The Searching Dead

by Ramsey Campbell

  Mr Noble looked away from the family seated in front of his desk as we all trooped into the room. “Two more of my eager band,” he said. “Do find yourselves seats. We shouldn’t be long now.”

  In some way he struck me as more eager than he’d said Jim and I were. Once the Joyces proved to have no queries he told them he looked forward to seeing them next year and straightened up to end the interview. He said nothing further until the door shut behind them, and then he inclined his upper body towards us. “Who’s first for the inquisition?”

  “We are,” my father said, squeezing out from behind Henry Shea’s desk.

  “Mr and Mrs Sheldrake.” Mr Noble reached across his desk to shake hands with both of them at once, which looked to me like some kind of secret sign if not a reminiscence of a seance. “You can be proud of your son,” he said and glanced past them. “Mr Bailey, Mrs Bailey, I’ll tell you the same.”

  As we sat on a trio of folding chairs in front of him my mother said “You think Dominic’s doing well, then.”

  “Both of them are. You enjoy grasping the past, don’t you, gentlemen?”

  When Jim mumbled an assent I did as well, but I couldn’t avoid thinking of the glimpse I’d seemed to have in the moonlit field—the objects that had clutched at Mr Noble’s hands. “They’re hungry for knowledge,” Mr Noble said, “and that’s the sort of mind we need to shape.”

  “So long as it’s the right kind of knowledge,” Jim’s father said.

  “The approved variety, of course.” As if to leave no time for anyone to suspect him of sarcasm Mr Noble said “Brother Titmuss tells me they have questing minds. Their like is the hope of the world.”

  This appeared to throw my parents, as I imagine it did Jim’s. None of them had responded when Mr Noble said “I’ve had no complaints as their form master. If nobody has any questions, may I take it you’re as satisfied as I am?”

  “No panic, is there?” Jim’s father said. “We haven’t had our interview yet.”

  “None at all if you’d like an individual session.” All the same, Mr Noble didn’t pause before saying “As long as you were all together I thought I’d made it clear that my remarks apply to both your sons.” I thought he was ensuring that I didn’t bring up my encounter with him and his family. He couldn’t have realised that I wouldn’t have dared to. I sensed at the very least impatience as he said “Now I see some visitors are waiting in the corridor.”

  “Let them wait,” Mr Bailey said. “We did and we weren’t complaining. We’ve got a few questions we’d like you to answer.”

  “By all means ask them,” Mr Noble said and sat up straight enough to be miming readiness.

  Perhaps his apparent enthusiasm left the parents less sure of themselves. I could see mine growing awkward now that it was time to confront him. I suppose they were realising how impolite they might have to be, and in front of us boys as well. It was Jim’s father who broke the silence. “Are you starting, Des?”

  My father hunched forward on his chair. “Mr Noble, we think you know one of our neighbours.”

  “Besides Mr Bailey’s parents, would that be?”

  “Yes,” my father said as if he couldn’t tell how sly the answer was, “as well as them.”

  “Do you know the name?”

  “Of course we do. It’s Mrs Norris.”

  “Not the most uncommon name.”

  “She lives in Cherry Lane.” When Mr Noble turned his empty hands up, my father said “She lost her husband last year.”

  “The dead are multiplying as we speak. Perhaps we should be glad that where they go is infinite.” As my father looked more confused than gladdened, Mr Noble said “Supposing I should know the lady, what did you want to establish?”

  “She’s had to be taken into hospital for her nerves.”

  “I hope she’s helped, but I’m not sure what you’re expecting of me.”

  I thought Mr Noble was challenging him to be impolite. I could see the social rules were inhibiting my father, but Mr Bailey said “Hang on, Des. Jim, get the door. No need to have those hanging round out there.”

  Surely the presence of more people would make it harder to confront Mr Noble, and he seemed happy to let Jim call the newcomers in. “Mr O’Shaughnessy,” the teacher said. “Mr and Mrs O’Shaughnessy. We shouldn’t keep you much longer.”

  By the time they found seats my father looked more constrained than ever. I think he might have been close to abandoning the interrogation if Jim’s father hadn’t said “Mr Noble, are you a Christian?”

