The House On Nazareth Hill

by Ramsey Campbell

  ‘Nothing at all, you mean. So why can’t we hear the chainsaws out there?’

  ‘Probably because the men are on their break,’ Arkwright said.

  ‘No, that isn’t it,’ Amy said, and strode to raise the sash. She’d taken hold of the chilly bolt when she saw that all three men had indeed stopped work. They were seated on the fallen tree, resting their victorious shadows on it too as they refilled plastic cups with the steaming contents of a flask, and she disliked them even more than she had for cutting down the oak. ‘I don’t care,’ she said, and the glass threw her voice back in her face. ‘We couldn’t hear them before either, not once I shut the window. You must have noticed.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ said her father. ‘You may recall I was in the bathroom. And if the double glazing works so well it’s hardly an occasion for complaint. We aren’t all as fond of noise as you. Now if that’s all that was keeping you—’

  ‘Are you going to talk to him about security?’

  ‘I suspect Mr Arkwright and I may discuss that, so if you’d like to—’

  ‘Ask him about Mr Metcalf’s flat.’

  ‘It’s locked, Amy,’ the Housall representative said. ‘Try not to let it bother you. There’s nothing to be afraid of, truly, and it’ll stay locked until someone else moves in.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘How do I—’

  ‘What makes you so sure it’s locked? People kept buzzing it after he was dead, and they’d have noticed if it wasn’t, but then Mr Roscommon got in.’

  ‘The other people must have been mistaken, obviously, but I promise you I’ve checked it. It’s locked up as tight as a, as a cell. You don’t look convinced.’

  ‘If you say it’s locked now I’ll believe you, but suppose it was before?’

  ‘You’ve run off again. You’ve left me behind.’

  ‘Suppose Mr Roscommon was let in?’

  ‘Don’t waste Mr Arkwright’s time with such nonsense.’ Her father grabbed her hand to turn her towards him; his fingers felt hot and moist and swollen. ‘And stop thinking things like that as well,’ he said. ‘It can’t be doing her mind any good, can it, Mr Arkwright?’

  Amy felt herself being held there to be judged. Even playing waitress would be preferable. She pulled free of her father and wiped her hand down the front of her sweater, and the doorbell rang. ‘Find out who that is, would you?’ he said.

  She was halfway down the hall when she heard him murmur ‘I apologise for all that. She used to imagine things about this place when it was derelict, when her poor mother was alive, but I’d assumed she had grown out of it. I’ll deal with it, don’t worry.’

  Through the snarl of her emotions one thought came clear: as far as he was concerned it was the Housall representative who needed reassurance. As she stalked past the paper eyes her fingers were tingling to poke them out, but she jabbed the button of the intercom instead, so viciously she almost broke her nail. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘You’re early, aren’t you, Rob? Or maybe you aren’t, I don’t know, but I want to get changed.’

  His voice sounded squashed into the metal cage by static. ‘Are you saying come back?’

  ‘No, come up.’ She leaned on the door release button and then hurried to the kitchen, where she filled the percolator. ‘I’ll bring the coffee when it’s made,’ she called. ‘Let Rob in for me.’

  ‘Just tell me if I’m in the way,’ she heard Arkwright urge as she went into her room.

  ‘It’s my daughter’s, I don’t know if we’re meant to call them boyfriends these days. It’ll be the first time I’ve spoken to him face to face.’

  ‘Was there anything you wanted to raise while I’m here?’

  ‘Nothing comes to mind. Please don’t think we aren’t happy here. It’s just a pity that sad business had to happen while my daughter is going through a phase.’

  ‘Believe me, they go through plenty. I’ve got one who’ll be older, and it gets no easier for me and her mother.’

  ‘That’s all you think it is with mine, then, just her age. You wouldn’t say she seemed…’

  Amy had left her door open an inch, but the speakers must be lowering their voices, because she was less and less able to hear them. Or perhaps it was her rage which at this point deafened her to whatever they were saying, not that she was going to let herself care what they said. She pulled off her sweater and jeans and dumped them on the floor beside her plate and milk-smeared glass from last night’s midnight snack, and having donned some black tights and her shortest skirt, sat on the unmade bed to wriggle into another black sweater. She was tying the laces of her calf-length boots when someone tapped on her door. ‘Don’t bother with coffee for me,’ Arkwright said. ‘I’m off to finish my rounds.’

