Born To The Dark

by Ramsey Campbell

  Born To The Dark

  Ramsey Campbell

  First published in the UK in October, 2017

  This epub is version 1.2, released August 2019

  for Tammy and Sam—the past creeps closer

  “Gaze not too long upon the outer dark, lest it turn upon you.”

  Revelations of Gla’aki, volume 4, Of the Secrets behind the Stars

  (Matterhorn Press, 1863?)

  Stop Press, 11 April 1955

  Eric Wharton, the popular newspaper columnist, was today drowned in a fall from New Brighton ferry.

  From an editorial, 13 April 1955

  So Eric Wharton has gone on his way; on the way we must all one day follow. He will leave a gap in many lives. Popular alike with his colleagues and his many readers, he was a true man of the people who told the truth as he saw it without fear or favour. Liverpool-born, he travelled the world but always stayed true to his roots. He was admired by most, and even those he criticised in his column respected him. He once famously wrote that if he were a stick of seaside rock, the word he would want to be printed all the way through him would be Honesty. He need not have feared, and surely now that quality has earned him his place in Heaven.

  NEWSPAPERMAN’S LAST WORDS DISPUTED.

  JOURNALIST “DISTRACTED” BEFORE DEATH.

  The Liverpool coroner today recorded a verdict of accidental death in the case of newspaper columnist Eric Wharton.

  On the afternoon of the 11th of April, Mr Wharton fell overboard from the Royal Iris ferry. Crewmen were alerted by members of the public, but were unable to rescue Mr. Wharton. His body was subsequently recovered by the Liverpool coastguard.

  In court, colleagues of the journalist described how he had seemed “preoccupied” or “distracted” in the weeks preceding the accident, to the extent that he became unable to write his popular newspaper column. An unfinished draft was found in his typewriter, complaining of his inability to think and ending with the apparently random words “looking over my shoulder.”

  Passengers on the ferry, on which Mr. Wharton regularly used to travel to his home in New Brighton, observed that he gave the impression of “looking or listening” for someone on board. Several passengers reported that he appeared to be trying to brush ash or some other substance from his clothes, though he had apparently not been smoking. His preoccupation may have left him unaware that he was dangerously close to the rail, where his actions caused him to lose his balance. While a number of witnesses agreed that he uttered a cry as he fell, there was dispute as to whether the word was “leave” or “believe.”

  Mr. Wharton’s housekeeper, Mrs. Kitty Malone, was overcome by emotion several times while giving an account of her employer’s mental condition. She described how Mr. Wharton became critical of her tidiness, which he had previously praised in his column, and would straighten the bed she had made “as if he thought I’d left some nasty thing in it.” She further testified that Mr. Wharton seemed to grow determined to embrace his faith in his final days, frequently repeating the word “Christian” to himself.

  The coroner concluded that while the balance of Mr. Wharton’s mind may have been to some extent disturbed, there was no evidence of intent for suicide, and insufficient reason for a verdict of death by misadventure.

  Eric Wharton was born in Liverpool in 1904. He attended St. Edward’s College and subsequently went up to Oxford. In the Second World War he was awarded the DSO…

  1985

  1 - The Reunion

  You and a guest are cordially invited to the launch of Roberta Parkin’s new book The Entitlement Trap at Texts in Tottenham Court Road, 18.00—19:30, 15 February 1985. RSVP…

  The train from Liverpool broke down less than halfway to London. It loitered between stations while the fields that isolated it grew dark and distant windows lit up as the first stars did. By the time a replacement engine arrived I was by no means the only passenger who would have walked to the nearest transport if the guard hadn’t kept the doors locked. Well before the train crawled into London, Bobby’s bookshop event was over.