  The teacher raised his head a little higher, and his eyebrows too. “Isn’t everybody in this room?”

  “We’re asking you.”

  “Forgive me, has there been some prior discussion?”

  Perhaps Mr O’Shaughnessy took this to be aimed at his family as well, because he said “We don’t know anything about it.”

  “I’d just like to be clear about who may be speaking for whom.”

  I couldn’t help feeling this might be some kind of threat to me and Jim. I don’t know if my father felt as much, but he said “Aren’t you going to answer the question?”

  “I must say I thought I had.”

  “We aren’t all as clever as you, Mr Noble,” Jim’s mother said, “but some of us don’t think you did.”

  I saw a glint in the teacher’s eyes, which I thought was contempt—a sense that he was playing with inferior opponents—but I’d barely glimpsed it when his look grew neutral. “Then let me tell you plainly, since it appears to concern you,” he said. “Of course I believe.”

  Though my father looked embarrassed, he wasn’t giving up. “In what?”

  “In the three persons.” With a flicker of a smile Mr Noble said “I hope that’s true for everybody here.”

  “You know it has to be,” Jim’s father said, which broadened Mr Noble’s smile. “You aren’t a spiritualist, then.”

  “Aren’t they meant to believe in God? I rather think they may as much as you do.”

  “Not in our way, and their kind aren’t welcome here.” This was addressed to Peter O’Shaughnessy’s parents as well, and when they murmured in agreement Mr Bailey said “So what’s the answer to the question, Mr Noble?”

  “I give you my word I’m not a spiritualist. I can swear to it if you like.”

  “You don’t go to their church,” my father said.

  “Why would I when I don’t share their faith?” Mr Noble kept his eyes on my father for some moments before gazing past him. “If there’s been a misunderstanding I hope I’ve put your minds at rest,” he said. “Now if I may return to the purpose of the evening, I have other parents to see.”

  This abashed my father into silence, but not Jim’s. “So it’s another man called Noble who’s a teacher,” he said, “who told our neighbour he could bring her husband back.”

  “I believe you’ve summed it up as well as I could, Mr Bailey.”

  “You won’t mind if we check who he is, then.” Mr Noble only gazed at him, even when Jim’s father said “I know who’ll be able to check. Your headmaster.”

  “If you feel you must go to such lengths you can’t be expecting me to prevent you.”

  Was this another undefined threat? I’d grown so nervous that I might have spoken if I could have thought of anything to dare to say. Instead it was Mr O’Shaughnessy who protested “Can somebody tell me what all this is about?”

  “The lady who lives near us, she’s a spiritualist,” my mother said and turned to him. “She met a Mr Noble in the graveyard by us and took him to their church. He convinced some of them he could raise the dead but now she doesn’t like what she thinks he brought back. I shouldn’t be saying all this in front of the children, but it’s affected her mind so much that she’s had to go into hospital.”

  I was growing red-faced with resentment of being called a child when Mrs O’Shaughnessy said “If it’s affecting minds we’re talking about, I’d like to know what gave our Peter night
mares.”

  Mr Noble widened his eyes. “Are you saying anybody here did, Mrs O’Shaughnessy?”

  His gaze failed to daunt her, and perhaps it provoked her. “I’m saying it started when you took the boys to France.”

  “Mam,” Peter mumbled. “They weren’t that bad. They were only dreams.”

  “They were bad enough to wake us when you got home,” his father said. “Just you tell your teacher what they were about.”

  Indistinctly enough to be trying to hide his words Peter said “A wormy man.”

  “Don’t be sounding like a baby, you. You can speak better than that when we’ve sent you to this school.”

  “It was a man that was all worms and caterpillars, things like them. I thought he was a puddle when he came up out of the ground, and then he got a face on him like a bunch of maggots and tried to get my hand. That’s all I kept dreaming before I woke up.”

  “That’s babyish as well,” his father said before redirecting his disfavour at the teacher. “That’s how going off with you left him.”

  While Peter was speaking I thought I glimpsed a hint of recognition in Mr Noble’s eyes, but he’d suppressed it now. “I really can’t imagine how you think I could have been responsible.”

