The Searching Dead

by Ramsey Campbell

  I felt everything was false and perhaps had always been—our formally attired stroll in the park that afternoon, where I wondered how my parents would react if we met the Noble family; our politely muted Sunday tea, yet another ritual and a denial of any concern about Mr Noble’s behaviour; the Sunday evening variety shows and the mirth that the comedy interludes were meant to prompt, when my parents competed at joining in with the audience and glanced at me to incite participation, a gesture I took as a conditional pardon for my sins. They couldn’t pardon any that they didn’t know about, and I doubted they would if they learned of the disobedience I already had in mind.

  As I chortled dutifully at quips and jokes, even some I failed to grasp, I was worrying about Bobby and her parents. In the morning I made sure I was in time to meet her on the way to school, having picked up Jim as I hurried along our road. For a moment she looked ready to avoid us, so that I was afraid she’d been warned not to speak to us and, worse, was obeying. Then she confronted Jim, too sombrely even to indulge in a punch. “Why’d you tell?”

  “I thought they’d have to do something now it’s got so serious.”

  “Mine have. They’ve made me promise not to go anywhere near your Mr Noble or I won’t be able to stay friends with you and Dom.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to ask if this was just what her parents had said or what she intended. The most I felt able to risk saying was “So what are we going to do?”

  Jim stared at me as though he didn’t understand or didn’t want to. “Maybe leave it for a bit at least,” Bobby said. “My dad’s organising the union at work, so I expect him and my mum will forget about us if we don’t remind them.”

  I saw the idea didn’t please Jim any more than it satisfied me. We were on the bus to Holy Ghost when he admitted “I don’t know if I want to do what I said I wouldn’t.”

  By now I knew better than to bring up the Tremendous Three. Far from persuading him, it might have aggravated his aversion, and in any case our exploits were too far removed from the ones we used to have, too characterised by banal subterfuge, deceiving people we never had to in my tales. “I’ve got to,” I said.

  I couldn’t tell whether he admired me for it or was dismayed by my untrustworthiness. “I’ll wait and see like Bobby says,” he said.

  I suspect he was hoping the Noble situation would resolve itself without involving us, and I’d started to wish that myself. I couldn’t do anything until Saturday—I didn’t think I would be able to delude my parents that I was meeting my friends after dark—and when the weekend came I gave in to doing only what I said I would, going to the cinema with Bobby and Jim. If the adults wouldn’t intervene over Mr Noble and his daughter, was it really up to us? The trouble was that the excuse felt worse than a lie—it felt like cowardice.

  A week later it still did. I wasn’t due to meet my friends until noon, and I ended up trying to write a new tale, which didn’t work at all. Thinking up a fresh adventure for the trio felt like a lie I was struggling to tell myself. I was tempted to write about Mr Noble and his family, not to mention the Trinity Church, but suppose my parents asked to see it? They often read my stories, giving them exactly the same praise they’d bestowed when I started to write, indulgent then, embarrassingly patronising now. If I wrote about the Noble business they would only think it proved I was obsessed. I felt bereft of experiences to draw upon—I wouldn’t have dared to write about my relationship with Bobby, not least because it was so unresolved—and I was sitting with my unproductive pen poised above a page that was bare except for a drip of blue ink when my mother called “Dominic, come down here.”

  Her voice sounded close to ominous, and I wondered what I’d done.

  When I ventured to the stairs I saw her in the hall, the morning paper open in both hands. “What is it, mum?”

  “Have you been talking to someone?”

  “Talking to who about what?”

  She gazed up at me and then relaxed. “I don’t suppose you would have, or your friends,” she said. “Well then, come and see. It looks as if you’re all getting your wish.”

  25 - The Power of the Press

  WHARTON’S WAY

  Good morning, one and all! I hope you’ve breakfasted well. But let me warn you, some of what I have to say in today’s column may turn your stomach.

  You know Mrs. Malone, the Irish lass who comes in to do my rooms. I’ve shared her wisdom with you often enough. Just the other day, as she was dusting my trophies, she cried, “Oh, Mr. Wharton, ’tis a sin all by itself, this world we’re after making.”

