The House On Nazareth Hill

by Ramsey Campbell

  ‘It wasn’t Amy’s fault,’ he declared, loudly enough to wrench himself back to the present, where a cat emitted a terse yowl somewhere ahead. He was on Moor View, the unseparated cottages of which flattened his footsteps and cast them back at him. He’d allowed the memories to come too close; he felt as though ice had penetrated his innards and was tightening around the core of him. If he hadn’t needed to ensure that Amy wouldn’t be infected by his fears he might at least have been with Heather in her final moments, but how could he give such an idea any room in his thoughts? Amy was still his and Heather’s little girl, and Heather would have been the last to blame her. The fault was entirely his, and perhaps Amy needed him to say so. Perhaps, he thought, she was old enough for him to tell her the whole of the truth.

  All the same, as Nazarill spread into view at the top of the road, he found he was glad that she was staying overnight at a classmate’s in Sheffield—that he was returning to a flat empty of deafening music. Whenever he asked her to turn it down he felt reduced to a parody of himself, and by no means only then: whenever he had to remind her yet again to clear away her school homework, or the plates from the snacks she ate between meals and consequently at them, or the cassette boxes she scattered throughout the apartment, even in the bathroom… Those were also times when he missed Heather, when he was most aware of his incompleteness.

  As he reached the top of Moor View he heard a man’s voice yelling ‘Stay in there till you’re told.’ A door slammed inside the end house on the right, and one of its bedroom windows turned black as Oswald passed through the gateway. The streetlamps of Nazareth Row stood on the pavement opposite, their cobra heads warning the cottages off, and as though in further deference to the great house, their orange glow fell short of it. The tinge grew ashen less than halfway along the gravel drive, on either side of which the blurred shadows of the railings, exhausted by having been stretched so far, petered out on the orange-stained turf. Between the edge of the glow from the road and the outermost point at which an approach would trigger the security lights was a band of dimness some fifty yards wide. Oswald’s toecap lifted a fragment of gravel, which clattered ahead of him and was extinguished like an ember. At that moment, up beneath the oak tree that was fingering its own darkness on the grass, something moved and then was motionless.

  Oswald halted amid a brief shrill clash of gravel. The movement he’d glimpsed had been too large for a bird, and it had seemed too stealthy to be up to any good. Was that an intruder’s head which he could just distinguish among the stooped branches, or a furry swelling on the trunk? He craned himself towards it, digging his nails into his thighs to maintain his balance; then he stepped off the drive, which delivered itself of a faint stony squeal, and tiptoed across the grass.

  The cage of branches seemed to flex itself towards him. He stepped beneath one which had rooted its tip in the ground as though the oak was trying to drag itself into the earth, and a smell closed around him: old wood, decaying vegetation, and an odour far less pleasant, suggesting that some animal had voided itself under the tree. He wished he had first gone close enough to the building to trip the lights. He was trying both to locate what he’d glimpsed and to avoid treading in the source of the stench when he realised where, and hence what, the movement had been. Of course, it was the length of rope attached to a high branch; only that morning he’d seen Amy and the girl from the next apartment taking turns to swing, though the Stoddards wanted their daughter to keep away from the tree. He spied the vertical line of the rope cutting through the tangled silhouettes of branches, and took hold of it to throw it over a branch too high for the girls to reach. Just as he realised that the rope weighed more than it should, the object at the end of it swung into his face.

  It was as big as his head. Its furry body squirmed against his lips and filled his nostrils with the worst of the smells beneath the oak. Unless he dodged out of its reach its legs and then its jaws would fasten on his face, but his hands were glued to the sticky rope down which the spider had run to wait for prey. The darkness under the tree seemed to collapse towards him, filling his skull and immobilising him. Then, at about the level of his forehead, he heard the most appalling sound he could imagine ever hearing: a moist eager bubbling hiss—the breath of a spider.

  So that was where its mouth was, very close to his eyes. His teeth began to chatter. Their shivering raced through him, his hand dragging helplessly at the rope, his legs performing an agonised dance as though to anticipate how they would writhe while the spider fed. He was willing himself desperately to be somewhere else, even if his body had to stay where it was, when the security lights blazed across the lawn.

