The Claw

by Ramsey Campbell

  At least, in a sense he was… But being away from her also allowed him to consider his feelings about her. He'd been uneasy whenever they were alone together, ever since he'd come back from Nigeria. All of a sudden she was getting on his nerves. Couldn't that be because his work was giving him trouble? Yes – but that wasn't the whole of it. Whenever he was alone with her, he felt that there was something he had to do, if only he could think of it. Perhaps he didn't need to think of it, just let his body act it out for him. For some reason he was remembering their last day on the beach, when he'd chased her and caught her, more and more roughly…

  He found he couldn't think of that for too long. It made him feel guilty and nervous, exactly as the dream had made him feel. If only he could wake fully he might be able to deal with it, but his thoughts were blurred, like something left in an attic for years. Most frustrating was the notion that the dream should have made clear to him what the claw was.

  He was still trying to grasp the impression, when the train pulled in at Liverpool Street. What was wrong with him, letting a dream bother him so much? God knows, he needed a clear mind for his meeting with Teddy, especially if he was going to break the news that the book might be late. He grabbed his briefcase and made for the taxi-rank.

  By the time he arrived on Queensway it was almost lunchtime. London was crowded with tourists, and half the shoppers in Oxford Street had been wearing robes -it was almost like a continuation of one of his dreams of Africa. Yesterday he'd been fairly sure he'd know what to say to Teddy when the time came, but now he felt sure of nothing, except that he wanted to deliver the contents of his briefcase as soon as he could. He wished he'd arranged to go to the Foundation first.

  Teddy was 'in a meeting'. Editors always seemed to be 'in a meeting' – when they weren't out to lunch. Alan sat on a leather sofa in the foyer, a high-ceilinged room elaborately decorated with plaster vegetation, and leafed through Publishers Weekly, glancing at a full-page advertisement for himself – 'Britain's leading thriller writer up there with Deighton and Le Carri.' A few years ago he'd never have dared dream that a publisher would spend that kind of money to advertise his books. He should have felt more pleased, but the sense of something to be done was still nagging at him.

  Soon Teddy came up from the basement. He was a tall Canadian with a youthful face that always looked scrubbed as a schoolboy's at a prize-giving. Though he was thirty-two, Alan had seen barmen refuse to serve him because he looked under age. Today he wore jeans and a T-shirt printed with a marihuana leaf. 'I hope you're starving,' he said.

  That and the T-shirt meant they'd be lunching at the pizza parlour. 'Pretty much,' Alan said. At least a leisurely meal might help him relax and choose his words.

  Small chance. The moment they sat down at their table, decorated with a large American flag, the waitress bobbed over to them, a pert girl with a stars-and-stripes apron and a Cockney accent. She brought them a carafe of white wine as soon as she saw Teddy.

  Alan had just ordered his pizza and taken a mouthful of wine when Teddy said, 'How's Out of the Past coming?'

  'Not too well,' Alan said, bracing himself for the worst.

  'Yes, I had that impression last time we spoke. You don't think you can deliver on time, am I right?'

  'Not without rushing it.' Alan wished he knew what Teddy thought of him, but the editor's face was bright and blank as a poster. 'I'm sorry,' Alan said. 'I don't want to seem temperamental.'

  'Nobody thinks that. You're one of our most professional writers. You take it at whatever pace feels right to you. It shouldn't take you more than a couple of months past the deadline, should it?'

  Just now Alan didn't know, and wondered if Teddy was flattering him in order to make him commit himself. 'I hope not,' he said.

  'Well, keep me up to date on how it's going. Just don't feel too pressured, that's the main thing. Anyway, I wanted to tell you, we're giving you an excuse for deliv- ering it late. You'll recall we're doing the first paperback of Spy on Fire in September, and we very much hope you'll agree to a signing tour.'

  Alan should have been delighted. At the start of his writing career he'd often dreamed of one day being important enough to tour the country at his publisher's expense, signing his books. But now he felt he was agreeing only because he could think of no reason to refuse. As soon as they'd finished their pizzas and cheesecake and coffee, he declined another drink in Teddy's office and ran for a cab to take him to the Foundation for African Studies.

