The Searching Dead

by Ramsey Campbell

  I want to remember everything I can, but I’m not sure what we watched that afternoon, even though we sat through the hour’s worth of films several times. I think the adverts welcomed us as we sat down—perhaps the false teeth marching to the song of an almost military male voice choir:

  “Oh won’t you try this experiment

  And clean your dentures with Steradent?

  Then your teeth will gleam

  Every time you beam

  Which will mean you’ll always show merriment.”

  Some titles come to mind, and perhaps we saw those films then. A Chipper Chappie has Chaplin donning a dress suit that fell off the back of a van and passing himself off as a toff at a formal dinner. In Hovering Husbands Laurel and Hardy struggle to master a balloon that eventually raises them helplessly heavenwards, leaving their wives to find a gun and shoot them down. Acme Jack, the salesman who sells the coyote a series of disastrously faulty items, proves to be the Road Runner. I do recall that we watched In the Tweet Bye and Bye, in which Sylvester succeeds in swallowing the canary, only to be haunted by Tweetie’s spirit and eventually carried off to an afterlife peopled by demonic birds. In the end it turns out to be a dream, though Tweetie’s rather than Sylvester’s. This didn’t reassure me much, while Jim’s and Bobby’s mirth at all the films simply left me feeling isolated with my thoughts. I could almost have felt that the entire audience was chortling at the images in my head.

  Both Jim and I had dreamed of a man rising like a snake out of the earth. I’d fought to stay awake even once Mr Noble had crept into the dormitory, most of an hour after we’d regained our beds, because I’d felt nervous of closing my eyes. The dream might have been lying in wait for me, and at once I’d seen the swollen fleshy filaments that the figure had for hands and face begin to writhe as if they were groping for another shape to take. Perhaps the nightmare had its roots in the talk old Mr Noble had given, but I didn’t think this was its only source. When I lurched awake, stifling a cry, I remembered what I was increasingly certain I’d seen in the moonlit field—the boneless fingers worming up to clutch at Mr Noble’s, not reaching out of the earth so much using it to take shape. I had an awful sense that this meant the substance stuck to Mr Noble’s hands had been fragments of the fingers, which had been the benison he’d scattered to the four corners of the world.

  10 - The Unexpected Guests

  I did my best to enjoy every minute of the coronation. It was on television, after all—the first television I’d ever watched. Many of the neighbours had rented a set for the occasion, and those who hadn’t were the guests of somebody who had. I might have liked to have gone somewhere other than next door, a cluttered house with a piercing smell of disinfectant, where the Quiggin sisters told me virtually in chorus to wipe my feet as soon as I stepped over the threshold. We were there in good time to watch both sisters struggle to adjust the reception of the set, which was tuned to a dogged broadcast of the test card, while they offered each other advice or at any rate criticism. Eventually my father took a turn at wandering about with the aerial, and when the sisters grudgingly agreed that planting it among the china dogs on the mantelpiece brought the least befogged image, everybody settled down to wait for the picture to change. The adults sipped cups of tea flecked with curdled milk while I was let off with a glass of water. When at last the test card gave way to a view of Westminster Abbey, my father raised a cheer that I suspected mightn’t have been simply patriotic.

  While the television was no wider than my chest, a magnifying screen stood in front. I felt as if I were watching activity under a microscope, observing the antics of a form of life quite unlike myself. The unctuous commentary distanced me further, describing the gold of the royal coach that looked silver at best, enthusing about the stained-glass windows and their myriad colours that I saw were as black and white as a moonlit field. The sight of doll-sized figures enacting ritual movements so slowly that I thought they must be weighed down by their robes only made me wonder how Bobby’s father might be greeting the spectacle. I don’t know how many hours it took me to grasp that the ceremony would be even more protracted than the service we had to sit and stand and kneel through every Easter. I risked giggling at one of the choruses of coughs the congregation almost ritualistically produced, making full use of the acoustic of the venue, but the reproachful look my parents sent me quelled my mirth, though I found it unfair that the grownups weren’t as silent as they apparently expected me to remain. My mother and the sisters made sounds like the one the doctor had me imitate when he inspected my open mouth, and my father added the occasional appreciative manly grunt. The loudest sighs came not when the celebrant lowered the crown onto Elizabeth’s head—I was put in mind of a scientist warily wielding an element prone to explode—but as she and her prince took communion together. It struck me that my mother had let out just such a sigh when the prince resurrected Snow White in the Disney film.