  The tree trunk stood between most of the glare and the thing at his face. For a moment he thought all that the light had achieved was to blind him, and then he realised that the shock had loosened his hold on the rope. He flung it away and staggered backwards, and saw Teresa Blake standing outside the glass doors, rubbing her arms through the sleeves of a slate-grey suit before shielding her eyes to peer about the grounds. ‘Pouncer,’ she was calling. ‘Good Pouncer. Here, puss.’ The rope swung out of the hulking shadow of the trunk, and Oswald saw that its burden was a black cat with a noose around its neck.

  Before he knew why, he put the trunk between himself and the magistrate. Absurd though it might be, he blamed himself for not having recognised immediately that it was her pet on the end of the rope. As it began to swing into the light again, he steadied the rope and closed his hands around the animal so as to lift it, in the hope that would slacken the noose. His thumbs met across the plump furry chest, and his touch convulsed the animal. Its eyes bulged, its mouth gaped to release another strangled hiss, and as its body folded up over its stomach, it dug all its claws into Oswald’s wrists.

  ‘Devil,’ he cried in a whisper as sharp as a scream. His wrists felt as if white-hot handcuffs had been locked around them. He hurled the cat as high as his arms would stretch, but the claws hooked themselves deeper. The pain tugged his arms down, too hard, too far. The rope jerked taut, hauling at its branch, and Oswald thought he heard and felt the wood snap. Then the claws snatched themselves out of his flesh, and as his grasp slackened, the cat was plucked from his hands. The branch sprang back into position and flourished the animal at him, wagging its pop-eyed silently snarling head on the broken neck.

  Oswald gripped his wrists as though he could squeeze the pain out of them, and heard Teresa Blake raise her voice. ‘Pouncer, come in now. I know you’re out here, you sly little thing.’ A clash of gravel indicated she had stepped onto the drive. He thought she was making for the tree until he saw her tramping around the far side of the house in the direction of the car park. He backed along the shadow of the tree, and glanced nervously towards Nazareth Row in case anyone was watching. Nobody appeared to be, and what right had they to spy on Nazarill? When he was close enough to the gateway to have just arrived, unnoticed by the magistrate, he responded to her increasingly terse shouts. ‘Miss Blake? Is anything the matter?’

  She turned so quickly that the action carried her several unsteady steps towards him. ‘My pal,’ she called, lowering her voice as she came. ‘Something startled her this morning. She ran out as I was leaving and I couldn’t get her back before I had to go.’

  Her progress was jabbing her darkest shadow at Oswald, but he wasn’t about to betray that he felt accused. He made himself glance at the tree, and react with a mime of restrained dismay, and hold up a hand to arrest her, and managed not to wince as the cuff of his overcoat dragged itself over his wrist. ‘Stay there, Miss Blake. I’m afraid—’

  ‘Are you all right, Mr Priestley? Can I help?’

  ‘I’m fine, thank you for asking. Nothing wrong with me.’ Oswald let his hand drop and shook the cuff down. ‘Only I’m afraid I can see—if you can do your best to be prepared—’

  ‘Try and calm yourself.’

  Oswald could imagine her saying that to the guilty in front of her bench while regardin
g them much as she was gazing at him. ‘The same to you,’ he muttered, and having discovered that his hands were clasped, pulled the right one free to indicate the rope. ‘I’m sorry, but that’s her, isn’t it? Or him.’

  The magistrate ducked to peer under the branches. Her eyes widened, her face shook, and then it composed itself into an expression which she must surely reserve for the worst offenders. ‘Who did this?’

  ‘I think—’

  ‘Yes, continue. Go on. Speak up.’

  ‘I’d say by the look of things it may have done it to itself.’

  Her face swung towards him, and so did the cat’s. ‘You think it was a poor harmless little cat’s fault, do you?’ she said.

