Dark Companions

by Ramsey Campbell

  The barman was staring at him. “Weren’t you with a girl yesterday?”

  “She’s back at the cottage.”

  Everyone nearby looked at Tony. When he glanced at them, they looked away. “You want to be sure she’s safe,” the barman muttered, and hurried to fill flourished glasses. Tony gulped down his beer, cursing his imagination, and almost ran to the car.

  Above the skimming patch of lit tarmac, moths ignited; a rabbit froze, then leapt. Discovered trees rushed out of the dark, to be snatched back at once by the night. The light bleached the leaves, the rushing tunnels of boles seemed subterraneously pale. The wide night was still. He could hear nothing but the hum of the car. Above the hills hung enormous dim clouds grey as rocks.

  He could see Di as he hurried up the path. Her head was silhouetted on the curtain; it leaned at an angle against the back of the settee. He fumbled high in the porch for the hidden key. Her eyes were closed, her mouth was loosely open. Her typescript lay at her feet.

  She was blinking, smiling at him. He could see both needed effort; her eyes were red, she looked depressed—she always did when she’d finished a book. “See what you think of it,” she said, handing him the pages. Beneath her attempt at a professional’s impersonality he thought she was offering the chapter to him shyly as a young girl.

  Emerging defeated from a patch of woodland, the dryads saw a cottage across a field. It stood in the still light, peaceful as the evening. They could feel the peace filling its timbers: not a green peace but a warmth, stillness, stability. As they drew nearer they saw an old couple within. The couple had worked hard for their peace; now they’d achieved it here. Tony knew they were himself and Di. One by one the dryads passed gratefully into the dark wood of the beams, the doors.

  He felt oddly embarrassed. When he managed to look at her he could only say “Yes, it’s good. You’ve done it.”

  “Good,” she said. “I’m glad.” She was smiling peacefully now.

  As they climbed the stairs she said “If we have children they’ll be able to help me too. They can criticise.”

  She hoped the book would let them afford children. “Yes, they will,” he said.

  The scream woke him. For a moment he thought he’d dreamed it or had cried out in his sleep. But the last echo was caught in the hills. Faint as it was, he could feel its intolerable horror, its despair.

  He lay blinking at the sunlight. The white-painted walls shone. Di hadn’t awakened; he was glad. The scream throbbed in his brain. Today he must find out what it was.

  After breakfast he told Di he was going into Camside. She was still depressed after completing the book; she looked drained. She didn’t offer to accompany him. She stood at the garden wall, watching him blindly, dazzled by the sun. “Be careful driving,” she called.

  The clump of trees opposite the end of the path was quivering. Was somebody hiding behind the trunks? Tony frowned at her. “Do you feel—” but he didn’t want to alarm her unnecessarily “—anything? Anything odd?”

  “What sort of thing?” But he was wondering whether to tell her when she said “I like this place. Don’t spoil it.’’

  He went back to her. “What will you do while I’m out?”

  “Just stay in the cottage. I want to read through the book. Why are you whispering?” He smiled at her, shaking his head. The sense of someone watching had faded, though the tree trunks still quivered.

  Plushy white and silver layers of cloud sailed across the blue sky. He drove the fifteen miles to Camside, a slow roller-coaster ride between green quilts spread easily over the hills. Turned earth displayed each shoot on the nearer fields; trees met over the roads and parted again.

  Camside was wholly the colours of rusty sand; similar stone framed the wide glass .of the library. Mullioned windows multiplied reflections. Gardens and walls were thick with flowers. A small river coursed beneath a bridge; in the water, sunlight darted incessantly among pebbles. He parked outside a pub, The Wheatsheaf, and walked back. Next to the library stood an odd squat building of the amber stone, a square block full of small windows whose open casements were like griddles filled with panes; over its door a new plastic sign said Camside Observer. The newspaper’s files might be useful. He went in.

  A girl sat behind a low white Swedish desk; the crimson bell of her desk lamp clanged silently against the white walls, the amber windowsills. “Can I help you?”

  “I hope so. I’m, I’m doing some research into an area near here, Ploughman’s Path. Have you heard of it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She was glancing away, looking for help to a middle-aged man who had halted in a doorway behind her desk. “Mr Poole?” she called.

