The Face That Must Die

by Ramsey Campbell

  Jesus, where was five o’clock? The clock’s hands appeared to shift minutely, but perhaps that was an echo of his acid trips. A queue passed sluggishly along the counter; they were all coming in now that it was nearly closing time. “Open your books, please. One on top of the other.”

  Quarter to five. All the windows were boarded up, and protected further by heavy wire mesh. You couldn’t lock people and their problems out, any more than you could lock them away. He wished he’d had a joint – except that would have made him feel more oppressed, shut in with the artificial light in daylight. No wonder kids broke the windows when the city council spent so much on building a new library, yet expected them to live in shit and tower blocks.

  The librarian patrolled, intoning “Closing in five minutes.” An old man woke grumbling; another shuffled newspaper pages together like huge unwieldy cards. Some children ran in to dare the notice: NO

  CHILDREN ALLOWED IN THE LIBRARY WITHOUT TICKETS OR NOT IN THE COMPANY

  OF AN ADULT. One of the staff chased them, calling “Now then, now then” like a stage policeman. He was playing a game as much as they were, Peter thought.

  “ We’re closed, I’m sorry,” the librarian said, barring the way of a group of men. “Closed, I’m sorry. Closed.” Peter had heard the men talking in the pub next door; they were communists, unemployed. One of these days they won’t be able to lock you out, brothers.

  “ Goodbye, Peter,” the librarian said. “I hope you do well with your studies.”

  “ See you,” Peter said generally, and “See you, brother” to longhaired Mike, who read the New Statesman.

  He strolled along Great Homer Street. The line of shops, low boxes of orange brick, dwindled behind him; some of them were already locked in metal, impregnable as safes. Opposite them on a patch of waste stood two market stalls, Scrawny frameworks of tubular steel, picked almost clean of merchandise. He wouldn’t be seeing those sights again. He was free.

  Girls stood beneath a tower block. “There’s the library man,” one said.

  “ Where?” another hooted. “That’s a girl.”

  Ah, irresistible Liverpool humour, the famous Scouse wit, the instant quips. Their squeals of laughter set the back of his neck ablaze. He ought to have retorted “If I’m a girl then what the fuck does that make you?” Often he replayed scenes in his head and gained the advantage – more often since taking acid.

  The bus laboured uphill, away from the Mersey. Back there, stars were drowning – lights on the river, blurred by mist. Ahead, floodlights blazed over Anfield football ground, a glare of lightning prolonged for hours. Football fans piled onto the bus.

  Ranks of lit shops passed close on both sides. Scarved fans disembarked. A newcomer asked Peter “What’s the score?”

  “ Half an ounce of Moroccan hash.” Pretending frustrated him, and nothing interested him less than football. Sometimes his refusal to pretend landed him in fights – at least, with the threat of them. This time he didn’t need to worm his way out. The man sidled away, shaking his head, to question someone else.

  Lights sank into fog. West Derby Road. Boaler Street. The gay porn bookshop on Holt Road. Lodge Lane. Trees stirred dimly in Sefton Park, like the onset of a trip. He hoped Cathy was out shopping; he liked coming home to an empty flat. When he’d lived with his parents he could always retreat into his room when he grew irritable.

  The flat was as empty as the house sounded: good. He had still to grow used to this new experience, marriage. It had seemed to promise total security, an end to all problems – but it felt less real than living with Cathy had. It weighed him down with bourgeois ambitions and the fear of failure. He was wary of giving himself to the marriage, in case he did something wrong.

  Was he being lazy? He released the vacuum cleaner from its cupboard and led it about, snatching at dust. “Darkies all work on the Mississippi,” he sang. When he’d finished he felt virtuous. Time for a joint.

  He crumbled the resin. Where had Cathy put his books now? Her idea of tidying was to clear things out of sight; it didn’t matter if you couldn’t find them. There they were, hiding in a corner. Most were library books, which he’d borrowed as a member of staff. One day he’d return them – maybe.

