Born To The Dark

by Ramsey Campbell

  I was thrown by having failed to notice that the serpentine body was equipped with rudimentary limbs—hands, at any rate, or else bunches of tendrils that sprouted at irregular intervals along its length. “I wouldn’t mind showing Lesley as well,” I said.

  I’d begun to think that my experience in the sleeping room had left me attuned to the wrongness of the house, if Jim was less susceptible, perhaps that mightn’t be altogether negative, though I wondered how he would react when he laid a hand on the carving. “What’s next?” was all he said as he left it on the dresser.

  Darkness paced behind us as the flashlight beam closed around the knob on the door at the end of the corridor. At least the doorknob was as solid as it looked. The large kitchen recalled a bygone era—the sink composed of the same ponderous grey stone as the working surfaces supported by tiers of drawers, the massive oaken table scarred by knives, the imposing range and oven of black iron. Jim was following me into the room when something darted across the flagged floor to vanish into the furthest corner. “What was that?” I blurted. “Did you see?”

  “Too big for a mouse. It must have been a rat or something like.” I would have said very little like. Perhaps it could have been a snake, though on the basis of my glimpse a decidedly deformed one, too variously swollen to fit through the small hole in the skirting-board. I was left with a disagreeable impression that it had thinned and elongated like a worm in order to pass through. “It didn’t look anything like that to me, Jim.”

  “No need to keep trying to persuade me things aren’t right.” As I tried to think how I could do so less obtrusively he said “I can see they aren’t, and I’ll help you convince your wife if you like.”

  “I’d appreciate it.” Just the same, I was starting to wonder if I’d been too ready to welcome his relative lack of perceptiveness—if it could endanger him. “Have we seen enough in here, then?” I said.

  “I want to see it all,” Jim said and set about opening drawers and cupboards. I didn’t know whether I was more hopeful or afraid that he might disturb some occupant, but all of them were empty of significance. A door I’d taken to belong to the largest cupboard led to a pantry equipped with bare stone shelves and a towering refrigerator, which contained just a half-eaten rotten apple like a joke neither of us grasped. “Time we went upstairs,” Jim said.

  The darkness in the corridor fell back towards the lobby as I poked it with the flashlight beam, and I did my best to think it wasn’t loitering more than it should. I was also trying not to wonder what might have driven the Nobles out of the house, but I was distracted by realising I’d overlooked a room I ought to have remembered—the room where Toby had spent time while Lesley and I talked to Phoebe Sweet. I found the door with the flashlight beam and shoved it wide.

  All the toys and books and games I’d seen last time were gone, along with a child-sized desk and a table that had been covered with crayons and paints and paper. The grimy daylight made the room look abandoned, and by no means recently. I was about to turn away when I saw that the bookshelves in the dimmest corner weren’t entirely bare. A book lay sprawled on the lowest shelf—a fractured copy of Peter Pan in a tattered jacket. It might well have been the copy Toby had been reading, which was why I leafed through it. Surely he couldn’t have been responsible for altering the illustrations, but the eyes of every airborne child had been enlarged and filled in with black ink.

  Somehow they didn’t look as vacant as they should, and I was peering into the depths of a pair of voided eyes when Jim glanced over my shoulder. “Kids these days don’t respect books the way we used to,” he said.

