Ancient Images

by Ramsey Campbell

  The woman in his arms nodded vigorously. "Feed the land and it will feed you."

  "Our way is to move on when the land wants to rest and dream, but the mass of men won't leave it alone. Man and the land used to respect each other, but now man pollutes the land, or he stakes his claim on it and then neglects it, or he cultivates it for food that will never feed anyone. There'll come a day when the earth demands more of man than it ever did when man knew what it wanted."

  Some of this made sense to Sandy, despite the phrasing. "Do you have somewhere in mind for yourselves?"

  "We found a place last week, but the people around it rose up against us," Enoch said. "Territory breeds violence."

  They had reached the woman's vehicle, a van painted with sunbursts around the headlamps, clouds on the sides. Immediately the woman who was driving halted to let her and the child climb in, the police car that was following began to blare its horn. "Lo and behold," Enoch said. "Everywhere is someone's territory where we aren't welcome."

  "There must be people who have some sympathy for you."

  "Find me them," Enoch challenged, and strode back alongside the convoy. "People hate us for showing them what's wrong with their lives, like being made to live where the state decrees, and living too close together, and being scared someone else will steal what they've got, and having their family come apart around them but not daring to work out a different kind of family life."

  Sandy wondered if the whole convoy used his words as the woman had. "Man is as savage as he ever was," Enoch was saying. "Violence used to be necessary, it used to be part of the relationship between man and the earth. Now it has lost its meaning it can only get worse."

  "It surely can't be that simple."

  "How can it mean anything when we know the Bomb can destroy the land and every one of us? What do you do?"

  He was asking what her profession was, she gathered, presumably to demonstrate that she couldn't refute his ideas. "I'm a film editor."

  He frowned at her, his hairy nostrils flaring. His frown felt like a change in the weather. "Then you're adding to the violence," he said sadly. "Making images of it doesn't take it out of people, not when you put it up in front of them in the dark like a god. That's just feeding the images and making them feed on themselves, and that gives them power. Soon they'll have nothing to do with humanity, they'll just be another power that gobbles up meaning and feeds people the opposite."

  "Come on, all films aren't violent."

  "All fiction is an act of violence." His words had almost the rhythm of a marching song. "It's all an act of revenge on the world by people who don't like it but haven't the strength to change it. It's a way of putting your own prejudices into other people's heads. Me and my folk, we've been made into a fiction, a scapegoat people think will carry away everything they hate if they can only get rid of us."

  "If you let yourself be interviewed," Sandy said, more to give herself a breathing space between his arguments than to persuade him, "mightn't that let the country see you as you are?"

  Enoch grunted and ducked his head bull-like toward her. "All they'd see is what they want to see. I've never watched films or television since I was old enough to walk away from them. They're both addictive drugs, and we've none of those here. We tell stories at night in the old way, stories the land and our dreams tell us. Anyone can add to the story and tell it again, and it belongs to us all. That's what films and the rest of those industries stole, the old stories we're rediscovering. They stole them and spoiled them so the tellers could pretend they were the property of just a few. Man can't resume his old relationship with the earth until we remember the tales that told the truth. We had a blueprint for living, and civilization tore it up."

  "I'd like to hear you tell those stories," Sandy said as a friendly farewell. He had led her to the front of the convoy, which had almost reached the crossroads. She gave him an apologetic smile to go with her remark, and turned to leave. Then she drew a breath that stung her nostrils. Beyond the relentless repetitive glare of the police car, a van from Metropolitan Television was waiting on the Cromer road. Directing the cameraman was one of the newsmen with whom she'd had the disagreement outside Boswell's office.

  He made to wave to Sandy, then tried to take the gesture back. Enoch had already noticed. He didn't even frown at her, he ignored her, which was as good as saying he'd known all the time she had meant to trick him. "I didn't even know they were here," Sandy protested. "I wasn't trying to soften you up."

  "None of my folk will talk to them," he muttered like thunder. "We won't be made into images for you to put in people's heads."

