The Searching Dead

by Ramsey Campbell

  Rather than answer I sucked in a breath. I wasn’t going to speak until he came to look at me, and perhaps then I could whisper low enough for Mr Noble not to hear. While I couldn’t judge how far the bus had travelled, surely we must be close to his stop. I didn’t realise that I hadn’t been addressed until Mr Noble said “Just dealing with some rubbish.”

  “We don’t want it on our buses, thank you. Will you kindly pick it up and take it with you.”

  “I can promise you want it more than I do.”

  The conductor paused, whether in disbelief or for emphasis. “Sir, I must ask you to clear your litter up.”

  “You’ve already asked and you’ve had your answer.”

  I was shocked by the pettiness the situation had exposed—Mr Noble’s need to exert power in even so trivial a fashion. “Sir,” the conductor said, “for the third time—”

  “All good things come in threes, is that the thing? Pick all this up, you’re saying, or you’ll throw me off your bus. Don’t bother fancying you can. Here’s my stop.”

  The bell clanged once as Mr Noble set it off, and I heard him march to the stairs. I could only assume that something about him had daunted the conductor, who made no attempt to detain him that I heard. The bus coasted to a halt, and I hauled myself up to risk a glance out of the window. Mr Noble was already striding towards the Grafton and the devastated streets beyond, so purposefully that his top half was inclined forward in the way that increasingly put me in mind of a snake.

  As I rose to my feet my eyes met the conductor’s. He was stooping to collect torn fragments of the newspaper, and turned his rage at them on me. “What were you playing at, sonny?”

  “Dropped my money. Got it now.” I was hardly even aware of lying. “Missed my stop,” I said and made for the stairs.

  He looked ready to delay me, having failed to arrest Mr Noble for littering. Perhaps he meant to demand an extra fare, though I was certain it cost the same to the next stop. Then he heard a burst of mirth downstairs, which he plainly took as a preamble to more mischief. “Go on,” he told me, less like a release than a warning.

  I jumped off the platform before the bus had quite halted and hurried uphill to the ridge overlooking downtown Liverpool. In less than five minutes I reached the ruined streets beyond the ballroom. Besides smoke and brick dust they smelled of fog, which was loitering among the smashed houses, too far away to help me hide if I needed to. I couldn’t see Mr Noble or hear him, and had no idea how close he might be. Surely he must be well on his way to the church, but I was taking care not to make any unnecessary noise as I picked my way through the rubble in the streets when I heard him.

  He was several streets away, at the church or very near. I don’t know if he said a word; all I caught was a bellow of rage or anguish that resounded through the derelict streets. For a moment I thought he’d injured himself—his cry had sounded agonised enough—and then I wondered if the issue was something he’d seen. I dodged between the collapsed houses, taking care to stay out of his sight, until I heard the church door slam.

  I made for the church so fast that I came near to tripping over bricks. Their shrill clink slowed me down, but it didn’t take me long to reach a two-storey remnant of a housefront from behind which I could spy on the church. Though I was hundreds of yards away, I made out that every window on this side of the church had been shattered, while the signboard for the Trinity Church of the Spirit lay in pieces beside the porch. In a moment Mr Noble’s voice resounded through the church. From his tone I could have thought he was praying, but even if I hadn’t known him too well to come to that conclusion, the name he was calling had more syllables than God.

  After those three syllables he fell silent, and I was waiting for sounds when he emerged from the church. He slammed the door and stalked towards me. He looked ready to strike down anyone he suspected of having vandalised his church, and as I flinched out of sight I was sure he’d seen me. I heard him kick rubble out of his way so viciously that it shattered against a wall. I was staring around me, desperate to find somewhere I might be less visible, when he tramped past my hiding place and away down the devastated road.

  At least he was making plenty of noise, but I didn’t risk stirring until I couldn’t hear him. Even then I peered around the wasteland to reassure myself that he wasn’t on his way back, and then I headed for the church. As I’d assumed, every window was broken, leaving the apertures toothy with glass. Having made a circuit of the church, which looked as though it had set about reverting to the ruinousness around it, I let myself in.

