I got the vehicle started, stomped the accelerator, and the rose-heads went flying. One of them, Jacobs, bounced over the hood and splattered into a spray of flesh, ichor, and petals.
I had never driven the vehicle, so my maneuvering was rusty. But it didn’t matter. There wasn’t exactly a traffic rush to worry about.
After an hour or so, I turned to look at Mary. She was staring at me, her eyes like the twin barrels of a double-barreled shotgun. They seemed to say, “More of your doing,” and in a way she was right. I drove on.
Daybreak we came to the lighthouse. I don’t know how it survived. One of those quirks. Even the glass was unbroken. It looked like a great stone finger shooting us the bird.
The vehicle’s tank was near empty, so I assumed here was as good a place to stop as any. At least there was shelter, something we could fortify. Going on until the vehicle was empty of fuel didn’t make much sense. There wouldn’t be any more fill-ups, and there might not be any more shelter like this.
Mary and I (in our usual silence) unloaded the supplies from the vehicle and put them in the lighthouse. There was enough food, water, chemicals for the chemical toilet, odds and ends, extra clothes, to last us a year. There were also some guns. A Colt .45 revolver, two twelve-gauge shotguns, and a .38, and enough shells to fight a small war.
When everything was unloaded, I found some old furniture downstairs, and using tools from the vehicle tried to barricade the bottom door and the one at the top of the stairs. When I finished, I thought of a line from a story I had once read, a line that always disturbed me. It went something like, “Now we’re shut in for the night.”
Days. Nights. All the same. Shut in with one another, our memories and the fine tattoo.
A few days later I spotted the roses. It was as if they had smelled us out. And maybe they had. From a distance, through the binoculars, they reminded me of old women in bright sun hats.
It took them the rest of the day to reach the lighthouse, and they immediately surrounded it, and when I appeared at the railing they would lift their heads and moan.
And that, Mr. Journal, brings us up to now.
I thought I had written myself out, Mr. Journal. Told the only part of my life story I would ever tell, but now I’m back. You can’t keep a good world-destroyer down.
I saw my daughter last night and she’s been dead for years. But I saw her, I did, naked, smiling at me, calling to ride piggyback.
Here’s what happened.
It was cold last night. Must be getting along winter. I had rolled off my pallet onto the cold floor. Maybe that’s what brought me awake. The cold. Or maybe it was just gut instinct. It had been a particularly wonderful night with the tattoo. The face had been made so clear it seemed to stand out from my back. It had finally become more defined than the mushroom cloud. The needles went in hard and deep, but I’ve had them in me so much now I barely feel the pain. After looking in the mirror at the beauty of the design, I went to bed happy, or as happy as I can get.
During the night the eyes ripped open. The stitches came out and I didn’t know it until I tried to rise from the cold, stone floor and my back puckered against it where the blood had dried.
I pulled myself free and got up. It was dark, but we had a good moonspill that night and I went to the mirror to look. It was bright enough that I could see Rae’s reflection clearly, the color of her face, the color of the cloud. The stitches had fallen away and now the wounds were spread wide, and inside the wounds were eyes. Oh God, Rae’s blue eyes. Her mouth smiled at me and her teeth were very white.
Oh, I hear you, Mr. Journal. I hear what you’re saying. And I thought of that. My first impression was that I was about six bricks shy a load, gone around the old bend. But I know better now. You see, I lit a candle and held it over my shoulder, and with the candle and the moonlight, I could see even more clearly. It was Rae all right, not just a tattoo.
I looked over at my wife on the bunk, her back to me, as always. She had not moved.
I turned back to the reflection. I could hardly see the outline of myself, just Rae’s face smiling out of that cloud.
“Rae,” I whispered, “is that you?”
“Come on, Daddy,” said the mouth in the mirror, “that’s a stupid question. Of course, it’s me.”
“But … You’re … you’re …”
“Dead?”
“Yes … Did … did it hurt much?”
She cackled so loudly the mirror shook. I could feel the hairs on my neck rising. I thought for sure Mary would wake up, but she slept on.
