The Collected Short Fiction

by Ramsey Campbell

  But the page had dragged his head forward and down into the darkness. He started, completely disoriented. He was floating forward on the darkness, sailing toward a band of chattering men running through the dark Roman streets. He clung to Forum, to his case, to anything. He was at the mercy of the waves of darkness. He couldn't think. He must get out. He was preparing to stand up when something caught his leg.

  He looked down. In the dark, amid the crumpled cartons and the spilled ash sticking to stains of orange juice, a woman was reaching up to him. Her nails tore at his hands, pulling him down among the cigarette butts, into the secret darkness. Her dress was up; her thighs yawned on the dusty floorboards; her head lolled on the bruised snapped neck. "Jesus!" he screamed. "Get away!"

  The usherette's torch-beam swung toward him along the row. At his feet the floor was bare; nothing moved but the shadows of rubbish. "It was the cat," he stammered. "I didn't know what it was." He stumbled out. Of course it had been the cat; no wonder he had turned it into his dream, after what he'd read. He'd dropped Forum beneath the seat. Thank God, he thought. He must reach Hilary before it did. She mustn't think he'd read it and was taking her on holiday to deceive her. There was time.

  The train was nearing Liverpool when Phil realized how like the succubus his experience had been.

  Exactly like. Well, no, not exactly: of course there weren't such things. But his dream had come between him and Hilary, just as the succubus had behaved in the film. It was almost as if it had been deliberately blinding him to her. When he tried to visualize Hilary he could reach nothing but a dull blank in his mind.

  The dream had come from inside him. He had to remember that. The notion he had had originally, that it had been put into his mind, was nonsense. That must have been his mind, trying not to admit the truth. Since the dream had come from him, he could destroy it. What they advised in Forum was wrong, that you should act out your fantasies; that was wrong.

  All at once he saw how much of a mute appeal Hilary's issues of Forum had been. He felt admiration and compassion; she suffered a good deal, without burdening him with it. Only because he wouldn't let her speak! My God, he thought numbly. With that insight came another. She didn't go out to work so that he could paint undisturbed. That was a sentimental lie. She went out in order to stay away from his temper. He'd driven her out of the house.

  He felt lightened by his insights, buoyant, capable of anything. At last he could see Hilary as she was. But he couldn't; still there was only the dull blank. Overhead the rush hour traffic clogged the bridge. Deep in his mind there seemed to be a gray vague weight, waiting. Never mind. Once they were on holiday the last of his depression would lift. No time to think further. Here was Lime Street Station, home.

  At the flat he packed their cases. He'd booked their hotel before leaving London. When he'd finished he glanced at his watch. Hilary would finish work in an hour; tonight was early closing. They could catch a train at once. He took a taxi to the shop, amid the Jaguars and Japanese front gardens.

  The shop was open for half an hour yet. He was sure they'd let Hilary go when they saw the taxi waiting. He could see her behind the counter, watching a woman who was talking to the manageress. Good; he wouldn't have to wait to speak to Hilary. He strode into the shop.

  "This is absolutely ridiculous," the woman was saying loudly. "That woman knows nothing about her job. If you're so hard up for staff my daughter is looking for work."

  Only when he saw Hilary's expression—mutely furious, ashamed—did he realize the woman was talking about her. "That's my wife you're insulting," he said.

  The woman turned to examine him. "Then your wife is ignorant," she said.

  "Not ignorant where it counts, like you." He tried to hold onto his temper, but couldn't deny himself the pleasure. "Go on, you fucking old whore," he shouted.

  The woman whirled and stalked out. "There's the taxi," he told Hilary. "Your holiday begins right now."

  "Do you want me to lose this job?"

  "We can do without it. Come on," he said, restraining his irritability. "Don't you want to go to the Lakes?"

  She smiled as broadly as she could. "Yes, I do," she said. She was about to speak to the manageress, but he headed her off. "The least you could have done was stick up for her," he told the woman. "You've been paying her little enough, God knows."

  In the taxi Hilary said "I told you I was going to give that job until the end of the year."

  "I never heard you."