  I thought of going home to Lesley, and now I know I should have gone. As a voice encased in static announced that the train was outside Euston I retrieved the invitation from my bag. The large white card embossed in gold bore a postscript in Bobby’s small but elaborate handwriting. Eats afterwards at Yellow Sea in Chinatown. Hope you and Jim can make it! Let’s be three again! I couldn’t resist that appeal, and as soon as the guard released the doors I jumped onto the platform and sprinted to the underground.

  The escalators were as crowded as the subterranean platform, which was populated mostly by smokers. At least smoking on the trains themselves had been banned last year, and so the atmosphere was no longer quite as stifling, especially once someone opened a window to let in a draught, along with the shrill roar of the dark. At Leicester Square I struggled up an escalator with a commuter on every step to emerge onto Charing Cross Road. By the time I left some of the crowd behind by dodging into Chinatown my hip ached with the insistent thumps of the luggage strapped over my shoulder. Competitively coloured neon signs glared in my eyes and put out the sky as I searched for the restaurant I was growing desperate to find. I had to retrace my steps before I caught sight of most of an illuminated word at the far end of an alley. YE OW, the brightest letters said.

  The place looked like just another Chinese café dangling headless poultry in its window. Opening the door let out more noise than I would have imagined the place could contain. Though the front was narrow, the room gilded with paintings of dragons stretched back several times that width. Every table was occupied by Chinese diners, all of whom seemed to be talking at once. No, in the far corner an occidental woman was facing me, but she was nobody I knew. As I wondered where I’d gone wrong an unsmiling waiter came up to me. His face made it plain that the restaurant was fully booked, but I couldn’t leave without saying “Parkin.”

  He shook his head, which failed to shift his frown. “No parking here.”

  “No, Parkin.”

  “I say that.” He plainly felt I didn’t understand English. “I say no parking.”

  “No, I’m saying Parkin. The Parkin party, they’re meant to be here.”

  The woman in the corner was staring at me as if the waiter’s scrutiny wasn’t enough. “Parking party,” he said, and I was about to spell the name at the top of my voice when the woman’s companion turned around. “Dom,” she shouted and sprang to her feet “We’re over here.”

  How could I have failed to recognise her broad straight shoulders, even if we and Jim hadn’t met for decades? As she raised her face to greet me, her long nose and indomitable chin helped resolve her smile. The waiter flung his hands apart, using one to wave me onwards, and I was edging between the tables with my bag pressed against my side when the door to the toilets let out Jim. “Jim,” Bobby called, “he’s come after all.”

  He was slimmer than I remembered, and half a head taller than me. He caught me before I reached the table, and shook my hand with both of his. “Great you made it,” he said. “Bob was starting to be disappointed.”

  “I would have been too. I was stuck on the train.” As we sidled to the table I said “Have you brought your wife?”

  “No,” Bobby said, “Carole’s mine.”

  I’d forgotten how red my face could grow. I hadn’t really noticed the way Bobby and the other woman could have been competing for the tersest hairstyle. Bobby gave me a prolonged fierce hug and kissed my cheek, none of which left me less aware of her partner. Carole’s small face looked concentrated around watchfulness—you could have called the features delicate or sharp—and her scrutiny hadn’t relented. “Sorry,” I said hardly loud enough to be heard over
the hubbub of diners, and took her cold limp hand.

  “Why?”

  “Not if you don’t think I need to be.”

  “What you feel ought to be your choice,” Carole said and dealt my hand a solitary shake.

  “I feel happy for you both,” I said but suspected that she thought I was being too deft with language. As soon as I let go of her hand I was worried my swiftness could seem like aversion. The punch Bobby dealt me would have come as a relief even if it had been less affectionate. I shrugged off my bag as she poured me a glass of Sauvignon so pale it earned its adjective. “Here’s to the book,” I said, raising the glass.

  Along with hers Bobby lifted her face as if her smile had buoyed it up. “And here’s to us.”

  Carole waited until Bobby met her gaze. “Yes, to us.”

  Jim seemed to think he needed to improve on this. “Old times,” he said.