“It was instantaneous, Daddy, and even then, it was the greatest pain imaginable. Let me show you how it hurt.”
The candle blew out and I dropped it. I didn’t need it anyway. The mirror grew bright and Rae’s smile went from ear to ear literally—and the flesh on her bones seemed like crêpe paper before a powerful fan, and that fan blew the hair off her head, the skin off her skull, and melted those beautiful, blue eyes and those shiny white teeth of hers to a putrescent goo the color and consistency of fresh bird shit. Then there was only the skull, and it heaved in half and flew backward into the dark world of the mirror and there was no reflection now, only the hurtling fragments of a life that once was and was now nothing more than swirling cosmic dust.
I closed my eyes and looked away.
“Daddy?”
I opened them, looked over my shoulder into the mirror. There was Rae again, smiling out of my back.
“Darling,” I said, “I’m so sorry.”
“So are we,” she said, and there were faces floating past her in the mirror. Teenagers, children, men and women, babies, little embryos swirling around her head like planets around the sun. I closed my eyes again, but I could not keep them closed. When I opened them the multitudes of swirling dead, and those who had never had a chance to live, were gone. Only Rae was there. “Come close to the mirror, Daddy.”
I backed up to it. I backed until the hot wounds that were Rae’s eyes touched the cold glass and the wounds became hotter and hotter and Rae called out, “Ride me piggy, Daddy,” and then I felt her weight on my back, not the weight of a six-year-old child or a teenage girl, but a great weight, like the world was on my shoulders and bearing down.
Leaping away from the mirror I went hopping and whooping about the room, same as I used to in the park. Around and around I went, and as I did, I glanced in the mirror. Astride me was Rae, lithe and naked, her red hair fanning around her as I spun. And when I whirled by the mirror again, I saw that she was six years old. Another spin and there was a skeleton with red hair, one hand held high, the jaws open and yelling, “Ride ’em, cowboy.”
“How?” I managed, still bucking and leaping, giving Rae the ride of her life. She bent to my ear and I could feel her warm breath. “You want to know how I’m here, Daddy-dear? I’m here because you created me. Once you laid between Mother’s legs and thrust me into existence, the two of you, with all the love there was in you. This time you thrust me into existence with your guilt and Mother’s hate. Her thrusting needles, your arching back. And now I’ve come back for one last ride, Daddy-o. Ride, you bastard, ride.”
All the while I had been spinning, and now as I glimpsed the mirror, I saw wall-to-wall faces, weaving in, weaving out, like smiling stars, and all those smiles opened wide and words came out in chorus, “Where were you when they dropped The Big One?”
Each time I spun and saw the mirror again, it was a new scene. Great flaming winds scorching across the world, babies turning to fleshy jello, heaps of charred bones, brains boiling out of the heads of men and women like backed-up toilets overflowing, The Almighty, Glory Hallelujah, Ours is Bigger Than Yours Bomb hurtling forward, the mirror going mushroom white, then clear, and me, spinning, Rae pressed tight against my back, melting like butter on a griddle, evaporating into the eye-wounds on my back, and finally me alone, collapsing to the floor beneath the weight of the world.
Mary never awoke.
The
vines outsmarted me.
A single strand found a crack downstairs somewhere and wound up the steps and slipped beneath the door that led into the tower. Mary’s bunk was not far from the door, and in the night, while I slept and later while I spun in front of the mirror and lay on the floor before it, it made its way to Mary’s bunk, up between her legs, and entered her sex effortlessly.
I suppose I should give the vine credit for doing what I had not been able to do in years, Mr. Journal, and that’s enter Mary. Oh God, that’s a funny one, Mr. Journal. Real funny. Another little scientist joke. Let’s make that a mad scientist joke, what say? Who but a madman would play with the lives of human beings by constantly trying to build the bigger and better boom machine?
So what of Rae, you ask?