  “You were meant to be responsible for all your boys, weren’t you? We trusted you with them.” In a voice like an omen of anger Mr O’Shaughnessy said “We heard you even slept with them.”

  I wasn’t sure how close this came to an accusation, but Mr Noble met it with a look that dared him to be clearer. “I was in charge of a dormitory, as were my colleagues,” the teacher said. “The boys knew they could come to me with any problems, but I can assure you your son never made me aware of anything unwelcome.”

  “It wasn’t only me,” O’Shaughnessy blurted. “Lots of the others had dreams too.”

  “You never told us that,” his mother complained, slapping the side of his head.

  “Ow, mam, I forgot. I’ve stopped having the dreams, so I don’t want to remember.”

  “I should think you’d feel that’s sensible,” Mr Noble told Peter’s parents. “Now if we could move on—”

  “We haven’t got to catch the last tram, have we? Let’s just put on the brakes.” As the teacher’s face absorbed the smile he had started to offer, Peter’s mother said “How about you two? Did you have nightmares over there?”

  I couldn’t see Jim without looking over my shoulder, and I didn’t want to be the first to speak. Seconds passed before he admitted “I dreamt something like that too.”

  “I did as well,” I said at once.

  As our parents made it plain that we should have told them, Peter’s mother said “Did you stop when you came home?”

  I had, and Jim proved to have as well. “What have you got to say about that, Mr Noble?” she said.

  “I’m afraid I may be able to explain.”

  “Then you go right ahead.”

  “Do you think you might have been dreaming about my father’s story, gentlemen? Perhaps you haven’t bothered telling your parents about that either.”

  “We don’t know anything about it,” Mr O’Shaughnessy warned whoever should be blamed.

  “My father was invited to address the school to prepare the gentlemen for their French experience, but I don’t think one of his memories sat too well with the headmaster.”

  “What one was that?” my father said.

  Mr Noble hesitated as if to select his words. “Let’s just say he told everyone about a battlefield he thought was, how shall I put it, eager for the battle. And you’ll remember, gentlemen, he described a dream he had there. I think you’ll agree that he made it so vivid it’s no surprise if you had it too.”

  As I gave in to an uncertain dishonest nod, Jim’s father said “And what about you, Mr Noble?”

  I saw this catch the teacher unawares. For a moment he seemed not to know how to answer. “You could say I experienced something like a dream,” he said.

  I didn’t quite dare to speak, but Jim did. “We went where your dad told us about, didn’t we, sir?”

  “We may have driven past it, Mr Bailey.”

  “How did he know?” my mother said. “Did you tell them?”

  “I did not,” Mr Noble said and fixed Jim with a look that did its best to stay blank. “What’s the solution, Mr Bailey? I should like to hear it too.”

  Jim mumbled and had to be prompted by his mother. Even more reluctantly he said “Must’ve been the dream.”

  I felt he’d let me down, which drove me past my shyness. “It was the trees as well, wasn’t it, Jim?”

  As Mr Noble’s eyes withdrew any expression they might have shown, Jim’s mother said “Which were those?”

  I was hoping Jim would answer, but he left it to me. “There was a field all the trees were leaning out of,” I said. “Leaning all round it, not just off one side. Mr Noble said there must have been a hurricane. Wasn’t that the place your dad meant, sir?”

  “I’m sorry if you weren’t prepared to accept my explanation, Mr Sheldrake,” the teacher said and seemed to find another thought more useful. “I shouldn’t decry your son’s imagination,” he told my parents. “He may need it for his tales.”

  I wasn’t sure how they took this, because I felt too defeated and embarrassed to look at them. “I’ll apologise if my father gave your sons his dream,” Mr Noble said. “I would just mention that it was the headmaster who invited him to talk to them.”

  “So you’re blaming him as well,” Jim’s father said. “That’s another reason we should have a word with him.”

  “Would you care to do so now?” This might have been a challenge or a dismissal, and Mr Bailey took it as both. “Are we done here, Des?” he said.