  When we all clinked our glasses Carole’s gesture felt qualified, not far from withdrawn. As a waiter ladled soup into our bowls I said “How did the book launch go?”

  “Plenty of arguments.” I gathered Bobby welcomed this. “So long as they buy the book,” she said, “but we always know half of them won’t, don’t we, Carole? Half’s the target, which we nearly reached.”

  “Maybe if you hadn’t given them your definition of a socialist…” Carole said.

  “Someone who cares so much for other people,” Bobby let me know, “that they want to spend other people’s money on them.”

  Though I knew her journalism well enough for her views not to come as a shock, I was still prompted to ask “What does your father think of your book?”

  “He’s disowned me.” She jerked her chin up in the gesture I remembered, and then laid a hand on Carole’s wrist. “My mother nearly did,” she said, “for the rest of who I am.”

  “We haven’t, though,” Jim said.

  I could tell he would have liked to plant a hand on Bobby’s, and for an ignominious moment I recalled spying on them in the cinema more than thirty years ago. That revived memories of Christian Noble, of his family and the secrets beneath his church. How long had it been since I’d thought of them? The memories seemed so remote they felt close to unreal, and just now they were no more than an intrusion. “I’m sure we never will,” I said.

  None of us spoke while we finished the soup, but as the waiter bore the bowls away in the tureen Bobby retrieved her capacious canvas bag from the floor and took out two copies of her book. “Here you are, both of you,” she said with untypical awkwardness.

  I was about to ask her to inscribe my copy when I saw she had, and more than that. For Dom and Jim with love, the dedication said, we’re still three. “Bobby, thank you,” I said, which Jim topped with “Thanks a lot, Bob.” We both took her hands, and I was put in mind of a seance, which revived memories of Christian Noble once again. I squeezed her hand as the waiter brought a platter of dim sum. “Tuck in, boys,” Bobby urged. “It’s on us.”

  As we all set about it, she said “When are you going to bring a book out, Dom?”

  “I’ll leave that to the writer at the table. My family and lecturing, they’re really all I have time for.”

  “I thought you’d end up writing. You inspired me to.”

  “You’re one reason I joined the police,” Jim told me, “the way you were always trying to make us investigate things and do good.”

  I was surprised and touched, but felt Bobby’s partner was being left out. “What do you do, Carole?”

  “Oh,” Carole said with a trace of resentment, “I’m a journalist as well.”

  “Is that how you two met?”

  “No.” As if my suggestion were somehow improper she said “We met in the sort of bar we used to frequent.”

  I’d begun to wish Jim would have more to say for himself, but presumably he had while they were waiting for me. The arrival of the rest of the banquet gave me time to find a topic that seemed neutral, though perhaps I wanted to resolve an insistent memory. “Speaking of journalism, did you two hear what happened to Eric Wharton?”

  Jim glanced up from spooning steak off a hot metal platter onto his bowl of rice. “Remind us, Dom.”

  “You read about it, then.”

  Bobby put Jim’s blank look into words. “I think Jim’s saying we don’t know who he is.”

  “The columnist who exposed Christian Noble and his church.”

  “Oh, him.” Before I could decide which of them she was dismissing, Bobby said “So what did happen to whatever you said his name was?”

  “Eric Wharton. He drowned less than a year after he wrote that column.”

  With a hint of his profession Jim said “Are you saying there was foul play, Dom?”

  “The coroner didn’t think so. Accidental death, he said. Only some of the witnesses made it sound as if Wharton was trying to fight something off and that’s why he fell overboard.”

  “Did any of them see anything?”

  “Not that the reports said, but I don’t need to tell you what I think.”

  “You might need to tell me,” Carole said.

  “Christian Noble used to teach at our school, Jim’s and mine. They didn’t know he was a spiritualist, well, rather more than that. He went in for raising the dead.”

  “Presumably you mean he believed he did.”

  “I think you’ll find some people here do as well.”