  She left him striding behind the police car, and stalked across the junction, past the television van. The newsman pretended not to know her until she came abreast of him. "Well done, Sandy," he murmured. "What have you got for us?"

  "My self-respect, and I'll keep it, thank you. I'm on leave, in case you didn't know. They don't want you to film them, and they're allowed to refuse, aren't they, even if you think it's for their own good?" By now she was at her car, and shouting. She climbed in and slammed the door and breathed hard until her rage subsided, and then she drove toward Cromer without looking back.

  ***

  Two hours later she drove out of a forest and up a long slope past a derelict zoo, and there was the sea beyond Cromer. A shoal of sunlight played on it, all the way to the sharp horizon. A breeze that felt like a memory of sand and cold salt water made her face tingle. The openness was such a relief after the crooked roads that she drank in the view for a minute or so before heading down into the narrow streets.

  The crowds in the town were so brightly dressed and so variously sunned that they looked almost cartoonish. Families nudged one another off the pavements outside shops dangling red-cheeked postcards and sprouting bunches of plastic buckets, inflated ducks, wrinkled pink lifebelts. Side streets were flagged with signs: Fish 'not' Chips, Tea and Staff o' Life, Hotel de Paris… She thought it best to head for the esplanade, where tall slender hotels overlooked bathing cabins and the pier. The first hotel she walked into had a vacant room.

  She checked in and went onto the pier, where the pavilion was advertising Valentine the Vampire: a Show for All the Family. Tommy Hoddle's name had been forced almost to the bottom of the posters by photographs of a comedian and of the male and female leads, none of whom meant much to Sandy. He wasn't in the theater, the girl in the box office told her, and wouldn't be until his makeup call. The best the manager could offer was a ticket for the evening performance and the possibility of interviewing Tommy Hoddle afterward. Sandy thanked him and wondered where the actor might be now. "He always walks as far as he can and be sure of getting back on time," the manager said. "He might be on the cliffs or on the beach."

  "Do you happen to know what he's wearing?" The manager shrugged. "The usual sort of thing." Sandy had an incongruous vision of him wearing a policeman's uniform, which Hoddle and Bingo had always worn in films-a vision of him wandering the beach like a sad clown searching for his mate. She stood on the pier and scrutinized the coast in case she might recognize him. Children marked out territories with sandcastles near their supine parents; a dog that looked starved went scrabbling up the cliff near her hotel. She could see nobody by himself on the beach or the cliff. She returned to the hotel, to use the phone in her room.

  Roger didn't answer for a while, and then he said only, "Yeah, hold on." His preoccupation deserted him as soon as he heard her voice. "Hi, Sandy! Where have you got to?"

  "I'm taking the sea air in the jewel of the Norfolk coast," she said, quoting the sign she'd passed on the road into the town. "I've tracked down half of the comic relief in the film and I hope to meet him later. How are things with you?"

  "The book's growing, coming along fine, I think, despite whichever of my neighbors can't keep their pets under control. Listen, I've some news you'll want to hear. Stilwell is going to have to eat his words. I've got part of the movie he said never existe
d."

  "Where did you find it? How much have you got?"

  "Well, ah, just a couple of frames. But they're consecutive shots, Karloff on a tower and Lugosi looking up. I'll stake my reputation that they're not from any other movie. I only wish I had more footage, say a complete scene. It would prove to the world that Graham was right all along. Toby found these frames at the flat, and there was a witness to confirm he did."

  "What made him go back?"

  "He was moving out the bed now that he's got a new place of his own. I guess he wanted a memento he'd shared with Graham. The guy who was helping him noticed something caught under the door near the hinges. Toby says he's not surprised the cops overlooked it, it must have had to work itself loose before anyone could see it. I guess these frames are from the end of a reel. Whoever stole the film from Graham must have caught the end in the door and ripped this piece loose, the way it's chewed up. Hell of a way for anyone who's supposed to care about movies to behave, even a thief."

  "It is, isn't it?" Sandy was trying to find words for the uneasiness it made her feel when Roger said, "Toby tried to contact you at Metropolitan before he called me, and he says someone there wants to talk to you."

