The Claw

by Ramsey Campbell

  As soon as she had driven away, Alan said, 'I wish you wouldn't resent her so much. She's only trying to help.'

  'Yes, at my expense.'

  'Oh, that's nonsense. Why do you say that? If she's difficult sometimes, it's only because she'd like to see more of her grandchild.'

  'She sees as much of her as my parents do.'

  'Well, it isn't my mother's fault if your parents live so far away, is it? It isn't her fault your father has a weak heart and won't drive.'

  She stared at him. 'I can't talk to you at all,' she said, and went into the house, half-blind with nerves and anger. In the long room the cassette was still running; great crude masks were dancing. She made for the kitchen, trying to think, through the jumble of her emotions, if there was anything she'd forgotten to do.

  She had barely reached the kitchen when Anna came trailing after her. 'Anna, will you please go out and play or find something to do so you don't get under my feet,' she cried.

  'I don't want to go out. The man's there.'

  'Don't be so childish.' Often the little girl behaved as if she was older than six; right now, for some reason, she was acting as if she was considerably younger. Liz strode into the garden to show her there was nothing there. A breeze tousled her hair, flowers stooped like ballerinas, the hedge shook. Amid the roaring of the sea she heard children shouting and an unpleasant high-pitched sound she couldn't place. She was almost at the point where she could see through the hedge when she faltered. Anna had been right. There was a man beyond the hedge.

  The next moment Liz relaxed. It was only Joseph; she would have known that grubby raincoat anywhere, especially on a hot day like this. He was bending over something in the grass, and he had his back to her. His raincoat blocked her view. But she could still hear that high-pitched sound, and it made her apprehensive. Joseph's right arm was rising and falling, the torn sleeve of his coat was flapping. Liz hurried to the hedge to see what he had found.

  But she stumbled away before she reached the hedge, one hand over her mouth to stop herself from crying out. That might bring Anna, and the child mustn't see. Liz hadn't seen a great deal herself: only far too much – only the sharp stone in Joseph's right hand, which came up redder every time it rose into the air. Now she knew what the high-pitched noise was. There couldn't be much left of what lay at his feet, but whatever was left was screaming.

  Twelve

  Alan thought: Christ, what's wrong now? Everything seemed to be going wrong since he'd come back from Nigeria: his work, his home life, his surroundings. Both he and Liz were seeing things – she at the window and in the pillbox, he on the cassette. And that was yet another problem to undermine his work. He had been so busy trying to find the man he thought he'd seen on the cassette that he'd completely lost the inspiration the documentary had originally given him. Now his mother and Liz were at each other's throats, which made him feel helpless and edgy, and he was being drawn into silly, time-wasting arguments. Worst of all, there was Anna, moping about the place as if she expected someone to pounce on her, behaving as if she was afraid to be alone with her father or even to have him touch her, making a ridiculous fuss about the weapon he'd brought home from Nigeria, doing everything she could to make it difficult for him to work, even upsetting his mother.

  And now, on top of everything else, here was Liz with the latest bad news.

  For a moment he thought she wanted to reopen the argument – about his mother, or her parents, or whatever the devil the matter had been. Then he saw how white her face was, and he was furious: nothing was going to make her look like that if he had anything to do with it. 'What's wrong?' he said, suddenly gentle.

  'Go and see.' Whatever the matter was, she clearly didn't want to say in front of Anna. 'Go quickly. Just beyond the hedge. I'll call the police.'

  She didn't sound at all hysterical. She was hurrying Anna into her playroom – 'Just find yourself something to do for a few minutes' – as he made for the back door. Though he felt apprehensive, she had also raised his spirits; perhaps at last there would be something to confront.

  As soon as he had let himself out of the side gate he saw Joseph, his coat flapping like a scarecrow's. For a moment he wondered if Liz had been hysterical after all; there was nobody but Joseph on the cliff. Then he saw how Joseph was tearing at an object in the grass – tearing with his bare hands. Both the object and his hands were crimson. Alan went forward quietly, gritting his teeth.