  The Foundation was an elegant cream stucco building near Russell Square, with a pedimented doorway flanked by round windows, portholes of gleaming white plaster, and the air of a miniature country house. Lions the size of cats perched on the gateposts between black railings, and a man was clipping the lawns in front of the building with long-handled shears. Alan wondered vaguely if he could be a plain-clothes guard, then dismissed the idea as fanciful. Perhaps he could work it into a future book: he filed the image away in his mind.

  The front door was open. The man, whose shears were almost as tall as himself, glanced up as Alan went in. Beyond the door was a foyer with a graceful staircase, at the foot of which a young woman with braided hair sat at a switchboard behind a desk. A small neat man with glossy black hair that almost hid his gleaming cranium scurried out of a room near the desk and frowning abstractedly at Alan, hurried upstairs. 'May I help you?' the young woman said.

  'I'm supposed to see Dr Hetherington.'

  'Why, there he is. Dr Hetherington!' she called – but already the small neat man had turned and was descending the stairs.

  So much for Alan's image of a tall stooped white-haired professor. At least Hetherington seemed as fussy as he sounded on the phone. He gazed at Alan, then his frown cleared. 'Ah, yes, of course,' he said. 'You're bringing me the Leopard Men's claw.'

  He led the way upstairs to his office, a sunny spacious room overlooking the lawns, and lined with books in glass-fronted bookcases, out of reach of the sunlight. Through the open window came the murmur of traffic, and from closer by, the sound of clipping. Flicking a switch on his intercom, Hetherington called for tea, while Alan sank into a leather chair that sighed. Now Alan could ask the question that had nagged him all the way upstairs. 'You said the Leopard Men. The Nigerian secret society, you mean?'

  'Correct.' Hetherington was obviously glad of a chance to lecture. 'At least, they were last heard of in Nigeria,' he said. 'That was in the Forties, when they were simply killers, sometimes for hire. But the Leopard tradition was found across a wide belt of Africa, from Guinea through Sierra Leone and Liberia to Nigeria and Cameroon, on through Chad and the Sudan to Uganda and even Kenya – though there were only scattered reports there. Its influence was powerful while it lasted. One wonders if it has died out completely, even now.'

  A secretary came in with a teapot, mugs and milk and sugar on a tray. Hetherington poured the tea himself, giving all his attention to the task. Alan felt that if he asked a question he wouldn't be heard. There was something he needed to know, but was afraid to ask. Hetherington brought him a mug at last – 'Do tell me if the tea isn't as you like it' – and Alan took it.

  'They used to dress up in leopard skins and masks, didn't they?' he said. 'They lay in wait for people and killed them with the metal claws.'

  'Yes, in some areas there was a ritual robing. There were many regional variations. In the Western Congo, for example, where the tradition came from Gabon, they would tear off their victim's thumbs with their bare hands, and all the flesh between the eyes.' Suddenly he had the look of a teenage girl squirming at her first horror film.

  'The important element seems to have been to tear out the heart while the victim was still alive.'

  Why did Alan feel nervous? 'You mean they were cannibals?'

  'So we're led to believe. Only the Leopard societies, of course, not the cultures in which they occurred. Supposedly they devoured their victims as a way of achieving power. Some cannibalism appears to be based on the belief
that by consuming the victim you take on his powers, but it seems the Leopard Men were trying to reach back to some older form of magic, one that demanded human sacrifice and cannibalism. I mean, of course,' he added primly, 'that is what they believed.'

  Alan now realized why he was nervous: because he didn't know what he was afraid to hear. Outside, the sound of the clipping continued. The blast of a horn on the road seemed so loud that he jumped, almost spilling the tea.

  'The tradition seems to be traceable back to the Ju-ju men of the nineteenth century,' Hetherington was saying. 'Before that, there is no documentation. That was David Marlowe's task, to trace it back to its origins. It seemed an impossible task to me, but he was a brilliant researcher. I wonder,' he said sadly, 'if the research affected his mind. The way he seems to have become obsessed with the claw that he gave you, for example. Heaven knows how many people it may have killed. Certainly I should never have given it house room.'