  Most were set books for the University. He must do some reading. Nineteenth-Century Litteratchah. Dickens – Christ, what a turgid turd. “Discuss the effects on Dickens’ style of the tension between melodrama and social comment.” Should he write something now, while Cathy wasn’t here to distract him? But the flat seemed distractingly large and silent. If he played a record, the music would carry his thoughts away. He’d get his head straight soon. He could work during the rest of the vacation.

  He felt the cannabis take hold. Time slowed. The sound of a passing car became an event in itself, prolonged and fascinating. He reached for an unread Silver Surfer, and admired the sleek metallic curves of the inhuman superhero. “Leave comics alone,” his parents had used to say. “They’re beneath you.” He hadn’t looked at a comic for years, until one day when he was wandering stoned.

  Now Cathy disapproved. Couldn’t she see that in time the comics might buy them a house? Often he went to the Comics Marts, to share a few joints and to marvel at the comics dealers’ prices. He wanted a house as much as she did: he’d like a room to himself. But they had no chance of a mortgage now. Christ, why would he want to trap her here? He had more reason to want to move than she had. He thought he might have seen the killer before he’d murdered Craig, and had done nothing.

  The first time he’d seen the man watching Craig – when Craig had been complaining about the stereo – he’d known the two of them were involved. He hadn’t needed to glimpse the man lurking among the trees to confirm it. One of Craig’s ex-boyfriends, no doubt. Peter had wondered what he was up to, but hadn’t been about to get mixed up with those people: Craig had always disturbed him, with his simultaneous heftiness and grace, the qualities of Oliver Hardy. Perhaps if Craig had been open about what he was, he would have been less alienating.

  Whoever the man was, he had something to hide; he must have, to have conned Fanny into thinking he was a detective. Maybe he just hadn’t wanted her to know he was gay, Stupid cow – she was as stupid as her name. She deserved the same as had happened to Craig.

  He shuddered. He’d had a brief vivid image of the killing. Shit, he couldn’t have prevented it. The joint was setting his thoughts adrift; they floated over one another, overlapping. Suddenly he saw Craig against the wall. His mouth and his flesh were gaping. Peter felt the razor part his own skin.

  He jerked himself free of the trance with a start like awakening. His stomach felt hollow with abrupt vertigo. Christ, that had been like acid; he hadn’t realised the dope was so strong. Maybe he needed a walk in the country, to calm his head.

  That reminded him. He dialled, and at last Jim’s stoned voice said slowly and warily “Who is it?”

  “ It’s Peter. Did you score that acid?”

  Jim sounded lugubrious and muffled, as though talking in his sleep.

  “ It’s supposed to be coming tonight.”

  “ Oh, great. Will you keep me a tab? I’ll come around later.”

  When Cathy came in, sinking on the bed as her bag of potatoes sagged on the floor, he said “Want to go out tonight?”

  “ Oh, yes.” She sat up. “Where?”

  “ Jim’s got some good stuff.” No need for her to know that it was acid.

  “ Oh.” She sank back. “I thought you might mean to look at houses.”

  “ Houses? Houses?” he gurgled in a strangled Monty Python voice. The cannabis forced him to observe his behaviour. It was a way of avoiding discussion, but he had to struggle to free himself of the voice; his throat seemed to contract around it. “Not tonight,” he said irritably.

  “ The stuff won’t wait.”

  “ Peter, for heaven’s sake. You’ll smoke all our money.”

  “ Ah ha!” That was a cue for his Freak Brothers quot
e. “Dope will get you through times of no money,” he said and raised his voice as she trudged sighing to the kitchen, “better than money will get you through times of no dope.” It occurred to him that he needn’t feel mean for wanting his own room. Clearly she did too.

  ***

  Chapter XXI

  “ Are you coming?” Peter said.

  It wasn’t worth making the automatic pun. Why should she bother to go with him? She moved about, rapidly tidying. He glared when she touched his comics. “You put them away so you know where they are,” she suggested.

  “ I will later. Are you coming?”

  Halfway downstairs she halted. Good Lord, surely she could bear staying alone in the flat. She had plenty to read. There was nothing duller than a roomful of people waiting to score. She might visit Frank and Angie. Peter wouldn’t have far to walk. Suppose he were stopped by the police? She was faltering outside Fanny’s door when the light ran out of time, and clicked off.