  “We’ve run a few stories about that place,” the man told Tony. “You’ll find them in our files, on microfilm Next door, in the library.”

  “Oh good. Thanks.” But that might mean hours of searching. “Is there anyone here who knows the background?”

  The man frowned and saw Tony realise that meant yes. “The man who handled the last story is still on our staff,” he said. “But he isn’t here now.”

  “Will he be here later?”

  “Yes, probably. No, I’ve no idea when.” As Tony left he felt the man was simply trying to prevent his colleague from being pestered.

  The library was a long room spread with sunlight. Sunlight lay dazzling on the glossy tables, cleaved shade among the bookcases; a trolley overflowed with thrillers and romances. Ploughman’s Path? Oh, yes—and the librarian showed him a card file that indexed local personalities, events, areas. She snapped up a card for him as if it were a tarot’s answer. Ploughman’s Path: see Victor Hill, Legendry and Customs of the Severn Valley. “And there’s something on microfilm,” she said, but he was anxious to make sure the book was on the shelf.

  It was. It was bound in op-art blues. He carried it to a table; its blues vibrated in the sunlight. The index told him the passage about Ploughman’s Path covered six pages. He riffled hastily past photographs of standing stones, a trough in the binding full of breadcrumbs, a crushed jagged-legged fly. Ploughman’s Path—

  Why the area bounding Ploughman’s Path should be dogged by ill luck and tragedy is not known. Folk living in the cottage nearby have sometimes reported hearing screams produced by no visible agency. Despite the similarity of this to banshee legends, no such legend appears to have grown up locally. But Ploughman’s Path, and the area bounding it farthest from the cottage (see map), has been so often visited by tragedy and misfortune that local folk dislike to even mention the name, which they fear will bring bad luck.

  Farthest from the cottage. Tony relaxed. So long as the book said so, that was all right. And the last line told him why they’d behaved uneasily at the Farmer’s Rest. He read on, his curiosity unmixed now with apprehension.

  But good Lord, the area was unlucky. Rumors of Roman sacrifices were only its earliest horrors. As the history of the place became more accurately documented, the tragedies grew worse. A gallows set up within sight of the cottage, so that the couple living there must watch their seven-year-old daughter hanged for theft; it had taken her hours to die. An old woman accused of witchcraft by gossip, set on fire and left to bum alive on the path. A mute child who’d fallen down an old well: coping stones had fallen on him, breaking his limbs and hiding him from searchers—years later his skeleton had been found. A baby caught in an animal trap. God, Tony thought. No wonder he’d heard screams.

  A student was using the microfilm reader. Tony went back to the Observer building. A pear-shaped red-faced man leaned against the wall, chatting to the receptionist; he wore a tweedy pork-pie hat, a blue shirt and waistcoat, tweed trousers. “Watch out, here’s trouble,” he said as Tony entered.

  “Has he come in yet?” Tony asked the girl. “The man who knows about Ploughman’s Path?”

  “What’s your interest?” the red-faced man demanded.

  “I’m staying in the cottage near there. I’ve been hearing odd things. C
ries.”

  “Have you now.” The man pondered, frowning. “Well, you’re looking at the man who knows,” he decided to say, thumping his chest. “Roy Burley. Burly Roy, that’s me. Don’t you know me? Don’t you read our paper? Time you did, then.” He snatched an Observer from a rack and stuffed it into Tony’s hand.

  “You want to know about the path, eh? It’s all up here.” He tapped his hat. “I’ll tell you what, though, it’s a hot day for talking. Do you fancy a drink? Tell old Puddle I’ll be back soon,” he told the girl.

  He thumped on the door of The Wheatsheaf. “They’ll open up. They know me here.” At last a man reluctantly opened the door, glancing discouragingly at Tony. “It’s all right, Bill, don’t look so bloody glum,” Roy Burley said. “He’s a friend of mine.”