I’ll tell you. She is inside me. My back feels the weight. She twists in my guts like a corkscrew. I went to the mirror a moment ago, and the tattoo no longer looks like it did. The eyes have turned to crusty sores and the entire face looks like a scab. It’s as if the bile that made up my soul, the unthinking, nearsightedness, the guilt that I am, has festered from inside and spoiled the picture with pustule bumps, knots and scabs.
To put it in layman’s terms, Mr. Journal, my back is infected. Infected with what I am. A blind, senseless fool.
The wife?
Ah, the wife. God, how I loved that woman. I have not really touched her in years, merely felt those wonderful hands on my back as she jabbed the needles home, but I never stopped loving her. It was not a love that glowed anymore, but it was there, though hers for me was long gone and wasted.
This morning when I got up from the floor, the weight of Rae and the world on my back, I saw the vine coming up from beneath the door and stretching over to her. I yelled her name. She did not move. I ran to her and saw it was too late. Before I could put a hand on her, I saw her flesh ripple and bump up, like a den of mice were nesting under a quilt. The vines were at work. (Out goes the old guts, in goes the new vines.)
There was nothing I could do for her.
I made a torch out of a chair leg and an old quilt, set fire to it, burned the vine from between her legs, watched it retreat, smoking, under the door. Then I got a board, nailed it along the bottom, hoping it would keep others out for at least a little while. I got one of the twelve-gauges and loaded it. It’s on the desk beside me, Mr. Journal, but even I know I’ll never use it. It was just something to do, as Jacobs said when he killed and ate the whale. Something to do.
I can hardly write anymore. My back and shoulders hurt so bad. It’s the weight of Rae and the world.
I’ve just come back from the mirror and there is very little left of the tattoo. Some blue and black ink, a touch of red that was Rae’s hair. It looks like an abstract painting now. Collapsed design, running colors. It’s real swollen. I look like the hunchback of Notre Dame.
What am I going to do, Mr. Journal?
Well, as always, I’m glad you asked that. You see, I’ve thought this out.
I could throw Mary’s body over the railing before it blooms. I could do that. Then I could doctor my back. It might even heal, though I doubt it. Rae wouldn’t let that happen, I can tell you now. And I don’t blame her. I’m on her side. I’m just a walking dead man and have been for years.
I could put the shotgun under my chin and work the trigger with my toe, or maybe push it with the very pen I’m using to create you, Mr. Journal. Wouldn’t that be neat? Blow my brains to the ceiling and sprinkle you with my blood.
But as I said, I loaded the gun because it was something to do. I’d never use it on myself or Mary.
You see, I want Mary. I want her to hold Rae and me one last time like she used to in the park. And she can. There’s a way.
I’ve drawn all the curtains and made curtains out of blankets for those spots where there aren’t any. It’ll be sunup soon and I don’t want that kind of light in here. I’m writing this by candlelight and it gives the entire room a warm glow. I wish I had wine. I want the atmosphere to be just right.
Over on Mary’s bunk she’s starting to twitch. Her neck is swollen where the vines have congested and are writhing toward their favorite morsel, the brain. Pretty soon the rose will bloom (I hope she’s one of the bright yellow ones, yellow was her favorite color and she wore it well) and Mary will come for me.
When she does, I’ll stand with my naked back to her. The vines will whip out and cut me before she reaches me, but I can stand it. I’m used to pain. I’ll pretend the thorns are Mary’s needles. I’ll stand that way until she folds her dead arms around me and her body pushes up against the wound she made in my back, the wound that is our daughter Rae. She’ll hold me so the vines and the proboscis can do their work. And while she holds me, I’ll grab her fine hands and push them against my chest, and it will be we three again, standing against the world, and I’ll close my eyes and delight in her soft, soft hands one last time.
For Ardath Mayhar
NEEDING GHOSTS
RAMSEY CAMPBELL
The Oxford Companion to English Literature describes Ramsey Campbell as “Britain’s most respected living horror writer.” He has received more awards than any other writer in the field, including the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association, the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild, and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University for outstanding services to literature.