  Her father was in the hall too, though she’d heard neither of them emerge from the main room. By the time she’d finished tying up her boots he had ushered Arkwright along the hall. He opened the door as she stepped around hers, and Rob was outside. He gave a defensive blink and lifted his long face as if to level his sharp chin at her father, and the rings in his ear and nostril flashed. ‘One way to get yourself a magnetic personality,’ Arkwright quipped as he sidled past Rob and thumbed Beth Griffin’s buzzer.

  Rob blinked hard at him, then peered beneath his enviable eyelashes at her father. ‘Aim said come up.’

  ‘Step in and close the door.’

  ‘I just need to get my coat,’ Amy said.

  ‘No panic, is there? Now I’ve got your friend here I’d like to acquaint myself with him,’ said her father, and made way for Rob so quickly that he appeared to be recoiling. ‘Do tell me all about yourself.’

  ‘Not much to tell,’ Rob mumbled. He looked nervous, and no wonder, Amy thought. His nervousness felt like a restless parasite in her stomach. She beckoned him into the main room, where she sat on the sofa and patted the space beside her, but he wandered over to the window. ‘Are the men still on their break?’ she thought to ask.

  ‘Sitting on their victim, looking pleased about stealing your oxygen.’

  ‘It had to be dealt with,’ Amy’s father said. ‘It was starting to be dangerous. Its age, you know. Please have a seat.’

  Rob dropped himself next to Amy. A cushion separated them, and she left her hand there in case he wanted to take it, but he rested his fists on his thighs, protruding his knuckles at her father. ‘How did you and Christmas treat each other?’ her father said, lowering himself into the seat opposite.

  ‘Pretty fair.’

  ‘Something to celebrate?’

  ‘I’d say so. Did Aim tell you my parents gave me a car?’

  ‘I rather meant Christmas was an occasion to celebrate. Birth of our saviour and all that old-fashioned palaver. I’m not embarrassing you, I hope.’ When Rob released his fists from their apparent paralysis and tried to wave the suggestion away, her father said ‘A car, you say. Quite a gift, and a responsibility.’

  ‘My father sells them and my mother’s an instructor.’

  ‘Fully insured, will they be?’

  ‘Must be.’

  ‘You’ve passed your test, I take it.’

  ‘On my birthday.’

  ‘Weren’t you too young to have learned?’

  ‘They didn’t think so.’

  ‘You’re saying parents know their children best and hang the law.’

  Amy dug her fingers into the cushion. ‘He’s saying they trust him.’

  ‘Which—’

  ‘May I call you Robin? Please do continue, Robin.’

  ‘Maybe you should try treating Aim—’

  ‘Don’t damage that, Amy, please.’

  She forced her hand open and moved it closer to Rob’s, but he lifted his to rub his forehead with his knuckles. ‘Maybe you should treat her more like they treat me.’

  ‘That must wait to be seen. She has more than a year before she can drive, though I must say I don’t know why she would want to when she has me
.’

  ‘Not driving. Trusting her.’

  Amy’s father stared at him as though the words were remnants of a message, too little of it to be comprehensible. ‘And how would you have me trust her, Robin? Does it involve you?’

  Rob’s ring had flashed like a struck match as he wrinkled his nose at the syllable of his name he disliked. ‘It’s up to Aim,’ he mumbled, not looking at her.

  ‘I rather think at her age it’s up to me, young man.’

  ‘Then let her go to Spain with her school.’

  Amy felt as though they’d both locked her in some hot cramped place in order to discuss her. ‘So my child has been talking to you about me, has she?’ her father said. ‘Count yourself privileged. The reverse doesn’t apply. You’re one of her many secrets.’

  ‘Maybe if she felt you trusted her…’

  ‘And letting her fly off to Spain would achieve that, would it?’

  ‘It’d help, wouldn’t it, Aim?’

  ‘Might.’

  Her father was studying Rob’s face. At last he said ‘I wonder why it should be so important to you for her to visit a country like Spain.’

