The doll who ate his mother: a novel of modern terror

by Ramsey Campbell

  She must go, or she’d be late for school. The faces peered out of the dimness; the grains of the dimness swarmed. Flies buzzed in the hall, which sounded full of them. Oh, all right. She would just see what the object was, quickly, without digging it up. She began to scrape the earth away.

  It was a doll. A woman. Her face was large, the lips full. The woman was gazing down at herself in appalled panic. Clare knew the face, from the photographs at Mrs. Kelly’s. She hesitated; the face gazed down in immobilized panic, trapped in the light; flies bumbled in the hall. Clare scraped the earth from the rest of the doll.

  The woman was pregnant. Her belly swelled between her hands, which clawed at the earth. That was all. There was nothing more to see, only a small patch of earth stuck to the doll. But it was dragging Clare down to peer closer, to be certain. It wasn’t a patch. The earth had collected in a hole in the belly of the doll: a mouth.

  Clare stood up too quickly. The basement rocked unsteadily about her, orange. She closed her eyes, waiting for the orange to drain. She was intensely aware of the doll at her feet. For the first time she was convinced of the power of John Strong. He must have been able to do everything he said he could. The pregnant doll made her feel that his power was still here.

  She kept her eyes closed. She must be calm, mustn’t flee in panic; she might fall. The orange faded. Pick up her torch, the spade; Chris’s purse was safe in her pocket. But the sound of the flies distracted her. Her ears seemed full of it.

  It was nearer than the hall. It was at the top of the steps. It was coming down into the basement, buzzing. It was coming toward her, covered with flies, to take its revenge for what she’d done in the basement. Even when she’d swung the torch beam toward the steps, it took her a long time to open her eyes.

  “Oh, Chris,” she said. “You fool.”

  Oh, poor Chris. She’d come to explain and apologize; that was a fine way to begin! But her relief was so great that she couldn’t have contained her exclamation. “Oh, I’m sorry, Chris,” she said, laughing, safe now. “Come and see what I’ve found.”

  He didn’t move. He stood halfway down the steps. His hair hung lank beside his cheeks; his spectacles glared with torchlight. He was wearing old clothes, for the digging—the clothes she’d seen laid on the bed. Flies circled him. He held out one arm before him, stiffly.

  “Oh, don’t play now, Chris. It’s nasty down here, don’t. I’ve got to go in a minute,” she said.

  He was descending the steps, slowly, silently. He was pretending to be John Strong or someone. Perhaps he actually wanted to scare her, for intruding into his flat. His long pointed face was paler than she’d ever seen it, intent, unmoving. “Chris,” she said sharply.

  He had reached the bottom step, still holding one arm stiffly toward her. It looked paler than his face. “Don’t,” she said. She dropped the torch-beam toward the stiff arm. He was holding it in both hands. It wasn’t his arm at all.

  It was one of those things they sold in joke shops; it was rubber. He’d bought it to make sure she was frightened. But she could see the flies. She could see the clothes Chris was wearing, and at last she recognized them.

  At last she saw Rob, his raw shoulder pressed against the passenger door. She saw Chris gazing in at him, at her, his orange face at the window. She saw him running into the mirror, stooping to the explosion of blood on the gravel, standing up triumphantly, hands full. The worst thing wasn’t what Chris had done, but the sight of Chris. Chris.

  He left the steps and came toward her, throwing his burden carelessly toward the hall. Now that the light had left his spectacles, she could see his eyes gazing at her. They were as dead as a doll’s.

  She must get past him. But he was between her and the steps. She must defend herself, with the spade. But she felt as if she and the spade were stuck in a marsh. Why couldn’t she move? Why couldn’t she pull up the spade?

  Because if she did she would fall. Only the spade was holding her up. She felt exactly as she had just before she’d fainted at the hospital.

  She mustn’t. If she fainted she would be at his mercy. But the spade was slipping, she was tottering sideways. She threw herself back and lunged for the far edge of the pit. She could hear him behind her, approaching softly across the mud. His sounds were softer, they were rushing away from her, they had rushed into the distance, leaving her with no support at all, poised on the edge of darkness. She fell.

