Born To The Dark

by Ramsey Campbell

  “Sorry.” By now each syllable increased the pain, no matter how terse I tried to make them. “Could you call nur,” I said before I couldn’t bear to speak.

  “Go and get her for him, Marge.”

  I heard the door thump, and soon it did again. I thought this heralded some relief until my neighbour’s wife said “She won’t be long.” At last a plastic cup nudged my lips, and some time after swallowing I was able to believe the pain had begun to shrink. I kept my eyes shut and did my best to hold my mind as blank as my vision. Thinking wouldn’t help my state while it was all I could do. As the pain receded it drew me towards sleep, but I wasn’t aware of having lost consciousness until a woman murmured “Mr Sheldrake.”

  I was dismayed to think that Tina Noble had tracked me down while I was helpless. My eyes jerked wide, reviving a threat of pain, and I saw she’d put out the lights. No, they were only dim, suggesting that it was the middle of the night. I had to narrow my eyes to make out a face I didn’t recognise and to establish that it belonged to a nurse. “Mr Sheldrake,” she whispered, “can you walk?”

  “Where to?”

  “Just along the corridor. Your father’s asking for you and we think you’d better come.”

  I didn’t want to ask why, because I was afraid I knew. When I raised my head it encountered no pain, but I took some care over finding the floor with my feet and standing up. The thump of the door as it shut behind me sounded like an isolated heartbeat, giving way to silence. Was the lighting in the corridor feebler than I would have expected it to be? I had a sense that too much was at a low ebb, and a glimpse of the nurse’s wristwatch told me the time was almost four o’clock. I wasn’t sure why this made me stumble faster towards the other ward.

  My father lay face up with his arms extended to the sides of the bed. While this wasn’t quite the posture I knew all too well from Safe To Sleep, it seemed unnecessarily similar. I hoped only the muted illumination made his eyes look far dimmer than normal as they turned towards me. “Sorry to get you out of bed, son,” he said in very little of a voice. “Were you asleep?”

  “I’ve had plenty of sleep, dad. Just now I’m not doing much else.”

  I sat by the bed and reached for his hand, but he made a weak fist and edged it away from me. “No need for holding hands, son,” he said with the faintest hint of vigour. “We’re grown men. We don’t want anybody thinking we’re something else.”

  I felt disconcertingly wistful for saying “I should think people could see I’m your son.”

  “Not when it’s this dark. Let’s not waste time arguing.” He made a visible effort to lift his head from the pillow, but must have decided to save his energy for speaking. “Afraid I may not be as much use to you as I wanted,” he said. “May have to leave that Noble character to you after all.”

  “I can deal with him, but don’t start thinking you’re out of the running just yet, dad.”

  “That’s my boy. You carry on being positive.” Before I could urge the attitude on him my father said “I want you to tell me one thing, and then you can make me a promise.”

  “Anything at all.”

  “About your Mr Noble, when you were at school.” My father’s eyes flickered sideways as though to ensure he wasn’t overheard. “That book you had of his,” he muttered. “I know you always said not, but you pinched it, didn’t you?”

  I saw his eyes gleam in an ineffectual bid to peer into mine. I’d barely opened my mouth when he said “Tell me the truth and I can rest easy, Dominic.”

  His plea overrode my doubts. “I suppose you could say I did.”

  “We always knew, me and your mother. Thanks for that. I can trust you now.”

  “You mean you haven’t all these years.”

  “I mean when you promise. I said let’s not argue, son.” He fumbled to clutch at his chest as trying to raise his voice dislodged a raw cough. “Will you do whatever you have to that’ll keep your boy safe?” he said once he could.

  “Dad, you don’t need to ask.”

  “I know, but it’d help me rest if I heard you promise.”

  “I give you my word I’ll go to any lengths to make sure Toby’s safe.”

