The House On Nazareth Hill

by Ramsey Campbell

  He felt the skin over his knuckles tighten and split open, but the knob turned, and his weight dragged the door towards him. The fire was swifter. As the gap between door and frame showed him that the corridor was deserted, he felt flames meet across his shoulders. The nape of his neck caught fire, bowing him into a convulsion as though he could duck out of reach of the blinding pain. A last instinctive thought remained to him: he was beyond escaping from the fire, and so must phone for help.

  He spun giddily in the midst of the smoke of himself, stretching his arms wide in a crazed notion that doing so would keep some of the fire away from the core of him, and saw there was no longer a phone in the hall. He’d smashed it to prevent Amy from calling for help. He’d done far worse, and the sudden flood of memories convulsed him more savagely than his physical agony had. As though the flames were leaving his mind nowhere to hide, he remembered everything at once. He remembered saving her from falling into Nazarill, her small hands gripping his for protection, and he remembered the effort he’d had to exert on the scissors as they bit inside her mouth.

  The flames had reached his scalp, but it was the memory that almost sank him to his knees. Instead he thumped his back and his skull against the wall to put out as much of the fire of himself as he could. It didn’t work; indeed, he felt flames spreading down his legs. Nevertheless he limped towards her room, beyond which fire swarmed fluttering out of the kitchen to snatch at the hall. ‘I’m coming, Amy,’ he did his best to call while trying to keep his voice gentle. ‘Don’t be afraid. I won’t touch you, I won’t come anywhere near you. I only want to let you out and then I’m staying here.’

  There was no response from beyond the bolted door. Of course, he thought, he would never again hear her voice. The upsurge of appalled shame he experienced was almost enough to render him incapable of venturing even as close as her door, but he compelled the lumps of fire that were his feet to advance one more step, and another. It was a draught that stopped him.

  It came from behind him, where he would least have expected it. It whipped the flames around him to embrace every part of him that wasn’t already on fire. His legs wobbled one more step and were no longer capable of supporting him. He fell yards short of Amy’s door. He heard his body strike the carpet, but he didn’t feel the impact; perhaps he had nothing left with which to feel. That wasn’t true, because he felt helpless grief at the sight of flames blustering out of the kitchen towards Amy’s door. Then fire raced crackling over the panels of the wall above him, and he knew the fuel of that fire was himself.

  28 - Beyond the hill

  As Amy rose towards consciousness she seemed unable to see or to breathe. A substance heavier and more solid than darkness was filling her up on the way to her brain. If it shut down her awareness once more, that was fine with her. Being aware would only bring her pain and a knowledge of imprisonment and loss. There was no point in trying to remain alert in case someone came to save her, because nobody would. Now she understood why she had made so few friends: people you relied on went away when you most needed them, as her mother had and, in another sense, her father. Having understood that, she could forget it, and everything else too. Neither seeing nor breathing was much of a reason for her to fight off the dark, and once she gave in to it she wouldn’t miss them. Thinking was the feeblest reason of all, especially when a multitude of dreams was waiting to be dreamed, requiring nothing more of her than relaxation. It was time she returned to the dark.

  Except that some presence at an indeterminable distance from her consciousness wouldn’t let go of it. A profound lack of sensation had occupied her body, annulling even the pain which she would have expected to be suffering, and so she doubted that the troublesome element was part of herself, unless it was the very lack. Perhaps it was the darkness which was more than darkness—which, now that her reluctant awareness grasped it, was much more like smoke. How could she have failed to smell the acridity of it? She couldn’t stand her unawareness now, and so she lifted herself off the bed.

  At first she was unable to locate the floor. Perhaps, she couldn’t help thinking, there was less of it to find. The notion that she might be stepping off into a void as empty as her vision almost sent her into retreat, but imagining the worst might be less bearable than knowing. Besides, now she was managing to make her way in the direction where her instincts told her the door stood, although she could still feel nothing underfoot. Her eyes might as well have been replaced by the dark; it was impossible to judge whether she was seeing the faintest outline of the door or whether this was an impression her mind felt obliged to provide. But the door was where she had taken it to be, except that as she reached out to it, the block of ash it had apparently become fell away, revealing the hall—revealing that the hall was hardly there.

  A single picture lay at the foot of the opposite wall, the face under the cracked glass charred beyond recognition. Presumably all that was left of the panels was the soot which clung to the brick. She could see into the blackened cave that had been her father’s bedroom; it no longer had a door, nor any glass in its window. Most of its floor, like that of the hall, had been consumed, leaving a few joists and random lengths of floorboard chewed by fire and, by the look of them, consisting mostly of ash. Through the gaps between them she saw the yawning depths of Nazarill. For a moment she thought the roof at least had survived, and then a star gleamed in the ribbed blackness overhead.

  So her nightmare of a fire had come to pass without her even being aware of it. Not only the fire but also any firefighters had apparently come and gone, abandoning her unnoticed in the ruin. The disaster seemed to have driven her father away, at any rate; she didn’t care that he hadn’t saved her, only that he was gone. There was silence throughout Nazarill except for the whisper of ash in a wind that fluttered the black fur of the walls, and then she heard a chunk of the roof slither off the bricks on which it was resting and plunge in a series of shattering crashes all the way down to the foundations.

