Suspended In Dusk

by Ramsey Campbell

  As the fire withdrew further, the darkness grew silent and cold.

  “Time to go home,” Pa said to nobody in particular. “The children are getting restless.”

  * * *

  By the time we got home, I was shivering. Although I needed to ask many questions, Mum packed me into bed and told me to be quiet and sleep.

  All night images of fire plagued me, and I feared I would burn. The bitter flavours of smoke and fear clogged my throat, and I heard the sounds of crackling fire. My heart hammered and my body was bathed in cold sweat. Many times I touched the floor to check it for heat, afraid that the storey below was burning. Any moment smoke and flames might burst through and engulf me in hell fire.

  * * *

  In the morning, I was still upset. My hair stank of nasty smoke, and my head burnt from the uneasy night.

  Mum put her hand on my forehead while we sat at breakfast. “The girl has a fever. You shouldn’t have taken her out in the cold.”

  “You’ve been too soft with the children. They have to become tougher.” He lit a cigarette and puffed. Normally, he didn’t smoke at breakfast. The smoke curled and found its way into my nostrils.

  While the others had bread with butter and blackberry jam, Mum served up bangers, mash and mushy peas. In our family, sickness was no excuse for wasting food. I recoiled at the vomit-like stuff, no less repulsive after microwaving than it had been before. Mum sniffed, but not at the food. “Holy Mother, you stink. All three of you. The smoke is in your hair.”

  I sliced a banger with my knife, and watched the grease run and curl around the peas-mash heap. Darren spread butter and thick blackberry jam on his bread. I glanced at the picture of the jolly lambs and decided it wasn’t worth it. If Pa left for work soon, I might get away without forcing the horrid stuff down. Mum sometimes waived punishments.

  The letterbox rattled, and a plop told us that the newspaper had arrived. Mum fetched it. She moved the bread-bowl to the side and spread the paper out on the kitchen table, opening it on the first page of local news.

  I read the headline, one bold word after the other. “Family Perish in Fire––Hoax Call Leads to Destruction of Shop and Homes.”

  Perish meant something like ‘die’. But surely nobody had died. We’d been there, and everyone had said that the Eversons were away on holiday.

  A large photo showed a smouldering ruin, a smaller one depicted fire fighters directing a blast from a hose.

  Darren grabbed the paper and read aloud. “Three members of the Maqsoum family died in the fire. They were…” He mumbled the names and ages of the victims.

  So people had died. They had burnt like the martyrs in the most frightening stories of The Children’s Book of Saints. But it couldn’t be true. The saints had died in faraway countries a long long time ago, not at the end of our road last night.

  The report said that the local fire fighters had been called to a non-existent fire, which made them late to arrive at the site. It described how the charred remains had been found. The mother had cowered under a table while the father and the eight-year-old twin daughters had squeezed into a corner. The man’s body was shielding the children with his own, apparently trying to hold off the flames from them until the last possible moment.

  Nausea squeezed my throat again. These people had been awake and conscious. They hadn’t passed out in the smoke, as the woman with the spectacles had tried to make me believe. With a pang of guilt I remembered the Werther’s toffee I had accepted from her, and resolved to smuggle it into the rubbish bin later when nobody was looking.

  I realised that the Arabs had seen the flames coming, looked into the deadly orange, smelled that bitter, acid smoke. Perhaps they’d found the exit blocked, but kept hoping that someone would get them out, if only they could retreat from the fire until help arrived. They’d withdrawn, shrunk into the corner, pursued by death. Even as the flames gnawed at them, as smoke clogged their nostrils and bit their throats, even as the flames started to devour their flesh, they continued to hope, even as the father sacrificed himself to gain a few more seconds for his girls… And then they screamed. I had heard those screams of pain and despair and death.

  “They suffered,” Mum said. “Holy Mother of Jesus, they must have suffered. I thought they’d go without pain, from the smoke. It doesn’t seem right. Even for Arabs, this can’t be right.”