  “That’s all I wanted to hear.” When he lifted his shaky right hand in my general direction I took it despite his reluctance, and he gave mine a determined shake that let me feel how thin and light his hand had grown. “You go and catch up on your sleep now,” he said. “The sooner you get better, the sooner you can look after your boy. And I don’t know if you pray any more, but if you ever do, say some for me.”

  When I looked back from the door I saw he had already closed his eyes. I found I couldn’t breathe until I was certain he was doing so. The nurse who’d fetched me tried to look encouraging as I made for the corridor. How long had my father suspected if not known that I’d left his religion behind? His acknowledgement that I might have almost made me want to rediscover prayer on his behalf.

  As I lay awake in the dim ward I willed him to be wrong about his own state. Surely just his enervation had made the nurse think it was imperative for me to go to him, and once he was over the infection he would regain his strength. The thought let me doze, but another one jolted me awake—that I’d lied to him once more by pretending I’d stolen Noble’s journal. Noble’s father had, and he’d meant it to be read. I was tempted to go back to my father, though how would the truth help? Sleep overtook me before I came anywhere near a decision, but the ward was still keeping its lights low when someone murmured in my ear. “Mr Sheldrake,” the nurse from the other ward said, “I’m afraid your father’s gone.”

  14 - Speaking Of The Dead

  As I paced behind my father’s coffin towards the church I was troubled by how few mourners I could recognise. I saw Jim’s parents and Bobby’s next to them, but theirs were the only faces I knew in the sombre crowd. Lesley’s parents weren’t there, since they hadn’t known my father, and in any case they lived and taught in Canada. She and Toby were at my back, the only other people following the coffin. I heard my son begin to whisper until his mother hushed him. I almost turned to intervene, because I should have liked to hear whatever he might have said. It was less a fear of impropriety than of losing my balance and staggering against the coffin that kept me faced towards the church.

  I’d been out of hospital for just a few days, and life at home felt like a truce that would have to be broken soon. Organising the funeral had taken all my time and energy, which meant I’d had to nominate a colleague to assess my students. Toby was attending all his sessions at Safe To Sleep. Lesley hadn’t brought up the situation any more than I had since our confrontation at the hospital, but we both knew the conflict wasn’t resolved. Judith helped remind us by not letting Claudine visit now that I was home, instead entrusting her to another parent at the school, having apologised to Lesley while she knew I could hear. Once my father was buried and remembered I meant to protect Toby however I could. I’d promised my father as much, and perhaps that was the best way to commemorate him.

  The church was a long concrete hall furnished with pale pine pews beneath arched beams of the same material. The pointed windows contained saints pieced together out of splinters of rainbow glass. Beyond a cut-price altar the largest window showed Mary with her infant in her arms under a spiky sun. As the undertaker’s quartet lowered the coffin into place before the altar, an usher guided us towards the right-hand front row, where Toby ended up between Lesley and me. “We’ve got the best seats,” he said.

  “Toby,” Lesley murmured.

  “It’s all right, Toby, you can talk. Just not that loud.” I found I was anxious to hear any observations he might make about the funeral or in church. “What did you mean?” I said.

  “Where we can see best from.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to learn “What are you expecting to see?”

  “I don’t know, dad. I’ve never been to one of these before.”

  Lesley’s look warned me not to ques
tion him further. I saw Jim’s and Bobby’s parents file into the pew opposite ours, and heard dozens of mourners shuffle to their seats. In the midst of the muted bustling Toby said “Why do they put people in boxes when they’re dead?”

  “It’s a way of showing respect, Toby,” Lesley said. “That’s why we’re here.”

  “I thought they mightn’t want us to see them.”

  I saw she would have liked to let this go, but I had to ask “Who mightn’t?”

  “The men who carried grandad. It’s like they want to lock him up.”

  “Nobody can do that any more,” Lesley assured him.

  “I know.” Our son sounded impatient to establish “They can’t stop him flying away now.”

  I suspected that I knew where this idea had come from, but couldn’t make sure just now. “When do we have to cry?” he said.