  If she’d been tempted to wait to be found—her room had protected her, after all; she assumed its lack of ventilation had kept the fire at bay—she felt too vulnerable now. What could she do? Calling for help had proved useless before, and now she had no voice. In any case, when she considered the lights of Partington beyond the charred hole where the window had been, they seemed no less distant and indifferent than the star overhead. Nobody would help her except herself, but when she gazed along the very little that remained of the hall floor, she wasn’t sure that she would be enough. The prospect of the black gaps between the remains of floorboard balanced on the shrivelled joists made even her perch on the threshold of her room feel increasingly precarious, but if she left it she was by no means convinced she would be able to distinguish any footholds in the shifting smoky darkness. Her plight was threatening to shrink her into a point which would have room only for panic, but she mustn’t let that happen. ‘Help,’ her mind said.

  She meant the appeal for herself alone, and yet she wasn’t entirely surprised when a response came from outside her. There was a creak of wood at the far end of the hall, where the doorway gaped emptily, as a small dim shape entered the apartment. Deft as an acrobat, it ran across the scraps of floor to Amy and sat up on its haunches. Before she could glimpse its face in the dark it shuffled round and began to pick its way more slowly towards the corridor. A yard or so from her it halted and turned the shadowy blotch of its head to her. It wanted her to follow, and was showing her the route.

  It might have been a cat; it was about the right size. The darkness allowed her to take it for someone’s clever pet which had strayed into the building and was guiding her, as clever pets did in stories she’d once read. Even if it was what she suspected it might be, it was all she had, and it had come when she’d called. As the dim head wobbled, beckoning, she abandoned her refuge and lurched onto the first of the stepping-stones which were all that survived of the floor.

  She wavered on the exposed charred joist, and th
e three-storey void surged at her to pull her down. Then she had her equilibrium, and immediately advanced to the next perch. She recalled from stories that the trick was never to look down, and so she kept her attention on the next footing she had to reach. It was like learning how to walk again, but more exhilarating. Her guide must be sure of her, because it had turned away and was demonstrating the next few steps of their route. She couldn’t be less sure of herself than it appeared to be of her, and in almost no time that she was aware of she gained the end of the hall.

  The corridor had been reduced to its essentials, a dark three-storey tunnel crossed by skeletal portions of blackness. As a wind moaned along it beneath a sky that was uncovering its stars, the black-furred walls appeared to shudder. The naked drop beneath her might have troubled Amy if she hadn’t concentrated her attention on her guide, which was staying only a pace ahead of her now. She rather hoped it wouldn’t turn to her; she was beginning to distinguish the outline of its body, which was less complete and regular than she would ideally have preferred. As though sensing her wish, it kept its head hunched low between its shoulders while it led her past the doorless gutted apartments to the stairs, or rather where the stairs had been. All that remained of them were stubs of joists protruding from seared brick.

  Her guide sprang onto the highest joist at once. Surely it wouldn’t have done so unless the carbonised stump was capable of supporting Amy too, and once it leapt to the next she launched herself after it. She caught the rhythm of the descent at once, and soon she and her companion were skipping down the excuse for a ladder, even managing to swing themselves around the bends in the staircase without breaking their headlong progress. Since the joists were so close together, Amy was able to observe more about her guide, not least the dark lines between its ribs—lines much deeper than shadow. This failed to disconcert her, and she found herself reflecting instead that she was so certain of her balance she might have leapt from floor to ruined floor rather than bothering to use the remains of the stairs. Perhaps she’d needed them as some kind of reassurance, she thought as the lowest joists carried her down to the level which had been occupied by the ground floor.

  It was hardly more than a pit now. Just enough of the floor had endured to make Amy feel capable of picking her way to the exit. She would have to pass all the rooms she’d feared, but she could tell they were deserted. She glanced into each hall as she came abreast of it. The blackened bricks were dripping, presumably with water from the hoses the firefighters would have employed, but if the vistas beyond the charred doorways resembled cells, those cells had been liberated. And so was Amy about to be, just as soon as she followed her guide, which had pranced lopsidedly out through the blistered opening where the glass doors used to stand. Amy sprang from the last stump of wood ribbed with black ash onto the step and from it onto the gravel.

  It was odd: she couldn’t feel the chunks of stone beneath her feet, any more than she remembered having felt the footholds she’d used to make her way out of the ruin. She found she was unwilling to look down at her feet. Her reluctance might have troubled her more if she hadn’t sensed that her perceptions were being overwhelmed by the shadow of Nazarill, a dark stony presence which, however impalpable, seemed to be exerting itself to hold her within it. Having managed to escape from the building, she could surely elude its shadow as her guide, which had dodged around a corner, apparently had. She darted forward and felt the shadow clinging to her like a fog that was more than fog, trying to stretch after her as she reached its edge alongside the buried roots of the oak. Then she was beyond it, and sensed it drawing its darkness into itself. She was free at last—free of Nazarill and all it represented—but where had she to go?