  Inside was worse. Not a single item had survived. The pews and the other seats had been hacked to bits, and the confessional where my friends and I had hidden was reduced to splintered chunks of wood. Whoever was responsible must have devoted quite some time to the altar, which was strewn in bits across the broad ledge at the top of the steps, while the drapery lay crumpled in a corner. I guessed that the vandal or vandals had been provoked by Eric Wharton’s newspaper column. I was gazing about, trying to decide how the destruction made me feel, when I saw that the job wasn’t finished. While the wood around the lock on the door to the crypt had been gouged with an axe, the tool had been abandoned among the fragments of the altar.

  I felt worse than an intruder—unreasonably like a vandal—as I ventured along the aisle between the wrecked seats to pick up the axe. Just the same, I had to find out what Mr Noble was keeping beneath the church. Someone had to see, and wasn’t I entitled if anybody was? I gripped the shaft of the axe as firmly as I could and swung it at the deepest gouge beside the lock.

  The blade bit deep into the stout wood, and the impact shuddered through my arms. At the second blow they began to ache. At the third, chips of wood flew out of the panel, and I was firming my grasp for another blow when I heard a sound beyond the door. It wasn’t quite a voice, though I could have fancied that it was attempting to become one. Since it was audible through the door, its source had to be unappealingly large or else numerous. Neither possibility encouraged me to renew my efforts to break into the crypt. Retreating at some speed, I hid the axe under the altar cloth in the corner, and then I hurried out of the church.

  I was making for the bus stop when a glimpse of crimson showed me a phone box on the main road. Surely I had sufficient reason now to call the police. I pressed button B in the hope that the slot would yield up a coin, as they often did, but the mechanism was keeping all its money to itself. I dialled one 9 and faltered as the dial returned to zero with a sluggish whir. Was this really an emergency? I looked up the number of the nearest police station in the dog-eared floppy book and fed pennies into the A slot, but I’d only dialled three digits before I lost confidence. When the police heard how young I was, they would never believe the kind of thing I had to say; they’d think it was a prank. I poked button B to retrieve my coins, and the phone box let out a cigarette breath as I ran for a bus. I was going back to the church, but first I had to find Bobby and Jim.

  26 - Farming the Dead

  “Hey, look, it’s Dom. Couldn’t you find Nobbly? You’ve missed the big film.”

  “It was good even though it was a cowie. We can sit it round again if you want to see it.”

  “No, you’ve got to help me, both of you. He went to the church and he’s in a rage. Somebody’s smashed up the church.”

  “Well, nobody we know would have, but maybe you ought to just be glad someone did.”

  “They haven’t smashed it all, Jim. They’ve left the door that goes down.”

  “Still ought to teach him a lesson, though. Maybe he’ll stop what he’s been doing now he knows how people feel.”

  “You know he won’t. He doesn’t care what anybody thinks except him and Tina. He’ll just start up somewhere else.”

  “I expect the same thing will happen then, Dom.”

  “Bobby, you don’t understand. Neither of you do. Whatever he’s keeping under the church, we need to find out what it is before he moves it.
We need to go now.”

  “The other film’s on in a few minutes. It’s a gangster.”

  “We can see it another time, Jim. I’ll pay for us all if you like.”

  “You’re really serious about it, aren’t you, Dom?”

  “Cross my heart, Bobby, I heard something down there. On the Bible I did, Jim, something alive. I mean I did while you were watching your film.”

  “You followed Mr Noble in there all by yourself.”

  “I had to, didn’t I? Only I waited till he’d gone. I’m certain he’ll be coming back. We need to see before he does.”

  “And then what are we supposed to do?”

  “When we know what’s there we can show people. They’ll have to believe us then, and maybe someone will do more about him than just wreck his church.”

  “But won’t he know it was us that told?”

  “We can make an anonymous phone call. I know, we could phone Eric Wharton.”