  And yet he had expected Alan to do so. Still, it had been Alan's own decision to put it on display. Now, presumably, it was Hetherington's, whether he wanted it or not. Alan sipped his tea automatically, though it seemed to be making him hot and light-headed. The clipping of shears felt as if it was nipping at his brain.

  'David set out to interview surviving Leopard Men, and I understand that he succeeded,' Hetherington said. 'We shan't know until we see his notes, and we'll have to wait until the Nigerian police have finished with them for that. Perhaps it was the interviews that caused his breakdown – the strain of having to be polite to such men. I could never have done it myself. I don't believe in treating murderers like normal human beings – and these men were worse than murderers. Presumably each one of them must have gone through his own disgusting initiation ritual.'

  'What was that?' Alan said, though he wasn't sure by any means that he wanted to know.

  'Why, the killing of the child. One can only hope that some of them refused when they found that was what they were required to do – even if refusing meant being killed in their turn. You'd have thought that a man who had the courage to face those who'd chosen him would also have the courage to make them remove the compulsion. But of course these were superstitious savages. They would have been too scared to refuse.'

  Alan was gripping the mug so hard he thought it might shatter, thick as it was. 'What did you mean about killing a child?'

  'Each man had to give his young daughter to the cult before he could be accepted – a girl child of his own or his wife's blood. They would send the child running down a path through the bush at night. When they caught her they would tear her to pieces and eat her.'

  Alan managed to set down his mug on the carpet, though he could hardly see. He was blinded by a flood of memories – the dream of chasing Anna and bringing her down with the claw, his feelings about her since he'd brought the claw home, the dream which suddenly came flooding back to him – the chase dream he'd had on the plane out of Lagos. It must have started then, the influence on him. He groped for his briefcase, snarling under his breath. He had to control himself, or when he got hold of the claw he wouldn't be able to stop himself flinging it at Hetherington, this small intolerably smug man who had let the influence gain such a hold on him.

  He shuddered as he groped in the briefcase, for the touch of cold leather made him feel for a moment as if he were groping inside a corpse. He must calm down, he must shake off his fears in order to be able to look. But he'd already felt the contents of the briefcase, and that was why his fears were worse. He wrenched the case wide open, thinking sickly of Joseph tearing open the goats, and peered in. He couldn't believe it, even when his vision cleared. He hadn't brought the claw with him at all.

  Fourteen

  He must have lost it somewhere between here and home: in the pizza parlour or in one of the taxis, perhaps. But that made no sense: he hadn't opened his briefcase since before he'd left the house – not even at lunch with Teddy, for he'd thought that there was nothing in the case except the claw. Could it have been stolen on the train while he was asleep? The possibility wasn't even worth considering. 'I haven't got it,' he muttered, hardly aware of Hethering-ton. 'It isn't here.'

  'I don't understand,' Hetherington said, rather snappishly.

  'Do you think I do?' He was trying desperately to recall when he'd put the claw in his briefcase. He'd been drunk last night when he'd left the hotel – he thought he'd drunk so much to celebrate being about to get rid of the claw -and Liz had had to drive. As soon as he'd reached home he'd taken the claw from the mantelpiece. No, that couldn't be right; he'd carried Anna to bed, managing to tuck her up without waking her, and then there was a vague memory of his drunken attempt to make love to Liz. Then he had stumbled downstairs, while Liz got into bed. He'd gone to the living-room mantelpiece and reached out for the claw. Now he had located the moment, he could no longer be deceived. He'd reached out drunkenly and knocked the claw off the mantelpiece, behind a chair. After that there was a blank, until he remembered lying in bed.

  He must have dreamed he'd put the claw in his briefcase – but was there more, and worse, to it than that? He'd forgotten that he had the claw while he was approaching the Customs barrier at Heathrow; he'd forgotten to call the Foundation to begin with; he'd forgotten for a while that he had agreed to bring the claw. It felt very much as if his thoughts about the claw had been manipulated. In that case, could he have been made to think he'd brought the claw so that Liz and Anna would be left alone with it? 'It must be at home,' he said tightly. 'I'll have to phone my wife.'

  'Is that really necessary?'

