Edgeworth could only just hear Mary Barton’s voice, as if it was no longer directed at him. He was right to hold the phone at arm’s length to protect his eardrum from any surprises they had in mind, because he heard a shrill metallic sound before the line went dead. It was ridiculous even to think of searching the airwaves for Night Owl. He did his best to pick up the Welles film where he’d left off, but the twitching maniac in charge of the motel disturbed him more than he liked. He put the film back in its place among the dozens of Ts before tramping angrily to bed.
He lurched awake so often, imagining he’d heard the phone, that not just his eyes were prickly with irritation by the time he had to get up for work. He was going to let Mary Barton know he’d had more than enough, and he wouldn’t give the rest of them the chance to enjoy the show. ‘Eager to get going?’ the manager said by way of greeting.
‘I’m eager all right,’ Eric said and grinned as well.
He clocked on and hurried to the ticket counter, hoping Mary Barton would be first to arrive so that he could follow her to the staffroom. She’d been warned yesterday about timekeeping, after all. He watched the manager let in their workmates and grew more frustrated every time the newcomer wasn’t her. Larry Rivers was among the last to join Edgeworth at the counter. ‘What were you up to last night, Eric?’ he said.
Edgeworth almost turned on him, but he could play too. ‘Nothing you’ve ever seemed interested in.’
Somebody more gullible than Edgeworth might have thought the fellow felt rebuffed. No doubt he was disappointed that Edgeworth hadn’t taken the bait, and some of their audience looked as if they were. There was still no sign of Mary Barton by opening time. ‘Meet the public with a smile,’ Mr Gittins said.
Perhaps the woman had stayed home because she was too embarrassed to face Edgeworth, unless it was her day off. ‘Isn’t Mary Barton coming in?’ he said before he knew he meant to.
‘She’s called in sick.’ Mr Gittins seemed surprised if not disapproving that Edgeworth felt entitled to ask. As he made for the doors he added ‘Some trouble with her eye.’
Edgeworth struggled to think of a question. ‘She’ll have had it for a while, won’t she?’
‘She’s never said so.’ Mr Gittins stopped short of the doors to say ‘Her mother hasn’t either.’
‘What’s she got to do with anything?’
‘She’s looking after Mary’s children while Mary’s at the hospital. Happy now, Eric? Then I hope we can crack on with the job.’
As Mr Gittins let the public in, one of the girls alongside Edgeworth murmured ‘You’ll have to send her a Valentine, Eric. She isn’t married any longer.’
‘Keep your gossiping tongues to yourselves.’ He glared at her and her friends who’d giggled, and then past them at Rivers. ‘I’m putting you on your honour,’ he said as his grandmother often had. ‘You and your friends have been ringing me up at night, haven’t you?’
‘What?’ Once Rivers finished the laugh that underlined the word he said ‘We get more of you here than we want as it is, Eric.’
After that nobody except the public spoke to Edgeworth, and he couldn’t even interest himself in which films they were unwise enough to pay for. Of course there was no reason to believe Rivers was as ignorant as he’d pretended - not about the late-night calls, at any rate. Edgeworth felt as if the long slow uneventful day were a curtain that would soon be raised on a performance he had no appetite for. At last he was able to leave behind everyone’s contemptuous amusement, which felt like a threat of worse to come. When he shut himself in his apartment he found that he hoped he was waiting for nothing at all.
The pizza tasted stale and stodgy, an unsuccessful attempt to live up to itself. He tried watching classic comedies, but even his favourites seemed unbearably forced, like jokes cracked in the midst of a disaster or anticipating one. They hardly even passed the time, never mind distracting him from it. He was gazing in undefined dismay at the collapse of a dinosaur skeleton under Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn when the phone went off like an alarm.
He killed the film and stared at the blank screen while the phone rang and rang again. He left it unanswered until a surge of irrational guilt made him grab it. ‘What is it now?’ he demanded.
‘Someone was scared you weren’t playing any more, Eric.’
‘I thought your friend was meant to be in hospital,’ Edgeworth said in triumph.
‘She’s your friend, Eric, only yours. You’re the only one she can turn to about films.’
‘Can’t she even speak for herself now?’
