The House On Nazareth Hill

by Ramsey Campbell

  ‘All Christian men rejoice, with heart and soul and voice…’ At first he couldn’t grasp what was intruding between him and these sentiments—why the words were going wrong in his head—and then he heard that Amy was singing not ‘Christian men’ but ‘Christie Annes’. When he nudged her, harder than he’d thought he would, she retreated along the pew, leaving him to raise his voice to drown any other changes she might make. The carol was over before he managed to regain a sense of being part of it, and as the priest vanished into the sacristy Oswald took hold of her arm, to rebuke her for refashioning the words. He hadn’t spoken when she pulled herself free, muttering ‘I’m going to the grave.’

  She meant Heather’s. It had been years since they’d visited it together. ‘I’ll come with you,’ Oswald called after her, only to be halted in the porch by a diminutive couple who were waiting for him. ‘Merry Christmas, Mr Priestley,’ said Jack Pickles, peering up at him from behind tortoiseshell spectacles which might have been chosen to tone in with his freckled scalp and the last of his reddish hair.

  ‘A joyous Christmas to you both.’

  ‘And many more with children in them,’ said Hattie, who seemed determined to live up to that name whenever she left the house: tonight she was crowned with a pink creation which resembled a giant sugar whorl at least as much as headgear. ‘Where’s our Shaun?’ she demanded, having already found him, and urged him by one elbow towards Oswald. ‘Here he is, up there. You remember Mr Priestley who saw to our insurance. Wish him the compliments.’

  Her son’s mottled face was in the process of rearranging its colours. ‘Ha,’ he mumbled immediately before ‘Happy Christmas.’

  ‘Leave the boy now, Hattie. He’s not usually such a drooping snowdrop, Mr Priestley. You should see him do his job. Isn’t the light of your life with you?’

  ‘She was ahead of me. Sorry if she didn’t speak. You know how they can get at her age, or perhaps you don’t. That’s her over there in the black.’

  ‘God bless her,’ said Hattie, rubbing out a tear with a fingertip. ‘It’s the book and its cover and no mistake.’

  Oswald was wondering why he wasn’t as touched as she was by the sight of Amy, her lips moving as she confronted the granite column of the gravel plot on the far side of the churchyard, when Jack Pickles said ‘You’ve been seeing quite a bit of her lately, haven’t you, son?’

  ‘When she worked by the market,’ Shaun admitted.

  ‘You won’t have seen her working there recently,’ said Oswald.

  ‘Since you told her not to go in that shop, you mean.’

  ‘That was my mind, certainly. How did you know?’

  Shaun’s face had started to increase its blotchiness even before his mother said ‘I think he’s got his eye on her on the quiet. Pity there’s not fewer years between them.’

  ‘The one she’s walking with is older than she is.’

  Shaun must have been encouraged by Oswald’s tone; the redder patches of his face set about reverting to pink. ‘I’ve seen him, if that’s a him.’

  ‘A conundrum, I agree. So what’s my answer?’

  The nineteen-year-old, as Oswald had now dated him, stared. ‘Scuse?’

  ‘You haven’t seen her go into that shop since I bade her.’

  ‘I haven’t, Mr Priestley. I can include it in my patrol if you like.’

  ‘I should think most folk would want you to. Were you about to say more?’

  ‘He still hangs round that shop, her dope with the stuff in his face.’

  ‘I should have realised,’ Oswald said, wondering why he’d needed to be told. At that moment Amy turned towards the church, and her face hardened, which dismayed him so much that she was on her way to the gate before he called out ‘Amy, come here a minute.’

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ Jack said as though his loudness must provoke at least an echo.

  ‘Yes, do join us. We’re still yapping. We’ve already got one shy type here,’ said Hattie, nodding the pink whorl at her son. ‘Don’t say you’re another.’

  Something about this seemed to amuse Amy, who picked her way over the grass, her shadow catching on gravestones as it kept its distance from the spotlights which exhibited the church. ‘You know our Shaun, don’t you?’ Jack said.

  ‘I know him.’

  Oswald didn’t like her manner, nor the expressionless gaze she fixed on the youth, but Hattie took her attitude to signify the opposite of its appearance. ‘We were just going to say, weren’t we, Jack, why don’t both of you drop in over Christmas.’