  Lesley glanced at me and seemed relieved to find I wasn’t outraged. “Whenever you feel you have to,” I said.

  “I don’t know if I’m going to. I don’t think grandad’s really gone.”

  I had no chance to ascertain what Toby meant by this, because the priest had come to stand beside my father’s coffin. Father Harty was a round-faced wide-mouthed man who gave the impression of constantly restraining ebullience, just as his name appeared to have suppressed an appropriate vowel. He toned his voice down to express gentle reassurance as he said “We are gathered here today to celebrate the life of our departed relative and friend Desmond Sheldrake…”

  Toby looked bemused by the description but didn’t query it aloud. I felt distanced from the ceremony, not least since I’d had to leave so much of it to the priest. He’d told me which my father’s favourite hymns were, for example, and soon everybody stood up to sing one. “Oh God, our help in ages past…”

  I sang the words from the pamphlet that bore a smudged photograph of my parents, in which they were several years older than my wife and I were now. It brought back a memory of spying from my bedroom window on a man with a pram in the graveyard, and I did my best to concentrate on the hymn, though I felt unable to engage with the sentiments until a verse seemed to fasten on my mind:

  “Time, like an ever-rolling stream,

  Bears all its sons away;

  They fly, forgotten, as a dream

  Dies at the opening day…”

  It wasn’t just that I was anxious to determine whether these ideas had any special significance for Toby, though I could see no reaction when I tried to watch him without turning my head. It was more that I was certain someone in the church had raised her voice at the start of the verse. I thought she was near the back of the church, but once we reached the next verse I couldn’t hear her any more. Soon we all knelt to recite the Lord’s Prayer, though I confined myself to intoning the amen, which Toby echoed—the second syllable, at any rate. We sat while Father Harty read to us, though I would have preferred to hear about somebody other than Lazarus. At least the next hymn—Abide with Me—was one I’d liked in my childhood. I still did until a few words seemed to rise out of the body of the hymn. “Change and decay in all around I see…”

  I was convinced that not only my mind had emphasised the line—that the woman’s voice had. I glanced back, but at once the voice was lost in the amateur chorus, and Lesley gave me a quick frown. We sat down to be told about Christ and the thief—“Today thou shalt be with me in paradise”—and even this made me wish I hadn’t let my father think I’d stolen Noble’s journal. I was able to derive a little wry amusement from All Things Bright and Beautiful, since Bobby’s father visibly resented the suggestion that God put the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate. More prayers brought us to communion, and most of the mourners joined the queue for the wafer, but I would have felt worse than hypocritical, even if my father would have liked me to participate. “What are they having to eat?” Toby whispered.

  “They believe it’s God,” Lesley said barely loud enough for him and me to hear.

  “That’s too little,” Toby said, stifling a giggle. “You don’t eat gods, they eat you. I don’t mean really eat. They’re so big and special they can have millions of galaxies inside them.”

  I saw Lesley hoping I agreed he was merely being fanciful. I did my best to look unconcerned, because the prospect of facing the congregation while I spoke about my father had put me on edge despite all my years as a lecturer. Another hymn followed the communion, and within seconds I was listening so hard I felt in danger of a headache.

  “Come, Holy Ghost, creator, come

  From thy bright heav’nly throne.

  Come take possession of our souls…”

  I’d scarcely been reminded of the school where I’d encountered Noble and his beliefs when the woman’s voice behind me rose to embrace the third line. I was convinced it swelled again at “teaching little ones to speak and understand” and “thrice-blessed three in one”. Once the congregation took their seats again Father Harty paused, which I found unnecessarily dramatic. “And now,” he said, “Desmond’s son Dominic will share some personal memories of his father.”

  As I sidled past her Lesley squeezed my elbow, offering support of some kind, and Toby whispered “Can I as well?”

  “Tell people about grandad, do you mean?” Lesley murmured. “You can afterwards if you like.”

