The House On Nazareth Hill

by Ramsey Campbell

  He was assuming that must silence his listener, but he’d omitted from his reckoning the stubbornness of the young. ‘If she gets in touch,’ the boy said, ‘could you tell her—’

  ‘I thought I had made clear that is impossible. Please refrain from calling here again,’ Oswald said, and cut him off for good.

  He listened to the almost monastic drone of the dead line for a few moments before restoring the handset to its place, beside which Amy’s door was shut. Was she asleep, or had she heard the phone and ignored it? He rather hoped the latter was the case. Her wilfulness might have some merits after all—indeed, already had. He remembered coming home along the peaceful corridor only to be greeted by her crazed uproar. She had shown him more by that than she could have intended. Whatever had to happen in their flat would be inaudible outside its walls.

  20 - The guardians

  Amy was awakened from the latest of her restless dozes by a stealthy sound beyond the foot of her bed. Her eyes snapped open, and she saw the door creeping ajar to let her father peer in at her. His face didn’t change as her eyes met his; it seemed as set in its expression as any of the pictures in the hall. It was blank as a sketch waiting for its details to be filled in. His gleaming pupils fixed on her, and then, apparently having seen nothing he wanted to see, he stepped back. As the door began to swing closed she knew she had to get out of the room.

  It no longer felt like a haven. Though she’d kept the light on all night, that hadn’t helped her sleep; only her exhaustion had. Whenever she had jerked awake she’d felt compelled to survey her surroundings for evidence of intrusion—for any sign that her father, or something less alive, had invaded the room while she’d nodded in her vigil. Once she had opened her eyes to see a denim jacket sliding off a pile of clothes in a corner of the room, and for a moment she’d thought the headless handless shape was about to launch itself at her, to wrap its arms around hers and pin her to the bed. The idea had pursued her into her sleep, where worse nightmares were waiting, all of them set in Nazarill and an increasing number in her room. Now the door was about to shut her in with them, away from the daylight, however feeble, that was levering itself almost imperceptibly more vertical in the hall. ‘Wait,’ she called.

  The door halted, framing the right side of her father’s face. That eye found her again, and the half of a mouth parted its straight lips. ‘Have you decided to tell me the truth?’

  There was only one answer she could give him. ‘Yes.’

  ‘All the truth?’

  She might have been trapped in a fairy tale where some evil gate-keeper kept requiring more questions to be answered before she could pass through. ‘You just wanted to know where I got the history from before.’

  ‘Very well, let us make that the beginning. Who was your source?’

  ‘It wasn’t a who, it was a what. A book in the market. I read it there, I didn’t bring it home.’ Neither his face nor the door showed any inclination to stir further, and she was searching her abruptly empty mind in some desperation for a title in case he asked for it when he said ‘After you were expressly instructed not to pry into the past.’

  ‘I wanted to know why I saw—the kind of place we’re in.’ Her changing the explanation halfway didn’t influence him, and so she forced out another word. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘That at least is welcome. It has been far too long since I’ve heard that word from you.’ He pushed the door, revealing all his face. While the door was on the move he looked as though he might be about to turn back into the father she’d had when her mother was alive. Then his gaze strayed to the top of her head, and his face reverted to twice the mask it had been in the narrower gap. ‘We shall attempt to build on your contrition. Can I trust you to restrain yourself while I go out to work?’

  Amy couldn’t remember when she had last consulted her watch, but now she did so, having located it on the floor. ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ she cried, raising herself against the headboard. ‘I’ve missed my bus. I wanted to go to school.’

  ‘I hardly think that is appropriate.’

  ‘Why not? What do you mean?’

  ‘Why, so soon after your condition was supposed to have rendered you incapable of attending church.’

  ‘I don’t feel so bad now,’ Amy tried to assure him, despite sensing that her headache lay in wait behind her eyes for any number of excuses to constrict her brain. ‘I can still go. I’ll just have to be late.’

  ‘No.’