  Chris tossed his toy into a corner, where the flies followed it. He had finished playing now. He moved toward Clare. The torchlight had left his face; the grey light of the basement settled comfortably around him.

  She knew what he was going to do. She’d given up trying to talk him out of it, trying to make him feel he knew her. She was just someone staring at him as his grandmother had used to. Her mouth was opening, like his grandmother’s when she had tried to scream. He’d stop that. There was the sharp edge of the spade.

  But she was turning. She had pushed the spade away. She twisted in the pit and moved toward the far side, moving as though she couldn’t stop herself. He watched as she fell across the side with a squelching thud. Light spilled from the torch ahead of her, across the mud.

  She lay unmoving. As he gazed at her he felt his first emotion for a while. He was going to enjoy himself. She had made it easier for him. He moved leisurely toward her.

  He was nearly at the pit when his foot slipped. It slithered on a small round object near the edge, like a stone. He was skidding toward the pit.

  The earth gaped at him, its lips crumbled, glistening. At the bottom he could see a doll. It was a woman with a swollen belly. A mouth was emerging from the belly. At once he knew it was him in his mother.

  He couldn’t keep his balance on the edge. He was falling toward the doll. He managed to take most of the fall on his left foot, but his right came down on the doll. Beneath his weight he felt the doll sink into the earth.

  It was taking him down with it. It was dragging him down into his dream, to lie beneath the earth. He heard earth falling behind him, into the pit. Soon he wouldn’t be able to see even the dimness, only the earth packed on his eyes. His mouth and nose would be full of earth; his ears would be plugged with it. In sudden panic he wrenched up his foot and stamped the doll into fragments.

  He stood in the pit. The earth had ceased falling. He stared at the grey fragments around his feet. They had been him and his mother. He had been lying there in the earth; he’d broken himself in pieces. He couldn’t understand what that meant. He gazed down.

  At last the torchlight attracted his gaze. Clare lay near it. That confused him more. What was he going to do about her? The others—her brother, Mrs. Pugh—had been dead before he’d done anything. His grandmother had struggled to protect herself; he’d enjoyed that. But Clare lay breathing, yet still. It bewildered him.

  He would wait until she moved, so that he could stop her. He climbed out of the pit and turned the torch to show her face in the mud, her breathing torso. Then he stepped back to watch for movement.

  He was still watching when he heard someone creeping along the hall.

  He turned toward the steps. Sunlight from a window slit fell across his face. He watched the grey rectangle of the hall. A figure appeared, peering down. The figure came forward into the doorway, stood at the top of the steps, staring at him. It was Alice, George Pugh’s wife.

  The sunlight clung to his face as she scrutinized him. She was trembling, trying to conceal it. Let her come down if she wanted to. He had nothing against her.

  At last she came down the steps, as if there were nothing else she could do. Her face was set hard; it looked in danger of breaking, releasing a flood of emotion. She swatted flies viciously away as they rose toward her. She passed him on the far side of the pit, gazing at him all the while, and went to Clare.

  He turned to watch. She was thrusting the torch at Clare’s face. Breath slabbered in the mud at Clare’s mouth. Alice was slapping her face as she lay in the
mud. She stooped further and tried to drag Clare to her feet. After an effort she let her fall back and stood panting.

  She’d never do it. He could help. But as he went forward Alice brandished the torch at him, battering his face with light. “Don’t you come near,” she said. She crouched over the girl, like a cat protecting her kitten.

  He hadn’t done anything; he hadn’t touched Clare. He wasn’t going to hurt her now. He’d show Alice. “I’ll help,” he said; his voice seemed distant. He stooped to Clare, gazing up at Alice.

  She shone the torch into his face. All he could see was the glare, aching in his eyes. At last he heard her say, “All right, you carry her.” She sounded weary, helpless.

  She shone the light on him as he picked up Clare’s small body and carried her easily toward the steps. The knife wound stung. As he passed the pit he kicked earth down on the grey fragments. Near the pit, a small grey face smiled upside-down at him from the mud.

  Clare’s head felt brimming with liquid, liquid that swayed. Leather burned on her back; her shoulder rested against metal. She felt painted with heat. She only hoped she wouldn’t be sick.She opened her eyes.

