by Otto Penzler
Miss Gribbin’s lips tightened and he saw her shiver slightly.
“Mr. Parslow will be angry,” was all she said.
“I really cannot help that. Perhaps it is all for the best. If Monica does not like his little daughter they had better not be brought together again.”
For all that, Everton was a little embarrassed when on the following morning he met the Vicar out walking. If the Rev. Parslow knew that his little daughter had left the house so unceremoniously on the preceding day, he would either wish to make an apology, or perhaps require one, according to his view of the situation. Everton did not wish to deal in apologies one way or the other, he did not care to discuss the vagaries of children, and altogether he wanted to have as little to do with Mr. Parslow as was conveniently possible. He would have passed with a brief acknowledgment of the Vicar’s existence, but, as he had feared, the Vicar stopped him.
“I had been meaning to come and see you,” said the Rev. Parslow.
Everton halted and sighed inaudibly, thinking that perhaps this casual meeting out of doors might after all have saved him something.
“Yes?” he said.
“I will walk in your direction if I may.” The Vicar eyed him anxiously. “There is something you must certainly be told. I don’t know if you guess, or if you already know. If not, I don’t know how you will take it. I really don’t.”
Everton looked puzzled. Whichever child the Vicar might blame for the hurried departure of Gladys, there seemed no cause for such a portentous face and manner.
“Really?” he asked. “Is it something serious?”
“I think so, Mr. Everton. You are aware, of course, that my little girl left your house yesterday afternoon with some lack of ceremony.”
“Yes, Monica told us she had gone. If they could not agree it was surely the best thing she could have done, although it may sound inhospitable of me to say it. Excuse me, Mr. Parslow, but I hope you are not trying to embroil me in a quarrel between children?”
The Vicar stared in his turn.
“I am not,” he said, “and I am unaware that there was any quarrel. I was going to ask you to forgive Gladys. There was some excuse for her lack of ceremony. She was badly frightened, poor child.”
“Then it is my turn to express regret. I had Monica’s version of what happened. Monica has been left a great deal to her own resources, and, having no playmates of her own age, she seems to have invented some.”
“Ah!” said the Rev. Parslow, drawing a deep breath.
“Unfortunately,” Everton continued, “Monica has an uncomfortable gift for impressing her fancies on other people. I have often thought I felt the presence of children about the house, and so, I am almost sure, has Miss Gribbin. I am afraid that when your little girl came to play with her yesterday afternoon, Monica scared her by introducing her invisible ‘friends’ and by talking to imaginary and therefore invisible little girls.”
The Vicar laid a hand on Everton’s arm.
“There is something more in it than that. Gladys is not an imaginative child; she is, indeed, a practical little person. I have never yet known her to tell me a lie. What would you say, Mr. Everton, if I were to tell you that Gladys positively asserts that she saw those other children?”
Something like a cold draught went through Everton. An ugly suspicion, vague and almost shapeless, began to move in dim recesses of his mind. He tried to shake himself free of it, to smile and to speak lightly.
“I shouldn’t be in the least surprised. Nobody knows the limits of telepathy and autosuggestion. If I can feel the presence of children whom Monica has created out of her own imagination, why shouldn’t your daughter, who is probably more receptive and impressionable than I am, be able to see them?”
The Rev. Parslow shook his head.
“Do you really mean that?” he asked. “Doesn’t it seem to you a little far-fetched?”
“Everything we don’t understand must seem far-fetched. If one had dared to talk of wireless thirty years ago——”
“Mr. Everton, do you know that your house was once a girl’s school?”
Once more Everton experienced that vague feeling of discomfiture.
“I didn’t know,” he said, still indifferently.
“My aunt, whom I never saw, was there. Indeed she died there. There were seven who died. Diphtheria broke out there many years ago. It ruined the school which was shortly afterwards closed. Did you know that, Mr. Everton? My aunt’s name was Mary Hewitt——”
“Good God!” Everton cried out sharply. “Good God!”
“Ah!” said Parslow. “Now do you begin to see?”
Everton, suddenly a little giddy, passed a hand across his forehead.
“That is—one of the names Monica told me,” he faltered. “How could she know?”