  She’d had enough. He was determined not to let her go, and anything Rob said would only aggravate his distrustfulness. She had to escape the hot dark cramped cell he was making of the inside of her head. ‘Because he wants me to be happy, not that you’d know anything about that,’ she blurted, and grabbed Rob’s hand to drag him to his feet. ‘Come on, Rob. Take me anywhere.’

  Her father stood up, closer to the hall. His face had turned blank, and appeared to have grown heavier, the whole of him did. ‘And just where might anywhere be?’

  ‘Wherever Aim wants.’

  ‘Where’s that, Amy? I’m sure we’d both like to know.’

  She turned to Rob, which left her father as a hulk on the edge of her vision. ‘Wherever you like.’

  ‘Shall we go for a drive and then back to mine?’

  ‘Vital.’ As she headed for the door she was prepared to dodge her father if he tried to seize her, but he only said ‘Will your parents be at home when you are, Robin?’

  ‘They didn’t say. And listen, it’s just Rob.’

  ‘You don’t care for the name they chose for you.’

  Amy marched into her room to grab a coat from her wardrobe and a cap from the row of them before almost running along the hall, where her father appeared behind Rob. ‘Please make certain you’re home by midnight.’

  ‘Why, what do you think I’ll turn into if I’m not?’

  ‘It’s what you are already becoming that worries me.’

  If he expected a response to that, he could invent one for himself. Amy threw open the door and darted into the corridor, whose dimness seemed to narrow it, and down the stairs, which struck her as even more reluctant than usual to admit to their illumination. The light from outside only emphasised the gloom of the ground floor, on which the six slabs of doors gleamed darkly at her. The metal handles chilled her fingers as she emerged into sunlight cold and pale as the gravel of the drive, to be met by the renewed chorus of the chainsaws. She might have asked the men whether they had only just recommenced work, but the uproar was too oppressive to let her frame the question. She ran around the corner of the building to the car park, where Rob caught up with her. ‘Which is yours?’ she said.

  ‘Guess.’

  ‘The Jag,’ she said, though she’d deduced that the sleek black beast came with the Housall representative.

  ‘No, the Microbe.’

  ‘It’s a nice little microbe.’

  A blue respray had made the Nissan Micra look almost new. Inside it was redolent of car shampoo and faded upholstery, a homely smell. Once she ran the passenger seat all the way back she was able to stretch her legs under the dashboard. Her seat belt issued from its slot in a series of jerks, and by the time she’d fastened it Rob, having slammed his door a second and conclusive time, was saying ‘Where do you—’

  ‘I don’t care. Just drive.’

  Maybe once they were in the open she would want to talk, but for the moment everything beyond the windscreen felt like the oppression she was trying to leave behind: the chainsaws mutilating their prone victim in the midst of a spray of its substance, the locked marketplace whose lifelessness appeared to have spread into the streets which it brought to an end, the tics of the Christmas lights, even Partington itself, whose buildings seemed the exact colour of senile teeth. Rob steered the car to the main road and engaged fifth gear as the road began to unwind across the moors, and Amy opened her window a crack so that the wind could tug at her hair and cool her face. When her ringed nostril started aching with the chill she screwed the window tight, which Rob took as a signal to halt the car. ‘This is good, isn’t it?’ he said hopefully.

  ‘Suppose.’ The sun had subsided behind a ridge, above which the sky was drawing into itself all the green of the darkening slopes and setting like a plane of crystal around the silhouettes of bare trees, slowing down their gentle dance. They were as black as the hem of the eastern sky, in which the first star was glimmering. She remembered loving to see that sight when she was little, especially at Christmas. But she couldn’t ignore the sight of Partington like teeth in the broken lower jaw of the horizon; it had crammed itself into the wing mirror, where the smallness of its image only intensified its significance, so that she felt as if that was squeezing words out of her. ‘I don’t know what’s making him act that way,’ she hardly knew she said.

  ‘Me.’

  ‘Not you, you you.’ She reached across Rob to switch off the engine before taking his left hand in both of hers. ‘I do know. He was never like that before we moved. It’s that place.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Something, and he won’t admit there’s anything, and that’s why he’s like he is.’

