The House On Nazareth Hill

by Ramsey Campbell

  ‘Go away,’ Dave muttered, his lips and the day’s worth of stubble tickling her above her hip-bone, and stayed crouched beside her stomach. The phone delivered six pairs of trills and was halfway through a seventh when it fell silent. ‘Call again soon,’ Dave said indistinctly, and traced the outline of her hipbone with his tongue. He was hitching himself forward on his elbows when the phone recommenced shrilling, and he raised his head. ‘Shall I answer it?’

  ‘Leave it. It can’t be any of our folk, not so soon after we’ve seen them.’

  ‘Except if it was it would have to be something urgent, wouldn’t it?’ He slapped the quilt with both hands and stood up. ‘If I don’t find out I’ll worry. I’ll be quick.’

  ‘The longer you are the older I’ll be when you get back,’ Donna said, lifting her head to watch him hurry out of the room. She was just able to distinguish a flickering in the dark hall—a hint of the Christmas tree lights—as the door began to inch shut behind him. ‘Leave the—’ she said, but it was more important that he reach the phone in time, and so she let her head subside on the pillow, which puffed itself up around her ears. She heard Dave switch on the light in the main room, making no appreciable difference to the visibility of the very little of the hall she could see, and then there was a clatter mixed with a curtailed trill. ‘Dave and Donna Goudge,’ he gabbled. ‘Hello?’

  As far as Donna was concerned this was followed by silence except for the creaking of the mattress as she flexed her hands and feet, which were growing cold and stiff. ‘I can’t make out what you’re saying,’ Dave said at last. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘It’s nobody. Tell them happy Christmas and to go and bother someone else.’ Donna peered along her cheekbones at the sliver of dark hall, then closed her eyes to stop them aching. Through the enclosure of the pillow she heard Dave say ‘I’m sorry, I can’t make any sense of this. You’ll have to phone back.’

  ‘Not now,’ Donna pleaded, and might have repeated it loud enough for Dave to hear, except that he said ‘If it isn’t urgent, make that tomorrow.’ His voice sounded more muffled, and she was assuming he’d turned away from her when she heard a faint noise beyond the foot of the bed. Her eyes widened just in time to see the door swing shut. As it did, the bedroom light went out.

  Had she glimpsed a movement at the switch? Surely that must have been the shadow of the door. She sucked in a breath to replace the one she’d lost by gasping and opened her mouth to call to Dave. Instead she spoke. ‘Don’t do that, Dave. It isn’t funny, not after last night. I know you’re there.’

  That brought no audible response, but she didn’t need to hear him to sense the presence in the room. He was pussyfooting across the thick carpet towards her, perhaps even crawling over it, and she would never have expected him to be so stupid. She hoped he was able to see as little as she could in the dark that the curtains had closed in—she hoped he would fall over something. Nevertheless he was making her so nervous she might have wept with anger. ‘Dave, stop it now,’ she said louder. ‘You aren’t turning me on at all.’ But her rebuke trailed off; she wasn’t even sure if the last word passed her lips. The phone had emitted the single note which it always released as the receiver was hung up. Dave was still in the main room.

  She tried to cry out to him, but her tongue felt as though a weight the size of her mouth was pressing it down. He must surely be on his way to the bedroom. She jerked her hands towards the bedposts in an attempt to slacken her bonds and struggled to snag the knots at her wrists with her fingernails. They didn’t reach, and she had succeeded only in clawing at her palms when she realised that by now Dave ought to have come back. Was he waiting by the phone in case it rang again? She dragged wildly at her bonds, and the scarf tied to her left wrist slipped off the bedpost.

  Her fist thumped the mattress, and she was suddenly afraid of having drawn attention to herself. She opened her mouth—all at once she didn’t care what noise she made to summon Dave—as she became aware that the rest of her bonds had remained unyielding. Then something trailed across her bare midriff.

  It felt almost insubstantial enough to allow her to believe she was fancying the sensation. But something was there—a part of whatever had crept up to her in the blind dark and was leaning over her in a silence that was worse than any voice or breath. Before she could imagine what she might touch, her fist lashed out to ward it off.