  "You never hear anything I say."

  He gazed at the taxi-driver's attentive neck and succeeded in focusing his irritability there. "I know I've been drifting away," he told Hilary. "I'm sorry." He said loudly, "I'm going to get close to you tonight."

  It was still light when they reached the hotel. Streamers of mist were caught in the branches on the hilltops; a mass of mist was groping down toward the nearby lake. From their window Phil could see perfect trees in the lake, reaching down into the sunset water. The corridors were thickly carpeted: hushed, gentle. He read the same feelings in Hilary. He felt she had had to make an effort to be happy—to forget the scene in the shop, of course. Never mind; she was happy now.

  They were late for dinner, but somebody cooked them a meal. They had a cobwebbed bottle of wine. Afterward they drank in the bar and played billiards, which they hadn't played since before their marriage. When the bar closed they went up to their room. The corridor closed softly about them.

  Phil gazed into the night. The mist had reached the road now, greedy for headlights. It felt like the gray blank that was still in his mind. He tried to grasp the blank, but it wouldn't come out until it was ready. He turned as Hilary emerged from the bathroom naked and lay down on the bed. Quickly drawing the curtains, he smiled at her. He smiled. He smiled. He felt no desire at all.

  "Are you going to get close to me now?" she said.

  He nodded. "Yes, I am," he said hurriedly, lest she sense his mood. Undressing, he gazed at her. Her breasts lay slack, faintly blue-veined; the golden hair still grew from one. The gray blank hung between his penis and his mind. He had to make love to her without the dream. If he relied on the dream it would estrange them further, he was sure. But so, he realized miserably, would failure.

  "Will you leave the light on?" she said.

  "Of course I will," he said, but not for her reason.

  She smiled up at him. "Do you want to do anything different?" she said.

  "Like what?"

  "I don't know. I just thought you might."

  At once he knew what he'd seen back home at the flat as he'd packed: a copy of Forum lying on the settee. It had been a copy of the issue he had bought in London. In his hurry he hadn't realized. She had read the reply to her letter.

  She gazed up, waiting. His mouth worked, suddenly dry. Should he tell her he knew? Then he would have to explain about the dream—to tell her everything. He couldn't; it would hurt her, he was sure. And he didn't need to. She had already suggested the solution. His penis was stirring, and so was the gray blank. "I'll rape you," he told Hilary.

  He knelt above her. "Go on, then," she said, laughing.

  That wasn't right. If she laughed it wouldn't work. "Put your legs together," he said. "Fight. Try as hard as you can to stop me."

  "I don't want to hurt you."

  The gray was returning, seeping through his mind; his penis was shrinking. "Don't worry about that," he said urgently. "Defend yourself any way you can." His penis was hanging down. God, no. He pinched her nipple sharply. As she cried out and brought her hands down to protect it, he seized both her wrists. "Now then," he said, already inflamed again, thrusting his knees between hers.

  She was struggling now. The bed creaked wildly; the sheets snapped taut beneath them as her heels sought purchase. She had ceased playing; she was trying to free her hands, gasping. His hand plunged roughly between her legs. In a moment she was ready. This is the way she liked it, he thought, and he'd never known.

  On t
he lip of her, he hesitated. The gray blank was still there in his mind, like a threat. He could hear people in the corridor, the television in the next room, the cars setting off into the mist, intruding on his passion, distracting him. He was sure his penis was about to dwindle.

  Then he knew what he'd omitted. He dragged Hilary's hands up to her shoulders and, digging his elbows into her forearms, closed his fingers tightly on her throat. She was panting harshly. The sound of her breath tugged him violently into her. The presence was gone from his mind at once. His penis pulsed faster with each stroke, his fingers pressed, her eyes widened as his penis throbbed, her hands fluttered. He strained his head back, gasping.

  Like the sound of a branch underfoot betraying the presence of an intruder, there was a sharp snap.

  He came immediately, lengthily. His breath shuddered out of him. His hands let go of Hilary and clawed at the sheets. He closed his eyes as he finished, drawing deep breaths.

