Thieving Fear

by Ramsey Campbell

  Charlotte cried out. It wasn't much of a cry; it was the kind of enfeebled wordless protest she might have uttered in her sleep while fighting to break out of a nightmare. Nevertheless it appeared to bring a response. The door at the end of the carriage slid swiftly yet noiselessly wide, and a thin blackened shape that might have been scaly or in some sense ragged sprang into the carriage.

  It dodged behind the nearest seat, dropping low as it vanished, and Ellen threw her hands out to clutch at her companions. Barely in time not to subject them to her touch, she realised what she'd seen. The door hadn't opened. Only sunlight had prised the darkness wide, incidentally throwing the shadow of some object that had passed before Ellen could locate it. Although the sounds of the train had grown more spacious, they and the light seemed to fall short of Charlotte's awareness; she might still have been shut in a dream. At least Hugh's eyes were open, even if he looked less than reassured by the choice of views. 'We're out,' Ellen said, hoping this might release Charlotte from her panic – and then she wondered whether, in some sense she preferred not to grasp, they were nothing of the kind.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Charlotte was first off the train. Before a signboard had identified Leeds Station she'd crouched forwards like an athlete impatient to begin a race. She stood at the door all the way along the platform and only just waited for the alarm to acknowledge that the train had stopped. Hugh watched her jab the button and dart onto the platform. He would have dashed to keep up except for Ellen, who hesitated as a thin figure, mostly covered in black and otherwise alarmingly pale, appeared outside the window. Although he was only a teenager, his approach seemed to startle Charlotte. 'Come on, you two,' she said without owning up to nervousness. 'Bring each other.'

  He couldn't advance until Ellen did, or he might be lost. As soon as she took a few reluctant steps he was at her heels. When she looked back he was afraid she would tell him to overtake her, but she was peering beyond him as if she fancied someone else wanted to pass, not a pleasant fancy to judge by the expression on her starved slack face. Twisting around showed him the aisle was deserted, and once he grasped which way to turn he saw Charlotte losing patience with his and Ellen's antics. 'Nearly there,' she urged.

  He felt she was blaming him for the delay – blaming him for having imagined too much aloud. If it had all been his imagination, why didn't she climb aboard to help instead of directing operations from the safety of the platform? She watched Ellen until her cousin ventured forwards, glancing both ways as she left the cover the train provided. Hugh stayed close while an escalator raised them all to a walkway considerably more than wide enough for them to progress abreast, where Charlotte looked over her shoulder to see why he wasn't beside her and Ellen. Was she about to tell him to keep up? Even if he was the youngest, he wasn't going to be treated like a child, and he couldn't help demanding 'Why did you make that noise, then?'

  The question appeared to render Ellen nervous of the muddle of sounds beneath the vast arch of the roof. 'What did you hear?'

  'I don't mean now. In the, you know where.' He felt inconsiderate for being forced to add 'The tunnel.'

  Charlotte frowned at a queue of commuters within earshot at a cash dispenser. 'Not here, Hugh.'

  'Where, then?'

  'Preferably nowhere,' she said and stepped on a downward escalator.

  As he followed his cousins Ellen's mass of perfume struck him in the face, and he retreated a metal step. Her uneasy question had heightened his awareness of the noises of the station, so that he heard somebody without very much to them scuttling after him. He clutched at the unstable rubber banister as he swung around to see that the escalator above him was empty. Some object must have caught between the treads, but it was no longer audible, never mind visible. 'Careful you don't fall,' Ellen told him.

  Had her attention been drawn by the sound? He had no chance to ask as they descended, and by the time they reached the ticket barriers it seemed too late and too trivial. Beyond was a vaulted hall full of benches and echoes. 'How far is it to the hospital, do we know?' Charlotte said.

  'The taxi will,' said Hugh.

  'Maybe it's close enough to walk to. We could see if there are any clothes shops on the way.'

  'We don't want to waste time getting to Rory,' Ellen objected. 'We aren't here to shop.'