  Pa shifted uncomfortably on the corner seat. I thought he would say something to praise the Arab father’s courage. Instead, he lit another cigarette and said, “I’ll be off in a moment.”

  Mum recovered and turned her attention to us. “Never play with matches,” she lectured. “I’ve always told you so. Now you know what comes from being careless with fire.”

  “They were only Arabs,” Darren said with the superiority of a twelve-year-old. “Dirty people. It was a dirty flat they lived in, full of clutter. Arabs live like that. I mean, just think of it. Four people in a one-bedroom flat. Decent people wouldn’t live like that.”

  Although I didn’t follow his reasoning, I accepted that the deaths had been at least partly the Arabs’ fault, because of the way they lived, and because they had probably been careless with matches. I clutched my mug of hot milk.

  “Why didn’t they get out?” Mum wondered aloud. “They must have heard the fire, smelled something. They can’t have been asleep at that time.”

  “Don’t get involved.” Pa took his coat and left.

  * * *

  Because of my fever, Mum made me stay in bed all day and brought me chamomile tea and hot water bottles. I sweated in the heat.

  I could almost feel the hot breath of fire on my arms, and closed my eyes against the pain. In my mind, I crowded in the corner with the Arab family. We were trying to shield one another from the inevitable fire, the fear, the stinging leaps, the bites of the flames.

  I thought of my own family. Strangely, I couldn’t imagine Pa shielding us. I felt a yearning for the kind of love this Arab father had for his daughters.

  In the evening, Mum made me sit at the kitchen table, either because she thought my fever had gone, or because she didn’t want to annoy Pa. She plunked the plate of old food before me, not even bothering to reheat it in the microwave.

  * * *

  I was saved when a visitor came: the old woman with the silver spectacles. Mum patted her hair as if to check that the waves were still in place, and swiftly removed the plate with the disgusting food. Instead, she gave me and the woman fresh plates and we ate bread and mustard like the others. Of course talk turned to the fire again.

  “Shame about the shop,” the woman said. “I know Everson wants to move to more central premises where he can have a tea room, but it’s still a huge loss.”

  Pa smiled. “They have insurance.”

  I didn’t understand this grown-up talk, but had a vague idea that insurance prevented families from getting burnt. “Do we have insurance?” I asked.

  “We don’t need it. We don’t have Arabs living in our house.”

  The mention of the Arabs made me cry.

  “The girl’s upset,” the woman said. “It’s been too much for her. She’s so young. How old are you, dearie?”

  “Seven,” I managed between sobs. Then I asked the question I had wanted to ask all day. “Are they saints now? Have the gone to heaven?”

  “No, dearie, they’re Arabs. Arabs don’t go to heaven.”

  I cried more. I wanted them to go to heaven.

  Mum tried to console me. “Maybe there’s something like a lower heaven where Arabs can go. Other heathens as well, if they’ve been good.” She patted my hand. “Remember when your cat died? Maybe there’s a heaven for cats and Arabs and other animals.”

  Darren giggled, and Pa snorted. “There’s nothing in the Bible about that.”

  For a moment, all was quiet. Mum’s mouth twitched like she might cry, too.

  The visitor spoke into the silence. “If Everson doesn’t rebuild, the site would suit our n
ew church.”

  “We could use a new church.” Relief sang in Mum’s voice. “Something good is coming out of this after all.” She folded her hands in her lap and smiled.

  Pa and the neighbour smiled, too, because everything was good and right.

  Ministry of Outrage

  Chris Limb

  The world is a far better and much safer place than it has ever been and continues to improve on a daily basis.

  What about the casual horror of urban life in the twenty first century? One only has to watch the news to be sickened almost beyond belief. The constant mindless violence. The murder. The hypocrisy. The disregard for others that has gripped the soul of the human race for the last half century.

  I’m flattered that you really believe all of that. No, more than that. I’m actually quite touched. Thank you. That means a lot to me.

