Dark Companions

by Ramsey Campbell

  The choir sang. Boyish trebles pierced the hymn: la, la, la, one sang tunelessly. Her shoulders writhed and shuddered, but she managed to stay kneeling. She’d had hallucinations with insomnia before: bushes that smiled, trees that raised their heads from grazing. The choir was in tune now. She sat back gratefully. But when the sermon mentioned spirits—ghosts—she found she was trying not to hear.

  She strode into her home. Now, no more nonsense. She hooked her coat onto the stand, and at once heard it fall behind her. The fall sounded far too heavy for a coat. On the floor, whose shadows seemed thickened rather than diluted by the light that leaked beneath the door, all the coats lay in a mound—her parents’ too, which she kept meaning to give away. The mound looked as if a lumpy shape were hiding underneath.

  They were coats. Nothing but coats. Good God, it wasn’t as if they were moving. But if the lurker were holding itself still, waiting to be uncovered… She stumbled forward and snatched away the coats. She stood glaring defiantly at the bare floor. The coats didn’t seem bulky enough to have composed so large a mound.

  She felt strange, handling her parents’ clothes so roughly. Had she left them on the stand because she hadn’t known how to touch them? That afternoon she took them to the presbytery for the rummage sale.

  Her house seemed very empty; the restless prattling made it more so. All she needed was sleep. After midnight she slept fitfully when the voice allowed her. Surely she wouldn’t need a doctor. Sometimes, when her self-control was barely equal to her job, she’d dreaded that. La, la, la.

  On Monday Sue Thackeray came visiting. They returned from the Chinese restaurant companioned by a bottle of gin. Edith was glad of Sue, whose throaty laugh gave the echoes no chance to sound hollow.

  Sue’s armchair wheezed as she sat back bulging, tenderly cradling her refilled glass. Her arms were almost as thick as the stuffed chair’s. Memories of her parents, whom she had recently lost, floated up on the gin. “At least you lived here with yours,” she said. “I didn’t see mine for months.”

  “But the house seems so empty now.”

  “Well, it will. I thought you looked a bit peaky, love.” She stared hard and blearily at Edith. “You want to get away.”

  “I’m going to Minorca this summer. I can’t afford to go anywhere else as well.”

  They fell silent. The silence rustled with the approach of rain. “Anyway,” Sue said, slapping her knee, beginning to grin. Edith hushed her. “Can you hear that?” she blurted.

  La, la, la. “Rain,” Sue said.

  “No, I don’t mean that.” It was so difficult to force the words past her confusion that surely the effort must be worthwhile. “Can’t you hear the child?” she demanded, almost pleading.

  Sue gazed at her rather sadly before saying “No.” She thought it was Edith’s imagination, did she? She thought Edith had wished a child into her mind, did she?

  “Did you ever want to adopt a child?”

  “No,” Edith declared angrily, “I never did, and I don’t want one now. I have enough of them at school. I like my freedom, thank you.” Why was she shouting, with only Sue to hear?”

  “All right, all right,” Sue said grumpily. “I didn’t mean—”

  The crash turned her next word into a gape. Edith was already running to the door. But it had warped somehow, and refused to budge. She mustn’t lose her temper, things were like children sometimes. But she must get out to see what had happened! At the third wrench the door set her free.

  The fallen rail lay tangled in its curtains, scattered with plaster. Above it, her filled sockets had been gouged. “Look at that,” she said incredulously. “It’s been torn down.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Sue rebuked her. “It’s just fallen.”

  When Sue left, hurrying bowed beneath rain, Edith stood staring at the dull street. The air was latticed with transparent slashes. Just fallen, indeed! How could the woman be so smug about her blindness? At least her smugness had convinced Edith that the child must exist objectively outside her own mind, however unnaturally. The gin allowed her thoughts to be comfortably vague. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t drive her out of her own house. “You’ll go first,” she shouted to her echoes.