  The trailing substance was snatched away, and for a moment she was able to think it had only been the scarf which she’d been unaware of flinging across herself. The thought had barely offered itself when her fingers, opening in the dark, caught in the substance that was still dangling over her. It was hair.

  It felt like thick cobweb loaded with grit. It clung to her fingers as she tried to flail it away, only managing to entangle them in it. She heard a sound that the removal of a sodden piece of sticking-plaster might have made—she felt the lock of hair detach itself from the scalp and settle across the back of her hand. She also heard Dave’s footsteps in the hall, but he was too late; indeed, the prospect of his switching on the light dismayed her so much that she would have covered her eyes with her hand if it had been empty. Her arm shuddered in mid-air as he halted outside the door. ‘Who shut that?’ she heard him wonder. ‘Are you up, love?’ The doorknob turned with a faint squeak, and the door swung open.

  The hall was illuminated only by the flickering of the Christmas tree, but to her eyes, which were famished for light, even that was sufficient to alleviate the blackness of the room. She was almost certain that she saw an appallingly thin silhouette leaning over the side of the bed. At once it retreated in a lopsided crouch to a corner of the room, into the alcove formed by the wall and the wardrobe, and shrank down as though shrivelling into the dimness. ‘What’s happened?’ Dave said, and slapped the light-switch.

  The bulb under the fluted cut-glass shade lit up before Donna could wrench her gaze away from the corner. Except for the shadow of the wardrobe, which lent it some of the appearance of a gloomy cell, it was empty. That might have come as a relief if she hadn’t been distressingly conscious of staring at it so as to avoid seeing the contents of her hand. ‘Sorry about that. Some maniac who sounded as though they’d got something in their mouth,’ Dave said, and then ‘What’s wrong, love?’

  She couldn’t speak. She held up her fist to show him rather than look at it herself. ‘You want me to take them off,’ he said, and hurried to her. ‘Did you get scared? I wouldn’t have left you in the dark if I’d known you were. I mustn’t have put the switch right down, and the door closing knocked it off.’

  The hair was brushing the back of her arm now. She stared at him, willing him to see, and then, because there seemed to be no alternative, she forced herself to look. There was nothing in her fist, nothing in her trembling fingers when she stretched them wide, and only the scarf was trailing down her arm. ‘You’re fit, aren’t you?’ Dave said, picking at the knot which held her other wrist.

  ‘I will be,’ Donna told him and more importantly herself. ‘Only let’s not tonight. Just hold me.’ As soon as he had freed her she retreated under the quilt, leaving her dress and underwear for him to wad up and throw in the laundry basket in the bathroom. She was about to call to him to hurry back when he did, and the opportunity was past for her to ask him to turn on all the lights. Besides, that would need too much explaining. She wanted to believe he was right to think she had just scared herself in the dark. ‘Open the curtains a crack,’ she told him, and when he joined her under the quilt she hugged him hard while she stared at the column of darkness in the corner next to the wardrobe. Nothing appeared there, and the feel of his familiar warm flesh against her was a comfort. Nevertheless it took her a long time to be able to close her eyes, and much longer before she could sleep.

  9 - The secret of the tree

  When the oak began to tilt in the midst of an absolute lack of its own sound, Amy opened the window of the main room. Observing the workmen using chainsaws on the
branches and the trunk had felt like watching a film of the event, but now it seemed as though someone had stolen the tree’s voice. She dislodged the bolt which secured the twin sashes and pushed the lower one up just as the trunk fell. It uttered a groan of protest as its wooden jaw was forced wider and wider, and then there was a moment’s silence like the absence of a breath before the remains of the tree struck the lawn with a thud that vibrated through Nazarill. A gasp of wintry air laden with smells of decay and old wood rushed through the window, flapping the Christmas cards strung up to the picture-rail on tapes. As they subsided her father hurried out of the bathroom, clutching a towel around himself. ‘For heaven’s sake, child, what have you done now?’

  ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘What have you broken? Did you throw something from the window?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Something you would prefer me not to see, perhaps. I wonder how much that’s in your room that may apply to.’

  ‘You’ll never know, will you? Because if you start poking in my room I’ll leave home, and you won’t stop me.’

  ‘Let’s cease being idiotic,’ he said, but she knew he meant only her. The chainsaws went to work again, audibly now, and she saw him realise what the thud had been. He began to towel his greying chest with the hand that wasn’t pinching the mantle shut behind him. ‘And shut the window, will you, please, unless you want me to catch an infection.’

  ‘Say you’re sorry and I will.’

  ‘What am I expected to be sorry for?’

  For her, she thought fleetingly, except she didn’t want that from anyone. ‘For the way you keep treating me.’

  ‘Good heavens, what is that supposed to be?’

  ‘Not even like a person sometimes.’

  ‘That’s quite unfair, you know. I treat you as your behaviour warrants.’ He jabbed a finger at the window, and a drop of bathwater anointed her forehead. ‘And your behaviour just now—’

  The door buzzed at the end of the hall. He waved his free hand angrily and clenched the other on the towel as he retreated to the bathroom. ‘Will you close the window and answer that, and if it’s Miss Griffin, I should like a word with her. I’m sure the pills she gives you are partly to blame for your moods.’

  When she heard him bolt the bathroom door she felt as though he was locking her in. The problem was that she couldn’t help doing as he’d asked: the snarl of the chainsaws was beginning to affect her with a headache such as Beth’s medication usually cured, and she wanted to see who was at the door. She dragged the sash down, which was akin to thrusting a gag into a mouth; the chainsaws might as well have been switched off. She hurried through the aching silence to peer through the spyhole of the door at the end of the hall. A tiny man in black was loitering in the warped corridor.

  Since he was nobody she’d ever seen before, her first reaction was to wonder how he’d got into Nazarill. She opened the door to replace his shrunken image with his six-foot self. He was either in his thirties or determined to appear that young, with a wiry frame and a flat turf of blond hair and a spotless face which looked not merely shaved but planed, its long cheekbones squared off by the jaw. His suit proved to be blue, but so dark it might as well have been the negative of his white shirt—only his pale blue tie permitted itself more colour. ‘Afternoon, young lady,’ he said in not much of a Yorkshire accent. ‘Are your parents in?’

  ‘My dad is. I wish—’ She didn’t want to admit that to herself, never mind to him. ‘He’s just getting dressed,’ she said.

  ‘Shall I come back? You might tell him it was Rory Arkwright of Housall.’

  ‘He wants you to wait.’ At least, she did: she had any number of questions for their visitor if she could think of them. ‘He won’t be long,’ she said, as much a warning to herself as an invitation to the caller.

  When she stepped back he eased the door shut with his finger and thumb on the latch, then granted the pictures along the hall a few quick blinks. ‘Are you the artist?’

  ‘Not unless I’m older than your grandmother and a bit mad.’

  ‘I can see you aren’t one of those.’ Having followed her past the eyes and into the main room, he found something else to say to her once he noticed the bookcase. ‘Are you the reader, then?’

  ‘My mother bound all those.’

  ‘Is that who? I’m impressed. Can I sit anywhere?’

  “That’s what the chairs are for.’

  She sat on one to demonstrate, and was ready with a question as he perched on the edge of the sofa, but he wasn’t giving up the subject without a contest. ‘They must be good,’ he said, bowing his head at the books.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For your mother to have taken so much trouble to make them look special.’

  Amy could have argued with that and with his expression, which might have been implying some disloyalty on her part, except that she had a more useful response. ‘Like you did with here, you mean.’

  ‘Much like, now you mention it.’

  ‘You don’t think sometimes people make things look good to cover up what they are.’

  ‘You can’t be saying that about your mother.’

  ‘I wouldn’t ever.’ Amy had tried to read some of the books once they were in Nazarill, only to be dismayed by how shallowly romantic and dated they were, but she wasn’t going to admit that to him. ‘I was thinking of this place.’