  * * *

  I considered myself an artist. A very highly paid artist, to be sure; an artist working to a very specific brief, but a bona fide creative giant nonetheless. On the other hand, I didn’t see why this meant that I had to dress like some kind of bohemian imbecile. Not for me was the scruffy ill-fitting thrift store attire of the bulk of my colleagues. No unkempt hairstyle defiled my skull.

  Some of my fellow employees at the Ministry of Outrage had, on occasion, remarked that I looked as if I’d be more at home in a city bank. What they failed to realise was that their faux beatnik look was just as much a uniform as the bowler and pinstripe of the denizens of the Square Mile.

  As far as I was concerned what mattered was my work—and I’d never had any complaints about that.

  The lift chimed and I stepped out through the opening doors into the Ministry’s offices. Here I was again, back at work, enjoying my job, doing what I did best.

  For all intents and purposes, the Ministry of Outrage was just another Soho advertising agency. Or so everyone believed. While it was indeed true that we took on any number of bona fide commonplace and lucrative contracts, these were just a front for our true purpose. A very successful front, certainly. Everyone remembers that one with Osama Bin Laden on the tube, not to mention the infamous Baby with AK47 campaign.

  I love the way that our name was an elaborate double bluff. Ministry of Outrage. Very trendy, very chic. Very Soho. Very genuine ad agency.

  Very true.

  We never had to kowtow to the Advertising Standards Authority. We weren’t answerable to the Independent Television Commission. Our masters were a body far more mysterious and powerful.

  Strictly speaking we were civil servants. Personally, I still considered myself an artist.

  I sat down at my desk and waggled the mouse. The computer woke from its slumber and, after typing in my password, I fired up NewsMill 2.0.

  * * *

  I was recruited while still working at Globular Cluster. It was shortly after one of my most daring and successful campaigns had been pulled after numerous complaints from Daily Mail and Guardian readers alike.

  I was annoyed, but as far as my boss was concerned, having an advert pulled was a rite of passage. It meant that I was playing with the big boys now.

  I had no idea how big until the Cadaver came calling.

  It was one of those midwinter days when the watery London daylight barely made it down to street level. I was soaked and in a foul mood when I swept past Julie and started up the wrought iron spiral stairs two at a time.

  “Maxwell!” she called after me. “There’s a Mr Cavanagh to see you.”

  When I opened the door to my office he was sitting in one of the easy chairs, bowler hat and neatly furled umbrella hanging from my hat stand. I frowned. He should have been made to wait in the foyer.

  He unfolded himself and stood. Topped with steel grey hair, the pale translucent skin of his face was stretched over an angular skull. He looked simultaneously delicate and powerful, older than at first glance. Almost a corpse. An intelligent and dangerous corpse.

  “Mr Bruckler. Pleased to meet you. Cavanagh.”

  Cadaver. His voice was quiet. I shook the papery hand he offered me. It was surprisingly warm and strong. His suit was black and his shirt white. He wore a plain grey tie and regarded me through old-fashioned spectacles.

  “What can I do for you?” There was something about him that told me acting on my initial impulse to ask him just what the fuck he thought he was doing would be unwise. I sat down.

  “I’ll get to the point.” The Cadaver pulled a business card from his top pocket. “We wondered when you’d have time for a meeting with us. We have a proposition you might find interesting.”

  I took the card.

  J Cavanagh esq

  90 Whitehall

  SW1A 2AS

  The government.

  “Look, if this is about those complaints…”

  “Not at all,” the Cadaver raised a hand, “Certain opportunities have arisen for someone of your talents. Opportunities that might afford a salary at least twice the one you currently draw. Interested?”

  * * *

  90 Whitehall was a grey building near the Ministry of Defence. Inside, wood-panelled walls and threadbare red carpet deadened my footsteps. I wasn’t quite sure where to go. There was no reception desk.

  “Ah, Bruckler,” the Cadaver appeared from a door a little way down the corridor, “glad you could make it.”