  ‘Obviously not fault, no. I was meaning an accident. The girls were swinging on it earlier, mine and the one from next door, the rope, you understand. They must have tied it like that, one of them, and your, it must have, I don’t know precisely, fallen out of the tree and unfortunately…’

  None of the eyes which appeared to be accusing him blinked. ‘I’m sure neither of them meant any harm,’ he said desperately. ‘Mine’s a vegetarian.’

  The dead gaze was worse than the living, and both gathered on him for considerably longer than seemed reasonable before the magistrate uttered words to go with hers. ‘Are you helping me, or do you just mean to watch?’

  ‘What would you like me to do?’

  ‘I’ll hold her while you take the rope off her,’ Teresa Blake said as if that should have been obvious.

  ‘I’ll try.’ Remembering the force with which he’d hauled the noose tight, Oswald wasn’t optimistic. As Teresa raised the corpse with her hands cupped under its spine, he had an impression of her preparing to take down a criminal from the gallows. He edged between the rope and the tree trunk, nearly tripping over more than one root, and the magistrate said ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To do as you asked.’ If he didn’t keep to the shadow of the oak she might notice the marks on his wrists. He dug his nails into the snarl of rope with all the force he could bring to bear, and the bones of the snapped neck ground together against his fingers. Pain flared in his wrists, his nails started to peel away from the flesh; the cat’s head sagged against his hands as though it was trying to nuzzle him. It felt like a spider again. He wrenched at the rope in a frenzy, and it untwisted itself so suddenly there might have been no knot at all.

  He loitered, his smarting wrists hidden behind him, while the magistrate cradled the head to stare into the face. He was thinking of stealing away when a glass door threw an extra portion of light into his eyes, and George Roscommon emerged onto the wide step to raise one hand in the shape of half a megaphone to his mouth. ‘Who’s there? I can see you behind there.’

  Oswald nearly shot up a hand to wave as he stepped out of the shadow. ‘It’s me and Miss Blake. Her, it’s met with an accident.’

  ‘I’m not quite getting …’ The gardener advanced several tentative paces, and his habitually startled look diminished into genuineness. ‘Oh Lord,’ he said, and lowering one shoulder to peer over it through the railings: ‘Did somebody…’ ‘Mr Priestley believes she got caught in the rope.’ ‘It shouldn’t have been allowed to stay,’ George said, dealing a low branch a thump with the side of his hand which made several branches creak and grope around him, and bent his head like a mourner towards the cat. ‘Will you… May I take it…’ ‘Speak up if you’ve anything to say.’ ‘Only that if you wanted her buried, I could.’ Oswald took this as his cue to leave. ‘If you’ll excuse me…’ ‘Yes. Yes, of course. Thank you.’ It wasn’t clear which of the men Teresa was addressing. Oswald sidled between two rooted branches, just as she said ‘Are your hands always scratched like that?’

  He felt as though the cage of wood and shadows had closed over him. As he struggled not to respond until he knew whether a lie or an abject apology would escape his mouth, George Roscommon said ‘Not this badly usually. I’m dealing with a place that’s been left to itself for too long.’

  ‘Weren’t you a bit scratched at the get-together?’ Oswald improvised in case that helped, and fled across the glaring lawn to Nazarill.

  As the doors gonged together he felt as though they had shut out the incident. He managed to fish forth his keys without scraping his wrist on his pocket, but removing his overcoat to hang it in the wardrobe brought the tweed into contact with the scratched flesh. He imagined how Heather would have looked after him, taking his wrists in her cool hands and wanting to know what he’d done. He held his wrists under the hot tap in the bathroom until the searing grew unbearable, then splashed disinfectant over the red weals and bared his gritted teeth at his tearful face in the mirror. ‘At least you aren’t hanged,’ he growled, and went in search of ways to occupy himself.

  In the kitchen he transferred the contents of the washing machine to the dryer. While the drum embarked upon its churning he took from the refrigerator the half of a steak and kidney pie and set it in the microwave, and then he found himself drawn to the window of the main room. Teresa Blake was standing on the lawn in front of Nazarill, where the gardener had dug a border as yet unseeded. The cat, arranged to look no worse than asleep, lay in her shadow on the grass. When another shadow joined hers, a man’s brandishing the silhouette of an outsize hammer which it took Oswald a moment to identify as a spade, he retreated to the kitchen.