  ‘We’ll be delighted, won’t we, Amy?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Whenever’s convenient,’ Jack said.

  Shaun’s chewed lips had started to admit to a grin. Amy stared at it and said ‘I’ll be busy then.’

  ‘Convenient for you as well, we mean,’ Hattie protested. ‘Not just as well, as much. Shaun will put some records on for you, won’t you, Shaun? It’s not our style, all this Cliff Richard crooning, but I expect it appeals to you. I’m sure you’ll find you’ve a lot in common if you get to know each other.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘No harm in giving it a try,’ said Oswald, keeping most of his anger inaudible. ‘I’d like to spend a little time with these good people when they’ve so kindly invited us.’

  ‘You go, then. No thanks,’ Amy said, and elicited a discouraging screech from the gate as she walked out of the churchyard.

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what the problem is with her at the moment, but it’s going to have to be solved damned quick.’

  ‘It must be a trial bringing her up on her own,’ Hattie said.

  That made Oswald feel no less humiliated. He would have shouted at Amy to come back and apologise to their friends, except that would be to create more of a scene. Instead, as a kind of unstated apology, he stayed in the midst of the Pickles family as they trailed after her up Moor View. At Gorse Cottages he took an awkward leave of them, as a drunk began to rant somewhere ahead. ‘Peace on earth,’ Jack commented.

  ‘There will be if I’ve anything to do with it,’ Oswald said grimly, and strode after his daughter. Once the Pickles family was out of earshot he spoke. ‘Wait there. I want to talk to you.’

  As Amy halted, an illuminated slab rose beyond her, filling the end of the street. It was part of the front of Nazarill, where the security lights had been triggered. Oswald overtook her and stared into her face, and saw only leaden resignation. ‘Perhaps you can explain yourself,’ he said.

  ‘Shouldn’t think so.’

  The drunk was still ranting, close to Nazarill. Had he wandered into the grounds and set off the lights? Oswald would have been finding out if he hadn’t had to deal with Amy. ‘What were you hoping to achieve by such behaviour?’ he demanded.

  As her eyes waited for Oswald to go away the man’s voice continued to rave, giving Oswald a confused impression that it was answering him. ‘I never imagined I’d see you so unmannerly,’ he said. ‘What do you suppose they thought of you?’

  ‘Wouldn’t know.’

  ‘You no sooner leave your mother’s grave than you spurn my, not just my friends, my clients, on this of all nights.’ There remained far more to be said, but the man’s voice was distracting him—its elusive familiarity was. ‘Come along,’ Oswald said harshly. ‘Don’t think I’ve done with you by any means, but I want to see what that is.’

  He’d halved the distance between himself and Nazarill before he heard her start to follow him. Once they were home where nobody could hear, he promised himself, they would have a proper talk. Spectators had come out of the end houses of Moor View to watch the grounds, somewhere in which the voice was repeating a few words over and over. Emerging onto Nazareth Row, which had produced even more of an audience, Oswald saw Alistair Doughty and Max Greenberg and Teresa Blake standing outside the shadowy cage of the oak. ‘What’s happening, do you know?’ Oswald asked the nearest onlooker, a burly shirtsleeved man who was sharing a can of lage
r with his wife.

  ‘Some old feller’s gone round the bend, looks like.’

  As though the words had focused the glare of Nazarill, Oswald saw a figure through the branches, a man in striped pyjamas and a dressing-gown who was clinging with all his limbs to the dark side of the tree. The man twisted his head round as Teresa Blake ventured towards him, and Oswald saw he was Harold Roscommon. ‘I’m not going back in there,’ he shouted yet again. ‘Keep off.’

  Oswald grimaced a rebuke at the audience while he crossed the road, but they gazed at him as if he was part of the spectacle. He strode onto the drive, and the gnashing of gravel drew the attention of those at the oak. The old man craned his head back. ‘Is that George?’ he shouted. ‘I want George.’

  ‘The Goudges are trying to find him, Mr Roscommon,’ the magistrate said.

  ‘I don’t know where he’d be at this hour,’ Max Greenberg said as though to use up his own preoccupation with time.