  No doubt a rebuke for her bahavior at the crossroads was awaiting her. It could wait, she thought, and said "Do you want to read Graham's list to me while I've some time to spare? I promise to guard it with my life."

  "Sure, so long as having it doesn't stop you calling." He dictated the list to her. "You're in Birmingham tomorrow, right? I made you an appointment the day after, in Wordsworth country, near Keswick. Charlie Miles, the set designer. Graham didn't trace him, but I managed to. Sounds crotchety but talkative."

  "Well done, armchair hunter."

  "The day after that I can probably meet you if you want me to, if you let me know where you'll be."

  "I will. Here's something for you to ponder until we meet again. Harry Manners and Denzil Eames both gave me material relating to the film, including a film magazine called Picture Pictorial, and do you know who was attacking the film before it was even completed? None other than our friend Leonard Stilwell."

  "Jesus, that's strange. What's behind all this, do you think? I'll see what I can find out here."

  "Don't go getting yourself badly reviewed."

  "You wouldn't deny me a taste of the thrill of the chase."

  "I'll have to remember that turns you on."

  She might have said more, but she felt inexplicably constrained, as if their conversation were being overheard. She copied down the details of her appointment in Keswick, and said goodbye to Roger with a kiss that felt clammy in the mouthpiece. She tried to call several addresses further north, with so little success that she began to think she was misdialing: perhaps she needed to unwind after her journey. Shouldering her handbag, she strolled down to the promenade and sat on a bench to examine what Denzil Eames had given her.

  After glancing through F. X. Faversham's book, she dropped it back in her handbag. The ornate Victorian style of writing seemed too much like hard work just now, and besides, Eames had said that the film had little to do with the original story. Instead she unfolded Spence's notes.

  The large wry handwriting proved easy to decipher once she identified several of the letters, but all it seemed to let her know was that the notes were random ideas rather than the products of research. "Man killed while building tower… his accidental death dedicates it to some pagan god… biblical parallels (Babel; others?)… demands sacrifice…" Much of the notes concerned Lord Belvedere, apparently the Karloff character: "… haughty, strutting, vainglorious, impervious to argument, chauvinistic, unyielding…" After more of this, written at such speed that some of the letters had torn the paper, Spence had tried his hand at dialogue: "Belvedere: You are trespassing in what you say. Never dare to question an Englishman's title to his land. Do not judge my country by the savagery of yours.

  "Gregor: Can't you see that your denial lets it grow stronger? Truth is our only weapon against that which has been buried but not destroyed. While you deny the blood your ancestors caused to be shed, it will have blood."

  A breeze prowled through the grass on the cliff, and a shiver took Sandy by surprise. She wondered if Eames had paraphrased the dialogue or hadn't bothered to incorporate it in the film. There seemed to be an insight lurking behind her thoughts, but it wouldn't emerge into the light of her mind. She took out the musty book and glanced at "The Lofty Place." Yes, the character was called Lord Belvedere; Gregor had been added to expand the tale to feature length, of course. She closed the book and gazed out at the leisurely unraveling of the waves. That helped her relax, but she was still feeling dissatisfied and thick when it was time to return to the hotel.

  She ate Cromer crab at a table set for one in the dining room that overlooked the beach, which was almost deserted now. Before long she had to stop herself trying to creep up on the idea that was staying stubbornly out of reach. She kept thinking the waves looked like a shape that reared up and crouched, slithered on its belly along the glistening sand, reared up again closer to her. She was tempted to order another half-bottle of Chablis, but decided that the show at the end of the pier might be what her nerves needed. She drank a token cup of coffee and strolled out of the hotel.

  ***

  The evening was reawakening. Couples promenaded arm-in-arm above the beach, wheelchairs squeaked. Close to the pier a back street jangled with pinballs and tenpenny rides. In the twilight the inflated beach toys that hung in bunches outside shops looked like huge strange vegetables. Families were hurrying down the zigzag ramp that de scended from the esplanade. She joined the queue as it began to clatter onto the pier.