  I tore the page out of my Remington and screwed it up to chuck it in the bin, the way photoplays have taught us scribblers behave. “What’s troubling you, Kitty?” I enquired.

  “How some of the churches are getting to be,” she wailed, “they’re the real sin.”

  Summing up the theological chat we had, she thinks too many modern clerics are giving out their own gloss on the Bible rather than the word of God. When I probed a little deeper (we journalists can be detectives too, you know), she told me she was “discombobulated” most of all by a new church she’d heard of from a friend at the washhouse. Its leader sells it as the oldest church, which, as Kitty says, ought to mean it speaks the truest word of God. “But oh, Mr. Wharton,” she cried, “may the good Lord strike me dead if I don’t think it’s the work of the Devil.”

  When she told me all she’d heard I undertook to investigate. I met the man who runs the church and attended what he presumes to call a service, and it is my considered view that Mrs. Malone’s old-fashioned words may not be so short of the truth.

  The Trinity Church of the Spirit stands in Joseph Street near Kensington. It is housed in a building which was deconsecrated after being damaged in the blitz and which has been rebuilt by a disciple of a new belief. Christian Noble, the leader of the church, was unwilling to explain whether it has been consecrated afresh. He insists that he is not a priest, and resists the use of a religious term for himself. Perchance this betrays more about the nature of his organisation than he would prefer.

  Many folk would think his church is based on Spiritualism. However this belief may appeal to the credulous, it cannot compare with our home-grown British faith, soul of the nation. How much less so is Noble’s church, which is more akin to a reversion to savagery than any revival of the Christian verities which its name seeks to evoke. Its services involve what he describes as spiritual tributes, which are grown upon the family graves of members of the church. He claims that our harvest festivals are based on the ritual whereby these tributes are placed upon his un-Christian altar. One member of the congregation informed me that the rite which follows was (according to the leader of the cult) the origin of Holy Communion. Say rather that it is a blasphemous parody, in which participants consume a portion of the tribute they have brought and then believe they hear the deceased speak. Why, if I had believed hard enough, I too could have imagined I heard whispers. Many mediums offer as much, and most have been exposed as the frauds they are.

  Are we not a tolerant nation? I hear some of my readers ask. Should our countrymen not be allowed their beliefs, however abhorrent we may find them, so long as they do no harm? I leave aside how such a cult may prey upon the vulnerable. Let me say only that of all the spectacles I witnessed at the Trinity Church, I was most appalled to see its leader’s two-year-old child at the rite. While she was not made to participate, I shrank from asking how soon she would be involved, but I pose that question now. I will further say that the Trinity Church of the Spirit is neither spiritual in any healthy sense nor a true church, and that Christian Noble is very from living up to either of his names. If he wishes to respond, I shall make space in my column for him.

  Let me end by quoting Dennis Wheatley, our leading authority on the occult and Satanic, who graciously made time to hear my account of the church. “Beware the evil in our midst,” he advised me. “Remember Crowley was an Englishman. We should always be on the alert
for an invasion of our shores, but we should never let that make us overlook corruption that is growing from our own soil.”

  “My dad says he wasn’t praying but thank God that’s all over,” Bobby said.

  Jim looked pained by the profanity but let it go under the circumstances. “My mum said Nobbly deserves all he gets.”

  “I shouldn’t reckon she called him that, did she?” Bobby said with a laugh that sounded like abandoning nervousness. “Mine says that now it’s done with she doesn’t mind admitting she was worried.”

  “They aren’t saying, but I think my mum and dad feel a bit like that too.”

  We were walking to the bus stop into town, and I halted in front of the tobacconist’s to ask “Why aren’t they still worried? Aren’t we?”

  The tobacconist watched us through the glass door, quite possibly assuming the discussion was about which brand of cigarettes to buy. “Why, Dom?” Bobby said.

  “The story in the paper won’t save Tina, will it? She’ll still be with him.”

  “Maybe she won’t be now so many people know about him. Their neighbours will, so maybe they’ll do something. Maybe they’ll get her adopted, or somebody will.”