  Charlotte visibly thought better of responding. Hugh would have supported her if she'd suggested Ellen ought to buy something else to wear, but he couldn't raise the subject, especially while he was distracted by an echo surely too thin to be actual footsteps behind him. At least they fell short of pursuing him out of the station to a taxi rank, where Charlotte was asking 'Could we go to the hospital?'

  The maternally plump driver looked sympathetically at Ellen. 'Which one, love?'

  'We're visiting our cousin,' Ellen said, not without resentment. 'He was in an accident.'

  Hugh felt provoked to establish that Rory was his brother, but said only 'He's in a coma.'

  'You'll want the General,' the driver said, still gazing at Ellen.

  Hugh could have said so at the outset if he hadn't hung back, and wondered whether Ellen was rounding on him because of it. Perhaps she was taking a sly revenge by enquiring 'Which way do you want to go, Hugh?'

  'How do I know?'

  Her starved face sagged at his tone. 'I mean which way do you want to sit.'

  'Sorry. I thought –' He made to touch her arm until he sensed how little she would welcome that. 'Can I face the way we're going?' he said and felt childish.

  'I will too if nobody minds.'

  'I don't,' Charlotte said.

  She stepped back while Hugh followed Ellen into the vehicle, and then she seemed to reconsider ducking under the low roof. Hugh was expecting her to propose to walk by the time she took a loud deep breath and climbed in to sit opposite him. 'Is that everyone?' the driver said.

  Charlotte twisted around to stare at her. 'Who else is there going to be?'

  'I thought there was someone behind you.'

  Hugh felt as if the interior had grown smaller and darker, unless he was sharing Charlotte's discomfort. 'That was me,' he said in the hope that it would end the misunderstanding and let him feel less nervous, but everyone gazed at him – even the driver, using her mirror – as if he had no idea where he was. 'If you say so,' the driver said and sent the taxi up a ramp.

  As a green light released the vehicle into the traffic she lowered her window. In a few hundred yards the taxi veered into a cross street and then another, by which point Hugh had already lost the way back to the station. A shadow flexed its thin limbs on the seat beside Charlotte – only a shadow. It wasn't plucking at the sleeve of her black Cougar T-shirt to make her and her cousins look; that was just a breeze through the driver's window. In a moment Hugh realised why the driver had left it open, and was afraid Ellen would think even less of herself. His gaze dodged about in search of any subject he could mention and lit upon a passing Chinese restaurant. 'That looks like a good place to eat,' he said wildly.

  'Do you want to know the best restaurants?' the driver said.

  'We might, mightn't we, Ellen?'

  'I can't speak for you.' She inched away from him as if she had to manoeuvre a ponderous burden. 'And you shouldn't for me,' she said.

  'Don't be like that with us. We're your cousins. I was only trying –'

  To his further dismay, it was Charlotte who interrupted. 'Not in here.'

  Did she mean because of the space or because of the driver? Surely the woman at the wheel couldn't be delighted by their struggles to communicate – she didn't look the type – but nobody else was to be seen. 'Shall I tell you when we come to them?' she said.

  'I'd really rather you didn't,' said Ellen.

  Hugh was afraid this might provoke the driver to turn hostile if not personal. 'I shouldn't think any of us will want to eat till we've seen how Rory is,' he said.

  He was tempted to inform the driver that his brother was an artist, but
suppose that let her identify him from the news and she detested his work? Hugh didn't want to be responsible for any more awkwardness, and so he joined in the silence, although it made Rory into yet another subject nobody was anxious to mention. He was reduced to wondering where it was safe to look: not at the streets challenging him to grasp the route, nor at Ellen as he sensed her shrinking away from him or herself, nor at Charlotte's determination to keep her eyes wide as if closing them might plunge her into a nightmare, unless she was struggling to cope with one she could see. The driver couldn't be watching all or indeed any of this – she was intent on the road – and yet Hugh felt somebody was, and revelling in Hugh's plight as well. Were his cousins suffering the same experience? He couldn't refer to it while the driver might hear, but he was barely able to contain it until the taxi executed yet another turn that brought them to the hospital. At least this gave him an excuse to speak. 'I'll pay,' he said at once.

