Ancient Images

by Ramsey Campbell

  "We came in one morning after the studio had been unattended overnight and found an entire set scattered to the winds. It must have taken hours of vandalism, yet nobody who lived nearby would admit to having heard anything. One chap insisted that the studio had been entirely dark. So Giles hired another night watchman and we tried to get on with the job and keep Giles's spirits up."

  "Things were getting to him?"

  "Alas. He banned all visitors-a pity the long-nosed fellow whose interview you have there had already been and gone-but he still kept behaving as if there were intruders while he was shooting. More than once he called a cut halfway through a take because he was convinced someone had looked out of a window on camera. Perhaps the nervousness he infected us with added to the atmosphere of the film. Still, I was quite relieved when I'd finished my stint."

  "You weren't there for the whole film?"

  "No, I left during the last week, before some unhappy incident involving a stuntman. And as though all this weren't enough, the studios burnt down before another film could be commenced. After all that, I think justice demands that the film should be seen, though I hope you don't revive its devil's luck."

  "You don't believe in that, do you?"

  "My child, every actor does. Why do you think we don't name the Scottish play? As for Giles's film, what with the director and producers dying shortly after it was completed, and the studios destroyed-well, you might even wonder what it had to do with your friend's death."

  "I might not."

  "The mouth, the mouth." He slapped himself across the lips. "I didn't mean to upset you, nor to deter you from your search. Please, if all this clucking isn't ruining your nerves, let me buy you another drink."

  Sandy sipped her ale while he downed several large Scotches. She drove him home, where he insisted on making her a coffee and showing her an enormous scrapbook of posters bearing his name. She hadn't the heart to rush away, though soon it would be the peak hour on the motorway to Cambridge, her next destination. She had to convince him that his remark about Graham hadn't upset her before he would let her leave. "May the ghosts of the film help you search," he said as she started the car.

  By the time she reached the motorway, his comment about Graham no longer upset her so much as it angered her. Graham had died because he'd been chasing a thief and hadn't realized he was too exhausted to repeat the jump he had achieved once, she told herself. To suggest anything else demeaned his memory to the level of a cheap horror film. "Bloody nonsense," she growled, treading hard on the accelerator to overtake two lanes of lorries, and her anger made her face so hot she had to spit it out. "I'd like to see anything that would have dared do that to him."

  The motorway ahead was clear. She swung into the middle lane and then into the inner, above a bank that sloped to a hedge bordering a cornfield. Then she braked and almost swerved, thinking that a crouching shape had darted away from the hedge and up the bank. She made herself regain speed for the sake of the traffic behind her, but as soon as she reached a service area she stopped for several cups of coffee. The ale at the Crooked Billet must have been stronger than she'd realized. She'd thought that before she had lost sight of it the shape beside the motorway had raced the length of the field, faster than her car.

  Sandy booked into a hotel on the outskirts of Cambridge, only to discover that none of the bedrooms had phones. She couldn't face driving around Cambridge in the rush hour to find a hotel that was better equipped. She was hoping Denzil Eames wouldn't mind if she met him an hour or so later than they had agreed, to give herself time for a rest before dinner. She went down to the small russet lobby, where the receptionist was reading an Andrew Minihin novel with a gouged eye embossed on the cover, and stood under the porous helmet of the phone booth. She opened her handbag, and groaned and struck her forehead. She'd left the list of names in Roger's flat.

  "Silly bitch," she hissed at herself. She must have overlooked it in her haste to leave before the temptation to stay grew irresistible. At least Denzil Eames was listed in the directory beneath the phone. She growled at herself while his phone rang, and sucked her lips between her teeth as she heard the hasty clatter of a receiver. "What is it now?" a voice shrilled. "Who's there?"

  It sounded sexless with age. He'd been querulous when she had called him from Roger's, but not like this. "It's Sandy Allan, Mr. Eames," she said. "I'm to visit you this evening."

  "Who? Oh, oh, to talk about that cursed film. Let it stay buried. I don't want to be reminded of it, I've decided. Nothing more to say."