  She was sitting in Ringo, outside the house. She was in the front passenger seat. Through the windscreen she saw Alice and Chris, standing on the pavement with their backs to her. When she saw Chris she wound the windows closed more tightly and locked the doors. Something touched her breast: the purse. Ripping her pocket in her haste, she hurled the purse out onto the rubble and screwed the window tight again. Then she sank back against the hot leather. She felt faint. She just wanted to rest.

  Alice and Chris stood aimlessly. They glanced unseeing at the fall of the purse. Alice’s bicycle leaned against the yard wall. Through the glass Clare heard Alice chattering. “I rang Clare at school. I wanted to meet her, to tell her something. I thought it might be best if she heard it from me. It doesn’t matter now. They told me she was looking for you. I thought she’d probably come here.” Clare could tell she was talking so as not to think.

  Alice fell silent. At last she said, “Chris, will you come with me?”

  “Where?” he said dully.

  “To the police station.”

  In a voice in which there was no life at all he said, “Yeah, all right.”

  A lorry left the corrugated tin wall, flashing sunlight. The sun hung near the grey house. Alice stood irresolute, now that she had charge of Chris. There was movement down Mulgrave Street, at Princes Avenue. A tiny George had appeared there.

  He was hurrying toward the house. Edmund appeared behind him, small as a doll; he looked as if he were trying to call George back, gesticulating. Clare watched Edmund see Chris.

  He halted, then he ran. He ran past George, toward Clare, growing, growing faster. She watched him grow. She wondered whether Chris would see him.

  “Shit, no,” Chris said. Some life had returned to his voice.

  Alice glanced where he was staring. “It’s all right, I’ll talk to him,” she said, but Chris had already dodged into the house as if it were home. He ran along the hall, peered up the stairs at a sound up there, wavered by the doorway to the cellar. Clare realized he was afraid to go into the cellar to hide.

  That distressed her, in a distant generalized way. The sight of Edmund, looking about quickly as he reached the house then stooping to the gutter for the metal bar she’d carried out of the house, seemed closer; at any rate, her revulsion was. “Call the police,” he said rapidly to Alice. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t get away.”

  Clare saw Chris glance into the cellar as Edmund ventured toward him. Suddenly Chris wasn’t there. He’d dodged into the cellar, and immediately she knew he’d gone to get the spade for a weapon. She was hardly aware of clambering out of the car to see what would happen.

  She was almost glad to reach the house, for support—even the support of the oozing walls. Alice and George were murmuring together urgently, and hadn’t noticed her. She stumbled forward, doing her best to hold her head steady on her neck. She was almost at the cellar before Edmund turned and saw her.

  “Go back,” he hissed, “I’m handling this”—and Chris appeared on the steps behind him, raising the spade.

  She couldn’t warn Edmund. She didn’t know if she would have if she could. He must have read something in her eyes, for he whirled just as Chris swung the spade to chop him down—swung it with such force that it tore through the low ceiling. Plaster rained down, turning Chris’s hair and shoulders grey. Clare heard wood splinter, and a creaking.

  The spade had lodged in timber, like an axe. As Chris wrenched at it amid the dusty rain, the splintering and creaking increased. Get out of there, she wanted suddenly to cry. “Try that with me, would you?” Edmund snarled. “Get down there where you belong.” He drove the iron bar into Chris’s stomach as George and Alice came into the hall.

  Chris doubled up but kept hold of the spade. A last uncontrollable splintering, and the rotten timber gave as he lost his footing on the steps. A plank and its burden of broken glass came ripping through the plaster overhead. The plank caught him on the shoulder, flinging him backward into the mud.

  For a moment that seemed to be all, except for the creaking, louder and more ominous. Clare wasn’t sure if the ceiling of the cellar had begun to sag violently or whether that was just the way she felt. She wasn’t sure if a smooth pale face had appeared at Chris’s shoulder as he floundered stunned in the mud. Perhaps one of the stones had; surely there were no pale arms to go with the face, no arms reaching out of the mud to embrace Chris. Then the rotten floor gave way overhead, and a wardrobe that she took at first to be a coffin came crashing through the plaster onto Chris. She saw him break and writhe, saw him die. She felt nothing.