  I thought her hopes for Tina were as unreal as any of my tales of the Tremendous Three. “You haven’t told us what your mum and dad thought,” Jim reminded me as if this had some importance.

  “My dad’s at work. I expect he’ll think what my mum does and everyone, it’s all finished with or it will be soon and they can forget about it, and we can. Look, I thought that too at first.” Reading Eric Wharton’s column in the newspaper had come as such a relief that I’d let myself imagine everything was resolved; I’d almost told my mother that we’d overheard the journalist investigating the church. “It doesn’t matter what they think,” I said.

  “Maybe you don’t care what yours think,” Jim said, “but we aren’t all like you, Dom.”

  “I mean they can’t be right when they’ve never been to that church.”

  “We have and I think they are. Don’t you, Bobs?”

  As Bobby set about agreeing with him I said “Then what do you think he’ll have to do about it?”

  “I expect he’ll move away if he’s got any sense,” Jim said. “The further the better.”

  “About what’s underneath his church. Don’t you think he’s going to be worried somebody might look?”

  “At what, Dom?” Bobby said too much like someone talking down.

  “At whatever he’s keeping there. You heard it, didn’t you? You’d both have heard.”

  “It was a flower or something like that the woman brought in, wasn’t it? I heard him and Tina take it down.”

  “That’s what I heard too,” Jim said. “Can we get a move on? We don’t want to miss the start of the film.”

  As he strode away from the disappointed tobacconist’s I hurried to overtake him. “There was something else. Did you honestly not hear?”

  “Honest,” Jim said, and in case I didn’t catch his meaning “That’s what I am.”

  “I heard Tina laughing,” Bobby admitted. “I don’t know what she’d find to laugh at in a crypt, if that’s what it is.”

  “You’ve got it. There’s something there that shouldn’t be.”

  “Well, it’s someone else’s job to find out now,” Jim said, though not as if he thought there would be much if anything to unearth. “Like you say, somebody probably will.”

  I hadn’t said that, and I was unsure whether it would happen; I’d no reason to suppose it would immediately or even soon. “We ought to see what he does now he’s in the paper.”

  “Dom,” Bobby said; “we shouldn’t go anywhere near him.”

  I felt betrayed or about to be. “Why not?”

  “Suppose he thinks we made Eric Wharton write about him? If he even sees us he might blame us.”

  “Anyway,” Jim said, “we’re going to see Apache.”

  “There’s more important things than films,” I said before I could catch up with him.

  I was hoping this might slow him down, but he didn’t even bother looking back. “Bobs wants to see it too,” he said. “It’s got Burt Lancaster.”

  “It can wait till next time, can’t it? It’ll be on somewhere else.”

  Jim might have been trying to outrun my scrutiny as he said “I’ve told my mum and dad I’m going.”

  “I told mine I was too. Well,” I said and felt inspired, “I was.”

  He stopped at last and turned with a frown. “I don’t like not telling them the truth.”

  “I don’t really either. Dom,” Bobby said, “when you read about the film you said you’d like to go.”

  “Yes, but not till we’ve seen what Mr Noble’s doing.”

  “Why do you think we’d even be able to?” As I stayed where I was she took a step after Jim. “Aren’t you coming with us?” she said.

  Just then all I could hear was her and Jim raising every objection they could think of, but now I realise she was trying to persuade me not to take risks on my own. “You go if you want,” I said. “Someone’s got to keep an eye on him.”

  I was hoping this might bring them back, but Bobby turned away, twitching one shoulder in an unadmitted shrug, to follow Jim. I felt as if I’d wasted all the time I’d spent in trying to convince them. I hurried down the nearest side street that wasn’t mine or Bobby’s—I couldn’t chance being seen by any of our parents—and made for the Noble house.

  The streets smelled of a fog that had faded away hours ago. A thin shrunken sun was the only item in a sky as pale as mist, and lent a weak glow to the twisted brownish leaves the trees still held. As I passed the Norris house, where the empty rooms looked drained not just of life but colour, I felt vaguely guilty that nobody I knew had visited Mrs Norris in hospital. I came to a stop by the entrance to the graveyard, wondering if I should watch the Noble residence from behind the hedge. Suppose Mr Noble was already at the church or on his way there? The bus that would take me closest passed his house first, which seemed like a plan.