  A child was laughing. The sound seemed peaceful. Perhaps she might enjoy having a child in the house. She woke to the touch of cold rubber on her feet; the hot water bottle felt dead. No, she didn’t want a child. The hard hot poking that preceded it had been bad enough: that, and the doctor’s groping to get rid of it, and the sight of it—it hadn’t looked at all human, it had never had the chance. She had had it murdered. She could never have had a child after that, even if she had wanted to. “I want no child,” she snarled at the dark. Then she froze, remembering what she’d felt as she had awakened.

  Of course, it had been a dream: the face nuzzling hers eagerly, the hand reaching playfully to touch her feet and the bottle. Only in dreams was such a reach possible. But she lay stiffly, trying to hush her breath, willing the bed to be empty, willing the dark not to nuzzle her face. Perhaps she lay thus for hours before, inadvertently, she fell asleep.

  In the kitchen, a dim face was staring at her from the empty house. Has it gone back? she thought, immediately anxious not to understand what she meant. But it was the housekeeper who hadn’t kept house. Impulsively Edith ran to the yard wall. “Excuse me,” she called. “Excuse me.”

  Eventually the door opened to let out the reluctant face. Edith felt drained of words, tricked by her own impulse. “When Mr Er died,” she said, still unwilling to think what she meant. “Was the child there?”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed, though they hadn’t much scope to do so. “What child?”

  “The one who lived with him.” Perhaps she could shock the woman into truth. “It was your child, wasn’t it?”

  “It certainly was not,” the woman said, turning away.

  “But he had a child,” Edith pleaded.

  “I don’t know who’s been talking. He never had one that lived,” the woman muttered resentfully. “It killed my aunt before she could bear it.”

  Perhaps her aunt had been married to him. Or perhaps not. Dirty old man. Irrelevant, Edith thought impatiently. She pointed behind the woman. “Surely there must have been a child. What about all that baby food?”

  “He had no teeth,” the woman said smugly. Her eyes reminded Edith of a pig’s: small, dull, penned in. She was closing the door. “But the skipping rope,” Edith protested.

  “Listen,” the woman said, “whatever he may have done, he’s dead now. I won’t discuss it. And you better hadn’t either.”

  The door snapped shut like disapproving lips. Perhaps he’d lured children to his house for sexual purposes; no doubt most men would, given the chance; but that wasn’t the point. That wasn’t what the woman, too stupid to realise she had done so, had confirmed. Her very stupidity, her refusal to think, had confirmed it. There had been a child in that house, but nobody had seen it—because it couldn’t be seen.

  Now it had come into Edith’s house. Today she found the thought of its objective existence less comforting. But at least it meant there was nothing wrong with her. “Yes, la, la, la,” she said loudly; it was distant and muffled. “Go on, keep it up as long as you like.”

  Sometimes she managed to switch off her awareness, as she often did with her class. Whenever she heard the sound again she laughed pityingly. It was no worse than the cries of children outside, though they had become aggressively distracting. She tried to doze. The library might be more restful, but she wouldn’t be driven out of her own house. When the song became more insistent, frustrated by being ignored, she laughed louder.

  A bath might relax her. She turned on the taps, and the steam expurgated her reflection, diluted her colours, softened her swollen curves; she no longer looked heavily fleshy—almost attractive, she thought. Steam surrounded her reflected face with a vignette’s oval that shrank like an iris in an old film.

  She sank into the
water, wallowing, yet she couldn’t relax. As her muscles loosened they seemed to liquefy, and her mind felt helplessly afloat and vulnerable. The walls looked insubstantial, as though infiltrated by fog that muffled the room, deafening her to anything that might be approaching the door.

  She felt she was being watched. She washed quickly and rose sloshing. She rubbed herself roughly with the towel. Was something playfully touching her? She whirled, and glimpsed a face.

  It had been spying on her from the mirror, through the peeling steam. Her own face, of course, and she wiped the mirror clear. But as the steam reformed she seemed to glimpse beyond it a dim movement, with eyes. Instinctively, infuriatingly, she covered herself with the towel. She wrenched at the door, which had warped shut. She closed her eyes, trapping her cry behind her lips, and tugged until the door pulled free.

  As she dressed she grew coldly furious. It wouldn’t get the better of her again. She read, determined not to hear the tuneless babbling. She slept a little, despite the almost insubstantial groping at her face in the dark.