  At once she was sure that Fanny’s room was occupied.

  It couldn’t be Fanny. How could Fanny infect her with such fear? She felt as though she had been struck blind. She backed away, and found she had lost her bearings. She was afraid of falling down the precipitous stairs, but she was terrified of touching something in the dark. “Peter,” she called, holding her voice rigid. “Put the light on.”

  The silence which surrounded her wasn’t quite silence. There was a faint creaking whose source she tried not to guess. Was it coming from more than one direction? Were Fanny’s and Mr Craig’s doors opening stealthily, trapping her between them? Who was creeping out to close in on her from both sides? “Peter, will you put the light on!” she cried.

  The click was unexpectedly close to her. He had been tiptoeing upstairs, to pounce. Both doors were closed, and insisted that they hadn’t opened. Seeing her expression, he said “Hey, what trip were you on there?”

  She tramped out and started the van. She barely waited for him to slide the door shut before she drove off. In the park trees were embedded in night, like fossils. She couldn’t have stayed alone in the house. Depression was gaining on her, slowing her time.

  From Sefton Park Road she turned onto Croxteth Road. Traffic lights counted off the time it took her: green, amber, red. Couples with bottles converged on a tall house; aloft, music thumped. She wished she were going to that party, or one like it. She turned left into Hartington Road.

  As she drove, houses and gardens dwindled on both sides. Doorbells of flats showed names less often. A door leaned out of a broken window as if it were searching for visitors. Grey faces peered through net curtains like cobweb; they looked unsure of themselves as ghosts. “Don’t park outside,” Peter said.

  Fern Grove was closed off by pebble-dashed bollards like petrified tree-stumps. Eventually she found an open side road. She felt conspiratorial, but it was less exciting than dispiriting.

  The house had no front garden. A swollen unkempt privet hedge concealed the front window. A path whose gravel held still underfoot led between a few patchy fist-sized stones to a large front door beside a stack of two bay windows. Red light smouldered through the curtains and through the panes of the door.

  At last the bell brought someone into the crimson hall. His head looked boiling with wiry curls. Eventually his hand found the latch.

  “ Peace, Jim,” Peter said. “You know Cathy.”

  “ Yeah.” He sounded as though he wasn’t sure or didn’t care. Peter stepped in, glancing warily at the street, and urged her to be quick.

  Red light filled the house, thick as jam. Her eyes felt coated with it; she had to prove to herself that she could breathe. Upstairs someone was singing – no, wailing: “Oh shit shit shit.” Was it a bad trip? Another voice tried to interrupt, low and soothing.

  Jim gestured them loosely into the front room. In the clotted light, people sat on threadbare furniture or floor cushions. Their tangled hair looked like spaghetti dangling in the sauce of the light. “Hi” or “Yeah” they muttered, or raised lethargic hands. The dim walls were cluttered: mandala posters, science fiction book covers enlarged, posters for rock concerts, a large damp patch of wallpaper. Joss-sticks protruded fuming from small metal stands.

  She sat with Peter on a cushion. Jim perched on a limping wooden chair. The bars of a feeble electric fire were indistinguishable from the light. Nobody said anything. Everyone watched a man whose hair swayed about his face as he rolled a joint. His movements were slow and careful as a celebrating priest’s.

  Ten minutes later he licked the paper shut. In five more minutes he’d inserted cardboard in the mouth of the joint. A further minute passed before he lit the twisted end. He inhaled, closing his eyes prayerfully.

  Everyone watched in a kind of stoned respectful silence. Incomprehensible wails seeped through the ceiling. When was Peter going to get down to business? Delaying was part of the ritual; you had to pretend you weren’t here to score, only to smoke. It might be hours before he asked Jim.

  She refused the joint when it reached her at last; she was depressed enough. Someone split open a cigarette to roll another. Conversation began. Had it needed the cannabis to coax it out? The passing of the joint filled the long pauses.

  “ They seized eight kilos on the docks today.”

  “ Bad news.”

  “ There’s supposed to be some Lebanese hash coming from London.”