  When Alice reached Edmund she slapped his face as hard as she could.

  The hall walls clapped. George stared at her, bewildered, then he looked up toward the cries of panic. In their midst a baby was wailing. As Alice saw Clare begin to shake and came to hold her, he went upstairs.

  Saturday,

  April 17

  __If I hadn’t followed George in case he needed help, Kelly might be at large today.

  But we did more than stop a criminal from committing further horrors. George went back to the house to rescue that baby, and George does what he sets out to do. I like to think that by starting the search for Kelly, I helped save that baby. I think that makes everything worthwhile.

  The End

  of a book by Edmund Hall

  Coming soon: The Terrible Terrorists __

  The switchboard was winking at Dorothy. “BBC Radio Merseyside,” she said, and sent the call to its extension. Rain rushed at the window; it reminded her of a car-wash. Across the roofs, the Liver Building looked like a bedraggled charcoal sketch. Someone was waiting at the reception counter. She turned and saw Clare.

  Clare was early, unexpected. Dorothy made a hasty grab to hide Satan’s Cannibal, too late. “It’s all right, Dorothy,” Clare said, smiling slightly. “I’ve read it.”

  “Oh, that’s good.” She was glad Clare felt able to. “That’s a good handbag,” she said while she regained her poise.

  “Haven’t you seen it before? No, you wouldn’t have. It’s the one my parents bought me last year.”

  The wind hurled rain at the windows. “We won’t want to go far for lunch,” Dorothy said.

  “Do you fancy the Master Mariner’s?”

  After a silence Clare said abruptly, “Yes, all right.”

  “We’ll go somewhere else if you’d rather.”

  “No,” Clare said. “We’d better go there.”

  Carol arrived to take over the switchboard. “I’ll just be a minute, Clare,” Dorothy said, and hurried to Studio 2. As she opened the door Bob’s voice boomed out. “Now here’s a real working-class sound; you can tell he knows what he’s got in his head.”

  “Will you put that tape in my pigeonhole when you’ve finished with it?” Dorothy said.

 
; “All right, love,” Billy Butler said. When Dorothy turned she saw that the door from Reception hadn’t closed behind her; Clare had heard Bob’s voice.

  The lift’s door winced away from Clare’s foot. Dorothy followed Clare’s expressionless back. “Bill asked to listen to that tape,” she explained. “He wants to trace a record Bob played.”

  “Do you listen to Rob’s tapes?”

  Clare would never call him Bob. Well, Bob was hers too; if calling him Rob made her memories more secure, Dorothy wasn’t going to argue. “I listen sometimes,” she said. “I used to enjoy listening to his shows. They sounded as though he’d never let anyone tell him what to say. But now I don’t know; he sounds as if he’s just talking to himself, not to us at all.”

  “All his fibs about the working class, you mean.” The lift halted at the second floor, yawned, recommenced sinking. “I mean, some of the parents of my kids are thieves. Some of the women live with more than one man; the kids don’t know who their parents are. Some didn’t want their kids at all and still don’t,” Clare said. “And Rob was trying to idealize all that. They’re only people; it does no good to blur them into something else. It’s funny, Rob was trying not to sound class-conscious. He never realized that was exactly how it made him sound.”

  Though the rain was abating, the crowds sheltered; Dorothy and Clare had a clear path. Puddles bubbled with the last raindrops, as if the pavement were full of fish. “I’ll tell you what annoyed me,” Dorothy said. “Some of the things Edmund Hall says, I never told him. All that about how I put up with Bob’s artistic temperament, that’s silly. Bob just didn’t want anyone to know how unsure of himself he was. He didn’t like my knowing. That’s why we had rows. But I still loved him.”

  Puddles frowned at a breeze; jigsaw pieces of window displays glided by beneath the water. In Williamson Square the cloudy sky tossed and turned underfoot. A man with a handful of pamphlets came at Clare, but she eluded him, almost running. “There’s another way the book’s unfair,” she said as they entered St. John’s Precinct. “To Chris.”