The Searching Dead

by Ramsey Campbell

  Another was how he talked to us, like young men rather than faintly contemptible inferiors or receptacles to be crammed with unquestioned information. Whenever he was on yard duty he would engage some of us in conversation, not least about ourselves and our families. I was still a little disconcerted by his trait of ducking his upper body towards whoever he was about to address—because it reminded me of my first sight of him, I supposed, although I hadn’t seen him in the cemetery since. We were all fond of his history lessons, which were always engrossing and, when he showed us caricatures of historical figures, amusing too. I thought him audacious for telling us which newspapers printed cartoons of Macmillan and other dignitaries of our time. Not just the pictures but the subjects seemed to make him laugh, an attitude I found excitingly subversive, though I think I wondered if he valued anybody very much. All the same, nobody betrayed any doubts about him until Paul Joyce asked him about the war.

  It would have been late in the year, because the afternoon was already growing dark. Mr Noble’s was the final lesson, preceded by an English class. Whenever he taught Shakespeare Mr Askew spent the last few minutes in performing a soliloquy from memory, limping up and down the classroom with his gown cast over his arm. The gloom lent more conviction to his speech about the dagger, and I could almost have imagined that I saw it leading him into the dark. The school bell blotted out most of his line about the wicked dreams that rose from the dead half of the world, but once the shrilling ceased he recommenced with witchcraft and its sacrifices and continued to the end. “It is a knell that summons thee to heaven, or to hell,” he said, throwing up a hand as though to signify the recent interruption. With him we were never sure if we were meant to laugh, but a few of us risked a titter, and he looked ready to react until Mr Noble loomed on the frosted pane of the classroom door. “Yes, yes,” Mr Askew muttered, limping to let him in. “They’re yours and I wish you joy of them.”

  He snatched the door open so abruptly that Mr Noble’s smile of greeting faltered. For an instant he resembled a boy who’d been caught spying, the way I’d felt at my bedroom window. “Take your time, Mr Askew,” he murmured.

  Perhaps he hadn’t meant to draw attention to his colleague’s disability, but it was clear that Mr Askew didn’t welcome the indulgence. He lurched out of the classroom, only to stumble over the sill. Mr Noble caught his elbow, an action that earned him a scowl the twilight failed to hide. “Q,” Mr Askew said, a thanks so truncated it was pinched to barely a syllable.

  “Do switch the light on, Mr Shea.” Once Henry Shea had done so, Mr Noble gazed at us as though to ascertain how much we’d observed. “Learn to make allowances, gentlemen,” he said. “They’ll help you get on.”

  I couldn’t decide whether he was talking about success or sociability if not both, but Paul Joyce wasn’t concerned with that question. “The Krauts gave it to him, didn’t they, sir?” he said.

  “Let’s leave slang outside the gates, Mr Joyce. But yes, Mr Askew was injured in the last war.”

  “Weren’t you, sir? My dad lost an eye.”

  “As you told me, and I hope you passed on my condolences.”

  “Sir, he said ta very much. He wanted to know where you fought, sir.”

  “I’m afraid you will have to tell him I didn’t participate.”

  Someone sniffed or drew an expressive breath, and the general silence said quite a lot more, but I wasn’t so sure how I was entitled to feel. While my father had returned intact from the war, he never spoke about it except to thank God more than once that it was over. “Why not?” Joyce said, adding less than swiftly “Sir.”

  “The dead outnumber us by many billions, Mr Joyce. I can see no point in adding to them without a pressing reason.”

  “Sir,” Frank Nolan said, “don’t you think what they were doing to the Jews was one?”

  “We weren’t aware of the camps when I joined up, Mr Nolan.”

  “Sir.” Joyce looked as if someone, possibly himself, had tricked him. “I thought you said…”

  “My apologies, gentlemen. Always take care with your words. I should have said I didn’t fight. I was with the ambulances. At the front, if anyone would like to know.”

  “What was it like, sir?” Shea among others was eager to hear.

  “I imagine Mr Joyce and his father would say it hardly matters how it was for me.”

  As Joyce looked abashed Shea said “What about the casualties, sir?”

  “Some we patched up and they either came home to their families or went back into the field. And some we could do nothing with. Let me tell you, gentlemen, quite a few wished they weren’t alive.”

  “That’s a sin against the Holy Ghost,” Brian O’Shaughnessy protested. “Isn’t it, sir?

  “Unless they were ready to see what leaving their bodies could show them.”

  I doubt that any of us found this notion less than odd. Perhaps Nolan meant to bring the discussion back into familiar territory by saying “My dad says there won’t be any more wars.”

  “He has visions of the future, does he? Why does he think that, Mr Nolan?”

  “When everybody’s got the bomb they’ll be too afraid to start a war in case they blow the world up.”

  Something like amusement flickered in the teacher’s large dark eyes and twitched his thin pale lips. “Unless someone does and the dead claim the world.”

  His odd way of thinking silenced us until Joyce said “Those men you were talking about must have helped us win, mustn’t they, sir?”