  I could see no point in trying to persuade him that the changes represented worse than vandalism. I shut up Peter Pan’s expanded eyes and dropped the book on a shelf with a hollow clunk like the fall of a lid. Leaving the door wide didn’t lighten the corridor much, and the lobby was so dim that I wondered if the front door had closed by itself. It was as open as we’d left it, and once we reached the stairs I switched off the flashlight to conserve the batteries. The nearest window lit the upper flights of stairs or at any rate made them dimly visible, but I had to use the flashlight in the left-hand corridor upstairs. Off the corridor we found room after room denuded of furniture, where the only decorations were cobwebs in the corners, inhabited by bloated leggy denizens I preferred to leave unscrutinised. Up here the windows seemed to welcome very little daylight, and I’d begun to think that they weren’t darkened on the outside after all—that the panes looked infested with murk. Jim confronted the rooms with growing disfavour. “They had to live somewhere,” he complained. “They must have been on the other side of the house.” I could have added that whoever had given the Nobles the house might have been trying to leave no sign of themselves. Even the bathroom at the far end of the corridor was as bare as the white-tiled walls. Someone’s footstep dislodged a dangling drop of water from a brass tap above the metal bath, and I had a sense that it was lingering to hover in the air, as though time had begun to congeal. As I made to draw Jim’s attention to the phenomenon, the drop struck the bath and trickled down the plughole with a gurgle shrill enough for mirth. Did Jim notice anything untoward? He squinted at the bath before saying “Nothing here.”

  The windowless gallery over the front entrance connected the tops of the staircases and extended to the upper corridors. As we crossed it I could have fancied we were passing above an abyss. Certainly the light from the door we’d left open barely relieved the darkness; in fact, I wasn’t sure I was seeing light down there at all. Although a bathroom was visible along the right-hand corridor, it left the passage stubbornly dark. The gloom below us troubled me enough that I dodged down the stairs. “Where are you going, Dom?” Jim said as if he was determined not to be concerned.

  I gripped the banister while I craned over to be sure what I was seeing. “The door’s shut. The front door.”

  “No point in bothering about it now. Let’s finish up here and then go down.”

  “But we left it open all the way. I know we did.”

  “It’s an old house, Dom. Doors can shut by themselves. It’s most likely subsidence.”

  I was afraid he was being too rational—too resolved to overlook the ominous. His explanation left me with an unhappy fancy that the house had tilted, allowing the door to creep shut. It infected me with vertigo, and I kept hold of the banister while I took a long breath. When my head steadied—a sensation unpleasantly reminiscent of my return to myself in the sleeping room—I shoved myself away from the banister and made for the corridor.

  I roused a shape that advanced to greet me and Jim—my image in the bathroom mirror. I didn’t immediately recognise myself, because I appeared to be lost in the midst of a swarm that was hovering in the mirror. No doubt the mass of particles consisted of dust on the surface, multiplied by its reflection that made it seem to extend far into the glassy depths. I retrieved my mind from trying to distinguish patterns in the swarm, which I could easily have thought was restless, and lit up the nearest door with the flashlight. The doorknob stayed as solid as it looked while I opened the door.

  It revealed a bedroom, if not much of one. A black wardrobe yawned the length of a wall opposite a bed with an unclothed mattress. Flanking the window were a chest of drawers and a dressing-table topped by a triple mirror. I didn’t care much for the sight of myself multiplied by three—it put me in mind of Christian Noble’s beliefs—but otherwise the room looked unthreatening enough, and I made for the chest of drawers. When I opened the first one it exuded a scent suggestive of decaying flowers, and I told myself the small discoloured misshapen bag squashed into a corner was an abandoned sachet, despite its toadlike appearance. I wasn’t about to try picking it up—at second glance it resembled a fungus, not least in the way it had started to quiver—and I hastened to shut the drawer. All the rest were empty, and I looked around to find Jim at the window. “Insects,” he said.

  I had to lean close to the window, because the panes l
ooked stained, and not even on the surface. By straining my eyes I was able to make out some activity above the mounds in the grass, surely the swarming of ants, though it reminded me of the patterns I’d imagined in the bathroom mirror. “I expect the heat’s bringing them out,” Jim said.

  I wouldn’t have called the day hot or especially sunlit either. I supposed that needn’t mean the swarms weren’t ants, however dark and solid the hectic masses had begun to look. In some ways I was glad to turn my back on them, so swiftly that it revived my vertigo, and I could have thought my surroundings tilted a fraction. Jim shook his head, but before I could ask why, he was heading for the corridor. “Nothing here either,” he said.