  Both spoke so carefully it was clear to Oswald they were reining in their emotions. ‘Go inside, Amy,’ he said as she came abreast of him, having hurried after all. ‘No arguments. I’ll be up in due course.’

  To his annoyance, Greenberg intervened. ‘Mr Priestley, if I were you I wouldn’t tell—’

  ‘You’re blessed with not being, Mr Greenberg. I’m the father, and I think that gives me the right—’

  ‘Nobody’s about to contest that, only you mightn’t want her going in by herself just at the present.’

  ‘Why not?’

  It was Amy who asked, but the watchmaker persisted in addressing Oswald; he even lowered his voice. ‘Mr Metcalf’s door may be open, and you’d hardly want her seeing. He seems to be—he must have had the heart attack some of us were predicting.’

  If his murmuring was designed not to be overheard by Harold Roscommon, it didn’t work. ‘No seems about it,’ the old man said, and louder ‘He’s dead, and there was something in there with him.’

  ‘Children present, Mr Roscommon,’ the magistrate said.

  ‘I don’t see any,’ said Amy, a protest that went unanswered as the old man cried ‘That won’t shut me up either. I saw what I saw, and it’ll take more than all of you put together to drag me back inside there.’

  ‘Stay where you are for the nonce,’ Oswald told Amy, and turned back to Max Greenberg. ‘What does he think he saw?’

  ‘Nobody’s sure. What he did see was Mr Metcalf, which must be why he’s in this state. He’d gone out of his apartment looking for his son and found Mr Metcalf’s door open.’

  ‘Has anyone called the police and ambulance?’

  ‘The police will be here as soon as they can,’ Alistair Doughty said, ‘and the ambulance has to come from Sheffield.’

  ‘Well done, Mr Doughty.’ The community of Nazarill was beginning to unite, thought Oswald. If only someone had cared enough to say to the photographer’s face that his excesses were straining his heart! ‘Is anyone with Mr Metcalf?’ Oswald said.

  ‘The medical lady from your floor is,’ said the magistrate. ‘She was the one who took his pulse.’

  ‘I suppose she must know what she’s doing,’ Oswald murmured, only to provoke the old man. ‘What are you muttering about?’ he cried. ‘Why won’t anyone listen to me?’

  ‘I will,’ said Amy, and before Oswald could prevent her she had ducked under the branches. ‘What did you see?’

  As Roscommon shifted to face her, two large chunks of bark came away in his hands. ‘Somebody with a mouth bigger than this,’ he said, and shook his gnarled fist.

  ‘Amy, will you please—’ called Oswald, but the old man was louder. ‘I thought at first a dog had got in, because it was too thin for a person. Only it looked at me, and it used to be someone right enough, before all that happened to its face. Then it crawled off into the dark like an old spider.’

  ‘All right, Amy, that’s quite enough.’ Oswald saw her and the old man staring at each other with a kind of recognition which he neither liked nor wanted to define. ‘Enough,’ he repeated.

  Roscommon stretched out a hand to detain her, and the piece of bark hit a root with the sound of a gavel. ‘Have you seen it too?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Of course she hasn’t.’ Whatever game she thought she was playing, it infuriated Oswald. He made for her, to march her into Nazarill if necessary, but faltered as Max Greenberg spoke. ‘They’ve found—he’s there.’

  There was movement at a window on the middle floor. One of Ursula Braine’s curtains had been pushed back, revealing George Roscommon, naked from at least the waist up. The next moment he vanished, returning immediately to tug the curtain shut. ‘I hope he’ll be quick down,’ Teresa Blake said, and with somewhat less disapproval ‘Mr Roscommon, your son’s on the way’

  ‘Where was he? With that trollop, I’ll wager.’

  ‘That isn’t important,’ Amy tried to persuade him. ‘You were telling me—’

  The magistrate frowned at her. ‘Morality is always important, miss.’

  ‘She knows that,’ Oswald said, and seizing Amy’s elbows, turned her to face him. ‘And you’ve been told often enough to respect your elders.’

