologized again and Baldassare watched them negotiate the difficult staircase. The alarm was raised. In the course of the search the police went through the palazzo and questioned the servants, all without result. Yet Hadley was secretly convinced beyond all reason and beyond all doubt that Susan Field had been up there in that musky forgotten chamber.

  She had been there . . . so ran his obsession . . . and she had passed through the door into the palazzo. Her fate was bound up in his mind, from the first, with the rejection and neglect she appeared to have suffered. In those first night hours he and the Signora rushed into the girl’s bedroom . . . neat, virginal; later a lamp appeared to be missing. On the dressing table lay the purse of white leather that Hadley remembered but the “evidence” she had shown him was all gone. There was nothing but a letter which he read at once and found quite remarkably cruel. After that he measured the good-natured Jamie against that old brute, Field the Elder, who withdrew his paternity after fourteen years and consigned Susan to social oblivion.

  He stayed on after James, his poor friend, had left, but Venice, which he had loved, became threatening. Terrible enough if Susan Field was dead, but if she were still alive? He began to see visions, in fact to look out for them. A young woman in deep mourning, heavily veiled, riding in a gondola towards the cemetery islands. An old man—was it Baldassare?—buying postcards on the Piazza? In a dream he saw a young girl dressed unequivocally as a courtesan; her mask was a death’s head. She said, “Oh, much curiouser than that, Mr Hadley!” and under the mask it was Susan, unscathed, bright-eyed.