‘I’m here, Eric.’ Mary Barton’s voice had lost some strength or was designed to sound as feeble as the prank. ‘They’ve fixed me up for now,’ she said. ‘I had to come back tonight or I’d have lost everything.’
‘Trying to make a bit extra for your children, are you?’
‘I’m trying to win as much as we need.’
Was she too preoccupied to notice his sarcasm, or wouldn’t that fit in with her game? Could she really be so heartless that she would use her children to prolong a spiteful joke? His grandmother never would have - not even his mother, though she’d had plenty to say about any of Edgeworth’s shortcomings that reminded her of his unidentified father. ‘Ready to help?’ the man with Mary Barton said.
‘What will you do if I don’t?’
Edgeworth heard a suppressed moan that must be meant to sound as terrified as pained. ‘Up to you if you want to find out,’ the man said.
‘Go on then, do your worst.’ At once Edgeworth was overtaken by more panic than he understood. ‘I mean,’ he said hastily, ‘ask me about films.’
‘Be careful, Mary. See he understands.’
The man seemed more amused than ever. Did he plan to ask about some detail in the kind of recent film they knew Edgeworth never watched? Edgeworth was ready with a furious rejoinder by the time Mary Barton faltered ‘Which was the film where Elisha Cook played a gangster?’
There were three possibilities; that was the trick. If she and Rivers hoped to make Edgeworth nervous of giving the wrong answer, they had no chance. ‘The Maltese Falcon,’ he said.
‘Wider, Mary.’
‘That’s not right, Eric.’
Her voice had grown shriller and shakier too, and Edgeworth was enraged to find this disturbed him. ‘He was a gangster in that,’ he objected.
‘It isn’t what they want.’
‘Then I expect they’re thinking of The Killing.’
‘Wider again,’ the man said as if he could hardly bear to put off the end of the joke.
‘No, Eric, no.’
It occurred to Edgeworth that the actor had played a criminal rather than a gangster in the Kubrick film. The piercing harshness of the woman’s ragged voice made it hard for him to think. ‘Just one left, eh?’ he said.
‘Please, Eric. Please be right this time.’
She might almost have been praying. Far from winning Edgeworth over, it embarrassed him, but he wasn’t going to give a wrong answer. ‘No question,’ he said. ‘It’s Baby Face Nelson.’
‘Wider still.’
‘What are you playing at?’ Edgeworth protested. ‘He was a gangster in that.’
‘No, it was his son,’ the man said. ‘It was Elisha Cook Junior.’
‘That’s what you’ve been working up to all along, is it?’ Edgeworth wiped his mouth, having inadvertently spat with rage. ‘What a stupid trick,’ he said, ‘even for you.’ He would have added a great deal if Mary Barton hadn’t cried ‘No.’
It was scarcely a word. It went on for some time with interruptions and rose considerably higher. Before it had to pause for breath Edgeworth shouted ‘What are you doing?’
‘It’s a good thing we aren’t on television.’ By the sound of it, the man had moved the phone away from her. ‘We couldn’t show it,’ he said gleefully, ‘and I don’t think you’d want to see.’
‘Stop it,’ Edgeworth yelled but failed to drown out the cry.
>
‘Relax, Eric. That’s all for you for now,’ Terry Rice said and left silence aching in Edgeworth’s ear.
The number was withheld again. Edgeworth thought of calling the police, but what could that achieve? Perhaps it would just prove he’d fallen for a joke after all. Perhaps everything had been recorded for his workmates to hear. He grabbed the remote control and set about searching the audio channels on the television. He thought he’d scanned through every available radio station, since the identifications on the screen had run out, when a voice he very much wished he couldn’t recognise came out of the blank monitor. ‘This is Night Owl signing off,’ Terry Rice said, and Edgeworth thought he heard a muffled sobbing. ‘Another night, another game.’
Edgeworth gazed at the silent screen until he seemed to glimpse a vague pale movement like a frantic attempt to escape. He turned off the set, nearly breaking the switch in his haste, and sought refuge in bed. Very occasionally his thoughts grew so exhausted that they almost let him doze. He did without breakfast - he couldn’t have borne to watch a film. Once the shower had made him as clean as he had any chance of feeling he dressed and hurried to work.