  The queen had been crowned for just a few minutes when I heard noises outside the house. The street was closed off for a party to celebrate the coronation, and it sounded as if the festivities had begun. When I betrayed signs of restlessness my parents renewed their disappointed look. Once we’d sat through several minutes of a parade of horsemen topped with furry helmets as tall as their heads, however, my father stood up. “Thank you so much. That was lovely,” my mother told the sisters, and my father said “Very nice.”

  The party hadn’t started after all. People were still carrying plates of sandwiches and jugs of lemonade out of their houses to the trestle tables that occupied the middle of the road. Everyone was dressed for Sunday, and the aisle of trees along the road reminded me of a church, since some of the leafy branches came close to meeting overhead. The trees were hosting a contest of birdsong, but I couldn’t help remembering the silent trees around the moonlit field in France.

  My parents fetched our contribution from the house—a plate piled with fish paste sandwiches, their crusts cut off in the service of good breeding and fed to the birds, and a strawberry jelly that quivered to enact my mother’s fear that it hadn’t set enough. The end tables in our street and the next one met at the junction near the railway bridge, and when we found seats there Jim’s family and then Bobby’s came to join us. Some of the parents hadn’t previously met, and I thought the introductions and handshakes felt like an unspoken truce. When paper crowns were handed out, Bobby jammed hers on her head as if to cover up the pink ribbon she’d obviously been compelled to wear.

  We were demolishing my mother’s dessert before it drooped too much in the June heat when I saw that Mr Parkin—Bobby’s father—was impatient to speak. He was a wiry fellow not much bigger than his daughter or his wife, with a face that looked as though he’d tugged it thin by thrusting it through some inhospitable medium, dragging his eyes permanently wide and sharp. Bobby’s mother kept playing the peacemaker, laying a hand on his arm to restrain some remark. Several people had left their front-room windows open so that we could hear the coronation commentary and various attendant sounds, all of which engaged Mr Parkin’s attention more than the talk of summer holidays and which items had reappeared in the shops. When the chat reached a lull he jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the broadcast. “There’s one good thing come out of today, any rate.”

  It was obvious where Jim inherited his size from. Both his parents looked not merely rounded but padded, a protection against any unpleasantness they might encounter. While their faces were placid, I thought this was simply how they would prefer to be, and now both of them blinked, hinting at lines on their foreheads. “A lot more than one, Mr Parkin,” Mrs Bailey said.

  “Bill,” Mr Parkin said, not entirely like an invitation. “What do you reckon we should all be cheering for?”

  “Being ruled by someone who believes in God,” my father said, “to start with.”

  “We all like being some woman’s subject, do we?” Mr Parkin said without asking. “I’m just here for the party food,
me.”

  “We like seeing all our neighbours,” his wife tried to remind him, “don’t we, Bill?”

  Another burst of music swelled out of the houses to compete with the birdsong in the trees, and Mr Parkin jerked his thumb again. “I’m saying it’s a good thing we got to see what’s going on for once. Maybe having televisions will help people wake up to the truth. Looks like the powers that be can’t stop some getting through.”

  “Which truth is that?” Jim’s father said, and shortly “Bill.”

  “How much all that’s costing us. Us commoners have only just come off rationing but that was in the coffers all along. They’ve got plenty to spend when they want to remind us we’re subjects and we need to know our place.”

  “Some of us enjoyed the spectacle,” his wife said.