  The noise of the wind and the sea must have drowned the sound of Alan's approach, unless Joseph was too preoccupied to look up. Alan was able to creep within arm's length of him, close enough to gaze down at the body of the goat. It was torn wide open, and Joseph was dragging out the small intestine, a glistening rope that seemed endless. His nails were biting into it; Alan had never seen his nails so long. With a kind of horrible banality, he made a mental note that his own nails needed cutting too.

  Joseph stumbled backward without warning – surely the goat was twitching only because he was dragging at it, not because it was still alive? – and Alan saw his face. His eyes were blank, as if they couldn't bear to see what he was doing. He was chewing; a trickle of blood ran down his chin from whatever was in his mouth.

  The next moment he saw Alan. His eyes widened with horror – with realization of what he had done? He gave a shrill inarticulate snarl and stumbled away, running bow-legged toward the path down to the beach. He slithered down a few feet, then whirled around and came stumbling upward, slipping on drifts of sand. A family – a podgy man in Bermuda shorts, a plump woman squeezed into an imitation leopard-skin swimsuit, two bright pink children wrapped in bath towels – were climbing the path, blocking his way.

  They had seen his crimson hands and his wild eyes. The man came after him, shouting 'Hey!' Joseph dodged between Alan and the edge of the cliff. For a moment Alan thought he'd trapped him – Joseph was forced to teeter on the very edge, which began at once to crumble – then Joseph fled crabwise toward the house. Let him get there, let Anna see what he'd become, then perhaps she'd appreciate her father. .. Horrified by his own thoughts, Alan raced after Joseph, trying to head him off.

  The plump woman had seen the carcass in the grass. 'Oh, the swine!' she cried, thrusting her shoulder-bag at the elder of the children and giving them a shove toward the family car. Then she joined the chase. Though her flesh quivered wherever it bulged out of her swimsuit, she was as fast as any of them and a good deal more furious.

  Alan had managed to keep Joseph away from the house. Joseph went lurching toward the pillbox, waving his hands frantically, scattering drops of blood. Alan noticed he was wiping his hands down his coat. Perhaps he felt he would be rid of his guilt if he got rid of the blood. Now he was struggling out of the smeared coat, tearing off the buttons. For the first time Alan saw what he wore underneath: trousers and braces, but nothing else.

  Joseph was nearly at the pillbox. Perhaps they could trap him in there. Alan's gesture to the couple said as much. The man dodged behind the building to head Joseph off, Alan ran straight at him. The woman was running at him too, her face red with exertion and fury. They would almost certainly have caught him if she hadn't turned fastidiously aside to avoid treading on the smeared coat. Joseph fled toward the road, stretching out his hands on either side of him as far as they would go, as if he wished they would vanish, as if he could forget they were there.

  He stopped before he reached the road. The police were waiting for him, the red-faced policeman and a younger man with a crew-cut. The sight of them seemed to paralyse Joseph, for they almost reached him before he turned and tried to flee. The young man brought him down with a rugby tackle. The dry earth beneath the parched grass must have knocked all the breath out of him. Even so, the young policeman grabbed his arms and twisted them viciously up his naked back.

  Alan found the capture rather sordid and unpleasant. No doubt in reality such things always were. The older policeman seemed embarrassed too. 'All right, lad, we've got him n
ow. Go easy on him.'

  'Go easy on him?' the plump woman cried. 'Have you seen what he did to that poor dumb animal? Give him to me, I'll show you how to treat him.'

  'It's all right, Freda,' her husband said, glancing warily at the police. "They know their job. We'd best be getting back to the children.'

  After a while she allowed herself to be coaxed away. Alan led the older policeman to the remains of the goat, where flies were already gathering. To his surprise he'd begun to like the man, who had proved to be human after all. 'My wife won't have to see this, will she?' he said.

  'She was the one who called us, you know.' But he looked sickened himself. 'Did you see him in the act? Well, then I think we can let her off."

  Alan had to retreat from the smell of blood before he could describe what he had seen. The young policeman was hauling Joseph to his feet, still with his arms twisted behind him, and Alan's testimony seemed redundant; the evidence was there on Joseph's hands, and dribbling from his mouth. The young policeman marched him forward and forced him to stoop to the carcass, into the stench of blood. 'Did you do this?' he shouted.