  A girl set out beer mats; her radio sang that everything was beautiful, in its own way. Roy Burley bought two pints and vainly tried to persuade Bill to join them. “Get that down you,” he told Tony. “The only way to start work. You’d think they could do without me over the road, the way some of the buggers act. But they soon start screaming if they think my copy’s going to be late. They’d like to see me out, some of them. Unfortunately for them, I’ve got friends. There I am,” he said, poking a thick finger into the newspaper: “The Countryside This Week,” by Countryman. “And there, and there.” “Social Notes,” by A. Guest. “Entertainments,” by D. Plainman. “What’s your line of business?” he demanded.

  “I’m an artist, a painter.”

  “Ah, the painters always come down here. And the advertising people. I’ll tell you, the other week we had a photographer—”

  By the time it was his round Tony began to suspect he was just an excuse for beers. “You were going to tell me about the screams,” he said when he returned to the table.

  The man’s eyes narrowed warily. “You’ve heard them. What do you think they are?”

  “I was reading about the place earlier,” Tony said, anxious to win his confidence. “I’m sure all those tragedies must have left an imprint somehow. A kind of recording. If there are ghosts, I think that’s what they are.”

  “That’s right.” Roy Burley’s eyes relaxed. “I’ve always thought that. There’s a bit of science in that, it makes sense. Not like some of the things these spiritualists try to sell.”

  Tony opened his mouth to head him off from the next anecdote: too late. “We had one of them down here, trying to tell us about Ploughman’s Path. A spiritualist or a medium, same thing. Came expecting us all to be yokels, I shouldn’t wonder. The police weren’t having any, so he tried it on us. Murder brings these mediums swarming like flies, so I’ve heard tell.”

  “What murder?” Tony said, confused.

  “I thought you read about it.” His eyes had narrowed again. “Oh, you read the book. No, it wouldn’t be in there, too recent.” He gulped beer; everything is beautiful, the radio sang. “Why, it was about the worst thing that ever happened at Ploughman’s Path. I’ve seen pictures of what Jack the Ripper did, but this was worse. They talk about people being flayed alive, but—Christ. Put another in here, Bill.”

  He half emptied the refilled glass. “They never caught him. I’d have stopped him, I can tell you,” he said in vague impotent fury. “The police didn’t think he was a local man, because there wasn’t any repetition. He left no clues, nobody saw him. At least, not what he looked like. There was a family picnicking in the field the day before the murder, they said they kept feeling there was someone watching. He must have been waiting to catch someone alone.

  “I’ll tell you the one clever suggestion this medium had. These picnickers heard the scream, what you called the recording. He thought maybe the screams were what attracted the maniac there.”

  Attracted him there. That reminded Tony of something, but the beer was heavy on his mind. “What else did the medium have to say?”

  “Oh, all sorts of rubbish. You know, this mystical stuff. Seeing patterns everywhere, saying everything is a pattern.”

  “Yes?”

  “Oh, yes,” Roy Burley said irritably. “He didn’t get that one past me, though. If everything’s a pattern it has to include all the horror in the world, doesn’t it? Things like this murder? That shut him up for a bit. Then he tried to say things like that may be necessary too, to make up the pattern. These people,” he said with a gesture of disgust, “you can’t talk to them.”

  Tony bought him another pint, restraining himself to a half. “Did he have any ideas about the screams?”

  “God, I can’t remember. Do you really want to hear that rubbish? You wouldn’t have liked what he said, let me tell you. He didn’t believe in your recording idea.” He wiped his frothy lips sloppily. “He came here a couple of years after the murder,” he reluctantly answered Tony’s encouraging gaze. “He’d read about the tragedies. He held a three-day vigil at Ploughman’s Path, or something. Wouldn’t it be nice to have that much time to waste? He heard the screams, but—this is what I said you wouldn’t like—he said he couldn’t feel any trace of the tragedies at all.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, you know these people are shupposed to be senshitive to sush things.” When he’d finished laughing at himself he said “Oh, he had an explanation, he was full of them. He tried to tell the police and me that the real tragedy hadn’t happened yet. He wanted us to believe he could see it in the future. Of course he couldn’t say what or when. Do you know what he tried to make out? That there was something so awful in the future it was echoing back somehow, a sort of ghost in reverse. All the tragedies were just echoes, you see. He even made out the place was trying to make this final thing happen, so it could get rid of it at last. It had to make the worst thing possible happen, to purge itself. That was where the traces of the tragedies had gone—the psychic energy, he called it. The place had converted all that energy to help it make the thing happen. Oh, he was a real comedian.”