  He took hold of the edge of the door so swiftly that she heard a fingernail scrape on the wood, and turned his head towards the kitchen. Was he looking for some object with which to wedge her door shut? ‘All right,’ Amy called, and had to suck in a breath to steady her voice. ‘All right, daddy. I’ll stay at home. I can work there instead.’

  His eyes seemed to close around her words and grow brighter for the sustenance. ‘Where?’

  ‘Here,’ Amy said, recognising that she ought to have used that word to placate him. ‘In the flat, I mean. On the table, the dining one. I can’t spread myself out in my room.’

  ‘No doubt you plan to pollute the air of our home with your diabolical clamour.’

  ‘I won’t,’ she said, and saw his eyes narrow further: she shouldn’t have seemed so eager to please him. ‘Only low. I’ll have it, my music on low.’

  Perhaps she had reminded him of some notion he found positive; he nodded to himself before allowing his eyes to grow almost indulgent. ‘Listen to your dance music, though God knows what kind of dance it is meant to promote, if it will help to keep you here until I return.’

  ‘Oh, it will,’ Amy said, and met his gaze with all the innocence she could muster.

  When he finally moved away from the door she threw herself out of bed at once and began carrying schoolwork into the main room. She was on her second trip when he reappeared from his bedroom, buttoning his overcoat. ‘When are you back?’ she said, squaring the pile of books in her arms.

  ‘When I have seen those of my charges I must see.’

  ‘Your trade, you’re saying,’ Amy said, less to clarify than to do away with his usage, only to have him look angry, even bewildered. ‘When about, do you think?’

  ‘As soon as is practicable, I assure you.’

  She might have concluded that the idea of quitting the building confused him. Nevertheless he strode to the door and unchained it. ‘For the moment I have responsibilities beyond these walls.’

  He was hauling the door shut behind him when, having dropped the books on the table, she ran along the hall and grabbed the latch. His face swung towards her, his eyes bright as the spotlights of Nazarill. ‘What are you bent upon now?’

  ‘Just wanted to say goodbye.’

  His face shifted, but she had barely glimpsed a reminiscence of affection before it vanished into blankness. ‘Goodbye for the present.’

  ‘I’ll close it.’

  She wasn’t holding the door open only to make certain he was really leaving; she wanted to see him looking like her father. From the back, trudging away down the corridor narrowed by dimness, he did. The sight reminded her she was about to be alone, and she had to remind herself that she needed to be. She was biting her lip so as not to call him back—any company was beginning to seem desirable—when his head turned to her as it set about jerking downstairs. Even at that distance she could see the gleam which substituted for compassion in his eyes. She retreated into the flat and slammed the door, telling herself that she wasn’t afraid of him, only anxious to be sure he left the grounds.

  She had been standing at the window of the main room for some minutes when the Austin nosed into view. As its distorted oblique shadow dragged it to the gateway, she thought he was driving more slowly than usual. The brake-lights flared as though the wind that was shivering the grass had kindled them, and then the car edged between the gateposts. As soon as the dead lights disappeared around the curve of Nazareth Row, Amy dashed into her room.

  She flung off her T-sh
irt and fumbled some underwear on before covering herself in the first socks and jeans and sweatshirt and trainers and jacket that came to hand. Some of her fellow apartment-dwellers must surely still be in the building, and even if she didn’t meet them in the corridors, their presence should be enough—had to be—to let her reach the outer doors. She strapped on her watch and grabbed her bag and ran between the crowd of pressed fixed goggling eyes to release herself into the corridor.

  It was deserted and silent and barely illuminated. She took a step into it and pulled the door after her, let it drift further, saw it shut her out of the apartment with a stealthy thud and a click. Ought she to lock the mortise? Her hand was moving to her bag when she wondered if she should ring Beth’s doorbell to ascertain whether she was home from her weekend—except that should Beth not be there Amy wouldn’t just have wasted time, she would have robbed herself of some of her determination to brave the way out. Clutching her bag shut in her fist, she sent herself towards the stairs.