  "But this morning you told me you were pleased with your work on it. Couldn't we at least-was

  "Not tonight. I need my sleep. Call me tomorrow if you must, but don't be too hopeful," he quavered, and cut her off.

  "Well, there you go, if that's how you feel," Sandy said. Could Stilwell's comments in the Daily Friend have reached him since this morning and changed his mind? Might someone from Gorehound have traced his name and address and pestered him? More likely he was just acting his age. Frustration, mostly with herself, made her dig in her purse again for the cost of a long-distance call.

  When Roger heard her voice he said, "Your list. My fault for distracting you. I tried to call you at home as soon as I realized, but you must have been on the road."

  "I shouldn't have wanted to do without the distraction."

  "That's good to hear. Me neither. Did you get to Harry Manners at least?"

  "He's a sweetie, but he hasn't got the film."

  "Shall I read you the whole list? It's been here by the phone just waiting for your call."

  "Hold on." She found her pen and diary, and had to feed the phone again. "Here I am."

  "Are there any you already have? Hang on, what's that?"

  "I didn't say anything," Sandy told him, but the sudden silence at the other end made her realize he hadn't meant her. The sharp quick rattling was the sound of curtain rings on the rail above his desk, she thought, just as he said, "It couldn't have been anything. I thought someone was tapping on the window."

  "I wish I were, right now. You needn't give me details for Newark or Birmingham, I've already put those in my diary."

  "Okay, let's see. Hungry little bugger, isn't it?" he said as the phone began to cry for more coins. When Sandy had fed it he said, "Why don't I call you back?"

  "Because I'm looking at a sign that says this phone does not accept incoming calls."

  "Well, how about this? Suppose you give yourself a break while I call some of these numbers and see if I can set up interviews for you? Your phone there doesn't sound too ideal. I can use the excuse to take time off from this chapter."

  "And I can phone you tomorrow from a better hotel, I hope."

  "Fine. You have a good evening and don't be too lonely."

  "Keep your fly zipped for me," Sandy said, earning herself a shocked look from the receptionist.

  Later, when she took her place among half a dozen sales representatives in the dining room that smelled of plastic bouquets and surreptitious cigarettes, she saw the receptionist whispering about her to the waitress, who was trying to rub nicotine off her fingers with a napkin. Sandy chose the plainest course on the menu for safety, but something on the plate of fatty beef managed to taste of garlic from another course. "This should curb my sex life," she remarked to the waitress, who fled.

  In the bar, where concealed lighting flared over paintings so that they appeared to sink into the shadows of their frames, the only unoccupied seat was at a table with two young salesmen, both of whom immediately bought her a drink. She chatted with them until it became abruptly clear that they both expected to join her in her room. "I'm a one-man woman," she said happily.

  "Don't knock it till you've tried it," said the salesman with gold teeth, and his plump pale friend, whose smile was growing wet and loose, told her, "You only say that because you've never tried it from both ends at once."

  "I've never tried catching AIDS, either," Sandy said into a pause in the Muza
k. She left them staring after her and muttering blame at each other. The barmaid, who had overheard her, was scurrying up and down the bar like an animal in a trap, impatient to be out to tell her colleagues what she'd heard. "I hope I get a discount for providing the entertainment," Sandy said, and made the barmaid gape.

  The lift-was about the size of a large telephone box. It raised Sandy to the upper corridor, which was papered brown as the carpet. She glanced back from her door to confirm that nobody had followed her. At least the room had a bathroom attached, and she didn't need to venture further until tomorrow. She kicked off her shoes and upended the pillows against the headboard, then she sat back on the brown quilt of the narrow bed and opened Picture Pictorial.

  It fell open at a photograph of Karloff and Lugosi. They were sitting in canvas chairs and drinking tea from bell- shaped china cups. They looked oddly uncomfortable, taken unawares by the camera or by whatever might just have been said. In the background a tall man with a long oval face and a thin black mustache was frowning at the camera. The caption-"The monsters take a break while their director clocks them"-didn't seem quite to fit the image. OUR MAN WITH THE NOTEBOOK SAYS "BOO!" TO THE BOGEY-MEN was the title beneath the caption, and Sandy read on.