“How indeed? Mary Hewitt’s great friend was Elsie Power. They died within a few hours of each other.”
“That name too … she told me … and there were seven. How could she have known? Even the people around here wouldn’t have remembered names after all these years.”
“Gladys knew them. But that was only partly why she was afraid. Yet I think she was more awed than afraid, because she knew instinctively that the children who came to play with little Monica, although they were not of this world, were good children, blessed children.”
“What are you telling me?” Everton burst out.
“Don’t be afraid, Mr. Everton. You are not afraid, are you? If those whom we call dead still remain close to us, what more natural than these children should come back to play with a lonely little girl who lacked human playmates? It may seem inconceivable, but how else explain it? How could little Monica have invented those two names? How could she have learned that seven little girls once died in your house? Only the very old people about here remember it, and even they could not tell you how many died or the name of any one of the little victims. Haven’t you noticed a change in your ward since first she began to—imagine them, as you thought?”
Everton nodded heavily.
“Yes,” he said, almost unwittingly, “she learned all sorts of tricks of speech, childish gestures she never had before, and games.… I couldn’t understand. Mr. Parslow, what in God’s name am I to do?”
The Rev. Parslow still kept a hand on Everton’s arm.
“If I were you I should send her off to school. It may not be very good for her.”
“Not good for her! But the children, you say——”
“Children? I might have said angels. They will never harm her. But Monica is developing a gift of seeing and conversing with—with beings that are invisible and inaudible to others. It is not a gift to be encouraged. She may in time see and converse with others—wretched souls who are not God’s children. She may lose the faculty if she mixes with others of her age. Out of her need, I am sure, these came to her.”
“I must think,” said Everton.
He walked on dazedly. In a moment or two the whole aspect of life had changed, had grown clearer, as if he had been blind from birth and was now given the first glimmerings of light. He looked forward no longer into the face of a blank and featureless wall, but through a curtain beyond which life manifested itself vaguely but at least perceptibly. His footfalls on the ground beat out the words: “There is no death. There is no death.”
VI
That evening after dinner he sent for Monica and spoke to her in an unaccustomed way. He was strangely shy of her, and his hand, which he rested on one of her slim shoulders, lay there awkwardly.
“Do you know what I’m going to do with you, young woman?” he said. “I’m going to pack you off to school.”
“O-oh!” she stared at him, half smiling. “Are you really?”
“Do you want to go?”
She considered the matter, frowning and staring at the tips of her fingers.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to leave them.”
“Who?” he asked.
“Oh, yo
u know!” she said, and turned her head half shyly.
“What? Your—friends, Monica?”
“Yes.”
“Wouldn’t you like other playmates?”
“I don’t know. I love them, you see. But they said—they said I ought to go to school if you ever sent me. They might be angry with me if I was to ask you to let me stay. They wanted me to play with other girls who aren’t—that aren’t like they are. Because you know, they are different from children that everybody can see. And Mary told me not to—not to encourage anybody else who was different, like them.”
Everton drew a deep breath.
“We’ll have a talk tomorrow about finding a school for you, Monica,” he said. “Run off to bed, now. Good-night, my dear.”
He hesitated, then touched her forehead with his lips. She ran from him, nearly as shy as Everton himself, tossing back her long hair, but from the door she gave him the strangest little brimming glance, and there was that in her eyes which he had never seen before.
Late that night Everton entered the great empty room which Monica had named the schoolroom. A flag of moonlight from the window lay across the floor, and it was empty to the gaze. But the deep shadows hid little shy presences of which some unnamed and undeveloped sense in the man was acutely aware.
“Children!” he whispered. “Children!”
He closed his eyes and stretched out his hands. Still they were shy and held aloof, but he fancied that they came a little nearer.
“Don’t be afraid,” he whispered. “I’m only a very lonely man. Be near me after Monica is gone.”
He paused, waiting. Then as he turned away he was aware of little caressing hands upon his arm. He looked around at once, but the time had not yet come for him to see. He saw only the barred window, the shadows on either wall, and the flag of moonlight.