  I dashed past the railway alongside the graveyard, and as I reached the main road I saw a bus approaching the nearest stop. I put on a final sprint, shoving my hand out so far that my arm ached with stretching. I was afraid the bus would sail by—they often did when people of my age or younger tried to flag them down, even if we were waiting at the stop—but this one slowed to arrive at the stop as I did. I’d hardly clattered panting upstairs and fallen onto the right-hand front seat when the conductor came after me. “Where are you going, sonny?”

  “Brow.” Having regained more breath, I said “Everton Brow.”

  He hadn’t been smiling—with the NO SPITTING sign above his head he looked as if he was warning me against the offence—and now he found even less of a reason. “Everton Brow please, I think you mean.”

  “Yes.” I was growing afraid that even if he didn’t put me off the bus for impoliteness, he would distract me from watching Mr Noble’s house. “Everton Brow please,” I gabbled, snatching out the fare so hastily that I almost scattered it across the floor.

  The conductor looked at the very least dissatisfied, whether with my speeded-up courtesy or because I hadn’t given him the correct change. He lingered over snapping coins out of the holder he wore, and accompanied them with a scowl before winding my ticket out of the machine. I don’t suppose he approved of my turning away as soon as I’d taken the ticket from him. I remembered to mumble my thanks, but I was mostly aware that the Noble house had come in sight ahead. The conductor was tramping downstairs deliberately enough to make each step a comment when Mr Noble strode out of the house.

  I could see the bus had brought him out, but he turned to call “Look after her or someone else will.” Even if the front hall had amplified his shout, for me to catch it at that distance he plainly didn’t care who heard. It occurred to me that he’d left Tina behind so that she wouldn’t slow him down. He slammed the front door and marched across the
road, brandishing a rolled-up newspaper to stop the bus. I had to hide, and I slid off the seat so fast that the metal under the front window scraped my knees. At least there was nobody upstairs to see my behaviour. As I crouched out of sight the bus halted abruptly, bumping the top of my head against the metal, and Mr Noble came on board.

  I heard his footsteps on the stairs and tried to hush my breaths. If he made for the unoccupied front seat he would see me at once. I was both afraid of that and dismayed by how ridiculous I would look. His footsteps hesitated as they reached the top deck, and my breath caught in my throat like stale tobacco smoke. Then his steps receded along the aisle, and I was starting to relax as much as I could in my cramped posture when I heard the conductor set about following him.

  The man knew I was there. He would want to know what I was doing, and even if I pretended to have lost something on the floor, Mr Noble would hear my voice. I couldn’t tell whether I was holding my breath or unable to breathe. When I heard the conductor halt at the top of the stairs I was certain he was staring towards me. In a moment Mr Noble said impatiently if not with pique “Yes, here I am.”

  The conductor tramped halfway down the bus to him. “Thank you,” Mr Noble said, “the Brow.”

  So he was going to the church. At once I was afraid that the conductor might make some remark, perhaps that the Brow seemed to be a popular stop, but he said nothing at all. Change clicked out of the holder, and the whir of the ticket machine was followed by a silence that I feared might mean the conductor was about to come and find me. Then I heard a juvenile commotion on the lower deck, several boys competing at how loud they could fart with their mouths once they’d finished laughing at each performance. The conductor’s footsteps clattered fast along the aisle and down the stairs. “Any more of that,” he said loud enough to be heard throughout the vehicle, “and you’ll be off this bus.”

  The storm of mirth subsided into a lingering drizzle of giggles, which let me hear faint sounds on the upper deck. They seemed familiar from somewhere else—from the stage at my school. I’d grasped that Mr Noble was tearing paper into shreds when the conductor came upstairs again. As I strove to crouch lower and smaller, every one of my joints felt eager to ache if not to flare with pain. From the top of the stairs the conductor demanded “What do you think you’re doing there?”