He had to ring the bell twice at length to bring Mr Gittins out of his office. The manager’s plump smooth face set not much less hard than marble as he saw Edgeworth. He was plainly unimpressed by Edgeworth’s timeliness; perhaps he thought it was a ruse to gain his favour. ‘I hope you’ll be doing your best to get on with your colleagues,’ he said.
‘Why, who’s said what?’
Mr Gittins didn’t deign to answer. He was turning away until Edgeworth blurted ‘Do we know if Mary Barton’s coming in today?’
‘What concern is it of yours?’ Having gazed at Edgeworth, Mr Gittins said ‘She won’t be in for some time. I’m told she can’t walk.’
Edgeworth swallowed, but his voice still emerged as a croak. ‘Do we know why?’
‘It really isn’t something I’m prepared to discuss further.’
Mr Gittins looked disgusted by Edgeworth’s interest and whatever it revived in his mind. Edgeworth gave him a grimace that felt nothing like apologetic and dashed to the staffroom. For once the list of staff and their phone numbers on the notice board was of some use. He keyed Mary Barton’s number on his mobile and made the call before he had time to grow any more fearful. Well ahead of any preparation he could make for it a woman’s tightened weary voice said ‘Hello, yes?’
‘I’m one of Mary’s friends at work. I was wondering how she is.’ With more of an effort he managed to add ‘Just wondering what’s wrong with her.’
‘Has it got something to do with you?’
The woman’s voice was loud and harsh enough to start two children crying, and Edgeworth felt as if the sounds were impaling his brain. ‘I wouldn’t say it has exactly, but—’
‘If I thought you were the man who did that to Mary I’d find you and make sure you never went near a woman again. Just you tell me your name or I’ll—’
Edgeworth jabbed the key to terminate the call and shoved the mobile in his pocket. As soon as it began to ring he switched it off. He couldn’t loiter in the staffroom in case Mr Gittins wondered why, and so he ventured into the lobby, where a stray lump of popcorn squeaked piteously underfoot and then splintered like an insect. He’d hardly reached the ticket counter when the phones on it began to ring in chorus. ‘See who it is,’ Mr Gittins said.
Edgeworth clutched at the nearest receiver and hoisted it towards his face. ‘Frugoplex Cinemas,’ he said, trying not to sound like himself.
When he heard the woman’s voice he turned his back on the manager. While she wasn’t the caller he’d been afraid to hear or the one he might have hoped for, she was all too familiar. ‘Congratulations, Eric,’ she said. ‘Three wrong means you’re our next contestant. Someone will pick you up tonight.’
He dropped the phone, not quite missing its holder, and turned to find Mr Gittins frowning at him. ‘Was that a personal call?’
‘It was wrong. Wrong number,’ Edgeworth said and wished he could believe. Mr Gittins frowned again before making for the doors as some of Edgeworth’s workmates gathered outside. Edgeworth searched their faces through the glass and struggled to think what he could say to them. Just a few words were repeating themselves in his head like a silent prayer. ‘You’re my friend, aren’t you?’ he would have to say to someone. ‘Be my friend.’
RAMSEY CAMPBELL was born in Liverpool, where he still lives with his wife Jenny. His first book, a collection of stories entitled The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants, was published by August Derleth’s legendary Arkham House imprint in 1964, since when his novels have included The Doll Who Ate His Mother, The Face That Must Die, The Nameless, Incarnate, The Hungry Moon, Ancient Images, The Count of Eleven, The Long Lost, Pact of the Fathers, The Darkest Part of the Woods, The Grin of the Dark, Thieving Fear, Creatures of the Pool, The Seven Days of Cain and the movie tie-in Solomon Kane.
His short fiction has been collected in such volumes as Demons by Daylight, The Height of the Scream, Dark Companions, Scared Stiff, Waking Nightmares, Cold Print, Alone with the Horrors, Ghosts and Grisly Things, Told by the Dead, and Just Behind You. He has also edited a number of anthologies, including New Terrors, New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Fine Frights: Stories That Scared Me, Uncanny Banquet, Meddling with Ghosts, and Gathering the Bones: Original Stories from the World’s Masters of Horror (with Dennis Etchison and Jack Dann).