  “You’d like to think they were of use. I just wish some of them had had the proper rites.”

  Aware of failing to contribute, I blurted “Sir, my dad says if people could see where it happened they wouldn’t want any more wars.”

  “The devastation, I suppose he means. The dead land, except we all know nothing ever really dies.” A gleam had surfaced in the teacher’s eyes. “Thank you for the inspiration, Mr Sheldrake,” he said. “What do the rest of you think?”

  Nobody argued against the idea, and several boys supported it, though I thought some of them might have been anxious to ingratiate themselves with him. “Well then,” Mr Noble said, “what are you saying we should?”

  While he often encouraged debate like that, I don’t believe any of us had a proposal in mind. It was Jim who said “There are school trips in the holidays, aren’t there, sir?”

  “You’re suggesting visiting the battlefields. I can certainly put it to the headmaster. It’s related to history, after all.”

  I saw Jim was pleased with himself, and at the time I thought I should be, except for a sense that the teacher had directed things somehow—that he’d guided us to a conclusion that was already in his head. The following week he told the class that Brother Treanor had authorised him to organise a tour of sites of both World Wars in France. “I think it’s only right that anybody here who wants to go should take priority,” Mr Noble said, “since it was your idea.”

  In that case, I was provoked to think, I ought to be first in the queue. I wasn’t quite so confident once I heard the price of the trip, and by the time I reached home in the icy twilight I didn’t know if I should even raise the subject, My mother emerged from the kitchen, her chapped hands gloved in soapsuds from using the washboard. “Is something wrong at school?”

  “It’s fine. I am.” Since this only made her widen her eyes by raising her brows while she turned her small mouth downwards, I had to say “Just Mr Noble wants us to go to France for history.”

  “That sounds like a treat.” All the same, or perhaps because of it, she said “You’ll have to ask your father.”

  A few minutes later he and a fierce smell of coffee came home. You caught the aroma if you even walked past the store where he worked, Cooper’s on Church Street downtown. As soon as he’d removed his overcoat and loosened the knot of his tie we had dinner, sprouts and potatoes and a pair of sausages each. We were still at the table, where my parents were smoking after-dinner cigare
ttes—Du Maurier out of an elegant red box—when my mother said “Dominic wants to ask you something, Desmond.”

  “Mr Noble wants the class to go on a history trip to France.”

  “And what’s the cost of that, son?”

  “It’s a lot,” I said to prepare myself for disappointment. “Fifty guineas.”

  “That’s a bit ferocious,” my father said but didn’t flinch. “Will it help you at school?”

  “It might.” While I didn’t feel justified in making more of a claim, I did add “He’s taking everyone because I told him you thought people ought to go and see.”

  My father glanced at my mother, who met him with a hopeful look, before saying “All right, sign yourself up and let us know what’s needed. There won’t be much to spend our money on for a while yet.”

  I was so excited that I found it hard to sleep that night, and when tiredness overtook me I couldn’t be bothered to leave my bed to see why the dogs along the road were barking. In the morning I was almost too impatient to wait for Jim in case Mr Noble didn’t save us places on the French trip after all. We were at the school and making for the assembly hall when I caught sight of Mr Noble beyond the schoolyard. “Let’s tell him we’ll be going,” I said.

  We were crossing the yard when I realised he wasn’t alone at the edge of the playing field. While his companion was hidden by the wall—one of the smaller boys, presumably—Mr Noble kept stooping towards them. He had his back to us, and I heard him murmuring. We were almost at the wall when I caught some words, which made me falter. “Leave me now,” he was urging. “Go back. Not here.”

  Jim told me later that he heard none of this, which was why he kept on. At the sound of his footsteps Mr Noble reared up, twisting around. I didn’t see his face, because I was distracted by a movement beyond the gap that led onto the field. “Mr Bailey, Mr Sheldrake,” he said more harshly than I’d ever heard him speak. “Why aren’t you in the hall?”

  I was too daunted to respond, but Jim said “Sir, we just wanted to tell you we can go to France.”

  “I’ll be seeing you all in class after lunch,” Mr Noble said on the way to resuming his usual mildness. “No, I shouldn’t rebuke your enthusiasm. You’re the first to join the merry band. I didn’t realise I had an audience, that’s all. I hope you won’t think your form master has a screw loose.”

  I was beside Jim at the gap by now, and saw that the teacher was by himself. “No, sir,” I thought it best to say.

  “Don’t sound quite so dubious, Mr Sheldrake. Do you know what I was sending packing? Nothing but a dog that took a shine to me on my way here. I can’t see it any more, can you? I expect it’s nearly home. You two head for the hall now and I’ll be along directly.”

  As soon as we were out of earshot I whispered to Jim “What did you see?

  “Nothing. What did you?”

  “Nothing either,” I said, because the truth wasn’t sufficiently clear to let me say anything else. I supposed I’d seen the shadow of the dog Mr Noble had mentioned, a dark vague shape slithering away across the turf. I assumed there must have been a breeze at ground level beyond the wall, because as the shape darted out of sight, the short grass through which it was passing had stirred, almost too imperceptibly for me to think it had. I glanced back at Mr Noble as we left the yard. He was still in the same place beneath the pale unbroken clouds, and as he ducked forward again I wondered if the dog had strayed back to him.