  I felt it wasn’t wise to separate, and hurried after him to the next bedroom. I could almost have imagine that the house had started to play tricks, because the room resembled the one we’d just left far too much: stripped bed, black yawning wardrobe, chest of drawers shut tight, triptych of mirrors conjuring a trinity made up of me. As Jim began to pull out drawers, which creaked like a tree, I couldn’t help searching for details to prove the room was its own self. I was reminded of puzzles where you had to spot the differences between a pair of apparently identical pictures printed side by side. The memory felt capable of reviving more of my childhood, and I was trying to ensure it didn’t bring back any childish weakness when I saw something was wrong with the bed. As I stooped to examine the bare mattress the sight turned my mouth dry. “What have you found, Dom?” Jim said, having finished his unproductive search.

  “I hope I’m wrong, but look.”

  He joined me in staring at the marks near the upper corners of the mattress, two sets of five scratches that had dug so deep they’d torn the fabric “Say what you’re thinking,” he said low.

  “Whoever slept here must have made those. I think Bobby might have.”

  “Those bastards. If I find out they did that to her…” More like a policeman he said “Or anyone else, for that matter.”

  “Are you going to be able to make it official?”

  “We’ll have to see about that, Dom.”

  I left the flashlight off as we made for a second bathroom, even though the grudging sunshine beyond the doorway was reluctant to illuminate the corridor. I was preoccupied with the mirror, which wasn’t covered with dust after all. I would have liked to think some effect of the light had produced the illusion of swarming, but could this explain what I was seeing now? My reflection and Jim’s at my back looked more distant than they ought to, and somehow less than wholly related to us. In fact, as we advanced I had the impression that they were inching surreptitiously backwards, as if the mirror was drawing them in while enticing us towards them. When Jim’s face set in a grimace that looked like a bid to fend off confusion I risked asking “What are you seeing there, Jim?”

  “Exactly what’s there. The two of us.”

  “Do you think something’s wrong with us?”

  “No, just with this place.” As I made to follow this up he said “We’ll talk about it later.”

  I thought it best not to aggravate any unease he was experiencing. I led the way into the bathroom as our reflections edged stealthily back, a sight that seemed to threaten a loss of all sense of direction if not of how space worked. I could see no trace in the room of anyone who had lived in the house. One item caught my eye—a murky drop of water, which appeared to be suspended in the air between a tap and the extravagant stone sink. I’d begun to think I needed to remember how to breathe by the time it fell, exploding on the sink with an impact that looked as slowed down as the sluggish sound. The plughole downed the trickle with a shrill noise that I told myself sounded nothing like a giggle, however much it resembled the one I’d heard in the other bathroom. “Let’s move on,” Jim said.

  I took him to be saying that the bathroom contained nothing to delay us. His tone suggested no more than that, and I had to hope the lethargy that appeared to have overtaken the room wouldn’t infect us. As we turned towards the corridor I had a sense that our reflections took significantly longer to move than we did, and couldn’t help fearing they might detain us somehow. I switched on the flashlight in case this could fend off the threat, and regretted glancing towards the bathroom. There was no sign of the beam in the mirror, which showed just our dim distant silhouettes rendered more insignificant by the dark frame of the corridor. I trained the beam on the doorknob Jim was reaching for, and wasn’t certain if I saw him hesitate before he twisted it and flung the door wide.

  It belonged to the largest bedroom, in which a pair of empty wardrobes gaped at an immense bed. Three figures moved in unison to confront me with their doubtful faces until I turned aside from the mirrors and let Jim search all the drawers while I scrutinised the mattress. I had plenty to show him by the time he admitted defeat, but I had to swallow in order to say “They were here.”

  The bed was sufficiently broad to accommodate several people, even at arms’ length. I could see where two of them had planted their outstretched hands, digging their fingers into the mattress. It was equally clear that a smaller sleeper had lain between the adults, gripping the surface of the mattress, and not only with its little hands. “My God, how sick is that?”

  Jim said. “I ought to have believed you sooner, Dom. Whatever’s gone on here, it’s worse than wrong.”