Among his novels are The Face That Must Die, Incarnate, Midnight Sun, The Count of Eleven, Silent Children, The Darkest Part of the Woods, The Overnight, Secret Story, The Grin of the Dark, Thieving Fear, Creatures of the Pool, The Seven Days of Cain, Ghosts Know, The Kind Folk, Think Yourself Lucky, and Thirteen Days by Sunset Beach. His most recent title, The Way of the Worm, concludes “The Three Births of Daoloth” trilogy, which also comprises The Searching Dead and Born to the Dark.
Campbell’s short fiction is collected in Waking Nightmares, Alone with the Horrors, Ghosts and Grisly Things, Told by the Dead, Just Behind You, Holes for Faces, and By the Light of My Skull, while Needing Ghosts, The Last Revelation of Gla’aki, The Pretence, and The Booking are novellas.
His novels The Nameless and Pact of the Fathers have been filmed in Spain, where a movie of The Influence is in production.
“Needing Ghosts rather crept up on me,” recalls the author. “Immediately before it I’d written Midnight Sun and had the hardest time I’ve ever had with the first draft of a novel. In the midst of this, Deborah Beale at Legend did her best to persuade me to write a novella that would appear in a series she was publishing. I’d never previously tried to write one, and I resisted until I came upon a suggestion by Brian Aldiss that the form should cover the events of a short period—a day, perhaps. This helped awaken a couple of ideas that had been lying dormant in one of my notebooks, and I amassed material while I rewrote Midnight Sun.
“I wasn’t prepared for how Needing Ghosts would take off. From the point where Mottershead arrives at the bus terminal, it became so much stranger than I’d expected that I was delighted to follow. The rest of it was more like dreaming onto the page than anything else I’ve written, and I went up to my desk every morning eager to find out what new surprises were in store. In a way I think it’s the dark dwarfish twin of Midnight Sun, owning up to themes the novel can’t quite handle, but it also released the comedy underlying much of my earlier fiction, and the next novel I wrote was the overtly comic Count of Eleven. I hope the reader has as much deranged fun with it as I did.”
HE KNOWS THIS dark. Though it feels piled against his eyes, it doesn’t mean he’s blind. He only has to lie there until he can tell where he is. As soon as his sense of his body returns he’ll know which way he’s lying.
He feels as though he has forgotten how to close his eyes and how to breathe. Perhaps he could shout and gain some idea of the extent of his surroundings from wha
tever happens to his voice, but he can’t think of anything to say. The notion of shouting without words dismays him, and so does the possibility that he mightn’t know what he means to shout until he hears himself.
In any case, his sense of himself is beginning to gather. His arms are stretched out parallel to his body, his hands lie palms downward by his sides. How thin they are! He’s disinclined to raise them to his eyes in case he’s unable to see them. The darkness must relent eventually, and meanwhile there’s no call for him to move; didn’t he take some trouble to achieve this peace? Now that he’s aware of the remainder of his body—the outstretched legs, the upturned toes, the tight skin over the ribs—he ought to be able to enjoy lying still.
But the darkness is no longer absolute. It has begun to betray hints of shapes standing tall and immobile as if they’re waiting to be seen. Those directly ahead of him appear to be draped in robes, and can’t he hear voices whispering? He thinks of judges watching him with eyes that pierce the blackness, judges waiting for the dawn to reveal them and himself.
To his right he can just distinguish the profile of an open box at least as tall as himself. Hovering within it is an object which looks too oddly proportioned to be complete. To his left is an open horizontal box, from which shapes dangle as though exhausted by their struggle to emerge. He very much hopes that the whispers aren’t coming from either box.
His clenched fists spread their fingers and reach out shakily on either side of him. By stretching his arms to their limit he can grasp the edges of the lumpy creaking mattress, and the action gives him some awareness of the room. Those aren’t robed figures ahead of him, they’re heavy curtains, and he’s almost sure that if he parts them to admit more light he’ll see that the figure hovering in the wardrobe, the stumps of its legs drawn up towards its handless monkey arms, is nothing of the kind.
The Mammoth Book of Nightmare Stories Page 34