JUST BEHIND YOU
Ramsey Campbell
HEAVILY INFLUENCED BY THE work of H. P. Lovecraft, John Ramsey Campbell (1946–) published three short story collections in a similar style before producing his first novel, The Doll Who Ate His Mother (1976; revised edition 1985). The following year, 1977, he wrote the novelizations of three films (The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula’s Daughter, and The Wolfman) as Carl Dreadstone, a house name under which three additional novels were written by others. He was successful in bringing a pulpy style that evoked those classic films. Among the best of his later novels are The Face That Must Die (1979), Incarnate (1983), Ancient Images (1989), Midnight Sun (1991), and Grin of the Dark (2008). Among the many accolades Campbell has received are six World Fantasy nominations (four winners), sixteen British Fantasy Society nominations (ten winners), and two Bram Stoker Award nominations (both winners). He has been named the Lifetime President of the British Fantasy Society. Often described by critics and fellow writers as the greatest stylist of the contemporary horror genre, Campbell was born in Liverpool. He set many of his novels and stories there and in the fictional city of Brichester in the same region. While much of his work is explicitly violent, Campbell’s use of metaphor, symbolism, and imagery allows a poetic tone to suffuse his prose, suggesting horrors that remain in the memory long after the initial shock of a starkly brutal occurrence has passed.
“Just Behind You” was first published in Poe’s Progeny, edited by Gary Fry (Bradford, U.K., Gray Friar Press, 2005).
Just Behind You
RAMSEY CAMPBELL
I’VE HARDLY SLAMMED the car door when Mr. Holt trots out of the school. “Sorry we’re late, head,” I tell him.
“Don’t send yourself to my office, Paul. It was solid of you to show up.” He elevates his bristling eyebrows, which tug his mottled round face blank. “I’d have laid odds on you if I were a betting man.”
“You don’t mean no one else has come.”
“None of your colleagues. You’re their representative. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure it goes on your record somehow.”
I want to keep this job, whatever memories the school revives, but now it looks as if I’m attending his son’s party to ingratiate myself rather than simply assuming it was expected; the invitations were official enough. I’m emitting a diffident sound when Mr. Holt clasps his pudgy hands behind his back. “And let me guess, this is your son,” he says, lowering his face at Tom as if his joviality is weighing it down. “What’s the young man’s name?”
I’m afraid Tom may resent being patronised, but he struggles to contain a grin as he says
“Tom.”
“Tom Francis, hey? Good strong name. You could go to bat for England with a name like that. The birthday boy’s called Jack. I expect you’re eager to meet him.”
Tom hugs the wrapped computer game as if he’s coveting it all over again, and I give him a frown that’s both a warning and a reminder that his mother promised we’d buy him one for Christmas. “I don’t mind,” he says.
“Not done to show too much enthusiasm these days, is it, Paul? Cut along there, Tom, and the older men will catch you up.”
As Tom marches alongside the elongated two-storey red brick building as if he’s determined to leave more of his loathed chubbiness behind, Mr. Holt says, “I think we can say it’s a success. A couple of the parents are already talking about hiring the school for their parties. Do let me know if you have any wheezes for swelling the funds.”
I’m distracted by the notion that a boy is pacing Tom inside the ground-floor classrooms. It’s his reflection, of course, and now I can’t even see it in the empty sunlit rooms. “It was tried once before,” I’m confused enough to remark. “Hiring the place out.”
“Before my time,” the headmaster says so sharply he might be impressing it on someone who doesn’t know. “There was a tragedy, I gather. Was it while you were a pupil here?”
Although I’m sure he doesn’t mean to sound accusing, he makes me feel accused. I might almost not have left the school and grown up, and the prospect ahead doesn’t help—the schoolyard occupied by people I’ve never seen before. The adults and most of the boys have taken plastic cups from a trestle table next to one laden with unwrapped presents. “I’m afraid I was,” I say, which immediately strikes me as an absurd turn of phrase.
“Can we start now, dad?” the fattest boy shouts. “Who else are we supposed to be waiting for?”
“I think you’ve just got one new friend, Jack.”
I hope it’s only being told it that makes him scowl at Tom. “Who are you? Did you have to come?”
“I’m sure he wanted to,” Mr. Holt says, though I think he may have missed the point of the question, unless he’s pretending. “This is Paul Francis and his son Tom, everyone. Paul is proving to be the loyallest of my staff.”