  Joseph's moan was wordless, but there was no mistaking the sound of guilt. The young policeman dragged him backward, wrenching his arms further up between his shoulders. Alan felt sorry for Joseph, but helpless to intervene. Joseph surely couldn't have known what he was doing. But what could have changed him so much and so suddenly, to make him act that way?

  All at once Joseph gazed into his eyes with an expression both pleading and accusing. Alan felt inexplicably afraid of what he might say. Nothing, probably, for he was spitting out blood, and the young policeman had already begun to drag him off to the police van. But Joseph struggled back toward Alan. 'He made Joseph do it,' he said thickly. 'He brought it here.'

  'Don't you be telling lies,' the young policeman said, jerking Joseph's arms. 'Nobody made you do it but yourself. And this gentleman never brought the goat here, either. You're loony, that's what you are, but that won't help you.'

  He forced Joseph to stumble toward the road. Joseph stared back over his shoulder, crying, 'He brought it here!' until his captor shoved him into the back of the van.

  Alan felt dizzy with guilt, but the red-faced policeman was apologetic. 'I may have to bother you again,' he said, 'but I hope there won't be any need.'

  When the police had taken Joseph away, Alan stood for a while at the edge of the cliff. The sea glittered jaggedly, the pebbles on the beach looked like stubble in brown flesh. Another police van arrived to collect the carcass. It was undoubtedly their most sensational case for years. Suddenly he didn't want to be alone, though he wasn't sure if he should tell Liz what he felt, or even if he could. He hurried back to the house.

  Liz was waiting for him in the back doorway. She must have persuaded Anna to stay alone in the playroom for a while. 'I'm sorry I behaved as if you were imagining things,' he said at once. 'It must have been Joseph all the time. At least it's over now.'

  'I suppose so.' She seemed understandably depressed, yet relieved. He held her for a while, but that reminded him that he wasn't telling her the whole story. Telling her might upset her for no reason; and anyway, he knew what he had to do. Eventually she said, 'Maybe I shouldn't leave Anna by herself too long,' and he was able to go up to his workroom.

  He sat staring out of the window at the cliff-top, at the reddened patch of grass where the goat had lain. He was right, he knew. He'd known what Joseph was going to say even before he spoke. It explained so much – Anna's apparently irrational fear, his own glimpse on the video-cassette, perhaps even the things Liz had seen: he no longer knew how real they'd been, and it didn't seem to matter. Above all, it explained the change in Joseph, and that showed how serious the situation was. Thank God, he knew what to do.

  He made three phone calls quickly. His agent was booked up for the rest of the week, but Teddy the Editor was free. It wouldn't have mattered if he hadn't been, but he was a good excuse, a means of making things look more natural to Liz. Alan made one more call, then he went downstairs to her. 'Shall we take Anna to the hotel for dinner?' he said.

  'To celebrate, you mean?'

  'Not quite that.' Liz had immediately regretted her sarcasm. 'I just thought it would take the pressure off you a bit,' he said.

  'God knows I need that. All right, let's.' Then she looked suspiciously at him. 'Are you trying to soften me up for something?'

  He was glad she thought so; that way she wouldn't realize that what he really wanted was to get all three of them out of the house for a while, away from whatever was there. 'Well, Teddy wants me to go into London and have lunch with him tomorrow. You don't mind, do you? You've got your at-home with the girls in the afternoon.'

  'Do you have to go? Yes, all right, I know you do. I only hope I can persuade Anna that everything's all right without mentioning Joseph.'

  'I'm sure you will. I'll try not to be back too late.'

  Seeing that she'd accepted the excuse, he was able to say, casually, 'And I'll take that African thing with me.'

  Thirteen

  That night Alan couldn't sleep. Either the heat was tropical, or he'd had too much to drink at the hotel. Long after Liz had fallen asleep he lay awake beside her, sweating and prickly, bothered by the vague idea that there was something he had to do. 'All right,' he found himself muttering at the dark, Til do it, I'm going to do it tomorrow.' But still his compulsion wasn't satisfied; it kept jerking him back from the edge of sleep, stranding him in the rumbling seaside dark with fragments of the day – Joseph stumbling backward as the raw intestine unravelled; Joseph helpless on the ground with the policeman on top of him, himself carrying Anna asleep in his arms, out of the hotel to the car. Why did all these memories make him feel uneasy?