  My father turned to Peter’s parents. “If you want a chat about anything you can ring me at Cooper’s where I work.”

  “There’s a thought,” Jim’s father said. “We know some of the other parents too.”

  I was acutely embarrassed by how they were letting Mr Noble know they intended to discuss him. Perhaps my mother felt that way, because she murmured “Thank you for all that you’ve done for our boys, Mr Noble.” At the very least this was polite, but he appeared to think it was a gibe, and perhaps that made him reckless. “It’s a pity you’ve so little time for beliefs other than your own,” he said as my father opened the door. “You may learn better.”

  Jim’s father looked ready to argue, but his wife urged him out of the room. He didn’t speak until we were well along the corridor. “Do you know what struck me most in there? You can’t trust a word he says.”

  “Shall we save it for later?” his wife said.

  I gathered that she didn’t want Jim and me to hear, but Jim’s father was eager to share his observation. “If he’s the man who goes to that lady’s church,” he said, “he won’t even let on he’s a spiritualist. If he isn’t one I’d like to know what he is and why he goes.”

  Jim looked as uncomfortable as I felt. “What are you going to do, dad?” he said.

  “Nothing you two need to know about or worry about either, so keep your mouths shut about it till it’s done.”

  I was more worried how Mr Noble might treat us the next time we saw him. In the morning my eyes kept being drawn to him on the stage in the assembly hall, but I could never catch him watching me or Jim, despite a persistent impression that he’d just looked away from us. “I hope last night was rewarding for you, gentlemen,” he said at the start of our first period with him, and precisely because he wasn’t looking at us two I felt that the remark was meant to have an ominous significance for us. After that any question he asked me or Jim in class seemed to conceal some meaning that his neutral tone denied, not least since they were all about history—about reaching into the past. I was constantly nervous that he might raise the subject of the French trip and the things we’d said, but he didn’t for the whole of the rest of the term.

  I didn’t feel ignored so much
as secretly observed. I wondered what Jim’s parents and mine might be doing, if they hadn’t already carried out their plan. During the summer holidays I did once ask my mother, but she only said “Mr Bailey had him right. He isn’t what he wants people to think.” When I tried to enquire further she said “Just make sure you stay away from him, Dominic.” I didn’t understand how that would be practicable until I realised we would have a different form master when we moved up a school year. It was only when we returned to Holy Ghost in September that I learned Mr Noble was no longer at the school.

  1954

  13 - The Hidden Book

  That year it was a film magazine we all watched being torn to bits, as Brother Treanor made its owner shred it page by page. My memory suggests that it was quite a serious journal, and the fourth-former protested that he’d brought it into school to show Brother Stimson, but his demurral only stoked the headmaster’s rage. The magazine never had a chance, given that the cover displayed Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in their swimwear, embracing supine on the beach. I suspect Brother Treanor was even more infuriated by the Oscars that From Here to Eternity had received—best actress, best actor, best film. No doubt this confirmed his sense of the ungodliness of the world.

  Other news would have as well. When Lord Montagu of Beaulieu and his friends were jailed for gay behaviour, Brother Treanor railed at length against “unwholesome and unhealthy friendships”, citing the diseases with which God would smite us. When the saucy seaside postcards of Donald McGill earned him a prosecution for obscenity, the headmaster took the chance to lecture us about impure thoughts and the temptations females represented. At least Roger Bannister’s four-minute mile let Brother Treanor exhort us to strive for our goals, and now I recall the argument Jim and I had with Bobby later that month when Diane Leather broke the women’s record for the distance, Bobby complaining that the athlete hadn’t been granted half the publicity her male counterpart enjoyed, Jim insisting this was fair when she’d taken five minutes to conquer the mile, a contention that earned him half a dozen vicious punches on the arm. The event Brother Treanor hailed most fervently was Eisenhower’s revision of the Pledge of Allegiance, adding “under God”. “Let us pray this sets other nations an example,” the headmaster said, “let us pray it shapes the future of the world,” and set about leading the school in a prayer to which we only had to say Amen. I saw Brother Bentley mouthing all the words like a barely tardy echo, and his Amen was the most heartfelt of all.