  “But what about the screams?”

  “Same kind of echo. Haven’t you ever heard an echo on a record before you hear the sound? He tried to say the screams were like that, coming back from the future. He was entertaining, I’ll give him that. He had all sorts of charts, he’d worked out some kind of numerical pattern, the frequency of the tragedies or something. Didn’t impress me. They’re like statistics, those things, you can make them mean anything.” His eyes had narrowed, gazing inwards. “I ended up laughing at him. He went off very upset. Well, I had to get rid of him, I’d better things to do than listen to him. It wasn’t my fault he was killed,” he said angrily, “whatever some people may say.”

  “Why, how was he killed?”

  “Oh, he went back to Ploughman’s Path. If he was so upset he shouldn’t have been driving. There were some children playing near the path. He must have meant to chase them away, but he lost control of the car, crashed at the end of the path. His legs were trapped and he caught fire. Of course he could have fitted that into his pattern,” he mused. “I suppose he’d have said that was what the third scream meant.”

  Tony started. He fought back the shadows of beer, of the pub. “How do you mean, the third scream?”

  “That was to do with his charts. He’d heard three screams in his vigil. He’d worked out that three screams meant it was time for a tragedy. He tried to show me, but I wasn’t looking. What’s the matter? Don’t be going yet, it’s my round. What’s up, how many screams have you heard?”

  “I don’t know,” Tony blurted. “Maybe I dreamt one.” As he hurried out he saw Roy Burley picking up his abandoned beer, saying “Aren’t you going to finish this?”

  It was all right. There was nothing to worry about, he’d just better be getting back to the cottage. The key groped clumsily for the ignition. The rusty yellow of Camside rolled back, rushed by green. Tony felt as if he were floating in a stationary car as the road wheeled by beneath him—as if he were sitting in the front stalls before a cinema screen, as the road poured through the
screen, as the bank of a curve hurtled at him: look out! Nearly. He slowed. No need to take risks. But his mind was full of the memory of someone watching from the trees, perhaps drawn there by the screams.

  Puffy clouds lazed above the hills. As the Farmer’s Rest whipped by, Tony glimpsed the cottage and the field, laid out minutely below; the trees at Ploughman’s Path were a tight band of green. He skidded into the side road, fighting the wheel; the road seemed absurdly narrow. Scents of blossoms billowed thickly at him. A few birds sang elaborately, otherwise the passing countryside was silent, deserted, weighed down by heat. The trunks of the trees at the end of Ploughman’s Path were twitching nervously, incessantly. He squeezed his eyes shut. Only heat-haze. Slow down. Nearly home now.

  He slammed the car door, which sprang open. Never mind. He ran up the path and thrust the gate back, breaking its latch. The door of the cottage was ajar. He halted in the front room. The cottage seemed full of his harsh panting.

  Di’s typescript was scattered over the carpet. The dark chairs sat fatly; one lay on its side, its fake leather ripped. Beside it a small object glistened red. He picked it up, staining his fingers. Though it was thick with blood he recognised Di’s wedding ring.

  When he rushed out after searching the cottage he saw the trail at once. As he forced his way through the fence, sobbing dryly, barbed wire clawed at him. He ran across the field, stumbling and falling, towards Ploughman’s Path. The discoloured grass of the trail painted his trouser cuffs and hands red. The trees of Ploughman’s Path shook violently, with terror or with eagerness. The trail touched their trunks, leading him beneath the foliage to what lay on the path.

  It was huge. More than anything else it looked like a tattered cut-out silhouette of a woman’s body. It gleamed red beneath the trees; its torso was perhaps three feet wide. On the width of the silhouette’s head two eyes were arranged neatly.

  The scream ripped the silence of the path, an outraged cry of horror beyond words. It startled him into stumbling forward. He felt numb and dull. His mind refused to grasp what he was seeing; it was like nothing he’d ever seen. There was most of the head, in the crotch of a tree. Other things dangled from branches.