  "When I find Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi on the set of their first British film they are singing a duet. 'D'ye ken John Peel?' they demand while Karloff murders a piano. I think this must be how monsters carry on between scenes, but it turns out it is part of the film. The bogey-men must want to prove there's more to them than scaring children. Readers, judge for yourselves.

  "I am given lunch with the 'orrible pair. Karloff eats like the lorry-driver he used to be; Lugosi's portion looks red enough to put me off my food…"

  Sandy groaned and wondered how much more of the article the writer had simply made up.

  "I am meant to understand that the interview is a rare privilege, because 'Mr. Lugosi does not usually give interviews.' Perhaps that means whoever normally handles his publicity has enough sense to refuse on his behalf.

  "Lugosi doesn't want to talk about horror or the way his films may warp the minds of the impressionable. When I ask about his film The Island of Lost Souls, which was so objectionable it was banned in Britain (and Mr. H. G. Wells, who wrote the original novel, was in favour of the ban), all Lugosi does is wonder if Mr. Wells' novel should have been banned too. He wants me to know how much he enjoyed watching a soccer match near the studio, but I hope no children were there. He tells me how sad he was to have to leave his dogs in quarantine when he came to England. He offers me an expensive cigar and asks if I have seen any of his comedies. In International House he keeps bumping into W. C. Fields, and in Hollywood on Parade he leers over Betty Boop's throat and slavers 'Boop, you have booped your last boop.' Screamingly funny, don't you think? 'I want to make ze ow-di-yence laugh,' he rumbles as if he can frighten us into laughing. 'I vish you had seen me play Rooh-meo,' he says, but since that was on stage in Hungarian, I think Shakespeare may rest in peace.

  "Karloff is proud to be monstrous. He calls Frankenstein 'my monster.' He got the monster role when the producer laughed at Lugosi's screen test, and I gather there is no love lost between the bogeys. Both fee-faw-fums seem to feel they are badly done to. Karloff thinks the monster should never have spoken (and parents of children may feel the same about Karloff); Lugosi complains that in the sequel to Dracula his part was played by a wax dummy. Perhaps he is upset that nobody noticed. He won't confirm that he resents being paid half Karloff's fee on The Raven (the film that has outraged so many millions of English parents) for doing more work, but his eyes answer for him. In his last film before he 'went on relief,' he even had to play a character called Boroff. He seems particularly put out that in their 'Horror Boys from Hollywood' routine the Ritz Brothers burlesqued Laughton, Karloff, and Lorre, and didn't even think of him. If he and Karloff spend so much time complaining when they are in Hollywood, it is no wonder they have to come here to find work, though I understand the Daughters of the American Revolution are also waiting there to deal with them.

  "In this film Karloff plays a member of the English aristocracy whose land is haunted by his ancestors until Lugosi sees them off with some mumbo-jumbo. Hardly the kind of film a loyal Englishman would want to make, and would he need to import the 'orror boys if it was any good? I am reminded of the words of Mrs. Lindsey, the respected American journalist, in Log of the Good Ship Life: 'To take a child to see one of these Karloff and Bela Lugosi horrors is to outrage its nervous system and perhaps warp it for life. No child should ever be allowed to see one of them.' If our censor should be so ill-advised as to grant this film the new Horrorific certificate, I think we English can be trusted to treat it with the contempt it deserves. Back to your lairs, bugbears! We English subsist on more wholesome fare."

  "You ought to meet the staff of Gorehound," Sandy murmured. She hadn't realized that the outcry against horror films in the thirties had been so vicious. Karloff and Lugosi would be remembered long after the writer was forgotten, she thought, especially since he hadn't signed the article. She turned idly to the contents page, and felt her jaw drop. The writer's name was there in the table of contents, beneath the title of the article. His name was Leonard Stilwell.