  There was one more upstairs room. Despite being smaller and darker than any of the bedrooms, it was too large for its contents—just a sizeable desk and a chair. The chair faced away from the view of the grounds, which suggested to me that whoever used to sit at the desk had been indifferent to the world. Was condensation obscuring the view? It looked as if the murk that blurred the window was inside the glass, giving it an unpleasantly gelatinous appearance. The desk was bare except for three exercise books, and I was disconcerted to feel that I recognised them. As I made for the desk I didn’t know if I wanted to be right or absurdly deluded. I threw back the cover of the topmost book, to be confronted by handwriting I couldn’t mistake.

  I was nowhere near dealing with the implications of the sight when Jim came over. He frowned at the page for some moments before saying “That looks like your writing used to when we were at school.”

  “That’s because it is mine. It’s the copy I made of Christian Noble’s journal.”

  Jim turned his frown on me. “How did it get here, Dom?”

  “Our son took it. I’m sure Noble made him.” Admitting all this let me say “I can understand that, but I don’t understand why Noble’s left it now.”

  I hardly knew what explanation I was seeking as I leafed through the book, unless I had a vague idea that Christian Noble might have added to the text. Someone had. All those years ago I’d left the final pages blank, having transcribed his entire journal, but now the first of them bore words—just a single unfinished sentence written in a childish but painstaking script. What we behold we s, it said, and its conclusion put me in mind of a reptilian hiss.

  As I wondered what might have driven the Nobles out of the house before the writer could complete the sentence, Jim said “That wasn’t you, Dom, was it?”

  “I think his grandson may have written it.”

  “You mean the swine dictated it to a child of how old?”

  “Unless it’s worse than that. I think Toph, that’s his grandson, may have thought it himself.”

  Jim’s dismay lingered in the look he gave me, but I wasn’t sure if it applied to the notion or to me. He went through the drawers of the desk, and I found I couldn’t breathe much until he’d finished, despite hearing no activity inside them. I’ll bring these,” he said and picked up the exercise books. “I think we’ve seen everything that matters.”

  I remembered how my plan to bring evidence away from the Trinity Church of the Spirit had fallen out, but surely the books were no danger to us. I felt rather more threatened by realising that I couldn’t recall much of the layout of the house, as if the relentless gloom had dimmed my mind too. Jim loi
tered long enough to rouse my nerves before he said “Fair enough, let’s get out. I don’t like it any more than you do.”

  Just now I didn’t want him to be any more explicit. I was first out of the room, mostly to ensure the flashlight led the way. Despite the time of day, the space beyond the corridor appeared to have grown darker. As I hurried downstairs with Jim at my back, a colossal elongated shape rose from the floor of the lobby to pace us on its myriad limbs—the shadow of the banister, bigger and vaguer than before. It vanished as we turned the bend in the stairs, and then its leggy relative accompanied us, growing smaller and more solid to await us. I tried to ignore its stealthy activity while I concentrated on the front door.

  Even when I trained the flashlight on it, the door was barely distinguishable from the panelled wall. Indeed, I could have thought the wall was doorless, not to say unrelieved black. I could locate the door only by knowing where it had to be, surely where I remembered it as being. I stumbled off the bottom stair to advance through the gloom while the flashlight beam shrank, growing reluctantly brighter. If I could just find the doorknob—The nervous light wavered over the panels and set about wandering across the wall until I brought it back, rousing an unsteady shadow. It was too vague or else too shaky to have much of a shape, but it had to belong to an object protruding from the door. I used both hands to direct the beam until the shadow merged with its source, and I could have imagined it was adding to the substance of the metal object— surely not undermining it, at any rate. As soon as it sent me a tentative gleam I hurried to grab the doorknob like a lifeline. It quivered visibly, surely because I was holding the flashlight in the wrong hand. I was about to give Jim the flashlight so that I could use both hands to turn the knob when it yielded, and I stumbled backwards as the door swung wide.