  I followed him into a small windowless room dominated by a white projector screen.

  “Do take a seat.”

  The seats were decrepit swivel chairs—state of the art circa 1950—but comfortable.

  “I hope you’ll find this interesting,” the Cadaver slid a piece of paper and a fountain pen across the table, “but you need to sign this first.”

  Non-disclosure agreements were par for the course in advertising. Never mind government secrets; the shit would really hit the fan if WikiLeaks were ever to get its hands on half of what goes on in the commercial world.

  Still, I’d never been asked to sign the Official Secrets Act before.

  The Cadaver glanced at the signed document before secreting it within his briefcase.

  “You may find this illuminating.” He pressed the button on a remote control and a face appeared on the projector screen. A woman’s face, contorted in anger, the light of hell burning in her eyes. The eyes. Beneath the fury there was something almost happy about them. A joy at being permitted such anger.

  The picture panned sideways and zoomed out, revealing that the woman was merely one of a crowd, all of whom shared the same expression of ecstatic fury.

  “This is what we have been tasked to control. Not far beneath the veneer of civilization lurk these barely human monsters.” Despite the emotive turn of phrase, the Cadaver’s voice sounded measured and calm, a voiceover from a documentary about the twenty-first century from several hundred years hence.

  “Where’s this from?” It looked familiar but it was the kind of thing you saw in the newspapers on an almost weekly basis these days—I might have just been recognising the look rather than the actual scene.

  “A year ago. Outside a courthouse inside which an alleged child-killer was on trial. Look at the crowd’s depth of feeling. How angry they are. You would hardly credit that the human brain had the capacity for such sustained negative emotion.”

  “Alleged?” I was curious about the Cadaver’s turn of phrase.

  “How many of these people do you think knew the victim or her family?” On the face of it the Cadaver was ignoring my question but I could tell from the intelligent glint in his eye that this was his way of replying.

  “Difficult to say, given mob mentality,” I thought about it and erred on the side of caution, “Say… less than five per cent of them? Depends upon the size of the community of course.”

  “An intelligent guess,” the Cadaver pulled out a sheaf of papers from beneath the table and leafed through it looking for the answer, “it’s Northampton, population approximately two hundred thousand. The size of the crowd outs
ide the courthouse was over five hundred so that’s more than a quarter of one per cent of the population. And of this percentage… precisely none of them knew the victim.”

  “Really?” I raised my eyebrows, “How can you be certain? I’m not surprised, given what people are like—but none? Really?”

  “We can be absolutely certain of these facts,” the Cadaver shut the dossier with a snap, “Because there was no victim. The entire case was a fabrication, the officers concerned are in the employ of our department and the perpetrator is an actor, also in our employ. It might surprise you to learn that once these people are supposedly locked up everyone forgets about them, no matter how many of them were vowing bloody murder and threatening dire consequences for them upon release. This is a very… useful amnesia.”

  “But why? Why bother?”

  The Cadaver gestured with the remote again and the picture on the screen changed to a close-up of the woman first displayed.

  “Because of this. “He walked over to the screen and tapped at it with a fingernail. “This untapped anger. We have to drain it off somehow.”

  “But isn’t faking these outrages stirring up the anger in the first place?”

  “Alas no,” the Cadaver shook his head with a kind smile, “Without these distractions the anger and violence inherent in humanity would build up and explode. Probably directed at the government.”

  “So why…” I must admit I was puzzled. I’d always thought of the human race en mass as toothless cattle, a resource to be exploited by judicious use of pretty colours, pictures and lights. I didn’t like the idea of having been wrong about something or having been in the dark. It felt against nature. Against my nature.

  However, there was something about the Cadaver’s demeanour that prevented any resentment building up against him. Despite his benign, almost frail, aspect there was something very dangerous about him. If I crossed him I wouldn’t even know about it. I’d just wake one day to discover I’d never existed in the first place.