  When he looked down Hilary was gazing at the wall. One cheek rested on the sheet; her head hung askew on her broken neck.

  Phil began to sob. He took her cheeks in both hands and turned her face up to him. He rubbed her cheeks, trying to warm life back into her eyes. He stroked her hair back from her eyes, for it lay uncomfortably over them. He grasped her shoulders, shaking them. When her head rolled back onto its cheek he slumped on her body, grinding his fists into his eyes, moaning.

  Then her legs closed over his, and he stared down to see her eyes gazing up at him: one blue eye, one brown.

  Lilith's (1976)

  Palin must have noticed the shop shortly after it opened. He rode home that way every weekday evening. The district depressed him; its sameness did—the same colorless tower blocks everywhere on the slope above the river, the same slow procession of derelict terraces as the bus ground uphill, the same hostilities scrawled on walls, attacking the nearby travelers' camp. The January rain on the glass of the bus made the view worse, more the same: the houses were smudged brown blotches, the boards in their windows were bedraggled slashes of dark crayon; huge pale unsteady lumps of tower-blocks floated past. Palin sat swathed in layers of tobacco-smoke, coughing; the driver had driven him upstairs when he'd tried to stand, bloody little Hitler. The bus throbbed throatily at a stop. As Palin glanced about, trying to blink the smarting from his eyes, he caught sight of an unfamiliar protrusion on a terraced house, like a railway signal at STOP but written on: the streaming letters said—The bus shook itself and breasted the headlong rain.

  The next day the gray sky was saving up its rain. LILITH'S, Palin read before the bus whipped the sign away. The window of the terraced house contained a display; many of its neighbors were plugged with bricks or boards. The main road framed the side street with an anonymous dilapidated shop and an abandoned gap-toothed WO LWO TH'S. Palin craned back as the progress of the bus closed the side street. What on earth was that in the window beneath the sign?

  For the rest of January he made sure he sat upstairs, on the right side. He opened the window to clear the glass, despite the protests of coughing smokers. If the bus failed to stop by the street, angry frustration welled in him, threatening to explode his silence—it felt like his impotence with Emily. The morning journeys began to frustrate him too, for then the bus used another road, higher up the slope. But even when the bus dawdled, and daylight spread further into the evenings, Palin couldn't make out what was sitting in that window.

  It looked something like a person. It sat pinkly in the display, wearing a woman's black underwear. Around it were books, posters, vaguer objects. Perhaps it was only a mannequin—of course that was what it must be. But why did it have a huge white blossom in place of a head?

  In March, determined to know, he got off the bus opposite the shop.

  It was only two stops before his. Nevertheless he'd had to argue himself off the bus. It was a long walk home, his mind had reminded him. He didn't like the area, he just wanted to rest after wrestling with people's taxes and their complaints all day; it was raining, it was absurd to give in to his impulse. One evening he'd determined to get off, but his arguments had carried him past the stop. The next day, despite drizzle, he hustled himself to the doors of the bus.

  Beneath the bus stop's metal flag he felt isolated, faintly ridiculous. Among the paved paths between the tower blocks rectangles of unkempt grass lay juicily stranded, like life thrown away by a sea. Children spied on him from concrete balconies. A doll with a trampled head lay at the foot of a stack of balconies; the doll's mouth was burst wide. Down the slope men plodded home, stopping to threaten the travelers' camp.

  Palin crossed the road. On one corner of the side street, within the anonymous shop, a dog biscuit lay on bare boards, gathering dust. He hurried along the blinded terrace. LILITH'S signal waved him on, gesturing in the moist wind. The pink figure sat waiting, its face lost in white convolutions like coral.

  It wasn't a mannequin. It was a Love Mate; the carton against which it rested said so. Its title on the carton was clumsily stenciled, but its limbs and body were well-shaped, even attractive if that kind of thing attracted you. Its head was wrapped in tissue paper.