  Two blurred thin figures paced her, doing their best to mimic her actions. Whenever one came to the edge of a panel the wood pinched it thinner before letting go of it. She had to keep recalling that the figures were herself—versions of herself that the walls wanted her to see. Each time she passed a door she glimpsed movement in its pupil-less eye, and that was her too, or part of herself that the constricted squeezed-out globes were attempting to trap.

  The secretive dimness clung to her like centuries of grime, and yet it was impalpable as the stifling heat. They seemed to conspire to render her footsteps inaudible on the marshy carpet, and she had to restrain herself from tramping hard to convince herself that she was indeed on the way to making her escape. She had grown so preoccupied with her own lack of sound as she reached the stairs that she wasn’t sure whether she heard a door opening beyond them.

  She grasped her bag tighter, it being the only weapon she was aware she had, and felt her held breath trembling in her nostrils. Just before she had to gasp it out she heard the door shut gently, and a rattle of keys. Someone had come out of an apartment on the middle floor. ‘Hello?’ Amy called. ‘Who’s down there?’

  There was silence from below while she breathed again, followed by a renewed sound of keys, sharper and quicker. The door was being locked. Amy raised her voice to be sure she was audible over the metallic clatter. ‘It’s Amy. Amy Priestley from the top floor. Hang on, I’m coming down.’

  This time there was no pause. The rattling turned into a harsher sound and reverted to itself, then ceased. The keys had been snatched out of the lock to be shoved into a pocket or a handbag, and the muffled rapid padding which ensued meant that whoever was below was making for the stairs. It took Amy several seconds—long enough for the footsteps to start descending—to understand that the person was anxious not to meet but to avoid her.

  Amy faltered, then she hurled herself at the stairs. It didn’t matter who was down there or what they thought of her, only that she kept them in sight long enough to help her flee through the ground floor of Nazarill. At least now she was able to hear the thuds of her own feet, but she could also hear those of the other person speeding up. She seized the clammy metal banister and swung herself around the bend in the stairs, and took the lower flight two at a time. As her heels dealt the middle floor a united thump, the footsteps which she was pursuing came to a halt. She hadn’t had time to draw breath to call out when she heard a subdued glassy clang. The other tenant had opened the exit doors.

  Amy heard the world let in: the generalised murmur of Partington augmented by the slow roar of a lorry passing through the town, a repeated single note of a birdsong chipping at the icy air, a child’s high voice calling ‘Mummy, come and look at this.’ A hint of the chill of the January day touched her, and she didn’t think there could be any sensation more welcome. The next moment the deadened note of the doors tolled, shutting out the world.

  ‘Wait,’ Amy cried without thinking—without knowing whether she was trying to arrest the person who’d abandoned her or to hold onto a sense of freedom beyond Nazarill. The latter was enough to make her reckless, and she launched herself onto the next flight of stairs, slapping the banister as she missed each second tread. She almost collided with the glowing wall at the bend, where a faceless parody of herself floundering in amber loomed up to meet her. She shrugged off the image and caught at the banister, which was thrumming dully from her slaps, to swing herself onto the last flight. Her heel struck the second tread down with an impact which seemed to jar her brain, and then she was teetering on the edge of the next but one. Not only her precariousness made her clutch at the banister so hard that pain surged through her wrist. She could see the ground floor, and it was going to be worse than she’d feared.

  The spectacle of a vehicle shrinking along the drive distracted her from immediately seeing the worst. The car was a shiny black Honda—Max Greenberg’s car. So it had been the jeweller who’d fled upon hearing her voice. She would have expected better of him. Scarcely aware of her actions, she descended a step to keep the car in view. As she did so it flashed its brake-lights at her between the gateposts. Then it was gone, and she was alone with the vista of gravel stretching to the distant road.

  The glass doors seemed almost as distant. Perhaps that was one reason why the view beyond them appeared less than entirely convincing, more like a photograph projected on the glass and framed by the dim elongated corridor. It was all too easy to imagine herself trapped in a former time with which the outside world was insufficiently real to connect. That couldn’t be, any more than it was possible for the corridor to have extended itself; the tinge of daylight seeping across the carpet towards the stairs was enough to refute both these fears. Indeed, the daylight was strong enough to cast a thin shadow of the edge of each apartment doorframe onto each door—except that her innards were tightening as though to retreat deeper within her, because she knew she was deluding herself. None of the doorknobs cast a shadow, which meant that the vertical lines of darkness weren’t shadows either. Every one of the six doors was ajar.