  “Jim, the lights are going down. We can’t talk any more or we’ll get thrown out.”

  “Jim, I need you to help me break the door down.”

  “Never mind leaving me out, Dominic Sheldrake. I can do it just as much as him. You’ve felt how strong I am. I’m coming with you.”

  “Then I am as well. Just make sure our parents never know.”

  If the conversation had gone along those lines, what difference would it have made? Probably none to the world, but a great deal to me. It was the kind of thing I rehearsed in my head on the bus into town—a tale of the Tremendous Three I was telling myself. Would Jim have referred to our parents, or was he still calling them our mums and dads? I can’t even say if all of us were less mature than we thought we were, or if I was alone in that as well.

  I jumped off the bus outside Lewis’s department store, on the front of which a stone giant trained his penis on Saturday shoppers and strollers through town. I sprinted along Lime Street, past a pair of cinemas to the third of the trio, the Forum. Beyond it, opposite a frieze of pigeons on the colonnade of St George’s Hall, a horde of football supporters red-necked with scarves emerged chanting from the railway station. Do I honestly remember all these details? How much am I inventing? At least it helps to fix my memories and bring them to life. At least they feel as if they’re only mine.

  The pigeons took flight as the football fans flooded towards them, and I hurried into the cinema. I hadn’t taken out my cash by the time I crossed the tiled lobby, and the woman in the pay box gave me a guarded look. “Can I just go in and find my friends?” I said.

  “Don’t try that on, son.” Her face made it clear I’d confirmed her initial suspicion. “Nothing’s free in here,” she said.

  I hadn’t time to argue. I shoved enough money under the window for a seat in the front stalls, remembering barely in time to pay for an adult ticket. For a moment I thought she was going to refuse to admit me, even though the film only had an A certificate, unless I found an adult to take me in. She took her time over counting my pennies and threepences and sixpences before releasing a ticket from one of the metal slots in front of her. No doubt she disapproved of how I snatched the ticket and dashed to the entrance to the auditorium.

  An usherette tore the ticket, and her flashlight beam set about guiding me as I strode fast down the aisle, but I knew where I was going. Jim and Bobby and I always sat on the front row, so close to the screen that we had to lean back in our seats with our legs stuck out in front of us and gaze up at the film. Just now Burt Lancaster was naked from the waist up, which I suspected might please Bobby a good deal, and hiding from pursuers in a field. I could see this was the climax of the film, and it seemed best to let my friends enjoy it before I told them about the church. Surely that wouldn’t lose us too much time—but then I saw they weren’t on the front row after all.

  I swung around beneath the screen to peer at the auditorium. Dozens of scattered faces flared up and grew dim with the shifting light from the screen, but none of them belonged to Bobby or Jim. Someone shouted at me to sit down, though my head couldn’t have been bigger than a seed in the field. I sprinted up the aisle, earning stares and frowns, and found the usherette watching the film from beside the doors. “I’m supposed to meet my friends,” I whispered. “They must be upstairs. Can I go and look?”

  She said nothing while she followed me into the lobby, and I was afraid she meant to eject me from the cinema until she called to a young man wearing the male version of her uniform. “Just take this lad up to the balcony to see if he can find his friends,” she said and told me “Five minutes and then you’ve got to go back where you paid for, and don’t go making any noise.”

  The usher led me up several flights of carpeted marble stairs. I’d never been up here before, and I wondered why Jim and Bobby had now. Why would they have made it a special occasion when I wasn’t with them? An usherette was standing by the doors to the circle, and her colleague sauntered over to her, indicating me with his flashlight. “He’s stalls,” he said, “but Judy says he can go in to look for someone.”

  The usherette narrowed her eyes at me but shrugged off her doubts—responsibility, at any rate. As she let me into the circle I saw that the film was coming to an end. Despite how it had looked downstairs, Burt Lancaster hadn’t been killed after all. Music swelled up as I took my first steps down the stairs of the aisle, and I saw Jim and Bobby at once. They were three rows back from the edge of the balcony, silhouetted against names that were crawling up the screen. I recognised their profiles as they separated, and I saw the thread of saliva that linked them.