  4 - The Same Man

  On Christmas Eve my mother sent me to fetch the turkey from the butcher’s. Usually my father bore the prize home, but he was out at work. I managed to feel like the man of the family as far as the corner of our road, where I had to rest the cumbersome lump on an equally frosty garden wall. Carrying it by the handles of the plastic bag only made them dig into my fingers through the gloves my mother insisted I wear, while clutching it in my arms let a chill indistinguishable from an ache seep through my duffle coat and settle on my chest. All the way along our road I had to keep planting my burden on walls, beyond which many of the front rooms exhibited Christmas trees. Although every tree was decorated, very few had lights. They reminded me how Mr Noble had offended Brian O’Shaughnessy by suggesting that the festive trees were older than Christianity—I’d had a sense that the teacher might have said more if he hadn’t been wary of going too far.

  By the time I reached our gate I was pricking with wintry sweat. I had to pin the obdurate bird against my chest while I fumbled with the latch before stumbling along the path to clank the clumsy knocker on its anvil. My mother didn’t hurry to answer the door, but the moment she saw me she speeded up like a comedy film, grabbing the bagful of bird and dashing to the kitchen with it before bustling back to me as I struggled to drag off a glove. “You must be frozen,” she cried. “Come by the fire.”

  She’d lit the one in the front room, where Christmas cards drooped like bunting above the mantelpiece. She moved the fireguard along the hearth and tonged chunks of coal out of the scuttle to drop them into the dull pink heart of the fire. I watched them smoulder and start flaming, and couldn’t help thinking of hell. The fiery version I’d originally been taught was receding into memory, having been supplanted by the vision Mr Noble had proposed when he returned to discussing the war. Paul Joyce had asked him where he thought the villains of the piece had ended up, but I wasn’t sure if the teacher had answered the question. He’d suggested that some people might be condemned to eternal terror, having lost their minds as a result of losing their bodies, a fate that would be worse than any physical hell. In any case, how could flames harm you if you were a disembodied soul? Perhaps those had simply been a way of terrifying the mediaeval faithful with a notion of hell they could grasp. O’Shaughnessy hadn’t liked that much, but I was excited by the questioning of beliefs we’d been encouraged to embrace, though I was wary of telling my parents about it in case they took against the teacher. I was musing on all this when my mother came back from the kitchen, and I guessed from the stains on her apron that she’d been rooting inside the turkey for its giblets. “When you’re ready, Dominic, would you do one more little thing for me?”

  “Shall I get something from the allotment?”

  “You can later if you like, but just run round to Mrs Norris’s. If she’s on her own, ask her over for a mince pie.”

  I retrieved my coat and tugged my gloves on and braved the icy day again, where the emptily blue sky seemed to let the sunlight escape straight back into space. Beyond the point where Bobby’s street met mine at a fork, the road led under the railway bridge to Cherry Lane, where Mrs Norris lived opposite that side of the graveyard. As I made for her house a train raced over the bridge and then across the stone arch at the nearest cemetery entrance. The arch was so deep it was virtually a tunnel, and I heard the iron gates send a tremulous echo into the stony dimness.

  I hadn’t seen Mrs Norris for weeks. The narrow front yard of her little house was filled by three red clay pots of flowers beside the stubby path. I’d thought she cared as much for the flowers as my mother did for her roses, but several were hanging down their heads on withered stems, as if they were ashamed to keep company with the weeds that were invading the circles of earth. Both of the small bay windows were uncurtained now—at least, the middle pane on each floor was clear. I was reaching for the knocker, where I saw greenish spots on the long brass tongue, when the Norris dog started to bark. “What is it now, Winston?” Mrs Norris pleaded somewhere in the house.

  Her tone disconcerted me so much that I tapped TT in Morse on the knocker, a message only Jim and Bobby would have understood, “it’s Dominic,” I called, though my parents disapproved of shouting.

  Winston’s was the only answer until Mrs Norris inched the door open just wide enough to show her face. It looked drawn into itself, wary of letting out too much. A trace of lipstick had strayed past the left-hand corner of her mouth, and her face was so heavily powdered that tan crumbs had lodged in the furrows of her forehead.
“Dominic. You’re a good boy,” she added, though I couldn’t have said why, and stepped back. “You can come in,” she said as if someone had suggested otherwise. “Be quick before he runs off.”

  As I shut the door she reminded Winston who I was, and he gave a yap that sounded more like recognition than the clamour he’d been making. He was a long-haired mastiff, and strands of his grey hair stuck to the jacket and skirt of the blue suit Mrs Norris was wearing. She and the dog and the bicycle her husband used to ride weren’t leaving me much space in the portion of the hall ahead of the stairs, and I had a sense that Mrs Norris wasn’t sure which room to take me in. “Come along, then,” she said as though the indecision was my doing, and led the way into the front room.