  ‘Your home, is that? I’d say you should be proud of it too.’

  ‘Not the flat, this whole place.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ve run ahead of me. Did you have a complaint about our building?’

  ‘Don’t you want to hear it if I have?’

  ‘We want all our clients to be as happy as it’s within our power to make them. That’s why I’m here now.’ He drummed the start of a march on his knees with the flats of his hands, which he then used to push himself to his feet as the bathroom door opened, the bolt having emitted a sound like a trap. ‘Speak of the, well, I hope you don’t think I’d dream of calling you that. Mr Priestley, I believe? Rory Arkwright of Housall.’

  Amy’s father was dressed all the way down to his slippers, only the unconcealed tag of his white polo-neck betraying his haste. He dealt his hair a swift comb in front of the nearest framed illustration before shaking Arkwright’s hand. ‘Nothing to drink, Mr Arkwright?’

  ‘I wasn’t asked, but if you’re having one…’

  ‘I apologise for my daughter. She used to be the little hostess, but now she must think she’s too big. I’ll have coffee, Amy, thank you, and Mr Arkwright?’

  ‘Straight coffee’s my medicine too. I should tell you Amy was wanting to talk to me about Nazarill.’

  Was he offering that as an excuse on her behalf or informing on her? She couldn’t judge for the fury which the men were taking turns to aggravate. ‘That’s more than she’s said to me,’ her father admitted. ‘Well, Amy, let us hear it if it’s so important it makes you forget your manners.’

  She stood up so as to turn away from him, towards the Housall representative. ‘Do you know what this place used to be?’

  ‘Offices, and I’ll lay you a fiver you couldn’t tell.’

  ‘Before it was offices.’

  He raised his eyebrows as though to persuade her it wasn’t a quick frown that had wrinkled his forehead. ‘I couldn’t say. Some kind of country house by the look.’

  ‘Not first a monastery and then a hospital.’

  ‘I can’t see any signs of those, can you?’

  ‘Where do you get such ideas, Amy? Who have you been talking to?’

  Amy swung towards her father without glancing at him. ‘You don’t think I can have any ideas of my own.’

  ‘I’d rather you had none like those if they can be blamed for making you act as though you wish we hadn’t moved here.’

  ‘I’m sorry if you feel that, Amy. Is there some way I can help? With your father’s approval, of course.’

  ‘Yes, tell me t
he truth.’

  ‘I assure you I—’

  ‘I haven’t asked yet. Are there any stories about Nazarill?’

  ‘It’d be news to me. What kind of stories?’

  ‘Like the one Mr Roscommon told after he found Mr Metcalf. Didn’t you hear what he said he saw?’

  ‘Why, Amy, that whole tragic episode is exactly why I’m here now, to put people’s minds at rest in any way I can. We don’t stop caring about our clients once we’ve sold them property. It saddens us that Mr Roscommon and his son don’t feel able to come back. But you surely aren’t blaming your home for what tragically happened.’

  ‘Finding Mr Metcalf was too much for his mind, that’s all,’ Amy’s father declared.

  ‘And may I say this, Amy? You shouldn’t be surprised if it has affected yours a little. Nothing to be ashamed of, just to take into account. I expect it feels as if what happened was too close, does it? But these things do happen, and it might just as easily have in the street where you used to live. If you laid all the flats in this building end to end you’d have a street, wouldn’t you? Try thinking of it that way if it helps.’

  Arkwright sat back, obviously pleased with her response, although she had smiled only at the unpersuasiveness of his suggestion. ‘Anything more I can help with?’

  He either thought he’d covered all she’d said or was pretending to, or did he have the nerve to assume she thought he had? ‘A couple of things,’ she said.

  ‘Amy, the coffee.’

  ‘This is more important. What’s strange about our windows?’

  ‘Nothing I’m aware of,’ her father said at once.

  ‘Listen for a minute. What can you hear?’

  ‘Nothing much.’