  The manager was standing in the doorway of the pavilion, rocking on his heels and bowing to the audience as they filed in. He saw Sandy, and slapped his brilliantined scalp. "Tommy Hoddle. I forgot to mention you to him. I'll have a word with him before the final curtain."

  The auditorium was almost full, of at least as many children as adults. Sandy's seat was on the aisle, close to the exit. In the row ahead of her a small boy was licking a green ice lolly whose wrapper showed a vampire with his hair slicked back. Nearer the stage, a little girl was clutching a gray doll with a boxy head and bolts protruding from either side of its neck. As Sandy noticed those, the lights went out.

  The curtain rose to reveal two headscarved women chattering over a garden fence, complaining about newcomers to their village. Only that morning the man with the pizza wagon had offered one of them a bite of his big salami (hoots of shocked mirth from a party of old ladies), and what about the family who'd bought the old house on the hill and who never came out in the daytime? They even sent their little boy to night school. "It'd drive me bats to live like that," one woman crowed, to a few knowing groans from the audience.

  The woman carried on in that vein for a few minutes, the dialogue not merely begging for laughs but cocking its leg as well, and then the spotlight beam which denoted the sun dropped like a stone. Children in the audience began to murmur and stir. "It's all right, they're friendly vampires," a mother behind Sandy whispered. "The little boy saves everyone when there's a flood at the end. He turns into a bat and flies to get help."

  The women at the fence peered into the wings and fled as the family appeared, a cloaked man who intoned "Good evening" in a deep indeterminately foreign voice, a hooded woman wheeling a pram shaped like a coffin and shaking a rattle made of bloodshot eyes, and finally a diminutive comedian wearing a cloak and short trousers, who was greeted with applause and cheers. They sang a song, "Flit- tery Flappery Floo," and then complained of a smell of garlic and retreated offstage to make way for the pizza wagon, whose proprietor sang "You can't-a have-a da pizza without-a you gotta da garlic" while Sandy considered walking on the beach until the curtain. What she thought might be the world's oldest young couple sang a tepid love duet, until the simpering fiancee pushed her beau away. "Behave yourself, here comes my father," she said as
the band struck up the theme from a television series about the police. It could only be announcing Tommy Hoddle, and Sandy sat forward to watch.

  He backed onto the stage, stooped over as though the lantern in his hand were bending him. His policeman's helmet was too large, his jacket and trousers were absurdly small, exposing his bony wrists and ankles. The jump he gave as he pretended to notice the audience made her think of a grandfather trying to entertain youngsters. He pushed up his helmet, which had slipped even lower, and goggled at them.

  His downturned mouth was so wide it might almost have been painted on. His eyes seemed larger and more prominent than they had in the one film of his and his fat partner's that she'd seen. He cupped his ear until someone in the front row shouted "Boo," and then he nearly fell over backward. "He's just pretending," the mother whispered behind Sandy, for his panic was so convincing it was barely funny. Even the reappearance of the two gossips came as a relief.

  He had to go up to the house on the hill, they cried, and find out what them foreigners were up to. They scattered as the diminutive vampire came onstage to sing "I'm just a little bats today." A blackout made him vanish, a rubber bat swooped across the stage, and the lights came up for the first interval.

  The next act began with Tommy Hoddle in front of the curtain, dressed as a scoutmaster and singing "With me little peg and hammer in me hand" in a high occasionally shaky voice. No doubt the tent pegs were meant to come in handy later on as stakes. An owl hooted onstage, and he took refuge in the wings while the curtain rose to display the vampires' front room, mirrors turned to the wall, a coffin by the fireplace, false fangs in a glass on the mantelpiece, the midget vampire playing with a tarantula doll. "Don't let him go on there or you'll wake granny," his mother said, indicating the coffin, and glided away to answer the doorbell. She came back followed timidly by Tommy Hoddle, and offered him a drink. "See if you can dig up your father, wherever he is," she said to her boy, and they left Hoddle alone.