  I suppose she was hoping to placate him, but she provoked not only him. “Someone has to lead the country,” Jim’s mother said, “and set an example.”

  “I don’t need anyone to show me how to behave,” Bobby’s father retorted. “Specially not somebody we didn’t even vote for.”

  “What would you rather have?” my mother said with an attempt at mildness. “A president like Mr Eisenhower?”

  “Not him or his crony Nixon neither. I don’t want us getting any more like the Yanks. We tag along after them too much of the time as it it. They treat their workers even worse than our lot do, and the rest of the masses as well.”

  “At least they’ll be showing us how to deal with infiltrators,” Jim’s father said. “In fact that’s too big a word for it. Traitors will do.”

  “Hey, that’s comical. Watch out you don’t cut yourself being so sharp.” With even less evidence of amusement Mr Parkin said “Who are you talking about, Kevin?”

  “I thought you’d have heard of Senator McCarthy, Bill.”

  “I’ve heard all about the, I won’t say the word in front of ladies and children. See, I don’t need to be taught how to behave after all.” Before anybody could respond Mr Parkin said “Know what they used to call him in the air force? Low-Blow Joe. He’s still going in for those, but now he’s doing it to his own people.”

  “The ones he’s after aren’t his people,” my father said, “and I wouldn’t like to think they’re anybody’s here.”

  “They’re just trying to live their lives like real Christians would if they went back to the basics.”

  “Excuse me, Mr Parkin,” Jim’s mother said, “but communists don’t believe in God.”

  “You can believe in both if nobody’s stopping you,” Mr Parkin said and turned on Jim’s father. “I’m as much a Catholic as you’ll ever be, but fellers like your friend the senator ought to make us ashamed we are.”

  Somewhere in the distance I heard a dog barking and a woman calling to it. I hoped this might distract our parents, but Jim’s father wasn’t to be diverted. “So what else are you, Bill?” he said.

  Before anybody else could speak Bobby said “There’s a teacher at Jim and Dom’s school who’s like that.”

  Of course she intended to protect her father. Too late I realised that we hadn’t told her to keep what we’d said about Mr Noble to herself. “Like what?” Mr Bailey demanded.

  “He’s more than one thing. He thinks you can bring back the dead.”

  “That’s up to God,” Bobby’s father said as if he was demonstrating his religiousness.

  “She means he’s a spiritualist, dad,” Jim was anxious to establish.

  “He’s misguided, then. Still, that crowd are harmless enough,” Jim’s father said, and then he frowned at Jim and me. “Has he been teaching you boys about it?”

  I thought it wise to be the one who answered. “He’s never said anything about it at school.”

  “Then how do you know about him?” my father said.

  “I heard about someone with his name and then I realised it was him.”

  “What name?”

  I felt trapped and ineffectual. “Mr Noble,” my father repeated once I’d finished mumbling. “That’s what you said.”

  “Yes, Mr Mumble.”

  “I’ll be having a good look at him at the parents’ evening and maybe you’ll want to as well, Kevin,” my father said and stared towards the railway bridge.

  I’d been hearing the dog for a few minutes now. If it hadn’t been for all the talk I might have realised sooner why the barking had grown hollow and enlarged: because it was under the arch that led into the graveyard. Now it was smaller although closer, and in a moment Winston appeared under the bridge. As that amplified his barks I heard Mrs Norris calling if not crying out to him. She’d hardly lurched into sight beneath the bridge, where her footsteps sounded as if they were tripping over their echoes, when Winston fled towards us. At that distance he looked like a welcome distraction. “Winston,” I called, clapping my hands as well.

  The dog hesitated and then ran to me, trailing his lead. His eyes were flickering from side to side, and I had the uneasy notion that they were bigger than they used to be. His tongue was hanging out, and he was dribbling so copiously that all three mothers in our party made sounds of distaste. I captured his lead, though he almost snatched it out of reach by flinching, and coaxed him to me so that I could pat his head. “Be careful of him, Dominic,” my mother said. “He doesn’t look too happy.”