  Palin shrugged wryly. At least he knew now; it wouldn't bother him again. Behind the display he could see what looked very much like the front room of a terraced house, patched with astrological posters. Bare floorboards supported a counter of bare boards, piles of books about witchcraft, odd objects beneath cloth; on a book a girl held a carved man toward the carving's living subject, who stumbled toward her, glassy-eyed. There was something deeper in the dimness, Palin saw, between the books and Tarot decks and phallic ornaments. It was a girl, dim beyond the counter. Her large dark eyes gazed from her heart-shaped face. Her beauty shivered through him.

  What beauty? He could hardly see her. He shook his head, frowning. He didn't intend to be lured in. He'd had enough of feminine allure, that promised but frustrated; he'd had enough with Emily. So stop gazing at this dim girl. He was still trying to see what was so beautiful about her when something tapped him on the shoulder.

  Only rain. But when he turned, a man was staring at him from the steps of the house opposite, front-door key in hand. As he gazed at Palin, his expression burned with hatred and disgust. Palin tried to stare him out, then strode toward the main road; he felt the stare following him. At the road he looked back. The man was staring at the shop now, a crusader in dirty overalls; his stance was a furious threat.

  A fortnight later Palin returned to the shop.

  It was spring, it was pleasant to walk home a little way. If he got off the bus here he needn't sit upstairs, suffering smoke for the sake of a glance. He might see a present for Emily in the shop. None of these was his real reason. For a fortnight he had been trying to fathom what had made the girl so beautiful.

  It wasn't just her large eyes, her small softly rounded heart-shaped face. Then what? He never saw her body; she always wore a long dress and the dimness. Her full lips and her eyes smiled at him, an encouraging smile, promising, mysterious. Promising what, for heaven's sake? He snorted at his eager fantasies. But the next evening he went back, peering for her slight smile.

  Often he was watched from the house opposite. Once, when children stood in an alley to gaze at the shop, the man rushed out and chased them away. Sometimes Palin saw the man's head displayed in a small upstairs window above the front door, a hostile Toby jug. Let him try to chase Palin away, just let him try.

  But it was absurd, this fascination. What could come of it? Traffic droned along the main road, dust and fumes swirled. Perhaps he should buy Emily a present and be done with the shop. She'd been aloof from him today—her period, no doubt, some such excuse. Among the plain-wrapped books— Joy of the Body, Glory of the Flesh—and unlabeled vials and what he guessed from the coy pictures on their closed boxes to be penis candles, Palin saw several packs of Tarot cards. They were the kind of thing she might like. He didn't: too inexplicable, unpredictable.

  No. He wou
ldn't buy her a present for being moody. When she was friendlier, maybe. If she ever was. He and Emily were drifting apart, slowly as flight in a nightmare, each making timid attempts to break it off, giving hints of impatience and boredom; neither was willing to make a decisive move. He couldn't be sure they had drifted too far to reunite. But it was so much work, judging her moods, trying to keep her happy, to know what she was thinking. It was always work, with women. The girl gazed smiling from deep in the shop.

  That was the girl's appeal. He gasped; his face hung open-mouthed on the window. She wasn't like Emily, she hadn't encouraged him only to make him struggle to please her. She simply waited, displaying her smile on the velvety dimness, an intimate smile if he wanted it to be. She would be willing, anxious to please, peaceful and quiet and submissive. She was there if he wanted her. All that was in her smile, her eyes.

  Nonsense. It was only his fantasy. For a moment he wondered whether she had fantasies. She was always sitting behind the counter in the dimness; what could she think all day? But it would be wonderful to have a woman who would do exactly what he wanted, whenever he wanted it. Like the Love Mate. Oh no. He didn't need that sort of thing.

  Why not?

  His answers to that seemed weaker each day. On the neck of the figure was a bulb of coralline convolutions, as if white brains had boiled from the head: but beyond that shock the body was beautiful—the long slim arms and delicate hands, the smooth thighs mysteriously closed, the round full breasts that he was sure were clothed for decency, not for support. The figure looked soft, not rubbery at all; even the pink flesh no longer looked unnatural, simply new, young, virgin. The girl's body beneath the long dress could be no more beautiful. It was as if she veiled herself in the dimness the better to display her body in the window.