  His cousins climbed out while he handed the driver a ten-pound note, and Ellen was shutting her door when she stiffened. Apparently the sight of Hugh with a hand through the aperture in the security grille didn't appeal to her. The driver was reaching for change, but he had a sudden notion that somebody else was about to clutch at his hand. He snatched it away and backed out of the taxi, thumping his skull on the underside of the roof, to accept the change through the driver's window. He was afraid his cousins might ask why he'd behaved like that, but they only insisted on giving him money before Ellen said 'Let's find him.'

  'He's in Intensive Care,' Hugh said, which felt for a moment like knowing where to go. He dogged his cousins past a gathering of smokers, more than one of whom gave Ellen a concerned look, and through the entrance to the lobby, where a receptionist directed them to the first floor. Not too far, Hugh thought, and the lift was just around a corner, whichever way that led. The large featureless grey box took its time over closing, and he fancied that Charlotte was urging it to get the process over with while Ellen hoped nobody would join them. As the doors came within an inch of meeting he imagined that somebody was about to squeeze between them without pushing them further apart. Or might that happen when the lift reached the first floor? He felt as if it were weighed down by several kinds of apprehension. Certainly it was in no hurry to arrive, and he thought he wasn't alone in tensing when it did.

  The corridor was deserted, and led straight to Rory's ward in the direction Charlotte and Ellen took. Hugh tried not to be distracted by the entrances they passed – operating theatres, children's cardiac, children's intensive care – although he felt as though he were avoiding the possibility that someone might be lurking in one of the side passages. Somebody thin rose up to meet his cousins as they pushed open the doors to the ward they needed, but she was the sister in charge, and she'd only stood up behind her desk. 'We're here for Rory Lucas,' Charlotte said.

  'Have you come far?'

  Hugh was reflecting that her accent had made her sound fatter on the phone as Charlotte told her 'London.'

  'You may as well all go in.'

  Hugh couldn't help feeling this seemed ominous. 'How is he?'

  'Comfortable. No change since you called. It was you, wasn't it?' When he assumed it must have been she said 'Furthest on the left.'

  He was grateful to have his cousins to lead him past sleeper after sleeper fitted with tubes. He tried not to glance at them, though this felt like ignoring an intruder. Most of them were unattended and presumably unaware of it. Worse, Rory was equally unaware he was the opposite.

  He was lying on his back, his head slightly raised by a pillow as if this might lift his awareness. Various tubes led to and from him, but Hugh wished he could feel more encouraged to see little sign of injury, not even plaster. Rory's expression was utterly blank, and Hugh had the distressing idea that the tubes were draining his personality, reducing him to an inert mass indistinguishable from the contents of the other beds. He didn't stir when Ellen made to hold one of his hands as Charlotte clasped the other. Hugh busied himself with bringing them chairs and fetching a third one, after which there appeared to be nothing to do beyond feeling guilty and useless. Smiling sympathetically across the aisle at a woman seated by an even older man's bed soon lost any meaning, and he'd thought of something to ask a nurse well before she came to write on Rory's clipboard. 'What was wrong yesterday?' he enquired of her. 'Why couldn't we visit him?'

  The brawny girl nibbled her pinkish lower lip as she glanced along the ward, and Hugh thought she'd heard someone come in until he realised she was checking that the sister was on the phone. 'We had a bit of excitement with one of Rory's friends,' she murmured, 'didn't we, Rory?'

  Ellen had ventured to take his hand at last. She turned up her free one and then hid it beside the bed. 'Are you saying someone came to see him?'

  'Not till you all did. Are you glad they have, Rory?' When this produced no visible response the nurse said 'Another patient got a bit lively, that's all.'

  Charlotte crouched restlessly forwards in the gap between Rory's bed and his insensible neighbour's. 'I assume it had to be more than a bit for us not to be allowed to come.'

  'Sister didn't want any more of a panic.' The nurse turned her head an inch towards the peremptory clatter of the phone returning to its stand. 'I shouldn't think Rory minded waiting, did you, Rory? Your family's here now,' she said and retreated down the ward.