  Beyond the gateway she saw the dull glow of the marketplace and the static lights of the rest of the unhelpful town. Past them all was Rob’s house, invisibly dark. He’d tried to help her at the end, but she didn’t think she could go to him now, not only because the lightlessness of his window showed he was asleep. It must be the middle of the night, yet she wasn’t even slightly tired. What else ought to strike her as unusual? Something else uncommon for the time of night—some quality of Nazarill. She hadn’t looked towards the building when it occurred to her to wonder how, when the night was so dark, the ruin was able to cast the shadow she had seen. She swung round like a weight on a rope, and saw. Behind the hulk the crown of the hill was glowing.

  For an instant she imagined it was catching moonlight, but there was no moon in the pierced ebony sky. Besides, no moon could have made the ground shine so brightly. The grass, and the scattering of wild flowers which had crept back in the absence of the gardener, seemed transformed into luminous pearl, and from several hundred yards away she could distinguish every separate blade of grass, each leaf and petal. The spectacle mesmerised her, and before she was conscious of deciding to approach it she was drifting uphill over the frozen lawn.

  She kept well away from the ruin, which was surrounded by a patch of blackened earth like a frustrated attempt to extinguish the glow of the hill. Now she was past, and the light swelled up within her, ousting her sense of herself. She wasn’t even convinced she was seeing her shadow, it was so feeble and thin, and yet she was afraid of damaging the flowers over which she was passing; the minutest details of them were intricate as crystal. ‘You don’t need to be,’ she thought, or was it she who’d thought it? She was almost at the summit now, and she wanted to make out her shadow in case the light did away with it. She looked down and saw not only her shadow. She saw twelve more, six on either side of her, all of them as shrivelled and malformed as hers. In the moment of their growing visible, each of the nearest extended a hand to her.

  It seemed impolite not to take them, especially when they were no more incomplete than hers. The fire had reached her after all, she saw. At once her hands vanished from her sight, and she was holding onto her invisible companions with the essence of herself in the midst of the pearly glow. ‘We shall see everything save ourselves,’ said another voice within her.

  ‘We rescued one another.’

  ‘We shall be whole at last.’

  All the soft intimate voices, even those which had yet to speak, already seemed as familiar to Amy as her own. They belonged to her truest friends, whom she would always have. ‘Let us go up,’ another suggested, and in a moment they had glided to the crown of the hill.

  The moor stretching to the horizon shone with a moonless moonlight—a luminousness that was as much a part of her as of the landscape. Beyond the moor were further mysteries, and beyond them the sky and the stars, and other revelations whose vastness she feared for the moment to contemplate. The wind in the mile after mile of shining heather was the secret voice of the moor, and she thought it was promising her that she and her companions would be equal to whatever they encountered; she felt herself being given a promise. It might take eternity to keep it, she thought as they began to sail effortlessly over the moor—as she became aware that the consciousness she was acquiring might be capable of holding within itself every living thing around her, and every individual detail, and the awesome whole of which they were a part, beginning with the world. Beyond that she dared not venture yet, and so she fixed her awareness on the moor that was sharing her light. As she revelled in the start of her voyage she felt herself being raised up with an immense gentleness by the stars.

  Set us all free

  The day before he was to leave for university Rob finished packing late in the afternoon, and then he wondered if he had. He surveyed the pile of suitcases and the huddle of cartons in his room, but they weren’t the answer. The view which had been nagging at him throughout his preparations drew him to the window. A slow procession of builders’ lorries was emerging from the gates of Nazarill. The spectacle made him feel hollow, abandoned by the year he’d known Amy. Just about now he might have been meeting her to arrange when they would see each other once he was settled in his new accommodation. When he swallowed with an effort and turned
back to his room it was only to be confronted by the poster she had bought him.

  It could stay on the wall, he decided in that moment. Packing it would be to try and fail to bring Amy with him. Even without it he was bound to be wakened in the night by memories of her. Thoughts of actions he should have taken were the worst, harsh as a beam shone into his eyes in the dark. His parents kept telling him he would form new friendships, maybe more than friendships, and he supposed that would have to be so. Perhaps he would feel better about it once he told Amy he was going; perhaps visiting her would reach him in a way that the clump of smugly mysterious faces surrounded by clouds was unable to achieve. He liked the band and the fake magic of their lyrics even less now, and if it weren’t for Amy their faces would no longer be in his room, but they were the nearest thing he had to a picture of her. Working his arm to rid his mended shoulder of the twinge it still sometimes experienced, he hurried downstairs and out of the house.

  The September sky was veiled by cloud. A vague disc of pale light was lowering itself towards the horizon of the moor beyond Nazarill. The air smelled of early autumn smoke. Usually this first sign of the dying of the year appealed to Rob—when he was younger it had promised fireworks to come, and Christmas—but now it reminded him of the stench of the ruin of Nazarill on the day after the fire, the day he’d wakened from his medicated sleep to learn of the disaster. He hunched his shoulders at the thought, digging out the twinge again, and found his way along the lumpy road in the direction of the church.