  The sight froze her and, it seemed, everything: even the advance of the feeble sunlight across the floor. Perhaps when the light reached the stairs she would be capable of moving—and then she realised it never did. If someone, anyone, came downstairs she could walk through the ground floor with them, though it was late enough by now for everyone except her to have quitted the building. She strained her ears for any hint of company while she stared in panic at the gaps between the doors and their frames. Staring only made the doors appear to creep wider, so that she had to blink away the impression, and suppose any sound she managed to hear came from beyond them? Her clenched hands were being transformed into bruises, one containing sensations of metal and the other of rough canvas, and her ankles had begun to throb from pressing her heels into the angle of the stair. If she moved now it would only be to bolt upstairs, but if she did that she thought she would never leave Nazarill. She was struggling to derive some impetus from that thought—enough rage at her helplessness to inflame her to action—when she saw movement beyond the glass.

  While she kept glimpsing traffic on Nazareth Row, none of the cars seemed to have any function other than to mock her plight, but there was more to this. A small truck emblazoned with a crossed fork and spade had pulled up outside the railings. She recognised it, and almost cried out to the driver to come on, but succeeded in restraining herself to a choked gasp. In a moment the truck turned along the drive and halted a few yards inside the grounds. She didn’t dare step down yet, but she stooped to watch as George Roscommon climbed out of the cab.

  She would wait until he saw her, and then nothing would deter her from sprinting for the exit—nothing that she wanted to imagine. She saw his heels strike the gravel, and he gave the door of the truck a hearty slam. She heard neither impact, but perhaps she was wholly preoccupied with feeling in danger of losing her balance, having stooped too far. She clung to the banister while she lowered
one foot to the next stair and planted it so gingerly her leg quivered with the strain of being careful. George Roscommon reached through the open window of the cab and fished out a clipboard before turning towards Nazarill.

  She had to go down further to ensure she was seen. She made her grip on her bag more uncomfortable to assist her in relinquishing her hold on the banister, and took a jerky tentative step which froze in midair. Hers had not been the only surreptitious movements within Nazarill. While she had been intent on the gardener, both of the doors closest to the stairs had opened at least another inch.

  That almost paralysed her again, but not quite. George Roscommon was gazing along the drive at Nazarill as he strolled past the truck, and she would never have a better chance of being seen by him. She flung herself away from the banister and down the stairs, six of them between her and the ground floor which she must see only as her route to liberty. Five, four, and now he couldn’t avoid noticing her; he was gazing straight at her. She risked another stair, though that made it impossible for her to ignore the gaping inhabited darkness on both sides of the corridor, and waved her arms, agitating the contents of her bag. George Roscommon was shading his eyes as he passed the front of the truck. The next moment he turned, his face making clear that he’d observed nothing unusual, and headed for the nearest flower-bed.

  ‘Wait,’ Amy cried, her voice tearing at her throat. ‘Don’t go away. I’m here.’ The gardener continued walking, no more aware of her than she had been able to hear the slam of the door of the truck. Before she had time to fill her lungs again, he moved out of the frame of the doorway. At once the view was no more than a picture of a freedom she couldn’t attain. The gaping doors were altogether more real, and she knew her pleas had been heard beyond them.

  Her panic seemed to darken the corridor almost to blackness, and then she found herself shaking with rage. She was letting herself be rendered helpless while daylight and companionship and release were practically within her reach. ‘You can’t stop me,’ she shouted, ‘I’m going to him,’ and started down the last three stairs, not so much setting her feet down as allowing them to fall of their own weight. They took her to the beginning of the corridor, but that was as far as her body was willing to go. At each of her steps the nearest doors had crept further open, and now an object was visible just above the knob of the left-hand door.