  “ Probably came through Liverpool first.”

  “ That’ll put the price up.”

  “ Thirty pounds an ounce.”

  “ Bad news.”

  “ Inflation.”

  All that had consumed ten minutes. Words were slowing; heads nodded. One of Jim’s commune returned from the kitchen with a dish of biscuits: hash cookies, or a vegetarian recipe? His long nails were underlined with dirt. Cathy gestured the dish onwards without touching it. She thought of the health food cafe on Hardman Street, full of thin morosely virtuous young men.

  Another joint was rolled. She felt cramped and utterly bored. Once she’d seen Fantasia at the Royal Court. The back stalls had been packed with muted families of theatre-goers; Peter and his friends had occupied the front three rows, passing joints and cheering when the cartoon mushrooms danced. She’d felt little affinity with either group.

  Was that a faint desperate screaming overhead? In the thick light, the damp patch on the wall glistened red. Blurred by the dimness, the bloody shadows looked unnervingly shapeless. She felt a twinge of the panic she had suffered on the landing.

  Perhaps Peter sensed her unease. Sounding embarrassed, he said

  “ Hey, Jim, did you get that stuff?”

  “ Yeah,” Jim said mournfully. “I’ve got some Congo bush too if you want.”

  They wandered off to use the scales. If Peter hadn’t been expecting grass, what had he meant to score? A joint was making its round. What the hell – Peter would be half an hour at least, no doubt. When the joint was handed to her to pass on, she inhaled heavily.

  She felt the cannabis reach into her brain. That was enough: she was driving. Too late: the joint had released all the thoughts she wanted to suppress. They seized her mind, and grew. Would she and Peter ever have children? Suppose they had waited too long, like Angie and Frank? Wouldn’t houses grow more and more expensive, leaving them always behind? What had there been on the landing?

  Footsteps dawdled in the hall. The door opened sluggishly, to admit the faint shrieking. It sounded weaker now, choked. She stood up. She’d had enough of the stained wall and the cries.

  “ Did you get some of Jim’s acid?” someone asked Peter.

  Peter glared, but had to say “Yes.”

  “ Peter.” Had she known he meant to score LSD, she would never have driven him.

  He didn’t look at her, but at someone who remarked “You don’t see much acid these days.”

  “ It’s gone out of fashion,” someone else joined in, now that the conversation had become interesting.

  “ It
was a sixties thing.”

  “ An optimistic drug.”

  “ Not for the seventies.”

  “ There’s a lot of heroin in London now.”

  Cathy waited on the pavement. She wouldn’t go back, however long Peter dawdled. Time clung to her. The street looked so intensely present as to seem unreal. She gazed at the neglected hedge. The stagnant people beyond the reddened curtain filled her mind. Wasn’t Peter growing more like them? Wouldn’t he withdraw deeper into himself on his trip, and become more inert?

  She knew what had made him so passive and uncertain of himself: he’d seemed an unexpected miracle to his parents, late in their lives; they had treasured and spoilt him – but you couldn’t use your childhood as an excuse for the rest of your life.

  Peter appeared, glancing about like the hero of an inept spy film. How could she argue him out of himself without seeming to want to emasculate him? He hurried to the van, his hands in his pockets guarding his hoard. He wanted to go home, to smoke until he was too stoned to roll another. She would sit in the flat, having nowhere else to go.

  Oh, why couldn’t something happen to change their situation?

  ***

  Chapter XXII

  “ I want to join out,” the little boy said.

  “ Do you!” Cathy exclaimed. The turn of phrase amused her. She would never have said “Do you mean you want to cease borrowing books?” as one of her colleagues did.

  The miniature face stared up at her, impatiently serious. “You keep your tickets, then,” she said. “You might want to borrow books again sometime.”

  The little boy went out shaking his head: he was too old for fairy tales. “You can go now, Cathy,” the librarian said.

  She climbed the spiral staircase. She was proud of her sureness on the gallery; she’d conquered that fear, though she avoided looking down through the metal mesh. Would she be capable of walking on the top gallery of the Picton library, which was judged unsafe for the public but not for the staff?