Some of the adults stand their cups on the table to applaud while others raise a polite cheer. “Is that my present?” Jack Holt is asking Tom. “What have you got me?”
“I hope you like it,” Tom says and yields it up. “I would.”
Jack tears off the wrapping and drops it on the concrete. A woman who has been dispensing drinks utters an affectionate tut as she swoops to retrieve it and consign it to the nearest bin. “Thank you, dear,” Mr. Holt says, presumably identifying her as his wife. “Even if it’s your birthday, Jack—”
“I’ll see if it’s any good later,” Jack tells Tom, and as Tom’s face owns up to hoping he can have a turn, adds, “When I get home.”
“Do pour Paul some bubbly, dear. Not precisely champers, Paul, but I expect you can’t tell on your salary.”
As a driver I should ask for lemonade, but I don’t think I’ll be able to bear much more of the afternoon without a stronger drink or several. As Mrs. Holt giggles at the foam that swells out of my cup, her husband claps his hands. “Well, boys, I think it’s time for games.”
“I want to eat first.” With a slyness I’m surely not alone in noticing Jack says, “You wouldn’t like all the food mother made to go stale.”
I take rather too large a gulp from my cup. His behaviour reminds
me of Jasper, and I don’t care to remember just now, especially while Tom is on the premises. I look around for distraction, and fancy that I glimpsed someone ducking out of sight behind the schoolyard wall closest to the building. I can do without such notions, and so I watch Mrs. Holt uncover the third table. The flourish with which she whips off its paper shroud to reveal plates of sandwiches and sausage rolls and a cake armed with eleven candles falters, however, and a corner of the paper scrapes the concrete. “Dear me,” she comments. “Don’t say this was you, Jack.”
“It wasn’t me,” Jack protests before he even looks.
Someone has taken a bite out of a sandwich from each platter and sampled the sausage rolls as well, though the cake has survived the raid. Jack stares at Tom as if he wants to blame him, but must realise Tom had no opportunity. “Who’s been messing with my food?” he demands at a pitch that hurts my ears.
“Now, Jack, don’t spoil your party,” his mother says. “Someone must have sneaked in when we all went to welcome your guests.”
“I don’t want it any more. I don’t like the look of it.”
“We’ll just put the food that’s been nibbled out for the birds, shall we? Then it won’t be wasted, and I’m certain the rest will be fine.”
I do my best to share her conviction for Tom’s sake, although the bite marks in the food she lays on top of the wall closest to the sports field look unpleasantly discoloured. Jack seems determined to maintain his aversion until the other boys start loading their paper plates, and then he elbows Tom aside and grabs handfuls to heap his own plate. I tell myself that Tom will have to survive worse in his life as I promise mentally to make up to him for the afternoon. If I’d come alone I wouldn’t be suffering quite so much.
I let Mrs. Holt refill my cup as an aid to conversing with the adult guests. I’ve already spoken to a magistrate and a local councillor and an accountant and a journalist. Their talk is so small it’s close to infinitesimal, except when it’s pointedly personal. Once they’ve established that this is my first job at a secondary school, and how many years I attended night classes to upgrade my qualifications, and that my wife doesn’t teach since she was attacked by a pupil, except I’d call her nursery work teaching, they seem to want me and Tom to feel accepted. “He certainly knows how to enjoy himself,” says the magistrate, and the councillor declares, “He’s a credit to his parents.” The accountant contributes, “He’s a generous chap,” and it’s only when the journalist responds, “Makes everybody welcome even if he doesn’t know them” that I realise they’re discussing not my son but Jack. The relentlessly sparkling wine helps me also understand they’re blind to anything here that they don’t want to see. I refrain from saying so for Tom’s sake and quite possibly my job’s. I do my best not to be unbearably aware of Tom’s attempts to stay polite while Jack boasts how superior his private school is to this one. When Jack asks Tom if his parents can’t afford to send him to a better school than he’s admitted to attending, my retort feels capable of heading off Tom’s. It’s Mrs. Holt who interrupts, however. “If everyone has had sufficient, let’s bring on the cake.”