  As Jim and Bobby exchanged glances Carole said “Are you seriously suggesting this journalist you mentioned was killed by a ghost?”

  “Perhaps he thought one was after him,” Bobby said. “Noble seemed to have a knack of getting inside people’s heads.”

  “You know he did more than that,” I protested. “Remember what you saw by the bridge that night in the fog.”

  “Dom, I told you at the time I wasn’t sure if I saw anything.”

  “What was Bob supposed to have seen?” Carole said.

  “Something Noble sent after me because I’d been watching his house.” I felt reckless with wine and combative too. “It used to be his father,” I declared.

  I saw Carole refrain from uttering her first thought. “How old were you?” she asked her partner.

  “We were all thirteen.”

  “I’d guess that explains it, then.”

  Bobby looked close to agreeing but reluctant on my behalf. “Explains what?” I demanded.

  “Bob’s told me how active your imagination was. Is still, I’m guessing. Perhaps you used to do what you say this Noble person did, put your fancies into other people’s heads.”

  Carole was scrutinising me again, and now I realised that her watchfulness was concern for her partner. Even so, I was about to retort when Jim said “Dom, did you read about Wharton’s death at the time?”

  “I did, and I’ve still got all the clippings.”

  More like a policeman than I found appropriate Jim said “Why didn’t you tell us then?”

  “Because you both seemed to have lost interest.” For a moment I was on the edge of revealing how I’d caught them in the cinema. “And all right,” I said to preclude that, “I was nervous of saying.”

  “Why would you be nervous?” Carole said.

  “Back then I thought talking about those things might bring them after me.”

  “You don’t now.” Before I could respond Carole said “Well, you were only thirteen. I suppose it was a kind of fun.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you knew what happened at the end.”

  “When someone wrecked his church, you mean,” Bobby said, explaining to her partner “Noble had started a church he told people could bring back the dead.”

  “More than wrecked.” Once I’d said this there was no point in not saying “I never told you two what happened.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Jim said, which sounded only slightly less interrogative for adding “Dom.”

  “As Carole says, I was just a child. I’m afraid I was angry with you both for leaving me to
deal with the Noble business by myself.”

  “You do seem to have kept a lot to yourself,” Carole said.

  “I did wish we’d done more, Dom.” I was tempted to enquire at what point Bobby had started feeling that way, but she said “Are you going to tell us what happened, then?”

  “You know I went to Noble’s church while you two were at the cinema. I told you I went in the crypt, but I found more than I said. He was keeping plants down there, and herbs. His congregation brought them, you remember, and maybe he did too. Only—” Although taking a drink failed to help me decide how much it would be wise to say, perhaps it made me careless. “They weren’t just vegetation any more,” I said.

  “What on earth can you mean by that?” Carole said.

  I felt bound to laugh, though not to suggest I was joking. “They’d mutated somehow. They weren’t species anyone would recognise.”

  “You didn’t say you were a botanist.”

  “That’ll be because I’m not one. I’m just a lecturer on cinema, but I think even you would have agreed with me if you’d been there.” For Bobby’s sake I tried to be less hostile as I said “They were worse than deformed, believe me. They were moving.”

  Carole met this with an unimpressed look. “Moving in what way?”

  “Twisting their stems. Opening their flowers.”

  “Isn’t that quite common? Plants like that are called carnivorous.”

  “And why would somebody keep anything like that under a church?”

  “Perhaps he was more of a botanist than we are.”

  Even if she meant to make peace by associating me with her, I found her comment absurd and patronising. “You must have taken some away with you,” Bobby said, “mustn’t you, Dom?”

  “I didn’t. I destroyed the lot of them.”

  Jim looked disappointed, very possibly with me. “That doesn’t sound like you, Dom. Why did you behave like that?”

  “I was bringing one away when it tried to get hold of me. I knocked a table over and those plants started moving as well, and I’m afraid I lost it. Somebody had left an axe, and I chopped them all to bits.”