  ‘What way is that when I’m not there?’

  ‘Same as when you were. No, worse.’

  ‘How? Tell me how.’

  ‘As if he doesn’t know me any more. As if he wants to keep me a prisoner.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ said Rob, and his hand relaxed. ‘Mine are like that sometimes.’

  ‘Not like he is. Not trying to get you off with someone you hate because they think he’ll keep an eye on you.’

  ‘Who, Aim?’

  ‘Only the worst. Only Shaun Picknose.’

  ‘Antagonistic,’ Rob said, but then his concern made itself heard. ‘What’s he been trying to do?’

  ‘Shaun, what he’s always trying, and he knows he can piss off. Why, did you think you’d got competition?’ She leaned over and gave Rob’s thin cheek a swift kiss. ‘My dad, though, he thinks Shaun’s some kind of angel. Thinks he’s what I need to turn me back into someone I never was.’

  ‘So long as you never are.’

  ‘Sometimes I don’t know who I am,’ Amy confessed, and felt that the conversation was dissipating the subject she’d wanted to discuss. ‘I won’t be who he wants me to be, I know that. You saw how he even stopped me working.’

  ‘That’s bad, but that’s parents. Martie gave me a present for both of us, by the way. And thanks for my CDs.’

  ‘Thanks for my hat and necklace. My dad gave me money I had to buy stuff to wear with, but you knew what I liked. What did Martie give us?’

  ‘Can I have my hand back for it?’

  ‘It’s my hand too, so remember I’m only lending it back to you.’ Before he reached into the pocket of his black denim jacket she suspected what he might produce, and when she heard the crinkling of foil she knew. Maybe it would help her free herself of her lingering emotions, since talking had fallen short of them. ‘Do you want to smoke it now?’ she said.

  ‘Up here ought to be good, but I don’t want to risk driving. Martie says it’s phenomenal. Let’s go to mine and I’ll show you something else the car’s good for.’

  Partington had begun to glow as if the jaw and all its teeth had been thrown into a fir
e. Darkness was welling up from the hollows of the moors, bringing with it a hint of fog, and Amy knew that if she allowed it, that would taste like tears. ‘Let’s go down, then,’ she said. ‘Does the radio work?’

  ‘Give it a finger,’ said Rob, switching on the engine and the dashboard lights. Amy poked the button as he set about turning the car, stopping well short of the unfenced ditches, and a mellifluous male Yorkshire voice soared out of the speakers. ‘I hope you got a big goose for Christmas like us. Oscar gave me all the stuffing I could handle. Replete, I was. Replete.’

  ‘Change the station if you want,’ Rob said in some embarrassment. ‘I was just listening for our weather.’

  ‘I don’t mind Charlie Churchill. He’s quite funny sometimes. My dad can’t stand him.’

  The disc-jockey was announcing ‘Frosty the Snowman’, a process which took him some minutes before he started the record. By that time the car had left the spiky dark behind and was re-entering Partington, whose orange glow touched Amy without warmth, like an image of a fire. Rob swung the Micra off the main road opposite the entrance to the market car park and drove up the least modernised lane in town, a winding bumpy track which ended several hundred yards on, alongside six cottages above the reinforced wall of the main road. The drystone wall in front of Rob’s house, the cottage farthest from the town, blushed as he reversed almost against it. ‘Nobody’s in,’ he said.

  ‘What a surprise.’

  ‘They didn’t say they wouldn’t be.’

  ‘So let’s make the most of it.’

  ‘When we’re up,’ Rob said as the song dwindled into oblivion, and gave her a slim round-bowled hash pipe to look after while he unfolded the foil and pinched off a moist lump of resin so aromatic she could smell it breaking. ‘I wouldn’t want his icicle anywhere near me,’ Charlie Churchill was saying as Rob pushed the dashboard lighter into its socket and dropped the lump of resin into the bowl of the pipe. ‘Sends a shiver through my vessels, the very idea.’ When an inch of the lighter sprang out he removed it and inverted the bowl of the pipe over the red-hot disc, their circumferences matching exactly. He drew in a long toke and held it for some seconds before releasing it through his nostrils. ‘Wow’