  Amy regarded him with a mixture of pity and disbelief as she disengaged herself from him. She glanced at the old man, but he was no longer looking at her; he’d redoubled his hold on the oak as if, Oswald thought furiously, what she’d made him say had aggravated his panic. As she reached the entrance to Nazarill, George Roscommon dashed into view, his untied shoelaces flailing the air, and held one glass door open for her. She went in slowly, then halted in the corridor. Before Oswald could move or shout, she pushed open the door of Dominic Metcalf’s apartment and walked in.

  Oswald sprinted across the lawn, skidding on the grass, and up the drive. George stepped back with a bewildered look to perform his doorman act again. As Oswald’s footfalls were muffled by the carpet he heard Beth Griffin say ‘Don’t worry, Amy, I’ll be all right on my own.’ The next moment Metcalf’s door swung wide open and Amy emerged, her gaze passing over Oswald as she headed for the stairs.

  At first he thought she had seen nothing of significance, her expression was so blank. The homeopath was standing at the near end of a hall lined with framed photographs and additionally illuminated by the light of every room. She extended one stiff arm to push the door shut, and Oswald saw an object protruding from the doorway nearest to that of the kitchen. It was a man’s clenched hand.

  Its plumpness had apparently belied its strength. In its final convulsion it had ripped a thick brown fistful out of the carpet. Oswald found himself wondering distractedly how the Goudges might feel about that after they’d devoted so much care to carpeting the whole of Nazarill. Then the door blocked his view, and as he hurried to the stairs up which Amy had disappeared, the grotesque notion gave way to the thought he had been trying not to admit. Whatever Amy might have seen of Metcalf’s corpse, her expression had seemed to imply she’d already seen worse.

  8 - Not such a game

  Once the Goudges’ families started to assemble on Christmas Day it became clear they felt bound to mention the carpets. ‘Good rich brown,’ Donna’s mother said.

  ‘Negro,’ said Donna’s father from the kitchen, where he was placing cans of beer in the refrigerator.

  ‘We aren’t allowed to say that any more,’ Auntie Ethel halted on her two sticks in the hall to warn him.

  ‘Don’t hold up the traffic, sis. It’s the other thing you can’t say now,’ said Auntie Pen, fluttering her stubby fingers to shoo her onward.

  Ethel swung round in the living-room doorway, prompting everyone to rush to her support until she steadied herself with twin triumphant thumps of her sticks. ‘I thought it was black you couldn’t say these days, not good old brown.’

  ‘Not black or brown, the other thing.’ Pen turned her palms up and began to wag her fingertips as if to scoop the answer out of the air. ‘The other thing. En eye gee… that.’

&nb
sp; ‘Stopping talk doesn’t change anything,’ Donna’s father said. ‘It just lets folk pretend things have changed.’

  This provoked the general hoot of derision with which the family always greeted his profundities, and Donna’s mother took the opportunity to put away the subject. ‘You look tired,’ she told Donna.

  She often did, but this time the cause of any tiredness hadn’t been a night of fun. Dave crossed the kitchen, having forked the turkey and fitted the plate back into the oven, and gave Donna’s waist a squeeze. ‘We were in bed late and up early,’ he said.

  Donna clasped his hand, in response and to hush him. While he was obviously not about to describe how they’d occupied the morning other than by preparing dinner—ensuring that every family item was not only on show but also not occupying more of a position of honour than any other, photographs and spectacularly inappropriate cushions and ornaments of a hideousness that had consigned them to the spare room until now—she hoped he wouldn’t mention last night’s events either. As if her thought of family had been overheard, the doorbell from the downstairs entrance rang. ‘Shall I have a go?’ Pen, who was nearest, said.

  ‘I expect it’s my lot,’ said Dave. ‘Just—’

  She had already poked the door release beneath the speaker with one adventurous thumb. ‘Ah well, it shouldn’t matter,’ he said.

  ‘Wasn’t that the ticket?’

  ‘I’m sure it was, only we usually check first who’s there.’

  ‘You should have said,’ Pen reproached him, and leaned a knuckle on the other button. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I should think they’ll have—’ Dave began, but she shushed him with a hiss that rivalled the noise the speaker was emitting. Holding down the button, she lowered her head to the box. ‘I can’t make it out,’ she eventually said, and straightened up. ‘They were singing.’

  ‘Waits,’ Ethel suggested, though nobody but Pen had heard anything but static.