PS Publishing recently issued the novel Ghosts Know, and the definitive edition of Inhabitant of the Lake, which included all the first drafts of the stories. Forthcoming is another novel, The Black Pilgrimage.
Ramsey Campbell has won multiple World Fantasy, British Fantasy and Bram Stoker Awards, and is a recipient of the World Horror Convention Grand Master Award, the Horror Writers’ Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the Howie Award of the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival for Lifetime Achievement, and the International Horror Guild’s Living Legend Award. For many years he reviewed films for BBC Radio Merseyside and he is also President of both the British Fantasy Society and the Society of Fantastic Films.
‘This is one of many tales that spring from some everyday element that I’ve taken for granted for years and suddenly don’t,’ explains the author. ‘In this case, quiz shows where contestants can phone a friend. I think I may also have had at the back of my mind one of our friend John Probert’s wickeder delights.
‘Oddly enough, after finishing the tale I discovered that there could have been another answer to the Elisha Cook, Jr. question, since he also plays a criminal in the Mickey Spillane film I, the Jury. Though he has two major scenes, he isn’t credited. Let’s assume my characters didn’t know that any more than I did.’
<
*
Alice Through the Plastic Sheet
-ROBERT SHEARMAN-
A
LAN AND ALICE liked Barbara and Eric. Barbara and Eric were good neighbours. Barbara and Eric were quiet. Barbara and Eric never threw parties - or, at least, not proper parties, not the sort of parties with music and loud noise; they’d had a dinner party once, and Alan and Alice knew that because they’d been invited beforehand, inviting them had been such a good neighbourly thing for Barbara and Eric to do. And Alan and Alice had thanked Barbara and Eric, and said that it was a very nice gesture, but they wouldn’t accept, all the same - they gave some polite reason or other, probably something about needing a babysitter for Bobby (although Bobby was a good boy, he didn’t need a babysitter).
But the real reason they didn’t go was that they didn’t know Barbara and Eric. They liked them, they liked them perfectly fine. They were good neighbours. But they didn’t want them to be friends. As good neighbours, they worked. Good neighbours was good.
Barbara and Eric had a dog, but it was a quiet dog, it was just as quiet as Alan and Alice’s own. They had two children, but they were grown-up children, and the three times a year the grown-up children vi
sited Barbara and Eric (Christmas, both parent birthdays) they did so without fuss or upheaval. Some weekends Alan would see Eric, out clearing leaves from the front garden, out mowing the lawn, and Alan might be out tending to his own lawn, and the two of them would recognise the mild coincidence of that, Eric might raise a hand in simple greeting over the fence and Alan would do the same in return; for her part, Alice might smile at Barbara in the supermarket. And when Barbara put the house up for sale, Alan and Alice didn’t know why.
‘Hello!’ said Alice cheerily one day when she saw Barbara at the checkout queue, ‘So, where are you off to then?’ And Barbara had told her that Eric was dead, Eric had had a heart attack, Eric was dead - months ago now, and she couldn’t bear the loneliness any longer, she worried quite honestly that the loneliness would drive her mad. And she’d broken down in tears right there in front of Alice. Shrill, with lots of noise; it wasn’t like Barbara at all. And Alice said she was sorry, she offered Barbara her condolences, she offered Barbara her handkerchief, she said she and Alan had had no idea, ‘how dreadful!’ and ‘we had no idea!’ And later she told Alan she’d felt a bit embarrassed, how could they have had no idea? How could all that death and suffering have been going on not thirty feet away without their knowing? She supposed they hadn’t been especially good neighbours after all.
‘We’re going to miss them,’ said Alice, as the family gathered around - Alice, Alan, little Bobby, even the dog got in on the act - and peered through the curtains to watch the removal men take the last pieces of Barbara’s life away.
‘I suppose we will,’ said Alan. And let the curtains twitch back.
*
‘They’re never going to sell it like that,’ said Alan one night at dinner. Alan worked in sales, he was an expert on sales. He was pretty much Head of Sales really, or would have been had Old Man Ellis not nominally still been in charge, but Alan was pretty much de facto Head of Sales, even Ellis had said so, pretty much everyone accepted that. ‘The first rule of sales,’ said Alan, ‘is you have to let the consumers know you’ve something to sell in the first place. There’s no point in being coy about it.’
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