  “He knows me, mum,” I said and raised my voice. “I’ve got him, Mrs Norris.”

  Though Winston jerked at the lead, I didn’t think he was too eager to rejoin her, and I sensed how my parents and our neighbours were suppressing their reactions to her appearance. Despite being held by several pins, her hat was barely even perched on her dishevelled curls, and the blue suit I’d seen her in too many times was greyish with Winston’s hairs. As she emerged from under the bridge she blinked hard at the trestle tables. “It’s that day, isn’t it?” she said and made a noise vaguely related to a laugh. “I’d have brought something if someone had reminded me. I’ve had such a lot on my mind.”

  Jim and I and all the nearby men stood up as she stumbled towards us, though Bobby’s father took his time. At least Jim and I had no caps to raise, and I didn’t think we needed to lift our paper crowns. As Mrs Norris made for the place I’d vacated, Winston dodged behind me, tugging at the lead. “Will you take him round the table, Dominic?” Mrs Norris said. “Maybe if he can’t see me he’ll calm down.”

  Nobody appeared to understand this any more than I did. Just the same, once I’d led Winston to the far side of the table I managed to persuade him to lie down, though he kept his ears high. Having sat down, Mrs Norris gave her immediate neighbours a flimsy smile and fumbled at her hatpins, which didn’t leave her hat any less precarious. “Here’s a plate and a cup, Mrs Norris,” my mother urged. “You have whatever you like.”

  As Mrs Norris laid a solitary sandwich in the middle of her plate my father filled her coronation mug with lemonade, and I couldn’t help thinking of the tea parties that girls unlike Bobby staged for their dolls. Mrs Norris and my parents were playing a different kind of game—a pretence that only the street party mattered or needed to matter. Bobby’s father didn’t seem to want to play, since he said “Today doesn’t mean that much to you, then.”

  Perhaps he was looking for someone who shared his attitude, but Mrs Norris said “My Herbert isn’t letting me think about much except him.”

  “Who’s he when he’s at home?”

  “Just my husband,” Mrs Norris said as if she hoped this was the case.

  “Is he a bit of a handful, Mrs Norris?” Jim’s mother said, glancing at my mother to share the wifely joke.

  My mother was prefacing her answer with a dismayed look when Mrs Norris admitted “He’s dead.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. I didn’t know,” Mrs Bailey said and went so far as to pat her arm.

  “You shouldn’t get the wrong idea. He’s dead but he’s not gone.”

  “Oh,” This sounded as though Mrs Bailey might have added that
she saw, but she plainly didn’t quite. “You mean he’s,” she said.

  “Mr Noble brought him back to me.”

  “Noble.” My father had been keeping the conversation at a distance, but now he leaned towards her with a sharp look at me and Jim, “He’s not a teacher, is he?”

  “He’s taught us a lot at the church. He says those who’ve gone before us can see more of the truth of things, and they can bring some to anyone who can bear to know.”

  “No,” my father said as if he hadn’t time to argue, “does he teach at a school?”

  “That’s his job. Why, do you know him?”

  “We’re going to,” my father said like an ominous promise.

  “I know I told you before Christmas you ought to go and see him, but I don’t think I would now.”

  “Why’s that, Mrs Norris?”

  I’d started to wish my father would leave her alone. She was growing uneasy, repetitively brushing at the lapel of her faded jacket, and appeared to be infecting Winston with her nervousness, since his ears had begun to twitch, “I’m sorry he chose me. I’m sorry I found him,” Mrs Norris said, and with something like defiance “It isn’t only me who wishes they’d never met him.”

  Although he looked vindicated, my father said “You’re still not saying why.”

  “Maybe he can’t help what happens. Maybe it’s how people like my Herbert end up,” Mrs Norris said and raised her voice as Winston started barking. “Can you keep him off?”