  A pile of cans was waiting to fall on her when she opened a cupboard door. How stupid and infantile. She pushed them back and checked the other cupboards, which were innocent. She smiled grimly—oh no, it wouldn’t play that trick on her—and climbed the stairs slowly, examining the stair rods.

  All of its tricks were moronic, and some were disgusting, but none was worth her notice. Amid the clamour in the street a voice prattled, distant or muffled. She refused to hear its words. It might be only her lack of sleep that made it rush towards her.

  She dreamed that she had died and that the house was full of laughter. The dream shifted: something was kissing or licking her cheek. When she struggled awake it was there on her pillow—a fat encrusted earthworm. Stupid, disgusting. She hurried downstairs to throw it out, but not too fast to check the stair rods.

  Hadn’t she read this page before, more than once? The window cleaner gazed at her, making her feel caged, on show. His sluggish progress round the house, his dull dabbing at the panes, unnerved her. Nor did he seem to have lightened the rooms. She had never realised how many dark corners the house contained. Many of them had begun to acquire objects, some of which moved, none of which was there when she strode close.

  Once, when the cries of children outside seemed especially violent and threatening, she heard an object being dragged upstairs. She ran into the hall, and seemed to glimpse a dim movement as it climbed onto the landing. It seemed dreadfully large, or shaped like a nightmare, or both.

  Whatever it was, she wasn’t having it in her house. She climbed, scrutinising the stair rods. She heard her bedroom door open, and the fall of something moist and fat within. Had it been dragging a burden that it had now dropped? Was that why it had looked so grotesque? Her hand clenched on the doorknob when she heard the giggling within; it took her minutes to open the door. But the room was mockingly bare. She went downstairs white-faced, checking the rods.

  She had to sit down to calm her heart. Her tormentor had almost reached her. To have let such stupidity touch her! She wouldn’t again. She found herself looking forward to next term: school would make her sure of herself again. Only three more days. In the corners, objects kept her company. She slept, when she managed to sleep, with the light on. Only two days. La, la, la. Only one.

  The sight of the fallen rail depressed her. If she replaced the rail it would only be torn down again. No point in moping. Less than one more day. To cheer herself up, she ate dinner using the Wedgwood service.

  She must go to bed early and try to sleep, but not just yet. She could read, except that her books didn’t interest her. But what in God’s name stopped her going to the library to change them? She wouldn’t be trapped any more than she would be driven out. She washed up swiftly and left the plates on the table.

  A few children ran among the tables for a last chase. “We’ll be glad to give them back to you,” the librarian said wryly. There were no books that appealed to Edith, except ones she’d read. Impulsively she chose some new children’s books, to find out what they read these days. Maybe she’d read them to her children.

  It had begun to rain. Buds of water grew on the hedges, gleaming orange with sodium light. The lampposts were rooted in shallow glaring pools. Rain pecked at her; houses streamed, their windows tight and snug. Her own house looked bedraggled; its windows drooled. The unkempt lawn struggled to stand beneath the rain.

  Water snatched at her as she slammed the door behind her. The slam resounded through the house, as though all the doors were mocking her. The darkness became still, preparing its next trick. She wouldn’t give it the chance. Clutching her books, she switched on the hall light. The hall stand appeared beside her, its head swollen with coats. With the adjacent switch she drove back the dark on the landing, then she hurried into the front room. The house hemmed her in with echoes. Only echoes. The window was frosted with rain; watery shapes crawled about the room. Would her groping hand meet the light switch, or something soft and tongued? Of course it was the switch, and the light destroyed the shapes. She drew the curtains, trying to make the room cosier.

  As she did so, what had been hiding behind a chair rose up to scare her. She refused to look, although the grinning object seemed too large, and grotesquely lacking. She couldn’t have glimpsed so much from the corner of her eye, but hadn’t the object been held up by a hand rather than a neck, even though it had rolled its eyes? Rubbish. She clashed the curtains together as if cutting off a play, and turned to confront the empty room.