  He slept at last, and woke late, feeling as if he'd run for miles. By the time he'd rushed through washing, shaving and dressing, Anna was sitting by Liz on the bed, and Liz was blinking herself awake. He kissed them both, then grabbed his briefcase and hurried out to the car. As he passed the living-room he glimpsed the empty space on the mantelpiece where the claw had been before he had packed it in his briefcase, and felt intensely relieved.

  He backed his dented car out of the garage and drove to Norwich. Soon the sea fell behind. Golfers and hikers wandered over the green landscape, barges roamed the waterways. Luckily there wasn't much traffic on the roads – for he was driving before he was fully awake – and he drove through the villages without mishap. A postman cycled from house to house, women with wicker baskets chatted outside shops – but Alan barely noticed them, intent on his driving.

  He reached Norwich earlier than he had expected. The train reminded him of the railway museum, for his carriage was faded and empty. Why did these musty old carriages always seem so dim, even on sunny days like this? He sat and gazed along the ranks of deserted seats, settees crammed together. His briefcase was on the floor beside him. He pushed it away a little with one foot, so that it wouldn't be quite so near him.

  The carriage was still empty when the train jerked forward. The jerk felt like an awakening – except that he was still trying to struggle awake five minutes later. The landscape was rushing past faster now, but it hardly changed at all and wasn't enough to distract him from the contents of his briefcase, nor from the muttering of his thoughts. He wasn't sure if he believed his intuition of yesterday. Hadn't he been thinking too much like a writer, trying to make everything fit together too neatly? Could such an insignificant object really have influenced Joseph so profoundly? But if not, why had the anthropologist been so anxious to get rid of it? It didn't matter what Alan thought; whatever his reasons he had to deliver it to the Foundation.

  That relieved his anxiety, a little. The train was rocking him back to sleep, and there was nothing in the landscape that his mind could seize upon to stay awake. He moved over on the seat and placed the briefcase between himself and the window. In a few moments he was nodding. There was something he had to do. His head w
as nodding, it seemed to agree. His body knew what he had to do; why couldn't it let him into the secret? One more nod that he was distantly aware of, and then he was lost in a dream.

  Perhaps it was the answer, for he was close to home. He had to find Anna. There she was, running through the murky fields ahead. He didn't know exactly where he was, but he could hear the sea, though it sounded as he thought a rainstorm in a jungle might sound. He had to catch up with Anna, for a shape was running beside him on all fours, a naked shape with a human face, a shape that glistened red all over, even in the dark,. Now he had outdistanced the shape and was running effortlessly, his feet hardly touching the ground. In a moment he would catch Anna. That was when she looked back, and he saw the terror in her eyes. He felt as if the ground beneath his feet had fallen away. She knew that he hadn't been chasing her to save her. He sprang at her, raising the claw that had been in his hand all the time.

  Had he closed his eyes so that he couldn't see what he'd done? Certainly he'd had a blackout of some kind, because now he was somewhere in the jungle, stumbling through the greenish light beneath enormous dripping trees. Now he knew: the scene with Anna hadn't happened yet, and he was here to prevent it from ever happening. Here was a clearing with a few conical huts, a pot steaming over a fire, a thin leathery man with small blank eyes like a spider's, squatting with his back to a tree. Alan stumbled toward the man with the spidery eyes, for he was Alan's one chance to stop what was going to happen. Then, for a moment too brief to grasp, he realized what he would have to do in order to make sure of that chance, and it was so dreadful that he woke shrieking.

  The carriage was still deserted. He wished there were someone there, even though it might have been embarrassing. Beyond the window at the end of the carriage, more seats lurched back and forth; beside him a blur of hedges raced by. He'd already forgotten what he had to do in the clearing in the jungle, and he was trying to forget his dream about Anna too, but there was one thought he couldn't avoid: the dream hadn't been entirely false to his feelings about her. He had to admit that he was relieved to get away from her.