  I twisted around and stumbled blindly up the aisle. I felt sick and very possibly about to be. I was so desperate to be gone before the lights came up and the lovers could notice me that I tripped over the top step. I blundered against the doors and fell into the upstairs lobby, almost colliding with the pair of uniformed staff. “What’s wrong?” the usherette cried. “What’s wrong with you?”

  By the time I thought of an answer, not that I cared how she and her colleague took it, I was too furious to feel sick any longer. “Somewhere else,” I blurted and ran downstairs to stalk out of the cinema.

  The enervated sun was sneaking its cold light over the roofs, a glow that seemed too fierce to me. While my rage made it hard to think, I knew that I didn’t need Bobby and Jim any longer, and that they must never learn I’d caught them at their business in the dark. As I headed for the bus I loathed everybody in the crowd I was dodging through—loathed them for seeing however I must look and dismissing it as adolescent self-indulgence. When it occurred to me that they probably weren’t even aware of me, I began to detest myself for believing I mattered. I certainly didn’t to Bobby and Jim.

  I was going to matter. I shouldn’t have wasted time in trying to involve the pair who used to be my friends. The Tremendous Three showed how childish my view of Bobby and Jim had been. I was tempted to go straight home and tear up all my stories, but I had a more important mission, and they would have to wait. The bus came within minutes, even if those provoked me to grimace like an oldster at every bus I didn’t need. I hauled myself onto the platform with the pole, earning a frown from the conductor—a frown of recognition. He’d been on the bus that had brought me downtown.

  I tramped upstairs to the front seat, where I tried to be ready to restrain my anger no matter what he might say. Though I felt capable of walking to Everton Brow, I didn’t want to be turned off the bus and waste even more time than my former friends had robbed me of. I heard him mount the stairs behind me, and then he loomed at my side. I was counting out the correct change when he said “Do you think I look out of shape, sonny?”

  I couldn’t very well not meet his eyes, which were as unfriendly as his voice. “No?” I said, far more of a question than one word.

  “I was thinking you might fancy I’m needing the exercise, making me shinny up here every time.”

  I was sure he was eager for an excuse to put me off the bus. “I just like sitting
at the front,” I said and was enraged by how infantile I sounded.

  “Your sort always does, and hang everybody else.” Having apparently exhausted the objections he could make, he said “Off to do more mischief?”

  “I haven’t done any yet.” All at once I couldn’t hold my rage in. “I won’t, either,” I declared, clenching my fists hard enough for the coins to bruise my palm.

  “You’re a rare one, then.” This might have resembled praise until he said “It won’t buy you a free ride.”

  The implication that I was trying to cheat him made me nearly unable to contain my rage. I only just managed to thank him once he’d wound the ticket out of his machine. None too soon he left me alone to watch the streets grow less crowded and then close to empty as the bus laboured up Everton Brow. As I hurried downstairs, having rung the bell, he said “Off home, are we?”

  “I don’t live here.”

  “You’d wonder what the appeal is, then.”

  I stared straight into his eyes as the bus slowed. “I’m going to church.”

  In a sense it wasn’t a lie, although the way he must have heard it was. It felt like a summation of the person I was becoming, and expressed my ire as well. As I strode fast towards the streets beyond the ballroom I wouldn’t have minded encountering Mr Noble. He was as good a target for my rage as any, and I imagined I was capable of dealing face to face with him.

  The shrunken sun hung low above the wrecked streets. It looked as if the devastation had dragged it down the pallid greyish sky to drain its light, lending the broken houses a muffled lifeless glow. The skeletal buildings that still clung to bits of their rooms looked as dead as my friendship with Bobby and Jim, and so the wasteland felt like the most appropriate place for my teenage self to be. Better yet, I had a reason to be there—a reason that no longer involved them.