  “He’ll hear me better when everyone’s quiet. I expect he’ll hear dad.” At once I remembered how Christian Noble believed the dead were desperate to cling to any scraps of their personality they could salvage, which might explain some of the rudimentary messages mediums claimed to receive. I hoped Toby had nothing of the sort in mind, and did my best to think that nothing I might say could affect my father now. I took care over climbing the steps to the pulpit, gripping both the smooth slim handrails. I gazed across the lectern at the congregation and saw the woman at once.

  She was sitting by herself on the furthest occupied pew. Her pointed oval sharp-featured face was tied up in a black headscarf and framed by faded bushy red hair that the scarf hadn’t altogether managed to contain. While everybody was intent on me, I was sure her eyes were wider. I saw mourners willing me not to lose control, but I thought she was urging me to speak, and I vowed not to leave the pulpit until I’d made her betray that she was an intruder. Even if the Nobles hadn’t sent her, I felt certain she followed their faith.

  I took a breath and instantly forgot the entire speech I’d been working on for days. I’d wanted to ensure I didn’t falter or end up babbling when my turn came to speak. Losing my prepared speech felt too much like a symptom of concussion and the threat of a vicious headache as well, and I could only snatch at memories and talk about them as they surfaced: times we’d spent together when I was at school and less often since, jokes he’d told, traits that made him unique, advice he’d given me when I was young and indeed significantly older, though I hadn’t always followed it and in some cases regretted that now. These fragments hardly even started to piece a life together, especially if you gave any credence to Christian Noble’s belief. Humpty Dumpty in the afterlife, I found myself thinking, an image that enraged me as much as the solitary woman did, not least because I was sure she believed the ideas I couldn’t evict from my brain. Perhaps the way to combat them was to confront her, and I searched for thoughts that might mean more to her than she would like. My parents had brought me up in the faith he’d adopted, but this didn’t seem to bother her. Neither of my parents had doubted at the end or sought solace elsewhere, but her wide-eyed face stayed uncommunicatively neutral. In his last hours he’d asked me to pray for him, and I was certain everybody here would, an observation I directed straight at her. When her gaze flickered aside from mine I didn’t have to think what to say next. “I’m sure we all wish my parents will be together for eternity,” I said, and the woman looked down at whatever her hands were doing, invisible to me. I stared hard at her on my way back to the front pew, but she didn’t raise her eyes or her head.

  “Thank you, D
ominic,” Father Harty said, “for gifting us those deeply personal insights into your father,” which left me wondering how much of this was exaggeration meant to compensate for a lack. He led prayers for the departed and for those left behind, petitioning not just to be heard but to be graciously heard. He blessed the coffin and swung a censer at it, and I felt more remote than ever from the ceremony, though I couldn’t help wishing with no conviction at all that his performance were able to fend off the likes of Christian Noble and his secret practices. Suppose, having learned that my father was dead, Noble used him as a warning to me?

  Once the undertaker’s men had plodded past us with the coffin, my family let me out of the pew. As we marched in slow motion along the aisle an organ played a thin tune, a hymn I couldn’t name. The woman at the back of the congregation blinked at the coffin before lowering her eyes again, and didn’t look at me when I stared at her. While the men loaded the hearse, the surviving Sheldrakes climbed into the limousine behind it. Toby strapped himself into one of the seats facing backwards and looked pensive. “I never cried.”

  “I expect you felt sad, though, didn’t you?” Lesley said.

  As he considered this I said “You shouldn’t make yourself feel what you don’t really feel. I’m sure grandad would want you to be true to yourself.”

  “Why do we need to be sad if he isn’t really gone?”

  I saw Lesley assume he had some notion of heaven in mind. Though I suspected he meant something else entirely, I couldn’t question him now. As the limousine crept after the hearse he watched the procession of cars we were leading, and I could have thought his view bordered on the regal, as if he felt he was observing his inferiors. Surely this came from riding in such a luxurious car, and I told myself my son was just an ordinary boy, or at least only a precocious one—that he could be made ordinary, at any rate.