  Was it her professional opinion that addressing Rory might revive him, or had she been trying to encourage the visitors? Hugh's face grew hot at the thought of talking to the absence that was his brother, especially in front of an audience that didn't consist only of their cousins. Nevertheless he was about to move his chair away from the foot of the bed, once he decided which of his cousins might find his closeness least unwelcome, when he heard a whisper at his back. 'It was him.'

  At first Hugh was afraid to turn, and even when he did he couldn't tell which way he had. It confronted him with the old lady opposite, who was still grasping her husband's limp fingers, and with the question he had to ask. 'Who?'

  'My Jack here.' She lifted his hand as if that helped her identify him and then let it subside. 'He was the one who was making the fuss,' she said.

  'That's good, is it? Mustn't it mean he was conscious?'

  'Not of his old Annie. The way he carried on it was more like he was having a bad dream and couldn't wake up.'

  Hugh heard restlessness behind him. He couldn't look around, instead demanding 'Did you hear that?'

  'What?' Ellen said with none of his nervous triumph.

  'What this lady said.'

  'Call me Annie, do.'

  'We're all capable of hearing, Hugh. Nobody's lost their wits.' Rather less sharply Charlotte added 'Did your husband actually say anything, Annie?'

  'He did that. Said there was someone on the screen that shouldn't be.'

  This seemed remote enough for Hugh to experience some fleeting relief. 'In a cinema, you mean?'

  'I wish he'd been dreaming about all the times he took me when we were courting. We used to go to the pictures twice a week and he always bought me flowers as well. I sometimes dream about that when I'm going off to sleep.' Annie's eyes grew unfocused and moist before she appeared to remember the question. 'It wasn't any picture-house,' she said. 'You'd have thought he was on about the screen around your Rory's bed.'

  Hugh tried to recapture his sense of triumph but was closer to regretting his insistence. 'What did he say about it?' Ellen asked somewhere behind him.

  'We couldn't make half of it out, me and the nurses. They're a credit to the hospital, let me promise you. Your Rory's in the best hands.' Hugh was afraid she'd lost her conversational way again, and was on the edge of having to prompt her when she said 'He kept saying they were hiding behind the screen. On the floor, it sounded like, or maybe they went under the bed.'

  Hugh had to ask the question. 'Who?'

  'Nobody they'd let in a hospital. Some man that was all bones and so dirty he left marks on the s
creen. Jack thought he was a big spider at first, he was going so fast, or maybe it was how he was going.'

  Hugh heard movement behind him again as Charlotte said 'You seem to have understood quite a lot. Was that the half?'

  It was clear to Hugh that she was inviting no more, but at the end of some visible musing Annie said 'One thing that was funny – well, you mightn't have thought it was. No, I don't think you would have.'

  With enough impatience for all three of Rory's visitors Charlotte said 'What wasn't funny?'

  'It was just they were doing something for your Rory and the screen really was round his bed.'

  'But you didn't see anything,' Hugh urged.

  'Do you know, he got me so I almost thought I did.' Perhaps Hugh's expression made her add 'Don't fret, it was just a shadow. Nobody's that thin.'

  Hugh was trying to decide whether he could risk looking behind him when Annie patted her husband's hand before levering herself to her feet. 'Will you keep an eye out for him while I go to the littlest room?'

  'For your husband,' Charlotte said.

  'There's nobody else for me to care about.'

  This silenced Rory's visitors until Annie left the ward, but as soon as the doors met with a gentle thud Hugh said 'It was him.'

  'I don't know why you sound so pleased about it,' Charlotte said.

  'I'm not,' Hugh said and was provoked to turn to her. 'You know what I meant.'

  'Perhaps I don't want to know.'

  'You do, don't you, Ellen?' When she only held up her hands and lowered them as they strayed within her vision Hugh said 'Know, I mean, not want. I don't want either.'

  'Then try not being so obsessed with it,' said Charlotte.

  'That won't make it go away, will it?'

  As he saw that they ought to be discussing how this could be achieved Charlotte said 'What are you imagining now? What sense does it make?'

  Hugh felt his face grow blotchy, and was about to protest that it wasn't up to him alone to interpret the situation when he realised 'He stopped us coming last night, didn't he?'