  Eyes followed him, but they were only paper. He didn’t need to hide his stinging wrists. He wouldn’t have been able to do so from Heather, but she wasn’t there to see him; even the smell of the books she’d bound was fading. All at once he felt as though he had wished her away for fear of being observed. What could he ever do that would make him afraid of her seeing it? The microwave chirped like a simplified bird, and he sprang the metal door open and removed the plate to the kitchen table. He’d sat on the bench with just a fork when he made himself fetch a knife. Heather had never liked his eating with a fork alone; it set Amy a bad example, she’d said. He’d guided Amy worse than that, he thought as a whiff of the wrong kind of incense reached his nostrils. They’d hardly been to church since Heather’s funeral.

  He fed himself a mouthful, then sprinkled more salt than he supposed was good for him on the pie before he took another, and still had the impression that the taste was avoiding him. He strode chewing into the next room and searched in the rack beside the hi-fi for something of Heather’s. Here was a tape of some of her favourite music, including songs with which her mother had sung her to sleep. He slipped the tape into the player and brought the velvet curtains together on the view of the shadow of a spade, its head swelling each time it flung the ghosts of clods of earth across the grass.

  The speakers broke into song as he returned to the bench, and at once he wished he had played another tape of Heather’s. ‘If you were the only girl in the world…’ Suppose Heather’s mother were indeed the only person in a place he dared not begin to visualise, what would her state be now? Growing old had loosened her already feeble grasp on her sanity: suppose she was condemned to an eternity of madness? His thoughts had already gone too far, but there was no arresting their momentum. Suppose the fear which Heather had admitted to him—that despite all the control she exerted over herself, in time she would become like her mother—had been realised at her own death?

  It couldn’t be. He mustn’t give the notion any kind of life. Even if he couldn’t snuff out the image of her mother walled up in a place the size of her mind and crawling with all the nightmares in it, he mustn’t imagine that of Heather. Was controlling his imagination the best he could do? Did he care less about her than Betty Raistrick did for her late husband—so little that he wouldn’t pray for her because he wasn’t sure it worked? ‘Please God,’ he mumbled, and swallowed a tasteless lump of pie so as to speak louder. ‘Please…’

  He had little sense to whom or to what he was praying. He’d ceased to believe in much since Heather’s death. The tape was singing about the Garden of Eden, ‘just made fo
r two’, and he felt as though he’d cast himself out by giving up the vague beliefs he’d retained from his childhood—please God, cast out only himself. He switched off the tape before any more words could catch at him, and emptied the contents of his plate into the kitchen bin. He couldn’t pray while he was eating, and a little fasting wouldn’t do him any harm. As the dryer ceased its rumbling he unplugged it and headed for his bedroom.

  He hadn’t knelt to pray since he was Amy’s age, and he found that doing so now would only make him feel hypocritical. He sat on the edge of the single bed and gazed at the small shelf of Heather’s favourite books, which she’d bound for the love of them, before he turned to the photograph on the dressing-table of Heather and himself with six-year-old Amy on his shoulders, the adults stretching out their hands towards the sandcastle she’d made. He held that image in his mind as he clasped his hands tight, ignoring the pain in his wrists, and shut his eyes. ‘Please,’ he murmured. ‘Please don’t let her be suffering. It isn’t fair.’

  That wasn’t praying, it was wishing, and it sounded worse than childish—superstitious. He knew how to pray, he just had to remember, though trying felt like his fumbling attempts to unknot the rope which had proved only to be twisted. His failures at the tasks seemed to be entangled in his mind, as though one had caused the other. Which were the first words everyone who was taught to pray learned? He found them in a corner of the dark cramped place his mind was threatening to become, and he clenched his hands together. ‘Our Father—’

  What came next? Though his parents had always disagreed, until now he had never thought it mattered; yet surely if you said ‘Our Father Who’ that assumed you were addressing a person, whereas ‘Which’ implied some less imaginable and reassuring presence. His need at the moment seemed to leave Oswald no choice. ‘Our Father Who—’