  ***

  In the night Sandy was awakened by the feeling that someone was outside her door. Perhaps it was one of the salesmen, she thought drowsily, or one of the staff trying to hear if Sandy had company. At least the door had a strong lock and chain. Sandy lay waiting for whoever was out there to make a sound, until sleep began to edit her awareness. Just as sleep took over, she thought she heard a sound as if a body had lain down in the corridor, settling against the lower panels of the door.

  It must have been a dream, she told herself next morning, but it felt as if it was still beyond the door. She eased back the bolt, inched the door open as far as the length of the chain and peered around the edge. One of the salesmen who had accosted her was emerging from his room on the opposite side of the corridor. He stared at her and sniffed disapprovingly, so hard that his upper lip pouted. Apart from him and a smell of greasy breakfasts, the corridor was empty. A staleness about the smell made Sandy inclined to skip breakfast, except that avoiding the staff and the other guests would seem an admission of guilt. She closed the door and had a bath.

  The stale smell must have been in the corridor outside her room, but the breakfast was greasy enough. Gristly bacon was embedded in the white of the lukewarm egg. A sliced loaf of Staff o' Life bread was the most wholesome item on the table. She made do with bread and jam, and left the crowded watchful smoky room as soon as she had gulped two cups of instant coffee.

  She ducked under the telephone's helmet, and had hardly dialed when the receiver was snatched up. "Who's there?" demanded a voice almost as shrill as the pips.

  It sounded anything but promising, but at least she would have tried. "Mr. Eames?"

  "Is this the woman who called me last evening?"

  "I'm afraid so," Sandy mouthed, and said, "Yes, it is."

  "All right, let's get it over with. I've a lecture to prepare. How long will you be?"

  "I'll come now," Sandy said, so surprised that she wondered if he had mistaken her for someone else. "I can be there in half an hour."

  "That's as long as I can see you for, and less if you're late," he snapped, and rang off.

  The receptionist looked away quickly from watching. "Yes, it's another man," Sandy said, and went upstairs to pack. She noticed that the lower panels on the outside of her door looked scratched, which seemed typical of the shabbiness of the hotel. By the time she was out of the building, having waited for a remark that never quite escaped the receptionist's lips, she had forgotten the marks on the door.

  Cambridge was crowded. Students and gowned dons spilled off the thick pavements or queued outside coffee shops. Cyclists came flocking out of Jesus Lane, and Sandy missed her exit from the one-way system. She had to creep past Great St. Mary's C
hurch, outside which the striped awnings of a market had sprung up. This time around she was able to find Christ's Pieces, where tennis players darted and leaped in cages of wire netting. She parked opposite the green and climbed out of the car, kneading the back of her neck.

  A breeze wandered across Christ's Pieces, strewing a jingle of bicycle bells. The taut metronomic beat of tennis balls on rackets stumbled and regained its rhythm. Beyond the trees on the green the town looked petrified in the act of stretching spiny yellow pinnacles toward the sun that had scoured the sky. A clock began to chime, and then another, and they sent her running to the nearby side street where Eames lived.

  At first she thought he was the proprietor of a secondhand bookshop, who sidled swiftly out between two shelves of folios to ask what he could do for her. When she mentioned Eames he fluttered his long fingers at her and jerked his head at the dim ceiling, flourishing the tassel on the cap he wore. "Up there. Door next to my window. If he's gone out don't bother telling me. I've had all the rows with him I'm having over taking messages for him."

  She'd walked past Eames' door, whose grimy number was almost indistinguishable from the wood. She rang the bell and heard a distant rattle that made her think of a worn-out clockwork toy. After a minute or so she leaned on the button in case Eames was hard of hearing, and a window slammed open above her. "Just rein yourself back," Eames cried. "Shall I break my neck for you? Is that your idea of an interview?"

  The window slammed so hard that Sandy expected glass to splinter, and then there was a prolonged silence. She hadn't heard him on the stairs when the door wavered open, and he peered up at her. His head, which was almost bald and spotted with age, didn't reach her shoulder. His face made her think of a fruit squeezed colorless and dry; his white lips were puckered into an O that seemed disapproving. "Come up if you've anything to say," he snapped. "I won't be canvassed on my doorstep."