  She stalked to the kitchen, ignoring the crowd of her sounds. The Wedgwood was arrayed on the table. The sight of the empty window deformed by rain troubled her; as she moved, the window twitched like a nervous blind eye. She gazed out at the hectic night. Tomorrow she’d put up the rail. This time she’d make sure it stayed up.

  Something in her room was very wrong.

  She stood trapped, trying to recall what she’d seen, afraid to turn until she knew. The night was vicious with glittering. Suddenly she turned: of course, she’d used only part of the Wedgwood, yet the entire service was laid out. How stupid—hardly even a trick.

  She reached for a plate. But her hand faltered and hung slackly as she moaned, unable to accept what she was seeing. She had to pick miserably at a plate before she was convinced. Although they had been reassembled with terrible minuteness, every item of the service was shattered into fragments.

  Her panic threw her stumbling towards the hall. The hollow desertion of the house overwhelmed her. But she was not entirely alone, for although the switch stayed on, something was clapped over the light, trapping her in darkness.

  The room whirled as she did. The blind window gazed across, streaming grimily. She wrenched at the door, which had warped shut more stubbornly than the others. She stumbled across the flowing room towards the door to the yard, groping feverishly for her keys.

  She halted, squeezing her eyes tight in terror and rage. Whatever it did, she was determined not to see it. She could hear it running towards her, large and unbalanced, as though crippled. It was about to leap on her. Let it do its worst.

  The light blazed again, through her eyelids. Her tormentor was standing before her, waiting to be seen. Her forehead felt as though her skull were shrinking, squeezing out needles of sweat. She clenched her eyelids desperately.

  It touched her. Its large loose face crawled moistly over hers. Its hands plucked at her. They felt unformed, and terribly far apart. Its face returned and clung to hers, snuffling. Nothing could have forced her to open her eyes.

  Her whole body squirmed with a convulsion beyond nausea. She was terrified to move: what might she touch blindly? Suddenly, in utter desperation, her mouth opened. Words came uncontrollably as retching, but slowly, deliberately: “Get away from me, you filthy thing.”

  She felt it leave her, and stood frozen. Was the stillness a trick? At last she had to open her eyes, for the aching void made her giddy. The room felt as e
mpty as it looked, and she sat down before she could fall. Eventually she swept the Wedgwood into the bin. She switched on all the lights, then opened the front-room curtains and sat with her back to the window. Before her, her faint outline trembled incessantly with rain.

  Dawn seeped into the room. Her eyes felt hot and bloated. When she switched off the lights the room turned ashen. She sipped boiling tea, trying to taste it; her stomach writhed. The colours of the house struggled with the grey.

  She trudged through the soaked streets. She’d forgotten to bring the library books. No time now. She wouldn’t have been reading them today, she must make herself sure of her children again. They needed to be sure of one another, she and the children. She felt uneasy, unwilling to face them. As she trudged she grew tense. Her legs were aching, and her mind.

  Through the bars she could see some of her class. Thank God, they weren’t looking at her; she hadn’t decided how to approach them. Their cries sounded alarmingly jagged, menacing. She was still trying to decide as her automatic trudging took her into the schoolyard. At once the crying began.

  How could the other children ignore it, that inconsolable atrociously miserable cry? But she knew what it was. She strode glaring towards the school. Once she was inside and away from the sound she’d be all right.

  But the cry wrenched at her. It was so thin and feeble, yet so penetrating; so helpless and desolate, beyond any hope of being comforted. She couldn’t bear it. As she strode towards the children she could hear it coming closer. They gaped at her as she hurried among them, pulling them aside to peer for the abandoned wailing.

  She faltered and gazed at them. The plight of the crying victim could be no worse than theirs, with their home lives, their stupidity, their inability to find themselves. Wasn’t there a plea deep in their dull eyes? She couldn’t reach the crying, but at least she could touch these children; that must be worth something.

  Her eyes spilled her grief. “I’m sorry,” she said to the gaping children. “It’s all right,” she said, reaching out, trying to embrace them as they began to back away. “Come here, I won’t hurt you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Surely her cries must drain some of the enormous guilt that bowed her down.