  'You're asking me if it's necessary?' He wished he had the claw in his hand right now, to use on Hetherington. 'You let me keep that thing in my house, around my wife and child, when you knew what it was, and now you're begrudging me the cost of a phone call? How much do you want? I'll write you a fucking cheque.'

  'That won't be necessary under the circumstances.' Hetherington had turned pale as an elderly virgin confronted by a piece of hard-core pornography. He pushed the phone across the desk, then withdrew his hand nastily, as if he couldn't bear the thought of touching Alan.

  As soon as Alan had dialled, he turned his back on Hetherington, who he sensed was fuming, and listened. For a few seconds there was silence except for the measured clipping of shears, a sound that seemed to fill the room. Alan thought of sharp metal, and the thought made his fingers writhe. The next moment a woman's voice came on the line.

  It wasn't Liz. Of course – Liz was having her at-home. One of the others – Gail, Jane, Rebecca – must have answered the phone. But why couldn't he understand what she was saying? Because she had begun at the end of a sentence. Only when she repeated her message, and then again and again, did he realize that it was a recorded voice, telling him that all lines to that part of Norfolk were engaged.

  He slammed the receiver down so hard that Hetherington flinched. 'I can't get through. I'll have to go home at once.'

  Hetherington held up one finger. 'Will you let me know what transpires, please?'

  'Oh yes.' Though he was almost at the door, Alan turned so that the man could see his snarl. 'I'll be letting you know about that, don't you worry.'

  He ran downstairs and out, past the braided girl and the man with the shears, which were now nibbling the very edge of the lawn, by the railings. True or not, the idea of the man as a plain-clothes guard now seemed absurd, if only because it had become so trivial. Couldn't Alan have let his professional imagination run away with him about the claw as well? Maybe he should try his hand at writing horror stories. But no – that explanation was simply too tempting to be true.

  He found a free taxi before he reached Russell Square. The streets were relatively clear now, between lunch and the homeward rush, and the taxi raced toward Liverpool Street with hardly a pause; yet Alan was almost contemplating asking the driver to take him straight to Norwich and his car – or even all the way home. Commonsense told him that would be crazy. How could it be qu
icker, with all those winding roads? Alan's fists were aching, his palms felt raw with sweat. Should he at least try to phone again, or would he miss his train?

  The taxi swung down the slope at Liverpool Street a couple of minutes before a train was due to leave for Norwich. Without waiting for change, Alan thrust a five-pound note at the driver and dodged through the crowd to the ticket barrier.

  There was no time to phone. But, maddeningly, once he'd stumbled panting into the nearest carriage and thrown himself and his empty briefcase on a seat, it seemed that there were minutes to spare. The train ought to be moving by now, yet two minutes, three, elapsed, and still it seemed to show no sign of moving. His body was straining to race for the phones, and he was just beginning to doubt that he was capable of holding it still, when the train suddenly lurched forward and it was too late.

  Now that the train had trapped him, it seemed almost to be taunting him. It stopped at every station, even when Robody was boarding or alighting. Between stations it cruised as if it had all the time in the world. Shapeless clouds paced it along the horizon, and made Alan feel that the train was drifting slowly as clouds. His time was slowing down to a standstill, but at home time must be moving faster. It would take only a second for the first blow to fall, and then there would be raw flesh for the claw to tear…

  He must stop imagining what might be happening at home, or he'd never be capable of driving when he reached Norwich – but how could he stop? He found to his dismay that he was muttering to himself; he had no idea how long he'd been dping so. An old lady who'd boarded the train at the last station with her arms full of bags of apples leaned across the aisle. 'Are you all right, my dear? What's the trouble?'

  'Oh, it's nothing.' Yet saying that only made him feel more uncomfortable. He longed to tell her he'd been unkind to his wife and child and wanted to get home to make it up to them, but he was appalled by his own glibness – especially when he thought what might actually be happening. Yet surely he was worrying unnecessarily: after all, nothing very bad had happened to them yet; nobody at home had been affected like Joseph. There had never been any Leopard Women, it didn't matter that Liz was at home with the claw. But that felt like a contrivance in a story, a device he didn't believe in, but had to use to keep the plot moving.